Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [153]
Suddenly Morgaine fell to the ground, and for an instant Viviane feared the girl would break into wild sobbing. “Why did you do this to me, Viviane? Why did you use me this way? I thought you loved me!” Her face worked, though she did not weep.
“The Goddess knows, child, I love you as I have never loved any other human being on earth,” Viviane said steadily, through the knifing pain in her heart. “But when I brought you here, I told you: a time would come when you might hate me as much as you loved me then. I am Lady of Avalon; I do not give reasons for what I do. I do what I must, no more and no less, and so will you when the day comes.”
“That day will never come!” Morgaine cried out, “for here and now, I tell you that you have worked upon me and played with me like a puppet for the last time! Never again—never!”
Viviane kept her voice even, the voice of the trained priestess who would remain calm though the heavens should fall upon her. “Take care how you curse me, Morgaine; words flung in anger have an evil way of returning when you love them least.”
“Curse you—I thought not of it,” Morgaine said quickly. “But I will no longer be your toy and plaything. As for this child which you moved Heaven and Earth to bring to the light, I will not bear him in Avalon for you to gloat at what you have done.”
“Morgaine—” Viviane said, holding out her hand to the younger woman, but Morgaine stepped back. She said into the silence, “May the Goddess deal with you as you have done with me, Lady.”
Without another word she turned and left the room, not waiting for dismissal. Viviane sat frozen, as if Morgaine’s parting words had been a curse indeed.
When finally she could think clearly, she summoned one of the priestesses; already it was late in the day, and the moon, the thinnest paring of a crescent, was visible, slim and silver-edged, in the western sky. “Tell my kinswoman, the lady Morgaine, to attend upon me; I did not give her leave to go.”
The priestess went away, but she did not return for a long time; it was already dark, and Viviane had summoned the other attendant to bring food to break her long fast, when the first returned.
“Lady,” she said and bowed, and her face was white.
Viviane’s throat tightened, and for some reason she remembered how a long time ago a priestess in deep despair, after the birth of a child she had not wanted, had hanged herself by her girdle from one of the trees in the oak grove. Morgaine! Was it of this the Death-crone came to warn me? Would she lay hands on her own life? She said through dry lips, “I bade you bring the lady Morgaine to me.”
“Lady, I cannot.”
Viviane rose from the seat and her face was terrible; the young priestess backed away so swiftly that she almost fell over her skirt. “What has happened to the lady Morgaine?”
“Lady—” the young woman said stammering, “she—she was not in her room, and I asked everywhere. I found—I found this in her room,” she said, holding out the veil and deerskin tunic, the silver crescent and the little sickle knife which Morgaine had been given at her initiation. “And they told me on the shore that she had summoned the barge and gone away to the mainland. They thought she went by your orders.”
Viviane drew a long breath, reached out and took the dagger and crescent from the priestess. She looked at the food on the table and a terrible sense of weakness assailed her; she sat down and quickly ate some bread and drank a cup of water from the Holy Well. Then she said, “It is not your fault, I am sorry I spoke harshly to you.” She stood with her hand on Morgaine’s little knife and for the first time in her life, as she looked down at her hand, she saw the pulsing of the vein there and thought how easily she could draw the knife across it and watch her life spurt forth. Then would the Death-crone have come for me, and not for Morgaine. If she must have blood, let her have mine. But Morgaine had left the knife; she would not hang herself or cut her wrists. She had,