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“Go on with your search,” she managed to say. “We do not want Lord Lancelot angry with you both.”

Lionel shuddered. “No, my lady, we do not.” He made another hasty bow and took his leave, too quickly, because as the fog embraced him, he smacked into someone who cuffed and cursed him and sent him splashing off again.

Lynet wrapped her arms around herself, but it did no good. The cold she now felt came from within her. Where was Gareth? To be sure, on such a morning you could stand quietly beside someone and not be seen, but why would Gareth wish to hide? If he was in another's bed, it was not precisely a matter of shame with him …

He'd been upset when she left him, although he would not say why. She had thought it had been because of having to wait beside her, and wake her so suddenly. He was far from easy with what she did. But what if it was more than that? Something she had not seen, or, as bound up as she was in her own troubles, had not asked. She had assumed he had gone back to his fellow squires, but she did not know. He could have gone anywhere.

She stared out at the mists, toward where she thought the moors might be.
No. He did not go that way. Not in the dark with a fog rolling in. You are worrying over nothing
.

But around her, voices began to raise themselves above the muted grumbling, chiding, clanging and all the other sounds of the sluggish camp.

“Gareth?” called out a man's voice from somewhere to the right. Then, another, from the left. “Gaaaaareth!”

Lynet's throat tightened.
Peace. Peace,
she chided herself.
He has only found some warmer bed and is loathe to leave it. That's all.

But what bed could be so warm it would keep Gareth from serving his master at any time? If there was anything true about Gareth, it was his love for Lancelot and his pride of place. No, he would not wander far away, no matter how upset he was.

Not if he had any choice.

Stop, Lynet. You are only frightening yourself.

But Gareth's name still rang out through the mists, sounded by half-a-dozen separate voices now, and no answer came back. Out there in the unseen camp, conferences, curses and questions shunted back and forth, but she still could not hear the voice she missed.

Lynet felt ill. The mist pressed against her with palpable weight, like Merlin's shadows. She thought of Gareth and how he stood beside her in the darkness to keep her safe and to keep her secret even when he did not understand what was happening. Perhaps he did it to impress her, rake that he was, but she could not quite bring herself to believe that. He had stayed when he could have left her alone, he had kept his silence when he could have — perhaps should have — betrayed her. Whatever else he was, he was true to his word.

For that alone, she must stand by him. Lynet turned and strode away from the center of the camp.

Before she travelled a score of paces, the shadows of tent, pavilion and movement had vanished, taking all the sounds of men with them. Lynet was utterly alone. Her footsteps did not even leave any track on the springy, sodden ground.

A nearby stone made her a seat. As soon as she took the mirror from the purse, drops of moisture formed on its surface. She cupped her hands around the glass, leaning forward, seeing her frightened visage framed in white and spattered with water like sliver tears.

Her soul knew its road well now, and she did not even have to focus her will. The instant she thought of Ryol's name and form, she felt the pull of him soul to soul. The world of mists was swallowed up and gone in an eyeblink, and Lynet woke once more standing in Ryol's sweet and sunlit garden.

But the summer sweetness was well and truly gone now. Fall had come. The flowers dried on their stalks and the tree's leaves turned to gold and copper overhead.

Ryol crossed toward her from beneath the trees. With a shock, Lynet saw his hair had gone completely white, and his shoulders hunched as from beneath the weight of years. Both hands outstretched to take hers up, his face creased with worry. “My lady? You come so soon …” but just as he reached her, his hands fell to his sides. “There is danger.”

“Ryol, what has happened here?”

He smiled tiredly. “Do not concern yourself, Lady. It is the consequence of the use of spirit. What has happened?”

“But …”

He shook his head. “What has happened, my lady?” he asked again.

Lynet swallowed her questions. Ryol was right, yet again. There was no time. “The man, Gareth. He is gone from the camp. The moor is so close … did it take him?”

Ryol set his jaw and Lynet saw a flash in his eyes that might well have been anger. A sour scent drifted past on the garden's mild breeze. Despite this, his gaze turned to the distance. She felt his presence travelling from her as he reached out and sought the owner of the name she had given. The garden blurred, as if the fog had found its way here.

