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robes sagging and bunching around her body.
    “What have I created?” she wailed. “I loved him more than all the others, twice our mother’s child. He should have been the one most willing to revenge the degradation Arthur’s father forced on her. I should have told him Arthur raped me.”
    “He wouldn’t have believed you.” Mogause looked with disgust upon her younger sister. “You idiot. Uther Pendragon has won again. That is not your son, or Arthur’s, but Uther’s own grandson and as like him as any man could ever be. He’s right. He could have conquered Britain without once entering Camelot. It will be twice as dangerous for him now. I’ve been there. You don’t know what it’s like. Arthur wields a kind of enchantment. Lords like Meleagant think he does nothing but sit in his rooms all day and send out laws to anger them. They don’t know the hold he has over his knights. Have you ever heard of one of them being bribed? They may fight and carouse and game on their own, but when he orders them to settle a dispute or mediate a claim, they become everything he expects them to be. Even your sons do. Modred will have to find a way to break that, or he can never hope to destroy Arthur.” v
    “He wanted to strangle me!” Morgan caressed her throat, half expecting to feel bruises.
    “At the moment, I’m sorry he didn’t. By Maebdh’s own wrath, sister! I’ve told you often enough that you can’t play on the fringes of sorcery. Look at yourself. You’re three years younger than I am and you look thirty older. You’ve used your little bits of magic to seduce and cajole and shape pillows around your life. You can’t hope to control anyone that way. You must take the risks. I have looked into the fires and the mists. I have been burnt and scalded, but I hold power! You are nothing more now than the little slaves Modred plays with. You’ll get no more love from him.”
    Morgan’s wail rose at that and she buried her face in her couch and sobbed, beating her fists on the soft headrest. Morgause watched a few seconds, then sighed and went about her business.
    Modred was shaking by the time he returned to his rooms. He threw out the barber waiting for him and told the guard to keep his friends away.
    Little light came through the thick windows. The oil lamp sputtered and died as Modred sat before the hearth, staring at his hands as the firelight played over them. Modred thought he had long ago abandoned the old taboos of his Celtic sires and the new ones of his Christian grandmother. He had never thought of his games with Morgause as incest. She hardly looked old enough to be his aunt and she was so inventive . . . But the nausea in his throat told him that his sophistication was an elaborate veneer. It was one thing to feel delightfully sinful in his aunt’s bed and another to find he was the product of such sin. From deep in his childhood came tales overheard about monsters conceived in unnatural lust. He wondered if he might have been born with horns or the tail of a pig, thoughtfully removed by his mama. His lips whitened.
    What bizarre deformity might still be within him?
    He gripped the arms of the chair until his nails broke and bled. Very well. They had done this to him, his mother and the too-pure Arthur. If he had been born outside the pale then there were no more cords binding him to it or its rules. He was free. Whatever weakness they had given him was not in his arms or his wit. He was stronger and more agile than any of his brothers but Gawain, and more attractive to women. He had the gift of seeming friendship, too, and the wisdom to keep his own counsel.
    “Damn them all!” he roared. “I will be the greatest king since Constantine! You made me, Arthur, and you cannot stop me!”
     
     

 
     
    Chapter Four
     
     
    Spring had arrived at Caerleon. The courtyards were muddy, the practice fields were muddy, the paths down to the shops were muddy. Children soon discovered that it was