Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [101]
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 fingertips 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