They travelled mostly in the early hours, lying hidden at midday and riding again at dusk. The country was for the moment peaceful—the war was away to the east. But stray bands of marauding Northmen or Saxons had been known before this to fall upon villages or isolated country villas. Travellers, too, unless protected by armed men, went warily and trusted no one.
Viviane had half expected to find Uther’s court deserted, abandoned to women and children and those who could not fight, but from a distance she saw the dragon banner flying, which meant that the King was in residence. Her lips tightened; Uther neither liked nor trusted the Druids of the Holy Isle. Yet she had set this man whom she disliked on his throne, because he was the best of the leaders who had risen in the island, and now, somehow, she must work with him. At least he was not such a dedicated Christian that he would set himself to the task of wiping out other religions. Better, she thought, to have an ungodly man for High King than a religious fanatic.
Since she had been last at Uther’s court the fortified wall had risen higher, and there were sentries on the wall, who called out to challenge her party. She had instructed her men to use none of her titles, but to say only that the Queen’s sister had come. It was not the time to demand that they give respect to her as the Lady of Avalon; her present mission was too urgent for that.
They were led through the grass-grown enclosure, past all the clutter of an enclosed fort. She could hear somewhere the sound of an armorer or blacksmith beating on his anvil. Some herdswomen clad roughly in skin tunics were driving sheep inside for the night. Viviane, recognizing all these preparations for a siege, raised her eyelids slightly.
A scant few years before, Igraine had run to meet her in the courtyard at Tintagel. Now a solemn chamberlain, richly clad, and having but one arm —no doubt, a veteran of Uther’s service—welcomed her with a solemn bow and conducted her to an upper chamber. “I am sorry, Lady,” he said, “we are short of living space here. You must share this room with two of the Queen’s ladies.”
“I shall be honored,” she said gravely.
“I will send you a serving-woman. You have only to ask her for anything you require.”
“All I require,” said Viviane, “is a little water for washing, and to know when I can see my sister.”
“Lady, I am certain the Queen will receive you at the proper time ... .”
“Does Uther keep state like the Caesars, then? Listen to me, fellow, I am the Lady of Avalon, and I am not accustomed to be kept waiting. But if Igraine has grown to such high state as all this, then I beg you to send the lady Morgaine to me as quickly as is possible!”
The one-armed veteran shrank back, but when he spoke his voice was less formal and more human. “Lady, I am sure the Queen would receive you willingly, at once, but you have come at a time of trouble and danger.
The young prince Gwydion fell this morning from a horse no one should have let him ride, and the Queen won’t leave his side, not for an instant.”
“By the Goddess! I came too late, then!” Viviane whispered to herself.
Aloud, she said, “Take me to them, at once. I am skilled in all the healing arts, and I am sure Igraine would have sent for me if she knew I were here.”
He bowed and said, “Come this way, Lady.”
Following him, Viviane realized that she had not even had time to remove her cloak or the men’s breeches she wore for riding; and she had meant to present herself in all the dignity of Avalon. Well, this was more important.
Outside the door, the chamberlain paused. “It would be as much as my head’s worth to disturb the Queen. She won’t even let her ladies bring her food or drink—“
Viviane pushed the heavy door and went into the room. Dead silence; it was uncannily like a death chamber. Igraine, pale and wan, her headcloth rumpled, knelt like a stone figure beside the bed. A black-robed priest stood motionless, muttering prayers under his breath. Softly as she moved, Igraine heard her.
“How dare you—“ she began in a furious whisper, and broke off. “Viviane! God must have sent you to me!”
“I had a warning that you might need me,” said Viviane. This was no time to speak of magical visions. “No, Igraine, you can do no good by weeping,” she added. “Let me look at him and see how serious this is.”
“The King’s physician—“
“Is probably an old fool who knows nothing but potions of goat’s dung,” said Viviane calmly. “I was healing wounds of this kind before you were out of swaddlings, Igraine. Let me see the child.”
She had seen Uther’s son only once, briefly; he had been about three years old, and looked like any other fair-haired, blue-eyed toddler. Now he had stretched out to unusual tallness for his age—thin, but well-muscled arms and legs, much scratched by briars and brambles like any active boy’s. She put aside the covers and saw the great livid bruises on his body. “Did he cough any blood at all?”
“Not even a little. The blood on his mouth was where a tooth was knocked out, but it was loose anyway.”
And indeed Viviane could see the contused lip and the extra gap in his mouth. More serious was the bruise on the temple, and Viviane knew a moment of real fear. Had all their planning come to this?
She ran her small fingers across his head. She could see him flinch when she touched the bruise, and that was the best sign she could possibly have had. If he had been bleeding inside the skull, he would by this time have been so deep in coma that no possible pain could reach him. She reached down and pinched his thigh, very hard, and he whimpered in his sleep.
Igraine protested. “You are hurting him!”
“No,” Viviane said, “I am trying to find out if he will live or die. Believe me, he will live.” She slapped his cheek gently and he opened his eyes for a moment.
“Bring me the candle,” Viviane said, and moved it slowly across his field of vision. He followed it for a moment before his eyes fell shut again, with a whimper of pain.
Viviane rose from his side. “Make sure he’s kept quiet, and nothing but water or soup, nothing solid to eat for a day or two. And don’t sop his bread in wine; only in soup or milk. He’ll be running all over the place in three days.”
“How do you know?” demanded the priest.
“Because I am trained in healing, how do you think?”
“Are you not a sorceress from the Island of Witches?”
Viviane laughed softly. “By no means, Father. I am a woman who, like yourself, has spent her life in the study of holy things, and God has seen fit to give me skill at healing.” She could, she reflected, turn their own jargon against them; she knew, if he did not, that the God they both worshipped was greater and less bigoted than any priesthood.
“Igraine, I must talk to you. Come away—“
“I must be here when he wakes again, he will want me—“
“Nonsense; send his nurse to him. This is a matter of importance!”
Igraine glared at her. “Bring Isotta to sit beside him,” she said to one of the women, with an angry look, and followed Viviane into the hall.
“Igraine, how did this happen?”
“I am not sure—some tale about riding his father’s stallion—I am confused. I only know that they carried him in like one dead—“
“And it was only your good fortune that he was not dead,” Viviane said bluntly. “Is it thus that Uther safeguards the life of his only son?”
“Viviane, don’t reproach me—I have tried to give him others,” Igraine said, and her voice shook. “But I think I am being punished for my adultery, that I can give Uther no other son—“
“Are you mad, Igraine?” Viviane burst out, then stopped herself. It was not fair to upbraid her sister when she was distracted from watching at the bedside of her sick child. “I came because I foresaw some danger to you or the child. But we can talk of that later. Call your women, put on fresh clothing—and when did you last eat anything?” she asked shrewdly.
“I can’t remember—I think I had a little bread and wine last night—“
“Then call your women, and break your fast,” Viviane said impatiently. “I am still dusty from riding. Let me go and wash off the dirt of travel, and clothe myself as is seemly for a lady inside the walls, and then we will talk.”
“Are you angry with me, Viviane?”
Viviane patted her on the shoulder. “I am angry, if it is anger, only at the way fate seems to fall, and that is foolish of me. Go and dress, Igraine, and eat something. The child’s come to no harm this time.”
Inside her room a fire had been built, and on a small stool before it, she saw an undersized female, dressed in a robe so dark and plain that for a moment Viviane thought it was one of the serving wenches. Then, she saw that the simple gown was of the finest stuff, the headcloth embroidered linen, and she recognized Igraine’s daughter.
“Morgaine,” she said, and kissed her. The girl was almost as tall now as Viviane herself. “Why, I think of you as a child, but you are almost a woman ... .”
“I heard you had come, Aunt, and came to welcome you, but they told me you had gone at once to my brother’s bedside. How does he, Lady?”
“He’s badly bruised and banged about, but he’ll be well again with no treatment but rest,” Viviane said. “When he wakes, I must somehow convince Igraine and Uther to keep the physicians and their stupid potions away from him; if they make him vomit, he’ll be worse. I got nothing from your mother but weeping and wailing. Can you tell me how this came to happen? Is there no one here who can guard a child properly?”
Morgaine twisted her small fingers together. “I am not sure how it happened. My brother’s a brave child and always wants to ride horses which are too fast and too strong for him, but Uther has given orders that he’s only to ride with a groom. His pony was lame that day, and he asked for another horse, but how he came to take out Uther’s stallion, no one knows; all the grooms know that he’s never allowed to go near Thunder, and everyone denied seeing him. Uther swore he’d hang the groom who allowed it, but that groom has put the river between Uther and himself by now, I should imagine. Still, they say Gwydion stuck on Thunder’s back like a sheep in a thorn thicket until someone loosed a breeding mare in the stallion’s path, and we cannot find out who loosed the mare, either. So of course the stallion was off after the mare, and my brother was off the stallion, in the blink of an eyelash!” Her face, small and dark and plain, quivered. “He’s really going to live?”
“He’s really going to live.”
“Has anyone yet sent word to Uther? Mother and the priest said he could do no good in the sickroom—“
“No doubt Igraine will attend to that.”
“No doubt,” Morgaine said, and Viviane surprised a cynical smile on her face. Morgaine, evidently, bore no love to Uther, and thought no more of her mother for her love to her husband. Yet she had been conscientious enough to remember that Uther should be sent word about his son’s life. This was no ordinary young girl.
“How old are you now, Morgaine? The years go by so fast, I no longer remember, as I grow old.”
“I shall be eleven at Midsummer.”
Old enough, Viviane thought, to be trained as a priestess. She looked down and realized she was still wearing her travel-stained clothing. “Morgaine, will you have the serving-women bring me some water for washing, and send someone to help me robe myself properly to appear before the King and Queen?”
“Water I have sent for; it is there, in the cauldron by the fire,” Morgaine said, and then hesitated and added shyly, “I would be honored to attend on you myself, Lady.”
“If you wish.” Viviane let Morgaine help her remove her outer garments and wash off the dust of travel. Her saddlebags had been sent up too, and she put on a green gown; Morgaine touched the cloth with admiring fingers.
“This is a fine green dye. Our women can make no green as fine as this. Tell me, what do you use to make it?”
“Woad, no more.”
“I thought that made only blue dyes.”
“No. This is prepared differently, boiled and fixed—I will talk of dyes with you later, if you are interested in herb lore,” Viviane said. “Now we have other matters on our mind. Tell me, is your brother given to escapades like this?”
“Not really. He is strong and hardy, but he’s usually biddable enough,” Morgaine said. “Once someone taunted him about riding so small a pony, and he said that he was to be a warrior and a soldier’s first duty is to obey orders, and that his father had forbidden him to ride a horse beyond his strength. So I can’t imagine how he came to ride Thunder. But still, he wouldn’t have been hurt unless ... ”
Viviane nodded. “I would like to know who loosed that mare, and why.”
Morgaine’s eyes widened as she took in the implications of this. Watching her, Viviane said, “Think. Has he had any other narrow escapes from death, Morgaine?”
Morgaine said, hesitating, “He had the summer fever—but then, all the children had that last year. Uther said he should not have been allowed to play with the shepherd’s boys. He caught the fever from them, I think —four of them died. But there was the time when he was poisoned—“
“Poisoned?”
“Isotta—and I would trust her with my life, Lady—swears that she put only wholesome herbs into his soup. Yet he was as sick as if a death-cup mushroom had found its way into his porridge. And yet how could that be? She knows wholesome ones from the poisonous, and she is not yet old and her eyesight is good.” Again Morgaine’s eyes widened. “Lady Viviane, do you think there are people plotting against my brother’s life?”
Viviane drew the girl down to her side. “I came here because I had a warning of this. I have not yet inquired whence the danger comes, I had no time. Do you have the Sight still, Morgaine? When last I spoke with you, you said—“
The girl colored and looked down at her shoes. “You bade me not speak of it. And Igraine says I should turn my thoughts to real things and not daydreams, and so I have tried ... .”
“Igraine is right thus far: that you should not speak idly of these things to the once-born,” Viviane said. “But to me, you may always speak freely, I promise you. My Sight can show me only such things as are relevant to the safety of the Holy Isle and the continuance of Avalon, but Uther’s son is your own mother’s son, and by that tie, your Sight will find him and be able to tell who is trying to compass his death. Uther has enemies enough, all the Gods know.”
“But I do not know how to use the Sight.”
“I will show you, if you wish it,” said Viviane.
The girl looked up at her, her face taut with fear. “Uther has forbidden sorceries in his court.”
“Uther is not my master,” Viviane said slowly, “and no one can rule over another’s conscience. Yet—do you think it an offense to God, to try to discover whether someone is plotting against your brother’s life, or whether it is only bad luck?”
Morgaine said unsteadily, “No, I don’t think it wicked.” She stopped and swallowed and finally said, “And I do not think you would lead me into anything that was wrong, Aunt.”
A sudden pain clutched at Viviane’s heart. What had she done to earn this trust? With all her heart she wished that this small solemn girl was her own daughter, the daughter she owed the Holy Isle and had never been able to bear. Even though she had risked a belated childbearing, of which she had nearly died, she had borne only sons. And here, it seemed, was the successor the Goddess had sent her, a kinswoman with the Sight, and the girl was looking up at her with complete trust. For a moment she could not speak.
Am I prepared to be ruthless with this girl too? Can I train her, never sparing, or will my love make me less harsh than I must be to train a High Priestess?
Can I use her love for me, which I have in no way deserved, to bring her to the feet of the Goddess?
But with the discipline of years, she waited until her voice was clear and perfectly steady. “Be it so, then. Bring me a silver or bronze basin, perfectly clean and scoured with sand, and fill it with fresh rainwater, not water drawn from the well. Be sure that you speak to no man or woman after you have filled the basin.”
She waited, composed, seated by her fire, until at last Morgaine returned.
“I had to scrub it myself,” she said, but the basin she held out was shining and brilliant, filled to the brim with clear water. “Now, unbind your hair, Morgaine.”
The girl looked at her curiously, but Viviane said, low and stern, “No questions.”
Morgaine pulled out the bone hairpin, and her long locks, dark and coarse and perfectly straight, came tumbling down around her shoulders. “Now, if you are wearing any jewelry, take it off, and set it over there, so that it will not be near the basin.”
Morgaine tugged off two little gilt rings she had on her finger, and | unpinned the brooch from her overdress. Without the pin holding it, the overdress fell around her shoulders, and without comment, Viviane helped her pull it off, so that she stood in her undergown alone. Then Viviane opened a little bag she wore about her neck and took out a small quantity of crushed herbs, which wafted a sweetish-musty scent through the chamber. She sifted only a few grains into the basin of water before saying in a low, neutral voice, “Look into the water, Morgaine. Make your mind perfectly still, and tell me what you see.”
Morgaine came and knelt before the basin of water, looking intently into its clear surface. The room was very silent, so still that Viviane could I hear the small chirping of some insect outside. Then Morgaine said, in a wandering, unfocused voice, “I see a boat. It is draped with black and there I are four women in it ... four queens, for they wear crowns ... and one J of them is you ... or is it me?”
“It is the barge of Avalon,” Viviane said, low. “I know what you see.”
She passed her hand lightly over the water and saw the ripples follow her hand. “Look again, Morgaine. Tell me what you see.”
This time the silence was longer. Finally the girl said, in that same strange tone, “I see deer—a great herd of deer, and a man among them with his body painted—they put the antlers on him—oh, he is down, they will kill him—“ Her voice trembled and again Viviane passed her hand above the surface of the water, and the ripples passed over the surface. “Enough,” she commanded. “Now see your brother.” Silence, again, a silence that stretched and dragged; Viviane felt her body cramped with the tension of stillness but she did not move, with the long discipline of her training. At last Morgaine murmured, “How still he lies ... but he is breathing, soon he will wake. I see my mother ... no, it is not Mother, it is my aunt Morgause, and all of her children are with her ... there are four of them ... how strange, they are all wearing crowns ... and there is another, he is holding a dagger ... why is he so young? Is he her son? Oh, he will kill him, he will kill him—ah, no!” Her voice rose to a shriek. Viviane touched her shoulder. “Enough,” she said. “Wake, Morgaine.”
The girl shook her head like a puppy stretching after sleep. “Did I see anything?” she asked.
Viviane nodded. “Some day you will learn to see and to remember,” she said. “For now it is enough.”
Now she was armed to confront Uther and Igraine. Lot of Orkney was, as far as she knew, an honorable man, and had taken oath to support Uther. But should Uther die without an heir ... Morgause had borne two sons already and there were likely to be more—Morgaine had seen four, and there was no way in which the little Kingdom of Orkney would support four princes. The brothers, when they grew to manhood, were likely to be at one another’s throats. And Morgause ... sighing, Viviane remembered Morgause’s vaulting ambition. If Uther died without an heir, then Lot, married to the Queen’s own sister, would be a logical choice for the throne. And the succession would be Lot as High King, Lot’s sons heirs to the smaller kingdoms ... .
Would Morgause stoop to plot against the life of a child? Viviane did not like to think that of the girl she had nursed at her own breasts. But Morgause and Lot, together, with their ambitions!
Easy enough, perhaps, to bribe a groom or insinuate one of her own men into Uther’s court, with orders to lead the child into danger as often as possible. Not so easy, of course, to get past a faithful nurse who was his own mother’s faithful waiting-woman, but she could be drugged, or given stronger drink than usual, to make her confused, so that something deadly found its way past her vigilance. And no matter how well a child rode, it would take more strength than any six-year-old had to hold a stallion who scented a mare in season.
All our plans could have come to ruin in a moment ... .
At suppertime she found Uther alone at the high table, while the vassals and serving-men ate their bread and bacon at a lower table in the hall. He rose and saluted her courteously.
“Igraine is still at her son’s side, sister-in-law; I begged her to go and sleep, but she said she would sleep after he wakened and knew her.”
“I have already spoken with Igraine, Uther.”
