Chapter 28
I led us to the reception chamber, not quite sure what I had agreed to or why.
Ninianne entered the room, immediately drawn to a curved window that overlooked the edge of the rising spring. She stepped closer to the glass, trying to see more.
“Water calls to water,” I commented.
“It does.” Her eyes stayed on the silver pool. “Are you still dreaming of the sea?”
“Yes,” I replied. “When I do manage to sleep. Though I have never minded it.”
I didn’t know I would tell the truth until I had spoken. Ninianne turned, flickering with intrigue. “King Arthur dreams of it too,” she said. “Perhaps there is something in that.”
I had never told her I knew of Arthur’s dreams. That his visions had persisted alongside mine was a surprise, but I expressed nothing more. Ninianne would not use me to interpret my brother.
“Or there is little significance beyond coincidence,” I said carelessly. “No doubt we could argue the point all day.”
She stepped away from the glass and sat at the small table in the window recess, placing the Book of Prophecies before her. With careful fingers, she opened the cover, turned past Arthurus Rex and started to read.
Taking the seat across from her, I watched the parchment shifting under her hands, her eyes moving swiftly over Merlin’s script. I sensed her immediate absorption in the sorcerer’s words and felt a ripple of some surly, unnameable emotion.
“You look older,” I said. “Far more than I would have expected. I first noticed it at Merlin’s house. I didn’t think it was possible for you to age so quickly.”
It wasn’t entirely meant as insult, and I expected it to bounce off her regardless. However, she looked up in shock, then swiftly away, as if caught hiding behind a curtain.
Her evasion hooked me at once. “I’m right,” I said. “Something has taken its toll. Magic, maybe—a form complex and risky. What is it?”
Ninianne leaned back in her chair and sighed.
“Lancelot,” she said simply. “He was so damaged, in need of such comfort. I wanted to spend more of my life as his mother—teach him everything he wished to learn, give him the love and assurance to heal his losses. There were never enough hours or days, so…I changed things. For him, I slowed time.”
To anyone else, it would have sounded absurd, but I knew such things were possible.
When I first saw her when I was a child, she had paused time to ensure my escape from Merlin’s notice, and years later, as we rode to the sorcerer’s house, she had stretched the sunlight when the journey should have taken us through the night.
“You made more hours in the day?” I asked.
“No—creating time is impossible,” she replied.
“It’s more of a…bending. I slowed the march of the hours so we spent longer within them.
Lancelot had more time to enjoy life, to gain his knightly skills and try to move on from the horrors of his past. Physically, he is his born age, but his mind and instincts have travelled far beyond his years.
In effect, he has lived twice as many days under my care. ”
Knowing him, it made an odd but perfect sense. “And this aged you faster?”
“Time resists change,” she said. “The cost of holding such an enchantment, duelling with that force so often…it visits itself upon the body. Mine.”
Ninianne put a hand to her face, which was still dazzlingly beautiful, but better inhabited, more seasoned goddess than eternal nymph. She carried herself more gently, as if she knew what it was to ache.
“Quite the motherly sacrifice,” I said. “I told you there was potential for your heart. Other sorts of love. You discovered the protective, selfless kind, wanting your child to flourish at all costs. If my life here has rendered me more of a fairy, then your past fifteen years have made you—”
“Weak?” she cut in, green eyes flashing.
“No—human,” I replied. “The Ninianne I once knew would have never brought me the Shroud, or given her immortal body to battle with time, all for the sake of another.”
She tried to muster offence, but her light softened at the thought of him. “I gave Lancelot what he needed. It was worth it—every moment.”
The sentiment echoed within me; I had expressed the same to her long ago about bearing children. I felt myself harden, turn cold.
“And now, if you believe your precious golden book, your son’s actions will lead to the destruction of the entire country,” I said harshly.
Fear flared on her face. “We cannot be certain. As you said, the betrayer isn’t named, nor are all the prophecies equally worthy.”
“Is that what you were looking for?” I said. “Where Merlin placed the betrayal prophecy in his order of importance? It is fourth. Far from insignificant.”
“Merlin ordered King Arthur’s prophecies by the ones he believed to be most valuable,” she protested. “You can hardly claim there is a significance when you have never trusted in his predictions at all.”
