Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [491]
Arthur was riding in pursuit, Excalibur naked in his hand . . . but she and her escort were gone. Morgaine drew herself into silence, a part of shadow and tree as if some essential part of herself had gone into Fairy; while she stayed there motionless, covered in the silence of a priestess, no one from the mortal world could see so much as her shadow. . . .
Arthur shouted her name.
“Morgaine! Morgaine!” A third time he called, loud and angry; but the very shadows were still, and at last, confused from riding in circles—once he came so close that Morgaine could feel the breath of his horse—he wearied, and called to his escort, and they came to find him swaying in his saddle, the bandages slowly soaking through with blood, and they led him away the way they had come.
Then Morgaine raised her hand, and once again the normal sound of bird and wind and tree came back into the world.
Morgaine speaks . . .
In later years I heard the tale told of how I took the scabbard by sorcery, and how Arthur rode after me with a hundred knights, and I too had a hundred fairy knights all round me; and when Arthur’s pursuit grew near, I turned myself and my men into ring stones. . . . Someday, no doubt, they will add that when I had done, I called for my chariot with the winged dragons, and flew away into Fairy.
But it was not so. It was no more than this, that the little people can hide in the forests and become one with tree and shadow, and that day I was one of them, as I had been taught in Avalon; and when Arthur had been taken away by his escort, near to fainting with the long pursuit and the cold in his wound, I said farewell to the men of Avalon, and rode away to Tintagel. But when I came to Tintagel it mattered little to me what they did in Camelot, for I was sick even to death for a long time.
I know not, even now, what ailed me; I know only that summer faded and the leaves began to fall while I lay in my bed, tended by the servants I had found there, neither knowing nor caring whether I would ever rise. I know I had a low fever, a weariness so great that I could not force myself to sit upright or to eat, a heaviness of mind so great that I cared not whether I would live or die. My servants—one or two of them I recalled from the days when I lived there as a little child, with Igraine—thought me enchanted; and it may even have been true.
Marcus of Cornwall sent to me in homage, and I thought, Arthur’s star rides high, no doubt he believes that I have come here at Arthur’s will, and he will not—now—challenge Arthur even for these lands he believes his own. A year ago, I might have laughed at this, or even made common cause with Marcus, promising him lands here in return for leading a party of the disaffected against Arthur. And even now it crossed my mind; but with Accolon dead, it seemed to matter nothing. Arthur had Excalibur . . . if the Goddess wished that it should be taken from him, she would have to come and take it herself, for I had failed, I was her priestess no more. . . .
. . . I think it was that which hurt me worst, that I had failed, failed Avalon, that she had not put forth her hand to help me do her will. The strength of Arthur and the priests and of the traitor Kevin had been stronger than the magic of Avalon, and there was no one left.
No one left. No one. I mourned without ceasing for Accolon, and for the child whose life had barely begun before it was ended, cast aside like offal. I mourned too for Arthur, lost to me now, and my enemy, and, unbelievably, even for Uriens, and for the wreck of my life in Wales, the only peace I had ever known.
I had killed or thrust from me or lost to death everyone in this world I had ever loved. Igraine was gone, and Viviane lost to death, murdered and lying among the priests of their God of death and doom. Accolon was gone, the priest I had consecrated to do that last battle against the Christian priests. Arthur was my enemy; Lancelet had learned