Marion Bradley - The Mists of Avalon

"I fear you," said the girl, still kneeling at her feet, her dark, intense, small face glowing with firelight, "but I could never hate you."

Viviane sighed deeply, thrusting away foresight and dread. "And it is not me you fear," she said, "but her. We are both in her hands, child. Your virginity is sacred to the Goddess. See you keep it so till the Mother makes her will known."

Morgaine laid her small hands over Viviane's. "Be it so," she whispered. "I swear it."

The next day she went to the House of the Maidens, and there she remained for many years.

MORGAINE SPEAKS ...

How do you write of the making of a priestess? What is not obvious is secret. Those who have walked that road will know, and those who have not will never know though I should write down all the forbidden things. Seven times Beltane-eve came and went; seven times the winters shrivelled us all with cold. The Sight came easily; Viviane had said I was priestess-born. It was not so easy to bid it come when I willed and only when I willed, and to close the gates of the Sight when it was not fitting I should see.

It was the small magics which came hardest, forcing the mind first to walk in unaccustomed paths. To call the fire and raise it at command, to call the mists, to bring rain-all these were simple, but to know when to bring rain or mist and when to leave it in the hands of the Gods, that was not so simple. Other lessons there were, at which my knowledge of the Sight helped me not at all: the herb lore, and the lore of healing, the long songs of which not a single word might ever be committed to writing, for how can the knowledge of the Great Ones be committed to anything made by human hands? Some of the lessons were pure joy, for I was allowed to learn to play upon the harp and to fashion my own, using sacred woods and the gut of an animal killed in ritual; and some lessons were of terror.

Hardest of all, perhaps, to look within myself, under the spell of the drugs which loosed the mind from the body, sick and retching, while the mind soared free past the limits of time and space, and to read in the pages of the past and the future. But of that I may say nothing. At last, the day when I was cast out of Avalon, clad only in my shift, and unarmed save for the little dagger of a priestess, to return-if I could. I knew that if I did not, they would mourn me as one dead, but the gates would never again be opened to me unless I could bid them open at my own will and command. And when the mists closed around me, I wandered long on the shores of the alien Lake, hearing only the bells and the doleful chanting of the monks. And at last I broke through the mists, and called upon her, my feet upon the earth and my head among the stars, stretching from horizon to horizon, and cried aloud the great word of Power ... .

And the mists parted and I saw before me the same sunlit shore where the Lady had brought me seven years before, and I set my feet on the solid earth of my own home, and I wept as I had done when first I came there as a frightened child. And then the mark of the crescent moon was set between my brows by the hand of the Goddess herself ... but this is a Mystery of which it is forbidden to write. Those who have felt their brow burned with the kiss ofCeridwen will know whereof I speak.

It was in the second spring after that, when I had been released from the silence, that Galahad, who was already skilled at fighting the Saxons under his own father, King Ban of Less Britain, returned to Avalon.

12

The priestesses above a certain grade took it in turns to serve the Lady of the Lake, and at this season when the Lady was very busy with preparations for the approaching Midsummer festival, one of them always slept in the little wattled house, so that the Lady might have someone at her call night and day. It was so early that the sun still hid in the mist at the edge of the horizon when Viviane stepped into the room beyond her own, where her attendant slept, and beckoned quietly to awaken her.

The woman sat up in bed, flinging her deerskin tunic over her under-gown.

"Tell the bargemen to be ready. And go and ask my kinswoman Morgaine to attend upon me."

A few minutes later, Morgaine paused respectfully before the entrance where Viviane was kneeling to build up her fire. She made no sound; after nine years of training in the priestess arts, she moved so silently that no footfall or even a breath of air marked her passing. But after those years, too, the ways of the priestesses were so well known to her that she was not surprised when Viviane turned as she reached the door, and said, "Come in, Morgaine."

Rather contrary to her usual custom, however, Viviane did not invite her kinswoman to sit, but kept her standing there, regarding her evenly for a moment.

Morgaine was not tall; she would never be that, and in these years in Avalon she had grown as tall as she would ever be, a scant inch taller than the Lady. Her dark hair was plaited down the back of her neck and wrapped with a deerskin thong; she wore the dark-dyed blue dress and deerskin overtunic of any priestess, and the blue crescent shone darkly between her brows. Nevertheless, smooth and anonymous as she was among them, there was a glint in her eyes which answered to Viviane's cool stare, and Viviane knew from experience that, small and delicately made as she was, when she wished she could throw & glamour over herself that made her appear not only tall but majestic. Already she appeared ageless, and she would, Viviane knew, look much the same even when white appeared in her dark hair.

She thought, with a flicker of relief, No, she is not beautiful, then wondered why it should matter to her. No doubt Morgaine, like all young women, even a priestess vowed lifelong to the service of the Goddess, would prefer to be beautiful, and was intensely unhappy because she was not. She thought, with a slight curl of her lip, When you are my age, my girl, it will not matter whether or no you are beautiful, for everyone you know will believe that you are a great beauty whenever you wish them to believe it; and when you do not, you can sit back and pretend to be a simple old woman long past such thoughts. She had fought her own battle more than twenty years ago, when she saw Igraine growing to womanhood with the tawny and russet beauty for which Viviane, still young, would gladly have bartered her soul and all her power. Sometimes, in moments of self-doubt, she wondered if she had thrust Igraine into marriage with Gorlois so that she need not be endlessly taunted with the younger woman's loveliness, mocking her own dark severity. But I brought her to the love of the man destined for her before the ring stones of Salisbury plain were piled one upon another, she thought.

She realized that Morgaine was still standing quietly, awaiting her word, and smiled.

"Truly I grow old," she said. "I was lost, for a moment, in memories. You are not the child who came here many years ago; but there are times when I forget it, my Morgaine."

Morgaine smiled and the smile transformed her face, which in repose was rather sullen. Like Morgause, Viviane thought, though otherwise they are nothing alike. It is Taliesin's blood.

Morgaine said, "I think you forget nothing, kinswoman."

"Perhaps not. Have you broken your fast, child?"

"No. But I am not hungry."

"Very well. I want you to go in the barge."

Morgaine, who had grown used to silence, answered only with a gesture of respect and assent.

It was not, of course, a request unusual in any way-the barge from Avalon must always* be guided by a priestess who knew the secret way through the mists.

"It is a family mission," Viviane said, "for it is my son who is approaching the island, and I thought it well to send a kinswoman to welcome him here."

Morgaine smiled. "Balan?" she said. "Will his foster-brother Balin not fear for his soul if he goes beyond the sound of church bells?"