Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [151]
Morgaine followed her pointing finger with her eyes. Yes, there was a path there; she would have taken oath it had not been there when she came first into the grove.
The lady was still standing near her. There was a strange smell to her, not the strong smell of an unwashed body as it had been with the old tribal priestess, but a curious indefinable fragrance, as of some unfamiliar herb or leaf, a strange, fresh, almost bitter scent. Like the ritual herbs for the Sight, it made Morgaine feel as if there was some spell on her eyes so that she saw more than she saw at any other time, as if everything was new and clean, not the ordinary things of every day.
The lady said in a low, mesmerizing voice, “You can stay here with me if you will; I will make you sleep so that you will bear your child without pain, and I will take him for the strong life that is in him, and he will live longer than he would with your kind. For I see a destiny for him, in your world—he will try to do good, and like most of your kind, he will do only harm. But if he stays here among my people, he will live long and long—almost, you would say, forever—perhaps a magician or enchanter among us, living with trees and wild things that were never tamed by man. Stay here, little one; give me the babe you do not want to bear, then return to your people, knowing he is happy and will come to no harm.”
Morgaine felt a sudden deathly chill. She knew that this woman confronting her was not wholly human; she herself bore some such taint of this ancient elf-blood—Morgaine of the Fairies, the old name with which Lancelet had taunted her. She pulled away from the fairy woman’s hand and ran, ran toward the path she had pointed out, ran wildly as if pursued by a demon. Behind her the woman called, “Cast out your child, then, or strangle him at birth, Morgaine of the Fairies, for your people have their own fate, and what befalls the son of the King Stag? The king must die and be cast down in his turn . . .” But her voice died away as Morgaine plunged into the mists, racing, stumbling, briars catching at her and pulling her down as she fled in panic flight, until she broke through the mists into glaring sun and silence and knew that she stood again on the familiar shores of Avalon.
The moon was dark in the sky again. Avalon was covered in mist and summer fog, but Viviane had been priestess for so many years that she knew the moon’s changes as if they ran in the tides of her own blood. She paced the floor of her house silently, and after a time told one of the priestesses, “Bring me my harp.” But when she sat with the pale willow-wood harp on her knee, she only touched the strings idly, without the will or the heart to make music.
As the night began to pale toward morning, Viviane rose and took a tiny lamp. Her attendant priestess came swiftly from the inner room where she slept, but Viviane shook her head without speaking and gestured the woman to return to her bed. She went, silent as a wraith, down the pathway to the House of Maidens, and stole inside, treading more silently than any cat.
In the room where Morgaine slept, she went to the bedside and looked down on the sleeping face so like her own. Morgaine, sleeping, had the face of the little girl who had come to Avalon so many years ago and who had entered into Viviane’s inmost heart. Under the dark lashes, there were patches of darkness like bruises, and the edges of the eyelids were red, as if Morgaine had wept before sleeping.
Holding the lamp high, she looked long on her young kinswoman. She loved Morgaine as she had never loved Igraine, or Morgause whom she had nursed at her own breasts; as she had never loved any of the men who had shared her bed for a night or for a season. Not even Raven, whom she had schooled to the