“Oh, yes, she told me, she said you have given your word that he would live. Was that wise? If he dies after that—“
Uther’s face was drawn and worried. He looked no older than when he had married Igraine; his hair was so fair, Viviane thought, that no one could see whether it was greyed or not. He was richly dressed in the Roman fashion, and he was clean-shaven, too, like a Roman. He wore no crown, but around his upper arms he had two torques of pure gold, and a rich gold collar.
“He won’t die this time. I have some experience with head wounds. And the injuries to the body haven’t penetrated the lungs. He’ll be running around in a day or two.”
Uther’s face relaxed somewhat. “If I ever find out who loosed that mare ... I should beat the boy senseless for riding Thunder!”
“There would be no point in that. He has already paid the price of his rashness, and I am sure it will teach him whatever lesson is needed,” Viviane said. “But you should set better guard on your son.”
“I cannot guard him night and day.” Uther’s face was haggard. “I am away so often at the wars, and I cannot keep so big a boy tied to his nurse’s apron! And we have come near to losing him before this—“
“Morgaine told me.”
“Bad luck, bad luck. The man with only one son walks always at the mercy of any stroke of bad luck,” said Uther. “But I am remiss in courtesy, kinswoman. Here, sit beside me, share my dish if you will. I know Igraine longed to send to you, and I gave her leave to send a messenger, but you have come more swiftly than any of us dreamed—is it true, then, that the witches of the Holy Islands can fly?”
Viviane chuckled. “Would that I could! I would not have spoiled two pair of good shoes in the mire! Alas, the folk of Avalon, and the Merlin himself, must walk or ride, even as common folk.” She took a piece of the wheaten loaf and helped herself to butter from a small wooden cask. “You who wear the serpents at your wrists should know better than to credit those old fables! But there is a bond of blood between us. Igraine is my mother’s daughter, and I know when she has need of me.”
Uther set his lips tight. “I have had dreams and sorceries enough, I want no more of them in my life.”
This, as it was intended to do, silenced Viviane. She allowed one of the serving-men to help her to salted mutton, and spoke amiably about the fresh boiled herbs, the first of the year. When she had eaten sparingly, she set down her knife and said, “However I came here, Uther, it was by good fortune, and a sign to me that your child is guarded by the Gods, for he is needed.”
“I cannot bear much more of such fortune,” Uther said, and his voice was taut. “If you are a sorceress indeed, sister-in-law, I would beg you to give Igraine a charm against barrenness. I thought when we were wedded that she would give me many children, since she had already borne a daughter to old Gorlois, but we have only one, and already he is six years old.”
It is written in the stars that you shall have no other son. But Viviane forbore to say this to the man before her. Instead she said, “I will speak with Igraine, and be sure whether it is not some sickness in her which keeps her from conceiving.”
“Oh, she conceives right enough, but she can carry the child no more than a moon or two, and the one she brought to birth bled to death when his navel string was cut,” Uther said grimly. “He was misshapen, so perhaps it was as well, but if you could give her some charm for a healthy child —I do not know whether I believe in such things, but I am ready to grasp at any straw!”
“I have no such charms,” Viviane said, honestly pitying him. “I am not the Great Goddess, to give or withhold children from you, and I would not if I could. I cannot meddle with what the fates have decreed. Does not your own priest say as much to you?”
“Oh, aye, Father Columba speaks about submitting myself to the will of God; but the priest has not a kingdom to rule, which will fall into chaos if I die without an heir,” Uther said. “I cannot believe that is what God wants!”
“None of us knows what God wants,” Viviane said, “not you, nor I, nor even Father Columba. But it seems certain to me, and it heeds neither magic nor sorcery to see it, that you must guard the life of this little one, since he must come to the throne.”
Uther’s mouth tightened. “God avert that fate,” he said. “I should grieve for Igraine’s sake if her son died, and even for my own—he is a fine and promising child—but he cannot be heir to the High King of Britain. There is no man in all the length and breadth of this kingdom who does not know that he was begotten while Igraine was still wife to Gorlois, and he came to birth a whole moon sooner than he should have been born, to be my son. True, he was small and puny, and babes are cast forth from the womb before their proper time, but I cannot go around and tell all those in the kingdom who were counting on their fingers, can I? He will be Duke of Cornwall when he is grown, but I cannot hope to make him High King after me. Even if he lives to grow up, which with his luck is unlikely.”
“He looks enough like you,” Viviane said. “Do you think everyone at court is blind?”
“But what of all those who have never come to court? No, I must get myself an heir on whose birth there can be no stain. Igraine must bear me a son.
“Well, God grant it be so,” Viviane said, “but you cannot force your will on God either, nor allow Gwydion’s life to be thrown away. Why not: send him to fosterage at Tintagel? That is so remote, and if you put him in charge of your most trusted vassal, sending him there would convince everyone that he was truly Cornwall’s son and you have no intention of J making him High King; perhaps then they would not bother to plot against J him.”
Uther frowned. “His life would not be safe till after Igraine had borne me another son,” he said, “even if I sent him as far as Rome, or to the | country of the Goths!”
“And with the hazards of the road, that is not practical,” Viviane agreed. “I have, then, another suggestion. Send him to me, to be fostered: in Avalon. None can come there except the faithful who serve the Holy Isle. My own youngest son is already seven, but soon he will be sent to King Ban in Less Britain, to be fostered as suits a nobleman’s son. Ban has other sons, so Galahad is not his heir, but Ban acknowledges him, and has given him lands and estates, and will have him at court as a page, and a soldier when he is grown. At Avalon, your son will learn all that he needs to know about the history of his land, and his destiny ... and the destiny of Britain Uther, none of your enemies knows where Avalon lies, and no harm could come near him.”
“It would keep him safe. But for practical reasons, it is not possible. My son must be reared as a Christian; the church is powerful. They would never accept any king—“
“I thought you said he could not be king after you,” Viviane said dryly.
“Well, there is always the possibility,” Uther said in despair, “if Igraine should have no other son. If he has been fostered among the Druids and their magic—the priests would call that evil.”
“Do I seem evil to you, Uther? Or does the Merlin?” She looked straight into his eyes and Uther let his gaze fall.
“No, of course not.”
“Then why will you not entrust Igraine’s son to his wisdom and mine, Uther?”
“Because I too distrust the magic of Avalon,” said Uther at last. With a nervous gesture he touched the tattooed serpents around his arms. “I saw such things on yonder island as would make any good Christian turn pale and by the time my son is grown, this isle will be all Christian. There will be no need for a king to deal in such things.”
Viviane felt like raging, Fool, it was the Merlin and I who set you on that throne, not your Christian priests and bishops. But there was no good to be gained in arguing with Uther.
“You must do as your own conscience bids you, Uther. But I beg you to send him somewhere for fostering, and let that place be secret. Give it out that you are sending him out to be brought up in obscurity, away from the flattery of a prince at court—that’s common enough—and let people think he’s going to Less Britain, where he has cousins at Ban’s court. Then send him to one of your poorer vassals—one of Ambrosius’ old courtiers, perhaps: Uriens, Ectorius, someone very obscure and very trustworthy.”
Uther nodded slowly. “It will be a wrench to Igraine to part with the child,” he said, “but a prince must be fostered as suits his future destiny, and schooled in military strength. I will not tell even you, sister-in-law, where he is to go.”
Viviane smiled to herself, thinking, Do you really think you can keep it secret from me, Uther, if I wish to know? But she was too diplomatic to say it aloud.
“I have another boon to ask of you, brother-in-law,” she said. “Give me Morgaine to foster in Avalon.”
Uther stared a moment, then shook his head. “Impossible.”
“What is impossible to a High King, Pendragon?”
“There are only two fates for Morgaine,” said Uther. “She must marry a man completely sworn to me, one I trust. Or if I can find no such strong ally to give her, she’s for the nunnery and the veil. She’ll raise up no Cornwall party in this kingdom.”
“She does not seem pious enough for a good nun.”
Uther shrugged. “For the dower I can give her, any convent will be glad to take her.”
And suddenly Viviane was angry. She fixed Uther with her gaze and said, “And do you think you can keep this kingdom long without the good will of the Tribes, Uther? They care nothing for your Christ or your religion. They look to Avalon, and when these—“ She put out a finger and touched his tattooed wrists. He drew nervously away, but she went on. When these were set on your arms, they swore to obey the Pendragon. If Avalon withdraws its support from you—as high as we set you, Uther, that low can we bring you.”
“Fine words, Lady. But can you do as you threaten?” Uther retorted. “Would you do that for a girl and Cornwall’s daughter at that?”
“Test me.” Her gaze was unflinching. This time he did not lower his eyes from her; he was angry enough to meet her stare equally, and she thought, Goddess! Had I been ten years younger, how this man and I could have ruled! In all her life she had known but one or two men who were her equal in strength; but Uther was an antagonist worthy of her steel. And he would need to be, to keep this kingdom together until the predestined king should grow to manhood. Even for Morgaine she could not endanger that. But she thought she could make him see reason.
“Uther, listen to me. The girl has the Sight; she was born to it. There’s no way she can escape the Unseen, it will follow her wherever she goes, and in playing about with such things, she’ll come to be shunned for a witch, and despised. Is that what you want for a princess at your court?”
“Do you doubt Igraine’s ability to rear her daughter as befits a Christian woman? At worst, she could do no harm behind convent walls—“
“No!” Viviane said, so loudly that some of the folk in the lower hall raised their heads and stared round at her. “Uther, the girl’s priestess-born. Put her behind convent walls and she’ll pine like a caged skua gull. Could you send Igraine’s child to death or lifelong misery? I truly believe—and I’ve spoken with the girl—that she’d kill herself there.”
She could see that argument had reached him, and quickly pressed her point.
“She’s born to it. Let her be properly trained to her gifts. Uther, is she so happy here, or such an ornament to your court, that you would be sorry to see her leave it?”
Slowly, he shook his head. “I have tried to love her for Igraine’s sake. But she’s—uncanny,” he said. “Morgause used to tease her and say she was one of the fairy folk, and if I did not know her parentage I’d well believe it.”
Viviane’s smile was taut. “True. She is like me, and like our mother. She’s not for the convent or the church bell.”
“Yet how can I take both Igraine’s children from her at once?” Uther demanded, despairing. That struck Viviane as well with a pang of grief, almost of guilt, but she shook her head.
“Igraine too is priestess-born. She will abide her destiny as you, Uther, abide yours. And if you fear the anger of your house priest,” she added, striking shrewdly at a guess and saw, in his eyes, that she had hit home, “then tell no one where you have sent her. Put it about, if you wish, that you have sent her for schooling in a nunnery. She is too wise and sober for the ways of the court, small flirtations and womanish gossip. And Igraine, if she knows her children are safe and happy, growing toward their own fates, will be content while she has you.”
Uther bowed his head. “So be it,” he said. “The boy to be fostered with my trustiest and most obscure vassal—but how can I send him there unknown? Will the danger not follow him?”
“He can be sent by hidden ways, and under a glamour, as you yourself came to Tintagel,” Viviane said. “You trust me not, but will you trust the Merlin?”
“With my very life,” Uther said. “Let the Merlin take him. And Morgaine, then, to Avalon.” He leaned his head in his hands, as if the burden he bore were too great for endurance. “You are wise,” he said, then raised his head and stared at her with unflinching hatred. “I wish you were a foolish woman I could despise, damn you!”
“If your priests are right,” said Viviane calmly, “I am already thoroughly damned and you may save your breath.”
The sun was setting as they came to the Lake. Viviane twisted on her pony to look at Morgaine, who rode a little behind her. The girl’s face was drawn with weariness and hunger, but she had not complained, and Viviane, who had deliberately set a hard pace to try her stamina, was satisfied. The life of a priestess of Avalon was not an easy one, and she needed to know that Morgaine could endure fatigue and hardship. She slowed her pony now, and let Morgaine draw abreast of her.
“There lies the Lake,” she said. “In a little while we will be within walls, and there will be fire, and food and drink.”
“I shall be glad of all three,” Morgaine said. Are you tired, Morgaine?”
“A little,” the girl said diffidently, “but I am sorry to see this journey end, I like seeing new things, and I have never gone anywhere before.”
They halted their horses at the water’s edge, and Viviane tried to see the familiar shore as it would appear to a stranger—the dull greyed waters of the Lake, the tall reeds edging the shore, silent, low-hanging clouds, and tufts of weed in the water. It was a silent scene, and Viviane could hear the girl’s thoughts: It is lonely here, and dark, and dismal.
“How do we get to Avalon? There is no bridge—surely we do not have to swim the horses?” Morgaine asked her, and Viviane, remembering how they had had to do just that at a ford swollen by spring rains, reassured her quickly.
“No; I will call the boat.”
She raised her two hands to cover her face, shut out unwanted sight and sound, and sent out the silent call. Within moments, over the greying surface of the Lake, a low barge appeared. Draped at one end in black and silver, it glided so silently that it seemed to skim over the water like some waterfowl—there was no sound of oars, but as it came nearer they could see the silent oarsmen, wielding their paddles without the slightest splash or sound. They were dark little men, half naked, their skins tattooed with blue woad in magical patterns, and Viviane saw Morgaine’s eyes widen at the sight; but she said nothing.
She accepts all this too calmly, Viviane thought. She is young enough that she does not see the mystery of what we do; somehow I must make her aware of it.
The silent little men moored the boat, securing it with a curiously woven rope of plaited reed. Viviane signalled to the girl to dismount, and the horses were led on board. One of the tattooed men held out his hand to Morgaine to help her step on board, she half expected it to be insubstantial, a vision like the boat, but instead his hand felt callused, hard as horn. Last, Viviane took her place at the prow, and the barge moved out, slowly and silently, into the Lake.
Ahead of them rose the Isle and the Tor with its tall tower to Saint Michael; over the silent water, the sound of church bells rang a soft Angelus. Morgaine, from habit, crossed herself, and one of the little men gave her so sharp a frown that she flinched and dropped her hand. As the boat skimmed over the water through the overgrown reeds she could make out the walls of the church and the monastery. Viviane could sense the young girl’s sudden fear—were they going, after all, to the Isle of the Priests, where convent walls would close about her forever?
“Are we going to the Island church, Aunt?”
“We will not come to the church,” Viviane replied tranquilly, “though it is true that an ordinary traveller, or you yourself, if you set out upon the Lake alone, would never come to Avalon. Wait and see, and ask no questions; that is to be your lot while you are in training.”
Rebuked, Morgaine fell silent. Her eyes were still dilated with fear. She said in a low voice, “It is like the folktale of the fairy barge, which sets sail from the islands to the Land of Youth ... .”
Viviane paid no attention. She stood in the prow of the boat, breathing deeply, summoning her strength for the magical act she was about to perform; for a moment she wondered if she still had the strength for it.
I am old, she thought with momentary panic, yet I must live until Morgaine and her brother are grown. The peace of all this land depends on what I can do to safeguard them!
She cut off the thought; doubt was fatal. She reminded herself that she had done this almost every day of her adult life and by now it was so natural to her that she could have done it in her sleep or if she were dying. She stood still, rigid, locked into the tension of magic, then stretched out her arms, extending them full length, raising them high above her head, palms toward the sky. Then, with a swiftly exhaled breath, she brought them down —and with them fell the mists, so that the sight of the church was wiped out, and the shores of the Isle of the Priests, and even the Tor. The boat glided through thick, impenetrable fog, dark as night around them, and in the darkness she could hear Morgaine, breathing quickly like a small, scared animal. She began to speak—to reassure the girl that there was nothing to fear—then, deliberately, held her peace. Morgaine was now a priestess in training and must learn to conquer fear as she conquered fatigue and hardship and hunger.
The boat began to glide through the mists. Swiftly and surely—for there were no other boats on this Lake—the boat poled through the thick, clinging damp; Viviane felt it on her hair and eyebrows, soaking through her woolen shawl. Morgaine was shivering with the sudden cold.
Then, like a curtain being pulled back, the mist vanished, and before them lay a sunlit stretch of water and a green shore. The Tor was there, but Viviane heard the young girl in the boat catch her breath in shock and astonishment. Atop the Tor stood a circle of standing stones, brilliant in the sunlight. Toward it led the great processional way, winding upward in a spiral around the immense hill. At the foot of the Tor lay the buildings where the priests were housed, and on the slope she could see the Sacred Well and the silver flash of the mirror pool below. Along the shore were groves of apple trees and beyond them great oaks, with the golden shoots of mistletoe clinging to their branches in midair.
Morgaine whispered, “It is beautiful ... ” and Viviane could hear the awe in her voice. “Lady, is it real?”
“It is more real than any other place you have ever seen,” Viviane told her, “and soon you will know it.”
The barge moved toward the shore and scraped heavily on the sandy edge; the silent oarsmen moored it with a rope, and assisted the Lady to step on shore. Then they led the horses to land, and Morgaine was left to step on shore by herself.
She was never to forget that first sight of Avalon in the sunset. Green lawns sloped down to the edge of the reeds along the Lake, and swans glided, silent as the barge, over the waters. Beneath the groves of oak and apple trees rose a low building of grey stone, and Morgaine could see white-robed forms pacing slowly along the colonnaded walk. From somewhere, very softly, she could hear the sound of a harp. The low, slanting light—could it be the same sun she knew?—flooded the land with gold and silence, and she felt her throat tighten with tears. She thought, without knowing why, I am coming home, even though all the years of her life had been spent at Tintagel and at Caerleon and she had never seen this fair country before. Viviane finished giving directions about the horses, and turned to Morgaine again. She saw the look of wonder and awe on the girl’s face, and forbore to speak until Morgaine drew a shaking breath, as if waking from sleep. Women, robed in dark-dyed dresses with overtunics of deerskin, some of them with a crescent moon tattooed in blue between their brows, came down the path toward them; some were like Morgaine and Viviane herself, small and dark, of the Pictish people, but a few were tall and slender, with fair or reddish-brown hair, and there were two or three who bore the unmistakable stamp of Roman ancestry. They bent before Viviane in silent respect and she raised her hand in a gesture of benediction.
“This is my kinswoman,” Viviane said. “Her name is Morgaine. She will be one of you. Take her—“ Then she looked at the young girl, who stood shivering as the sun sank and darkness dropped grey, draining the fantastic colors from the landscape. The child was weary and frightened. There were enough trials and ordeals before her; she need not begin them at this moment.
