Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [527]
Ah, Gods, has he gone too . . . with so many of Arthur’s men. . . .
Truly the Grail was no blessing to Arthur’s court, but a curse. . . .
And rightly so, a curse to the traitor who would have profaned it . . .
And now is it gone forever from Avalon.
For a long time Morgaine believed that the Grail had been taken away by the Goddess into the realms of the Gods, so that mankind might never again profane it, and she was content that it should be so; for it had been defiled with the wine of the Christians, which somehow was blood as well as wine, and she had no notion of how to cleanse it.
Whispers came from the outside world to Morgaine through some of the old brotherhood of priests who came in these days to Avalon; Christians, some of them, of the old ones who had once worshipped beside the Druids, in their firm belief that their Christ had once lived here on Avalon and been taught wisdom. Now, fleeing from the enforced conformity of that new breed of Christians who would wipe out all other worship but their own, they came to Avalon, and from them Morgaine heard something of the Grail.
The priests were now saying that it was indeed the true cup from which Christ had drunk at his Last Supper, and that it had been taken away into Heaven whence it would never again be seen in the world. Yet also there were rumors that it had been seen on that other isle, Ynis Witrin, sparkling in the depths of their well, that well which on Avalon was the holy mirror of the Goddess; and therefore the priests on Ynis Witrin had begun to call it the Well of the Chalice.
And when the old priests had dwelt for a time upon Avalon, Morgaine began to hear rumors that now and again the Grail had been seen, for a moment, upon their altar. That must be as the Goddess wills. They will not profane it. But she knew not whether it was truly there in the ancient church of the Christian brotherhood . . . which was built on the very spot of the church on the other island, so that they said that, when the mists thinned, the ancient brotherhood on Avalon could hear the monks chanting in their church on Ynis Witrin. Morgaine remembered the day when the mists had thinned to let Gwenhwyfar through to Avalon.
Time ran strangely now upon Avalon. Morgaine did not know whether that twelvemonth and a day to which the knights were vowed had passed or not, and sometimes she thought that indeed years must have passed in the outside world. . . .
She thought long on the words Kevin had spoken: . . . the mists are closing on Avalon.
And then, one day, she was summoned to the shores of the Lake, but she needed no Sight to tell her who stood in the barge. Avalon had once been his home too. Lancelet’s hair was all grey now and his face thin and haggard, but as he stepped from the boat, with only the shadow of his old light-footed grace, she stepped forward and took his hands, and she could see in his face no trace of madness.
He looked into her eyes, and suddenly it seemed that she was the Morgaine of the old days, when Avalon was a temple alive with priestesses and Druids and not a solitary land adrift in the mists with a bare handful of aging priestesses, a few elderly Druids, a handful of half-forgotten ancient Christians.
“How is it that you are so untouched by time, Morgaine?” he asked her. “All seems changed, even here in Avalon—look, even the ring stones are hidden in the mists!”
“Oh, they are still there,” Morgaine said, “though some of us would lose our way if we sought them now.” And like a pain in her heart she remembered a day—ah, it was a lifetime ago!—when she and Lancelet had lain together in the shadow of the stones. “I think perhaps they will one day go altogether into the mists, and thus never be torn down by human