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The boat stopped.
As it had stopped for Elyssa, as it had stopped for each of them.
The figure cloaked in what appeared to be black night colors, not true
ones stood shakily. She reached out for the side of the boat and then almost
snarled. They all heard it; it carried across the water like a declaration of
war.
Merlin offered the woman no aid; he sank back, to the farthest end of the
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boat, the end that did not contain her. It came to Elyssa then that the
trembling she witnessed was not shock, not chill; it wasanger. He had brought
them a newcomer full of rage.
Had she been such a one? Had any of them?
She barely had time to wonder.
The woman spoke, and her voice uttered a word, a single word. "Morganne."
But the boat did not move.
She had offered her name; there was no question of it. There was a truth to
names, especially here by the water's edge, that denied all pretense and all
mask. But the boat was completely still; the water traveled outward from it in
a wide, moving ring, as if it had finally touched down enough to disturb the
lake's surface.
They watched; they waited. Elyssa's hair began to stand on end, rising in
goose bumps across her arms, reaching up for the back of her neck.
"Why isn't she coming?"
" 'Lyssa, what's wrong?"
"Hush," she said, more harshly than she'd intended.
"But 'Lyssa "
Elyssa turned to the youngest. "She hasn't answered the question."
"But youheard her she said "
"She spoke a single name," Elyssa said. "A single word."
"That's all we ever spoke."
Aye,
Elyssa thought,that's all we ever spoke. She felt it keenly, sharply, a
gratitude for herself mixed with a pity so profound it was almost horror.
Gently, as gently as she could force herself to respond, she said, "That girl
is already with child."
That girl the unseen girl, the cursed girl spoke her name again, spoke it
loudly; it echoed and resounded in the thick air like a clap of thunder. The
lightning must surely follow; Elyssa had heard such a rumble before, such a
heaving of heaven's own.
And the light did come, but it was all dark, a thing of knowledge and not a
thing of nature. Or perhaps a thing of bitter nature, of an uglier god than
the lake had ever shown itself to be. She cursed; they could hear the words,
succinct and terrible. But the boat did not move.
Elyssa said, quietly, "The boat will be still a long time."
"But why "
"She understands what it is that she carries, but she will not own it; she
will not grant it a name."
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"I wouldn't own it either," Viviane said coldly.
"If you had no choice?"
"What choice hasshe? What choice had any of us?"
"None. None at all," Elyssa replied. The night was cold, cold, cold.
"I'd bear it because I had no choice. But I'd take it up after it was born,
the vile thing, and I'd cut off its head and its genitals "
"If it were a boy."
"What else could it be? I'd cut them both off, and I'd send them to "
"Not here." Elyssa's voice was sharp. "Do not mention his name here."
"So he'd know," the girl continued. "So he'd know that he'd finally gotten
his heir." She laughed, and the laughter was low and bitter and terrible, as
ugly a sound as laughter had ever been. Elyssa had heard ugly laughter. They
all had.
Andshe heard it. Morganne.
She heard it; she heard the words that Viviane had spoken.
She rose, then, rose and cried out a single word: "Yes!" And then, grim and
terrible, she pulled the hood of the hunter's cloak away from her swollen,
bloodied face, her tangled, bramble-torn hair; pulled it away from exposed
flesh, bruised skin. She stood exposed to the night and the lake and the
gathering, and she said the second word, and it was taken by the wind, whipped
past their ears so quickly it might not have been said at all. Save for this:
The boat moved.
Lightning came, then. Bright, white, a streak of pure brilliance that
transformed the sky. The boat lurched forward, and she with it, stumbling in
its prow. But the hunter did not offer her his aid; the lake did not smooth
the boat's passage; she came to them, her anger complete, her vow still
smoldering in the night air like a hanging echo of something that will never
quite be forgotten.
Thus it was that the Lady of the Lake came to them all, a mere seventeen
years of age, the hunter behind her, and before her the future that they had
all been waiting for.
His eyes were bright and shiny, hard like glass, full of a light that she had
never seen there before. He lingered longer at the castle than he had ever
done, and he could not couldnot  stand still for more than five minutes at a
time.
"Merlin?" she said, and he spun on his feet at the sound of her voice, as if
voice at all was something wondrous and dangerous, as if the words could catch
him, hood him, bind him with jesses.
She stepped back as he whirled; he stepped forward.
Then he caught himself, stilled himself.
This,
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she thought,is what you look like when you hunt. But no, that wasn't quite
true. She had seen him hunt for years; had seen him, consciously biding his
time. This was new. This was different.
Bird of prey? She had learned much in her years at the castle, but she had
never seen this: This was the hunterbefore the kill, circling above its prey,
waiting for the right wind, the right movement, the right moment. Talons
extended, blood a scant second's dive away, this was where the bird met the
wind, and parted it, and rose triumphant.
"Merlin," she said, and he turned to her, and she was reminded that she had
never asked him that none of them had ever asked him what had been done to him
in the winter before her own ruin.
He came often during Morganne's confinement, although he never stayed the
night. There was something within the castle that denied him an evening's
rest but they were used to that. What they were not used to was his shadow
upon the shoreline, or the cadence of his voice at all times that the
sunlight, deft in its ability to seek out nook and cranny, came into the
courtyards and towers.
Were they jealous?
Perhaps. There were times when Elyssa looked over her shoulder to see them
huddled together, he the attentive and intent keeper, and she the wild anger.
At such times, the first of the isle's inhabitants wondered if all he had ever
sought was this: a pregnancy, a certain physical remnant of the man who had
destroyed all their lives.
He had always left the newcomers to Elyssa before.
One night she waited by the marshes.
"Elyssa," he said, although he did not seem terribly surprised.
"You have always left the newcomers to me," she replied, assuming a question
although he was graceless enough not to offer that opening.
"Yes," he said. "I have."
"And this one?"
"I had hoped to spare you her anger."
She was not the girl that she had once been; she knew a lie when she heard
it. The night closed in on them both, but the moon silvered the water. Her
silence was all the accusation she needed. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]