The Mists of Avalon

by Marion Marion Bradley

  She had killed before this. She had sent Avalloch without hesitation to his death, and not three days since, she had slain the harmless child in her womb ... he who lay sleeping before her was the greater traitor, surely. One stroke, swift and quiet... ah, but this was the child Igraine had placed in her arms, her first love, the father of her son, the Horned God, the King ... . Strike, fool! For this you came here!

  No. There has been too much death. We were born from a single womb and I could not face my mother in the country beyond death, not with the blood of my brother on my hands, and for a moment, knowing she moved at the very edge of madness, she heard Igraine calling impatiently, Morgaine, I told you to take care of the baby ...

  It seemed to her that he stirred in sleep, as if he too heard that voice; Morgaine slid the dagger back into its sheath, reached out her hand, and took the scabbard. This at least she had a right to take-with her own hands she had fashioned it, the spells she had woven into it were her own.

  She hid the scabbard under her cloak and went swiftly out through the thinning darkness to the ferry. As the ferryman rowed her across, she felt the prickling of her skin and seemed to see, like a shadow, the barge from Avalon ... on the far shore they were all around her, the crew of the Avalon barge. Now quickly, quickly, she must get back again to Avalon ... but the sun was rising and the shadow of the church lay across the water, and suddenly the sun flooded the landscape and with the dawn a ringing of church bells was everywhere. Morgaine stood as if paralyzed; through that sound she could not summon the mists, nor speak the spell.

  She said to one of the men, "Can you take us to Avalon? Quickly?"

  He said, shivering, "I cannot, lady. It grows harder, without a priestess to speak the spell, and even so, at dawn and at noon and at sunset, when they ring the bells for prayer, there is no way to cross the mists. Not now. The spell no longer opens the way at these times, although, if we wait till the bells are silent, it may be that we can manage to return."

  Why, Morgaine wondered, should this be so? It had to do with the knowledge that the world was as it was because of what men believed it was ... year by year, these past three or four generations, the minds of men had been hardened to believing that there was one God, one world, one way of describing reality, and that all things which intruded on the realm of that great one-ness must be evil and of the fiends, and that the sound of the bells and the shadow of their holy places would keep the evil afar. And as more and more people believed this, it was so, and Avalon no more than a dream adrift in an almost inaccessible other world.

  Oh yes, she could still call the mists ... but not here, not where the shadow of the church's spire lay across the water and the clamor of the bells struck terror into her heart. They were trapped on the shores of the Lake! And now she was aware that a boat was pushing out from the shores of the priests' Isle, to cross the Lake and find her here. Arthur had wakened and found her scabbard gone from him, and now would pursue her ... .

  Well, let him follow her as he could, there were other ways into Avalon where the shadow of the church did not prevent her passage. She climbed quickly into her saddle and began to ride along the shores of the Lake, circling; she would come at last to a place where, at least in summer, she could cross through the mists; the place where she and Lancelet had once found Gwenhwyfar strayed from the nunnery. It was not Lake but swampland, and they could get into Avalon by the back way, behind the Tor.

  She knew that the little dark men were running behind her horse, that they could run for half a day at her horse's tail if they must. But now she heard hoofbeats ... she was pursued, Arthur was hard on her heels, and there were armed knights with him. She dug her feet into the horse's side, but this was a lady's horse, not intended for the chase ... .

  She slid down her horse's side, the scabbard in her hand. "Scatter," she whispered to the men, and one by one it was as if they melted into the trees and mists... they could move like shadows if they must, and no man alive could find them if they did not want to be found. Morgaine grasped the scabbard in her hand and began to run along the shores of the Lake. In her mind she could hear Arthur's voice, feel his rage ... .

  He had Excalibur; she could feel it, like a great shining in her mind, the holy thing of Avalon ... but the scabbard he should never bear again. She took it in both hands, whirled it over her head, and flung it, with all her strength, far out into the Lake, where she saw it sink into the deep and fathomless waters. No human hand could ever reclaim it-there it would lie till leather and velvet rotted and the silver and gold thread tarnished and twisted and at last the spells woven into them vanished utterly from the world.

  Arthur was riding in pursuit, Excalibur naked in his hand ... but she and her escort were gone. Morgaine drew herself into silence, a part of shadow and tree as if some essential part of herself had gone into Fairy; while she stayed there motionless, covered in the silence of a priestess, no one from the mortal world could see so much as her shadow ... .

  Arthur shouted her name.

  "Morgaine! Morgaine!" A third time he called, loud and angry; but the very shadows were still, and at last, confused from riding in circles- once he came so close that Morgaine could feel the breath of his horse- he wearied, and called to his escort, and they came to find him swaying in his saddle, the bandages slowly soaking through with blood, and they led him away the way they had come.

