Chapter 51
There was no time to walk, and Ninianne didn’t have the strength, so I brought her white horse to the courtyard and helped her into the saddle, then climbed up in front of her.
“Hold on,” I said, drawing her arm around my waist.
She had enough wherewithal to obey, letting herself lean into me. Her presence still radiated, but I could feel her warmth fading against my skin. I rode as fast as the horse would carry us up the long woodland path to Llyn Glas.
Halfway there, I felt a new weight on my shoulder and glanced back to see Ninianne’s head hanging down.
“Just stay awake,” I urged her. “All will be well, I promise.”
It was hope rather than confidence; I had no idea if what I was doing would work. Once the willows were in sight, I didn’t pause to wonder; I rode the horse directly into the lake until it stood submerged up to its withers.
Dismounting, I brought Ninianne with me, almost sinking under her unconscious form and my soaking wet skirts and mantle.
Her body slid beneath the surface without a splash, as if the water wanted her, had accepted her.
Still I held her chin above the surface, afraid to let her sink. What if I was wrong?
In the midst of my hesitation, Ninianne took a huge, gasping breath and opened her eyes, incandescent green and fixed on mine.
Trust the water, she urged wordlessly.
I let her go, her entire form vanishing into its dark-blue embrace. I didn’t want to turn away, but I had to believe. The lake had saved me, and it would save her.
I led the horse out and tied it near the path, then returned to the shore, watching the surface where she had submerged.
All was quiet—the breeze had vanished, the willow fronds perfectly undisturbed, the lake glasslike, more still than it had ever been.
My skirts dried and I helped them along by toying with the heat in the air.
The sun began to fall from the sky, but all I could do was watch and wait, as though Llyn Glas needed me to bear witness.
Then, a ripple in the distance, concentric circles getting wider. Splitting at the curve, the circles turned into chevrons, pointing in my direction. A flash of light competed with the sun, shocking, blinding, but I kept my eyes on the water.
The Lady of the Lake broke the surface, copper hair blazing like fire, her skin brighter than I had ever seen it. She rose from the blue until her feet walked atop the surface, flowing forth to the shore and alighting on the grass like a freshwater wave.
“Ninianne,” I said. “Thank the goddess.”
She smiled, unhurried and contented, gleaming with restoration. “You swore to me that I would never see your lake,” she said.
I laughed, and it was all relief. “Yet here we are,” I replied.
“You saved me, Morgan,” she said. “More than once. Thank you.”
We stood there for a long moment, absorbing what it all meant. She had saved me in the past, and I had returned the deed in time for the future. We were even.
“Never mind prophecies,” I said, “let this stand as undeniable proof that we can never truly predict what the future holds.”
Ninianne inclined her head in agreement, then paused, squinting as if trying to catch the bars of a distant song. “Something is…here,” she said.
Before I could question, she had waded back into the lake, skimming her fingers over the surface. “There is a presence, I am sure of it. What can I feel, Morgan?”
“I don’t know,” I replied. “You are of the Lake. How can I say what you feel?”
“You do know.” She strode out of the water and took up my hands. “I thought so. Whatever it is sings of you too.”
Around us, the willow leaves stirred, though there was no wind, pinpricks of gold and silver glinting between the green.
Did she mean…?
He had never appeared to anyone but me. I had mostly accepted it, while never quite shaking the possibility that a great part of my life was based on fantasy. And yet…
“Accolon,” I said. “Are you there?”
For a moment, nothing, and my insides trembled with the same plunging doubt I had felt with Alys and Tressa. I looked at Ninianne, but she wasn’t paying attention to me, instead gazing at a cool, gentle light appearing just beyond my shoulder.
A familiar calm swept through me, an arrival I knew so well. I did not need to wonder if Ninianne could see him; I could feel her awareness through our joined hands.
“Oui, of course,” Accolon said, stepping out from under the willow.
Ninianne released me and took him in, curiosity shimmering from her body. I had never seen Accolon shy, but he eyed her with an uncertainty he rarely displayed. He too had become used to being perceived by no one but me.
“Sir Accolon of Gaul, I believe?” she said, as if greeting a shade half risen from death was entirely usual. “We have never properly met. I am—”
“The Lady of the Lake,” he supplied. “I know.”
“Ninianne, to be precise,” she corrected. “There are many ladies of many lakes. I am only one of them.”
