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turned, and there stood Nurse, no doubt come to fetch me back to my spinning.
    â€œHow so?” she whispered. Her face looked like snow upon a boulder.
    Thomas looked at her as if deciding whether to speak on, then spoke, keeping his voice very low. “He sickened and died. Two days ago.”
    â€œWhat—what is to become of Queen Igraine?”
    I stiffened, for—what was Nurse saying? That my mother might be in danger? I looked to Thomas for an answer. But he gave no answer. He only gazed back at Nurse with that shadow in his eyes.
    Nurse asked, “Who sent you here?”
    â€œUther’s seneschal.”
    â€œThe seneschal? Does he now claim the throne?”
    Thomas did an odd thing. Instead of answering, he peered over his shoulder toward the steps of the keep, where peasants waited to go in and plead their cases before Redburke, the turnip-nosed steward. And then he looked upward, to where the sky blew low and gray over the walls of Tintagel.
    In the sky wheeled a great bird the color of darkest dead ashes, its motionless wings wider than those of an eagle. Beside me, I heard Nurse’s heavy breathing catch. “The Morrigun,” she said, almost choking.
    â€œWhat?” I asked.
    Thomas lowered his sky blue gaze to me, but no one answered. There was a long silence. I stood there staring back at him without comprehension. “What is it?” I demanded finally.
    He whispered so softly I barely heard him. “The Morrigun is flying.”
    â€œThere will be war,” Nurse said in a crushed voice. “Men are fated to die.”
    Fate again. I hated fate. What was this meddlesome fate that it should concern me? Fate had better let me alone. “War? Where?” I demanded.
    His voice low, Thomas told me, “Everywhere, most likely. There are many who will wish to be king.”
    I began to understand, but only insofar as it concerned him. “What will you do? Where will you go?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    I heard a ladylike rustling of skirts and turned to find Morgause standing beside me. I tried not to scowl, but all I could think was that Thomas might like Morgause better than me, for Morgause was a sweet, shy violet of a young lady, mannerly, soft-spoken, everything I was not.
    With an abrupt change of tone, as if we had been discussing nothing more than social pleasantries all along, Nurse asked Thomas, “Will you stop here tonight?”
    â€œYes. Annie must rest.”
    â€œI’ll find you a pallet, then.”
    â€œNo need.” He gave her a long look. “I’ll make myself a bed of straw in the stable.”
    Nurse nodded, beckoned to Morgause and me, and led us inside, back to work.
    â€œWho was that?” Morgause asked.
    Nurse seemed not to hear. Morgause spoke so softly and gently, always, that she was accustomed to not being heard. She did not ask again.
    At the door of the solarium, Nurse touched my elbow to hold me back while Morgause entered.
    â€œMorgan,” Nurse murmured to me, “not a word. Our lives depend on it.” She gave me a look that took me in with a power I had not known was in her. Her eyes shone like the laughing fay’s that fearsome time at Avalon, like cat eyes gleaming in firelight. Shimmering clover green. Like falling into a deep, tree-shaded well. Was this—Nurse? My stolid, familiar nurse, with such unaccountable green power in her? It seemed so. Her gaze enchanted me and terrified me for a flashing moment before she turned away and led me back to my spinning.
    Perhaps an hour later I sensed someone watching me and looked up to see Redburke, of all people, looming in the doorway. Certainly he had never before taken such an interest in Morgause and me and our industry at the wheel and loom, but there he stood, all six broad burly feet of him, scowling out of his bearish hairy face at both of us. Morgause gazed blankly back at him, then ducked her chin in maidenly confusion. I