Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [349]
She nodded. “I remember well, kinsman,” she said, thinking that for all the weariness in his face, the new lines there, the touch of grey in the crisp curls of his hair, he was still more beautiful to her, more beloved, than any other man she had ever known. She blinked her eyes fiercely; so it was and so it must be: he loved her as kinswoman, no more.
Again it seemed to her that the world moved behind a barrier of shadows; it mattered nothing what she did. This world was no more real than the fairy kingdom. Even the music sounded faraway and distant—Gawaine had taken up the harp and was singing some tale he had heard among the Saxons, of a monster who dwelled in a lake and how one of their heroes had gone down into the lake and ripped off the monster’s arm, then faced the monster’s mother in her evil den. . . .
“A grim and grisly tale,” she said under her breath to Lancelet, and he smiled and said, “Most Saxon tales are so. War and bloodshed and heroes with skill in battle and not much else in their thick noddles. . . .”
“And now we are to live at peace with them, it seems,” Morgaine said.
“Aye. So it shall be. I can live with the Saxons, but not with what they call music . . . though their tales are entertaining enough, I suppose, for a long evening by the hearth.” He sighed, and said, almost inaudibly, “I think perhaps I was not born for sitting by a hearth, either—”
“You would like to be out in battle again?”
He shook his head. “No, but I am weary of the court.” Morgaine saw his eyes go to where Gwenhwyfar sat beside Arthur, smiling as she listened to Gawaine’s tale. Again he sighed, a sound that seemed ripped up from the very deeps of his soul.
“Lancelet,” she said, quietly and urgently, “you must be gone from here or you will be destroyed.”
“Aye, destroyed body and soul,” he said, staring at the floor.
“About your soul I know nothing—you must ask a priest about that—”
“Would that I could!” said Lancelet with suppressed violence; he struck his fist softly on the floor beside her harp, so that the strings jangled a little. “Would that I could believe there is just such a God as the Christians claim. . . .”
“You must go, cousin. Go on some quest like Gareth’s, to kill ruffians who are holding the land to ransom, or to kill dragons, or what you will, but you must go!”
She saw his throat move as he swallowed. “And what of her?”
Morgaine said quietly, “Believe this or no, I am her friend too. Think you not, she has a soul to be saved as well?”
“Why, you give me counsel as good as any priest.” His smile was bitter.
“It takes no priesthood to know when two men—and a woman as well—are trapped, and cannot escape from what has been,” said Morgaine. “It would be easy to blame her for all. But I, too, know what it is to love where I cannot—” She stopped and looked away from him, feeling scalding heat rise in her face; she had not meant to say so much. The song had ended, and Gawaine yielded up the harp, saying, “After this grim tale we need something light—a song of love, perhaps, and I leave that to the gallant Lancelet—”
“I have sat too long at court singing songs of love,” said Lancelet, rising and turning toward Arthur. “Now that you are here again, my lord, and can see to all things yourself, I beg you to send me forth from this court on some quest.”
Arthur smiled at his friend. “Will you be gone so soon? I cannot keep you if you are longing to be away, but where would you go?”
Pellinore and his dragon. Morgaine, her eyes cast down, staring and seeing the flicker of the fire past her lids, formed the words in her mind with all the force she could manage, trying to thrust them into Arthur’s mind. Lancelet said, “I had it in mind to go after a dragon—”
Arthur’s eyes glinted with mischief. “It might be well, at that, to make an end of Pellinore’s dragon. The tales grow daily greater, so that men are afraid to travel into that country! Gwenhwyfar tells me Elaine has asked for leave to visit her home. You may escort the lady thither, and I bid you not return until Pellinore’s dragon is