Lancelot was looking at Gawain with a strange, drawn expression. “You were there? In Dorchester?”
“Yes,” Gawain said to the air between Vera and Arthur rather than facing Lancelot. Nonetheless, Lancelot’s hand flinched as if to reach out in comfort. He balled it into a fist on his own thigh instead.
“I was born there,” Gawain continued. “My family was killed in the attack. Merlin was the first mage to respond after the massacre. He offered me a place at the Magesary. He’s the closest person to family that I have.”
Vera hadn’t realized. It brought a surge of affection for Merlin, complicated by his actions of late. “Do you trust him?” she asked.
Gawain hesitated before saying, “I do. I always have.”
“Then why are we having a secret meeting?” she said.
“Because of the real reason that we must see the mages.” Gawain took a deep breath. “I believe they can help with the Saxon, but there is another aspect to magic’s dwindling that needs to be addressed with the mages. Merlin would stop me if he knew.”
“Why would he do that?” Arthur asked.
“Because it has to do with how the mages expand our powers.”
Vera sat up straighter. She’d long wondered about that. It had been lodged in the back of her mind since the day Gawain told her that most mages start with only one power. “How do mages amass more gifts?”
Lancelot answered automatically, “Study and innovation.”
Arthur nodded along with him.
Gawain held Vera’s stare.
She leaned toward him and asked again. “How?”
He licked his top lip and swallowed heavily.
“You can’t say,” she breathed.
“Now you are asking the right question.” Gawain said, smiling weakly at her. He turned to Arthur. “Mages can speak freely only at the Magesary during a convened council gathering. After you have asked the mages for help, you must stay in the room. They will ask you to leave. They will pressure you to leave. As the ruler of this kingdom and thus of the mages, it is your right to stay. Tell them that. Do not leave that room.” His voice was stern. He rubbed anxiously at his temple with his thumb, his hand trembling. Whatever he meant for Arthur to understand, it frightened him.
“I won’t,” Arthur said.
“What did the mage in Dorchester look like?” Lancelot asked.
“He was obscured by magic like a shadow made flesh. Horrible and somehow unseeable.”
Vera shivered. Something … there was something else. It flitted around the edges of her thoughts, evading her. She kept coming back to the stories of Arthurian legend from her future. Vera tried to swat it out of her thoughts, but she could not stop its buzz.
Le Morte d’Arthur.
The tome’s name rose up in her mind, and she froze. The Death of Arthur.
She remembered a character from the legends that she had yet to meet. He had to be fiction. And yet … so many other pieces had come to fruition. A jolt of fear seared through her.
“Did the mage have a name?” she asked, hopeful that the truth would free her from her dread.
It did not.
Gawain nodded. “He called himself Mordred.”
Arthur and Lancelot had no reaction to hearing the name Mordred. Arthur asked another question, but Vera couldn’t hear it. She heard only a muted ringing inside her head.
Gawain didn’t answer Arthur’s question and kept his gaze steadily on Vera. “You’re familiar with that name,” he said. It was not a question.
There were names from the legend of King Arthur that she recognized, but she wasn’t sure of their role in the story. Not Mordred. She knew that name, and in any snippet of the myth Vera had heard, Mordred was the one who killed Arthur.
