“As a novice.”
Igraine almost smiled at him.
“And not a nun?”
For answer he spoke three simple words.
“Gorlois might die.”
The stillness of the woods seemed like the hush of a listening multitude. A blue haze of heat hung over the rolling domes of the western trees, and never a wind-wave stirred the long grass. Mountainous clouds sailed radiant over ridge and spur, and it might have been Elysium where souls wandered through meads of asphodel.
Igraine looked long over the valley with its stately trees, its flowering grass and quiet pool in the meadows. She was vastly calm, though her eyes were full of a woe that seemed to well up like water out of her soul. She still twisted and untwisted a strand of her hair about her wrist, but for all else she was as quiet as one of the trees that stood near and overshadowed her.
“Pelleas,” she said.
The man came two steps nearer.
“Go quickly.”