Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [570]
Inside the chapel there was a glimmer of light, the light they always kept in their sanctuary. For a moment, so real was the memory of her dream, Morgaine was tempted to step inside . . . she could hardly believe she would not see Lancelet there, struck down by the magical brilliance of the Grail . . . but no. She had no business there, and she would not intrude on their God; and if indeed the Grail was there, it had gone beyond her reach.
Yet the dream remained with her. Had it been sent as a warning? Lancelet was younger than she herself was . . . she knew not how time ran in the outer world. Avalon, now, had gone so far into the mists that it might be with Avalon as it had been with the fairy country when she was young—while a single year passed within Avalon, three or five or even seven years might have run by in the outer world. And so what it had come to her to do should be done now, while she could still come and go between the worlds.
She knelt before the Holy Thorn, whispering a soft prayer to the Goddess, and asking leave of the tree; then she cut a slip for planting. It was not the first time: in these last years, whenever one had come to Avalon and returned to the outside world, wandering Druid or pilgrim priest . . . for a few of them could still come to the ancient chapel on Avalon . . . she had sent with him a slip of the Holy Thorn, so that it might still blossom in the world outside. But this she must do with her own hands.
Never, except at Arthur’s crowning, had she set foot on the other island . . . except, perhaps, for that day when the mists had opened, and Gwenhwyfar had somehow fallen or wandered through. But now, deliberately, she called the barge, and when it was out in the Lake, sent it into the mists, so that when it glided forth into the sunlight again, she could see the long shadow of the church lying over the Lake, and hear the soft tolling of a bell. She saw her followers shrink from the sound, and knew that here, too, they would not follow her, nor set foot. So be it, then; the last thing she wished for was to have the priests on that isle staring in fear and dread at the barge from Avalon. Unseen, they glided toward the shore and unseen she stepped onto the land, watching the black-draped barge vanish again into the mists. And then, the basket over her arm—like any old market woman or peddler come here on pilgrimage, she thought—she went silently up the path from the shore.
Only a hundred years or less, certainly less in Avalon, that these worlds have diverged; yet already the world here is different. The trees were different, and the paths, and she stopped, bewildered, at the foot of a little hill—surely there was nothing like this on Avalon? She had somehow thought the land would be the same, only the buildings different, for they were, after all, the same island, separated only by some magical change . . . but now she saw that they were very different.
And then she saw, winding down the hill toward the little church, a procession of robed monks, and they bore with them, toward the church, a body on its bier.
So I saw truly, then, even though I thought it a dream. She stopped, and as the monks brought the body to rest before taking it into the church, she went forward and drew back the pall from the dead face.
Lancelet’s face was drawn and lined, far older than when they had parted . . . she did not want to think how much older. But she saw that only for a moment; then what she saw on his face was only the sweet and marvelous look of peace. He lay smiling, looking so far beyond her that she knew on what his dying eyes had rested.
She whispered, “So at last you found your Grail.”
One of the monks who carried him said, “Perhaps you knew him in the world, sister?” and she knew that in her dark garb, he thought her one of them.
“He was a—a kinsman of mine.”
Cousin, lover, friend .