“Tomorrow,” she said to Morgaine, “you will go to the House of Maidens. It will make no difference there that you are my kinswoman and a princess, you will have no name and no favors except what you can earn for yourself. But for tonight only, come with me; we have had little time to talk together on this journey.”
Morgaine felt her knees wobbling with the sudden relief. The women facing her, all strange and with their alien dress and the blue markings on their brows, frightened her more than the whole court of Uther assembled. She saw Viviane make a little dismissing motion, and the priestesses—for so she supposed they were—turned and went away. Viviane held out her hand, and Morgaine took it, feeling the fingers reassuringly cool and solid. Once again Viviane was the kinswoman she knew, yet at the same time she was the awesome figure who had brought down the mists. Once again Morgaine felt the impulse to make the sign of the cross, and wondered if all this country would vanish away as Father Columba said all demonwork and sorceries must vanish at that sign.
But she did not cross herself; she knew suddenly that she would never do so again. That world lay behind her forever.
At the edge of the apple grove, between two trees just coming into blossom, stood a little house of wattle and daub. Inside, a fire was burning, and a young woman—like the others she had seen, in dark dress and deerskin tunic—welcomed them with a silent bow.
“Do not speak to her,” said Viviane. “She is, at present, under a vow of silence. She is a priestess in her fourth year, and her name is Raven.”
In silence, Raven stripped off Viviane’s outer garments and her muddy and travel-worn shoes; at a sign from Viviane she did the same for Morgaine. She brought them water for washing, and later, food: barley bread and dried meat. For drink there was only cold water, but it was fresh and delicious, unlike any water Morgaine had ever tasted.
“It is the water of the Sacred Well,” Viviane said. “We drink nothing else here; it brings vision and clear sight. And the honey is from our own hives. Eat your meat and enjoy it, for you will taste no more for years; the priestesses eat no meat until they have finished their training.”
“Why is that, Lady?” Morgaine could not say “Aunt” or “kinswoman.” Standing between her and the familiar names was the memory of the Goddess-like figure summoning the mists. “Is it wrong to eat meat?”
“Surely not and a day will come when you may eat whatever food conies to you. But a diet free of animal flesh produces a high level of consciousness, and this you must have while you are learning to use the Sight and to control your magical powers rather than letting them control you. Like the Druids in the early years of their training, the priestesses eat only bread and fruit, and sometimes a little fish from the lake, and drink only water from the Well.”
Morgaine said shyly, “You drank wine at Caerleon, Lady.”
“Certainly, and so may you, when you know the proper times to eat and drink, and the proper times to abstain,” said Viviane curtly. That silenced Morgaine, and she sat nibbling at her bread and honey. But although she was hungry, it seemed to stick in her throat.
“Have you had enough to eat?” Viviane asked. “Good, then let Raven take the dishes—you should sleep, child. But sit here beside me before the fire and talk a little, for tomorrow Raven will take you to the House of Maidens, and you will see me no more, save at the rites, until you are trained to take your turn with the older priestesses, to sleep in my house and care for me as a serving-woman. And at that time you too may well be under a vow of silence, neither to speak nor answer. But for tonight, you are only my kinswoman, not yet vowed to the service of the Goddess, and you may ask me whatever you will.”
She held out her hand, and Morgaine came to join her on the bench before the fire. Viviane turned and said, “Will you take the pin from my hair, Morgaine? Raven has gone to her rest, and I do not want to disturb her again.”
Morgaine pulled the carven pin of bone from the older woman’s hair, and it came down with a rush, long and dark with a streak of white at one temple. Viviane sighed, stretching her bare feet to the fire.
“It is good to be home again—I have had to travel overmuch in late years,” she said, “and I am no longer strong enough to find it a pleasure.”
“You said I might ask you questions,” Morgaine said timidly. “Why do some of the women have blue signs on their brows, and others not?”
“The blue crescent is a sign that they are vowed to the service of the Goddess, to live and die at her will,” Viviane said. “Those who are here only for some schooling in the Sight do not take such vows.”
“Am I to take vows?”
“That will be your own choice,” Viviane said. “The Goddess will tell you whether she wishes to set her hand upon you. Only the Christians use the cloister as a kitchen midden for their unwanted daughters and widows.”
“But how will I know if the Goddess wants me?”
Viviane smiled in the darkness. “She will call you in a voice you cannot fail to understand. If you have heard that call, there will be nowhere in the world to hide from her voice.”
Morgaine wondered, but was too timid to ask, if Viviane had been vowed so. Of course! She is the High Priestess, the Lady of Avalon ... .
“I was so vowed,” Viviane said quietly, with the trick she had of answering an unspoken question, “but the mark has worn away with time ... if you look closely, I think you can still see a little of it at the edge of my hair, there.”
“Yes, a little ... what does it mean to be vowed to the Goddess, Lady? Who is this Goddess? I asked Father Columba once if God had any other name, and he said, no, there was only one Name by which we could be saved and that was Jesus the Christ, but—“ She broke off, abashed. “I am very ignorant about such things.”
“To know you are ignorant is the beginning of wisdom,” Viviane said. “Then, when you begin to learn, you will not have to forget all the things you think you know. God is called by many names, but is everywhere One; and so, when you pray to Mary, mother of Jesus, you pray, without knowing it, to the World Mother in one of her many forms. The God of the priests and the Great One of the Druids is the same One, and that is why the Merlin sometimes takes his place among the Christian councillors of the High King; he knows, if they do not, that God is One.”
“Your mother was priestess here before you, my mother said—“
“That is true, but it was not a matter of blood alone. Rather that I had inherited her gift of the Sight, and vowed myself to the Goddess of my free will. The Goddess did not call your mother, nor Morgause. So I sent Igraine to be married to your father and then to Uther, and Morgause to be married as the King should decree. Igraine’s marriage served the Goddess; over Morgause, she had no power and no call.”
“Are the priestesses called by the Goddess never married then?”
“Usually not. They do not vow themselves to any man, except for the Great Marriage, where priest and priestess join in symbol of God and Goddess, and children so born are children to no mortal man, but to the Goddess. This is a Mystery, and you will learn it at the proper time. I was so born, and have no earthly father ... .”
Morgaine stared at her and whispered, “Do you mean that—that your mother lay with a God?”
“No, of course not. Only a priest, overshadowed by the power of the God; probably a priest whose name she never knew, because at that moment or in that time, the God came into him and possessed him so that the man was forgotten and unknown.” Her face was distant, remembering strange things; Morgaine could see them moving across her brow. It seemed that the fire made pictures in the room, a great figure of a Horned One ... . She shivered suddenly and pulled her cloak about her.
“Are you weary, child? You should sleep—“
But Morgaine was curious again. “Were you born in Avalon?”
“Yes, though I was fostered on the Druid Isle, far to the north, in the Islands. And when I was grown to womanhood, the Goddess set her hand upon me—the blood of the priestess-born ran true in me, as I think it does in you, my child.” Her voice was distant; she rose and stood looking into the fire.
“I am trying to remember how many years ago it was that I came here with the old woman ... the moon was farther south then, for it was harvesttime, and the dark days of Samhain coming on, in the dying of the year. It was a bitter winter, even at Avalon; we heard wolves in the night, and snow lay deep, and we hungered here, for no one could make the passage through the storms, and some of the little children at the breast died when milk failed ... . Then the Lake froze, and they brought us food on sledges. I was a maiden then, my breasts had not grown, and now I am old, an old woman, a crone ... so many years, child.”
Morgaine could feel the older woman’s hand trembling; she held it hard in her own. After a moment Viviane drew the girl to her side and stood, her arm around her waist.
“So many moons, so many Midsummers ... and now it seems that Samhain follows hard upon Beltane-eve more swiftly than the moon waxed from maiden to full when I was young. And you too will stand here before the fire, and grow old as I have grown old, unless the Mother has other tasks for you ... ah, Morgaine, Morgaine, little one, I should have left you in Your mother’s house ... .”
Morgaine flung her arms fiercely around the priestess. “I could not stay there! I would rather have died. ...”
“I knew that,” Viviane said, sighing. “I think the Mother has laid her hand on you too, child. But you have come from a life of ease into a hard life and a bitter one, Morgaine, and it may be that I will have tasks for you as cruel as those the Great Mother has laid on me. Now you think only of learning to use the Sight, and of living in the beautiful land of Avalon, but it is no easy thing to serve the will of Ceridwen, my daughter; she is not only the Great Mother of Love and Birth, she is also the Lady of Darkness and Death.” Sighing, she stroked the girl’s soft hair. “She is also the Morrigan, the messenger of strife, the Great Raven ... oh, Morgaine, Morgaine, I would you had been my own child, but even so I could not spare you, I must use you for her purposes as I was myself used.” She bowed her head, laid it for a moment on the young girl’s shoulder. “Believe that I love you, Morgaine, for a time will come when you will hate me as much as you love me now—“
Morgaine fell impulsively to her knees. “Never,” she whispered. “I am in the hands of the Goddess ... and in yours ... ”
“May she grant that you never regret those words,” Viviane said. She stretched out her hands to the fire. They were small, and strong, and a little swollen with age. “With these hands I have brought children to birth; and I have seen a man’s lifeblood flow from them. Once I betrayed a man to his death, a man who had lain in my arms and I had sworn to love. I destroyed your mother’s peace, and now I have taken her children from her. Do you not hate me and fear me, Morgaine?”
“I fear you,” said the girl, still kneeling at her feet, her dark, intense, small face glowing with firelight, “but I could never hate you.”
Viviane sighed deeply, thrusting away foresight and dread. “And it is not me you fear,” she said, “but her. We are both in her hands, child. Your virginity is sacred to the Goddess. See you keep it so till the Mother makes her will known.”
Morgaine laid her small hands over Viviane’s. “Be it so,” she whispered. “I swear it.”
The next day she went to the House of the Maidens, and there she remained for many years.
MORGAINE SPEAKS ...
How do you write of the making of a priestess? What is not obvious is secret. Those who have walked that road will know, and those who have not will never know though I should write down all the forbidden things. Seven times Beltane-eve came and went; seven times the winters shrivelled us all with cold. The Sight came easily; Viviane had said I was priestess-born. It was not so easy to bid it come when I willed and only when I willed, and to close the gates of the Sight when it was not fitting I should see.
It was the small magics which came hardest, forcing the mind first to walk in unaccustomed paths. To call the fire and raise it at command, to call the mists, to bring rain—all these were simple, but to know when to bring rain or mist and when to leave it in the hands of the Gods, that was not so simple. Other lessons there were, at which my knowledge of the Sight helped me not at all: the herb lore, and the lore of healing, the long songs of which not a single word might ever be committed to writing, for how can the knowledge of the Great Ones be committed to anything made by human hands? Some of the lessons were pure joy, for I was allowed to learn to play upon the harp and to fashion my own, using sacred woods and the gut of an animal killed in ritual; and some lessons were of terror.
Hardest of all, perhaps, to look within myself, under the spell of the drugs which loosed the mind from the body, sick and retching, while the mind soared free past the limits of time and space, and to read in the pages of the past and the future. But of that I may say nothing. At last, the day when I was cast out of Avalon, clad only in my shift, and unarmed save for the little dagger of a priestess, to return—if I could. I knew that if I did not, they would mourn me as one dead, but the gates would never again be opened to me unless I could bid them open at my own will and command. And when the mists closed around me, I wandered long on the shores of the alien Lake, hearing only the bells and the doleful chanting of the monks. And at last I broke through the mists, and called upon her, my feet upon the earth and my head among the stars, stretching from horizon to horizon, and cried aloud the great word of Power ... .
And the mists parted and I saw before me the same sunlit shore where the Lady had brought me seven years before, and I set my feet on the solid earth of my own home, and I wept as I had done when first I came there as a frightened child. And then the mark of the crescent moon was set between my brows by the hand of the Goddess herself ... but this is a Mystery of which it is forbidden to write. Those who have felt their brow burned with the kiss ofCeridwen will know whereof I speak.
It was in the second spring after that, when I had been released from the silence, that Galahad, who was already skilled at fighting the Saxons under his own father, King Ban of Less Britain, returned to Avalon.
The priestesses above a certain grade took it in turns to serve the Lady of the Lake, and at this season when the Lady was very busy with preparations for the approaching Midsummer festival, one of them always slept in the little wattled house, so that the Lady might have someone at her call night and day. It was so early that the sun still hid in the mist at the edge of the horizon when Viviane stepped into the room beyond her own, where her attendant slept, and beckoned quietly to awaken her.
The woman sat up in bed, flinging her deerskin tunic over her under-gown.
“Tell the bargemen to be ready. And go and ask my kinswoman Morgaine to attend upon me.”
A few minutes later, Morgaine paused respectfully before the entrance where Viviane was kneeling to build up her fire. She made no sound; after nine years of training in the priestess arts, she moved so silently that no footfall or even a breath of air marked her passing. But after those years, too, the ways of the priestesses were so well known to her that she was not surprised when Viviane turned as she reached the door, and said, “Come in, Morgaine.”
Rather contrary to her usual custom, however, Viviane did not invite her kinswoman to sit, but kept her standing there, regarding her evenly for a moment.
Morgaine was not tall; she would never be that, and in these years in Avalon she had grown as tall as she would ever be, a scant inch taller than the Lady. Her dark hair was plaited down the back of her neck and wrapped with a deerskin thong; she wore the dark-dyed blue dress and deerskin overtunic of any priestess, and the blue crescent shone darkly between her brows. Nevertheless, smooth and anonymous as she was among them, there was a glint in her eyes which answered to Viviane’s cool stare, and Viviane knew from experience that, small and delicately made as she was, when she wished she could throw glamour over herself that made her appear not only tall but majestic. Already she appeared ageless, and she would, Viviane knew, look much the same even when white appeared in her dark hair.
She thought, with a flicker of relief, No, she is not beautiful, then wondered why it should matter to her. No doubt Morgaine, like all young women, even a priestess vowed lifelong to the service of the Goddess, would prefer to be beautiful, and was intensely unhappy because she was not. She thought, with a slight curl of her lip, When you are my age, my girl, it will not matter whether or no you are beautiful, for everyone you know will believe that you are a great beauty whenever you wish them to believe it; and when you do not, you can sit back and pretend to be a simple old woman long past such thoughts. She had fought her own battle more than twenty years ago, when she saw Igraine growing to womanhood with the tawny and russet beauty for which Viviane, still young, would gladly have bartered her soul and all her power. Sometimes, in moments of self-doubt, she wondered if she had thrust Igraine into marriage with Gorlois so that she need not be endlessly taunted with the younger woman’s loveliness, mocking her own dark severity. But I brought her to the love of the man destined for her before the ring stones of Salisbury plain were piled one upon another, she thought.
She realized that Morgaine was still standing quietly, awaiting her word, and smiled.
“Truly I grow old,” she said. “I was lost, for a moment, in memories. You are not the child who came here many years ago; but there are times when I forget it, my Morgaine.”
Morgaine smiled and the smile transformed her face, which in repose was rather sullen. Like Morgause, Viviane thought, though otherwise they are nothing alike. It is Taliesin’s blood.
Morgaine said, “I think you forget nothing, kinswoman.”
“Perhaps not. Have you broken your fast, child?”
“No. But I am not hungry.”
“Very well. I want you to go in the barge.”
Morgaine, who had grown used to silence, answered only with a gesture of respect and assent.
It was not, of course, a request unusual in any way—the barge from Avalon must always* be guided by a priestess who knew the secret way through the mists.
“It is a family mission,” Viviane said, “for it is my son who is approaching the island, and I thought it well to send a kinswoman to welcome him here.”
Morgaine smiled. “Balan?” she said. “Will his foster-brother Balin not fear for his soul if he goes beyond the sound of church bells?”
A glint of humor lighted Viviane’s eyes, and she said, “Both of them are proud men and dedicated warriors, and they live blameless lives, even by the standards of the Druids, harming none and oppressing none, and ever seeking to right a wrong when they find it. I doubt not that the Saxons find them four times as fearsome when they fight side by side. In fact, they are afraid of nothing, except the evil magic of that wicked sorceress who is mother to one of them ... ” and she giggled like a young woman, and Morgaine giggled with her.
Then, sobering, she said, “Well, I do not regret sending Balan to fosterage in the outer world. He had no call to become a Druid, and he would have made a very bad one, and if he is lost to the Goddess, no doubt she will watch over him in her own way, even if he prays to her with beads and calls upon her as Mary the Virgin. No, Balan is away on the coast, fighting against the Saxons at Uther’s side, and I am content to have it so. It is of my younger son I spoke.”
“I thought Galahad still in Brittany.”
“So did I, but last night with the Sight I saw him ... he is here. When last I saw him, he was but twelve years old. He is grown considerably, I should say; he must now be sixteen or more, and ready for his arms, but I do not know for certain that he is to bear arms at all.”
Morgaine smiled, and Viviane remembered that when Morgaine had first come here, a lonely child, she had sometimes been allowed to spend her free time with the only other child fostered here, Galahad.
“Ban of Benwick must be old now,” Morgaine remarked.
“Old, yes; and he has many sons, so that my son, among them, is just one more of the king’s unregarded bastards. But his half-brothers fear him and would rather he went elsewhere, and a child of the Great Marriage cannot be treated like any other bastard.” Viviane answered the unspoken question. “His father would give him land and estates in Brittany, but I saw to it before he was six years old that Galahad’s heart would always be here, at the Lake.” She saw the glint in Morgaine’s eyes and answered, again, the unspoken.
“Cruel, to make him ever discontent? Perhaps. It was not I that was cruel, but the Goddess. His destiny lies in Avalon, and I have seen him with the Sight, kneeling before the Holy Chalice ... .”
Again, with an ironic inflection, Morgaine made the little gesture of assent with which a priestess under vows of silence would have acquiesced to a command.
Suddenly Viviane was angry with herself. I sit here justifying what I have done with my life, and the lives of my sons, to a chit of a girl! I owe her no explanations! She said, and her voice was chilled with sudden distance, “Go with the barge, Morgaine, and bring him to me.”
