Marion Bradley - The Mists of Avalon

Simple lust? It might have been that on Kevin's part-Nimue was beautiful, and even though the Merlin had been most circumspect, she might have kindled any man; but Gwenhwyfar could not believe that Nimue had been likewise roused by such a one when she had remained courteous but cool and unattainable to all of Gwenhwyfar's handsomest young knights.

From where she sat at the Merlin's feet, Nimue sensed that Gwenhwyfar was watching her. But she did not turn her eyes away from Kevin. In a way, she thought, I am enchanting him. Her purpose demanded that she have him completely at her mercy-her slave and her victim. And again she stifled the flash of pity that she felt. This man had done worse than simply revealing the Mysteries or the secret teaching; he had given the holy things themselves into the hands of the Christians, to be profaned. Ruthlessly, Nimue refused to consider her next thought, that the Christians had not intended profanation but hallowing. The Christians knew nothing of the inner truths of the Mysteries. And in any case the Merlin had betrayed a sworn oath.

And the Goddess appeared to prevent that profanation ... . Nimue had had enough training in the Mysteries to know what she had witnessed; even now a shiver went over her at the thought of what had passed among the Companions on that festival day. She had not wholly understood, but she knew that she had touched the greatest holiness.

And the Merlin would have profaned this. No, he must die like the dog he was.

The harp was silent. Kevin said, "I have a harp for you, lady, if you will accept it. It is one which I fashioned with my own hands when I was a lad on Avalon, and first come there. I have made others, and they are better, but this is a good one and I have carried it long. If you will accept it, it is yours." Nimue protested that such a gift was all too valuable, but inwardly she was overjoyed. If she should possess something so valuable to him personally, something he had fashioned with his own hands and labor, then would it bind him to her, just as if it were a lock of his own hair or a drop of his blood. There were not many, even in Avalon, who knew that the law of magic went so far, that something which had been so intimately intertwined with the mind and the heart and the passions-and Nimue grasped that music was his deepest passion-retained even more of the soul than hair clipped from the body retained the essence of the body.

She thought with satisfaction, He himself, of his own free will, has put his soul into my hands. When he sent for the harp, she caressed it; small and crudely made as it was, the post had been worn smooth with resting against his body, and his hands had touched the strings with love ... even now they lingered on it tenderly.

She touched the strings, testing their music. In truth, the tone of the harp was good; he had somehow managed that perfect curve and structure that made the soundingboard echo the strings with the sweetest tone. And if he had done this as a boy, with those mutilated hands ... again Nimue felt the surge of pity and pain, Why did he not keep to his music and meddle not in the high affairs of state?

"You are too kind to me." She let her voice tremble, hoping he would think it was passion instead of triumph ... with this, soon he will be mine, possessed body and soul.

But it was too soon. The great tides of Avalon running in her blood told her that the moon was waxing; such great magic as this could be worked only in moon-dark, the slack time when the Lady sheds none of her light on the world, and her hidden purposes are made known.

She must not let his passion grow beyond bounds, nor her own sympathy with him.

He will desire me at full moon; this bond I am forging is a double-edged sword, a rope with two ends ... I will desire him as well, I cannot prevent that. For an enchantment to be total, it must involve both enchanter and enchanted, and she knew, with a spasm of terror, that this spell she was weaving would work on her too, and rebound on her. She could not pretend passion and desire; she must feel them as well. She knew, with a fear that wrung her heart, that even as the Merlin would be helpless in her hands, so it might well be that she would come to be helpless in his. And what of me, O Goddess, Mother ... that is all too great a price to pay ... let it not come on me, no, no, I am afraid ... .

"Well, Nimue, my dear," Gwenhwyfar said, "now that you have the harp in your hands, will you play and sing for me?"

She let her hair curtain her face as she looked timidly at the Merlin and murmured, "Shall I, then?"

"I beg you to play," he said. "Your voice is sweet and I can hear that your hands will bring enchantment from the strings ... ."

They will indeed if I am favored of the Goddess. Nimue set her hands to the strings, remembering that she must not play any song of Avalon that he would remember and recognize. She began to play a drinking song she had heard at the court, with words none too proper for a maiden; she saw Gwenhwyfar looking scandalized, and thought, Good, if she is shocked by my unmaidenly behavior, she will not inquire too deeply into my motives. Then she played and sang a lament she had heard from a northern harper, the mournful song of a fisherman out on the sea, looking for the lights of his home on the shore.

At the end of the song she rose, looking shyly at him. "I thank you for the use of your harp-may I borrow it again, that my hands may keep their skill?"

"It is my gift to you," said Kevin. "Now that I have heard what music your hands can bring from it, it could belong to no other. Keep it, I beg you-I have many harps."

"You are too kind to me," she murmured, "but, I beg you, now that I can make music for myself, do not abandon me or deprive me of the pleasure of listening to yours."

"I will play for you whenever you ask me," Kevin said, and she knew that his heart was in the words. She contrived to brush against him as she leaned forward to take the harp.

She murmured, softly so Gwenhwyfar would not hear, "Words alone cannot express my gratitude to you. Perhaps a time will come when I can express it more fittingly."

He looked at her, dazed, and she discovered that she was returning his gaze with the same intensity.

A double-edged spell indeed. I am victim too ...

He went away, and she sat obediently by Gwenhwyfar and tried to turn her attention to her spinning.

"How beautifully you play, Nimue," said Gwenhwyfar. "I need not ask where you learned ... I heard Morgaine sing that lament once."

Nimue said, averting her eyes, "Tell me something of Morgaine. She had departed from Avalon before I came there. She was married to a king in-Lothian, was it?"

"In the north of Wales," Gwenhwyfar began.

Nimue, who knew all this perfectly well, was still not completely false. Morgaine remained a puzzle to her, and she was eager to know how the lady Morgaine had appeared to those who knew her in the world.

"Morgaine was one of my ladies-in-waiting," Gwenhwyfar was saying. "Arthur gave her to me as such on our wedding day. Of course he had been fostered apart from her and hardly knew her, either ... ."

As she listened attentively, Nimue, who had been trained to read emotions, realized that beneath Gwenhwyfar's dislike for Morgaine, there was something else: respect, awe, even a kind of tenderness. If Gwenhwyfar were not so fanatically, mindlessly Christian, she would have loved Morgaine well.

At least while Gwenhwyfar was talking of Morgaine, even though she condemned her as an evil sorceress, she was not mouthing the pious nonsense that bored Nimue almost to weeping. But she could not give Gwenhwyfar's tales her full attention. She sat in an attitude of passionate interest, she made the proper sounds of attention or astonishment, but within, her mind was in turmoil: