Archive of Our Own ^beta

Camelot stifled the mage like smoke.

Had she her own choice she would have remained remote; her part, for the moment, was over, and there was business elsewhere to attend to. Yet in the early dawn after the battle she had stood on a hillside, distant enough that the castle was a storm-cloud smudge on the horizon, and the sense of the shattered tower had still throbbed in her mind. The sense of the natural world turned to unnatural ends lingered like a headache. She knew without seeing what remained in those ruins--the broken altar, and the rune-stone, and the lines etched in silver and obsidian at its base--all bleeding out a power that was fading, but in slow and sluggish increments.

Disturbed, a dying creature might lash out strongly enough to draw blood, and left to rot a dead creature might spoil what lay around it. There was no one but her who could snuff out and clear away what remained of this one. She'd turned herself to face that looming grey shape, and pushed herself towards it.

All through that first day she had been left blessedly alone inside the ruins of the tower; if anyone had taken notice of her entering the place none seemed to have the nerve to venture within it themselves. But the sound and sensation of a hundred or more folk working around and outside the tumbled walls--shifting rubble, hauling water, dragging bodies--pressed in on her senses. The instincts that had kept her alive remained too sharply primed, and reared up at every shout or loud sound. Too much noise, they said, and too many people who'd just as soon see you strung up, and threw out urgent thoughts of emptier places, of the safety of caves and thick-brushed forests.

She had tamped the feeling down until it was a murmur, and set herself to work.

"And the rest of it?" Arthur said to her on the morning of the second day. He of course had no fear of the place, and had wandered in and planted himself on the one of fallen stones of the eastern wall, where the sun would be out of his eyes and he was squarely in her field of vision.

"The rest of it is rock now." She brushed away the lines of vervain and black dirt she'd spread across one of the curved lines carved into the floor. The silver underneath, still bright a quarter of an hour ago, had begun to tarnish and crack.

"Ten thousand pieces of rock." The toe of his boot stirred a few grey slivers. "And most of them covered with scratches and squiggles."

"They will not come to life and curse you," she said.

"Well, you know that, and I know it." He knocked a knuckle against the rock he sat on and looked irritatingly confident, as if he would have known it if she hadn't been there to tell him. "But they--" tipping his head towards the wall, where she could hear the yells of a group of men as they broke down one of the wooden stockades "--right now they'd all rather chop off a finger or two than have to touch any of it. And they'll get antsy working 'round piles of stuff they think'll make their eyes rot out of their heads if they look at it crossways."

"Then you may tell them otherwise."

He leaned forward now, elbows on knees, eyes pinned on her. "Don't think it's me they need to hear it from, is it?"

It was, of course, the most needling way he could have suggested it to her. But it was a fair point, unpleasant as it was to have that point stuck into her ribs: when ordinary people heard the word mage, far better if they began to think of a pale dark-haired woman who took their questions with little friendliness but no malice instead of the king who had put their children in pens and bled them dry with both laws and blades.

So she began to let herself be interrupted ten and twenty times a day by nervous men, men twice her size or age who looked at her at first as though a wrong word from them would lead to a flick of her fingers and some unimaginable yet exceedingly horrible fate. At first it was the rocks the questioned her about, bringing her handfuls of it or pointing to lopsided chunks of rubble that had tumbled down into the shallow river or the ground around it. Even standing yards away one could see the carved figures along the stones: a line of shackled humanoid figures; a hart bending in fear under the grasping jaws of hounds; a group of tall spidery lines that might have been bare-limbed trees or grasping hands reaching upwards.

Yes, she told them, one by one, you may use that chunk of rock to shore up that wall, you may leave it in the river until the water washes it smooth, you may put it under your hammer and strike away until it's dust, and it will do nothing to harm you at all. Their manner around her began to thaw a little, and a handful of the castle's servants began to hesitantly creep into the tower too, bringing books and scrolls and scraps of paper from Vortigern's rooms, filled from edge to edge with runes and images of fanged beasts and crawling shadows drawn in dark inks. These were more wrenching to deal with; there was much in them that could be valuable or dangerous or both, and they ought to have a keeper, yet she could not carry them all away with her when she left and go plodding across the land like an overburdened pack mule.

"Shut the rest away in some safe place if it soothes you," she told each worried servant, after she had taken a few of the dearest and lightest of the volumes to keep with her. "The books themselves can do nothing to harm anyone." Not that she held much faith in the resolve of apprehensive servants, but this way she might save most of them from being pitched into a fire out of carelessness or fear.

Midway through the fifth day her ears, now well-prepared to listen for approaches under the hum and buzz of the noise outside, nearly missed the sounds of gentler footsteps--not the tread of boots or hard-soled shoes, but the pat of a soft slipper.

The footsteps paused before they rounded the edge of the collapsed wall, and for a few minutes the mage could only hear the very faintest shuffling. A nervous one, shifting their weight and pacing until they could get their courage up.

Finally a young woman with hair the color of dark wheat and a dress of fine blue lawn peered around the wall's edge. Her eyes darted all about the tower's ruins, and when she caught sight of the mage crouched over one of the floor she started and gasped.

"My l--your--" Her words caught and stumbled and she paused, eyes questioning and mouth still half-parted, clearly waiting for some guiding correction.

The mage said nothing. Across the way one of the larger rocks shifted against its neighbor with a low scrape; the young woman jumped again at the sound and spoke on hurriedly. "You will please forgive the intrusion, but if you are at liberty--" Her glance fell on the floor around the mage as if she expected fiends to rise out of it. "Maggie sent me to ask if you would kindly come and see to the birds."

"The birds," the mage said, flatly. She kept her gaze on the young woman and drew a looping sign across the stone.

The woman's eyes were still wide, one hand twisting in the fabric of her skirts. "The birds roosting in the aviary. They are all...they seem to be...disturbed."

'Disturbed' could mean a great many things. "And only them? Not the hounds, or the horses?"

"Not--not that I know of." The young woman looked ready to bolt. "But if you have some sense of what the trouble might be..."

Under the mage's hand the stone pulsed rapidly for a moment like a frantic heartbeat, then stilled, the chill of it beginning to fade. The thought of the castle's interior sat badly in her mind, but the unease that stirred in her stomach was greater.

"Wait for a moment," she said, and swept the vervain away to scatter into a cloud; the greenish motes swirled upwards in the sunlight. "I will come."

