Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [353]
I gave up my maidenhood to the King Stag . . . yet that was different. From childhood I had known what awaited me, and I had been taught and reared in the worship of that Goddess who brings man and woman together in love or in rut. . . . Elaine was reared a Christian and taught to think of that very life force as the original sin for which mankind was doomed to death. . . .
For a moment she thought she should seek out Elaine, try to prepare her, encourage her to think of this as the priestesses were taught to think of it: a great force of nature, clean and sinless, to be welcomed as a current of life, sweeping the participant into the torrent . . . but Elaine would think that even worse sin. Well, then, she must make of it what she would; perhaps her love for Lancelet would carry her through it undamaged.
Morgaine turned her thoughts back to simmering the herbs and the wine, and at the same time, somehow, it seemed she was riding on the hills . . . neither was it a fair day for a ride; the sky was dark and clouded, a little wind blowing, the hills bleak and bare. Below the hills the long arm of the sea which was the lake looked grey and fathomless, like fresh-smithied metal; and the surface of the lake began to boil a little, or was it but the water in her brazier? Dark bubbles rose and spilled a foul stench, and then, slowly, rising from the lake, a long, narrow neck crowned with a horse’s head and a horse’s mane, a long sinuous body, writhing toward the shore . . . rising, crawling, slithering its whole length onto the shore.
Lancelet’s hounds were running about, darting down to the water, barking frenziedly. She heard him call out to them in exasperation; stop dead and look down toward the water, paralyzed, only half believing what he saw with his eyes. Then Pellinore blew his hunting horn to summon the others, and Lancelet put spurs to his horse, his spear braced on the saddle, and rode at a breakneck speed down the hill, charging. One of the hounds gave a pitiful scream; then silence, and Morgaine, from her strange distant watch, saw the curiously slimed trail where half the dog’s broken body lay eaten away with the dark slime.
Pellinore was charging at it, and she heard Lancelet’s shout to warn him back from riding directly at the great beast . . . it was black and like a great worm, all but that mockery of a horse’s head and mane. Lancelet rode at it, avoiding the weaving head, thrusting his long spear directly into the body. A wild howl shook the shore, a crazed banshee scream . . . she saw the great head weaving wildly back and forth, back and forth . . . Lancelet flung himself from his rearing, bucking horse, and ran on foot toward the monster. The head weaved down, and Morgaine flinched, as she saw the great mouth open. Then Lancelet’s sword pierced the eye of the dragon, and there was a great gush of blood and some black foul stuff . . . and it was all the bubbles rising from the wine. . . .
Morgaine’s heart jumped wildly. She lay back and sipped a little of the undiluted wine in the flask. Had it been an evil dream, or had she actually seen Lancelet kill the dragon in which she had never really believed? She rested there for some time, telling herself that she had dreamed, and then forced herself to rise, to add some sweet fennel to the mixture, for the strong sweetness would conceal the other herbs. And there should be strong salted beef for dinner, so that everyone should thirst and drink a great deal of the wine, especially Lancelet. Pellinore was a pious man—what would he think if all his castle folk went