Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [427]
“Morgaine would know that,” said Morgause dryly, “but I would not suggest you ask her.”
“I do know that Arthur’s life is charmed,” said Gwydion, “for he bears the sacred Excalibur, sword of the Druid Regalia, and a magical scabbard which guards him from shedding blood. Without it, so Niniane told me, he would have bled himself to death at Celidon Wood, and after that. . . . Morgaine has been given as her first task to get this sword again from Arthur, unless he will swear anew to be true to Avalon. And I doubt not my mother is wily enough to do so. I doubt she would stop at much, my mother. Of the two, I think I like my father better—he knew not what evil he had wrought when he got me, I think.”
“Morgaine knew not that, either,” said Morgause sharply.
“Oh, I am weary of Morgaine . . . even Niniane has fallen under her spell,” said Gwydion sharply. “Do not you begin to defend her to me, Mother.”
Morgause thought, Viviane was even so, she could charm any man alive to do her will, and any woman either . . . Igraine went pliant at her bidding to wed with Gorlois and later to seduce Uther . . . and I to Lot’s bed . . . and now Niniane has done what Morgaine wished. And this foster-son of hers had, she suspected, something of that power, too. She recalled, suddenly and with unexpected pain, Morgaine with her head bent, having her hair combed like a child, on the night she bore Gwydion; Morgaine, who had been to her as the daughter she never bore, and now she was torn between Morgaine and Morgaine’s son, who was even dearer to her than her own sons. “Do you hate her so, Gwydion?”
“I know not how I feel,” said Gwydion, looking up at her with Lancelet’s dark mournful eyes. “It seems not to run with the vows of Avalon that I should so hate the mother who bore me and the father who got me. . . . I would that I had been reared at court as my father’s son and his sworn follower, not his bitterest enemy. . . .”
He laid his head down on his arms and said through them, “I am weary, Mother. I am weary and sick of fighting, and I know Arthur is so, too . . . he has brought peace in these isles—from Cornwall to Lothian. I do not like to think that this great king, this great man, is my enemy and that for the sake of Avalon I must bring him down to nothing, to death or dishonor. I would rather love him, as all men do. I would like to look on my mother—not you, Mother, but lady Morgaine—I would like to look on her who bore me as my mother, not as the great priestess whom I am sworn to obey whatever she bids me. I would that she were my mother, not the Goddess. I wish that when Niniane lay in my arms she were no more than my own dear love, whom I love because she has your sweet face and your lovely voice. . . . I am so weary of gods and goddesses . . . I would that I had been your son and Lot’s and no more than this, I am so weary of my fate. . . .” And he lay for a long moment quiet, his face hidden, his shoulders shaking. Tentatively, Morgause stroked his hair. At last he raised his head and said, with a bitter grin that defied her to make anything of his moment of weakness, “I will have now another cup of that strong spirit they brew in these hills, without the water and honey this time . . .” and when it was brought, he drained it, without even looking on the steaming porridge and bannock the girl had brought. “What was it said in those old books of Lot’s, when the house priest beat Gareth and me until our backsides were bloody, trying to teach us the Roman tongue? Who was yonder old Roman who said, ‘Call no man happy until he is dead’? My task, then, is to bring that greatest of all happiness to my father, and why should I then rebel against that fate?” He signalled for another drink; when Morgause hesitated, he seized the flask and poured the cup full again.
“You will be drunk, my