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“Are you all right, my lady?” gasped Daere as she put out a hand to steady Lynet.

The queen turned her head inquiringly. So too did every other woman in the tent.

“Yes, yes, thank you Daere,” said Lynet hastily, trying to avoid every eye by reaching for her bed coverings. “My feet ache.”

This they were all willing to believe, her broken feet having been made a public spectacle. Slowly, they were all willing to go back to the business of getting ready for their bed, including the queen. Lynet lay still and let Daere draw up the covers so no one would see her hand grasping her purse so tightly the mirror's edges dug into her hand, even through the leather.

Something was wrong. Lynet closed her eyes, turning over to face the canvas wall, so no one could see her distress. Something was blindingly, terribly wrong and she could feel it with each beat of her heart. Light flashed behind her eyelids, like a silent storm of omen. Yet the braziers flickered and cloth and covers rustled, and the queen laughed softly at yet another jest told by one of her useless, gossipy, feather-brained city women.

At last, when Lynet's teeth ached from being ground so hard against the screams that threatened to burst forth, the last light was covered, and darkness fell. Around her came the familiar rustling, sighing sounds of women trying to get comfortable on pallets now damp and lumpy from too much hard travel and not enough airing. Lady Mavis dropped off first as usual. She had a trilling kind of snore. One by one, the others followed her, and last of all, the queen's breath deepened and slowed, and Lynet was able to take one free breath herself.

Carefully, stealthily, she slipped out from under her coverings. No sound of breathing or soft snoring changed. Her groping hand found her cloak and she hugged it close. One cautious, agonizing step at a time she made her way to the door, giving Daere as wide a berth as she could. At last she reached the canvas flap and picked at the knotted lacings with impatient fingers, her ears straining all the while for any change in the sound of restful oblivion behind her.

Since the queen had found her that first night, Lynet did not dare try to use the mirror again inside the pavilion. At least if she were found creeping outside, there might be another explanation. She could buy herself some time concealed in the fringes of the wood, and if she cried out, it was less likely that anyone would hear.

She had to do this, and do this now. The urgency of it filled her. She had to bite back a cry of gladness as the final knot came loose and she was able to creep out the pavilion door.

Fortunately, the queen did not insist on guards beside the tent. Lynet could see the torches of their stations out at the edges of the camp. Soft talking and laughter rose from here and there, along with stray clanks and clatters. The whole camp settling to sleep, but not quite there, not yet. That was as well. This way she was one only more carefully moving shadow, trying not to disturb her fellows, just trying to find her bed, or a spot to relieve herself, at the edges of the light. Nothing to worry about. Nothing to question.

“I wondered if you would come out again tonight.”

Lynet whirled around, her fist stuffed in her mouth to stifle her startled scream. A shadow moved out from all the other shadows, and there stood Squire Gareth.

She stared at him. He made no apology for frightening her. He simply stood there, his hands loose at his sides, waiting to see what she would do next.

Lynet lowered her hand. “Squire Gareth,” she croaked.

“My lady,” he replied gravely, inclining his head. “What brings you out at this unseasonable hour?”

She swallowed, trying to remember her dignity, and all the plausible lies she had stored up.

“I have asked you a question, my lady,” said Gareth. There was something new in those words. A reminder that he was a man on the verge of knighthood, a man loyal to his knight and his queen and above all his high king. He had seen something. He was suspicious. This was what had kept him silent and apart from her all day, not her scathing words. He was afraid of the outland lady and her strange movements that had called himself and his people out into danger.

There was not a plausible lie in all the world that he would believe. What was more, Lynet realized as she looked up at his sad, stern visage, she did not want to have to lie to him.

You cannot stand here! You have no time to waste!

“Squire Gareth, I swear on the memory of both my mother and my father, I do nothing that will harm anyone here. Please, let me go.”

He flexed his hands. She could hear his breathing, harsh and uneasy for a long time before he spoke.

