Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [394]
“I am her consort,” he said implacably, “and shall win it there . . . it is not the time for a virgin—the priests make much of that nonsense. I call upon her as the Mother to give me my due and my life. . . .”
Niniane felt as if she were trying to stand against some relentless tide that would sweep her away. She said, hesitating, “So it has always been, that in the running of the deer, though the Mother sends him forth, he returns again to the Maiden. . . .”
Yet there was reason in what he said. Surely it was better to have a priestess for the rites who knew what she was doing, rather than some half-trained child new come to the temple, whose only qualification was that she was not yet old enough to feel the call to the Beltane fire. . . . Gwydion spoke truth: the Mother ever renews herself, Mother and Crone and again the Maiden, even as the moon who hides herself in the dark sky.
She bent her head and said, “Let it be so. You shall make the Great Marriage with the land and with me in her name.”
But when she was alone again she was frightened. How had she come to agree to this? What, in the name of the Goddess, was this power in Gwydion, that he could make all men do his will?
Is this, then, his heritage from Arthur, and the blood of the Pendragon? And ice flooded her again.
What of the King Stag . . . Morgaine was dreaming . . .
Beltane, and the deer running on the hills . . . and the life of the forest running through her body, as if every part of the forest was a part of the life within her . . . he was down among the deer, the running stag, the naked man with the antlers tied on his brow, and the horns thrust down and down, his dark hair matted with blood . . . but he was on his feet, charging, a knife flashing in the sunlight through the trees, and the King Stag came crashing down and the sound of his bellowing filled the forest with cries of despair.
And then she was in the dark cave, and the signs painted there were painted on her body, she was one with the cave, and all around her the Beltane fires flared, sparks crashing skyward—there was the taste of fresh blood on her mouth, and now the cave mouth was shadowed with the antlers . . . it should not be full moon, she should not see so clearly that her naked body was not the slender body of a virgin, but that her breasts were soft and full and pink as they had been when her child was born, almost as if they were dripping with milk, and surely she had been tested that she came virgin to this rite . . . what would they say to her, that she came not as the Spring Maiden to the King Stag?
He knelt at her side and she raised her arms, welcoming him to the rite and to her body, but his eyes were dark and haunted. His hands on her were tender, frustrating, toying with pleasure as he denied her the rite of power . . . it was not Arthur, no, this was Lancelet, King Stag, who should pull down the old stag, consort of the Spring Maiden, but he looked down at her, his dark eyes tormented by that same pain that struck inward through her whole body, and he said, I would you were not so like to my mother, Morgaine. . . .
Terrified, her heart pounding, Morgaine woke in her own room, Uriens sleeping at her side and snoring. Still caught up in the frightening magic of the dream, she shook her head in confusion to ward the terror away.
No, Beltane is past . . . she had kept the rites with Accolon as she had known she would do, she was not lying in the cave, awaiting the King Stag . . . and why, she wondered, why should this dream of Lancelet visit her now, why did she dream not of Accolon, when she had made him her priest and Lord of Beltane, and her lover? Why, after so many years, should the memory of refusal and sacrilege strike inward at her very soul?
She tried to compose herself for sleep again, but sleep would not come, and she lay awake, shaken, until the sun thrust the rays of early summer into her chamber.
11
Gwenhwyfar had come to hate the day of Pentecost, when each year Arthur sent out word that all his old Companions should come to Camelot and