Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [133]
By sunset of the third day it was finished, every inch of the scabbard covered with twining symbols, some of which she did not even recognize; surely they had come directly from the hand of the Goddess through her hands? She lifted it, slid the sword into it; weighted it in her hands; then said aloud, breaking the ritual silence, “It is done.”
Now that the long tension was broken she was aware that she was exhausted, shaken and sick. Ritual and prolonged use of the Sight could do this; it had, no doubt, interrupted her courses too, for they usually came on at moon-dark. This was said to be lucky, for the priestesses went apart to shield their power at this time, and it was the same as the ritual seclusion of the dark moon, when the Goddess herself secluded herself to safeguard the source of power.
Viviane came and took the scabbard. She could not suppress a little cry of astonishment as she looked upon it, and indeed it seemed even to Morgaine, who knew her own hands had fashioned it, to be a thing surpassing human work, pregnant with magic. Viviane touched it only briefly before wrapping it in a long, white silken cloth.
“You have done well,” she said, and Morgaine thought, her mind spinning, How is it that she thinks she can judge me? I too am a priestess, I have gone beyond her teaching . . . and was shocked at her own thought.
Viviane touched her cheek gently. “Go and sleep, my dearest; you have wearied yourself in this great work.”
Morgaine slept deeply and long, without dreams; but after midnight, suddenly, she woke to the sudden wild clamor of alarm bells, alarm bells, church bells, a terror out of childhood, The Saxons are upon us! Get up and arm yourselves!
It seemed that she woke out of a start, and she was not in the House of Maidens, but in a church, and on the altar stone of the church lay a set of weapons; and on a trestle nearby lay a man in armor, covered with a pall. Above her head the warning was still pealing and clamoring, fit to wake the dead . . . no, for the dead knight did not stir, and with a sudden prayer for forgiveness, she snatched up the sword . . . and woke fully this time, to light in her room, and quiet. Not even the church bells from the other island penetrated the quiet of her stone-floored chamber. She had dreamed the bells, the dead knight, and the chapel with burning tapers, the arms on the altar, the sword, all of it. How did I come to see that? The Sight never comes upon me undesired . . . was it just a dream then?
Later that day, she was summoned; with her conscious mind, she remembered some of the visions which had floated half-seen through her mind as she wrought the scabbard with the sword before her. Fallen to earth in a falling star, a clap of thunder, a great burst of light; dragged still smoking to be forged by the little dark smiths who had dwelled on the chalk before the ring stones were raised; powerful, a weapon for a king, broken and reforged this time into the long, leaf-shaped blade, tooled and annealed in blood and fire, hardened . . . a sword three times forged, never ripped out of the earth’s womb, and thus twice holy. . . .
She had been told the name of the sword: Excalibur, which meant cut steel. Swords of meteorite iron were rare and precious; this one might well be the price of a kingdom.
Viviane bade her cover herself with