Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [541]
Yet if I had had my way, if Lot and I had been successful in our plotting against Arthur, perhaps the whole land would be like this, silent and desolate and full of fears. . . .
Why was it so quiet? It seemed in all the world there was no sound but their horses’ hooves, and even these seemed to fall like stones dropped into water, muffled and dying away in ripples. They had nearly reached the Roman road—or where the Roman road should have been—when they heard hoofbeats on a hard road; a rider was coming, slow and deliberate, from Glastonbury. They could make out a dark figure through the fog, some kind of heavy-laden pack animal behind him. After a moment one of her men cried out, “Why, look there, it is sir Lancelet of the Lake—God give you good morning, sir!”
“Hallo! Who rides there?” It was indeed Lancelet’s well-known voice, and as he came closer, the homely sound of the hooves of horse and pack mule seemed to release something in the world around them. Sounds carried a long way in the fog, and this was a simple sound, dogs barking somewhere, a whole pack of dogs, perhaps quarrelling over their food after a hungry night, but it broke the unworldly stillness with its simple, normal noise.
“It is the Queen of Lothian,” called Cormac, and Lancelet rode toward them, halting his horse before her.
“Well, Aunt, I had not hoped to meet with you here—are my cousins with you, perhaps, Gawaine or Gareth?”
“No,” she said, “I ride alone for Camelot.” If, she thought irritably, such a place still exists upon the face of this earth! Her eyes rested intently on Lancelet’s face as he said some polite words of greeting. He looked weary and travel-worn, his clothing ragged and not overly clean, a cloak of fustian worse than he would have given his groom. Ah, the beautiful Lancelet, Gwenhwyfar will not find you so handsome now, even I would not stretch out my hand to invite him into my bed.
And then he smiled, and she realized, In spite of all, he is beautiful.
“Shall we ride together then, Aunt? For indeed I come on the most sorrowful of missions.”
“I had heard that you were on the quest of the Grail. Have you found it, then, or failed to find it that you are so long-faced?”
“It is not for such a man as I to find that greatest of Mysteries. Yet I bring with me one who did indeed hold the Grail in his hands. And so I have come to say that the quest is ended, and the Grail gone forever out of this world.”
And then Morgause saw that on the pack mule, covered and shrouded, was the body of a man, She whispered, “Who—?”
“Galahad,” said Lancelet quietly. “It was my son who found the Grail, and now we know that no man may look on it and live. Would that it had been I—if only because I bear such bitter news to my king, that the one who should be King after him has gone before us into the world where he may forever follow his quest unspoilt—”
Morgause shuddered. Now indeed will it be as if Arthur had never been, the land will have no king save for the king in Heaven, ruled over by those priests who have Arthur in their hands . . . but angrily she dismissed those fancies. Galahad is gone. Arthur must choose Gwydion to rule after him.
Lancelet looked sorrowfully at the pack mule with Galahad’s body, but he said only, “Shall we ride on? I had not intended to rest a night by the road, but the mists were thick, and I feared to lose my way. I would have thought it Avalon itself!”
“We could not find Camelot in the mists, no more than Avalon—” Cormac began, but Morgause interrupted him fretfully.
“Have done with that foolishness,” she said. “We mistook the road in the darkness, and rode back and forth half the night! We too are in haste to come to Camelot, nephew.”
One or two of her men present knew Lancelet and had known Galahad, and now they crowded close to the