Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [440]
it was hours later. She still could not move a muscle without griping, terrifying pain; almost she welcomed it. I should not go wholly free of this death, but Accolon’s hands are clean. . . . She looked up into his eyes. He was bending over her with concern and dread, and they were alone for a moment.
“Are you able to speak now, my love?” he whispered. “What happened?”
She shook her head and could not speak. But his hands on her were tender, welcome. Do you know what I have done for you, dear love?
He bent and kissed her. He would never know how close they had come to being exposed and defeated.
“I must go back to Father,” he said gently, troubled. “He weeps and says, if I had gone, my brother would not have died—he will blame me always.” His dark eyes rested on her, a shadow of disquiet in them. “It was you who commanded me not to go,” he said. “Did you know this with your magic, beloved?”
She found a shred of voice through the soreness in her throat. “It was the will of the Goddess,” she said, “that Avalloch should not destroy what we have done here.” She managed, with great pain, to move her finger, tracing out the line of the tattooed serpent on the hand that touched her face.
His expression changed, grew suddenly fearful. “Morgaine! Had you any part in this?”
Ah, I should have known how he would look at me if he knew . . .
“Can you ask?” she whispered. “I was weaving in the hall all this day in clear sight of Maline and the servants and the children . . . it was her will and her doing, not mine.”
“But you knew, you knew?”
Slowly, her eyes filling with tears, she nodded, and he bent and kissed her lips.
“Be it so. It was the will of the Goddess,” he said, and he went away.
3
There was a place in the woods where a rushing stream broadened out between rocks into a deep pool; Morgaine sat there on a flat rock overlooking the water and made Accolon sit beside her. They would be unseen here, except by the little ancient folk, and they would never betray their queen.
“My dear, all these years we have worked together—tell me, Accolon, what is it you think we are doing?”
“Lady, I have been content to know you had a purpose,” he said, “and not to ask questions of you. If you had sought only for a lover"—he raised his eyes to her and reached for her hand—"there would have been others than I for that, better suited to such games. . . . I love you well, Morgaine, and I have been—glad and honored—that you turned to me, even for companionship and the touch of tenderness, but it was not that which called me to you, priest to priestess.” He hesitated, and sat stirring the sand at his feet with a booted foot. Finally he said, “It has come to me, too, that there was more of purpose in this than the wish of a priestess to restore the rites in this country, or your need to draw down upon us the moon tides—glad I have been to aid you in this and share the worship with you, lady. Lady of this land you have been indeed, especially to the ancient folk who see in you the face of the Goddess. For a time I thought it was only that we had been called to restore the old worship here. But now it comes to me, I know not why"—he touched the serpents which twined about his wrists—"that by these, I am bound to this land, to suffer and perhaps to die if need be.”
I have used him, Morgaine thought, as ruthlessly as ever Viviane did me. . . .
He said, “I know it well—not once in a hundred years, now, is that old sacrifice exacted. Yet when these“—again he touched, with a brown fingertip, the serpents encircling his wrist—"were set here,