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Lady?”
    “A
geis
placed on me. A solemn pledge I made centuries ago not to reveal the hiding place of a certain … thing. Much was bound into that pledge, that injunction. If I break it, I could bring about the ruin of all Avalon.”
    She looked tensely at him, the blue-green of her eyes glimmering like sunlight slanting into a deep lake. “What I am going to tell you now, Merlin, is not the secret I am pledged to keep, but it comes perilously close to it.”
    “Then why risk telling me any of it, Lady?”
    “Because the consequences of
not
telling you could be so much worse. Great events are drawing near. You must sense this, I know. A battle, perhaps a final battle, is brewing. All of our worlds, mortal and immortal alike, are teetering on the brink ofdestruction—destruction more total than the Devastation that humans caused centuries back. Not just another isolated battle, I am speaking of a worldwide upheaval, though its epicenter may indeed be here in Britain. Part of what I know may tip the balance. And you are the one with whom it must be shared.”
    Merlin felt an overwhelming urge to run screaming from this place between worlds. What she was offering sounded to be a heavy, chilling responsibility. These last few years he had acquired great power, regaining some of his old powers and gaining new ones. But he had also, for the first time, enjoyed the fringes of what might almost be called a normal life. That, Merlin realized now, had brought him more joy than he had ever known.
    “Lady, I am just one person—defective and mortal. This responsibility is not for me. Surely there are others more suitable to bear it.”
    She looked at him with a sadness that seemed bottomless. “You, Merlin, are the
only
one who can bear it. If you do not take it up, I fear the world is doomed.”
    At the chilling finality of those words, Merlin shivered. For endless moments, he stared into the fluid silvery light that surrounded them. It pulled at him, sucking him into itself. Images swirled through it, images of people and places he had loved—Heather, Arthur, Nimue, his mother. Among them were brief glimpses he had enjoyed of Avalon and memories of the warm, wild Wales of his childhood.
    There were less cherished images swimming there as well—battles, companions he had lost, the beautiful, deadly face of Morgan Le Fay. And through it all wove the glittering, ominous tail of the comet. The dark and the light—they were all tied together in ways he could feel but not understand. Yet, he realized fiercely, he needed to understand. Everything seemed to hingeon it. Perhaps taking on this burden, whatever it was that the Lady was asking, was the only way to learn, the only way to make some difference.
    At last, yanking his gaze from the swirling images, he looked again at the Lady. “Tell me what I need to know.”
    “I will tell you as much as I can without actually breaking the
geis
I am under. But I must be quick. Maintaining an untraceable space for long is difficult.” She sat on a luminescent stone at the water’s edge and patted the spot beside her, inviting Merlin to sit as well.
    “Long ago, things in the Otherworlds and in yours were less definite, less divided than they are now. The dark and the light intermingled, were part of the whole. They had not yet divided, not yet seen each other as the enemy that must be overcome and dominated. It was then, near the beginning of things, that I fell in love. And he loved me too. You know of him, I am sure, but he was not then as he is now. Arawn, Lord of the Dead, King of the Netherworld, Ruler of Annwyn, land of chaos and death.”
    Merlin shuddered. The Welsh had long told stories of Arawn, stories spoken in hushed tones around a fire or tales to frighten little children into behaving. But Merlin had only known him as a shadowy mythic figure, and he preferred to keep him that way.
    The Lady smiled at Merlin’s startled face. “Light and shadow, each cannot exist