I bore still on my brow, faded beneath that housewifely coif Uriens would have me wear, the sign of her grace, but that would not help me now. Gazing at the fading stars, I did not know whether or no the rising sun would surprise me at my vigil; the sun tides had not run in my blood for half a lifetime, and I no longer knew the precise place on the eastern horizon where I should turn to salute the sun at its rising. I knew not, anymore, even how the moon-tides ran with the cycles of my body . . . so far had I come from the training of Avalon. Alone, with no more than a fading memory, I must somehow recapture all the things I had once known as part of myself.
Before dawn I went silently indoors, and moving in the dark, found for myself the one token I had of Avalon—the little sickle knife I had taken from Viviane’s dead body, a knife like the one I had borne as priestess and had abandoned in Avalon when I fled from there. I bound it silently around my waist, beneath my outer garments; it would never leave my side again and it would be buried with me.
I wore it thus, hidden there, the only memory I could keep of that night. I did not even paint the crescent anew on my brow, partly because of Uriens—he would have questioned it—and partly because I knew I was not, yet, worthy to bear it; I would not have worn the crescent as he wore the faded serpents about his arms, an ornament and a half-forgotten reminder of what once he had been and was no more. Over these next months and as they stretched into years, one part of me moved like a painted doll through the duties he demanded of me—spinning and weaving, making herbal medicines, looking to the needs of son and grandson, listening to my husband’s talk, embroidering him fine clothes and tending him in sickness . . . all these things I did without much thought, with the very surface of my mind and a body gone numb for those times when he took brief and distasteful possession of it.
But the knife was there to touch now and again for reassurance as I learned again to count sun tides from equinox to solstice and back to equinox again . . . count them painfully on my fingers like a child or a novice priestess; it was years before I could feel them running in my blood again, or know to a hairline’s difference where on the horizon moon or sun would rise or set for the salutations I learned again to make. Again, late at night while the household lay sleeping round me, I would study the stars, letting their influence move in my blood as they wheeled and swung around me until I became only a pivot point on the motionless earth, center of the whirling dance around and above me, the spiraling movement of the seasons. I rose early and slept late so that I might find hours to range into the hills, on pretext of seeking root and herb for medicines, and there I sought out the old lines of force, tracing them from standing stone to hammer pool . . . it was weary work and it was years before I knew even a few of them near to Uriens’ castle.
But even in that first year, when I struggled with fading memory, trying to recapture what I had known so many years ago, I knew my vigils were not unshared. I was never unattended, though never did I see more than I had seen that first night, the gleam of an eye in the darkness, a flicker of motion out of the corner of my eyes . . . they were seldom seen, even here in the far hills, anywhere in village and field; they lived their own life secretly in deserted hills and forests where they had fled when the Romans came. But I knew they were there, that the little folk who had never lost sight of Her watched over me.
Once in the far hills I found a ring of stones, not a great one like that which stood on the Tor at Avalon, nor the greater one which had once been Temple of the Sun on the great chalk plains; here the stones were no more than shoulder-high even on me (and I am not tall) and the circle no greater than the height of a tall man. A small slab of stone, the stains faded and overgrown with lichens, was half-buried in the grass at the center. I pulled it free of weed and lichen, and as I did whenever I could find food unseen in the kitchens, left for her people such things as I knew seldom came to them—a slab of barley bread, a bit of cheese, a lump of butter. And once when I went there I found at the very center of the stones a garland of the scented flowers which grew on the border of the fairy country; dried, they would never fade. When next I took Accolon out of doors when the moon was full, I wore them tied about my brow as we came together in that solemn joining which swept away the individual and made us only Goddess and God, affirming the endless life of the cosmos, the flow of power between male and female as between earth and sky. After that I went never unattended beyond my own garden. I knew better than to look for them directly, but they were there and I knew they would be there if I needed them. It was not for nothing that I had been given that old name, Morgaine of the Fairies . . . and now they acknowledged me as their priestess and their queen.
I came to the stone circle, walking by night, when the harvest moon sank low in the sky and the breath of the fourth winter grew cold on the eve of the Day of the Dead. There, wrapped in my cloak and shivering through the night, I kept the vigil, fasting; snow was drifting out of the sky when I rose and turned my steps homeward, but as I left the circle I turned my foot on a stone which had not been there when I came thither, and, bending my head, I saw the pattern of white stones arranged.
I bent, moving one stone to make the next in sequence of the magical numbers—the tides had shifted and now we were under the winter’s stars. Then I went home, shivering, to tell a story of being benighted in the hills and sleeping in an empty shepherd’s hut—Uriens had been frightened by the snow, and sent two men to seek me. Snow, lying deep on the mountainsides, kept me within doors much of the winter, but I knew when the storms would lift and risked the journey to the ring stones at Midwinter, knowing the stones would be clear . . . snow lay never within the great circles, I knew, and I guessed that it would be so here in the smaller circles, where magic was still done.