  Then Morgaine raised her hand, and once again the normal sound of bird and wind and tree came back into the world.

  MORGAINE SPEAKS ...

  In later years I heard the tale told of how I took the scabbard by sorcery, and how Arthur rode after me with a hundred knights, and I too had a hundred fairy knights all round me; and when Arthur's pursuit grew near, I turned myself and my men into ring stones ... . Someday, no doubt, they will add that when I had done, I called for my chariot with the winged dragons, and flew away into Fairy.

  But it was not so. It was no more than this, that the little people can hide in the forests and become one with tree and shadow, and that day I was one of them, as I had been taught in Avalon; and when Arthur had been taken away by his escort, near to fainting with the long pursuit and the cold in his wound, I said farewell to the men of Avalon, and rode away to Tintagel. But when I came to Tintagel it mattered little to me what they did in Camelot, for I was sick even to death for a long time.

  I know not, even now, what ailed me; I know only that summer faded and the leaves began to fall while I lay in my bed, tended by the servants I had found there, neither knowing nor caring whether I would ever rise. I know I had a low fever, a weariness so great that I could not force myself to sit upright or to eat, a heaviness of mind so great that I cared not whether I would live or die. My servants-one or two of them I recalled from the days when I lived there as a little child, with Igraine-thought me enchanted; and it may even have been true.

  Marcus of Cornwall sent to me in homage, and I thought, Arthur's star rides high, no doubt he believes that I have come here at Arthur's will, and he will not -now-challenge Arthur even for these lands he believes his own. A year ago, I might have laughed at this, or even made common cause with Marcus, promising him lands here in return for leading a party of the disaffected against Arthur. And even now it crossed my mind; but with Accolon dead, it seemed to matter nothing. Arthur had Excalibur ... if the Goddess wished that it should be taken from him, she would have to come and take it herself, for I had failed, I was her priestess no more ... .

  ... I think it was that which hurt me worst, that I had failed, failed Avalon, that she had not put forth her hand to help me do her will. The strength of Arthur and the priests and of the traitor Kevin had been stronger than the magic of Avalon, and there was no one left.

  No one left. No one. I mourned without ceasing for Accolon, and for the child whose life had barely begun before it was ended, cast aside like offal. I mourned too for Arthur, lost to me now, and my enemy, and, unbelievably, even for Uriens, and for the wreck of my life i
n Wales, the only peace I had ever known. I had killed or thrust from me or lost to death everyone in this world I had ever loved. Igraine was gone, and Viviane lost to death, murdered and lying among the priests of their God of death and doom. Accolon was gone, the priest I had consecrated to do that last battle against the Christian priests. Arthur was my enemy; Lancelet had learned to hate and fear me, and I was not guiltless for that hate. Gwenhwyfar feared and loathed me, even Elaine was gone now ... and Uwaine, who had been as my own son, hated me too. There was none to care whether I should live or die, and so I did not care either ... .

  The last of the leaves had gone and the fearful storms of winter had begun to beat over Tintagel when one day one of my women came to me and said that a man had come to seek me.

  "At this season?" I looked out beyond the window, where unceasing rain beat down from skies as grey and bleak as the inside of my own mind. What traveller would come through this bitter weather, struggling through storms and darkness? No; whoever he might be, I cared not. "Say to him that the Duchess of Cornwall sees no man, and send him away."

  "Into the rain on a night such as this will be, lady?" I was startled that the woman should protest; most of them feared me for a sorceress, and I was content to have it so. But the woman was right; Tintagel had never failed in hospitality when it was in the hands of my long-dead father, or of Igraine ... so be it. I said, "Give the traveller hospitality fitting his rank, and food, and bed; but tell him that I am ill, and cannot receive him."

  She went away and I lay watching the fierce rain and darkness, feeling its cold breath through the slit of the window and trying to find my way back into the peaceful blankness where now I felt most like myself. But after a very little, the door opened again and the woman returned, and I started upright, shaking with anger, the first emotion I had let myself feel in many weeks.

  "I have not summoned you, and I did not bid you return! How dare you?"

  "I am charged with a message for you, lady," she said, "a message I didn't dare say no to, not when one of the high ones speaks ... . He said, 'I speak not to the Duchess of Cornwall but to the Lady of Avalon, and she cannot refuse the Messenger of the Gods when the Merlin seeks audience and counsel.' " The woman paused and said, "I hope I've got it right ... he made me say it over twice to be sure I had it all."

