Lady of Avalon

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  “Perhaps it is so…” she murmured. “I will pray to the One who is beyond all differences to bring you gently to the Light.” She saw pain ripple across his features; then his breathing eased.

  “I have often thought…dying might be like moving into Faerie. A step inward and sideways…out of this world.”

  Tears pricked Viviane’s eyelids, but she nodded, and took his hand. His lips moved as if he were trying to smile. Then the smile began to fade.

  Viviane sat beside him, feeling his life seep away like water from a cracked bowl. It seemed a long time, but when she looked up from the emptied body, Taliesin was reining in beside her. She shook her head, trying not to weep.

  “He’s dead, but I won’t let them have his body. Help me get him away.”

  The bard turned in the saddle, making a sign with his fingers and murmuring a spell of confusion. Understanding his purpose, Viviane began to reinforce the spell. “You do not see us…. You do not hear us…. No one was here at all….” Let the Christians think Fortunatus had been carried off by demons if they pleased, so long as they did not see.

  Taliesin heaved the old priest across his own saddle and lifted Viviane back into her own, then spread his cloak across the body, took both reins, and led them back across the square.

  The illusion protected them until they left the city. Viviane would have liked to bury the old man on his own holy isle, beside the stone from which he stepped to Faerie, but Taliesin knew of a Christian chapel, now abandoned but still sacred ground. And there they laid him, with such rites as the Druids used, and Viviane, remembering that moment in the mist when she had been united with the Light and known all Truth to be One, thought that Fortunatus would not mind.

  If the first part of their journey had ended in failure, the remainder was more successful, though Viviane found it hard to care. They journeyed to Londinium, where the High King struggled to maintain a semblance of rule with his strong sons beside him. Viviane recognized Vortimer, the one who had come to Avalon, though he looked older now. At first he thought she was her mother; she did not tell him that she had been the veiled priestess who represented the Maiden in his ritual. He was quietly proud of his successes against the barbarians, and she had no doubt of his loyalty to Avalon.

  His father, Vortigern, was another matter: an old fox, married now to a redheaded Saxon vixen. He had ruled long and survived much, and would welcome any alliance, she judged, that would help him hold on to power. She spoke to him of Bishop Germanus, and how his fanaticism was dividing the land, though she had little hope that the High King would, or could, act against him. But to her message from the Lady of Avalon he did listen; for the sake of Britannia he would meet with his old rival Ambrosius to discuss cooperation, if an encounter could be arranged on neutral ground.

  After that their way led to the western strongholds, where the Saxons had not yet come. In Glevum, Ambrosius Aurelianus, whose father had called himself Emperor and contested with Vortigern for the sovereignty, was gathering men. He heard the Lady’s message with interest, for although he himself was a Christian of the rational sort, he respected the Druids as philosophers, and had met Taliesin before.

  He was a tall man in his forties, dark-haired with the eagle look of the Romans, but most of his warriors were young. One of them, a lanky, fair-haired fellow called Uther, was no more than her own age. Taliesin teased her with having acquired an admirer, but she ignored both of them. Compared with Prince Vortimer, Uther was only a boy.

  Ambrosius heard her complaint against Germanus with some sympathy, for the men of culture whom the Gallic bishop was so fond of attacking were the class from which he himself had come. But Venta Belgarum was in a part of the island which no longer gave allegiance either to himself or to Vortigern, and in any case, a secular lord had little control over churchmen. His response had been much more courteous than that of the High King, but Viviane sensed that his actions would not be any more useful.

  As she and Taliesin started back down the road toward Avalon, she meditated darkly on cursing Fortunatus’ murderers, and was only stopped by the suspicion that the old priest himself had probably forgiven them.

  In persuading Vortigern and Ambrosius to consider an alliance, Viviane had sown the seeds of British unity, but it was not until the following year that the first shoots appeared. Word had come that the Saxons were once more building up their strength in the east of Cantium, and Vortimer, determined that this time he would crush them, appealed to Avalon. And so it was that, just before Beltane, the Lady of Avalon departed from the holy isle and journeyed eastward with her older daughter and her priestesses and her bard to meet with the princes of Britannia.

