Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [270]
But that was long, long afterward.
For when I heard Raven in that terrifying cry which moved into the spaces between the worlds, reaching my mind even where I stayed in the timeless dream of the fairy world, I set forth . . . but not to Avalon.
14
In the world outside, the light of the sun shone bright through fickle cloud shadows over the Lake, and far away the sound of church bells rang through the air. Against that sound, Morgaine dared not raise her voice to cry the word of power which would summon the barge, nor take upon her the form of the Goddess.
She looked at herself in the mirrored surface of the Lake. How long, she wondered, had she tarried in the fairy country? With her mind free of enchantments, she knew—even though she could reckon only two or three days—that she had dwelt there long enough for her fine dark gown to wear away ragged where it dragged on the ground; somewhere she had lost her dagger or cast it away—she was not sure which. Now she remembered some of the things which had befallen her there as dreams or madness, and her face was stung with shame. Yet mingled with all this were memories of music sweeter than she had heard in the world or in Avalon, or anywhere else, save when she had been at the borders of the country of Death when her child was born . . . almost, then, she had longed to cross over, if only to hear the music there. She remembered the sound of her own voice singing with the fairy harp—never had she sung or played so sweetly. I would like to go back there, and stay there forever. And she almost turned about to return, but the memory of Raven’s fearful cry troubled her.
Arthur, betraying Avalon and the oath by which he had received the sword and been taken into the holiest place of the Druids. And danger to Viviane should she set forth from Avalon—slowly, trying to put things together in her mind, Morgaine remembered. She had set forth from Caerleon—it seemed only a few days ago, in the late summer. She had never come to Avalon, and now it looked as if she never would come there . . . she looked sadly at the church atop the Tor. If she could steal into Avalon behind the island—but the paths had carried her only into the fairy country.
Somewhere, then, she had lost both dagger and horse; and now she remembered seeing bleached bone, and shuddered. And now she came to take note, the church on the Tor seemed different, the priests must have been building on it, and surely they could not have built it so big in a month or even two . . . Somehow, she thought, gripping her hands together in sudden fright, I must find out how many moons have sped by while I wandered with the maidens of the lady, or took my pleasure with the fairy man who led me there. . . .
But no, it could not have been more than two or at most three nights . . . she thought wildly, not knowing it was the beginning of a confusion which would grow endlessly and never be wholly settled in her mind. And now when she thought of those nights she was frightened and ashamed, trembling with the memory of a pleasure she had never known, lying in the arms of the fairy man—and yet now she was away from the enchantment it seemed like something shameful, done in a dream. And the caresses she had given and received from the fairy maidens, something she could never have dreamed without such an enchantment—there had befallen something, too, with the lady . . . and now she thought of it, the lady was much like Viviane, and Morgaine was shamed too . . . in the fairy country it had been as if she had hungered all her life for such things, and yet in the outside world she would never have dared it, or even dreamed of it.
Despite the warm sun, she had begun to shiver. She did not know what time