PROLOGUE

Seated at the high table, with the emerald necklace her husband had given her resting on her half-naked bosom, the emerald tiara nestled in her dark hair, Lady Igraine tried not to answer the leer of the king. After years of warring with the duke-her husband-why now had the king suddenly called a truce and summoned them to his court? Why was he now feasting them? And why was he ogling her so?

She tried to listen to the minstrels playing upon lute and viol-music was a rare treat, but it could not cheer her. Nor did the sweet fragrance of scented beeswax raise her spirits, or the way candlelight glowed upon vessels of pure tooled gold. Although the servants placed before her roast suckling pig, quail in pomegranate sauce, sweetmeats, plum pudding, and many other delicacies, Igraine ate little. At last the marzipan was served and it was over. She rose to rejoin her husband, who was seated near the king, next to that fearsome old sorcerer who served as the king's chief counselor. A look into the dark pits of the sorcerer's eyes made Igraine shudder almost as much as her spidery sense of the king's stare on her bare shoulders.

Lifting her heavy silk shirt a few inches to free her slippered feet, Igraine took a couple of steps toward her husband. But the king stood in the way.

"Lady Igraine," he said, grasping her hand and pressing it to his lips.

She curtsied without replying. Perhaps she blushed, although she hated herself for blushing-but he was kissing her hand more than once, far more than courtesy called for. She wanted to pull her hand away, but did not dare. He was the king.

"Igraine the beautiful," he told her in a low, vibrant voice, "there will be peace if only you will be my paramour."

Panic stabbed her; her heart pounded. With a word she could save the lives of many, many men-but her husband! How could she betray her husband? Did this lecherous king not know what it meant for a woman to love and be loyal to her husband?

"What say you, my lovely Igraine?"

"I say no, Your Majesty." Her voice trembled. She wished it would not tremble, but it did. So did her hand.

The king scowled. "What?"

"By your leave," she quavered, pulling her hand away from him. She fled to her husband's side.

"What is the matter?" he asked her.

"Shhh."

Later, in their bedchamber, she told him. He leapt up and started slinging on his armor. "I'll kill him!"

"No, darling, think what--"

"He must die now. I'll kill him now. As he sleeps."

"Dear heart, there are guards! You'll be one against many! You'll be slain."

"I care not. I will kill him."

"And if he kills you instead, what will become of me?"

He faced her without speaking.

"Let us take to horse," Igraine said, "and leave this place at once."

They did so, making their escape in the night. When the king heard of their flight, he was enraged. He sent a messenger after them with word that they could expect either to be dead or be his prisoners within six weeks.

The duke manned and provisioned his two strongest castles, one for his wife and one for himself. Although Igraine understood that they separated for her safety-for the king would attack the duke first-still, she missed her husband dreadfully. Four, five, six weeks the king and his army besieged the duke's castle. Igraine paced the battlements every day. Even the playful hugs of her little daughters, Morgause and Morgan, could not comfort her.

Daughters. Two daughters, and her husband loved her still, even though she had not given him a son. Her heart swelled with longing for him.

On a night of the dark of the moon, she lay abed in her lonely chamber-although not yet sleeping-when she heard the surprised cries of servants in the hallway. Her chamber door opened and her husband strode in.

"Darling!" She sprang up to meet him. He looked weary and grimy from weeks in the field.

Without a word he took her into his arms.

She gave herself to him utterly. But something was wrong. He did not speak to her; he did not whisper endearments to her. He did not caress her as he usually did. It was as if she had given herself to a stranger.

At dawn he arose, kissed her silently, and left her.

She gazed after him, longing for something more, some sign. And perhaps it was a sign she saw, but a freakish one. As he passed through the chamber door, beyond it she saw the wolfish gleam of eyes, one glimmering green, the other eerily purple. Igraine knew those fey mismatched eyes: her younger daughter, Morgan, roaming the shadows like a restless spirit.

Then the door closed.

Igraine lay for a while staring into the shadows of the ceiling groins, then called for her women to help her dress. She refused breakfast. An uncanny knowledge rode in her belly: She carried a son from the night just past.