“I had no reason to believe anything in that book, when I knew the betrayal could not pertain to me,” I shot back. “Yet all this time you’ve conveniently believed me a traitoress and wanted Arthur’s prophecies. Why, if they are suddenly untrue?”
“None of this has been convenient to anyone,” she replied. “It has caused so much hurt, far beyond what you imagine. I never said the predictions were not true, just… ”
She trailed off, then suddenly, decisively, closed the Book of Prophecies. “I did not expect to be given this, nor did I want to argue with you.”
“Then why did you ask to speak to me?”
“I wanted to talk as one elemental entity to another,” she replied. “Much is happening to affect this country’s future, far beyond the stars. Whatever has gone between us, you are the only one I feel will understand.”
Her admission struck an odd chord, a deference that was unlike her. I leaned forwards and rested my elbows on the table. “Very well,” I said. “Try me.”
Ninianne drew a deep breath. “Magic is waning in Britain. In the land, in the air, the water. It is getting harder to charm, to enchant, even call upon the elements. The damage has been progressing slowly for years now. The natural, the conjured—all is in decline.”
I didn’t know how to receive such a serious declaration, but questions were a scholar’s candle in the dark. “Not to invoke him,” I said. “But beyond his faults, Merlin was still a strong diviner. Surely he would have foreseen something so cataclysmic?”
“Remember, Merlin possessed no natural power. This loss was not for him to feel, nor for the distant stars to know. The effects are most felt by those whose magic connects to nature. Those of us with the elements alive in our blood.”
My mind sparked with recognition, tracking back to my failures with the resurrection magic I had once performed so easily; the dead birds thrown in the fire because I could not answer their heartsong.
Aside from the magpie matriarch and my flourishing healing skills, what she spoke of resonated deeply.
Even my protective charms did not last as long as they had ten, even five years since.
Ninianne noted my pause. “Have you felt it, Morgan?”
I did not wish to lie or confirm the truth. “What’s causing it?” I asked.
“One cannot be sure, but my theory is, as the age of men gains in strength, the damage done through war, bloodshed and other unchecked power takes its toll.”
“What a surprise!” I said. “Practitioners such as Merlin, allowing monstrous men like Uther Pendragon to harness magic for brutality and dominance, has led only to destruction. No stars were needed to predict that.”
She let my bitterness pass. “It’s true the decline cannot be reversed, though King Arthur has done much to slow the rot.
Even when Merlin stood beside him, he was mainly kept as an adviser, especially after revealing the circumstances of your brother’s birth.
Since then, the King has relied on his actions, his sense of responsibility, his heart.
He has never asked to use my skills for might, or to bend a cause to his will. ”
I was in no mood to hear her preach upon my brother’s courage and goodness, though I could not dispute it in part.
Whether Arthur ran the kingdom perfectly was a matter of opinion, but he had never spoken of magic as a kingly tool, or sought to use sorcery to solve a problem.
His reverence for prophecy was his weakness, and that was because he had been inured to it since boyhood.
“But even Arthur cannot stop what is already happening,” I said.
Ninianne shook her head. “Eventually, for me, this realm may no longer sustain.”
The regret in her voice plucked at my sympathy, but I owed it to myself not to let her play with my feelings. “That sounds like a fairy quandary,” I said offhandedly. “I thought you said this wasn’t your realm anyway.”
“In some ways, but it is complicated,” she replied.
“My lake in Brocéliande is my realm, as you call it, but it became visible to this world due to the needs of raising a mortal son. As a result, it is vulnerable—to unrest, hardship, death. The more man-made destruction that seeps into the earth, the less power I can hold. If the major prophecies prove true and the kingdom falls, whatever is wrought will all but destroy magic in this land. I, and others like me, will not endure here.”
“Where will you go?” I asked.
“There is a place. An island off the Welsh and Summerland coasts, outside of time and beyond mortality. A sanctuary for those of us touched by fairy magic. Avalon.”
“Avalon,” I repeated. The name landed softly, echoing deep as if I’d long known of it, though I had never before heard the word spoken.
“To some—your Lady Alys and most of this household—it would be Ynys Afallach,” Ninianne continued.
“Isle of Apples. The apple, of course, representing knowledge, wisdom. It is a place of study and nature and peace. When the time comes, for those of us who live by magic, it will become our home for all eternity.”
“ ‘Those of us?’ ” I said. “There are more like you?”