A third time the silent gesture of assent and Morgaine turned to go.
“One moment,” Viviane said. “You will break your fast here with us when you bring him back to me; he is your cousin and kinsman too.”
When Morgaine smiled again, Viviane realized that she had been trying to make the girl smile, and was surprised at herself.
MORGAINE WENT down along the path toward the edge of the Lake. Her heart was still beating faster than usual; often, these days, when she spoke with the Lady, anger was mixed with affection, to neither of which she was allowed to give voice, and this did strange things to her mind. She wondered at herself, because she had been taught to control her emotions as she controlled her words and even her thoughts.
Galahad she remembered from her first years in Avalon—a scrawny, dark, intense boy. She had not liked him much, but because her heart hungered for her own small brother, she had let the lonely boy run about after her. Then he had been sent away to fosterage and she had seen him only once since, when he was twelve years old, all eyes and teeth and bones thrusting through outgrown clothes. He had grown into an intense disdain of anything female, and she had been occupied with the most difficult part of her training, so she had paid him little heed.
The small, dark men who poled the barge bent before her in silent respect to the Goddess whose form the higher priestesses were supposed to wear, and she signed to them without speaking and took her place in the prow.
Swiftly and silently the draped barge glided out into the mist. Morgaine felt the dampness coalescing on her brow and clinging to her hair; she was hungry, and chilled to the bone, but she had been taught to ignore that too. When they came out of the mist, the sun had risen on the far shore, and she could see a horse and rider waiting there. The barge continued its slow strokes forward, but Morgaine, in a rare moment of self-forgetfulness, stood unguarded, looking at the horseman there.
He was slightly built, his face aquiline and darkly handsome, set off by the crimson cap with an eagle feather in its band and the wide crimson cloak that fell gracefully around him. When he dismounted, the natural grace with which he moved, a dancer’s grace, took her breath away. Had she ever wished to be fair and rounded, when dark and slender could show this beauty? His eyes were dark too, glinting with a touch of mischief— mischief which alone gave Morgaine awareness of who this must be, although, otherwise, not a single feature remained of the scrawny boy with the bony legs and enormous feet.
“Galahad,” she said, pitching her voice low to keep it from trembling —a priestess-trick. “I would not have recognized you.”
He bowed smoothly, the cape swirling as he moved—had she ever despised that as an acrobat’s trick? Here it seemed to grow from his body.
“Lady,” he said.
He has not recognized me either. Keep it so.
Why at this moment did she remember Viviane’s words? Your virginity is sacred to the Goddess. See you keep it so till the Mother makes her will known. Startled, Morgaine recognized that for the first time in her life, she had looked on a man with desire. Knowing that such things were not for her, but that she was to use her life as the Goddess should decree, she had looked on men with scorn as the natural prey of the Goddess in the form of her priestesses, to be taken or denied as seemed right at the moment. Viviane had commanded that this year she need not take part in the Beltane fire rituals, from which some of her fellow priestesses emerged with child by the will of the Goddess, children who were either born, or cast forth by the knowledge of herb lore and drugs she had been taught—an unpleasant process, which if not followed inevitably brought on the even more unpleasant and dangerous process of birth, and tiresome children who were reared or sent to fosterage as the Lady decreed. Morgaine had been glad enough to escape this time, knowing that Viviane had other plans for her.
She gestured him to step on board. Never lay hands upon an outsider— the words of the old priestess who had schooled her; a priestess of Avalon must be even as a visitor from the otherworld. She wondered why she had to stop her hand from reaching out to touch his wrist. She knew, with a sureness that made the blood beat hard in her temples, that under the smooth skin would lie hard muscle, pulsing with life, and she hungered to meet his eyes again. She turned away, trying to master herself.
His voice was deep and musical as he said, “Why, now you move your hands, I know you—everything else about you has changed. Priestess, were you not once my kinswoman, called Morgaine?” The dark eyes glinted. “Nothing else is the same as when I used to call you Morgaine of the Fairies ... .”
“I was, and I am. But years have passed,” she said, turning away, gesturing to the silent servants of the barge to pole it away from the shore.
“But the magic of Avalon never changes,” he murmured, and she knew he was not speaking to her. “The mist and the reeds and the cry of water birds ... and then the barge, like magic, gliding from the silent shore ... I know there is nothing for me here, and yet, somehow, I always return ... .”
The barge moved silently across the Lake. Even now, after years of knowing that it was no magic, but intensive training in silencing the oars, Morgaine was still impressed by the mystical silence through which they moved. She turned to call the mists, and was conscious of the young man behind her. He stood, easily balanced beside his horse, one arm flung across the saddle blanket, shifting his weight easily without motion, so that he did not visibly sway or lose balance as the boat moved and turned. Morgaine did this herself from long training, but he managed it, it seemed, by his own natural grace.
It seemed that she could feel his dark eyes like a palpable warmth on her back as she stepped to the prow and raised her arms, the long sleeves trailing. She drew a deep breath, charging herself for the magical act, knowing she must concentrate all her strength, intensely angry at herself for her own awareness of the man’s eyes on her.
Let him see, then! Let him fear me and know me as the Goddess-self! She knew some rebel part of herself, long stifled, was crying out, No, I want him to see the woman, not the Goddess, not even the priestess, but another deep breath and even the memory of that wish was exhaled.
Up went her arms into the arch of the sky; down, with the mists following the sweep of her trailing sleeves. Mist and silence hung dark around them. Morgaine stood motionless, feeling the young man’s body warmth very close to her. If she moved even a little, she would touch his hand, and knew how his hand would feel, scalding against her own. She moved away with a little swirling of her robes, and collected distance about herself as with a veil. And all the time she was astonished at herself, saying within her mind somewhere, this is only my cousin, it is Viviane’s son who used to sit in my lap when he was little and lonely! Deliberately she summoned the picture of that awkward boy covered with bramble scratches, but when they sailed out of the mist the dark eyes were smiling at her, and she felt dizzy.
Of course I am faint, I have not yet broken my fast, she told herself, and watched the hunger in Galahad’s eyes as he looked on Avalon. She saw him cross himself. Viviane would be angry if she had seen that.
“It is indeed the land of the fairy folk,” he said, low, “and you are Morgaine of the Fairies, as always ... but you are a woman, now, and beautiful, kinswoman.”
She thought, impatient, I am not beautiful, what he sees is the glamour of Avalon. And something rebellious in her said, I want him to think me beautiful—myself, not the glamour! She set her mouth tightly and knew that she looked stern, forbidding, all priestess again.
“This way,” she said curtly and, as the barge’s bottom scraped silently on the sandy edge, signalled for the bargemen to attend to his horse.
“By your leave, lady,” he said, “I will attend to it myself. It is not an ordinary saddle.”
“As you like,” Morgaine said, and stood and watched while he unsaddled his horse himself. But she was too intensely curious about everything concerning him to stand silent.
“Why, it is indeed a strange saddle ... what are the long leather strappings?”
“The Scythians wear them—they are called stirrups. My foster-father took me on pilgrimage, and I saw them in their country. Even the Roman legions had no such cavalry, for the Scythians with these can control and stop their horses in mid charge, and that way they can fight from horseback,” he said, “and even in the light armor the horsemen wear, an equestrian knight is invincible against anyone on foot.” He smiled, the dark, intense face lighting up. “The Saxons call me Alfgar—the elf-arrow which comes out of darkness and strikes unseen. At Ban’s court they have taken up the name and call me Lancelet, which is as near as they can come to it. Some day I will have a legion of horses equipped this way, and then let the Saxons beware!”
“Your mother told me you were already a warrior,” Morgaine said, forgetting to pitch her voice low, and he smiled again at her.
“And now I know your voice, Morgaine of the Fairies ... how dare you come upon me as a priestess, kinswoman? Well, I suppose it is the Lady’s will. But I like you better like this than solemn as a Goddess,” he said, with the familiar mischief, as if they had parted but the day before.
Clasping at shreds of her dignity, Morgaine said, “Yes, the Lady awaits us, and we must not keep her waiting.”
“Oh yes,” he mocked, “always we must scurry to do her will. ... I suppose you are one of those who hurry to fetch and carry, and hang trembling on her every word.”
For that Morgaine found no answer except to say, “Come this way.”
“I remember the way,” he said, and walked quietly at her side instead of following behind with proper respect. “I too used to run to her and wait upon her will and tremble at her frown, until I found she was not just my mother, but thought herself greater than any queen.”
“And so she is,” Morgaine said sharply.
“No doubt, but I have lived in a world where men do not come and go at a woman’s beckoning.” She saw that his jaw was set and that the mischief was gone from his eyes. “I would rather have a loving mother than a stern Goddess whose every breath bids men live and die at her will.”
To that Morgaine found nothing whatever to say. She set a swift pace that meant he must scurry at her heels to keep up.
Raven, still silent—for she had bound herself by vows of perpetual silence, save when she spoke tranced as a prophetess—let them into the dwelling with an inclination of the head. As her eyes adjusted to the dimness, Morgaine saw that Viviane, seated by the fire, had chosen to greet her son not in the ordinary dark dress and deerskin tunic of a priestess, but had put on a dress of crimson and done her hair high on her forehead with gems glittering there. Even Morgaine, who knew the tricks of glamour for herself, gasped at the magnificence of Viviane. She was like the Goddess welcoming a petitioner to her underworld shrine.
Morgaine could see that Galahad’s chin was set and that the cords in his knuckles stood out, white, against his dark fists. She could hear him breathing, and guessed at the effort with which he steadied his voice, as he rose from his bow.
“My lady and mother, I give you greeting.”
“Galahad,” she said. “Come, sit here beside me.”
He took a seat across from her instead. Morgaine hovered near the door and Viviane beckoned her to come and seat herself too.
“I waited to breakfast with you both. Here, join me.”
There was fresh-cooked fish from the Lake, scented with herbs and dripping butter; there was hot, fresh barley bread, and fresh fruit, such food as Morgaine seldom tasted in the austere dwelling of the priestesses. She, and Viviane too, ate sparingly, but Galahad helped himself to everything with the healthy hunger of a youth still growing. “Why, you have set a meal fit for a king, Mother.”
“How does your father, and how does Brittany?”
“Well enough, though I have not spent much time there in the last year. He sent me on a far journey, to learn for his court about the new cavalry of the Scythian peoples. I do not think even the soldiers of Rome, such as they are, have any such horsemen now. We have herds of Iberian horses—but you are not interested in the doings of the stud farms. Now I have come to bring word to the Pendragon’s court of a new massing of Saxon armies; I doubt not they will strike in full force before Midsummer. Would that I had time and enough gold to train a legion of these horsemen!
“You love horses,” Viviane said in surprise.
“Does that surprise you, madam? With beasts you always know precisely what they think, for they cannot lie, nor pretend to be other than they are,” he said.
“The ways of nature will all be open to you,” Viviane said, “when you return to Avalon in the life of a Druid.”
He said, “Still the same old song, Lady? I thought I gave you my answer when last I saw you.”
“Galahad,” she said, “you were twelve years old. That is too young to know the better part of life.”
He moved his hand impatiently. “No one calls me Galahad now, save you alone, and the Druid who gave me that name. In Brittany and in the field I am Lancelet.”
She smiled and said, “Do you think I care for what the soldiers say?”
“So you would bid me sit still in Avalon and play the harp while outside in the real world the struggle goes on for life and death, my lady?”
Viviane looked angry. “Are you trying to say this world is not real, my son?”
“It is real,” said Lancelet, with an impatient movement of his hand, “but real in a different way, cut off from the struggle outside. Fairyland, eternal peace—oh, yes, it is home to me, you saw to that, Lady. But it seems that even the sun shines differently here. And this is not where the real struggles of life are taking place. Even the Merlin has the wit to know that.”
“The Merlin came to be as he is through years when he learned to know the real from the unreal,” said Viviane, “and so must you. There are warriors enough in the world, my son. Yours is the task to see farther than any, and perhaps to bid the warriors come and go.”
He shook his head. “No! Lady, say no more, that path is not mine.”
“You are still not grown to know what you want,” Viviane said flatly. “Will you give us seven years, as you gave your father, to know whether this is your road in life?”
“In seven years,” said Lancelet, smiling, “I hope to see the Saxons driven from our shores, and I hope to have a hand in their driving. I have no time for the magics and mysteries of the Druids, Lady, and would not if I could. No, my mother, I beg you to give me your blessing and send me forth from Avalon, for to tell the truth, Lady, I will go with your blessing or without it. I have lived in a world where men do not wait for a woman’s bidding to go and come.”
Morgaine shrank away as she saw the white of rage sweep over Viviane’s face. The priestess rose from her seat, a small woman but given height and majesty by her fury.
“You defy the Lady of Avalon, Galahad of the Lake?”
He did not shrink before her. Morgaine, seeing him pale under the dark tanning of his skin, knew that inside the softness and grace was steel to match the Lady’s own. He said quietly, “Had you bidden me this when I still starved for your love and approval, madam, no doubt I would have done even as you commanded. But I am not a child, my lady and mother, and the sooner we acknowledge that, then the sooner we shall be in harmony and cease from quarrelling. The life of a Druid is not for me.”
“Have you become a Christian?” she asked, hissing with anger.
He sighed and shook his head. “Not really. Even that comfort is denied me, though in Ban’s court I could pass as one when I wished. I think I have no faith in any God but this.” He laid his hand on his sword.
The Lady sank down on her bench and sighed. She drew a long breath and then smiled.
“So,” she said, “you are a man and there is no compelling you. Although I wish you would speak of this to the Merlin.”
Morgaine, watching unregarded, saw the tension relax in the young man’s hands. She thought, He thinks she has given way; he does not know her well enough to know that she is angrier than ever. Lancelet was young enough to let the relief show in his voice. “I’m grateful to you for understanding, madam. And I will willingly seek counsel of the Merlin, if it pleases you. But even the Christian priests know that a vocation to the service of God is God’s gift and not anything that comes because one wants it or does not. God, or the Gods if you will, has not called me, or even given me any proof that He—or They—exist.”
Morgaine thought of Viviane’s words to her, many years ago: it is too heavy a burden to be borne unconsenting. But for the first time she wondered, What would Viviane really have done if at any time during these years I had come to her and told her that I wished to depart? The Lady is all too sure that she knows the will of the Goddess. Such heretical thoughts disturbed her, and quickly she thrust them from her mind, resting her eyes again on Lancelet. At first she had only been dazzled by his dark handsomeness, the grace of his body. Now she saw specific things: the first down of beard along his chin—he had not time, or had not chosen, to shave his face in the Roman fashion; his slender hands, exquisitely shaped, fashioned for harp strings or weapons, but callused just a little across palm and the insides of the fingers, more on the right hand than the left. There was a small scar on one forearm, a whitish seam that looked as if it had been there for many years, and another, crescent-shaped, on the left cheek. His lashes were as long as a girl’s. But he did not have the androgynous, boy-girl look of many boys before their beards have grown; he was like a young stag. Morgaine thought she had never seen so masculine a creature before. Because her mind had been trained to such thoughts, she thought, There is nothing of the softness of a woman’s training in him, to make him pliable to any woman. He has denied the touch of the Goddess in himself; one day he will have trouble with her ... . And again her mind leaped, thinking that one day she would play the role of the Goddess at one of the great festivals, and she thought, feeling a pleasant heat in her body, Would that he might be the God ... . Lost in her daydream, she did not hear what Lancelet and the Lady were saying until she was recalled by hearing Viviane speak her name, and she came back to herself as if she had been wandering somewhere out of the world.
“Morgaine?” the Lady repeated. “My son has been long away from Avalon. Take him away, spend the day on the shores if you will, you are freed for this day from duties. When you were children both, I remember, you liked it well, to walk on the shores of the Lake. Tonight, Galahad, you shall sup with the Merlin, and shall be housed among the young priests who are not under the silence. And tomorrow, if you still wish for it, you shall go with my blessing.”
He bowed profoundly, and they went out.
The sun was high, and Morgaine realized that she had missed the sunrise salutations; well, she had the Lady’s permission to absent herself, and in any case she was no longer one of the younger priestesses for whom the missing of such a service was a matter for penances and guilt. Today she had intended to supervise a few of the younger women in preparing dyes for ritual robes—nothing that could not wait another day or a handful of days.
“I will go to the kitchens,” she said, “and fetch us some bread to take with us. We can hunt for waterfowl, if you like—are you fond of hunting?”
He nodded and smiled at her. “Perhaps if I bring my mother a present of some waterfowl she will be less angry with me. I would like to make my peace with her,” he said, almost laughing. “When she is angry she is still frightening—when I was little, I used to believe that when I was not with her she took off her mortality and was the Goddess indeed. But I should not speak like that about her—I can see that you are very devoted to her.”
“She has been as devoted to me as a foster-mother,” Morgaine said slowly.
“Why should she not be? She is your kinswoman, is she not? Your mother—if I recall rightly—was the wife of Cornwall, and is now the wife of the Pendragon ... is it so?”
Morgaine nodded. It had been so long that she could only half remember Igraine, and now sometimes it seemed to her that she had been long motherless. She had learned to live without need of any mother save the I Goddess, and she had many sisters among the priestesses, so she had no need of any earthly mother. “I have not seen her for many years.”
“I saw Uther’s queen but once, from a distance—she is very beautiful, but she seems cold and distant too.” Lancelet laughed uneasily. “At my father’s court I grew used to women who were interested only in pretty gowns and jewels and their little children, and sometimes, if they were not I married, in finding a husband.... I do not know much about women. You are not like them either. You seem unlike any woman I have ever known.”
Morgaine felt herself blushing. She said low, reminding him, “I am a priestess like your mother—“
“Oh,” he said, “but you are as different from her as night from She is great and terrible and beautiful, and one can only love and adore and I fear her, but you, I feel you are flesh and blood and still real, in spite off all these mysteries around you! You dress like a priestess, and you look like one of them, but when I look into your eyes I see a real woman there whom I could touch.” He was laughing and intense, and she thrust her hands into his, and laughed back at him.
