Holger noticed his breath. It felt no different from usual, except for a slight heaviness on his chest. He rolled his tongue around in his mouth and squirted saliva between his teeth. Somehow, he thought—striving for a toehold on sanity—the forces called magical must be extracting oxygen from the water for him and forcing it into a thin protective layer, perhaps monomolecular, on his face. The rest of him was in direct contact with the lake. His clothes flopped soggy. Yet he was warm enough… What am I gabbling about? I’ve got to get out of here!
He jerked free of her. “Who put you up to this?” he demanded.
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.”