Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [15]
“Then why did you not keep her in Avalon and train her to be priestess after you?”
Viviane looked very sad. “She is not fit. She sees, under the mantle of the Goddess, only power, not the unending sacrifice and suffering. And so that path is not for her.”
“It does not seem to me that you have suffered,” Igraine said.
“You know nothing about it. You did not choose to walk that path either. I, who have given my life to it, say still it would be simpler to live the life of a peasant woman, beast of burden and brood mare in season. You see me robed and crowned as the Goddess, triumphant beside her cauldron; you do not see the darkness of the cave or the depths of the great sea. . . . You are not called to it, dear child, and you should thank the Goddess that your destiny is laid elsewhere.”
Igraine said silently, Do you think I know nothing of suffering and enduring in silence, after these four years? but she did not say the words aloud. Viviane had bent over Morgaine, her face tender, stroking the little girl’s silky-dark hair.
“Ah, Igraine, you cannot know how I envy you—all my life I have so longed for a daughter. Morgause was like my own to me, the Goddess knows, but always as alien to me as if she had been born of a stranger, not my own mother. . . . I longed for a daughter into whose hands I could resign my office.” She sighed. “But I bore only one girl-child, who died, and my sons are gone from me.” She shuddered. “Well, this is my destiny, which I shall try to obey as you do yours. I ask nothing of you but this, Igraine, and the rest I leave to her who is mistress of us all. When Gorlois comes home again, he will go to Londinium for the choosing of a High King. Somehow you must contrive to go there with him.”
Igraine burst out laughing. “Only this you ask me, and this is harder than all the rest! Do you truly think that Gorlois would burden his men with escorting a young wife to Londinium? I would like to go there, indeed, but Gorlois will take me thither when figs and oranges from the south grow in the garden of Tintagel!”
“Nevertheless, somehow you must contrive to go, and you must look upon Uther Pendragon.”
Igraine laughed again. “And I suppose you will give me a charm so that he will fall so deep in love with me that he cannot resist it?”
Viviane stroked her curling red hair. “You are young, Igraine, and I do not think you have any idea how beautiful you are. I do not think Uther will have need of any charms.”
Igraine felt her body contract in a curious frightened spasm. “Perhaps I had better have the charm so that I will not shrink from him!”
Viviane sighed. She touched the moonstone about Igraine’s neck. She said, “This was not Gorlois’s gift to you—”
“No; I had it from you at my wedding, you remember? You said it was my mother’s.”
“Give it to me.” Viviane reached under the curling hair at Igraine’s neck and unfastened the chain. “When this stone comes back to you, Igraine, remember what I said, and do as the Goddess prompts you to do.”
Igraine looked at the stone in the hands of the priestess. She sighed, but she did not protest. I have promised her nothing, she told herself fiercely, nothing.
“Will you go to Londinium for the choosing of this High King, Viviane?”
The priestess shook her head. “I go to the land of another king, who does not yet know that he must fight at the side of Uther. Ban of Armorica, in Less Britain, is being made High King of his land, and in token, his Druids have told him that he must make the Great Rite. I am sent to officiate in the Sacred Marriage.”
“I thought Brittany was a Christian land.”
“Oh, it is so,” Viviane said indifferently, “and his priests will ring their bells, and anoint him with their holy oils, and tell him that his God has made the sacrifice for him. But the people will not accept a king who is not himself vowed to the Great Sacrifice.”
Igraine drew a deep breath. “I know so little—”
“In the old days, Igraine,” Viviane said, “the High King was bound with his life to the fortunes of the