To work in the tower was one thing, but she had not thought to set foot in the castle proper at all. If the grounds around it kept her feeling half-smothered and ready to flee, the castle itself pressed on her like the piled stones of a cairn. Once he knew of her return Arthur, with an air of amusement, had offered her whatever set of rooms she liked; she had stared at him until his smile started to slip and gone to spend that night and every night since sheltering in a snug hollow between the roots of an alder tree in the nearby fields. A year and more would need to pass at the very least, she had thought, before she would willingly walk into that place again. One day as a prisoner had been enough to fix the feel of it in her memory--not the sharp ache of ill-used magic but the sense of complete suffocation, the weight of twenty years of the ambitions and fears and tightened nerves of every man and woman that had lived in this place and tried to claw their way upwards--to stab at any threat--to stay alive. What had seeped into those bricks could not be removed by magic, or the work or hands, or anything other than time.

The mage bore up under it as the wheat-blonde woman led her down corridors and up staircases, weaving through the bustle of workers heaving open locked doors and scrubbing at the last of the bloodstains.

Eventually they came into a large and open room. The furnishings had all been moved out; the markings on the floor showed that a long table and chairs had once stood there. At the far end the wall gapped open behind a lattice of light wood, and Maggie, looking rather harried, stood by a young woman with fiery red hair who had a bowl of millet tucked into one arm.

"Ssh, ssh!" the young woman was saying to the forms behind the lattice--a mix of pigeons and doves pressed together on their roosts. Her tone was pitched to be soothing but had a frayed tension to it. "It's only a little food for you, see?" When she brought her hand close enough to the lattice-gaps to toss in a handful of seed the nearest bird pecked fiercely at her fingers, and she drew back her hand with a little gasp, which set up an echoing series of shrill whistles and cries from the gathered flock.

"Leave it, then," Maggie said, turning the young woman's hand up to check it. "If they don't want to be fed here, they can go elsewhere when they're hungry."

When she caught sight of the mage, she crossed the room in hurried steps.

"I know you've more important work to do," she said, speaking low. Up close the worry on her face was more apparent. "But Mathild and Athelis tell me every bird that's there has been acting as you see--" she glanced towards the lattice "--not taking any food that's offered, and making an awful racket whenever anyone gets close."

The mage kept her eyes on the birds. "You think there is some cause for concern?"

"I think I've seen more than enough here to worry when anything out of the ordinary occurs." Maggie's mouth firmed into a thin line. "And that you might know if it's only a sickness, or something that might require--your more particular attentions."

"Well," the mage said. "We shall see."

The flock was all still aflutter as the she crossed the room. There were almost too many of them in there, two and three birds to every roost and perch, dozens of black eyes shifting as their heads bobbed and turned and they clambered over each other for space. Their fluttering had settled a little, but sharp trills still rang back and forth.

When she set her hand against the wood of the lattice they all fell still and quiet as one.

The sudden silence was like a cold wind, and her disquiet grew. Even without touching a single one of the birds she could feel the sickening pulse of their panic. Just as well the flame-haired woman hadn't tried to step within the aviary itself; the wrong sound or movement now could have nudged into fleeing this place forever, or into terrified violence of wing and claw. They had not been unsettled by the slow-smothering atmosphere of the castle or even the upheaval of the recent battle, but something that had jarred them to their blood and hollow bones.

"When did it begin?" she said, watching on the huddled mounds of grey and white feathers.

There was a little shuffling behind her, and whispers passing back and forth. "We--we were hiding all during the battle," the wheat-blonde said. "And once it was over there was too much to do--by the time we thought to see to the birds they were all like this. Even the ones in her chambers--"

The mage pinned her with a look. "Whose?"

"Vortigern's daughter," Maggie said from behind her, before the wheat-blonde could speak again. "The princess Catia."

There was a silken rustling, the sound of feathers shifting against feathers.

"Show me," the mage said.

Mathild was the wheat-blonde, the mage learned as they led her down the hallways, and Athelis the flame-hair. "We touched nothing in her chambers except for the bird's cages," Athelis had said fretfully as they walked. "We thought--she might be in some secure place, hiding, until she knew it was safe to return...."

The rooms indeed looked as if nothing had been disturbed. It should not have been jarring, this space where a princess lived, with all its beautifully carved furniture in rich dark wood and the flowers painted in bright colors on the walls, the gold-threaded tapestries of ladies dancing in a garden and deer gamboling through a woodland clearing. The rushes on the floor were still fresh, and mixed with their scent was some brighter floral sweetness. The birds kept here were not the common doves or pigeons of the aviary--the one in the largest cage, a green-feathered parrot with a beak the red of barberries could only have come from across the sea--but their fluttering and chattering was no different.

Under their busy noise was a stillness that echoed down to her bones--the silence of a door slammed shut, a breath drawn in and held too long. A book sat open on one of the tables. A shawl trailed from the window seat and onto the floor, as though set down for a moment and forgotten. There were millet seeds here too, scattered about on the floor; they cracked under the mage's boots.

"I tried to feed them," Mathild was saying, "and they snapped at me just as the pigeons--"

The mage said nothing. She set her hand against the largest cage, and the parrot gave one more loud squawk before settling back on its perch, regarding her with a black and yellow eye.

When she opened the cage's door and offered her curled fingers the parrot stepped onto them easily, and the point of its beak bumped gently against her thumb as she raised her other hand to stroke its head. Restlessness aside, its eyes were bright and clear and its feathers felt sleek under her touch. Even against the multitude of colors in the room, its plumage was the brightest thing. When she pushed her mind against its small quick one she felt its faint resistance, thin as an eggshell--and then it gave way almost familiarly, the lines of its thoughts and senses tangling with hers.

Prickles of fretfulness washed over her, and distress--not so overwhelming from a single bird as it had been from a flock--the same flavor of distress she had felt from a lapwing returning to find its nest plundered, or a sparrow having found its roosting-tree felled by an ax. Something that should be here was not here. Gone! Gone! its mind cried as it beat its wings, and stirred memories of another hand stroking its head, another mind faintly and inexpertly brushing against its own, another figure with lavender-scented hands and a long fall of dark hair--

One figure, she saw in its mind, then two--the second one taller than the first--and then blood, and the scent of fear.

