Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [62]
Or to Uther, trying to make camp on these unfamiliar moors, battered by the storm, lost, blinded?
How could she reach Uther? She gathered to herself all the memories of what small training she had had in magic when she was a girl in Avalon. Body and soul, she had been taught, were not firmly bonded; in sleep the soul left the body and went to the country of dreams, where all was illusion and folly, and sometimes, in the Druid-trained, to the country of truth, where Merlin’s leading had taken her in dream that one time.
. . . Once, when Morgaine was being born, and the pains seemed to have gone on forever, she had briefly left her body, seen herself lying down below, a racked thing fussed over by the midwives and encouraged by her women, while she floated, free of pain and elated, somewhere above; then someone had bent over her, urgently telling her that now she must work harder, for they could see the crown of the baby’s head, and she had come back to renewed pain and fierce effort, and she had forgotten. But if she could do it then, she could do it now. Shivering in her cloak, Igraine stared at the fire, and willed herself, abruptly, to be elsewhere. . . .
She had done it. She seemed to stand before herself, her whole awareness sharply focused. The main change was that she could no longer hear the wild wailing of the storm outside the walls of the castle. She did not look back—she had been told that when you left your body, you must never look back, for the body will draw back the soul—but somehow she could see without eyes, all round her, and knew that her body was still sitting motionless before the dying fire. Now that she had done it she felt frightened, thinking, I should mend the fire first—but she knew if she went back into her body she would never have the courage to try this again.
She thought of Morgaine, the living bond between herself and Gorlois—even though he now rejected it, spoke scathingly of the child, still the bond was there, and she could find Gorlois if she sought him. Even as the thought formed in her mind, she was . . . elsewhere.
. . . Where was she? There was the flare of a small lamp, and by its fitful light she saw her husband, surrounded by a cluster of heads: men huddled together in one of the small stone huts on the moors.
Gorlois was saying, “I have fought beside Uther for many years, under Ambrosius, and if I know him at all, he will count on courage and surprise. His people do not know our Cornish weather, and it will not occur to them that if the sun sets in raging storm, it will clear soon after midnight; so they will not move till the sun rises, but he will be out and about the moment the sun is above the horizon, hoping to fall on us while it is still early. But if we can surround his camp in those hours between the clearing of the sky and the sunrise, then as they break camp we can surprise them. They will be prepared for a march, not a battle. With just a little luck we can take them before they have their weapons well out of the sheath! Once Uther’s army is cut to pieces, if he himself is not killed, he will at least turn tail and get out of Cornwall, never to return.” By the dim lamp, Igraine saw Gorlois bare his teeth like an animal. “And if he is killed, his armies will scatter like a beehive when someone kills their queen!”
Igraine felt herself shrink back; even bodiless, a wraith, it seemed that Gorlois must see her hovering there. And indeed, he raised his head and frowned, brushing at his cheek. “I felt a draught—it’s cold in here,” he muttered.
“And how could it be otherwise? It’s cold here as the pit, with the snow raging like this,” one of his men growled—but even before he got the words out, Igraine was