“My lady, listen to me,” he said softly. “There is something gravely amiss here. How am I to know that by my silence I do not jeopardize my comrades, my knight and my queen? Give me some explanation that I can understand, and I will hold my tongue. Continue in your own silence, and I must raise the alarm.”

He meant it. She could tell that easily. He would feel regret, but he would do exactly as he said.

And for good reason,
admitted Lynet to herself.

But he was giving her a chance. All of Ryol's warnings rang in her head, but no lie came to her, and the urgent warning within her. She must risk the truth. If she did not, she was lost already.

“We must not be seen.” She ducked into the nearby copse of trees and bracken that was surely where Gareth had watched her progress before he decided to confront her. Gareth followed more slowly, and when he did, she saw his hand was on his sword.

His sword. He had come to her armed. She wanted to find some blame in this, to ease her own guilt, but again she could not.

When she was certain they were as hidden as the could be, she drew the mirror from its purse. “This was a gift from the sea to my mother,” she told him, holding it out flat on her palm. It shone faintly in the darkness, as if it carried its own light within. “Through this, I may see my home and speak with Laurel. I do not want the queen to know, that is why I have tried to hide it.”

She waited for him to laugh, or cross himself, or to call her mad. He did none of these. He stretched out one cautious finger and touched the cool, smooth glass. “Why should you fear the queen's knowing?” he whispered.

“Her Majesty distrusts all things of the invisible countries, as well she should,” she added, thinking of Morgaine and all that had been done already. “If I were not desperate, I would have nothing to do with it.”
Is that true?
She put the question aside hurriedly. “But my sister is in danger, and it is only the visions I receive from the sea glass that keep her alive. I beg of you Squire Gareth,” she breathed softly, as she curled her fingers around the mirror. The sight and touch of it was maddening, driving her blood hard in her veins and sending it pounding to her temples. “Do not give me away.”

He was silent, watching her out of the darkness that cloaked him. “It is dangerous,” he said flatly.

“Only to myself.”

“How can you know?”

“On this you will have to trust me, Gareth.” She heard the quaver in her voice. “I am the only one in peril from this glass and what it holds.”

He regarded her for another long moment, his jaw working back and forth. Lynet held her breath, but did not let her gaze leave his. She longed to be able to reach out as she did when she was a shadow. As a shadow she could have gathered up his distrust and returned her own belief and sense of understanding.

Then, Gareth said, “You cannot lie a night out here alone. You will sicken from the cold.”

“It will not be that long this time.”

“You are sure of that?”

She bowed her head. “No.” It seemed that now that she had begun to tell him the truth, she could not stop.

“Then I will stay with you.”

That startled her. “No,” she said immediately.

He did not let her speak another word. “I cannot permit you to come to harm,” he said. “And if I am to keep my silence about this, I must see for myself what happens.” His lips twitched into a smile for an eyeblink. “I have been told many strange stories in my life, lady, some by my own brothers. If you want me to believe what you say, you must also let me be witness to it.”

A long and painful history lay beneath those words. She could feel it, even trapped in her separate skin. There was no way around it. Her urgency would burn a hole through her if she did not look into the mirror at once.

Anger sparked in her, but gratitude as well. for she knew that despite all his doubts, he had trusted her as far as he could.

But Gareth mistook the reason for her hesitation. “My Lady Lynet,” he said solemnly, formally. “I swear that I will remain to protect you. You will come to no harm while I watch over you.”

“Thank you, Gareth,” she murmured.

He drew himself up with a sigh, acknowledging their strange and awkward circumstances with no more than that gesture. “What must you do?”

“Sit down,” she said, and she suited actions to words. She brought the mirror up, seeing her own ghostly reflection in its smooth and perfect surface. All thought of Gareth, of queen, of any danger flew away as she saw her other self waiting there.

“Ryol,” she said. “Ryol!”

Lynet fell into darkness.