She slammed back into her own mind with a sharp breath. The parrot's claws bit into her fingers.

The young women were still watching her nervously. "Are they truly ill?" Mathild said.

"No," she said, passing the the bird to the startled Athelis, and followed the scent of lavender-water and fear out the door.

It was a tenuous thing, already starting to fade, half-held in her nose and on her tongue and half in the grasp of her mind, nearly buried under the weight of the castle's presence in her mind. She chased it at a swift walk along the hallway and down three staircases, slipping around servants dragging splintering chairs and moth-chewed linens out of abandoned rooms. Twice she nearly lost it entirely--once to a puff of dust from a tapestry beginning to rot, and once to the bracing rush of a cold breeze through a window. Another staircase and a long hallway lined with closed doors from end to end, and she halted in the middle, head turning, searching. It was gone--

Not gone. Underneath it, even fainter, was another thread. A dull spot of pain began to throb at her brow.

She stood still and held her breath. Barely a whisper, the sense of this thing; a too strong-breath might blow it away. The smell of dampness and old water; the chill of stone in darkness. Down, she thought, and down further still.

She went slowly through the rest of the hallway, and took the first set of stairs she spotted, and then the next, and the next, feet picking up speed until her pace could only be called a run. The staircases grew narrower and dimmer, and the numbers of people thinned until she saw no one at all.

Eventually, she ran out of stairs.

The hallway her feet had led her to stretched along into darkness until it could no longer really be called a hallway, but a tunnel, the walls still in the natural shape of the rock. The single door halfway along stood open; whoever had last passed through it had been in a great hurry and left it thrown wide.

The moment she stepped within she felt the air press close. Her head throbbed heavily in time with her pulse.

Old. Tremendously old, this place, the edges of the rocky shore and each step of the staircase worn nearly smooth. The torches on the wall burned without heat, and the carved faces stared out at her with their hollow dark eyes. Between the lapping of the pool against stone and the plat of the drops from the ceiling, this place was likely never silent. An iron bell hung from one of the pillars, half-over the water; when she touched a hand to it the metal was ice-cold, and a needle-sharp pain dug into her temple.

At the edge of the water she crouched and scooped up a handful. If she were to do the same to the water of the river outside it would carry a myriad of scents: the soap and sweat and dirt of humanity; the bleeding-green tang of water weeds; something of the spring that was its source, or a bite of brine washed up from the sea. The water in her cupped hands only smelled stale. All of it was stale--the pool, the light, the very air she was breathing--and the staleness had sunk into every inch of this place, and blanketed it all. She might have stood on the ground above it and never sense it was there.

She sat back on her heels, and considered.

After a moment, her eyes caught a brighter movement: a small white shape bobbing at the far side of the wall.

The mage eyed the depth of the water, then thought better of it and slapped her hand sharply against the surface.

Her strike rippled out far enough to jar the shape free; another slap the waves sent it bumping against the wall, and as it rolled back with the flow it came slowly spinning and floating back to her.

When it bobbed up against the rocks she realized what it was before she even caught hold of it: a lady's slipper in white silk. In her hand it was barely as wide as her palm.

She stared out into the darkness above the water, and the chill of the place settled over her.

An hour later, having rooted out Arthur from one of the upstairs rooms, she led him down the same winding path of hallways and stairways.

"This is meant to be wear me out, is it?" Arthur's voice at her back was lightly curious, almost amused. "Because I don't mind a walk, but there can't be anything down--"

She heard the stuttering scrape of his foot as it came down onto a step and stopped short. When the mage looked over her shoulder, he was staring at the long tunnel and the distant opened door with piercing look. It might have been surprise, or apprehension. Interesting; that was a point to remember and puzzle over later--he would never have seen this place before, but perhaps there was some part of his blood or gut that knew places that the active mind did not. Something that recognized the hallway and its door enough to throw out the warning: keep out of here.

"Do you think I would lead you into certain danger?" she said.

He turned that pointed look on her. "You pushed me into it. More than once."

"Yet you stand here, not dead." She turned and made her way to the door.

After a moment, she heard his tread following her.

His reaction to the cave and its waters was a little more even. "Damp place. What am I supposed to do here?" he said, turning to peer at the carved faces. "Kiss a frog? Be turned into a fish?"

"This." The mage set one hand on the cold iron of the bell.

His eyebrows went up; he was smiling, waiting for the joke. When she said nothing, his grin grew wider. "Small as you are, I don't think your arms are so weak you can't get that thing to move."

She arched her own eyebrows and gave the bell a push. It tipped forward and back, swinging wildly on its chain; the clapper struck the side and made no sound.

Arthur's eyes narrowed. "Oh. That sort of thing, is it?"

"This place has its purpose." She folded her arms. "The bell rings for those with the right blood, and no one else."

"And what kind of bell is it?" He eyed it as it swung silently. "Warning bell? Dinner bell?"

"If you ring it you will find out." Then, because he deserved a little reassurance, she added, "Nothing that it calls will bite you."

He caught the bell by the edge on its upswing and held it there. "You're going to tell me what this is about."

"Yes," she said, and did not look away from him.

He held her gaze for a long second, then gave the bell a shove as he dropped it. This time it sounded a deep and resonant toll, the low sound ringing out over the water.

"Keep your feet away from the edges," she said, stepping out onto the damp rock. "And if you must speak, ask nothing of them."

"Ask who--?" he began, then turned as the waters at the far end of the cave began to ripple.

She could say this in Arthur's favor: he did not gawp. However much foolishness might spill from his mouth on occasion, he had some skill at keeping it off his face, whether he was seeing a snake large enough to swallow him in one bite--or a tangle of limbs rising out of the pool, with skin the sickly pink and grey of meat beginning to spoil. He did not flinch at the sight of them, or as three sets of ink-black eyes settled on him, or as the eldest of the them spoke in a voice that rasped like rough wool.

"Well." Even in shadow and at a distance, her amusement was clear. "So one king falls, and the born king rises at last. And so soon he comes to treat with us?"

The mage heard the shifting of Arthur's weight--towards the water, not away--and took one step to stand in front of him. "You had dealings with the king that was," she said, staring at the eldest, and kept her face still as those black eyes shifted to settle on her.

"Twice we did." One of the younger syrens slid around the far side of the rock, her lower limbs slithering up out of the water. "Twice he paid, and twice we gave what was asked for."

