The Last Enchantment - Mary Stewart [162]
I started to warn her. "Ninian -- " I began, but then Arthur came quickly past me into the room, and stopped just inside the door, his eyes on her face.
Be sure that I was staring, too.
Now that I knew, I wondered how I had not always known. For eighteen, it was hardly a man's face; an immature eighteen might have had that smooth cheek and sweet mouth, and her body under the shapeless clothing was as slim as a boy's but the hands were not a young man's hands, nor were the slender feet. I can only think that my own memory of the boy Ninian had kept me, blindly, to the image of him as he had been at sixteen: my desire to have him had been strong enough to let me re-create him, first in the dimly seen ghost of the Lake, then in this girl, so near to me, so closely watched, and yet not seen, through all the past long months. And then, perhaps (I thought), she had been able to use a little of my own magic against me, to keep me blind -- and so to keep herself beside me, until her purposes were served.
She stood straight as a wand, facing us. I suppose it needed no magic for her to tell that we knew. The grey eyes met mine for the fraction of a moment, then she faced the King.
What happened then is difficult to describe. There was the quiet, everyday room, filled with the scents and sounds of the summer morning; sweet briar and early roses and the gilly-flowers she had planted outside the window; last night's burned logs (the nights could still have a chill in them, and she had insisted on making a fire for me to sit by); the sweet sub-song of the redbreast as he flew up into the apple boughs outside. A summer room, where, to anyone of normal perceptions, nothing passed at all. Just three people, in a pause of silence.
But to me the air tingled suddenly over the skin, like water when lightning strikes. I felt the flesh creep on my bones, and the small hairs on my arms fur up; my nape stirred like the ruff of a dog in a thunder-storm. I do not think I moved. Neither the King nor the girl seemed to notice anything. She watched him gravely, unalarmed, I might have thought unmoved and barely interested, if I had not been getting these fearsome currents washing over and through my flesh as the tide washes over a rock lying on the shore. Her grey eyes held his; his dark ones bored into her. I could feel the force as the two of them met. The air trembled.
Then he nodded, and put up a hand to loosen the cloak from his shoulder. I saw her mouth move with the shadow of a smile. The message had passed. For my sake, he would accept her. And for my sake, she would stand the trial. The room steadied, and I said: "Let me," and took his cloak from him to lay it down.
The girl said: "Shall I bring you some breakfast? Mora left it ready, but you were late, so she went to market. She says the best things are taken if she is not there early."
She went. The platters were laid ready on the table, and we took our places. She brought bread, and the crock of honey, and a pitcher of milk along with one of mead. She set the latter down at the King's hand, then without a word took her usual place across from me. She had not looked at me again. When I poured a cup of milk for her she thanked me, but without lifting her eyes. Then she spread honey on her bread, and began to eat.
"Your name," said the King. "Is it Niniane?"
"Yes," she said, "but I was always called Nimuë."
"Your parentage?"
"My father was called Dyonas."
"Yes. King of the River Islands?"
"The same. He is dead now."
"I know that. He fought beside me at Viroconium. Why did you leave your home?"
"I was sent to the Lady's service, in the Isle of Glass. It was my father's wish." The glimmer of a smile. "My mother was a Christian, and when she lay dying she made him promise he would send me to the Island; I know she intended me for the service of the church there. I was only six years old, but he promised her. He himself had never held with what he called the new God; he was an initiate of Mithras -- his own father took him there in the time