She climbed the spiral stairs of her tower. At the top, standing upon the windy battlements, she looked up-and shuddered. Over her head hovered a great soot gray carrion bird. It answered her stare with its pale, beady eye, then gave a harsh cry and flapped away.

Dread clawed Igraine's heart as she descended to the great hall.

Messengers awaited her. Her husband was dead, they told her. After seeing the king ride away from the encampment, the duke had sallied forth in a nighttime attempt to lift the siege. He had been killed.

He had been killed some four hours before dawn. Four hours before he had kissed her good-bye.

Book One, Chapter One

My father loved me.

He was the only one ever to truly love me.

They killed him when I was six years old.

I am Morgan le Fay, and I will never die. I hover on the wind, and fate falls out of each slow beat of my wings. That is what my name means: Morgan the fate, Morgan the magical, fey Morgan of the otherworld, Morgan who must be feared. But I was not always Morgan le Fay. When they killed my father, I was only little Morgan.

I saw him once after he was dead. I will never forget that night.

While he yet lived, I saw him perhaps eight or ten times that I remember. My father was the Duke of Cornwall, and he was often absent, at war. At first I thought he went out to fight a dragon. Later I understood that he fought a king with an odd name, something about a penned dragon. I did not understand or care what the battles were about; it was the nature of noblemen, evidently, to fight one another, and my father was very much a lord and a warrior.

When he came home to Tintagel, the whole castle shouted and sprang up to make him welcome. Nurse would restrain me with one hand and my sister, Morgause, with the other, for we were lady born, not common urchins to go capering under the horses' feet. We had to stand on the steps of the keep and watch with dignity, like Mother, as Father rode in a the gate, his head lifted so that his russet beard jutted from under his helm, his mail jingling and shining, his war horse curveting under his spurs. When he dismounted, he would look first to my mother, Igraine the Beautiful-that was what folk called her, and they did not lie. She was like moonlight on the sea, a goddess made of starlight and shadows. Proudly she would descend to meet him, my father, and he would look only at her, he would not even glance at me, and I would feel a fire dragon burning in my heart even though all the servants would cheer crazily. Father would toss his reins to a page boy and give Mother his hand. Hand in hand they would walk to the tall arched doorway and go inside.

Then no one would see them for a while. Father and Mother would go somewhere by themselves. And the castle folk would cheer and laugh and talk and joke. But Nurse never let Morgause and me hear the talk, the joking. She would take us back to our tower chamber, where she would scrub us. She would wash our hair and brush it and plait it with a cord of gold and wind it around our heads so that it looked like a crown made of braids. She would put us in our best frocks, with hose and shoes.

Then we would wait.

Nurse would try to feed us porridge and milk for supper but we could not eat.

And then. Then, finally, my father would send for us.

In his chamber amid torchlight and shadows he was a warm glow awaiting us in the big red velvet chair. Now he was not a mailed warrior; now he wore a soft woolen tunic and smelled of tallow soap. He would open his arms to us and hug us each to one side of his chest and kiss us amid his prickly beard and perch us each on one burly knee and turn his smile and his shining gray eyes upon each of us. "So, Morgan." He would address me first, for I was his favorite. "My little firebrand, how goes the mischief these days?"

And I could tell him anything fearlessly. "I put the cat in the wash water, Daddy!"

"I heard. Kitty came out very clean and the linens very dirty."'

"And I ran away from Nurse. I ran outside in my smallclothes."

"So I am told!"

"And I climbed the big pear tree and tore my apron."

And my father would say proudly, "You are born for trouble, Morgan."

That was why I loved my father so, because he saw me truly. He looked in my eyes and he knew. Morgause and I had dark eyes, deer eyes like our mother's, but mine were not quite like: One of my eyes peeped shadowy emerald green, ad one violet, like deepest dusky amethyst. My eyes marked me as fey right from the start. Most folk did not notice-they just saw dark eyes, almost black-or they chose not to notice. To all the others, even my mother, my sister and I were a sort of two-headed animal called Morgan-Morgause or, more commonly, "Girls!" Although Morgause was a year older, we might as well have been twins. They dressed us alive, lessoned us a like, scolded us alike when our noses were dirty and exhorted us alike to sit still and keep our legs together. But Daddy and I knew that I was not the least bit like prissy Morgause.

