Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [57]
No, no! Oh, Mother Ceridwen, blessed Goddess, no . . . our mother so died, but Viviane was so sure she was past childbearing . . . and now she will die, she cannot bear a child at her age and live . . . why, when she knew she had conceived, did she not take some potion to rid her of the child? This is the wreck of all their plans, then, it is the end. . . .
I too have thrown my life into ruin with a dream . . . and then Igraine was ashamed of herself that she could think of her own misery when Viviane was to lie down in childbed from which it could hardly be hoped that she would ever rise again. In horror, weeping in dread, she could not even turn from the mirror, and then Viviane raised her head, looking past the head of the priestess on whose arm she leaned, and into her dulled eyes, drawn with anguish, came recognition and tenderness. Igraine could not hear her, but it was as if Viviane spoke directly to her mind.
Little girl . . . little sister . . . Grainné . . .
Igraine wanted to cry out to her, in sorrow and grief and fear, but she could not lay her own weight of sorrows upon Viviane now. She poured all her heart into a single outcry.
I hear you, my mother, my sister, my priestess, and my goddess. . . .
Igraine, I tell you, even in this hour do not lose hope, do not despair! There is a pattern to all our sufferings, I have seen it . . . do not despair . . . and for a moment, her hair rising on her forearms, Igraine actually felt on her cheek a light touch, like the lightest of kisses, and Viviane whispered, “Little sister . . .” and then Igraine saw her sister’s face contorted with pain and she fell as if swooning into the arms of the priestess, and a wind ruffled the water of the mirror, and Igraine saw her own face, blurred with weeping, looking out through the water. She shivered, clutching some garment, anything to warm her, and flung the sorcerous mirror into the fire; then she threw herself down on her bed and wept.
Viviane told me not to despair. But how can I do other than despair, when she is dying?
She lay there, weeping herself into a stupor. At last, when she could not cry another tear, she rose wearily and washed her face in cold water. Viviane was dying, perhaps even dead. But her last words had been to bid Igraine not lose hope. She dressed herself and hung about her throat the moonstone Viviane had given her. And then, with a little stirring of the air before her, she saw Uther.
This time she knew it was a Sending, and not the man himself. Nothing human, certainly not Uther Pendragon, could have come into her guarded chamber without some man seeing and stopping him. He wore a heavy plaid about him, but on his arms—and this is why she knew it no dream—he wore the serpents she had seen when she dreamed of his life in Atlantis. Only they were not now golden torques, but live serpents, which raised their heads, hissing; only she did not fear them.
“My beloved,” he said, and although it was the very tone of his voice, the room was silent in the light of the flickering fire, and through the whispered voice she heard the small crackling of the juniper twigs. “I will come to you at Midwinter. I swear it, I will come to you, whatever may bar the way. Make ready for me at Midwinter—”
And then she was alone, with only the sun in the room, and the reflection of the sea outside, and in the courtyard below, the laughing voices of Morgause and her little daughter.
Igraine drew a long breath, calmly drank the rest of the wine. On an empty stomach, fasting, she felt it rise to her head with a sort of dizzy elation. Then she went quietly down the stairs to await the news she knew would come.
7
What happened first was that Gorlois came home.
Still flustered with the elation of that moment of vision—and frightened, for she had never really thought that Viviane could die, and in spite of the words of hope, she could not imagine, now, that Viviane could live—Igraine had expected something else; some