In another life, I’d known the feel of her breasts against my lips and tongue better than I’d known almost anything else.
With one of my wrists freed, Nimue straightens and nods at the other. “You can untie yourself. You’ll find that the chain allows you more than enough length to do everything you need. I’m obviously trusting you not to do anything self-destructive, but should the need arise, I can take away this particular freedom.” She says it cheerfully, almost as if the idea of taking away my freedom delights her.
The key on her chest glints as she steps back, and I understand that it’s the key that unlocks my cuff—the same cuff that is connected to a ring in the floor by a length of slender chain.
Anger comes.
And with it shame.
And with that, fear.
I died once this way, and I’d rather not do it again.
I lunge for my other wrist to untie it, needing to be free, needing to reach for Nimue to kiss her or kill her—but by the time I untie myself, she’s out the door with it shut and locked behind her.
2
My mind is a place of many veils.
Some are thin, gauzy, inviting with their seductive transparency. Through them I can look and infer, I can see partly and guess, I can apprehend enough of the moving shadows and shapes to glean what I need to know.
Some veils are thick. Layers of heavy embroidered fabric like tapestries on a castle wall. Like the curtains walling off the Holy of Holies—opaque and forbidding. Dividing apart the sacred and profane.
I suppose it’s natural that I should be on the side of the profane. It has been most of my work, after all, tending after earthly matters. I suppose the legend that grew out of my old life—what some would call my first life—doesn’t have a very earthly reputation. One thinks of wizards as men of magic, of mysteries and the unseen, and not as glorified political advisors.
Alas.
Here is what has never been veiled: I once lived another life serving at the side of a king named Arthur. I lied, manipulated, and clawed for peace—and I succeeded, for a time. Then everything transfigured into a fresh hell, and all our work was for nothing.
I was born as the same soul nearly fifteen hundred years l
ater to a family that recognized my gift. The gift has many names, but the sight is the aptest, because at its heart, it lets me see. The past through my memories, the future through my visions. The present through ways that even I don’t fully understand.
However, this gift is fickle and inconstant; as I said, it veils its secrets from me as often as it reveals them. Which means it is not as simple as knowing everything.
For example, I didn’t know I was going to die the last time Nimue kidnapped me.
For example, I don’t know if I’m about to die again.
The end of this path is hidden from my sight by a curtain thicker than the ancient drapes of the Tabernacle, but as I sit up and look around the room, I think it doesn’t matter.
Why would it end any better than it did last time?
I stand up, bracing a hand on the bed as I do, anticipating injury or weakness or something that would account for my abduction, but there’s only the thirst and the cuff around my ankle. I’m unbruised, undamaged, unbroken—which means I was competently and carefully drugged and then transported with care. There is a faint ache in my knees as I fully straighten to my considerable height, but there would be. I’m no longer a young man, you see, although it’s hard to say if I ever was a young man at all. That’s the problem with reincarnation, or at least my reincarnation. All of the others—Arthur and Guinevere and Morgan—were able to start fresh and lead completely new lives without the memories of their last ones. I’m the only one cursed with remembering.
And from birth, this is the remembering that’s terrified me more than any other.
Can you imagine? Having memories of your death from the time you were born?
Nimue didn’t lie. I’m able to go into the adjoining bathroom, which by candlelight appears spacious and modern and equipped with everything hygienically I could desire, save for a razor. I rub an idle hand along my jaw, which is rough with at least a day’s worth of stubble. When I look in the mirror, I can see the silver already salting through, matching the silver that’s begun to fleck my temples.
No, not a young man anymore. Not that it matters. If here is where I’m going to die anyway.
I find a light switch—the harsh blear of the overhead bulb after the gentle candlelight forcing a wince out of me—and then decide to clean up. I don’t think I’ve been unconscious for very long, but I’m fastidious about these things.
Almost feline, Nimue had teased me once, and I find I can’t remember which life that was in. You’re fussier about being clean than a cat.
I have to tear the boxers in order to get them off my body, on account of the chain, and it’s a waste I don’t appreciate, but it also can’t be avoided. I’m desperate for a shower, which I step inside before the water’s even had a chance to warm up. I tilt my face up to the cold spray and drink until my thirst is slaked, and then I wash myself, enjoying the small, humble pleasure of warm water on my skin.