"What Vortigern gave you," the mage said. "I want it back."

A laugh, low in the throat, from the eldest. "No small thing you ask for, little witch. Our rightful property, given in fair exchange and paid for appropriately?"

"Come fetch her yourself, pale lady," the youngest of them said, reaching out a hand to beckon. The shift of her body sent the water lapping up over the mage's feet, and for a moment it clung to the hem of her trousers. "Come into the waters on your own, and we will return what we took."

"No." The mage knelt down to look each of them in the eyes in turn; the youngest, now hesitant, stroked backwards with a strong push of her limbs. "But I will give you a better offer."

"Oh," the eldest said, voice dragging over the word like broken fingernails. "And what is that?"

"Other waters," the mage said.

That stilled them. Their varied limbs settled motionless in the sloshing water; she heard one of the younger ones let out a little exhalation, a sound of surprise.

"You are bound," the mage went on, "to these waters and that bell. Give back what you took, unharmed, and I will break the binding."

"What an offer you make," the eldest said, after another long moment. "Is it one you mean in truth?"

"Do you doubt I can?" The mage touched her hand to the water, and let a little pulse of her power ripple through it. "Myself as I am, with the blood of the born king at my hand?"

"You are a determined thing." The eldest syren's grin showed her sharp pointed teeth. "But the breaking will come first, before you get what you seek."

"Not much of a deal, is that?" Arthur's spoke from behind her, words sharp around the edges. "You get what you want before we even get to see what it is we're after?"

The eldest laughed. "You would find, my lord, that few beings deal fairly as us." Her black gaze bored into the mage. "Choose as you wish, little witch, and remember what you buy with your choice."

Then they were all gone in a single moment, the younger ones slipping under between one wave and the next, the eldest rolling back into the pool in one smooth movement, their blurred shapes converging until the three of them were only a single shadow under the waters skimming away into the darkness, and then gone entirely.

There was a long space of quiet, broken only by the ever-present dripping.

Arthur's gaze was still on the outcropping where the eldest syren had sprawled. "Knew a fellow in Londinium," he said. "Used to go out with the boats every day, brought in a decent catch maybe once a week. Couldn't fish for his life, but one day he came back with a thing he'd hauled up, looked looked a bit like that, with all the--" He waggled the fingers of both hands in a half-sinuous motion. "Smaller, though, and not looking like a woman up top. Not as chatty, either."

"Nor half so dangerous," the mage said, standing and shaking the water from the soles of her boots.

"So they are dangerous, then." He glanced back. "Just what is it that they do?"

"As you heard." She crossed back over to the bulk of the rock in one long step. "They offer, and they bargain. They...tempt. And what they ask for is always the very limit of what you are willing to give."

"Why are they here, with all..." His gesture took in the bell, the torches, the wickedly grinning faces. "...This?"

"You knew to beware this place before you knew what was in it, didn't you?" She didn't wait for an answer. "It's old. Older than your father, or his father, or his, and bound to their blood." She tapped her hand against bell. "If you cannot destroy a dangerous thing, you may at least contain it and reduce its influence."

"So you'll break whatever it is that keeps them here for--what?" He folded his arms. "What's thing of Vortigern's they have you're so set on getting back?"

"You know he had a daughter," she said, and before he had time to react to that she drew the slipper from her belt and held it out. The weak light cast a luster over the white-threaded stitching and seed pearls ringing its collar, and the spread of the water stains along the toe and the heel.

In this, too, he knew how to keep what he felt from his face. If she had known him less well it would have been hard to spot the tightening of his jaw, and harder still the minute widening of his eyes as the realization slid into in his mind. He said, "For--?'

"For power," she said, "when it was most needed."

His expression remained tense as he turned to stare at the water; his throat worked once, very slowly. Had those horrors of old swept away all of his childhood, or hidden away in a half-forgotten corner of his mind was there some scrap of memory of a little girl he had known and played with? "When he did--that was days ago. You think she's still alive?"

"The waters are not natural, and their tendency is not for quick deaths," she said. "These creatures would not offer what they can't deliver. It's only that whatever they ask steals as much from you as they give."

"And you agreed to let them loose."

"I don't want to." She tucked the slipper away. "But sometimes the only choice you get when you bargain is where it will wound you, and how badly."

"What if I want something else for them?" There was anger threading through his voice now, not at her--not only at her. She knew what he was seeing in his mind's eye: that figure half again as tall as him, wreathed in smoke and with eyes of fire. He was not too slow to assemble all the pieces and realize the source of that shape. Where it had come from a handful of days ago, and twenty years ago.

"You would not find them easy to kill. Not with your blade, or my magic, though with both we might contrive a death for them. But consider: what was done is Vortigern's act to bear. What will be done about it is yours." She set one foot on the lowest step. "Your bloodline bound them here; your blood is needed to break it."

"So if I say no?" he said, without hesitation.

She continued up the stairs. "Then it can sit on your conscience."

She nearly had a foot over the threshold of the door when she heard it: a drawn-out sigh, rasping up against the top of his mouth with exasperation.

"When?" he said. When she turned he was not looking at her or at the waters, but up towards the cave's dripping roof as though he could see through it to the sky above, as though was going to find the answer to his question there.

"Tonight, if you are willing. I will send to let you know."

"How is it," he said, eyes still turned upwards, "that out there is a very pretty lady making her home in every lake and stream and muddy puddle, and I get the castle with a pond full of--" He looked up at her "--sea hags?"

"What sort of things do you think they used to be?" she said, and had the pleasure of watching him blink in surprise at that.

For all that it was thickly threaded through every part of the cave, the spell broke with the ease of pushing a hand through cobwebs.

Arthur met her that evening as she came back from the fields with fresh air caught in her mouth and a bowl of spring-water gathered under the moonlight. When she turned to him with her little knife drawn his hand was already extended, palm up and spread wide, the line of the old scar faint in the light. He looked set and steady.

"Don't be dramatic," she said, and made the cut along the meat of his thumb. The blood dripped bright into the bowl of water.

The pillars, then, and the steps, the walls, the bell and its chain; she dipped her hands into the bowl over and over and drew the signs to untie every thread of magic that bound the room together. At the end she cast what was left in the bowl into the pool itself, and they watched the last few drops of blood spread and dissolve, spiraling down into nothing.

"Now what?"