"And how is my beautiful Morgause?" he would ask her next. He never called me beautiful, even though Morgause and I looked much alike, with our mother's porcelain skin and smooth sable hair. I knew we looked a like because folk said so, and also because Mother sometimes let us look at ourselves in her mirror. Father had gifted her with it, a mirror of polished silver, worthy of a queen. Most noblewomen had a circle of polished bronze for a mirror if they had any at all.

I did not mind that Daddy did not call me beautiful, because it took nothing to be beautiful, and I knew that he liked my mischief better.

"I've been good, Daddy," Morgause would answer, almost in a whisper.

"I knew it." He would give us each a hug. "You're my good little girl. And Morgan here is my most excellent daredevil. You're like scabbard and sword. You go together."

Then he would hug each of us again and kiss us again and send us off to bed with a gentle swat to hurry us on our way.

The swat did no good in my case. I was not one to stay in bed.

Morgause and I slept in the same chamber, with Nurse on a pallet between us. Nurse snored. Morgause slept quiet as a mouse all night long, flat on her back with her hands outside the coverlet the way Nurse told us to lie. I slept sometimes. More often I lay awake and wondered about things: What was war for? Was it fun? Why did women not do it? Why did women always have to keep their legs together, even on horses, riding sideways? Why must I keep my hands outside the coverlet?

And sometimes, quite often actually, I grew weary of lying on my back with my hands to my chin and I grew weary of wondering and I got up put of bed, crept past Nurse and out of the chamber, and wandered the shadowy corridors of the castle. Often I drifted toward my mother's chamber, for my mother was a great mystery to me. Once a day I was brought to her to be inspected and chided and kissed, but other than that I seldom saw her. And other than on those occasions I never entered my mother's chamber. I would wander there in the night sometimes, and stand cold and barefoot staring at her closed door awhile, and wander away again.

So it was that I saw my father one last time, after he was dead.

It was a night of the dark of the moon, very silent. I heard no owl call. Even the dogs down in the village beyond the wall were silent, and even the sea washed quietly against the rocky cliffs below the castle walls on that night, and the wind for once was still. I ghosted through the great hall, gazing up into the vast vaulting shadows of the groins, and I wished I could slip out to the kennels or the mews, but the guards might see me there. So I drifted up to the darkened solarium instead-through the costly glass windows I could see just a whisper of light in the east. Dawn. I must return to my bed soon so that Nurse would find me there in the morning, or else she would scold. Not that I much minded her scolding. Nurse was a plain, blocky Cornishwoman, perhaps of middle age; she seemed to me as old as the mountains, and as blank and patient. She never beat me. Nor did she ever speak a word more than was necessary. I understood that, being a sandy-haired commoner, she was different from my sleek, dark-haired, finely bred Breton mother, different from my sister and me.

After all, I did not care much about getting back to my bed before dawn. I wandered toward my mother's chamber.

And as I padded toward her door, it opened and my father, fully armed, strode out.

I was so surprised that I could not even shout. "Daddy!" I squeaked, and I ran toward him with my arms flung wide.

He barely looked at me. He shoved me out of the way with one gloved hand, sending me sprawling, and strode on.

I could not comprehend. I could only react. "Daddy!" I whimpered, and I picked myself up and trotted after him.

I could not catch up with him. His stride was longer than two of mine, even when I ran. But I followed him down the corridor and the spiral stairs and another long corridor to a postern gate where guards with torches and men on horses awaited him.

"Did it go as planned, Sire?"