“Oh, yes, I am real, as real as the ground under your feet or the birds in that tree. ...”
They walked together down by the waterside, Morgaine leading I along a little path, carefully skirting the edges of the processional way.
“Is it a sacred place?” he asked. “Is it forbidden to climb the Tor unless you are a priestess or a Druid?”
“Only at the great festivals is it forbidden,” she said, “and you certainly come with me. I may go where I will. There is no one on the Tor now except sheep grazing. Would you like to climb it?”
“Yes,” he said. “I remember once when I was a child I climbed it. I thought it was forbidden, and so I was sure that if anyone knew I had been there I would be punished. I still remember the view from the height. I wonder if it was as enormous as it seemed to me when I was a little lad.”
“We can climb the processional way, if you will. It is not so steep, because it winds round and round the Tor, but it is longer.”
“No,” he said. “I would like to climb straight up the slope—but”— he hesitated—“is it too long and steep for a girl? I have climbed in rougher country, hunting, but can you manage in your long skirts?”
She laughed and told him that she had climbed it often. “And as for the skirts, I am used to them,” she said, “but if they get into my way I will not hesitate to tuck them up above my knees.”
His smile was slow and delightful. “Most women I know would think themselves too modest to show their bare legs.”
Morgaine flushed. “I have never thought modesty had much to do with bared legs for climbing—surely men know that women have legs like their own. It cannot be so much of an offense of modesty to see what they must be able to imagine. I know some of the Christian priests speak so, but they seem to think the human body is the work of some devil, not of God, and that no one could possibly see a woman’s body without going all into a rage to possess it.”
He looked away from her, and she realized that beneath the outward assurance he was still shy, and that pleased her. Together they set off upward, Morgaine, who was strong and hardy from much running and walking, setting a pace which astonished him and which, after the first few moments, he found it difficult to match. About halfway up the slope Morgaine paused, and it was a definite satisfaction to her to hear him breathing hard when her own breath still came easily, unforced. She wound the loose folds of her skirt up around her waist, letting only a single drape hang to her knees, and went on along the steeper, rockier part of the slope. She had never before had the slightest hesitation in baring her legs, but now, when she knew he was looking at them, she could not keep from remembering that they were shapely and strong, and she wondered if he really thought her immodest after all. At the top, she climbed up over the rim of the hill and sat down in the shadow of the ring stones. A minute or two later he came over the edge behind her and flung himself down, panting.
When he could speak again, he said, “I suppose I have been riding too much and not walking and climbing enough! You, you are not even short of breath.”
“Well, but I am accustomed to coming up here, and I do not always stop to go round by the processional way,” she said.
“And on the priests’ Isle there is not even a shadow of the ring stones,” he said, and pointed.
“No,” she said. “In their world there is only their church and its tower. If we wanted to listen with the ears of the spirit we could hear the church bells ... they are shadows here, and in their world, we should be shadows. I sometimes wonder if that is why they avoid the church and keep great fasts and vigils on our holy days—because it would be too uncanny to feel all around them the shadow of the ring stones and perhaps even, for those who still had some shadow of the Sight, to feel and sense all around them the comings and goings of the Druids and hear the whisper of their hymns.”
Lancelet shivered and it seemed that a cloud covered the sun for a moment., “And you, you have the Sight? You can see beyond the veil that separates the worlds?”
“Everyone has it,” Morgaine said, “but I am trained to it beyond most women. Would you see, Galahad?”
He shivered again and said, “I beg you, do not call me by that name, cousin.”
She laughed. “So even though you live among Christians, you have that old belief of the fairy folk, that one who knows your true name can command your spirit if he will? You know my name, cousin. What would you have me call you? Lance, then?”
“What you will, save for the name my mother gave me. I still fear her voice when she speaks that name in a certain tone. I seem to have drunk in that fear from her breasts ... .”
She reached over to him and laid her fingertip over the spot between his brows which was sensitive to the Sight. She breathed softly on it, and heard his gasp of astonishment, for the ring stones above them seemed to melt away into shadows. Before them now the whole top of the Tor stretched, with a little wattle-and-daub church rising beneath a low stone tower which bore a crude painting of an angel.
Lancelet crossed himself swiftly as a line of grey-clad forms came toward them, as it seemed.
“Can they see us, Morgaine?” His voice was a rough whisper.
“Some of them, perhaps, can see us as shadows. A few may think we are some of their own people, or that their eyes are dazzled with the sun and they see what is not there,” she said, with a catch of breath, for what she told him was a Mystery which she really should not have spoken to an uninitiated person. But she had never in her life felt so close to anyone; she felt she could not bear it, to keep secrets from him, and made him this gift, telling herself that the Lady wanted him for Avalon. What a Merlin he would make!
She could hear the soft sound of singing: O thou lamb of God, who drawest away from us all evil of this world, Lord Christ, show us thy mercy ... .
He was singing it softly under his breath, as the church vanished and the ring stones towered again above them.
She said quietly, “Please. It is an offense to the Great Goddess to sing that here; the world she has made is not evil, and no priestess of hers will allow man to call it so.”
“As you will.” He was silent, and again the shadow of cloud passed over his face. His voice was musical, so sweet that when he ceased singing she longed to hear it again.
“Do you play the harp, Lance? Your voice is beautiful enough for a bard.”
“As a child, I was taught. After, I had only the usual training befitting a nobleman’s son,” said Lancelet. “I learned only so great a love of music as to be discontented with my own sounds.”
“Is it so? A Druid in training must be a bard before he is a priest, for music is one of the keys to the laws of the universe.”
Lancelet sighed. “A temptation, that; one of the few reasons I can see for embracing that vocation. But my mother would have me sit in Avalon and play the harp while the world falls apart around us and the Saxons and the wild Northmen burn and ravage and pillage—have you ever seen a village sacked by the Saxons, Morgaine?” Quickly, he answered his own question. “No, you have not, you are sheltered here in Avalon, outside of the world where these things are happening, but I must think of them. I am a soldier, and it seems to me that in these times, defending this beautiful land against their burning and looting is the only work befitting a man.” His face was indrawn, looking on dreadful things.
“If war is so evil,” Morgaine said, “why not shelter from it here? So many of the old Druids died in that last of great magics which removed this holy place from profanation, and we have not enough sons to train in their place.”
He sighed. “Avalon is beautiful, and if I could make all kingdoms as peaceful as Avalon, then I would gladly stay here forever, and spend my days in harping and making music and speaking with the spirits of the great trees... but it seems to me no work for a man, to skulk here in safety when others outside must suffer. Morgaine, let us not speak of it now. For today, I beg you, let me forget. The world outside is filled with strife, and I came here for a day or two of peace; will you not give it to me?” His voice, musical and deep, trembled a little, and the pain in it hurt her so profoundly she thought for a moment that she would weep. She reached for his hand and pressed it.
“Come,” she said. “You wanted to see if the view was as you remembered. ...”
She led him from the ring stones and they looked out over the Lake. Bright water, rippling softly in the sunlight, stretched all around the Island; far below, a little boat, no larger at this height than a fish leaping, streaked the surface. Other islands, indistinct in the mist, rose as dim shapes, blurred by distance and by the magical veil which removed Avalon from the world.
“Not very far from here,” he said, “there is an old fairy fort at the top of a hill, and the view from the wall is such that standing there, a man can see the Tor, and the Lake, and there is an island which is like the shape of a coiled dragon—“ He gestured with his shapely hand.
“I know the place,” Morgaine said. “It is on one of the old magical lines of power which crisscross the earth; I was brought there once to feel the earth powers there. The fairy people knew those things—I can sense them a little, feel the earth and the air tingling. Can you feel it? You too are of that blood, being Viviane’s son.”
He said in a low voice, “It is easy to feel the earth and air tingling with power, here in this magical isle.”
He turned away from the view, saying as he yawned and stretched, “That climb must have taxed me more than I thought; and I rode much of the night. I am ready to sit in the sun and eat some of that bread you carried here for us!”
Morgaine led him into the very center of the ring stones. If he was sensitive at all, she thought, he would be aware of the immense power here.
“Lie back on the earth and she will fill you with her strength,” she said, and handed him a piece of the bread, which she had spread thickly with butter and comb honey before wrapping it in a bit of deerskin. They ate slowly, licking their fingers free of the honey, and he reached for her hand, taking it up playfully and sucking a bit of honey off her finger.
“How sweet you are, cousin,” he said, laughing, and she felt her whole body alive with the touch. She picked up his hand to return the gesture, and suddenly dropped it as if it had burned her; to him it was only a game, perhaps, but it could never be so to her. She turned away, hiding her burning face in the grass. Power from the earth seemed to flow up through her, filling her with the strength of the very Goddess herself.
“You are a child of the Goddess,” she said at last. “Do you know nothing of her Mysteries?”
“Very little, though my father once told me how I was begotten— a child of the Great Marriage between the king and the land. And so, I suppose, he thought I should be loyal to the very land of Brittany which is mother and father to me. ... I have been at the great center of the old Mysteries, the great Avenue of Stones at Karnak, where once was the ancient Temple; that is a place of power, like to this one. I can feel the power here,” he said. He turned over and looked up into her face. “You are like the Goddess of this place,” he said wonderingly. “In the old worship, I know, men and women come together under her power, though the priests would like to forbid it, as they would like to tear down all the ancient stones like these above us, and the great ones of Karnak ... . They have already torn down a part of them, but the task is too great.”
“The Goddess will prevent them,” said Morgaine simply.
“Maybe so,” Lancelet said, and reached up to touch the blue crescent on her forehead. “It is here that you touched me when you made me see into the other world. Has this to do with the Sight, Morgaine, or is that another of your Mysteries of which you may not speak? Well, I’ll not ask you, then. But I feel as if I had been ravished into one of the old fairy forts where, they say, a hundred years can pass in a night.”
“Not so long as that,” Morgaine said, laughing, “though it is true that time runs differently there. But some of the bards, I have heard, can still come and go from the elf country ... it has moved further than Avalon into the mists, that is all.” And as she spoke, she shivered.
Lancelet said, “Maybe when I go back to the real world, the Saxons will all have been vanquished ... and gone.”
“And will you weep because there is no longer any reason for your life?”
He laughed and shook his head, holding her hand in his. After a minute he said in a low voice, “Have you, then, gone to the Beltane fires to serve the Goddess?”
“No,” said Morgaine quietly. “I am virgin while the Goddess wills; most likely I am to be kept for the Great Marriage ... Viviane has not made her will or the will of the Goddess known to me.” She bent her head and let her hair fall across her face, feeling shy before him, as if he could read her thoughts and know the desire which swept through her like a sudden flame. Would she indeed lay down that guarded virginity if he should ask it of her? Never before had the prohibition seemed a hardship; now it seemed that a sword of fire was laid between them. There was a long silence, while the shadows passed across the sun, and there was no sound except the chirping of small insects in the grass. At last Lancelet reached up and drew her down, laying a soft kiss, which burned like fire, on the crescent on her brow. His voice was soft and intense.
“All the Gods together forbid I should trespass where the Goddess has marked you for her own, my dear cousin. I hold you sacred as the Goddess herself.” He held her close; she could feel that he was shaking, and a happiness so intense that it was pain flooded through her.
She had never known what it was to be happy, not since she was a small and heedless child; happiness was something she dimly remembered before her mother had burdened her with the weight of her little brother. And here in the Island, life had soared into the free spaces of the spirit and she had known exaltation and the delights of power as well as the suffering and struggle of the pain and the ordeals; but never the pure happiness she knew now. The sun seemed to burn more brightly, the clouds to move through the sky like great wings against the dazzling, sparkling air, every bud of clover in the grass shimmered with its own interior light, a light that seemed to shine out from her as well. She saw herself mirrored in Lancelet’s eyes and knew that she was beautiful, and that he desired her, and that his love and respect for her were so great that he would even hold his own desire within bounds. She felt she would burst with her joy.
Time stopped. She swam in delight. He did no more than stroke her cheek with the gentlest of feather-light caresses, and neither of them wanted more. She played softly with his fingers, feeling the calluses on his palms.
After a long time, he drew her against him and spread the edges of his cloak over her. They lay side by side, barely touching, letting the power of the sun and the earth and the air move through them in harmony, and she dropped into a dreamless sleep through which she was still conscious of their intertwined hands. It seemed that some time, a very long time ago, they had lain like this, content, timeless, in an endless joyful peace, as if they were part of the standing stones which had stood here forever; as if she both experienced and remembered being with him here. Later she woke and saw him sleeping, and sat memorizing every line of his face with a fierce tenderness.
The sun had declined from noon when he woke, smiling into her eyes, and stretched like a cat. Still enclosed in the bubble of her joy, she heard him say, “We were going down to hunt waterfowl. I would like to make peace with my mother—I am so happy I cannot bear to think of being at odds with any living thing today, but perhaps the spirits of nature will send us some waterfowl whose given destiny is to make us a happy meal ... .”
She laughed, clasping his hand. “I will take you where the water birds hunt and fish, and if it is the will of the Goddess, we will catch nothing, so we need not feel guilt about disturbing their destiny. But it is very muddy, so you must take off those boots you have for riding, and I will have to tuck up my dress again. Do you use a throwing stick like the Picts, or their little arrows with poison, or do you snare them and wring their necks?”
“I think they suffer less when they are quickly netted and their necks broken at once,” Lancelet said thoughtfully, and she nodded.
“I will bring a net and snare—“
They saw no one as they climbed down the Tor, sliding in a few minutes down what had taken them more than an hour to climb. Morgaine slipped into the building where nets and snares were kept and brought out two; they went quietly along the shore and found the reeds at the far side of the Island. Barefoot, they waded into the water, hiding in the reeds and spreading the nets. They were in the great shadow of the Tor, and the air felt chill; the water birds were already beginning to descend in numbers to feed. After a moment a bird began to struggle and flap, its feet caught in Morgaine’s snare; she moved swiftly, seized it and, within seconds, broke its neck. Soon Lancelet caught one, then another; he tied their necks together with a band of reeds.
“That is enough,” he said. “It is good sport, but on such a day as this I would rather not kill anything needlessly, and there is one for my mother and two for the Merlin. Do you want one for yourself?”
She shook her head. “I eat no flesh,” she said.
“You are so tiny,” he said, “I suppose you need little food. I am big and I hunger quickly.”
“Are you hungry now? It is too early for most berries, but we might find some haws from the winter—“
“No,” he said, “not now, not really; my supper will be all the more welcome for a little hunger.” They came up on the shore, soaked. Morgaine pulled off her deerskin overtunic to dry it on a bush, for it would stiffen, and pulled off her skirt too, wringing out the water, standing unselfconsciously in her undershift of unbleached linen. They found where they had left their shoes, but they did not put them on, only sitting on the grass, holding hands quietly and watching the waterfowl swimming, suddenly upending their tails and diving for small fish.
“How still it is,” Lancelet said. “It is as if we were the only people alive in all the world today, outside time and space and all cares and troubles, or thoughts of war or battle or kingdoms or strife ... .”
She said, her voice shaking as the thought struck her that this golden time must end, “I wish this day could last forever!”
“Morgaine, are you weeping?” he asked in sudden solicitude.
“No,” she said fiercely, shaking a single rebellious drop from her lashes, seeing the world burst into prism colors. She had never been able to weep; had never shed a single tear in fear or pain, through all the years of ordeals in the making of a priestess.
“Cousin, kinswoman ... Morgaine,” he said, holding her against him, stroking her cheek. She turned and clung to him, burying her face in the front of his tunic. He felt warm; she could feel the steady beat of his heart.
After a moment he bent and laid one hand under her chin, raising her face, and their lips met.
He whispered, “I would you were not pledged to the Goddess.”
“I, too,” she said softly.
“Come here, come here—let me hold you, like this—I have sworn I will not ... trespass.”
She closed her eyes; she no longer cared. Her oath seemed a thousand leagues and a thousand years distant, and not even the thought of Viviane’s anger could have deterred her. Years afterward, she wondered what would have happened if they had stayed like that even a few more minutes; no doubt the Goddess in whose hands they lay would have had her will with them. But even as their lips joined again, Lancelet stiffened a little, as if hearing something just outside the range of hearing.
Morgaine pulled away and sat up.
“Morgaine, what is that?”
“I hear nothing,” she said, straining to hear beyond the sound of soft water lapping in the Lake, wind rustling in the reeds, and the occasional sound of a fish jumping. And then it came again, like a soft sighing ... like someone weeping.
“Someone is crying,” said Lancelet, and unfolded his long legs quickly to stand up. “Over there ... someone is hurt or lost, it sounds like a little girl ... .”
Morgaine followed quickly, barefoot, leaving her skirt and tunic on the bush. It was just possible that one of the younger priestesses might have become lost here, though they were not supposed to leave the enclosure near the House of Maidens. Still, young girls were young girls, and could not yet be trusted not to break rules; one of the old priestesses had once said that the House of Maidens was for little girls whose whole duty in life was to spill things, break things, and forget things, the rules of their daily life among them, until they had spilled, broken, and forgotten everything they could, and thus made room in their lives for a little wisdom. And now that Morgaine was a full priestess, she had begun to instruct the young, and sometimes she felt the old priestess had been right: surely she had never been so silly and empty-headed as the girls who were now in the House of Maidens.
They followed the sound. It was hazy, now fading out for minutes altogether, and then coming back, quite clear. Mist was beginning to drift in from the Lake in thick tendrils, and Morgaine was not quite sure whether it was ordinary fog born of the dampness and the approaching sunset, or whether it was the outlying mist of the veil surrounding the magical realm.
“There,” said Lancelet, plunging suddenly into the mist. Morgaine followed him and saw dimly, fading from shadow into reality and back again, the figure of a young girl standing in the water up to her ankles, and crying.
Yes, Morgaine realized, she’s really there; and, No, this is no priestess. She was very young and dazzlingly pretty; she seemed all white and gold, her skin pale as ivory just stained with coral, her eyes palest sky-blue, her hair long and pale and shining through the mist like living gold. She wore a white dress which she was trying unsuccessfully to hold out of the water. And somehow she seemed to shed tears without any ugly distortion of her face, so that, weeping, she only looked prettier than ever.