"We wait," she said, and sat.

Arthur sat too and said nothing. She had prepared herself to have her ears filled with his chatter--pretending great hurt over his cut thumb, fretting about the spell and the syrens, verbally poking at her for amusement and to pass the time--but even in this he seemed determined to exasperate her. Now she must sit there minute after minute, with the silence pressing in on her ears--

--silence. The constant drip of the water had stopped.

"I think," she began, and then stopped at the sight of a faint stir in the depths. A movement against the shadow, a mass of dark and tangled strands. Sea-wrack, her mind wanted to say--but there was more of it, and still more, and then under it a rising white shape--a young woman's face, blanched white against the ivory silk of her dress.

Arthur was up before she was, feet in the water and arms plunging down to catch the body under the shoulders and haul it out.

"Carefully," she said, and grasped at the skirt to help carry her legs-- they swung under her, one foot shod, one foot bare, the blue veins across the heel and ankle standing out like trails of spilled ink. Dragged up to rest against the grey stone, that skin was even paler. She felt at the wrist and the neck and there was nothing; her hand to rest against the mouth and waited, waited, Arthur's eyes boring into hers, her own stomach twisting into a knot until finally, so faintly she waited to feel it again, there came a gentle puff of breath against her fingers.

A benefit of having pulled Arthur into this: no one still awake at this hour was likely to stop him as he went hurrying through the halls with one unconscious young woman in his arms and one serious-faced one running at his heels. Imagine, the ever-sensible part of her mind went, if she had left him in the dark about the matter, cozened a few drops of blood out of him, and done all this herself--she would even now have been trying to drag the girl up half a dozen staircases.

Whatever servants tended Catia's rooms had not yet begun to wonder at their occupant's absence; the fires in both the out and inner rooms were lit and banked. Tumbled back onto her bed Catia was no longer white as paper, but her skin was still ice-cold.

"If I did that just for her to--"

"No," the mage said. "I will do what I can. Her ladies sleep down the hall; go fetch them so there'll be someone to watch her."

She heard his steps go loping away. In this, apparently, he would do what he was told without a word of complaint.

The business then was all focused work, one task after the next. She poked the fire up as high as it would go and stripped Catia out of her dampened dress, still with reddish smears along the front and trailing down the skirt, and into a sleeping gown. Though she was pale from foot to forehead there no wound on her--only a long jagged white line low on her stomach. The mage pressed her thumb to it and felt only the roughness of a raised scar. She touched wrists, forehead, and the centers of her palms, and felt nothing under her fingers except chilled skin and a slow but steady pulse, and nothing in her head but her own weariness.

As she was pulling up the bedding the young woman stirred, and made a little low sound in her throat.

The mage touched her hand to Catia's mouth to still it. "You are safe," she said, and allowed one moment to feel her relax before stepping away.

As she left the bedroom Mathild and Athelis hurried past her into it, exclaiming.

"She's all right, then," Arthur said.

"She's is stirring."

"And she's not...." He grimaced.

"I think not. But I will make certain." The sodden and blood-stained dress, folded across the crook of her arm, was dampening her sleeve. "What has happened to her might matter much less than what she remembers of it."

Arthur's expression turned serious at that; for a moment his teeth pressed into his lip. "You know, we weren't short enough on women that you needed to pull another one out of a puddle."

"Another will do you no ill," she said. "Make sure that room below is closed up."

And with that she went out, the dress's train trailing behind her.

The stories that came to her own ears and on wing and wind, were this: the princess had been sent by her father during the battle to hide in some secluded spot and had only now just dared to venture out. Or the princess had been struck by a blow attempting to escape during the fighting and lain insensible for days, before being found by some well-meaning person. Or, the princess had been carried off by ruffians in the confusion, and the new king had arranged for a daring but secret rescue.

Thankfully none of them seemed to have the right of it.

For the next few days in the very early morning the mage made a single visit to the princess's rooms, when their owner was still asleep and the mage could test her pulse and lay a hand against her brow without disturbing her. Each time she felt neither fever nor chill, and the mage could sense nothing spoiled in her. Mathild and Athelis fretted much, and said that she slept much and woke only occasionally--but she did wake, and would take a little food and drink, and was composed and not unusual in her speech and manner.

The ivory dress she cut into pieces and scattered the scraps to the winds. Even if it carried no trace of the waters' darkness, it should not be worn by anyone again; better to let it go to magpies and squirrels to line their nests.

On the fifth day when she tapped on the door there was no answer, and when she pushed it swung open freely. The room was dim and still, the silken hangings pulled over the window and only a handful of the tapers lit.

Within the inner room Catia was sitting up in her bed. Though the day was mild and the fire built up, the bedding had been piled high over her legs and lap. Her bearing was assured, but her eyes had the look of winter ice over shallow water and the hollows of her cheeks might have been scraped out with a knife-edge.

"Your ladies have left you unattended," the mage said.

"I've sent them away, for the moment." Catia's voice was steady, though her chin tipped up a little as she spoke. "I hoped to speak with you alone." She paused as if she were waiting for something.

Did she expect a bow? A curtsy? The mage drew up a chair and sat instead. "You are wrapped up well. Are you cold?"

A blink, and Catia's face shifted slightly, but she did not seem displeased. The straight line of her shoulders softened a hair. "A little, but not unduly. Is--if I were, would it be a sign of something?"

"Several things." The mage held out her hand; Catia, after a moment, placed her own in it. It was a little warm from being tucked up in the bedding, the fingers smooth though the nails were freshly worried at. The mage rested her thumb against the wrist and felt the pulse, slow but steady, then pressed her thumb against the center of the palm. Catia's fingers twitched in around her own, then relaxed. "Look straight and keep still," the mage said, and Catia held her eyes open and motionless. There was nothing unnatural in their color or cast--nothing unusual at all, except the now-plain uncertainty.

Catia blinked again when the mage released her hand. "Am I--right?"

"You are not cursed, or diseased, or dead," the mage said. "Your health is not all it should be, but you are recovering. Beyond that, it's not for me to say."

"Athelis and Mathild have told me that you...found me."

"Not myself alone."

"Yes." She smoothed out the blankets, and her hands tightened on them a little. "I wonder--if you would be good enough to tell me what you know. About what has happened to me."

"Why do you ask me?"

