Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [70]
He nodded soberly. “I dreamed of them before ever I wore them. And it was in my mind that you had something like to them, too, about your arms . . .” He picked up her slender wrist again and traced along it. “Only they were golden.”
She felt the hairs rise on her back. Indeed it had been no dream, but a vision from the Country of Truth.
“I cannot remember all the dream,” Uther said, staring over her shoulder. “Only that we stood together on a great plain, and there was something like to the ring stones. . . . What does it mean, Igraine, that we share one another’s dreams?”
She said, feeling her voice catch in her throat as if she were about to weep, “Perhaps it means only that we are fated for one another, my king . . . and my lord . . . and my love.”
“My queen, and my love . . .” He met her eyes suddenly, a long look and a long question. “Surely the time for dreaming is over, Igraine.” He thrust his hands into her hair, pulling out the pins, letting it tumble down over her embroidered collar and over his face; smoothed the long locks down with trembling hands. He rose to his feet, still holding her in his arms. She had never guessed at the strength in his hands. He crossed the room in two great strides, and laid her down on the bed. Kneeling at her side, he bent and kissed her again.
“My queen,” he murmured. “I would you could have been crowned at my side at my kingmaking. . . . There were rites there such as no Christian man should know; but the Old People, who were here long before ever the Romans came to these isles, would not acknowledge me king without them. It was a long road I took to come there, and some of it, I am sure, was not anywhere in this world I know.”
This reminded her of what Viviane had told her about the drifting of the worlds, apart in the mists. And thinking about Viviane brought to mind what Viviane had asked of her, and how reluctant she had been.
I did not know. I was so young then, and untried, I knew nothing, I did not know how all of me could be dissolved, torn, swept away. . . .
“Did they ask of you that you should make the Great Marriage with the land, as was done in the old days? I know that King Ban of Benwick in Less Britain was so required . . .” and a sudden, violent stab of jealousy went through her, that some woman or priestess might have symbolized for him the land he was sworn to defend.
“No,” he said. “And I am not sure I would have done so, but it was not asked of me. The Merlin said, too, that it is he, as with every Merlin of Britain, who is sworn to die if need be, in sacrifice for his people—” Uther broke off. “But this can mean little to you.”
“You have forgotten,” she said, “I was reared in Avalon; my mother was priestess there and my eldest sister is now the Lady of the Lake.”
“Are you a priestess too, Igraine?”
She shook her head, starting to say a simple no; then said, “Not in this life.”
“I wonder . . .” Again he traced the line of the imaginary serpents, touching his own with his other hand. “I have always known, I think, that I lived before—it seems to me that life is too great a thing to live it only once and then be snuffed out like a lamp when the wind blows. And why, when first I looked upon your face, did I feel that I had known you before the world was made? These things are mysteries, and I think it may be that you know more of them than I. You say