Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [478]
Accolon knelt before the throne, and the queen pressed her hands on his head. She raised one of his wrists and the serpents seemed to move and twine round his arms, crawled away and sat there in the queen’s palm where she sat absently playing with them, petting their small blue darting heads. “Morgaine, you have chosen well,” she said. “I think not that this one would ever betray me. Look, Arthur has feasted well, and there he lies—” and she gestured to where a wall seemed to open wide, and by pale light Morgaine saw Arthur, sleeping with one arm under his head and the other across the body of a young girl with long, dark hair, who seemed like a daughter of the queen—or like Morgaine herself.
“He will, of course, think that it was you, and that it is a dream sent him by the evil one,” said the queen, smiling, “so far he has moved from us that he will think shame to be given his dearest wish . . . did you not know that, my Morgaine, my darling?” And it seemed to Morgaine that she heard Viviane’s voice, dreamlike, caressing her. But it was the queen who said, “So sleeps the King, in the arms of one he will love until he dies . . . and what when he wakes? Will you take Excalibur and cast him out naked on the shores, seeking you always in the mists?”
Morgaine remembered suddenly the skeleton of a horse lying beneath the fairy trees. . . . “Not that,” she said, shivering.
“Then he shall remain here, but if he is truly as pious as you say and thinks to say the prayers which will part him from illusion, it will vanish, and he will call out for his horse and for his sword—what then shall we do, lady?”
Accolon said grimly, “I will have the sword, and if he can get it again from me, he is welcome to it.”
The dark-haired maiden came to them, and in her hand she held Excalibur in its scabbard. “I had it from him while he slept,” she said, “and with it he called me by your name—”
Morgaine touched the jewelled hilt of the blade.
“Bethink you, child,” said the queen, “would it not be better to return the Holy Regalia at once to Avalon, and let Accolon make his way as King with only such a sword as he can get for himself?”
Morgaine trembled. It seemed very dark in the hall, or grove, or whatever it was, and did Arthur lie sleeping at her feet, or was he far away? But it was Accolon who reached out and grasped the sword.
“I will have Excalibur and the scabbard,” he said, and Morgaine knelt at his feet and belted it round his waist.
“Be it so, beloved—bear it more faithfully than he for whom I made this scabbard—”
“The Goddess forbid I should ever be false to you, though I die for it,” he whispered, his voice shaking with emotion, and raised Morgaine to her feet and kissed her; it seemed that they clung together till the shadow of the night faded and the queen’s sweet mocking smile seemed to shimmer around them.
“When Arthur calls for a sword he shall have one . . . and something like to the scabbard, though it will not keep him from spilling a single drop of blood. . . . Give it to my smiths,” she said to the maiden, and Morgaine stared as if in a dream—had it been in a dream that she had belted Excalibur round Accolon’s waist? The queen was gone and the damsel, and it seemed that she and Accolon lay alone in a great grove and that it was the time of the Beltane fires, and he took her into his arms, priest to priestess. And then they were no more than man and woman, and it seemed to her that time stopped, that her body melted into his as if she were without nerve or bone or will, and his kiss was like fire and ice on her lips. . . . The King Stag should challenge him, and I must make him ready. . . .
Why, how was it that she lay with him in the grove, signs painted on her naked body, how was it that her body was young and tender, how was it that when he bore his body down into hers there