"The king," she said, and there was a little space between the two words, but no stumbling. "He has been...very kind, and offered whatever I need." Her mouth pulled up in what was likely meant to be a smile. "But he wouldn't answer this, when I asked him. There isn't anyone else who can tell me. When I woke up I was cold, and tired as if I hadn't slept for days or had slept too much. And all I remember before that is--darkness. The sort of darkness when you first wake from a nightmare and haven't the breath to call out."

"And before that?"

"I saw the people coming over the bridge, hundreds and hundreds of them, and I was afraid." Those pale eyes closed, and opened again. "And my father came in--" Her fingers tightened their grip.

She had been worrying over her memories like she would have worried over the wound in her belly, had it been left to her. "Do you want me to tell you what you already know?" the mage said.

Catia's eyes began to sheen over with tears. "My father," she said, her voice very thin. "He killed me." Her hands folded over her stomach. "Would have killed me, or--"

"Yes," the mage said. As she said it she knew the weight of that single word; there were other things that she might follow it with, to make the blow a gentler one.

She said none of them. In the fireplace one of the flames caught a pocket of sap, which popped. Catia's eyes were held as wide as they could be, and when she blinked the first tears spilled from the corners. She parted her lips to speak but pressed them closed again quickly, her chin trembling. Her head dipped.

When the mage touched her shoulder Catia's head bent even lower, and she brought her hands to her face. The mage left her hand where it was for a moment, then stood and silently stepped into the outer chamber.

The birds were shifting restlessly in their cages, the green-and-red parrot clicking its beak in a sharp tak-tak. She unlatched the door of its cage and let it climb to her shoulder, where it began to fuss with her bound hair. The sounds of from the other room were muffled very well, but she had no difficulty in recognizing the sharp gasps that meant breath drawn in against sobs.

The princess's ladies were surely not too distant; she might find them and send them back to their charge, to lay their well-meaning comfort over the fresh wound of a grief inconceivable to their minds. She might go back in there herself and offer Catia her wool-cloaked shoulder to cry on, and then leave her with the shame of having wept her heart out in front of a woman of ten minute's acquaintance.

She drew out a bundled pouch from one of her pockets, set it on the little table, and stayed where she was.

Behind the window-hangings the sunlight shifted upwards, and the lit tapers flickered and spilled wax down their sides. One of the other birds began to chatter to itself. The green parrot tired of tugging at the tie of her braid and picked its way down her arm and onto her hand, where it settled. She drew her hand across its head, feeling the silk of its feathers, and let it nip very gently at her fingers.

The sun had climbed to the top of the window by the time the sounds of crying stopped. After a little silence came the rustle of cloth on cloth and the soft pad of a bare foot against the floor, and Catia, ghostlike, appeared at the inner door. Her reddened eyes widened in surprise, and she opened her mouth to speak.

The mage flicked her fingers and sent the bird fluttering off to perch on the table. "Take the white willow for your headache," she said, touching the little bundle, "and the chamomile to soothe your eyes, once you've washed them. If you need more, send for me and ask."

She tugged her hood up and left, and felt Catia's still-startled eyes on her back as she did.

After that the mage did not visit Catia's rooms again. If the waters had left behind some trace, she would have felt its influence by now; if Catia drifted into illness, someone would be sent would fetch her. Indeed, she half-expected to be sent for, though not for any reasons of health. The princess had been overswept by emotions in the moment, but once they ebbed she would have other questions lurking in her mind that very few would be able to answer.

The days rolled on, and no one came. The mage broke the last of the markings on the floor and turned her attention to the tall stone with its lines of runes; the altar she would save for last.

One the first day of the new week she finished cutting through the marks of the rune ior, and, on a thought, called down a dove from where it had begun a flimsy nest on top of a half-collapsed ledge. It needed very little urging to go winging off to the castle's western side.

The silken hangings had not been drawn over the window; the dove's eyes could see everything there was to see. Catia was out of her bed and dressed; she still looked like a flower on the verge of wilting, but she sat calmly next to the fire, sorting through a box of ribbons, while Mathild read to her from a little book. It was exceedingly ordinary.

It was worrisome.

The mage sent another bird the next day, and another the day after that. Doves, pigeons, sparrows--common birds that could alight on the sill of any palace window and not be thought odd, or thought of at all. And rarely were they noticed, for though Catia kept herself cloistered--she had not set one foot outside her room since she had awoken--she was not always idle. She read, or was read to; she talked with her ladies; she tucked herself next to the window and watched the clouds. She sat with her own brightly-colored birds and fed them cracked seeds as they turned in circles under her guiding hand, or nudged a walnut shell 'round and 'round. Twice the mage's birds caught Arthur mid-visit, and she took particular care to guide them to stay out of sight; his pride was a little too tender to permit her seeing him as he spoke to Catia--brotherly and without a hint of bravado or swagger, talking in the gentle tones she had heard him use with his foster-mothers, while Catia smiled pleasantly though her shoulders were held stiff and straight.

It was better, of course, than Catia weeping herself into sickness or hammering her head on the walls in grief. But often, no matter the hour of the day, the mage saw her cease her activities and take herself to bed where she stayed unmoving, turned towards the wall.

One particular day through the eyes of several wrens she watched Catia sit at her embroidery frame for nearly the whole of the day, stitching twining loops of green leaves and buds on white linen. Her hands worked, sometimes listlessly and sometimes with great fervor, and her expression--distant, and only half-aware--changed not at all from hour to hour. As the afternoon wore on into evening and the light grew fainter Catia missed her grip on a stitch, the point of the the needle slipping into her thumb; her shoulders twitched but her face showed not a hint of pain at all--only a mild curiosity as she turned her hand to stare at her pierced finger. The wren, interweaved with the mage's mind, let out a startled run of chirps; when Catia's head whipped up to look at it the mage pulled it away from the window and let it slip free of her mind's grasp, and soar off into the grey sky.

Alone again in her mind in the empty tower, she considered her options.

On midday of the day afterward, she heard the approaching sound of a woman's light tread approaching the tower again. This time the steps did not hesitate at the edge of the wall, and when the figure slipped around the fallen stones she felt only a little surprise that it was Catia.

"Will it disturb you very much if I enter?" Her words sounded hesitant, as if the asking itself was unfamiliar. The white fur of her wrap made her look nearly as pale as if she were fresh from the water, and her eyes looked red and tired.