And there at the very center of the circle I saw a tiny bundle—a scrap of leather tied with sinew. My fingers were recapturing their old skill and did not fumble as I untied it and rolled the contents into my palm. They looked like a couple of dried seeds, but they were the tiny mushrooms which grew so rarely near Avalon. They were no use as food, and most folk thought them poison, for they would cause vomiting and purging and a bloody flux; but taken sparingly, fasting, they could open the gates to the Sight . . . this was a gift more precious than gold. They grew not in this country at all, and I could only guess how far the little folk had wandered in search of them. I left them what food I had brought, dried meats and fruits and a honeycomb, but not in repayment; the gift was priceless. I knew that I would lock myself within my chamber at Midwinter, and there seek again the Sight I had renounced. With the gates of vision thus opened I could seek and dare the very presence of the Goddess, begging to repronounce what I had forsworn. I had no fear that I would be cast forth again. It was she who sent me this gift that I might seek again her presence.
And I bent to the ground in thanksgiving, knowing that my prayers had been heard and my penance done.
10
The snow was beginning to melt off the hills and a few of the earliest wild flowers showed in sheltered valleys when the Lady of the Lake was summoned to the barge to greet the Merlin of Britain. Kevin looked pale and worn, his face haggard, his twisted limbs dragging more reluctantly than ever, and he braced himself with a stout stick. Niniane noticed, her eyes hiding the pity she felt, that he had been forced to put My Lady from him into the hands of a serving-man, and she pretended not to see, knowing what a blow that must have been to his pride. She slowed her own steps on the path toward her dwelling place, and there she welcomed him, summoned her women to build up the fire, and sent for wine, of which he took only a token sip, and bowed gravely in thanks.
“What brings you here so early in the year, Venerable?” she asked him. “Have you come from Camelot?”
He shook his head. “I was there for a part of the winter,” he said, “and I spoke much with Arthur’s councillors, but early in the spring I went southward on a mission to the treaty troops—I should say now, I suppose, the Saxon kingdoms. A
nd I take it you know whom I saw there, Niniane. Was that Morgause’s doing, or yours, I wonder?”
“Neither,” she said quietly. “It was Gwydion’s own choice. He knew he should have some experience in battle, Druid teaching or no—there have been warrior Druids ere this. And he chose to go south to the Saxon kingdoms—they are allied with Arthur, but there he would not come under Arthur’s eyes. He did not—for reasons known as well to you as to me—wish for Arthur to set eyes on him.” After a moment she added, “I would not swear that Morgause did not influence his choice. He takes counsel of her, when he will seek the counsel of any.”
“Is it so?” Kevin raised his eyebrows. “Aye, I suppose so—she is the only mother he has ever known. And she ruled Lot’s kingdom as well as any man, and still rules, even with her new consort.”
“I heard not that she had a new consort,” said Niniane. “I cannot see as well what happens in the kingdoms as did Viviane.”
“Aye, she had the Sight to aid her,” Kevin said, “and maidens with the Sight when her own Sight failed her. Have you none, Niniane?”
“I have—some,” she said hesitating. “Yet it fails me now and again—” and she was silent a moment, staring at the flagstones of the floor. At last she said, “I think—Avalon is—is drifting further from the lands of men, Lord Merlin. What season was it in the world outside?”
“Ten days have passed since the equinox, Lady,” said Kevin.
Niniane drew a long breath. “And I kept that feast but seven days since. It is as I thought—the lands are drifting. As yet no more than a few days in every moon, but I fear soon we shall be as far from sun tide and moon tide as that fairy kingdom they tell of . . . it is ever harder to summon the mists and to pass forth from this land.”
“I know,” said Kevin. “Why, think you, I came at the slack of the tide?” He smiled his twisted grin and said, “You should rejoice—you will not age as women in the outer world are prone to age, Lady, but remain younger.”
“You do not comfort me,” said Niniane with a shudder. “Yet there is none in the outer world whose fate I follow, save—”
“Gwydion’s,” said Kevin. “I thought as much. But there is one with whose fate you should be concerned as well—”
“Arthur in his palace? He has renounced us,” said Niniane, “and Avalon lends him no more help—”
“It is not of Arthur I spoke,” said Kevin, “nor does he seek help from Avalon, not now. But—” He hesitated. “I heard it from the folk of the hills—there is a king again in Wales, and a queen.”
“Uriens?” Niniane laughed, a scoffing laugh. “He is older than those same hills, Kevin! What can he do for those folk?”
“Nor did I speak of Uriens,” said Kevin. “Had you forgotten? Morgaine is there, and the Old People have accepted her as their queen. She will protect them, even against Uriens, while she lives. Had you forgotten that the son of Uriens had teaching here, and wears the serpents about his wrists?”
Niniane was silent for a moment, motionless. At last she said, “I had forgotten that. He was not the elder son, so I thought he would never reign—”
“The elder son is a fool,” said Kevin, “though the priests think him a good successor to his father, and from their view, he is so—pious and simple and he will not interfere with their church. The priests trust not the second son—Accolon—because he wears the serpents. And, since Morgaine has come there, he has remembered it, and serves her as his queen. And for the folk of the hills she is queen, too, whoever may sit on the throne in the Roman fashion. For them, the king is he who dies yearly among the deer, but the queen is eternal. And it may be that in the end Morgaine will do what Viviane left undone.”