I froze in my steps, for I could not find courage to move another inch toward the man who had spoken. His eyes-were those eyes? I saw them as black pits among his steel gray beard. He wore a black gown bordered in stars and moons and strange devices that shone with their own weird green glow in the half-light. Instead of riding a horse, he rode a long-eared white mule. Although I stood in the shadows, he looked straight at me and smiled-it was as if a skull had grinned at me. And a fey and fearsome shock of recognition burned through me, even though I had never seen such a person before.

Sorcerer.

"Just as planned," said my father-but his voice was not my father's voice. Daddy's voice was slow and golden, like honey, but this strange daddy's voice was like the scratch of dog claws on gravel. Swinging onto his horse, a fat, brass-colored charger I had never seen before, he said, "I owe you a purse of gold, Merlin."

"No, Sire. You only owe me what you have promised."

A look passed between them. I cowered; I could not have withstood looking into that wizard's empty black gaze.

"The baby she will bear," said the Sire man in a low voice.

"Do not forget, my king, or you will rue it."

"I keep my promises. But what do you want with my son?"

Merlin only laughed. He laughed like a night bird as they rode away.

I slipped back to my bed and lay trembling with my hands naughtily under the covers, curled between my legs for warmth. After a while I slept.

Oddly, Nurse let us girls sleep late that morning. When we awoke, we saw that she had been crying. She gave us porridge to eat, then told us that our father was dead.

I did not understand dead. I understood only that Daddy was gone. Somehow he had been turned into this Sire person, who turned out to be Uther Pendragon.

I did not think to fear that I would lose my mother also. Nurse put us in our plainest frocks-brown wool-with brown hose and shoes. She brushed our hair smooth but let it hang loose down our backs. All the while Morgause cried, squeakily, like the mouse she was, until she hiccupped. But I did not weep. I turned to stone.

When she had dressed us, Nurse took us to our mother and left us.

Perhaps she thought that our mother would comfort us, or that we would comfort her. But no. Mother sat dressed only in a chemise-I had never seen her so, and she seemed to me even more beautiful that way, in that simple shift of white, than when she wore silks and velvets and jewels. Her dark hair flowed loose like mine, rippling down over her pale, naked shoulders. She sat at her chamber window and stared. Morgause ran to her and laid her head in her lap, weeping, but Mother did not move. She did not even lower her eyes from their staring. She sat like a lovely statue and let Morgause weep uon her.

There were servants in the room, but they either wept upon one another or stood behind Mother, staring eastward as she did. I studied Mother for a while. Then, as she did not move-no one moved-I turned to the door, lugged it open with my heels digging deep into the scented rushes of the floor, and went out.

No one seemed interested in keeping me from wandering. I looked over my shoulder for a moment at the door that had closed behind me, then pattered off to see what was happening elsewhere.

In the kitchen they were cooking clothes. I had never seen such a thing. A huge pot boiling, and clothes going into it and coming out drippy black, like wet crows. I saw my favorite frock, red with blue larkspur trim, go in, and I cried out and ran forward to try to save it. I would have dived into the vat after it, and been boiled black in my turn, but one of the cooks seized me. Without scolding, without even speaking, she put me out the door.

I wept for the frock as I had not wept for my father, and I ran out into the courtyard, its cobbles ever shadowed by high walls. Beyond those walls the sea crashed cold against the cliffs, and always the wind swept down raw off the moors, but although I wore no shawl, I did not feel the chill. I was a weeping stone; what did I care whether the wind blew?

Where was everyone?

The gates stood open. No guards. No one coming or going atop the walls or within them.

I stopped weeping but kept running. I ran out through the yawning gates, past the village huts huddled against the outside of the wall, and up the rugged grazing lands toward the moor.

In that high place there were no people, only furze and heather and stunted thorn trees, deer and foxes and wind and stones. But giants used to live on the moor, Nurse had told me. Great stones taller than two men stood on end where the giants had placed them, maybe to play at quoits, for huge hoop-shaped stones lay strewn here and there. They must have been playful giants, because they had balanced the logan stones atop the cliffs also, stones the size of six horses, yet they rocked in every breeze as gently as cradles. The giants were gone now, Nurse said. Heroes had thrown them into the sea. Once I had asked her if Daddy had ever thrown them into the sea. Once I had asked her if Daddy had ever thrown a giant into the sea and she had laughed, but then she had said yes, he might have done so.

