Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [536]
I have waited too long. Lot should have been King of these lands many years ago, and I Queen. Now there is none to stop me. Viviane is gone; Morgaine is old; Gwydion will make me Queen. I am the only woman living to whose word he will listen.
“What of sir Mordred, Morag? Is he trusted by the Queen, by the King?”
But the voice grew thick and heavy. “I cannot stay—Mordred is often with the King—once I heard the King say to him—eh, my head aches, what am I doing here by the fire? Cook will skin me alive . . .” It was the idiot voice of Becca, thick and sullen, and Morgause knew that far away in Camelot, Morag had sunk back into her bizarre dream in which she faced the faraway Queen of Lothian or the Queen of Fairy. . . .
Morgause seized the pan of blood, shaking the last remaining drops into the fire. “Morag, Morag! Hear me, stay, I command!”
“My queen,” came the faraway ladylike voice, “sir Mordred has always at his side one of the damsels of the Lady of the Lake, they say that she is somehow kin to Arthur—”
Niniane, daughter of Taliesin. Morgause thought, I did not know she had left Avalon. But why now should she stay?
“Sir Mordred has been named captain of horse while Lancelet is gone from court. There are rumors . . . Eh, the fire, my lady, will you set the whole of the castle afire?” Becca was rubbing her eyes and whimpering on the hearth. Infuriated, Morgause gave her a savage push, and the girl fell screaming into the fire; but she was still bound and could not pull herself away from the flames.
“Damn her, she will wake the whole household!” Morgause reached out to pull the girl from the flames, but her dress had caught fire, and her shrieks were dreadful, striking Morgause’s ears like red-hot needles. She thought, with a trace of pity, Poor girl, there is nothing to be done for her now—she would be so burnt, we could not help her even if she should live! She pulled the screaming, struggling girl out of the fire, not regarding the burns on her own hands, and leaned close for a moment, laying her head on the girl’s brow as if to soothe her; then, with a single stroke, she cut her throat from ear to ear. Blood poured into the fire, and the smoke rushed high up into the chimney.
Morgause felt herself shaking with the unexpected power, as if she were spreading out through the whole of the room, through the whole of Lothian, through the whole of the world . . . she had never dared so much before, but now it had come to her, unsought. It seemed that she hovered bodiless over all the land. Again after years of peace there were armies on the road, and on the west coast hairy men in high-beaked dragon ships landed, plundering and burning cities, laying monasteries waste, carrying away women from the walled convents where they lived . . . like a crimson wind, sweeping down even to the borders of Camelot . . . she was not sure whether what she saw now was even at this moment moving in the land or was yet to come.
She cried out through the growing darkness, “Let me see my sons on the quest of the Grail!”
Darkness filled the room, sudden, black and thick, with a curious smell of burning, while Morgause crouched, beaten to her knees by the rush of power. The smoke cleared a little, with a small stirring and coiling in the darkness, like the boiling of a pot. Then Morgause saw, in the widening light, the face of her youngest son, Gareth. He was dirty and travel-worn, his clothing ragged, but he was smiling with the old gaiety, and as the light grew, Morgause could see what he was looking at—the face of Lancelet.
Ah, Gwenhwyfar would not fawn on him now, not this sickly and wasted man with grey in his hair and the traces of madness and suffering