Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [525]
At last she said, “The Goddess is merciful. Take him to the oak grove, as is ordained, but there slay him swiftly with a single stroke. Bury him beneath the great oak, and let it henceforth be shunned now and forever by all men. Kevin, last of the Messengers of the Goddess, I curse you to forget all, to be reborn without priesthood and without enlightenment, that all you have done in your former lives be wiped away and your soul returned to the once-born. A hundred lifetimes shall you return, Kevin Harper, always seeking the Goddess and never finding her. Yet in the end, Kevin, once Merlin, I say to you—if she wants you, be very sure she will find you again.”
Kevin looked straight at her. He smiled, that curious, sweet smile, and said, almost in a whisper, “Farewell, then, Lady of the Lake. Tell Nimue I loved her . . . or it may be that I will tell her myself. For I think it will be a long, long time before you and I shall meet again, Morgaine.” And again soft thunder punctuated his words.
Morgaine shivered as he limped away without looking back, supported on the arms of his captors.
Why do I feel so shamed? I showed mercy; I could have had him tortured. They will call me, too, traitor and weakling, that he was not taken to the oak grove and there made to scream and pray for death till the very trees shrank from the sound. . . . Am I only a weakling, that I would not torture a man I once loved? Is his death to be so easy that the Goddess will then seek vengeance on me? So be it, even if I must meet the death I could not give him.
She flinched, looking into the grey storm clouds in the sky. Kevin has suffered all his life long. I will add nothing more than death to his fate. Lightning flared in the sky, and she thought, with a shiver—or was it only the cold wind that came with the sudden rush of the storm outside?—So passes the last of the great Merlins, into the storm that breaks now over Avalon.
She gestured to Niniane. “Go. See my sentence done to the letter, that they slay him with a single stroke, and leave not his body above ground for a single hour.” She saw the younger woman’s gaze rest on her face; was it known, then, to everyone, that once they had been lovers? But Niniane only asked, “And you?”
“I go now to Nimue. She will need me.”
But Nimue was not in her room in the House of Maidens, nor anywhere in the house, nor, when Morgaine hurried across the rain-swept courts, was she in the secluded house where she had dwelt with Raven. She was not anywhere in the temple, and one of the attendant priestesses told Morgaine that Nimue had refused food or wine or even a bath. Morgaine, terrible apprehension growing in her with every flash of lightning as the storm grew and raged, called for all the servants of the temple to search for her; but before they could Niniane came, her face white, attended by the men she had sent to see Kevin’s death done as Morgaine had decreed.
“What is it?” Morgaine demanded, her voice cold. “Why was my sentence not done?”
“He was slain with a single stroke, Lady of the Lake,” Niniane whispered, “but with the very stroke came lightning from the sky and struck the great oak—cleft it in twain. There is a great rift in the sacred oak, from the sky to the ground. . . .”
Morgaine felt steel clamp around her throat. Nothing so strange, that with the storm should come the lightning flash, and ever the lightning strikes at the highest point. But that it should come in the same hour wherein Kevin prophesied the end of Avalon . . .
She shivered again, wrapping her arms about herself under her cloak so that those who looked on her should not see her trembling. How could she turn this omen, for omen it surely was, aside from the impending destruction of Avalon?
“The God has prepared a place for the traitor. Bury him, then, within the cleft in the oak. . . .”
They bowed acquiescence and went away, through thunder and the sudden rattle of rain, and Morgaine, distraught, realized that she had forgotten Nimue. But a voice within her