  The place appointed for their council was Sorviodunum, a small town located on the banks of a river where the track from die north crossed the main road from Venta Belgarum. The crossing was a pleasant place, shaded by trees, looking northward across the broad expanse of the plain. When the party from Avalon arrived, the flat meadows around it had sprouted tents like some new kind of spring flower.

  “We of the east have poured out our blood to defend Britannia,” said Vortigern from his bench beneath the oak tree. He was not a large man, but still solid, his hair more grizzled than it had been when Viviane saw him before. “In the last campaign my son Categirn traded his life for that of Hengest’s brother at the ford of Rithergabail. The bodies of our men have been the wall that kept the Saxons from yours.” He gestured at the tiled roofs of Sorviodunum, basking peacefully in the sun.

  “And all Britannia is grateful,” said Ambrosius evenly from across the circle.

  “Are you?” responded Vortimer. “Words are easy, but words will not stop the Saxons.” He looked older too, no longer the ardent youth who had dedicated himself to the Goddess, but a proven warrior. The lean features were the same, however, and the fierce falcon’s pride in his green eyes.

  A hero, thought Viviane, watching him from her place at her mother’s side. He is the Defender now. Everyone knew that the priestesses had arranged this meeting, but it was not politic to admit it publicly. The Avalon contingent had been placed in the shade of a thorn hedge, close enough for them to see and hear.

  “Can anything stop them?” asked one of the older men. “However many we kill, Germania seems to breed more….”

  “Perhaps, but if we are strong, they will seek easier prey. Let them fall upon Gallia, as the Franks have done. They can be expelled! In one more campaign we can do it. It is keeping them out that concerns me now.

  “And so it should,” said Ambrosius. He looked watchful, as if seeking a deeper meaning in Vortimer’s words. Vortigern gave a bark of laughter. Rumor was that he had come only at his son’s urging, and had little hope that anything would be achieved.

  “You know as well as I do what is required,” said the High King. “I fought your father over this very question for many years. Whether he be called emperor or king, there must be one ruler whom all of Britannia will obey. Only thus did Rome hold off the barbarians for so many centuries.”

  “And you want us to follow you?” exclaimed one of Ambrosius’ men. “To turn over the sheepfold to the man who invited in the wolves?”

  Vortigern rounded on him, and for a moment Viviane understood how the old man had held power for so many years.

  “I set wolves to fight wolves, as the Romans themselves have done, time and time again. But before I dealt with Hengest, I had worn out my voice in pleading with my people to take up the sword in their own defense—begging them, as I am pleading with you now!”

  “We could not pay Hengest, and he turned upon us,” said Vortimer more calmly. “Since then what little his hordes have left has been spent to fight him. What have you done, sitting in your peaceful hills? We must have men and we must have the resources to support them, not only for this campaign, but every year, to protect what we have regained.”

  “Our lands are battered, but with a few years of peace, they can heal.” Vortigern took up the arg
ument once more. “And then our united strength will be enough to break through the marshes and forests behind, which the Angles are sheltering, and take back the Iceni lands.”

  Ambrosius sat silent, but his gaze was on Vortimer. In the nature of things, he could expect to outlive the old man; it was the young one who would be his real rival, or his ally.

  “You have won all men’s respect for your valor, and your victories,” he said slowly, “and surely all of Britannia must be grateful. Were it not for you, the wolf would now be at our throats as well. But men want some say in who spends their money and whom they follow. Your own people owe you their loyalty. The men of the west do not.

  “But they will follow you!” exclaimed Vortimer. “All I ask is that you and yours fight at my side!”

  “That may be all you ask, but your father, I think, wants me to acknowledge him as leader,” Ambrosius replied. There was a heavy silence. “This much I will do,” the western Prince said then. “I will open our storehouses and send you supplies. But I cannot, in conscience, ride under the banner of Vortigern.”