“There.” Ryol raised his arm, pointing over her shoulder. “There.”

She turned to see. The fog had indeed come, shrouding the garden in its chill and looming mist. As she stared, her eyes seemed to adjust to the watery, grey light, and she saw Gareth, and he was not alone. A crowd of women in white robes belted with silver stood about him. Gareth knelt on the sodden, green ground, his chin held high, his face rapt as he gazed at the woman before him. She was a beauty beyond mortal life. Her hands were long and perfect and she laid them on Gareth's shoulders. Her skin was milk and rose without blemish, her hair a rich red-gold that would have outshone even the beauty of Queen Iseult's. But although she could clearly see every other feature, Lynet could not see the woman's eyes. There were only grey hollows above her cheeks as she looked down on Gareth kneeling before her.

A dozen other maidens, each as fully beautiful as the first, clustered behind her. With these mist-pale beauties stood a pack of hounds — great, black, heavy square-muzzled beasts, with eyes that burned with alert and ferocious life.

Gareth laid his hand over his heart and spoke to the achingly beautiful woman before him, his clear brown gaze never leaving her pure and lovely face. He was swearing something, taking some oath to this woman, these women, and their beasts beside them.

“Gareth!” Lynet cried and lunged forward, but Ryol gripped her arm hard, pulling her back.

“No, Lynet! You are spirit here. If you go among them as you are, they will draw you in and you will be lost.”

“Then I will be a shape.” She steeled herself, concentrating her will. But even as she did so, one of the great dogs lifted its muzzle, as if it had caught her scent. It growled, showing its white teeth. Its fellows stirred uneasily.

“No,” said Ryol again, more gently. She smelled that sour scent again. “It will not be enough, Lynet. You must believe me.”

The maiden who stood before Gareth took no notice of the dogs. She was smiling. She bent down and laid a delicate kiss upon Gareth's clear brow.

“What are they?” Lynet whispered.

“The daughters of the moor.” Ryol whispered the words. One of the dog's twitched its ears and cold fear took hold of Lynet. “It was their lights that led him astray.”

Before her, the maiden raised Gareth up, and kissed him again, this time on each cheek. It seemed to Lynet that some of the color drained from him as he smiled his witless smile at the beauty.

“How can I free him?”

She felt Ryol searching. The push and pull as his spirit ranged forth was like the buffeting winds on the heights. She felt also his reluctance. This she cast aside. It mattered not whether he liked what he did, only that it was done. Whatever fate these creatures might have in store for Gareth, she could not leave him to it. She thought suddenly of Bishop Austell on the deck of the pitching ship, standing strong one moment, and in the next gone down to the merciless embrace of the
morverch
.

No. She would not permit such a thing to happen again.

Ryol sucked in a breath through his teeth. The sour smell around them grew stronger. The maiden took Gareth's hand, and led him to her fellows who all curtsied to him, each smiling, each looking up at him with those strange, hollow eyes. Behind them, the dogs clustered together cutting off retreat, or approach.

“You must go to him,” said Ryol at last, reluctantly. “In the flesh. You must stand yourself between him and the daughters. Gareth is sworn first to you. As long as you do not release him, they cannot take him.”

I swear that I will remain to protect you.
Hope leapt up inside Lynet as Gareth's words rang through her memory. At the time, it had seemed a small reassurance, something to comfort her in the dark. But it was an oath, and in the lands between Heaven and Earth, between life and death, such words bound like bands of iron, as she had good cause to know. “How can I find him?” There were few trustworthy landmarks on a moor even when the weather was clear. Now, now the whole world was a blank slate.

“I will guide you. Hold aloft the mirror and fix your will on Squire Gareth. I will find you the proper road.” She looked at him again, this young man turned so suddenly old.

The women and their beasts surrounded Gareth now. She could not see him anymore. There were only the women's bodies and the haunches of the black hounds.

