touch. He didn't really need them, but they gave him a clerical, antiquarian

look that was often usefully deceptive. His body was lean and well muscled,

his

reflexes and instincts as sharp and quick as ever.

His grandmother, Igraine, had been a human, as was his paternal grandfather,

Uther. As a result, when Uther raped Igraine, the issue—Arthur—was a normal

human child. But his maternal grandfather, Gorlois, the Duke of Cornwall, was

of

the Old Race, and Modred's mother had inherited the genes and eldritch powers

of

the Old Ones. Morgan Le Fay had been a half-breed, as was Merlin. They both

had

the same blood running through their veins. Neither of them was completely

human.

Morgana herself did not know what she was till she met Merlin and he became

her

teacher. Merlin had told her the secret of her past and instructed her in the

mystic arts of thaumaturgy, but he never suspected her true purpose. Her

boundless ambition and her lust for vengeance had consumed her and

contaminated

everything she touched. She seduced her own half brother, Arthur, and gave

birth

to Modred. Through him she had brought down Arthur's kingdom, but when it was

over, she had been left with nothing. She could take no satisfaction in the

bitter irony of Arthur being destroyed by his own son. The spoils of her

vengeance were denied her. There had been no kingdom she could rule through

Modred, because without Arthur, the kingdom fell apart and there was no

Modred

to try to hold it all together.

With Arthur dead, the poison had gone out of Modred. He remembered Lucas and

Bedivere standing over him as he lay upon the battlefield, impaled on his

father's spear, and he heard Bedivere saying flatly, "He is done." Then they

had

left him lying mere and went to help their king, but Arthur did not survive

his

wounds. Modred had been certain that he would die of his as well. At that

moment

he had longed for nothing quite so much as death, and yet his body lingered,

clinging stubbornly to life in a way that no merely human body ever could.

He remembered lying on the corpse-strewn field of battle, looking up at the

darkening sky as the ravens feasted all around him, his body flushed with

agony,

tears of despair flooding his eyes. He grieved for the waste his life had

been,

never suspecting how much life was still ahead of him. It was as if the hate

that fueled him all his life had spilled out with his blood, and now he was

an

empty vessel, lying shattered and discarded on a field of broken dreams.

He had dragged himself away to heal and then had left England, to live first

as

an itinerant bard, then as a thief, and finally, having no other marketable

skills, he became a mercenary. It was a line of work for which he was

eminently

suited. He fought without passion or ideals and with no thought for

principles