Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [524]
Nimue whispered, “What will become of—of him?”
Morgaine held her tight. “Child, child, that need concern you not. You have done your part with strength and courage, it is enough.”
Nimue caught her breath as if she would weep, but she did not. She looked at Kevin, but he did not meet her eyes, and at last, shivering so hard she could hardly walk, she let two of the priestesses lead her away. Morgaine said in a low voice to them, “Don’t torment her with questions. Done is done. Let her be.”
When Nimue was gone, Morgaine turned back to Kevin. She met his eyes, and pain struck at her. This man had been her lover, but he had been more; he had been the only man who had never sought to entangle her in any political maneuvers, never sought to use her birth or high position, never asked anything of her save love. He had called her alive out of hell in Tintagel, he had come to her as the God, he had been perhaps her only friend, man or woman, in her entire life.
She forced her words through the tremendous pain in her throat. “Well, Kevin Harper, false Merlin, forsworn Messenger, have you anything to say to her before you meet her judgment?”
Kevin shook his head. “Nothing that you would consider important, Lady of the Lake.” She remembered, through a haze of pain, that he had been the first to yield to her this title.
“Be it so,” she said, and felt her face like stone. “Take him forth to judgment.”
He took a single faltering step between his captors, then turned back and faced her, his head thrown back in defiance. “No, wait,” he said. “I find I have a thing to say to you after all, Morgaine of Avalon. I told you once that my life was a small thing to forfeit for the Goddess, and I want you to know it is for her that I have done this.”
“Are you saying it is for the sake of the Goddess that you betrayed the Holy Regalia into the hands of the priests?” Niniane demanded, and her voice cut with scorn. “Why then, you are mad as well as forsworn! Take the traitor away!” she commanded, but Morgaine signalled to them to wait.
“Let him be heard.”
“It is even so,” said Kevin. “Lady, I said it once to you before this—the day of Avalon is ended. The Nazarene has conquered, and we must go into the mists further and further until we are no more than a legend and a dream. Would you then take the Holy Regalia with you into that darkness, preserving it carefully against the dawning of a new day that now shall never be? Even if Avalon must perish, I felt it right that the holy things should be sent forth into the world in the service of the Divine, by whatever name God or the Gods may be called. And because of what I have done, the Goddess has manifested herself at least once in the world yonder, in a way that shall never be forgotten. The passing of the Grail shall be remembered, my Morgaine, when you and I are only legends for the fireside and tales for children. I do not think that wasted, nor should you, who bore that chalice as her priestess. Now do with me what you will.”
Morgaine bent her head. The memory of that moment of ecstasy and revelation, when she had borne the Grail in the form of the Goddess, would remain with her until her death; and of those who had experienced the vision, whatever they might have seen, none of their lives would ever be the same. But now she must face Kevin in the person of the avenging Goddess, the Death-crone, the ravening sow who will devour her own young, the Great Raven, the Destroyer. . . .
Yet he had given the Goddess this much. She reached out her hand to him . . . and stopped, for under her hand again she saw what once before she had seen, a skull beneath her fingers. . . .
. . . now he is fey, he sees his own death, and I see it too. . . . Yet he shall not suffer nor be tortured. He spoke truth; he has done what the Goddess has given him to do, and now must I do the same. . . . She waited until her voice was steady