"As you please," said the mage, and turned back to the rune-stone.

There was a space of silence, and then footsteps began to pick their way along and around room--a circular path along the edge, meandering back and forth across the central part with an occasional pause. The silk of her dress shh-ed as the hem trailed across the floor.

The mage had broken the last runes on the sixth line when Catia spoke again.

"I was ill-mannered when we last met." She had halted a few feet away. "I never thanked you for the herbs, or what you've done for me or...the answer you gave me."

"Neither required gratitude." The mage pulled the blade of her knife free from the crossed lines of the rune gyfu. "What has happened to you is not ordinary. No one sensible expects courtesy from the grieving."

When she glanced up Catia was regarding her with an expression that seemed stuck between puzzlement and appreciation. "You're very forgiving," she said. "I thought perhaps you would say I should still be abed and march me back to my room."

"You are on your feet," the mage said. "If you have the strength to stand and walk, it's not my task to stop you from wandering. Though I would have thought Arthur would set guards to watch you."

"He did." Her brow furrowed in a delicate line. "But not to hinder me; I think I might have walked from here to the horizon and they would have allowed it."

"Walk where you please, then. Your time and your feet are your own."

"I haven't the strength to go any great distance." Catia's mouth twisted into something that was trying to be a smile. "You'll think it foolish that I came here. I wanted to see this place. To see what was worth--" The almost-smile became more strained. "I knew it was important to him. He'd never talk about it when I was in the room; he never let me come near it. Not so long ago I would have stopped before I came a dozen steps near this place. And now it's...." She turned to look at the scattered rocks. "I still don't understand."

"Some men are driven by their ambitions to be kings." The mage slid her fingers across the lines of runes. "And some kings are driven to be a ruler than none can supplant."

"My mother," Catia said. "I only remember her a little. She died--he told me she died in the great battle years ago." Her eyes had the wide and waiting look the mage had seen before. "Did she?"

The mage weighed the possible answers, and chose the lightest one. "I can't say what I haven't seen. You must make your own judgment."

"Ah." It was a heavy sound; Catia's shoulders folded in with the weight of it. She sank to perch on the rock where Arthur had sat days and days ago.

"All this--my mind is too bewildered," she said. Her voice was unsteady, and one hand twisted against the other in her lap. "Everything I see and do feels the same, and then I remember that it isn't, and--it's as though I had a nightmare, and woke out of it into another dream where all the world is different. Wrong. But it seems--this is better for everyone. That it's better that he's dead. But I still don't--" Her eyes closed, and opened again. "It is foolish of me to say all this. Especially to someone who is...what you are." She brushed at her eyes, wincing a little. "It's callous of me. I should ask your forgiveness again."

For what Vortigern had done to every other one of her kind, the mage could have planted the knife she now held into his throat without hesitation. She could have wrapped her hands around his neck and strangled him, and ground his face into the dirt afterwards, and still felt it was not enough.

Now he was dead, ash and cinders borne away on the wind.

"Ask it, if you feel it's needful," the mage said. "But what I feel or don't has no bearing on you. Think what you will, and mourn for yourself or your father as much as you like." She dug the blade into the runes again to begin breaking the next line. "Only keep bathing your eyes; you'll do yourself no good if you cry yourself blind."

There was a long pause, and the mage saw Catia's lips press together sharply. "You are gracious to say so," she said eventually, and stood. "Thank you. I will not bother you again."

"If--" the mage found herself saying, without meaning to. "If it will ease you to know," she went on, "you may have this: the bargain he meant to make required true feeling on his part. Whatever else, he loved you."

Catia's mouth trembled sharply, then stilled. "Yes," she said. "But not more than this." She touched the corner of the broken altar then drew her hand away, clenched as though it had hurt her, and tucked it within her wrap.

The mage watched her pick her way back to the dark bulk of the castle. She did not look back.

All the rest of that day that last moment remained in her mind--Catia's small, delicate hand touching the altar-stone, then fluttering away as though it had chilled or stung her. She thought of it as she broke the last lines of runes and felt the remaining well of its power drain away, and as she ate her evening's meal while the sun set, and as she pulled her cloak up tightly around herself and settled into the grass-lined hollow of her bed. Of Catia in her room, still as stone; of the fine birds in their cages and the common birds in the aviary worrying themselves into fits at her absence. She thought of her sitting at her embroidery frame and stitching, needle in, needle out, day after day,

At dawn she scrubbed her hands and face in the stream by the alder tree. A flock of loud-voiced and energetic starlings had settled in a hawthorn bush; she whispered a few words into the leaves and sent them winging towards a particular window in the southern part of the castle.

When she arrived in the courtyard Arthur was waiting, arms folded and looking rumpled. Part of his hair stuck out wildly near the back.

"I'm not much used to the way things work," he said, "but I thought a king's prerogative was to sleep as late as he wanted."

"The crown is not on your head yet," the mage said, "and a king's indulgence is constrained by the will of his subjects."

"That's you?"

"That is the birds." She went on before she could be drawn aside from her aim by banter. "What do you mean to do with the princess?"

That knocked his composure back a step; she could see him scrambling to re-order his mind. "Not what you're thinking." He looked almost offended.

"I am not thinking it." She met his eyes squarely. "But others will. A princess is for marrying, or marrying off. The longer things remain as they are, the more people will expect one or the other."

"They can get neither, then."

"So you mean to leave her as she is, with no plans for her."

"I don't plan anything at all." His fingers worked like they wanted something to grasp. "I asked her what she wanted. I told her to tell me--anything at all I can do for her."

"And she said there was nothing."

"Nothing." One hand ran back over his hair; it made the wild bit lie flat for a second, before it sprung up again. "I think she remembers me, a little. I don't think I remember her at all. You know, by the logic of it," he said, sounding suddenly thoughtful, "she ought to try to take the sword from me and spit me with it."

The mage felt a sound that was close to a laugh rise in her throat, and made it into a half-scoff instead. "I doubt that is her intent."

"No." He rolled his shoulders in a slow shrug. "But I still don't think she likes me much."

His face had a gentle ruefulness around the edges; it was such an odd look for him that the mage bit down on what she was about to say. "It isn't you she dislikes," she said instead. "Consider that her situation is as strange as yours, or stranger." Consider also what the last man who was very kind and gentle to her did, she might have added, but let the words stay in her mouth.