Niniane could hear, with a detached surprise, the bitterness in her own voice. “Kevin, not for one day since Viviane died and they came to set me here, have I been allowed to forget that I am not Viviane, that after Viviane I am nothing. Even Raven follows me with her great silent eyes that say always, You are not Viviane, you cannot do the work Viviane spent her life to do. I know it well—that I was chosen only because I am the last of Taliesin’s blood and there was no other, that I am not of the royal line of the Queen of Avalon! No, I am not Viviane, and I am not Morgaine, but I have served faithfully here in this place when I sought it never and when it was thrust upon me because of Taliesin’s blood. I have been faithful to my vows—is this nothing to anyone?”
“Lady,” said Kevin gently, “Viviane was such a priestess as comes not into this world more than once in many hundreds of years, even in Avalon. And her reign was long—she ruled here for nine-and-thirty years, and very few of us can remember before her time. Any priestess who must follow in her steps would feel herself less in comparison. There is nothing for which you must reproach yourself. You have been faithful to your vows.”
“As Morgaine was not,” said Niniane.
“True. But she is of the blood royal of Avalon, and she bore the heir to the King Stag. It is not for us to judge her.”
“You defend her because you were her lover—” Niniane flared, and Kevin raised his head. She had not realized; set within the dark and twisted face, his eyes were blue, like the very center of flame. He said quietly, “Would you try to pick a quarrel with me, Lady? That is over and gone years since, and when last I saw Morgaine, she called me traitor and worse, and drove me from her presence with harsh words such as no man with blood in his veins could forgive. Do you think I love her too well? But it is not my place to judge her, nor yours. You are the Lady of the Lake. Morgaine is my queen, and Queen of Avalon. She does her work in the world as you do yours here—and I where the Gods lead me. And they led me this spring into the fen country, where, at the court of a Saxon who calls himself king under Arthur, I saw Gwydion.”
Niniane had been schooled in her long training to keep her face impassive; but she knew that Kevin, who had had the same teaching, could see that she must do so with an effort, and felt that somehow those sharp eyes could read within her. She wanted to ask news of him, but instead she said only, “Morgause told me that he has some knowledge of strategy and is no coward in battle. How fared he, then, among those barbarians who would rather batter out brains with their great clubs than make use of them at their courts? I knew he went south to the Saxon kingdoms because one of them wished for a Druid at court who could read and write and knew something of figures and mapmaking. And he said to me that he wished to be seasoned in war without coming under the eye of Arthur, so I suppose he had his wish. Even though there has been peace in the land, there is always fighting among yonder folk—is the Saxon God not one of war and battles?”
“Mordred, they call Gwydion, which means ‘Evil Counsel’ in their tongue. It is a compliment—they mean it is evil for those who would harm them. They give every guest a name, as they call Lancelet Elf-arrow.”
“Among the Saxons, a Druid, even a young one, might seem wiser than he is, in contrast to all their thick heads! And Gwydion is clever! Even as a boy he could think of a dozen answers for everything!”
“Clever he is,” said Kevin slowly, “and knows well how to make himself loved, I have seen that. Me, he welcomed as if I had been his favorite uncle in childhood, saying how good it was to see a familiar face from Avalon, embracing me, making much of me—all as if he loved me well.”
“No doubt he was lonely and you were like a breath from home,” said Niniane, but Kevin frowned and drank a little wine, then set it down and forgot it again. He demanded, “How far did Gwydion go in the magical training?”
“He wears the serpents,” Niniane said.
“That may mean much or little,” Kevin said. “You should know that—” And although the words were innocent, Niniane felt their sting; a priestess who bore the crescent on her brow might be a Viviane—or no more than she herself. She said, “He is to return at Midsummer to be made King of Avalon, that state Arthur betrayed. And now he is grown to manhood—”
Kevin warned, “He is not ready to be
king.”
“Do you doubt his courage? Or his loyalty—”
“Oh—courage,” said Kevin, and made a dismissing gesture. “Courage, and cleverness—but it is his heart I trust not and cannot read. And he is not Arthur.”
“It is well for Avalon that he is not,” Niniane flared. “We need no more apostates who swear loyalty to Avalon and forsake their oath to the folk of the hills! The priests may set a pious hypocrite on the throne, who will serve whatever God he finds expedient at the moment—”
Kevin raised his twisted hand, with such a commanding gesture that Niniane fell silent. “Avalon is not the world! We have neither strength, nor armies, nor craft, and Arthur is loved beyond measure. Not in Avalon, I grant you, but all the length and breadth of these islands, where Arthur is the hand that has created the peace they value. At this moment, any voice arising against Arthur would be silenced within months, if not within days. Arthur is loved—he is the very spirit of all Britain. And even if it were otherwise, what we do in Avalon has little weight in the world outside. As you marked, we are drifting into the mists.”