He nodded with a mild shrug, his eternal insouciance undaunted; it was always refreshing how the stranger parts of my life bothered him so little.
“You were there at my death,” he said archly. “Though that may not count as a formal meeting.”
I had begun to feel mildly dizzy. “You can see him?” I asked Ninianne. “I mean—obviously you can, but… ”
“No one else has but you?” she said. “That is mysterious, but not impossible.”
I nodded, though it clarified nothing at all in my swimming head. So I was definitively not deluded, but that meant I truly had spent years interacting with my resurrected lover, recreated with my own healing power. Either way, it felt like madness.
“How did you come to be here, Sir Accolon?” Ninianne said.
“I am hardly the one to ask,” he replied. “Whatever this is, or what I am—Morgan made it so.”
Ninianne turned to me. “You did this?”
I had never seen such a gleam on her face, and it made my heart leap to behold. She had not taught me for decades, yet her goddess-like wonder, the idea she might be impressed with something I’d done, was more potent than any other praise I could receive.
“Y-yes,” I said. “I’d been working on a resurrection formula for years—since Merlin’s. Raising Accolon was the reason I wanted the Shroud of Tithonus. I had the Shroud and his heart, and I thought it would be enough. But I failed.”
“Failed?” She stared at me, incredulous. “He stands here before us like this, and you consider it a failure?”
Accolon gave me an affectionate grin. “See? I told you. C’est un miracle.”
“No,” I protested. “He isn’t whole. What I’ve done is make a terrible error.”
Ninianne stepped closer to Accolon, walking around him with deep scrutiny, which he allowed with an air of amusement.
“I haven’t been this keenly observed by a woman in many years,” he commented. “Perhaps I should be flattered.”
She said nothing, finishing her circle. Once satisfied, she came to my side once more. “Morgan,” she said gravely, “what you have done is incredible. You should not have been able to perform such a feat.”
“You don’t understand,” I said. “I’ve done this before, to greater success. You don’t know of the white hart. It was dead, torn apart.”
“What you achieved is known to me,” she said.
“You did remarkable work at Merlin’s, but the reason your efforts succeeded was because the creature was buried on the island.
I’ve told you—the soil within the moat holds deep and ancient magic, gathering power for millennia.
The white hart would not have emerged alive and complete otherwise. ”
The sorcerer, too, had mentioned the land’s power, the trio of ancient trees that once stood where his house was, creating a deep intersection of old magic.
He had directed us to bury the mangled deer within the potent roots of the remaining oak, but never claimed my success was anything to do with the land.
“Merlin treated the white hart as my own miracle,” I said. “The credit for which he rode off to steal.”
“He wanted to sweet-talk you, no doubt, keep you with him for longer,” Ninianne said. “In truth, he assumed the earth caused the restoration. The island was key in his plans for Arthur. His intention was to bring him there when the time came for resurrection.”
I looked at her stupidly and she beamed warmth towards me.
“Don’t you see, Morgan—even with your developing work, neither he nor I thought it was possible to perform such a wonder as this.
” She gestured to Accolon. “With only a heart and the Shroud of Tithonus, nothing should have happened. The resurrection of a fully formed shade, with mind, memory and soul—it is miraculous. Everything I thought lost is now open to us again.”
“Do not fix any hope upon it,” I insisted. “He cannot touch, or feel hunger, tiredness—he has no human needs. He’s trapped here, unable to move beyond the willow tree. Magical feat or not, it went wrong.”
I looked at Accolon, pained all over again at what he endured because of my selfishness, my desperation, the grief I could not live with.
“I don’t regret a moment I have spent with you here,” I told him.
“But what I did wasn’t for the best. I wanted another chance, freedom for both of us.
Instead, I have trapped you for eternity, bound to this damned tree. ”
He sighed. “No, mon coeur. How many times must we—”
“What tree?” Ninianne interrupted. I gestured to the willow and she shook her head. “He is not bound to that.”
“He is,” I insisted. “He cannot move outside its environs. Accolon, show her.”
Accolon obediently strode away from the weeping branches.
At once, his image began to fade, but he kept going, as if about to take the path to the house.
I opened my mouth to stop him, but he disintegrated so fast I didn’t manage a sound.
Panic flickered through me; every time he vanished, I still feared it would be the last time.
I turned back to Ninianne, who looked utterly unperturbed.