Morgaine said, “What is the matter, child? Are you lost?”
She stared at them as they came closer, and whispered, “Who are you? I didn’t think anyone could hear me here—I called out to the sisters, but none of them could hear me, and then the land started to move, and where it had been all solid, suddenly I was standing here in the water and the reeds were all around me and I was afraid ... . What is this place? I never saw it before, and I have been in the convent for almost a year now ... .” And she crossed herself.
Suddenly Morgaine knew what had happened. The veil had thinned, as it did occasionally in spots of such concentrated power, and somehow this girl had had enough sensitivity to be aware of it. This happened, sometimes, as a momentary vision, so that someone could see the other world as a shadow or a brief vision; but to move through into the other world was rare.
The girl took a step toward them, but under her feet the marshy surface swayed, and she stopped in panic.
“Stand still,” Morgaine said gently. “The ground is a little unsafe here. I know the paths. I’ll help you out, dear.”
But even as she moved forward, her hand extended, Lancelet stepped in front of her, picked up the young girl, and carried her to dry land, setting her down.
“Your shoes are wet,” he said, for they squelched as she moved. “Take them off and you can dry them.”
She looked at him in wonder; she had stopped crying. “You’re very strong. Not even my father is as strong as that. And I think I have seen you somewhere, haven’t I?”
“I don’t know,” Lancelet said. “Who are you? Who is your father?”
“My father is King Leodegranz,” she said, “but I am here at school in the convent.. ..” Her voice began to shake again. “Where is it? I cannot even see the building anywhere, or the church—“
“Don’t cry,” Morgaine said, stepping forward, and the young girl drew back a little.
“Are you one of the fairy people? You have that blue sign on your forehead—“ and she raised her hand and crossed herself again. “No,” she said doubtfully, “you cannot be a demoness, you do not vanish when I cross myself, as the sisters say any demon must do—but you are little and ugly like the fairy people—“
Lancelet said firmly, “No, of course neither of us is a demon, and I think we can find the way back to your convent for you.” Morgaine, her heart sinking, saw that he now looked upon the stranger as he had looked on her only minutes before, with love, desire, almost worship. As he turned back to Morgaine, saying eagerly, “We can help her, can’t we?” Morgaine saw herself as she must look to Lancelet and to the strange golden maiden —small, dark, with the barbarian blue sign on her forehead, her shift muddy to the knees, her arms immodestly bare and her feet filthy, her hair coming down. Little and ugly like one of the fairy folk. Morgaine of the Fairies. So they had taunted her since childhood. She felt a surge of self-hatred, of loathing for her small, dark body, her half-naked limbs, the muddy deerskin. She snatched her damp skirt off the bush and put it on, conscious suddenly of her bare limbs; she wound the filthy deerskin tunic over it. For a moment, as Lancelet looked at her, she felt that he too must think her ugly, barbarian, alien; this exquisite golden creature belonged to his own world.
He came and gently took the stranger girl’s hand, with a respectful bow. “Come, we can show you the way back.”
“Yes,” said Morgaine dully, “I will show you the way. Follow me, and stay close, because the ground is treacherous and you could mire yourself and not get out for a long time.” For a furious moment she was tempted to lead them both into the impassable mire—she could do it, she knew the way—lead them out there and leave them to drown or wander forever in the mists.
Lancelet asked, “What is your name?”
The fair girl said, “My name is Gwenhwyfar,” and she heard Lancelet murmuring, “What a lovely name, fitting to the lady who bears it.” Morgaine felt a surge of hatred so great she thought that she would faint with its force. She felt it would be with her until she died, and in that molten instant she actually longed for death. All the color had gone from the day, into the mist and the mire and the dismal reeds, and all her happiness had gone with it.
“Come,” she repeated in a leaden voice, “and I will show you the way.
As she turned to go she heard them laughing together behind her and wondered, through the dull surge of hatred, if they were laughing at her. She heard Gwenhwyfar’s girlish voice saying, “But you don’t belong to this horrible place, do you? You don’t look like one of the fairy folk, you’re not little and ugly.”
No, she thought, no, he was beautiful, and she—little and ugly. The words burned into her heart; she forgot that she looked like Viviane, and that, to her, Viviane was beautiful. She heard Lancelet saying, “No, no, I would love to come back with you—really, I would—but I am promised to dine with a relative this night, and my mother is angry enough with me already, I don’t want to make the old gentleman angry too. But no, I don’t belong to Avalon ... ” and, after a minute, “No, she’s—well, a cousin of my mother’s, or .something like that, we knew each other when we were children, that’s all.” And now she knew that he was speaking of her. So quickly, then, all that had been between them had been reduced to a distant family tie. Fiercely fighting back a surge of tears that made her throat ache, knowing that weeping would make her uglier than ever in their eyes, she stepped on dry land. “There lies your convent, Gwenhwyfar. Be careful to keep to the path, or you may lose yourself in the mists again.”
She saw that the girl had been holding Lancelet’s hand. It seemed to
Morgaine that he let it go reluctantly. The girl said, “Thank you, oh, thank you!”
“It is Morgaine you should thank,” Lancelet reminded her. “It is she who knows the paths in and out of Avalon.” The girl gave her a shy sidelong look. She dropped a little polite curtsey. “I thank you, mistress Morgaine.”
Morgaine drew a deep breath, drawing the mantle of a priestess around her again, the glamour she could summon when she would; despite her filthy and torn clothing, her bare feet, the hair that straggled in wet locks around her shoulders, she knew that suddenly she looked tall and imposing. She made a remote gesture of blessing and turned, silent, summoning Lancelet with another gesture. She knew, even though she did not see, that the awe and fright had returned to the girl’s eyes, but she moved silently away, with the noiseless gliding of a priestess of Avalon, Lancelet’s steps, reluctant, following her own silent ones.
After a moment she looked back, but the mists had closed and the girl had vanished within them. Lancelet said, shaken, “How did you do that, Morgaine?”
“How did I do what?” she asked.
“Suddenly look so—so—like my mother. All tall and distant and remote and—and not quite real. Like a female demon. You frightened the poor girl, you shouldn’t have done it!”
Morgaine bit her tongue with her sudden wrath. She said in a remote and enigmatic voice, “Cousin, I am what I am,” and turned, hurrying up the path ahead of him. She was cold and weary and sick with an inner sickness; she longed for the solitude of the House of Maidens. Lancelet seemed a long way behind her, but she no longer cared. He could find his own way from here.
In the spring of the year after this, through a drenching late-winter storm, the Merlin came late one night to Avalon. When word was brought to the Lady, she stared in astonishment.
“A night such as this would drown the very frogs,” she said. “What brings him out in such weather?”
“I do not know, Lady,” said the young apprentice Druid who had brought the word. “He did not even send for the barge, but made his own way by the hidden paths, and said that he must see you this night before you slept. I sent him for dry clothing—his own was in such a state as you can imagine. I would have brought him food and wine as well, but he asked if he might sup with you.”
“Tell him he is welcome,” Viviane said, keeping her face carefully neutral—she had learned very well the art of concealing her thoughts—but when the young man had gone, she allowed herself to stare in amazement, and to frown.
She sent for her attendant women, and bade them bring not her usual spare supper, but food and wine for the Merlin, and to build up the fire anew.
After a time she heard his step outside, and when he came in, he went directly to the fire. Taliesin was stooped now, his hair and beard all white, and he looked somewhat incongruous in the green robe of a novice bard, far too short for him, so that his scrawny ankles protruded from the lower edge of the garment. She seated him near the fire—he was still, she noticed, shivering—and set a plate of food and a cup of wine, good apple wine from Avalon itself, in a chased silver cup, at his side.
Then she seated herself on a small stool nearby and tasted her bread and dried fruit as she watched him eat. When he had pushed the plate aside and sat sipping at the wine, she said, “Now tell me everything, Father.”
The old man smiled at her. “I never thought to hear you call me so, Viviane. Or do you think I have taken the holy orders of the church in my dotage?”
She shook her head. “No,” she said, “but you were the lover of my mother who was Lady here before me, and you fathered two of my sisters. Together we have served the Goddess and Avalon for more years than I can number, and perhaps I long for the comfort of a father’s voice this night ... I do not know. I feel very old this night, Fa—Taliesin. Is it that you think me too old to be your daughter?”
The old Druid smiled. “Never that, Viviane. You are ageless. I know how old you are—or I could reckon up your age if I chose—but still you seem a girl to me. You might even now have as many lovers as you chose, if you willed it.”
She dismissed that with a gesture. “Be sure I have never found any man who meant more to me than necessity, or duty, or a night’s pleasure,” she said. “And only once, I think, any man save yourself who came near to matching me in strength—“ She laughed. “Though, had I been ten years younger—how, think you, would I have befitted the throne as the High King’s queen, and my son the throne?”
“I do not think Galahad—what is it he would have you call him now? Lancelet?—I do not think he is the stuff of which kings are made. He is a visionary, a reed shaken by the wind.”
“But if he had been fathered by Uther Pendragon—“ Taliesin shook his head. “He is a follower, Viviane, not a leader.”
“Even so. That comes from being reared at Ban’s court, as a bastard. Had he been reared as a king’s son ... ”
“And who would have ruled Avalon in those years, had you chosen a crown in the Christian lands outside?”
“If I had ruled them at Uther’s side,” she said, “they would not have been Christian lands. I thought Igraine would have power over him, and use it for Avalon ... .”
He shook his head. “There is no use in fretting after last winter’s snow, Viviane. It is of Uther I came to speak. He is dying.”
She raised her head and stared at him. “So it has come already.” She felt her heart racing. “He is too young to die ... .”
“He leads his men into battle, where a wiser man of his years might leave it to his generals; he took a wound, and fever set in. I offered my services as healer, but Igraine forbade it, as did the priests. I could have done nothing anyway; his time has come. I saw it in his eyes.”
“How does Igraine as queen?”
“Very much as you would have foreseen,” said the old Druid. “She is beautiful, and dignified, and pious, and goes always in mourning for the children she has lost. She bore another son at All Hallows; he lived four days, no more. And her house priest has convinced her it is the punishment for her sins. No breath of scandal has ever touched her since she married Uther—save for the birth of that first child, so soon. But that was enough. I asked her what would become of her after Uther’s death, and when she had done weeping for that, she said she would retire into a convent. I offered her the shelter of Avalon, where she could be near to her daughter, but she said it would not be seemly for a Christian queen.”
Viviane’s smile hardened a little. “I never thought to hear that of Igraine.”
“Viviane, you must not blame her, even in thought, for what you yourself have wrought. Avalon cast her out when most she needed it; would you chide the girl because she has found comfort in a simpler faith than ours?”
“I doubt it not—you are the only man in all of Britain who could speak of the High Queen as a girl!”
“To me, Viviane, even you are a little girl at times—that same little girl who used to climb on my knee and touch the strings of my harp.”
“And now I can hardly play. My fingers lose their suppleness with the years,” Viviane said.
He shook his head. “Ah, no, my dear,” he said, holding out his own thin, gnarled old fingers. “Next to this, your hands are young, yet daily I speak to my harp with them, and you could have done so as well. Your hands chose to wield power, not song.”
“And what would have become of Britain if I had not?” she flared at him.
“Viviane,” he said, with a touch of sternness, “I did not censure you. I merely spoke the thing which is.”
She sighed and leaned her chin in her hands. “I spoke well when I said that this night I was in need of a father. So it has come upon us already, the thing we feared and have wrought for all these years. What of Uther’s son, my father? Is he ready?”
“He must be ready,” said the Merlin. “Uther will not live till Midsummer-day. And already the carrion crows gather, as they did when Ambrosius lay dying. As for the boy—have you not seen him?”
“Now and again, I see a glimpse of him in the magic mirror,” she said. “He looks healthy and strong, but that tells me nothing except that he can look the part of a king when it comes to that. You have visited him, have you not?”
“At Uther’s will, I went now and again to see how he grew. I saw that he had those same books in Latin and Greek which taught your son so much of strategy and warfare; Ectorius is Roman to the core, and the conquests of Caesar and the exploits of Alexander are part of his very being. He is an educated man, and has trained both his sons for warfare. Young Caius was blooded in battle last year; Arthur fretted that he could not go, but he is an obedient son to Ectorius and did as he was told.”
“If he is so much Roman,” Viviane asked, “will Arthur be willing to be subject to Avalon? For he must rule the Tribes, as well, and the Pictish folk, remember.”
“I saw to that,” said the Merlin, “for I induced him to meet some of the little people, saying that they were the allies of Uther’s soldiers in this war to defend our island. With them he has learned to shoot their elf bolts, and to move silently in the heather and over the moors, and—“ He hesitated and said significantly, “He can stalk the deer and does not fear to go among them.”
Viviane closed her eyes for a moment. “He is so young ... ”
“The Goddess chooses always the youngest and strongest of men to lead her warriors,” said Taliesin.
Viviane bowed her head. “Be it so,” she said. “He shall be tested. Bring him here if you can before Uther dies.”
“Here?” The Merlin shook his head. “Not till the testing is done. Only then can we show him the road to Avalon and the two realms over which he must rule.”
Again Viviane bowed her head. “To Dragon Island, then.”
“It will be the ancient challenge? Uther was not tested so at his king-making—“
“Uther was a warrior; it was enough to make him lord over the dragon,” Viviane said. “This boy is young and unblooded. He must be tested and proven.”
“And if he fails ... ”
Viviane gritted her teeth. “He must not fail!”
Taliesin waited until she met his eyes again and repeated, “And if he fails ... ”
She sighed. “No doubt Lot is ready, if that should come.”
“You should have taken one of Morgause’s sons and fostered him here at Avalon,” the Merlin said. “Gawaine is a likely boy. Hotheaded, quarrelsome—a bull, where Uther’s boy is a stag. But there is the stuff of a king in Gawaine, I think, and he also is Goddess-born—Morgause too was your mother’s daughter, and her sons have the royal blood.”
“I do not trust Lot,” said the Lady vehemently, “and I trust Morgause less than that!”
“Yet Lot holds the clansmen to the north, and I think the Tribes would accept him—“
“But those who hold to Rome—never,” said the Lady, “and then there would be two kingdoms in Britain, ever warring, and neither strong enough to hold off the Saxons and the wild Northmen. No. Uther’s son it must be, he must not fail!”
“That must be as the Goddess wills,” said the Merlin sternly. “See you mistake not your own will for hers.”
Viviane covered her face with her hands. “If he fails—if he fails it will all have been for nothing,” she said wildly, “—all that I have done to Igraine, all I have done to all those I love. Father, have you foreseen that it will fail?”
The old man shook his white head and his voice was compassionate.
“The Goddess does not make her will known to me,” he said, “and it was you who foresaw that this boy would have the powers to lead all of Britain. I caution you against pride, Viviane—thinking you know the best for every man and woman living. You have ruled well in Avalon—“
“But I am old,” she said, raising her face, and she could see the pity in his eyes, “and one day soon ... ”
The Merlin bowed his head; he too lived under that law. “When that time comes, you will know; it is not yet, Viviane.”
“No,” she said, struggling against the sudden despair which had come, as it sometimes did now, a heat in her body, a torment in her mind, “when it comes, when I can no longer see what lies ahead, then I will know it is time to give over the rulership of Avalon to another. Morgaine is still young, and Raven, whom I love well, has given herself to silence and the voice of the Goddess. It has not yet come; but if it comes too soon—“
“Whenever it comes, Viviane, that will be the right time,” the Merlin said. He stood up, tall and unsteady, and Viviane saw that he leaned heavily on his stick. “I will bring the boy to Dragon Island then, at the spring thaw, and we will see whether he is ready to be made king. And then you will give him the sword and the cup, in token that there is an eternal link between Avalon and the world outside—“
“The sword, at least,” Viviane said. “The cup—I do not know.”
The Merlin bowed his head. “That I leave to your wisdom. You, not I, are the voice of the Goddess. Yet you will not be the Goddess for him—“
Viviane shook her head. “He will meet the Mother when he is triumphant,” she said, “and from her hand he will take the sword of victory. But first he must prove his own, and must meet first with the Maiden Huntress. ...” A flicker of a smile crossed her face. “And no matter what happens after that,” she said, “we will take no such chance as we did with Uther and Igraine. We shall make certain of the royal blood, whatever comes of it later.”
WHEN THE MERLIN had gone away, she sat for a long time, watching pictures in the fire, seeing into the past alone, not seeking to look through the mist of time toward the future.
She too, years ago, so many years that she could not now remember how many, had laid down her maidenhood to the Horned God, the Great Hunter, the Lord of the living spiral dance. She hardly spared a thought for the virgin who would take this part in the kingmaking which was to come, but she let her mind stray into the past, and the other times she had played the part of the Goddess in the Great Marriage ...
... never had it been more to her than duty; sometimes pleasant, sometimes distasteful, but always bidden, possessed by the Great Mother who had ruled her life since first she had come here. Suddenly she envied Igraine, and a detached part of her mind wondered why she envied a woman who had lost all her children to death or fosterage, and now was to suffer widowhood and end her life behind convent walls.
What I envy her is the love she has known ... . I have no daughters, my sons are strangers and alien to me ... . I have never loved, she thought. Nor have I known what it is to be loved. Fear, awe, reverence ... these have been given me. Never love. And there are times when I think I would give it all for one look from any human being such as Uther gave Igraine at their wedding.
She sighed bleakly, repeating half aloud what the Merlin had said. “Well, there is no use fretting after last year’s snowfall.” She raised her head, and her attendant came on noiseless feet.
“Lady—?”
“Bring me—no,” she said, changing her mind abruptly; let the girl sleep. It is not true that I have never loved or been loved. I love Morgaine beyond all measuring, and she loves me.
Now that, too, might come to an end. But that too must be as the Goddess willed it.