  The conference disintegrated into a babble of disputation. Viviane’s eyes pricked with tears of disappointment, but as she blinked them away, she realized that Vortimer was looking at her with a kind of desperate hope. The wisdom of men had failed him. What was left but to seek the counsel of Avalon? She was not surprised when he turned his back on the others and strode toward them.

  All her life Viviane had heard of the Giants’ Dance, though she had never been there. Riding north along the river, she watched eagerly for the first dark speck of stone to emerge from the plain. But it was Taliesin, tallest among them, who first saw it, pointing for Vortimer, and then for Viviane and Ana, to see. Viviane was grateful to the Prince for creating this opportunity. When he had asked the Lady of Avalon to foretell the future, she had replied that it could be done best by drawing on the power of an ancient site nearby. Viviane wondered if that was true, or whether Ana had simply not wished to work magic near so many unsympathetic eyes.

  Certainly a ride of nearly three hours ought to be enough to discourage idle curiosity. Though the afternoon sun was warm, Viviane shivered. The plain seemed endless under an immensity of open sky; it made her feel oddly vulnerable, like an ant crawling across a paving stone. But slowly the dark specks grew larger. Now she could make out the separate stones.

  She was familiar with the stone circle atop the Tor, but this one was larger, surrounded by a great ditch, its stones shaped with precision, and many of those that remained standing capped with lintels, so that the effect was more like a building than a sacred grove. Some of the stones had fallen, but that had done little to diminish their power. Though the grass grew green and thick around the circle, it was sparse and struggling within. She had heard that no snow fell inside that circle, nor would it stick to the stones.

  On closer examination she could see portions of surrounding stones poking through the soil. Inside the ring was a smaller circle of pillars, and four taller trilithons in a semicircle around the altar stone. She wondered to what realities one might pass through those dark doorways. They dismounted and hobbled the horses—there were no trees to which to tether them on the plain. Curious, Viviane walked around the bank above the ditch.

  “And what did you think of it?” asked Taliesin when she returned.

  “It is odd, but I kept thinking of Avalon—or, rather, of Inis Witrin, where the monks dwell. Two places could hardly be more different, yet the circle of trilithons is almost the same size as the circle of huts that cluster around the church that is there.”

  “That is so,” said Taliesin, speaking swiftly, almost anxiously. He had fasted since the night before to prepare for his own part in this magic. “According to our traditions, this place was built by the men of wisdom who came oversea from Atlantis in ancient times, and we believe also that the saint who founded the community in Inis Witrin was one of those adepts reborn. Certainly he was a master of the ancient wisdom, who knew the principles of proportion and number. And there is another reason you might feel the presence of Avalon.” He pointed westward across the plain. “One of the lines of power runs straight cross-country to the holy well.”

  Viviane nodded and turned once more to survey the surrounding countryside. To the east a row of mounds marked the burial sites of ancient kings, but beyond that there was little sign of humanity, and only a few clusters of wind-sculptured trees broke the undulating expanse of grass. This was a lonely place, and though elsewhere the people of Britannia might be preparing to celebrate a joyous Beltane, there was something stark here that would be forever alien to the innocence of spring.

  And none of us shall go from here unchanged…. She shivered again.

  The sun was sinking, and the shadows of the stones rayed out in long bars of black across the grass. Instinctively Viviane moved away from them, but that brought her to the single pillar that stood sentry in the northeast, guarding the approach to the henge. Taliesin had passed over the ditch to a long stone that lay flat on the ground just within it. He knelt beside it, the red piglet they had brought with them bound and squirming in his hands, and as she watched, he drew his knife and stabbed precisely beneath the angle of its jaw. The pig jerked with a shrill squeal, then fell silent, gasping. The bard held it, his lips moving in prayer as the red blood spurted onto the pitted surface of the stone.

