Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [8]
She has us all in her hand. How can she have such power over us all? Or is it that she is the only mother Morgause has ever known? She was a grown woman when Morgause was born, she has always been mother, as well as sister, to both of us. Their mother, who had been really too old for childbearing, had died giving birth to Morgause. Viviane had borne a child of her own, earlier in the year; her child had died, and Viviane had taken Morgause to nurse.
Morgaine had snuggled tightly into Viviane’s lap; Morgause leaned her silky red head on Viviane’s knee. The priestess held the little one with one arm while her free hand stroked the half-grown girl’s long, silky hair.
“I would have come to you when Morgaine was born,” Viviane said, “but I was pregnant, too. I bore a son that year. I have put him out to nurse, and I think his foster-mother may send him to the monks. She is a Christian.”
“Don’t you mind his being reared as a Christian?” Morgause asked. “Is he pretty? What is his name?”
Viviane laughed. “I called him Balan,” she said, “and his foster-mother named her son Balin. They are only ten days apart in age, so they will be reared as twins, no doubt. And no, I do not mind that he is reared a Christian, his father was so, and Priscilla is a good woman. You said the journey here was long; believe me, child, it is longer now than it was when you were wedded to Gorlois. Not longer, perhaps, from the Isle of the Priests, where their Holy Thorn grows, but longer, far longer, from Avalon . . .”
“And that is why we came here,” said the Merlin suddenly, and his voice was like the tolling of a great bell, so that Morgaine sat up suddenly and began to whimper in fright.
“I do not understand,” said Igraine, suddenly uneasy. “Surely the two lie close together. . . .”
“The two are one,” said the Merlin, sitting very erect, “but the followers of Christ have chosen to say, not that they shall have no other Gods before their God, but that there is no other God save for their God; that he alone made the world, that he rules it alone, that he alone made the stars and the whole of creation.”
Igraine quickly made the holy sign against blasphemy.
“But that cannot be,” she insisted. “No single God can rule all things . . . and what of the Goddess? What of the Mother . . . ?”
“They believe,” said Viviane, in her smooth low voice, “that there is no Goddess; for the principle of woman, so they say, is the principle of all evil; through woman, so they say, Evil entered this world; there is some fantastic Jewish tale about an apple and a snake.”
“The Goddess will punish them,” Igraine said, shaken. “And yet you married me to one of them?”
“We did not know that their blasphemy was so all-encompassing,” Merlin said, “for there have been followers of other Gods in our time. But they respected the Gods of others.”
“But what has this to do with the length of the road from Avalon?” asked Igraine.
“We come, then, to the reason for our visit,” said the Merlin, “for, as the Druids know, it is the belief of mankind which shapes the world, and all of reality. Long ago, when the followers of Christ first came to our isle, I knew that this was a powerful pivot in time, a moment to change the world.”
Morgause looked up at the old man, her eyes wide in awe.
“Are you so old, Venerable One?”
The Merlin smiled down at the girl and said, “Not in my own body. But I have read much in the great hall which is not in this world, there the Record of All Things is written. And also, I was living then. Those who are the Lords of this world permitted me to come back, but in another body of flesh.”
“These matters are too abstruse for the little one, Venerable Father,” Viviane said, gently rebuking him. “She is not a priestess. What the Merlin