The palest splinter of new moon stood to the west of Avalon. Morgaine paced slowly upward, her bare feet treading out the spiral pathway, noiseless and pale as the virgin moon. Her hair was unbound, her single garment uncinctured. She knew that guards and priestesses watched her, silent, lest some unauthorized person disturb her silence with an unconsecrated word. Behind the dark curtain of her hair, her eyelids were lowered. She moved unerringly on the path, without need for sight. Raven moved silently behind her, like Morgaine barefoot, ungirdled, her unbound hair curtaining her face.
Upward and upward in the darkening twilight, with a few stars pale in the indigo dome above them. The ring stones were grey and shadowy, a single pallid flicker within them—not fire; some will-o’-the-wisp, witch fire, sorcery, gleaming out from within the magical circle.
By the last flicker of the setting moon, reflected for a moment in the shining Lake below, a silent maiden priestess moved toward them, only a little girl, robed in undyed wool, her shorn hair no more than a wisp of darkness. She offered Morgaine a cup and Morgaine accepted it and drank in silence, then handed the cup to Raven, who drained its last drops. Silver and gold gleamed in the dying light. Morgaine took, from unseen hands, the great cross-handled sword, gasping a little at the unexpected weight. Barefoot, cold but not aware of it, she traced out the circle under the ring stones. Behind her, Raven took the long spear, thrust it into the heart of the witch fire. Light sprang up on the bit of tow there and she carried it, after Morgaine, all around the circle, a dim line of pale witch fire springing up around the dimness. Returning to the center by the dimmest of pale lights, they saw the face of Viviane; ageless, timeless, floating in midair disembodied—the face of the Goddess, shining. Although Morgaine knew that the effect was produced by a luminous substance smeared on cheeks and brow against the darkness of the circle and the dark garments, it never failed to make her catch her breath.
Bodiless, shining hands laid something in Morgaine’s hands, then in Raven’s. Morgaine bit into the sharp wooden bitterness, forced herself, past sickness, to swallow. Silence descended. Eyes gleamed in the dark, but no faces could be seen. She felt as if she were standing among multitudes beyond multitudes thronging the top of the Tor, but she could see no single face among them. Even Viviane’s bodiless face had vanished into the dark. She could feel the warmth of Raven’s body near hers, though they nowhere touched one another. She tried to keep her mind still, in meditation, moving into the schooled silence, not sure why she had been brought here.
Time passed; stars brightened against the ever-darkening sky. Time, Morgaine thought, time runs differently in Avalon, or perhaps it does not exist. Many nights during the long years she had traced out the spiral paths up the Tor, probing the mysteries of time and space within the circle of the ring stones. Yet tonight seemed stranger, darker, somehow more weighted with mystery; never before had she been called out from the other priestesses to play the major part in ritual. She knew that what she had been given the magical feast, was an herb used to strengthen the sight; that did not diminish its power or its magic.
After a time, in the darkness, she began to see pictures in her mind, small colored pictures as if at a very great distance. She saw a herd of deer running. She saw again the great darkness that had descended upon the land when the sun went out and a cold wind blew, and she had been afraid that the world was ending; but the older priestesses had explained to her, as they gathered in the courtyard, that the Moon God was effacing the brightness of the Goddess, and she ran out with them joyously to join in the shrieks of the women to frighten him away. Later it had been explained to her how the sun and moon moved, and why, now and again, one of them crossed the face of the other; that it was in the way of nature, and the common people’s beliefs about the face of the Gods were symbols which these people, at the current state of their evolution, needed to visualize the great truths. Some day all men and women would know the inner truths, but now they needed them not.
She watched in the inner Sight, as she had done in life, while again and again the cycles of the year swung around the great ring stones; she watched the birth and fecundity and at last the dying of the God; she saw the great processions winding up the spiral toward the oak grove before the ring stones had been set here ... time was transparent, it ceased to have meaning as the little painted people came and ripened and were cut down, and then the Tribes, and after them the Romans in their turn, and tall strangers from the coast of Gaul, and after them ... time ceased, and she only saw the movement of peoples and the overgrowth of the world, ice came and receded and came again, she saw the great temples of Atlantis now drowned forever between the covering oceans, saw new worlds rising and setting ... and silence and beyond the night the great stars wheeled and swung ... .
Behind her she heard an eerie wailing cry and her skin iced. Raven cried out, Raven whose voice she had never heard; Raven, who once, when they were serving together in the Temple, had caught a lamp about to overflow, and, scalded with the burning oil, had sat smothering her screams with her two hands while her burns were bandaged, that she might not break the vow which had given her voice to the Goddess. She would always bear the scars; once, looking at her, Morgaine had thought, The vow I made was a little thing next to that, and yet I came so near to breaking it for a dark and sweet-voiced man.
And now Raven, in the moonless night, screamed aloud, a high, eldritch crying, like a woman in childbed. Three times the shrill cry trembled over the Tor, and Morgaine shivered again, knowing that even the priests on the other island that lay corresponding to their own must waken in their solitary cells and cross themselves, hearing that haunted cry that rang between the worlds.
After the cry, silence, a silence which seemed to Morgaine filled with breathing, with held breath even, from the unseen initiates who now surrounded the dreadful solitude inhabited only by the three motionless priestesses. Then, gasping and choking, as if her voice were long disabled from the silence, Raven cried out:
“Ah—seven times the Wheel, the Wheel with thirteen spokes, has turned about in the sky ... seven times the Mother has given birth to her dark son ... .”
Again the silence, deepening in contrast, except for the choking gasps of the entranced prophetess. She cried out, “Ah—ah—I burn—I burn—it is time, it is time ... ” and lapsed again into the clotted silence, pregnant with terror.
“They run! They run in the spring rutting, they run—they fight, they choose their king—ah, the blood, the blood—and the greatest of them all, he runs, and there is blood on the antlers of his pride ... .”
Again the silence lengthened, and Morgaine, seeing in the darkness behind her eyelids the spring running of the deer, saw again what she had seen in a half-forgotten glimpse in the silver bowl—a man among the deer, struggling, fighting ... .
“It is the child of the Goddess, he runs, he runs ... the Horned One must die ... and the Horned One must be crowned ... the Virgin Huntress must call the king to her, she must lay down her maidenhood to the God ... ah, the old sacrifice, the old sacrifice ... I burn, I burn ... ” and the words began to choke over one another and die in a long, sobbing scream. Behind her, through her closed eyes, Morgaine saw Raven fall senseless to the ground and lie there, gasping, her gasps the only sound in the deepening silence.
Somewhere an owl called; once, twice, three times.
Out of the darkness, priestesses came, silent and dark, blue gleams on their brow. They lifted Raven tenderly and bore her away. They lifted Morgaine too, and she felt her throbbing head tenderly held to a woman’s breast as they carried her away. Then she knew no more.
THREE DAYS LATER, when she had recovered her strength somewhat, Viviane sent for her.
Morgaine rose and tried to dress herself, but she was still weak, and accepted the help of one of the young priestesses, grateful that the girl was under silence and did not speak to her. The long fasting, the terrible sickness brought on by the ritual herbs, the strung tension of the ritual, still gripped at her body; she had eaten a little soup the night before, and some bread soaked in milk this morning, but she still felt sick and empty after the long strain, and her head throbbed, and her moon-dark bleeding had seized her with a violence never felt before; this too, she knew, might be the aftereffect of the sacred herbs. Sick and incurious, she wished that Viviane had left her to recover in peace, but she did Viviane’s will as she would have done that of the Goddess, had the Goddess leaned down from Heaven and spoken a wish aloud. When she was dressed, and had braided her hair and wound it with a deerskin thong, and painted the blue crescent on her forehead with fresh blue dye, she went along the trail to the house where the High Priestess lived.
As was now her privilege, she entered without knocking or announcing her presence. Somehow in this house she always visualized Viviane waiting for her, seated in the thronelike chair as if she were the Goddess on her dark throne, but today Viviane was moving about at the back of the room, and the fire was not lighted, but dark and cold. Viviane wore her simple robe of undyed wool with a hood tied over her hair, and for the first time it came sharply on Morgaine that Viviane was priestess, not now of the Maiden or of the Mother, but of the ancient wise-woman—who was also the Old Death-crone. Her face looked lined and haggard, and Morgaine thought, Of course, if the rites made Raven ill, and myself, and we are both young and strong, what must it have done to Viviane, who has grown old in the service of her whom we serve?
Then Viviane turned and smiled at her, a loving smile, and Morgaine felt again the old surge of love and tenderness. But as was fitting a younger priestess in the presence of the Lady, she waited for Viviane to speak first.
Viviane gestured to her to sit. “Have you recovered, child?”
Morgaine let herself drop to the bench, and knew that even from the short walk she was exhausted. She shook her head.
“I know,” Viviane said. “Sometimes, when they do not know how you will react, they give you too much. Next time, do not take all they give you—judge how much you can take—enough to give you the Sight, but not enough to make you so very ill. You have that right, now; you have reached a stage where obedience may be tempered with your own judgment.”
For some reason those words rang again and again in Morgaine’s mind: tempered with your own judgment, tempered with your own judgment. She thought, I am still sick from the drugs they gave me, and shook her head, impatient, to clear away the sound and listen to Viviane.
“How much did you understand of Raven’s prophecy?”
“Very little,” Morgaine confessed. “It was mysterious to me. I am not sure why I was there.”
“Partly,” Viviane said, “to lend your strength to her; she is not strong. She is still abed, and I am concerned about her. She knows how much of the herb she can take, yet even that little seemed to be too much; she vomited blood, and is passing more. But she will not die.”
Morgaine put out a hand to steady herself; she felt hollow, and a sudden wave of sickness passed over her again, leaving her pale and giddy. Without excuse she stood up, staggered outside and vomited, bringing up the bread and milk she had swallowed that morning. She heard Viviane speak her name, and when she had done and stood clutching the doorframe, retching, she found one of the young attendant priestesses there with a cloth to wipe her face; it was wet and smelled faintly of sweet herbs. Viviane steadied her step as she came back inside, then handed her a small cup.
“Sip it slowly,” she said.
It burned her tongue and for a moment exaggerated the feeling of sickness—it was the strong spirit distilled by the northern Tribes, water-of-life they called it. She had tasted it only once or twice. But when it was down she felt a strong warmth spreading out from her empty stomach, and after a few minutes she felt better, steadier, almost euphoric.
“A little more,” Viviane said. “It will strengthen your heart. Now, do you feel better?”
Morgaine nodded. “Thank you.”
“Tonight you will be able to eat,” said Viviane, and in Morgaine’s strange state it sounded like a command, as if Viviane could command her very stomach to behave itself. “So. Let us talk of Raven’s prophecy. In the ancient days, long before the wisdom and the religion of the Druids came here from the sunken temples in the western continent, the fairy people— of whom we are both born, you and I, my Morgaine—lived here on the shores of the inland sea, and before they learned how to plant the barley and reap it again, they lived by gathering the fruits of the land, and by hunting the deer. And in those days there was no king among them, but only a queen who was their mother, though they had not yet learned to think of her as the Goddess. And since they lived by hunting, their queen and priestess learned to call the deer to her, and ask of their spirits that they sacrifice themselves and die for the life of the Tribe. But sacrifice must be given for sacrifice—the deer died for the Tribe, and one of the Tribe must in turn die for the life of the deer, or at least take the chance that the deer could, if they chose, take his life in exchange for their own. So the balance was kept. Do you understand this, my darling?”
Morgaine heard the unaccustomed endearment, and wondered dimly in her sick and drunken state, Is she telling me that I am to be the sacrifice? Is my life chosen for the Tribe?
It does not matter. I am given to the Goddess for life or for death.
“I understand, Mother. At least, I think I do.”
“So the Mother of the Tribe chose, every year, her consort. And since he had agreed to give his life for the Tribe, the Tribe gave him of their lives. Even if little children at the breast starved, he always had abundance, and all the women of the Tribe were his to lie with, so that he, the strongest and best, might sire their children. Besides, the Mother of the Tribe was often old past childbearing, and so he must have the choice of the young maidens, too, and no man of the Tribe would interfere with what he wanted. And then, when the year was past—every year in those times—he would put on the antlers of the deer, and wear a robe of untanned deerskin so that the deer would think him one of their own, and he would run with the herd as the Mother Huntress put the spell upon them to run. But by this time the herd had chosen their King Stag, and sometimes the King Stag would smell a stranger, and turn on him. And then the Horned One would die.”
Morgaine felt again the ice down her spine that she had felt when, on the Tor, this ritual had been enacted before her eyes. The year’s king is to die for the life of his people. Was the drug still working in her mind, that she could see it all so clearly?
“Well, time has moved on, Morgaine,” Viviane told her quietly, “and now those old rites are no longer needed, for the barley grows and the sacrifice is bloodless. Only in times of great peril does the Tribe demand such a leader. And Raven has foreseen that this is a time of such peril. So once again there will be a testing of one who runs the risk of death for his chosen people, so that they will follow him unto death.
“You have heard me speak of the Great Marriage?”
Morgaine nodded; of this, Lancelet had been born.
“The Tribes of the fairy folk, and all the Tribes of the North, have been given a great leader, and the chosen one will be tested by the ancient rite. And if he survives the testing—which will, to some extent, depend on the strength with which the Maiden Huntress can enchant the deer—then he will become the Horned One, the King Stag, consort of the Virgin Huntress, crowned with the antlers of the God. Morgaine, I told you years ago that your maidenhood belongs to the Goddess. Now she calls for it in sacrifice to the Horned God. You are to be the Virgin Huntress, and the bride of the Horned One. You have been chosen for this service.”
It was very still in the room, as if they stood again in the center of the ring stones in ritual. Morgaine dared not break the silence. At last, knowing that Viviane was waiting for some word of consent—what had the words been, so long ago? I(is too heavy a burden to be borne unconsenting —she bowed her head.
“My body and my soul belong to her, to do with as she will,” she whispered. “And your will is her will, Mother. Let it be so.”
Since she had come there, Morgaine had left Avalon only two or three times, and then only for short journeys into the countryside at the edges of the Summer Sea, so that she could become aware of the nearby sites which retained, despite disuse, their old power.
Time and place were now none of her concern. She had been taken from the Island at dawn in silence, cloaked and veiled so that no unpriestly eye might see the consecrated one, and carried in a closed litter so that not even the sun might shine on her face. In less than a day’s journeying from the enclosure of the sacred island she had lost all awareness of time and space and direction, lost in meditation, dimly aware of the beginning of the magical trance. There had been times when she had fought against the onset of the ecstatic state. Now she welcomed it, opening her mind full to the Goddess, inwardly imploring the Goddess to come into herself, the instrument, and possess her, body and soul, so that she might act in all things as the Goddess herself.
Nightfall; a moon nearly at full came dimly between the curtains of the litter. When the runners stopped, she felt it bathing her in cold light, like the kiss of the Goddess, and felt faint with the beginnings of ecstasy. She did not know where she was, nor did she care. She went where they led her, passive, blinded, tranced, knowing only that she went to meet her destiny.
She was inside a house, then she was put into the hands of a strange woman, who brought her bread and honey, which Morgaine did not touch —she would not break her fast again until she did so with the ritual meal —and water, which she drank thirstily. There was a bed, so placed that the moon fell upon her; the strange woman moved to draw the wooden shutters closed and Morgaine stopped her with an imperious gesture. She lay much of the night tranced, feeling the moonlight like a visible touch. At last she slept, but fitfully, wandering in and out of sleep like an uneasy traveller, strange images flickering in her mind—her mother, bending over the fair hair of the intruder Gwydion, her white breasts and coppery hair somehow forbidding instead of welcoming; Viviane, only somehow she was a sacrificial beast and the Lady of Avalon was leading her somewhere on the end of a rope, and she heard herself say fretfully, You needn’t pull, I am coming; Raven, soundlessly screaming. A great horned figure, half man, half animal, suddenly thrusting aside a curtain and striding into her room—she woke and half sat up, but there was no one there, only the moonlight, and the stranger woman sleeping quietly at her side. Quickly she lay down again and slept, this time dreamlessly and deep.
About an hour before dawn they awakened her. Now, in contrast to the tranced unawareness of the previous day, she was wide awake and sharply aware of everything—the cold fresh air, the mists stained with pink where soon the sun would rise, the strong smell of the little dark women in their garments of badly tanned skins. Everything was clean-edged and brilliantly colored, as if fresh this moment from the hand of the Goddess. The dark women whispered among themselves, not presuming to disturb the strange priestess; she heard them, but she knew only a few words of their language.
After a time the eldest of them—the one who had welcomed her and led her inside on the previous night, and whose bed she had shared—came to Morgaine and brought her fresh water. Morgaine bowed to thank her, the salute, priestess to priestess, and then wondered why. The woman was old; her hair, long and tangled and fastened with a clasp of bone, was almost all white, and her dark skin bore faded blue stains. Her garment was of the same imperfectly dyed skin of the others, but over it she wore a cloak of deerskin, the hair still clinging to it, painted with magical symbols; and about her neck were two necklaces, one of beautiful amber beads—Viviane herself owned none finer—and the other of bits of horn alternating with exquisitely chased gold bars. She carried herself with the authority of Viviane herself, and Morgaine knew that this was the tribal Mother and priestess of the people.
With her own hands, the woman began to prepare Morgaine for the ritual. She stripped her naked, and painted the soles of her feet and the palms of her hands with blue dye, and renewed the crescent moon on her brow; on her breast and belly she outlined the full moon, and just above the dark patch of Morgaine’s body hair she painted the dark moon. Briefly, almost perfunctorily, she parted the girl’s legs and probed a little: Morgaine, beyond embarrassment, knew why she was searching. For this rite, the priestess must be a virgin. But the tribal priestess would find nothing wrong; Morgaine was untouched, but she felt a sudden half-pleasurable moment of fear, and at the same moment she was conscious that she was almost fiercely hungry. Well, she was trained to ignore hunger, and after a time the hunger left her.
