Marion Bradley - The Mists of Avalon

From time to time some tale of the quest, each one more fabulous than the last, would reach her. Lamorak, she heard, had come back at last to Pellinore's castle, drawn by an old rumor of a magical dish that was kept there in a crypt beneath the castle, and there he had died, crying out that the Grail floated before him in the hands of a maiden, in the hands of his sister, Elaine, as she had been in childhood ... she wondered what he had really seen. Word came, too, from the country near the Roman wall that Lancelet was dungeoned somewhere in sir Ectorius' old country as a madman, and that no one dared send word to King Arthur; then she heard that his brother Bors had come and recognized him, and he had come to his wits and ridden away, whether to follow the quest further or to ride back to Camelot she neither knew nor cared. Perhaps, she thought, with luck he too would die on this quest; otherwise the lure of Gwenhwyfar would draw him back yet again to Arthur and his court.

Only her sensible Gwydion had not gone on the quest, but had remained at Camelot, close to Arthur's side. Would that Gawaine and Gareth had had the wit to do the same! Now at last her sons had come into the place that should always have been theirs with Arthur.

Yet she had another way to know what was happening. Viviane had told her, in her youth at Avalon, that she had not the patience nor the hardihood for initiation into the Mysteries, and Viviane-she knew it now -had been right; who would wish to forsake life for so long as that? For many years she had believed that the doors of magic and of the Sight were closed to her, save for such little tricks as she had mastered on her own. And then she had begun to understand, when first she had used her sorcery to discover Gwydion's parentage, that the magical art was there, awaiting her, needing nothing but her will; having nothing to do with the complex Druidical rules and limitations about its use, or lies about the Gods. It was simply a part of life, there and accessible, nothing to do with good or evil, but available to anyone who had the will and the ruthlessness to use it.

All those who pretend to religions, Morgause thought, wish only to keep the sources of power in their own hands. But now I have them freely and of my own making, without binding myself by oaths about their use or direction.

So now, on this night, shut away from her servants, she made her preparations. She felt a dispassionate sympathy for the white dog she had brought in, and a moment of genuine revulsion as she cut its throat and set forth the dish of hot blood she had caught; but, after all, it was her own dog, as much hers as a pig she might have slaughtered for the table, and the power of spilled blood was stronger and more direct than the power built up by the long prayers and disciplines of the Avalon priesthood. Before the fireplace, one of her servant-women was lying, drugged and ready, before the fireplace; not one, this time, for whom she had any affection or any real need. She had learned that lesson when last she had attempted this. She spared a regretful thought for the waste of a good spinning woman that time; at least this one would be no loss to anyone, not even the cook who had half a dozen more helpers than she needed.

She still felt a certain squeamishness at the preliminaries. The blood marking her hands and forehead was unpleasantly sticky, but it seemed to her that she could almost see, billowing forth from the blood like smoke, the thin streams of magical power. The moon had shrunk to the thinnest of glimmers in the sky, and she knew the one who awaited her call in Camelot would be ready. At the precise moment the moon moved into the proper quarter of the sky, she poured the rest of the blood into the fire and called three times aloud.

"Morag! Morag! Morag!"

The drugged woman by the fireside-Morgause vaguely recalled that her name was Becca, or something like that-stirred, her vague eyes taking on depth and purpose, and for a moment, as she arose, it seemed that she was wearing the elegant garb of one of Gwenhwyfar's waiting-women. Her voice, too, was not the rough dialect of the dim-witted country girl, but the careful speech of a southern court lady.

"I am here at your call. What would you have of me, Queen of the Darkness?"

"Tell me of the court. What of the Queen?"

"She is much alone since Lancelet has gone, but often calls young Gwydion to her. She has been heard to say that he is like the son she never had. I think she has forgotten that he is the son of Queen Morgaine," said the girl, the careful speech so incongruous from the empty-eyed, rough-handed kitchen girl in her shapeless smock of sacking.

"Do you still put the medicine in her wine at bedtime?"

"There is no need, my queen," said the alien voice which came through and behind the kitchen girl. "The Queen's courses have not come upon her now for more than a year, and so I have ceased to give her the drug. But in any case the King comes very seldom to her bed."

So Morgause's last fear could now be quieted-that somehow, against all odds, Gwenhwyfar would bear a belated child to endanger Gwydion's position at court. Besides, the King's subjects would never accept a child for king, after the long peaceful years of Arthur's reign. Nor, she supposed, would Gwydion have any scruples about making an end to a small, unwanted rival. But it was better not to chance it; Arthur himself, after all, had escaped all Lot's plotting and her own, and had lived to be crowned.

I have waited too long. Lot should have been King of these lands many years ago, and I Queen. Now there is none to stop me. Viviane is gone; Morgaine is old; Gwydion will make me Queen. I am the only woman living to whose word he will listen.

"What of sir Mordred, Morag? Is he trusted by the Queen, by the King?"

But the voice grew thick and heavy. "I cannot stay-Mordred is often with the King-once I heard the King say to him-eh, my head aches, what am I doing here by the fire? Cook will skin me alive ..." It was the idiot voice of Becca, thick and sullen, and Morgause knew that far away in Camelot, Morag had sunk back into her bizarre dream in which she faced the faraway Queen of Lothian or the Queen of Fairy ... .

Morgause seized the pan of blood, shaking the last remaining drops into the fire. "Morag, Morag! Hear me, stay, I command!"

"My queen," came the faraway ladylike voice, "sir Mordred has always at his side one of the damsels of the Lady of the Lake, they say that she is somehow kin to Arthur-"

Niniane, daughter of Taliesin. Morgause thought, I did not know she had left Avalon. But why now should she stay?

"Sir Mordred has been named captain of horse while Lancelet is gone from court. There are rumors ... Eh, the fire, my lady, will you set the whole of the castle afire?" Becca was rubbing her eyes and whimpering on the hearth. Infuriated, Morgause gave her a savage push, and the girl fell screaming into the fire; but she was still bound and could not pull herself away from the flames.

"Damn her, she will wake the whole household!" Morgause reached out to pull the girl from the flames, but her dress had caught fire, and her shrieks were dreadful, striking Morgause's ears like red-hot needles. She thought, with a trace of pity, Poor girl, there is nothing to be done for her now -she would be so burnt, we could not help her even if she should live! She pulled the screaming, struggling girl out of the fire, not regarding the burns on her own hands, and leaned close for a moment, laying her head on the girl's brow as if to soothe her; then, with a single stroke, she cut her throat from ear to ear. Blood poured into the fire, and the smoke rushed high up into the chimney.

Morgause felt herself shaking with the unexpected power, as if she were spreading out through the whole of the room, through the -whole of Lothian, through the whole of the world ... she had never dared so much before, but now it had come to her, unsought. It seemed that she hovered bodiless over all the land. Again after years of peace there were armies on the road, and on the west coast hairy men in high-beaked dragon ships landed, plundering and burning cities, laying monasteries waste, carrying away women from the walled convents where they lived . .. like a crimson wind, sweeping down even to the borders of Camelot ... she was not sure whether what she saw now was even at this moment moving in the land or was yet to come.