Maybe Daddy was in the sea now. Maybe a giant had come back and thrown him in. Maybe that was why everyone was acting so strange.

The steep moor slowed me to a walk. I trudged up the rocky hillside with no idea where I was going or why. In the distance, dust rose. That meant horsemen coming. Usually it meant Daddy coming home, and the castle folk would shout and Mother would come out and stand on the steps of the keep.

I did not know what it meant this time.

Caer Tintagel looked small below me now. Silent. Gates open like a beached fish's mouth.

I came to a circle stone standing on edge, bigger than a millstone, with a hole through it larger than I was tall. I climbed into the hole, turned sideways to make myself part of the stone and sat, waiting.

The dust had come closer, and in it I could see ghostlike shapes of men walking, silent, their heads down, their hands behind them. The ones on horses, the knights, herded the walking men like cattle, prodding them with their spears.

After that came more knights riding double file with their lances raised and in the fore a flag flying. A giant flag shaped like flames. Then I saw that the flames had form. A red dragon.

The wind made the dragon seem alive. I slipped through the quoit stone and lay on the ground behind it, hiding. I saw no more.

Perhaps that is what made such a difference between me and Morgause, afterward: that she saw Uther Pendragon ride into Tintagel, driving his prisoners before him, and she saw Mother walk out, barefoot and proud and pale in only her chemise, to surrender our home to him. And that I did not.

It was not until years afterward that I understood how Uther Pendragon had tricked Mother with Merlin's magic illusion the night before and bedded her. She never spoke of it.

I lay behind the quoit stone-some folk said such stones had a magical power to heal a person who passed through them, but it had done nothing for me. I lay there and after a while I realized that I was shaking all over, maybe with cold, and digging my fingers deep into the slaty ground. I sat up and saw that my hands were dirty and bloody red from clawing at the shale.

One hand clutched something, I noticed as if the hand did not belong to me. I willed it to open, and it did. In the palm lay a small something so round it could not have been just a pebble. I stood up and dropped it into the pocket of my brown frock.

Over the sea the sun was setting as red as my blood. As red as the dragon flag. In the waves its reflection shifted like flames.

I knew I had to go home.

Yet I did not see how I could bear to.

Something sniffed at my ankle. I looked down, so stony numb I was not even surprised. A black dog stood there, neither friendly nor fierce, gazing at me with weird whit eyes.

"Child," said a voice behind me.

I turned, and at first I thought it was a giant looming over me. But it was Merlin, hard and dark like a standing stone in the dusk. He wore a coarse cloak, like a shepherd's mantle, and he carried a thick, knotty walking stick, but I knew him. I could never mistake that voice like winter thistles or those black pits, like tin mines, that were his eyes. It was he.

I had no strength left to scream. I just stared into the midnight of his eyes, and he stared into the green and purple twilight of mine.

"Fay," he whispered.

I had not yet heard it then, for no one except my father considered me of much account, but my mismatched eyes marked me as one set apart. Morgan le Fay.

"Fate upon fate," Merlin murmured. "Cycles upon cycles of fate. Who are you, child?"

I could not speak. I tried to back away, but my feet seemed not to work.

"There is the ancient green power here," he said. "I smell it. What is your name, child? Is it Morrigun?"

At last my panic gave me strength. I ran. Headlong, falling down the slope, cutting my knees on the rocks, I ran back to Tintagel and reached it just as the gates were closing.

The courtyard teemed with strangers. Nobody seemed to notice a bloody child running through. I reached my chamber and found Morgause there, and she looked at me as if I were a stranger, her face as pallid and flat as the moon. Nurse came in after a while, took me to the washstand and scrubbed me and bandaged my hands and knees, all in silence. She did not scold me or ask where I had been. I concluded that no one had missed me. Since Daddy was gone, no one cared.