The sun Was rising as they led her outdoors, robed in a cloak like the old woman’s, with the magical signs painted on it—the moon, the antlers of the deer. She was aware of the stiff astringency of her painted body, and some part of her mind, very far away, stared with amazement and a moment’s contempt at these symbols of a mystery far older than the Druidic wisdom in which she had been so carefully schooled. That was momentary and vanished at once; the belief of generations ancient past knowing invested this rite with its own power and holiness. She saw the round stone house behind her; across from her was another, and they were leading forth a young man. She could not see him clearly; the rising sun was in her eyes, and she could see only that he was tall, with a shock of fair hair, and strongly built. He is not one of their own people, then? But it was not for her to question. The men of the tribe—and especially an old man, with the gnarled swollen muscles of a smith, blackened like his own forge—were painting the youth’s body from head to foot with the blue woad, covering him with a cloak of untanned raw skins, smearing his body with the deer fat. On his head they fixed antlers; at a low word of command, he swung his head to make certain they could not be dislodged, no matter how he moved.
Morgaine looked up to see the proud swing of that young head, and suddenly she felt a ripple of awareness run down her body, cramping her calves, running into the secret parts of her body.
This is the Horned One, this the God, this the consort of the Virgin Huntress.
They wound her hair in a garland of crimson berries and crowned her with the first of the spring flowers. The precious necklace of gold and bone was reverently taken from the neck of the Mother of the tribe and placed around her own; she felt its weight like the very weight of magic. Her eyes were dazzled with the rising sun. They placed something in her hand—a drum, taut skin stretched over a hooped frame.
As if it came from somewhere else, she heard her own hand strike it.
They stood on a hillside, overlooking a valley filled to the brim with thick forest, empty and silent, but within it she could sense the life in the forest—the deer moving on silent, slender feet, the animals climbing in the trees, and the birds nesting, darting, moving, asurge with the life of the first running tide of the full moon of spring. She turned for a moment and looked behind, on the hillside. Above them, carved white in the chalk, was a monstrous figure, human or animal she could not tell, her eyes were blurred; was it a running deer, was it a striding man, phallus erect and filled with the spring tide, too?
She could not see the young man at her side, only the surge of the life in him. There was a solemn, waiting hush all over the hillside. Time ceased, was again transparent, something in which she moved, bathed, stepped freely. The drum was in the old crone's hands again, but she had no awareness of having given it over to her. Her eyes were dazed with sun as she felt the God's head between her hands, blessing him. Something in the face ... of course: before these hills were raised, she had known this face, this man, her consort, from before the beginning of the world ... . She did not hear her own ritual words, only the surge of force behind them: Go forth and conquer ... run with the deer ... swift and strong as the very tides of the spring ... forever blessed be the feet that brought you here ... . She was not conscious of speech, only of the power, of her own hands blessing, of the force that streamed out of her body, through her body as if the very strength of the sun poured through her and into the man before her. Now the power of the winter is broken and the new life of the spring shall go with you and bring you to victory ... life of the Goddess, life of the world, blood of the earth our Mother, shed for her people ... .
She raised her hands, casting the blessing on the forest, on the earth, feeling the surges of power rushing through her hands like visible light. The young man's body was glowing like her own in the sunlight; around them none dared speak until, pulling her hands back with a rush, she felt the surge of power flung over them all, releasing the chant that rose around them. She could not hear the words, only the thrum of power within them:
Life surges in the spring, the deer run in the forest, and our life runs with them. The King Stag of the world shall bring them down, the King Stag, the Horned One blessed by the Mother shall triumph ... .
She was drawn to the last notch of tension, a strung bow pregnant with the arrow of power that must be sped. She touched the Horned One, releasing the power, and as if it sped through them all, they were off, running like the wind down the hillside, racing as if the very spring tides bore them. Behind them, feeling the power leave her, Morgaine crumpled and lay silent on the earth, feeling its damp chill strike up through her body. But she was unaware, tranced in the Sight.
She lay as if lifeless, but a part of her went with them, raced with them, speeding down the hillside, racing with the men of the tribe, flooding after the Horned One. Barking cries, as if they were hounds, sped after them, and a part of her knew that the women were crying out, speeding on the chase.
Higher in the sky the sun rose, the great Wheel of Life spinning in the heavens, fruitlessly speeding after her divine consort, the Dark Son ... .
The life of the earth, the pounding tides of the spring, flooded and pounded in the hearts of the running men. Then, as the ebb followed the flow, from the sunlit hillside the darkness of forest closed over them and swallowed them, and from running they moved swiftly on noiseless feet, imitating the delicate step of the deer; they were the deer, following the antlers of their Horned One, wearing the cloaks which held the deer spellbound, the necklaces signifying life as endless chain, live and feed and bear and die and be eaten in turn to feed the children of the Mother.
... hold thy children, Mother, thy King Stag must die to feed the life of her Dark Son ...
Darkness, the inner life of the forest closing around them; silence, the silence of the deer ... . Morgaine, aware now of the forest as life and the deer as the heart of the forest, cast her power and her blessing through and over the forest. A part of her lay on the sunlit hillside, tranced, exhausted, letting the life of the sun flood through her, body and blood and inner being, and a part of her ran with deer and men until both were one ... blending into one ... the surges of life that were the quiet deer in their thicket, the little does, smooth and slender, the life racing in them as it raced in her body, the surges of life that were the men, slipping silent and intent through the shadows ... .
Somewhere in the forest she felt the King Stag fling up his head, sniffing the wind, aware for the scent of an enemy, one of his own, one of the alien tribe of life ... she did not know whether it was the four-footed King Stag or the two-legged one she had blessed, they were one in the life of the Mother Earth, and their lot was in the hands of the Goddess. Antlers answered the toss of antlers, the sniffing breath taking in the life of the forest, searching it for alien, for prey, for predator, for rival where there could be none.
Ah, Goddess ... they were off, crashing through the underbrush, men fleet behind them only more silent, running, running ... run till the heart throbs like bursting in the chest, run till the life of the body overwhelms all knowledge and thought, fleet, searching and being sought, run with the deer who flee and the men who pursue, run with the spinning life of the great sun and the surge of the spring tides, run with the flow of life ... .
Lying motionless, her face pressed into the earth and the flooding sun burning her back, time crawling and racing by turns, Morgaine began to see—and from very far off it seemed that she had seen this before, in vision, sometime, somewhere, a very long time ago—the tall, sinewy youth, gripping his knife, falling, falling among the deer, among the slashing hooves —she knew she screamed aloud, and simultaneously knew that her cry had rung everywhere, so that even the King Stag paused in mid charge, appalled, hearing the shriek. There was a moment when everything stopped, and in that terrible moment of silence she saw that he scrambled to his feet, panting, charging with his head down, swinging his antlers, locking head-on, as he swayed and struggled, wrestling the deer with his strong hands and young body ... a knife slashed upward; blood spilled on the earth, and he was bleeding too, the Horned One, blood on his hands, blood from a long slash on his side, the blood spilling on the earth, sacrifice spilled to the Mother that life should feed on her blood ... and then the blood of the King Stag went over him in a gush as his blade found the heart, and the men around him rushed in with their spears ... .
She saw him carried back, covered in the blood of his twin and rival, the King Stag. All around him the little dark men were slashing, putting the raw, warm hide over his shoulders. Back they came in triumph, fires rising in the gathering dusk, and when the women lifted Morgaine she saw without surprise that the sun was setting, and she staggered, as if she too had run all day with the hunt and the deer.
They crowned her again with the crimson of triumph. The Horned One was brought before her, bleeding, and she blessed him and marked his forehead with the blood of the deer. The head was taken with the antlers which would bring down the next King Stag; the antlers which the Horned One had worn this day, broken and splintered, were cast into the fire. Soon there was a smell of burning flesh and she wondered if it was the flesh of man or stag ... .
They seated them side by side, and brought the first meats to them, dripping still with blood and the fat juices. Morgaine felt her head swimming, the rich taste of the meat overpowering her after her long fast; she was afraid for a moment that she would be sick again. Next to her he was eating hungrily, and she noticed by firelight that he had fine strong hands ... she blinked, seeing in a strange moment of doubled vision that serpents twined around them, then they were gone again. All around them the men and women of the Tribe were sharing in the ritual feast, the hymn of triumph, sung in an old language Morgaine could only half understand;
“He has triumphed, he has slain ...
... the blood of our Mother is shed upon the earth ...
... the blood of the God is spilled upon the earth ...
... and he shall rise and reign forever ...
... he has triumphed, he shall triumph forever, until the
end of the world ...”
The old priestess who had painted and decked her this morning held a silver cup to her lips; she felt the strong liquor sting her throat and burn all the way down. Fire, with a strong taste of honey behind it. Already she was drunk with the blood of the meat—she had tasted meat only a few times in the last seven years. Her head was swimming as they bore her away, stripped her and bedecked her naked body with more paint and garlands, marking her nipples and brow with the blood of the slain deer.
The Goddess receives her consort and she will slay him again at the end of time, she shall give birth to her Dark Son who will bring the King Stag down ... .
A little girl, painted blue from head to foot and bearing a broad dish, ran across the plowed fields, scattering dark drops as she ran, and Morgaine heard the great cry that went up behind her.
“The fields are blessed; give us food, O our Mother!”
And for an instant, some small part of Morgaine, dizzy and drunk and only half in her body at all, remarked coldly that she certainly must be mad; she, a civilized and educated woman, princess and priestess and kin to the royal line of Avalon, Druid-taught, here painted like a savage and smelling of freshly shed blood, enduring this barbarian mummery ...
.. . then it was all gone again, as the full moon, serene and proud, rose over the clouds that had barriered it from sight. Bathed naked in the moonlight, Morgaine felt the light of the Goddess streaming over, through her ... she was Morgaine no more, she was nameless, priestess and maiden and mother ... they strung a garland of crimson berries about her loins; the crude symbolism struck her with sudden fear, and she felt the full weight of virginity pouring and flooding through her like the spring tide. A torch flared in her eyes and they led her into darkness, echoing silences above and beyond her, a cave. All round her, on the walls, she could see the sacred symbols, painted there from the beginnings of time, the stag and antlers, the man with the horns on his brow, the swollen belly and full breasts of She Who Gives Life ... .
The priestess laid Morgaine on the couch of deerskins. For a moment she felt cold and frightened, and she shivered, and the old woman’s brow wrinkled in compassion; she drew Morgaine into her arms and kissed her on the lips, and Morgaine clung for a moment to the old woman, hugging her in sudden terror, as if the woman’s sheltering arms were her mother’s own ... then the woman smiled at her and kissed her again and touched her breasts in blessing and went away.
She lay there, feeling the life of the earth around her; she seemed to expand, to fill all the cave, the little scribbled drawings were painted on her breasts and her belly, and above her the great chalk figure, man or deer, strode with erect phallus ... the invisible moon outside the cave flooding her body with light as the Goddess surged inside her, body and soul. She stretched out her arms, and at her command she knew that outside the cave, in the light of the fecundating fires, man and woman, drawn one to the other by the pulsating surges of life, came together. The little blue-painted girl who had borne the fertilizing blood was drawn down into the arms of a sinewy old hunter, and Morgaine saw her briefly struggle and cry out, go down under his body, her legs opening to the irresistible force of nature in them. She saw without sight, her eyes closed against the glare of the torch, hearing the cries.
Now he was in the door of the cave, the antlers gone from his brow, his hair streaked, his body smeared blue and stained with blood, white skin like the white chalk of the body of the huge figure above the cave ... the Horned One, the consort. He moved dizzily, too, naked, except for a garland like her own about his loins, and she could see the erect life surging in him like that of the chalk figure. He knelt by her side, and by the torchlight, dazzled, she could see that he was no more than a boy, not one of the little dark people, but tall and fair ... . Why have they chosen a king who is not one of their own? The thought darted across her mind like a moonbeam and was gone; she was not thinking at all.
Now it is the time for the Goddess to welcome the Horned One—he was kneeling at the edge of the deerskin couch, swaying, blinking by the light of the torch. She reached up to him, gripped his hands, drew him down to her, feeling the soft warmth and weight of his body. She had to guide him. I am the Great Mother who knows all things, who is maiden and mother and all-wise, guiding the virgin and her consort ... dazed, terrified, exalted, only half conscious, she felt the life force take them both, moving her body without volition, moving him too, guiding him fiercely into her, till they were both moving without knowledge of what force gripped them. She heard herself crying out as if from a great distance, heard his voice high and shaken in the silence, never knowing what either of them cried out at that moment. The torch guttered and went out in the darkness as all the fierce fury of his young life burst and spurted into her womb.
He moaned and fell forward across her, lifeless except for his hoarse breathing. She eased him away, cradling his weight in her arms, holding him with weary warmth. She felt him kiss her naked breast. Then slowly, tiredly, his breathing quieted to normal, and after a moment she knew that he slept in her arms. She kissed his hair and his soft cheek with a wild tenderness, and then she too slept.
WHEN SHE WOKE the night was far advanced; moonlight had crept into the cave. She was utterly weary, her whole body aching, and she felt between her legs and knew that she was bleeding. She flung her damp hair back, looking down by the moonlight at the sprawled pale body still sleeping the sleep of long exhaustion beside her. He was tall and strong and beautiful, though by moonlight she could not see his features clearly, and the magical Sight had deserted her; now there was only the moon’s light and brilliance, no longer the compelling face of the Goddess. She was Morgaine again, not the shadow of the Great Mother; she was herself again, clear in her mind about what had happened.
She thought for a moment of Lancelet, whom she had loved, and to whom she had hungered to give this gift. Now it had come, not to a lover but to a faceless stranger ... no, she must not think like that. She was not a woman, she was a priestess, and she had given the force of the Virgin to the Horned One, as had been ordained for her fate before the walls of the world were laid. She had accepted her destiny as a priestess of Avalon must do, and she sensed that something of shattering importance had happened here in the night past.
She was cold and lay down, covering herself with the deerskin coverlet. She wrinkled her nose a little at its rankness; they had strewn it with sweet herbs, so at least there would not be fleas. Experienced at judging the tides, she guessed it was about an hour before sunrise. At her side the boy felt her stir and sat up sleepily.
“Where are we?” he asked. “Oh yes, I remember. In the cave. Why, it’s already getting light.” He smiled and reached for her; she let him pull her down and kiss her, wrapping her in strong arms. “Last night you were the Goddess,” he murmured, “but I wake and I find you are a woman.”
She laughed softly. “And you are not the God, but a man?”
“I think I have had enough of being a God, and besides, it seems to me that it is presumptuous for a man of flesh and blood,” he said, holding her against him. “I am content to be no more than a man.”
She said, “Perhaps there is a time to be Goddess and God, and a time to be no more than flesh and blood.”
“I was afraid of you last night,” he confessed. “I thought you the Goddess, all larger than life ... and you are such a little thing!” Suddenly he blinked and said, “Why, you speak my language, I had not noticed— you are not one of this tribe, then?”
“I am a priestess from the Holy Isle.”
“And the priestess is a woman,” he said, his hands gently exploring her breasts, which stirred into sudden life and hunger at his touch. “Do you think the Goddess will be angry with me if I like the woman better?”
She laughed and said, “The Goddess is wise in the ways of men.”
“And is her priestess?”
Suddenly she felt shy. “No—I have never known a man before this,” she said, “and it was not I, but the Goddess—“
He said in the dimness, drawing her close to him, “Since the God and the Goddess have known pleasure, should not the man and the woman know it also?” His hands were growing bolder, and she pulled him down to her. “It seems only fitting,” she said.
This time in full awareness she could savor it, the softness and hardness, the strong young hands and the surprising gentleness behind his bold approach. She laughed in delight at the unexpected pleasure, fully open to him, sensing his enjoyment as her own. She had never been so happy in her life. Spent, they lay, limbs twined, caressing each other in a pleasant fatigue.
At last, in the growing light, he sighed.
“They will be coming for me soon,” he said, “and there is much more of this—I am to be taken somewhere and given a sword, and many other things.” He sat up and smiled at her. “And I would like to wash, and have clothes befitting a civilized man, and free myself of all this blood and blue dye ... how everything passes! Last night I did not even know I was all smeared with blood—look, you too are covered with the stag’s blood where I lay on you—“
“I think when they come for me, they will bathe me and give me fresh garments,” she said, “and you too, in a running stream.”
He sighed with a gentle, boyish melancholy. His voice was breaking, an uncertain baritone; how could he be so young, this young giant who had fought the King Stag and killed him with his flint knife?
“I do not suppose I will ever meet you again,” he said, “for you are a priestess and dedicated to the Goddess. But I want to say this to you—“ and he leaned down and kissed her between her breasts. “You were the very first. No matter how many women I may have, for all my life I will always remember you and love you and bless you. I promise you that.”
There were tears on his cheek. Morgaine reached for her garment and tenderly dried the tears, cradling his head against her.
At the gesture he seemed to stop breathing.
“Your voice,” he whispered, “and what you just did—why do I seem to know you? Is it because you are the Goddess, and in her all women are the same? No—“ He stiffened, raised himself, took her face between his hands. In the growing light she saw the boyish features strengthened into the lines of a man. Still only half aware of why she seemed to know him, she heard his hoarse cry. “Morgaine! You are Morgaine! Morgaine, my sister! Ah, God, Mary Virgin, what have we done?”
She put her hands up to her eyes, slowly. “My brother,” she whispered. “Ah, Goddess! Brother! Gwydion—“
“Arthur,” he muttered.
She held him tight, and after a moment he sobbed, still holding her. “No wonder it seemed to me that I have known you since before the world was made,” he said, weeping. “I have always loved you, and this—ah, God, what have we done—“
“Don’t cry,” she said, helplessly, “don’t cry. We are in the hands of her who brought us here. It doesn’t matter. We are not brother and sister here, we are man and woman before the Goddess, no more.”
And I never knew you again. My brother, my baby, the one who lay on my breast like a little child. Morgaine, Morgaine, I told you to take care of the baby, as she went away and left us, and he cried himself to sleep in my arms. And I did not know.
“It’s all right,” she said again, rocking him, “don’t cry, my brother, my beloved, my little one, don’t cry, it’s all right.”
But even as she soothed him, despair beat at her.
Why did you do this to us? Great Mother, Lady, why?
And she did not know whether she was calling to Viviane, or to the Goddess.