She stretched her arms over her head till the verdant hair entwined their whiteness, arched her back, and poised on tiptoe. “None,” she smiled. “You cannot imagine how wearisome existence grows, alone and immortal. When a beautiful young warrior, with locks like the sun and eyes like heaven, chanced hither, I must love him on the instant.”
His cheeks burned. The detached part of him reflected that she, being of the Middle World, was as immune to the illusion which disguised him as he was himself. Even so... how did she know his name? “Morgan le Fay!” he flung out.
“What matter?” Her shrug was a flow along her whole body. “Come, my house lies near. A feast awaits you. Afterward—” She swayed close. Her eyelids drooped.
“This is no accident,” he insisted. “I expected Morgan would track us. When we passed by this lake, she arranged everything. I don’t believe my own actions were free, even.”
“Oh, fear not that. No mortal of good character can be touched by enchantment, unless he himself wishes.”
“Well, I know what my character was like at the time, and I suspect I was prodded into the right frame of mind, if not forced. Very well. Begone, you!” Holger drew the sign of the cross.
The nixie smiled her slumbrous smile. She shook her head, slow weaving back and forth with billows running through the loose hair. “Nay, too late. While you are here, whither your own desires have brought you, you may not escape so cheaply. Aye, why should I not own the truth, that her majesty of Avalon commanded me to lurk by the shore and abide my opportunity? I am to keep you here until she sends for you, which will be after the war that is almost begun.” She drifted upward till she lay horizontally before his face. Her thin wire-strong fingers reached out to stroke his hair. “Yet ’tis also truth, how glad of your questing Rusel is, and how cunningly she will strive to make your stay joyous.”
Holger wrenched away and kicked against the sand. He shot up. His limbs caught the water and he swam toward the unseen surface. The nixie glided alongside, effortlessly, still smiling. She didn’t oppose him herself, but beckoned.
Lean shapes hurtled into sight. Jaws snapped before Holger’s nose. He looked into the blank eyes and needle-toothed beak of the biggest pike he had ever seen. Others closed in, a dozen, a hundred. One ripped his hand. Pain jabbed; his blood came out like red smoke. He stopped. The pike circled on every side. Rusel made another gesture. They swam off, but slowly, and remained on the edge of vision.
Holger bobbed back down to the sand. He needed a few minutes to get his breath and pulse under control.
The nixie took his hand and kissed the wound. It closed as if it had never been made. “Nay, you must stay, Sir ’Olger,” she purred. “’Twould be a deadly disappointment for me did you seek so discourteously to leave.”
“Deadlier for me,” he managed to say.
She laughed and took his arm. “Far too soon will Queen Morgan claim you. Meanwhile, come, consider yourself a prisoner of war, honorably taken in an honorable captivity. Which I shall seek to lighten for you.”
“But my friends—”
“Fear not, my sweeting. By themselves they’re no menace to the great purpose. They can be suffered to return home unscathed.” With a flick of malice: “From a distance, after the sun that is fatal to me had sunk, I espied certain attitudes struck in yonder camp. Meseems the swan maiden will soon let herself be consoled for you. If not this very eventide, then surely within a sennight.”
Holger clenched his fists. He felt strangled. That worthless Saracen—
But Alianora had fallen all over herself to heed Carahue’s flatteries. The little bird-brain!
Rusel laid one hand on Holger’s neck. Her lips were close to his. He saw how they swelled. “All right,” he said thickly. “Let’s go to your house, at least.”
“How you gladden me, gallant sir! You shall see what dainties have been prepared. And what pleasures undreamed of by the oafish land dwellers there may be in these depths, where no weight hinders, the freedom of the body.”
Holger could well imagine. If he was caught, why not enjoy it? “Let’s go,” he repeated.
Rusel fluttered her lashes. “Will you not first remove that ugly sack?”
He looked at his water-logged garments and back at her. His hands fell to his belt.
But instead he clapped hold on Duke Alfric’s dagger. Memory flashed in him. For a moment he stood rigid. Then he shook his head, violently, and said, “Later, at the house. I expect I’ll want them again sometime.”
“Nay, Morgan will garb you in silk and vain. But let us not anticipate my sorrow when you must depart. Come!” The nixie arrowed off. Holger followed, threshing by comparison like a paddle-wheel steamer. She returned and laughed as she swam circles around him. Often she darted in to touch his mouth with her own, but slipped free before he could grab her. “Soon, soon,” she promised. The pike trailed after. Their eyes were dull lanterns behind the jaws.
Rusel’s house was not the coral palace he had half expected. Walls or roof were useless here. A ring of boulders bore weeds that streamed upward out of sight, forming curtains of green and brown which stirred, shifted, rippled. Fish darted in and out, minnows that fled at the nixie’s approach and trout with iridescent scales that nuzzled her fingers. As he passed through the weeds, Holger felt their touch cool and slimy on his skin.
Beyond, partitions of the same sort marked off a few large rooms. Rusel conducted him to a feasting chamber. Here stood ghostly frail chairs woven of fish bones, around a stone table inset with shell and nacre, laid with covered dishes of gold.
“Observe, my lord,” she said. “I’ve even gotten rare wines for you, by the help of Queen Morgan.” She handed him a spherical vessel with a stoppered tube, not unlike a South American bombilla. “You must drink from this, lest the lake water spoil the contents. But do drink, to our better acquaintance.”
Her own clinked against his. The wine was a noble vintage, full and heady. She leaned close. Her nostrils dilated, her lips invited him. “Welcome,” she repeated. “Would you dine at once? Or shall we first —”
I can afford one night here , he thought. His temples hammered. Of course I can. I’ve got to, even to disarm her suspicion before I try to make a break. “I’m not very hungry at the moment,” he said.
She made a purring noise and began to unlace his jerkin. He fumbled again with his own belt. As he took it off, her eye fell on the empty sheath and the filled one beside.
“But that can’t be steel!” she exclaimed. “I’d have sensed the nearness of cold iron. Ah, I see.”
She drew the blade and regarded it closely. “The Dagger of Burning,” she spelled out. “Strange name. Faerie workmanship, not so?”
“Yes, I won it from Duke Alfric, when I overcame him in battle,” Holger bragged.
“I’m not surprised, noble lord.” She rubbed her head against his breast. “No other man could have done so; but you are no other man.” Her attention wandered back to the dagger. “I’ve never seen that metal before,” she said. “All I have down here is gold and silver. I keep trying to tell the barbarian priests I want bronze, but they are so stupid even when conscious, let alone in a prophetic trance, that it never occurs to them the demon of the lake might have use for something with a good cutting edge. I have a few flint knives left from ancient times when such were offered me, but they’re worn down to nubbins.”
Holger wanted to grab her, when she curved and floated beside him. He needed his entire will to say, with such overdone casualness he was sure she would pounce on it, “Well then, keep this blade as a souvenir of myself.”
“I shall find many ways to thank you, bright lord,” she promised. She was about to continue unlacing him, with fingers that kept playfully straying, when he took the dagger back and tested the edge with his thumb.