Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [493]
“Why have you come here, then?”
“Again, I know not,” said the musical voice I had loved so well, “save perhaps in repayment of some debt laid down before these hills were raised, my dear.” Then he raised his voice to the serving-woman.
“Your lady is ill! Get her to a seat!”
My head was swimming and a grey mist seemed to waver around me; the next thing I knew I was seated by the fire across from Kevin, and the woman was gone.
He said, “Poor Morgaine, poor girl,” and for the first time since Accolon’s death had turned me to stone, I felt that I could weep; and clenched my teeth against the weeping, for if I shed one tear, I knew that everything within me would melt, and I would cry and cry and cry and never cease crying until I melted into a very lake of tears. . . .
I said tightly, clenched, “I am no girl, Kevin Harper, and you have won your way to my presence falsely. Now say what you will say, and go your way.”
“Lady of Avalon—”
“I am not,” I said, and remembered that the last time I saw this man, I had driven him from my presence, shrieked at him, called him traitor. It seemed not to matter; perhaps it was fate that two traitors to Avalon should sit here before this fire, for I too had betrayed my oath to Avalon . . . how dared I judge Kevin?
“What then are you?” he asked quietly. “Raven is old, and silent now for years. Niniane will never have the power to rule. You are needed there—”
“When last we spoke,” I interrupted him, “you said Avalon’s day was done. Why then should there be any to sit in Viviane’s place except a child half-fitted for that high office, waiting for the day when Avalon fades forever into the mists?” I felt a scalding bitterness in my throat. “Since you have forsaken Avalon for the banner of Arthur, will it not make your task easier if none reigns in Avalon save an ancient prophetess and a powerless priestess . . . ?”
“Niniane is Gwydion’s love and his creature,” said Kevin. “And it comes to me that your voice and your hands are needed there. Even if Avalon is fated to pass away into the mists, will you refuse to pass with it? I never thought you a coward, Morgaine.” And then he raised his eyes to mine and said, “You will die here, Morgaine, die of grief and exile . . .”
I turned my face away and said, “For that I came here . . .” and for the first time I knew indeed that I had come here to die. “All I have tried to do is in ruin, I have failed, failed . . . it should be your triumph, Merlin, that Arthur has won.”
He shook his head. “Ah, no, my dear, no triumph,” he said. “I do what the Gods have given me to do, no more, and you do the same. And indeed if your doom shall be to see the end of the world we have known, why then, my dearest love, let that doom find us each in our appointed place, serving what our God has given us to serve. . . . It is laid on me to recall you to Avalon, Morgaine, I know not why. My task would be simpler with only Niniane there, but, Morgaine, your place is in Avalon, and mine where the Gods shall decree. And in Avalon you can be healed.”
“Healed.” I said it in contempt. I did not care.
Kevin looked at me sadly. “My dearest love,” he had called me. It seemed to me now that he was the one person alive who knew me as I was; before every other person alive, even Arthur, I had worn a different face, seeking always to appear other and better than I was; even to Viviane, that she might find me more worthy to be a priestess. . . . For Kevin I was Morgaine, thus and no other. It came to me that even if I stretched forth my hand to him as the Death-crone he would see nothing but my own face, Morgaine. . . . I had always felt that love was other than this, was that burning I had felt for Lancelet, for Accolon. For Kevin I had felt little save for that detached compassion, friendship, kindness; what I had given him had meant but little to me, and yet . . . and yet he alone had taken thought to come to me, to care whether or no I died here of grief.
But how dared he break in upon my peace, when I