Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [531]
His voice had risen in excitement, and for a moment Morgaine saw the unhealthy brightness returning to his eyes, as she had seen it in the naked man running in the forest. She said quickly, “Don’t think of that time, my dear. It is over.”
He drew a long, shuddering breath and she saw his eyes fade. “My quest now is to seek Galahad. I know not what he saw—an angel maybe—or why the call of the Grail came so strongly to some and so little to others. Of all the knights, I think only Mordred saw nothing, or if he did he kept it to himself.”
My son was reared at Avalon; he would not have been deceived by the magic of the Goddess, Morgaine thought, and was about to speak and tell Lancelet what he had seen—he had been, in youth, an initiate of Avalon and he should not be allowed to think of it as some mystery of the Christians. But, hearing again that strange note in Lancelet’s voice, she bent her head and said nothing. The Goddess had given him a vision of comfort; it was not for her to destroy it with a word.
She had sought this, she had worked for it. Arthur had forsaken the Goddess, and the Goddess had scattered his fellowship with a wind blowing from her holy place. And the final irony was this: that her holiest of visions should inspire the most passionate legend of Christian worship. Morgaine said at last, reaching out her hand to him, “Sometimes I believe, Lancelet, that it does not matter what we do. The Gods move us as they will, whatever it is that we think that we are doing. We are no more than their pawns.”
“If I believed that,” said Lancelet, “I should go mad once and for all.”
Morgaine smiled sadly and said, “And if I did not believe it, I should perhaps go mad. I must believe that I had no power to do other than I have done.”
. . . must believe that I never had a choice . . . a choice to refuse the king-making, a choice to destroy Mordred unborn, a choice to refuse when Arthur gave me to Uriens, a choice to hold back my hand from the death of Avalloch, a choice to keep Accolon at my side . . . a choice to spare Kevin Harper a traitor’s death, and Nimue . . .
Lancelet said, “And I must believe that man has the power to know the right, to choose between good and evil and know that his choice has made a difference . . .”
“Oh, aye,” Morgaine said, “if he knows what good is. But does it not seem to you, cousin, that ever, in this world, evil wears the face of good? Sometimes I feel it is the Goddess who makes the wrong appear the right, and the only thing we can do—”
“Why then, the Goddess would be just such a fiend as the priests say she is,” said Lancelet.
“Lancelet,” she said, leaning forward to plead with him, “never blame yourself. You did what you must! Believe only that it was your fate and ordained—”
“No, or I should slay myself at once, so that the Goddess could not make use of me to bring about more evil,” said Lancelet vehemently. “Morgaine, you have the Sight, and I cannot—I cannot believe it is God’s will that Arthur and his court shall fall into Mordred’s hands! I told you I came hither because my mind played tricks on me. Without thinking, I called the Avalon barge to me and came here, but now, I think, perhaps I wrought better than I knew. You, who have the Sight, can look within the mirror and see for me where Galahad has gone! I will even brave his anger and demand that he leave this quest and return to Camelot—”
The ground seemed to quiver beneath Morgaine’s feet. Once she had stepped unwary into a patch of quicksand and had felt the mud shiver and slip sidewise; it was like that, as if she must throw herself at once to safe ground . . . she heard herself say, as if very far away, “You will indeed return to Camelot with your son, Lancelet—” and wondered why the cold seemed to suck at her very vitals. “I will look into the mirror for you, kinsman.