The Fay Enchantress

The Fay Enchantress is not Bretonnia's high priestess, for the Lady's cult needs none: it has her. Morgiana le Fay rides out of the morning mists on a unicorn when and where she chooses, ageless and lovely and subtly wrong in some way the eye cannot fix, and her word ends arguments that armies could not. Dukes have surrendered generations-old feuds at a sentence from her, and no king of Bretonnia truly reigns until she has judged him worthy of the Lady's blessing. None has yet dared ask what happens if she says no.

It is the Enchantress who takes the tithe that Bretonnia does not discuss. Where a daughter is born touched by the fay (in a hovel or a duke's high tower, it makes no difference), Morgiana comes for her, and the child goes away into the otherworld, to return years later as an ageless damsel of the Lady, or not at all. The mothers are told it is an honor. It may even be true. It is not, in any case, a choice.

When Morgiana herself rides to war, the kingdom understands the stakes, for she does not attend border quarrels. Around her the Lady's magic runs wild and gentle at once (mists that swallow regiments, destriers that do not tire, wounds that close beneath her glance), and the knights fight transfigured, certain the goddess is watching through her eyes. Perhaps she is. The space between the Lady and her Enchantress is one more Bretonnian mystery, and Morgiana le Fay has never once cared to make it smaller.