"And you," he said, all the softness now gone. "You're asking me because--you've got something in mind. You fished her out just as much as I did, so that gives you half claim on her?"

"Not a claim," the mage said. "But an interest in her welfare, and a thought for her future."

"Which is what?" The morning light turned the blue of his eyes sharp as a blade.

"Occupation," she said, and when he looked inquiring, she told him the rest.

Later in the day she came to Catia's chambers with her own blue cloak bundled in her arms.

The outer room was all in disarray. Everything but the birdcages had been shuffled into new spots: the chairs and stools spread out into a new pattern; the embroidery frame nearer to the fireplace; the tables all pushed to different places against the walls. The tapestry of dancing women in a garden had been moved across the room, and Mathild and Athelis were occupied in hanging the leaping-deer tapestry opposite it, while Catia stood watching with an embroidered cushion clutched in her hands. When she saw the mage she made a little wave at her ladies, who let the tapestry settle, bobbed curtsies, and hurried out.

"I thought it might help if it looked different," she said when they were gone. Her eyes were still red-rimmed. One of her fingernails had hooked its way under the thread of the cushion's seam; she was slowly and aimlessly pulling the thread loose. "I know it's foolish. I might simply ask the king for different rooms."

"Then when you were in them, you'd remember why you did not want to be in these." The cloaked bundle in her arms shifted gently, and she laid a hand across it to settle it. "You are still too pale. You should have some fresher air."

Catia's eyes had gone to the bundle as it moved. When the mage spoke, she looked up and and met her stare, her lips pursed as though she wanted to speak. Then they smoothed, and she followed the mage out the door.

The castle's battlements were lightly guarded now, and one could find a deserted corner or walkway with little effort. The wind blew sharper and more fiercely than on the ground, and the dingy white of the overcast sky stretched above like shell. From the here one could look out and see the scurrying of people in the courtyards below and the remaining scattered stones of the fallen tower, and beyond that the dappled greens and greys of the fields and foothills spreading out to the bend of the great river.

Catia had managed the climb with only a brief pause at one landing to rest; her breaths were a little short but otherwise even. The mage let her steady herself for a moment, then set her bundled cloak on the edge of the battlement and pulled its folds loose.

The blackbird within shook itself free and blinked at the sudden brightness. The high sun caught the glossy sheen of its wings, spotted in white. It parted its beak and let out a ripple of liquid notes.

Catia let out a breath and made a half-step towards it, then turned to the mage with a questioning look.

"It is not tame," the mage said. She had called it down from the alder tree a little over an hour ago. "But it is calm enough that it will not startle and flee."

"I see." Catia made another cautious step then reached a hand to where the bird perched, its head turning in small quick movements. It stilled at the sight of her hand but remained where it was, and her touch fell on it lightly as a breeze, with only the tips of her fingers stroking the crown of its head.

"You are fond of birds," the mage said.

Catia's head lowered in a nod, the tiniest of motions. "All my life. My--I've kept them since I was very young." The corners of her mouth had curved up; for the first time since the mage had seen her she almost looked peaceful. "I suppose I liked that they could fly off to see things I never would."

"A bird's mind," the mage said, "is not a human mind, and yet it is not entirely unlike it." She kept her voice measured and low, as much to lull as to convey the words. "They hold their own language; they keep their own memories. The needs of a human are in them--to eat, to protect their young, to seek safety--only sharper and more frantic. A person might make themselves think like a bird for a space of time, and their mind and the bird's would be as one."

She saw it as it happened, second by second. One blink and the pupil's of Catia's eyes were blown wide; another and her eyes were black from edge to edge, a black that mirrored the bird's own. It held for a long moment, then the hand stroking the bird twitched violently with realization, and the bird, surprised, flapped its wings and launched itself over the battlements.

Catia stumbled forward, catching herself with one hand against the wall. The blackbird caught an updraft and soared outwards, cutting through the air over the walls of the castle and out over the fields in widening loops.

The mage watched her hold the bird's mind for a second, and then another, and another--but the shock of it had loosened her grasp on it from the beginning, and she lacked the skill to reach it without physical contact. Already the black had faded from her eyes.

"What," she said, gasping, and could not seem to find any other words. "What?"

She took up Catia's other hand and set it on the wall, then put her own solidly against Catia's back, to let the sensation of the the physical world ground her. "What did you see?"

Catia eyes were still looking outward, wide, half-afraid. "The courtyards," she said, both hands pressed hard against the stone, "and the bridge, and the hay fields. But all--from above, and whirling under me." Her teeth bit into her lip for a moment, then came away as she took a deeper breath. "What did I do?"

"Your bloodline throws true in one way," the mage said. "The minds of your pets show the sign of it. You have something of the talent for magic in you, though little sense of how to use it." She let her hand drop.

At first Catia reacted not at all. Her hands stayed against the battlements, spread wide and tense. Her shoulders rose and fell as she breathed deep and slowly. When she turned to look at the mage the fear was gone from her face; she might have been wearing a blank mask.

"Why did you do this?" she said.

Out in the air the blackbird turned in a final loop, then folded its wings and settled back onto the stone of the battlement wall with a small hop. It looked at the two of them curiously.

"If you care to learn," the mage said, "I will teach you."

Catia's expression stayed smooth. "For yourself?"

"There are few enough mages left for me to let one who might learn lie fallow and wasted." The mage gathered her cloak up. "But consider: you've been wounded in more ways than one. You would heal more cleanly with purpose, and a new place."

"'New'," she said. "Not here."

"No." The cloak settled around her, damp from the stone. "This place isn't suited for me, or I for it. You might find life away from here much the same." Hard indeed to think of Catia in plain clothing instead of silks and fine linens, and of her walking and riding and eating and sleeping under the hot sun or the chilled rain instead of safely under a solid roof. "I think the change will not do you ill, nor do I mean to keep you away from here forever. But it is an offer, not a command. Do what best pleases you."

Catia stared at her. The mage returned her gaze, and said nothing; there was nothing more for her to say.

Above them the clouds rolled, grey on white. The wind stirred Catia's hair. Second by second her eyes began to soften, and she let her fingers come to rest against the darkness of the bird's feathers.

"Again," she said. "If you would--show me how to do it again?"

The mage stepped closer and, drawing in a breath of rain-scented air, reached out. "Like this," she said.