Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [95]
The small, dark men who poled the barge bent before her in silent respect to the Goddess whose form the higher priestesses were supposed to wear, and she signed to them without speaking and took her place in the prow.
Swiftly and silently the draped barge glided out into the mist. Morgaine felt the dampness coalescing on her brow and clinging to her hair; she was hungry, and chilled to the bone, but she had been taught to ignore that too. When they came out of the mist, the sun had risen on the far shore, and she could see a horse and rider waiting there. The barge continued its slow strokes forward, but Morgaine, in a rare moment of self-forgetfulness, stood unguarded, looking at the horseman there.
He was slightly built, his face aquiline and darkly handsome, set off by the crimson cap with an eagle feather in its band and the wide crimson cloak that fell gracefully around him. When he dismounted, the natural grace with which he moved, a dancer’s grace, took her breath away. Had she ever wished to be fair and rounded, when dark and slender could show this beauty? His eyes were dark too, glinting with a touch of mischief—mischief which alone gave Morgaine awareness of who this must be, although, otherwise, not a single feature remained of the scrawny boy with the bony legs and enormous feet.
“Galahad,” she said, pitching her voice low to keep it from trembling—a priestess-trick. “I would not have recognized you.”
He bowed smoothly, the cape swirling as he moved—had she ever despised that as an acrobat’s trick? Here it seemed to grow from his body.
“Lady,” he said.
He has not recognized me either. Keep it so.
Why at this moment did she remember Viviane’s words? Your virginity is sacred to the Goddess. See you keep it so till the Mother makes her will known. Startled, Morgaine recognized that for the first time in her life, she had looked on a man with desire. Knowing that such things were not for her, but that she was to use her life as the Goddess should decree, she had looked on men with scorn as the natural prey of the Goddess in the form of her priestesses, to be taken or denied as seemed right at the moment. Viviane had commanded that this year she need not take part in the Beltane fire rituals, from which some of her fellow priestesses emerged with child by the will of the Goddess, children who were either born, or cast forth by the knowledge of herb lore and drugs she had been taught—an unpleasant process, which if not followed inevitably brought on the even more unpleasant and dangerous process of birth, and tiresome children who were reared or sent to fosterage as the Lady decreed. Morgaine had been glad enough to escape this time, knowing that Viviane had other plans for her.
She gestured him to step on board. Never lay hands upon an outsider—the words of the old priestess who had schooled her; a priestess of Avalon must be even as a visitor from the otherworld. She wondered why she had to stop her hand from reaching out to touch his wrist. She knew, with a sureness that made the blood beat hard in her temples, that under the smooth skin would lie hard muscle, pulsing with life, and she hungered to meet his eyes again. She turned away, trying to master herself.
His voice was deep and musical as he said, “Why, now you move your hands, I know you—everything else about you has changed. Priestess, were you not once my kinswoman, called Morgaine?” The dark eyes glinted. “Nothing else is the same as when I used to call you Morgaine of the Fairies. . . .”
“I was, and I am. But years have passed,” she said, turning away, gesturing to the silent servants of the barge to pole it away from the shore.
“But the magic of Avalon never changes,” he murmured,