The fall this time was short and sharp. The world opened around her almost before she had time to blink, and Ryol was there at her side in the bright sun of the garden. But Ryol had changed yet again. Silver streaked his dark hair, and the petals of the roses and the blossoms strewn the garden's fading grass.

She opened her mouth, but Ryol did not give her time to speak. He grabbed her wrist and pulled her along behind him as he swept out his hand to shift the shadows and change the daylight garden to the dark reflection of Cambryn at nighttime. Clouds gathered thickly, scudding across the half-moon, but as before, Lynet found she could see as well as if the moon had been full and the night clear. Ryol was all but running now and it took all her concentration to keep beside him as the shadows rushed, bent and blurred around her.

When her vision cleared, she found herself standing in Colan's chamber. The fire and the rushlights had both been doused. The room was utterly black. With her shadow sight, she could make out Colan's hunched form crouched on the low sill of his narrow window.

She thought he meant to jump, to kill himself and end his blood-stained life. She felt the guilt in him. It rolled off him like waves of ice water, cutting through the shadow of herself, threatening to wash her away with its strength. It seemed as if he must be wading through it up to his neck. But no. Whether she drifted forward or pulled him close, she neared him, and she found she could feel beneath the guilt, discern its foundations, understand them.

He was going to kill Laurel. He was going to scale the old, time-pitted wall and creep across the roof slates. He could do it. He had done it in secret as a boy. He had waited here quiet and meek, waiting for the men to become bored and complacent, waiting for Laurel to become disgusted or distracted so that she did not visit him anymore.

Lynet knew all this, as surely as she knew he had killed their father. He was going to kill Laurel and offer up the death to Morgaine, a sacrifice, to show her he was still loyal, that he was still useful.

That he was still hers and that she could not abandon one of her own.

“No,” whispered Lynet. “No!”

But he could not hear her, she could not reach him. She was less than shadow now, she was nothing more than witness.

Without even looking to Ryol, Lynet gathered her strength, and reached out for his. It flowed into her like honey, thick and warming. She focused thought and will, and forced herself into being. Pain filled her with its unbearable fire, and she stood and she held. When her eyes could see again, she turned them on Colan and reached with the shadow that was herself. She caught up her own pain, and that cold, rolling guilt rushing from him, scooping it up like ocean water into an ewer, and with all her strength, she flung it back at Colan where he crouched like some great insect, waiting for his time.

His fingers gripped the stones hard for a moment and he toppled backward, barely catching himself in time to keep from sprawling on the floor. He turned, looking about the room, his face pale as death. His hands shook and he wrapped his arms to himself, doubling over as if suddenly sick. He did not move. Lynet let herself drift a little closer, still solid, still strong, wading through her brother's guilt, collecting it as she went.

“Father?” Colan whispered.

That single word told her what she must do, what she could do. She was an ethereal shape, and shapes could shift. She called up memory of her father, whom she was said to be so like, the height and breadth and strength of him, the set of his shoulders, the carved hollows of his cheeks, the hard, square hands of a warrior. And the blood, the blood she had last seen pouring from his torn belly.

All this she made herself, and in a final wrenching act of will, all this she showed to Colan. She knew at once he saw and saw clearly, for he screamed in utter horror, throwing up his hands to ward off the bloody ghost before him.

The door burst open, and Lynet let herself vanish, let the pain and the tide of her brother's guilt wash her away, back into the thinnest breath of shadow, back to passive witness as the men of Colan's guard ran into the room to find him crouched on his floor, his head in his hands, trembling and weeping like a babe.

Lynet looked down on her work and felt the tears stinging her eyes. “Take me to Laurel,” she told Ryol.

Gareth sat beside Laurel's body. She lay on the ground, her eyes closed, as peacefully as if she was asleep, save that her flesh was as cold and as pale as death. Only her fingers around her mirror kept their life. The mirror was cold as ice, but her hands were warm, almost fiery. He drew her cloak over her. She did not breathe. Did not stir. He sat back, biting his lip, wondering what he should do.