Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [505]
He drank, and briefly she wondered what it was that he saw, but then he fell away behind her as she moved on, or the cup itself moved, drawing her with it . . . she could not tell. She heard a sound as of many wings, rushing before her, and she smelled a sweetness that was neither incense nor perfume. . . . The chalice, some said later, was invisible; others said that it shone like a great star which blinded every eye that looked on it. . . . Every person in that hall found his plate filled with such things as he liked best to eat . . . again and again later she heard that tale, and by that token she knew that what she had borne was the cauldron of Ceridwen. But for the other tales she had no explanation, and needed none. She is the Goddess, she will do as she will. . . .
As she moved before Lancelet she heard him whisper in awe, “Is it you, Mother? Or do I dream? . . .” and set the cup to his lips, filled with overflowing tenderness; today she was mother to them all. Even Arthur knelt before her as the cup briefly passed before his lips.
I am all things—Virgin and Mother and she who gives life and death. Ignore me at your peril, ye who call on other Names . . . know ye that I am One. . . . Of all those in that great hall, only Nimue, she thought, had recognized her, had looked up in astonished recognition; yes, Nimue too had been reared to know the Goddess, whatever form she might take. “You too, my child,” she whispered with infinite compassion, and Nimue knelt to drink, and Morgaine felt somewhere through her the surging of lust and vengeance, and thought, Yes, this too is a part of me. . . .
Morgaine faltered, felt Raven’s strength bearing her up . . . was Raven beside her, holding the cup? Or was it illusion, was Raven still crouching in her corner, holding her upright with a flow of strength which poured through them both into the Goddess bearing the cup . . . ? Later, Morgaine never knew whether in truth she had borne the chalice or whether that, too, had been part of the vast magic she had woven for the Goddess . . . yet it seemed to her, still, that she bore the cup around the great hall, that every man and every woman there knelt and drank, that the sweetness and the bliss flooded her, that she walked as if borne along on those great wings she could hear . . . and then Mordred’s face was before her.
I am not your mother, I am the Mother of All. . . .
Galahad was white, overawed. Did he see it as the cup of life or as the holy chalice of Christ? Did it matter? Gareth, Gawaine, Lucan, Bedivere, Palomides, Cai . . . all the old Companions and many she did not recognize, and it seemed at the last that they walked somewhere beyond the spaces of the world, and all of those who had ever been among them, even those who had passed beyond this world, came to commune with them at the Round Table this day—Ectorius, Lot, dead years since at Mount Badon; young Drustan, murdered in jealous rage by Marcus; Lionel; Bors; Balin and Balan hand in hand, like brothers again past the gates of death . . . all those who had ever gathered here around the Round Table, past and present, today were gathered here in this moment beyond time, even at last before the wise eyes of Taliesin. And then it was Kevin kneeling before her, the cup to his lips . . .
Even you. I forgive all this day . . . whatever may come in the times yet to be seen. . . .
At last she raised the chalice to her own lips and drank. The water of the Sacred Well was sweet on her lips, and though she saw now all the others in the hall eating and drinking, somehow it seemed, when she took a bite of bread, that on her lips it was the soft honey bannock that Igraine had baked for her when she was a child in Tintagel.
She replaced the cup on the altar, where it shone like a star. . . .
Now! Now, Raven, the Great Magic! It took all the strength of all the Druids to shift Avalon from this world, but now we need not do so much . . . the cup and the dish and the spear must go . . . they must go from this