“Thank you, Ryol,” she said, tearing her gaze from the scene. “We must go at once.”

“Yes.” He hesitated, and then said softly. “Know this. They will be able to touch you, but not hold you. They are mist. You are stone and sea. You are stronger than they.”

She touched his arm, and he jerked away at once, as if she burned him, but in that single instant, she felt a spill of fear and anger over her, all but drowning out all other awareness.

“Go,” he said, before she could question any of this. “Delay and you condemn him to their mercies.”

His will pushed at hers. With no desire to resist, Lynet let herself be banished back to the mortal realm beyond the mirror.

Lynet woke huddled on her stone, her skin drenched, her whole body shivering. Her head ached. She held the mirror in one numb hand. She pushed herself upright and stood. Her eyes swam from the effort and her knees tried to buckle. She clenched her teeth and she held. All around was an unbroken white cocoon. There was no way to tell how long she had been gone, or if they now searched the camp for her as well as Gareth.

It did not matter. She raised her hand, gone blue with cold, and held the mirror high over her head. She thought of Gareth. She thought of the shape of his face and the sound of his voice. She thought of the startled anger she had seen in him when she took him for the kitchen boy, and of the brilliant smile that could spread a sudden light across his face and up into his autumn brown eyes.

Her palm tingled. Warmth blossomed across her skin. In the next breath, a beam of light, as straight and sharp as a blade scythed through the enshrouding fog, clearing a path just broad enough for Lynet to walk. Above, the sky was bright blue, below the ground was green and soft, broken only by tiny blue flowers and lichen-feathered stones. Which direction this road ran, Lynet could not tell. The sunbeams slanted in on her right hand, but as she did not know if noon had passed this gave her no help. It led down into the heart of the moor, and that was all she knew or needed to know.

Lynet knotted her sodden hems in her free hand so that she would not stumble over them, and started forward. She knew without looking that the mists closed behind her. She could feel the cold at her back as surely as she could feel the heat of her unearthly lantern in her hand. She too was now gone, and if she failed, she would not return.

She walked on. The ground beneath her squelched and each footstep brought up a fresh pool of water. The mists dragged at her sleeves and brushed her warming skin with fresh lines of cold. Her body was leaden, and each step felt as if it must be her last, but she kept on. She turned her mind again and again to Gareth, striving to recall each word they had spoken, each moment shared. She thought on the exact shade of golden brown that colored his eyes, the way his hands gentled his horse and held its reins so easily, how the rapture on his face when he looked at the daughters of the moor was so close to how he looked when he spoke of Lancelot's deeds.

There was no time here, no direction or true sense of place. Hunger and thirst nagged at her. Her sodden clothing clung to her body, an icy drapery that provided no screen from the elements. The ground beneath her was so drenched, she could as easily have been wading through a stream as walking on the land.

Then, the wind blew hard on her left hand, and the way in front of her opened wide. There, she saw Gareth lying on a stone. Lynet gave a wordless cry of gladness and ran forward. The wind blew again, bringing the mists back down, cold and close, and the mirror's light blinked out, and she was alone.

Lynet stopped short. Fear closed over her, but she held firm against it. She carefully placed the mirror in its bag. It would not do to lose it now. Slowly, she turned in place, staring hard at the whitened world around her. Through the thin veil at the edge of the fog, she saw movement. Then, she saw Gareth again, stretched on his back on the flat, age-speckled stone. She hiked up her skirts and ran to his side.

Gareth lay on his cold bed, unmoving and pale as death. Only his open eyes showed and small, witless smile showed him to be alive. If he knew she was there, he gave no sign even though she was panting hoarsely by the time she reached him. Over him, the mists swirled, every shade of grey blurring together and separating out again.

“Gareth!” Lynet laid her hands on his chest, feeling for breath and beating heart.

Her touch seemed to reach him as her voice could not. Gareth turned his pale face toward her. Slowly, recognition came to him, and the smile fell away, replace by sick despair. But he made no move to rise. Around them, the wind blew again, tugging at the mists, and reforming them. With the wind came something else.