  “We shall try the way of the Druids first.” Ana spoke in a low voice to Vortimer. “He feeds his spirits, and the spirits of this land.”

  When the animal had bled out and its spirit fled, Taliesin pulled back a strip of skin and sliced off a little of the meat. He stood up, his gaze already distant, the morsel, reddened further by the light of the dying sun, in his hand.

  “Come,” said Ana in a low voice as Taliesin, walking like a man in a dream, moved toward the ring of stones. Viviane twitched as she crossed over the ditch and passed the place where the pig had been sacrificed, for the sensation, though less intense, had been like the way she felt when she parted the mists to cross over to Avalon.

  The Druid stopped again just outside the henge. His jaws were working, and after a moment he took the bit of meat from his mouth and laid it at the base of one of the stones, murmuring a prayer.

  “My lord, we have come to the place of power,” Ana said to the Prince. “You must say once more why you have brought us here.”

  Vortimer swallowed, but he spoke steadily. “Lady, I seek to know who shall rule over Britannia, and who shall lead her warriors to victory.”

  “Druid, you have heard the question—can you now give answer?”

  Taliesin’s face was turned toward them, but his eyes were unseeing. With the same dreamlike deliberation, he passed beneath the stone lintel and into the henge. The sun was almost at the horizon, and the black shapes of the stones were edged with flame. As Viviane followed, she experienced another moment of disorientation. When she could focus again, it seemed to her that dancing flickers of light pulsed in the air. The Druid held up his hands to the dying light, turned them, and murmured another incantation into his palms.

  He let out a long sigh, then curled up against the flat stone in the center, his face hidden by his two hands.

  “What happens now?” whispered Vortimer.

  “We wait,” said the High Priestess. “This is the sleep of trance, from which the oracle shall come.”

  They waited while the sky faded to dusk, but though darkness was falling, everything within the circle remained dimly visible, as if by some light that came from within. The shining stars began their march across the sky. Still, time had little meaning. Viviane could not tell how long it was before Taliesin muttered and stirred.

  “Sleeper, awaken; in the name of She who gives birth to the stars I call you. Speak in the tongue of humankind and tell us what you have seen.” Ana knelt before him as he pushed himself upright, supported by the stone.

  “Three kings there shall be, struggling for power: the Fox,
who rules now, and after him the Eagle and the Red Dragon, who shall seek to hold the land.” Taliesin’s voice came slow and heavy, as if he were still in a dream.

  “Shall they destroy the Saxons?” asked Vortimer.

  “The Falcon shall set the White Dragon to flight, but the Red Dragon alone shall make a son to come after him; it is he who shall be called the White Dragon’s conqueror.”

  “What of the Falcon—” Vortimer began, but Taliesin interrupted him.

  “In life the Falcon will never rule; in death he may ward Britannia forever….” The Druid’s head sagged on his chest and his voice became a whisper. “Seek to know no more….”

  “I don’t understand.” Vortimer sat back on his heels. “I am dedicated to the Goddess already. What does She want of me? This is too much to know, or not enough. Call the Goddess, and let me hear Her will.”

  Viviane looked at him in alarm, wanting to warn him to be careful what he said, for words spoken in this place, on this night, had power.

  Taliesin struggled to his feet, shaking his head and blinking as if emerging from deep water.

  “Call the Goddess!” Vortimer spoke now as a prince, accustomed to command, and the Druid was still close enough to trance that without question he obeyed.

  Viviane’s body jerked as the flickering energies in the circle responded to that call. But it was in her mother that they focused. Vortimer gasped as the small figure of the High Priestess seemed abruptly to expand to more than mortal size. Low laughter echoed from the stones. For a few moments She stood, stretching out Her arms and moving Her fingers as if to test them; then She stilled, looking from Viviane’s appalled face to that of Taliesin, whose consternation showed that he now realized just what, unprepared and without consultation, he had done.

  But Vortimer, hope flaming in his eyes, had cast himself at Her feet. “Lady, help us!” he cried.