Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [444]
He swallowed and lowered his face to hers. His hair was awry with a wind that was not of this world, and clinging to his hair was a crimson leaf which made Morgaine shiver as they stood beneath the just unfolding buds of the hazel.
He said in a whisper, “He is gone . . . and she . . . or was it you? Morgaine, did it happen, was any of it real?”
Morgaine, looking into his dazzled face, saw something in his eyes, something that had never been there before—the touch of the nonhuman. She reached out and plucked the crimson leaf from his hair, holding it out to him. “You who bear the serpents . . . need you question?”
“Ah—” She saw the shudder run right through him. He struck the crimson leaf from her hand with a savage gesture, letting it fall silent to the forest floor, and said, with a gasp, “It seemed that I rode high above the world and saw such things as come never to mortal man . . .” and then he reached for her, with blind urgency tearing at her dress and pulling her down to the ground. She let him do as he would and lay stunned on the damp ground as he thrust blindly into her, driven by a force he hardly understood. It seemed to her, as she lay silent beneath that driving strength, that his face was shadowed again with antlers or with crimson leaves; she had no part in this, she was only the passive earth beneath rain and wind, thunder and lightning bolt, and it was as if the lightning struck through her into the earth beneath. . . .
Then the darkness receded and the strange stars shining forth by day were all gone, and Accolon’s hands, tender and apologetic, were helping her to rise, to arrange her disordered dress; he bent to kiss her, to stammer some half-explanation, some word of excuse, but she smiled and laid her hand across his lips. “No, no—it is enough—” The grove was silent again, and around them were only the normal sounds of the quiet day.
She said calmly, “We must go back, my love. We will be missed, and everyone will be shouting and crying out about the eclipse, as if it were some strange marvel of nature . . .” and smiled faintly; she had seen something far stranger than an eclipse this day. Accolon’s hand was cold and solid in hers.
He whispered, as they walked, “I knew never that you . . . you look like her, Morgaine. . . .”
But I am she. However, Morgaine did not speak the words aloud. He was an initiate; he should have been better prepared, perhaps, for this testing. Yet he had faced it as he must, and he had been accepted by something beyond her own small powers.
Then cold struck at her heart and she turned to look at his smiling, beloved face. He had been accepted. But that did not mean he would triumph; it meant only that he might attempt the final testing for which this was only the beginning.
I felt not like this when as Spring Maiden I sent Arthur—whom I knew not to be Arthur—forth for his testing. Ah, Goddess, how young I was then, how young we both were . . . mercifully young, for we knew not what we did. And now I am old enough to know what it is that I do, how shall I have courage to send him forth to face death?
4
On the eve of Pentecost, Arthur and his queen had bidden those guests with family ties to the throne to dine with them privately. Tomorrow would be the usual great banquet for all of Arthur’s subject kings and his Companions, but Gwenhwyfar, dressing herself carefully, felt that this would be the greater ordeal. She had long accepted the inevitable. Her husband and lord would by his act tomorrow make public and irrevocable what had long been known. Tomorrow, Galahad would be made knight and Companion of the Round Table. Oh, she had known it for years, yes, but then Galahad had been only a fair-haired little boy growing up somewhere in King Pellinore’s lands. When she had thought of it, she had even been pleased; Lancelet’s son, by her own cousin Elaine—now dead in childbed