sunset along the sea, and then the setting sun below the western clouds. She waited, knowing what he would say, what she would say in response.
He said, “Shall I go away?”
“Yes,” she said.
She did not move. A bird sang behind her, in the trees at the edge of the strand. Then another bird sang. The surf came in and withdrew, and then it came in again.
He said, “Where shall I go?”
And now she had to hurt him very badly, because he loved her and had not been here to save her when it happened.
She said, “You will know of Rakoth Maugrim; they will have told you on the ship. He took me a year ago. To the place of his power. He… did things to me.”
She stopped: not for herself, it was an old pain now, and Arthur had taken much of it away. But she had to stop because of what was in his face. Then after a moment she went on, carefully, because she could not break, not now. She said, “I was to die, after. I was saved, though, and in time I bore his child.”
Again she was forced to pause. She closed her eyes, so as not to see his face. No one else, she knew, and nothing else, did this to him. But she did it every time. She heard him kneel, not trusting his hands any longer, and lay Arthur gently down on the sand.
She said, eyes still closed, “I wanted to have the child. There are reasons words will not reach. His name is Darien, and he was here not long ago, and went away because I made him go away. They do not understand why I did this, why I did not try to bind him.” She paused again and took a breath.
“I think I understand,” said Lancelot. Only that. Which was so much.
She opened her eyes. He was on his knees before her, Arthur lying between the two of them, the sun and its track along the sea behind both men, red and gold and very beautiful. She did not move. She said, “He went into this wood. It is a place of ancient power and of hate, and before he went he burnt a tree with his own power, which comes from his father. I would…” She faltered. He had only just now come, and was here before her, and she faltered at the words that would send him away.
There was silence, but not for very long. Lancelot said, “I understand. I will guard him, and not bind him, and leave him to choose his road.”
She swallowed and fought back her tears. What was a voice? A doorway, with nuances of light, intimations of shade: a doorway to a soul.
“It is a dark road,” she said, speaking more truth than she knew.
He smiled, so unexpectedly that it stopped her heart for a beat. He smiled up at her, and then rose, and so smiled down upon her, tenderly, gravely, with a sure strength whose only place of vulnerability was herself, and he said, “All the roads are dark, Guinevere. Only at the end is there a hope of light.” The smile faded. “Fare gently, love.”
He turned with the last words, his hand moving automatically, unconsciously, to check the hang of the sword at his side. Panic rose within her, a blind surge.
“Lancelot!” she said.
She had not spoken his name before that. He stopped and turned, two separate actions, slowed by a weight of pain. He looked at her. Slowly, sharing the weight, with very great care, she held out one hand to him. And as slowly, his eyes on hers and naming her name over and over in their depths, he walked back, and took her hand, and brought it to his lips.
Then in her turn, not speaking, not daring to speak or able, she took the hand in which he held her own and laid the back of it against her cheek so that one tear fell upon it. Then she kissed that tear away and watched him go, past all the silent people who parted to make way for him, as he walked from her into Pendaran Wood.
Once, a long time ago, he had met Green Ceinwen by chance in a glade of the Wood by moonlight. Cautiously, for it always paid to be cautious with the Huntress, Flidais had entered the glade and saluted her. She had been sitting on the trunk of a fallen tree, her