Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [348]
Gwenhwyfar’s clear voice broke through. “See to the lady Morgaine,” she said, “my sister is faint—!”
She felt Lancelet’s arms supporting her and looked up into his dark eyes—it was like her dream, desire running through her, melting her . . . no, but she had dreamed that. It was not real. She put her hand confusedly to her brows. “It was the smoke, the smoke from the hearth—”
“Here, sip this.” Lancelet held a cup to her lips. What madness was this? He had barely touched her and she felt sick with desire for him; she thought she had long forgotten that, had had it burned out of her over the years . . . and yet his touch, gentle and impersonal, roused her to fierce longing again. Had she dreamed about him, then?
He does not want me, he does not want any woman save the Queen, she thought, and stared past him at the hearth, where no fire burned in this summer season, and a wreath of green bay leaves twined to keep the empty fireplace from gaping too black and ugly. She sipped at the wine Lancelet held for her.
“I am sorry—I have been a little faint all the day,” she said, remembering the morning. “Let some other take the harp, I cannot. . . .”
Lancelet said, “By your leave, my lords, I will sing!” He took the harp and said, “This is a tale of Avalon, which I heard in my childhood. I think it was written by Taliesin himself, though he may have made it from an older song.”
He began to sing an old ballad, of Arianrhod the queen, who had stepped over a stream and come away with child; and she had cursed her son when he was born, and said he should never have a name till she gave him one, and how he tricked her into giving him a name, and later how she cursed him and said he should never have a wife, whether of flesh and blood, nor yet of the fairy folk, and so he made him a woman of flowers. . . .
Morgaine sat listening, still twined in her dream, and it seemed to her that Lancelet’s dark face was filled with terrible suffering, and as he sang of the flower woman, Blodeuwedd, his eyes lingered for a moment on the queen. But then he turned to Elaine, and sang courteously of how the blossom woman’s hair was made of fine golden lilies, and how her cheeks were like the petals of the apple blossom, and she was clad in all the colors of the flowers that bloom, blue and crimson and yellow, in the fields of summer. . . .
Morgaine sat quietly in her place, cushioning her aching head in her hand. Later Gawaine brought out a pipe from his own northern country, and began to play a wild lament, filled with the cries of sea birds and sorrow. Lancelet came and sat near to Morgaine, taking her hand gently.
“Are you better now, kinswoman?”
“Oh, yes—it has happened before,” Morgaine said. “It is as if I had fallen into a dream and saw all things through shadows—” And yet, she thought, it was not quite like that either.
“My mother said something like that to me once,” said Lancelet, and Morgaine gauged his sorrow and weariness by that; never before had he spoken to her, nor to any other as far as she knew, of his mother or of his years at Avalon. “She seemed to think it was a thing which came of itself with the Sight. Once she said it was as if she were drawn into the fairy country and looking out from there as its prisoner, but I know not if she had ever been within the fairy country or if this was but a way of speaking. . . .”
But I have, Morgaine thought, and it is not like that, not quite . . . it is like trying to remember a dream that has faded. . . .
“I myself have known it a little,” Lancelet said. “It comes at a time when I cannot see clearly, but only as if all things were very far away and not real . . . and I could not quite touch them but must first cross a weary distance . . . perhaps it is something in the fairy blood we bear—” He sighed and rubbed his eyes. “I used to taunt you with that, when you were only a little maiden, do you recall, I called you Morgaine of the Fairies