Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [264]
No . . . the barge would not come for her, this night or ever again. It would come for a priestess, for Viviane’s chosen, cherished fosterling; it would not come for a runaway who had lived in secular courts and done her own will for four years. Once before, at the time of her initiation, she had been cast forth from Avalon, and the test of whether or no she might be called priestess was only this—that she should return without aid.
She could not call the barge; she feared within her very soul to cry aloud the word of power that would summon it through the mists. She could not command it, who had forfeited the right to be called a child of Avalon. As the color left the water and the last remnants of the sunlight faded into twilight mist, Morgaine looked mournfully toward the distant shore. No, she dared not call the boat; but there was another way into Avalon, around at the other side of the Lake, where she could cross by the hidden path through the swamp and there find her way into the hidden world. Aching with loneliness, she began to skirt the shore, leading her horse. The looming presence of the big animal in the dusk, his snorting breaths behind her, were a vague comfort. If all failed she could spend the night on the shores of the Lake; it would not be the first night she had spent alone in the open. And in the morning she would find her way. She remembered that solitary journey, disguised, to Lot’s court far in the north, years ago. She had grown soft with the good living and luxury of the court, but she could do it again if she must.
But it was so still: no sound of bells from the Isle of the Priests, no chantings from the convent, no bird cries; it was as if she moved through an enchanted country. Morgaine found the place she was looking for. It was growing dark, and each bush and tree seemed to take on a sinister shape, some strange thing, some monster, some dragon. But Morgaine was recovering the habits of mind she had possessed when she dwelt in Avalon; there was nothing here that would harm her, if she meant it no harm.
She began to take her way along the hidden path. Halfway she must move through the mists; otherwise the path would but bring her to the monks’ kitchen garden behind their cloister. She admonished herself firmly to stop thinking of the growing darkness and set her mind into meditative silence, fixing it on where she longed to go. Thus, then, with each step as if she wound a spell, treading out the spiral dance as if the way wound up the Tor toward the ring stones . . . she moved silently, her eyes half-closed, placing each foot with care. She could feel the mists cold about her now.
Viviane had not thought it any such great ill, that she should lie with her half-brother and bear him a child . . . a child born of the old royal line of Avalon, more a king than Arthur’s self. Had she borne such a child to Lancelet, then could that child have been fostered here in Avalon and reared to become one of the greatest of the Druids. Now what would become of her son? Why did she leave Gwydion in the hands of Morgause? Morgaine thought, I am an unnatural mother; I should have sent for my son. But she had not been willing to look Arthur in the face and tell him of his child’s existence. She would not want the priests and ladies at court to look on her and say, This is the woman who bore a child to the Horned One in the old pagan way of the tribes who paint their faces and wear horns and run with the deer like animals . . . the boy was well enough where he was, Arthur’s court was no place for him, and what would she do with a little boy of three running at her heels? Arthur’s?
But there