Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [568]
I tried to cry out, “I had no choice! I did not choose—” but they came at each other with their swords, rushing through me as if I were made of air, and it seemed that their swords met in my body . . . and then I was in Avalon again, staring in horror at the mirror where I could see nothing, nothing but the widening stain of blood in the sacred waters of the Well. My mouth was dry and my heart pounding as if it would beat a hole in the walls of my chest, and the taste of ruin and death was bitter on my lips.
I had failed, failed, failed! I was false to the Goddess, if indeed there was any Goddess except for myself; false to Avalon, false to Arthur, false to brother and son and lover . . . and all I had sought was in ruin. In the sky was a pale and reddening flush where, sometime soon, the sun would rise; and beyond the mists of Avalon, cold in the sky, I knew that somewhere Arthur and Gwydion would meet, this day, for the last time.
As I went to the shore to summon the barge, it seemed to me that the little dark people were all around me and that I walked among them as the priestess I had been. I stood in the barge alone, and yet I knew there were others standing there with me, robed and crowned, Morgaine the Maiden, who had summoned Arthur to the running of the deer and the challenge of the King Stag, and Morgaine the Mother who had been torn asunder when Gwydion was born, and the Queen of North Wales, summoning the eclipse to send Accolon raging against Arthur, and the Dark Queen of Fairy . . . or was it the Death-crone who stood at my side? And as the barge neared the shore, I heard the last of his followers cry, “Look—look, there, the barge with the four fair queens in the sunrise, the fairy barge of Avalon. . . .”
He lay there, his hair matted with blood, my Gwydion, my lover, my son . . . and at his feet Gwydion lay dead, my son, the child I had never known. I bent and covered his face with my own veil. And I knew that it was the end of an age. In the days past, the young stag had thrown down the King Stag, and become King Stag in his turn; but the deer had been slaughtered, and the King Stag had killed the young stag and there would be none after him . . .
And the King Stag must die in his turn.
I knelt at his side. “The sword, Arthur. Excalibur. Take it in your hand. Take it, and fling it from you, into the waters of the Lake.”
The Sacred Regalia were gone out of this world forever, and the last of them, the sword Excalibur, must go with them. But he whispered, protesting, holding it tight, “No—it must be kept for those who come after—to rally their cause, the sword of Arthur—” and looked up into the eyes of Lancelet. “Take it, Galahad—hear you not the trumpets from Camelot, calling to Arthur’s legion? Take it—for the Companions—”
“No,” I told him quietly. “That day is past. None after you must pretend or claim to bear the sword of Arthur.” I loosed his fingers gently from the hilt. “Take it, Lancelet,” I said softly, “but fling it from you far into the waters of the Lake. Let the mists of Avalon swallow it forever.”
Lancelet went quietly to do my bidding. I know not if he saw me, or who he thought I was. And I cradled Arthur against my breast. His life was fading fast; I knew it, but I was beyond tears.
“Morgaine,” he whispered. His eyes were bewildered and full of pain. “Morgaine, was it all for nothing then, what we did, and all that we tried to do? Why did we fail?”
It was my own question, and I had no answer; but from somewhere, the answer came. “You did not fail, my brother, my love, my child. You held this land in peace for many years, so that the Saxons did not destroy it. You held back the darkness for a whole generation, until they were civilized men, with learning and music and faith in God, who will fight to save something of the beauty of the times that are past. If this land had fallen to the Saxons when Uther died, then would all that was beautiful or good have perished forever from Britain. And so you did not fail, my love. None of us knows how she will