  Now, against my will, I felt the stirrings of curiosity. The Merlin? But Kevin was Arthur's man, surely he would not have come like this to me. Had he not aligned himself firmly with Arthur and with the Christians, traitor to Avalon? But perhaps some other man now held that office, Messenger of the Gods, Merlin of Britain ... and now I thought of my son Gwydion, or Mordred as I supposed I must now think of him; perhaps this was his office, for he alone would now think of me as Lady of Avalon ... . After a long silence, I said, "Tell him I will see him, then." After a moment I added, "But not like this. Send someone to dress me." For I knew that I was too weak to put on my own clothes. But I would not receive any man this way, weak and ill and in my bedchamber; I, who was priestess of Avalon, would manage to stand on my feet before the Merlin, even if what he brought was sentence of death for all my failure ... I am still Morgaine!

  I managed to rise, to have my dress put on and my shoes, and my hair braided down my back and covered with the veil of a priestess; I even painted, after the woman's clumsy hands had twice botched it, the symbol of the moon on my forehead. My hands-I noted it incuriously, as if they belonged to someone else-were shaking, and I was weak enough that I let the woman give me her arm as I crawled down the steep stairs. But the Merlin should not see my weakness.

  A fire had been built in the hall; the fire was smoking a little, as always here when it rained, and through the smoke I could see only a man's figure seated by the fire, turned away from me, draped in a grey cloak-but at his side stood a tall harp I could not mistake; from My Lady I knew the man. Kevin's hair was all grey now, but he dragged his stooped body upright as I came in.

  "So," I said, "you call yourself still Merlin of Britain, when you serve only Arthur's will and defy that of Avalon?"

  "I know not what to call myself now," said Kevin quietly, "save perhaps servant of those who serve the Gods, who are all One."

  "Why have you come here, then?"

  "Again, I know not," said the musical voice I had loved so well, "save perhaps in repayment of some debt laid down before these hills were raised, my dear." Then he raised his voice to the serving-woman.

  "Your lady is ill! Get her to a seat!"

  My head was swimming and a grey mist seemed to waver around me; the next thing I knew I was seated by the fire across from Kevin, and the woman was gone.

  He said, "Poor Morgaine, poor girl," and for the first time since Accolon's death had turned me to stone, I felt that I could weep; and clenched my teeth against the weeping, for if I shed one tear, I knew that everything within me would melt, and I would cry and cry and cry and never cease crying until I melted into a very lake of tears ... .

  I said tightly, clenched, "I am no girl, Kevin Harper, and you have won your way to my presence falsely. Now say what you will say, and go your way."

  "Lady of Avalon-"

  "I am not," I said, and remembered that the last time I saw this man, I had driven him from my presence, shrieked at him, called him traitor. It seemed not to matter; perhaps it was fate that two traitors to Avalon should sit here before this fire, for I too had betrayed my oath to Avalon ... how dared I judge Kevin?

  "What then are you?" he asked quietly. "Raven is old, and silent now for years. Niniane will never have the power to rule. You are needed there-"

  "When last we spoke," I interrupted him, "you said Avalon's day was done. Why then should there be any to sit in Viviane's place except a child half-fated for that high office, waiting for the day when Avalon fades forever into the mists?" I felt a scalding bitterness in my throat. "Since you have forsaken Avalon for the banner of Arthur, will it not make your task easier if none reigns in Avalon save an ancient prophetess and a powerless priestess ... ?"

  "Niniane is Gwydion's love and his creature," said Kevin. "And it comes to me that your voice and your hands are needed there. Even if Avalon is fated to pass away into the mists, will you refuse to pass with it? I never thought you a coward, Morgaine." And then he raised his eyes to mine and said, "You will die here, Morgaine, die of grief and exile ..."

  I turned my face away and said, "For that I came here ..." and for the first time I knew indeed that I had come here to die. "All I have tried to do is in ruin, I have failed, failed ... it should be your triumph, Merlin, that Arthur has won."

  He shook his head. "Ah, no, my dear, no triumph," he said. "I do what the Gods have given me to do, no more, and you do the same. And indeed if your doom shall be to see the end of the world we have known, why then, my dearest love, let that doom find us each in our appointed place, serving what our God has given us to serve ... . It is laid on me to recall you to Avalon, Morgaine, I know not why. My task would be simpler with only Niniane there, but, Morgaine, your place is in Avalon, and mine where the Gods shall decree. And in Avalon you can be healed."

  "Healed." I said it in contempt. I did not care.

  Kevin looked at me sadly. "My dearest love," he had called me. It seemed to me now that he was the one person alive who knew me as I was; before every other person alive, even Arthur, I had worn a different face, seeking always to appear other and better than I was; even to Viviane, that she might find me more worthy to be a priestess ... . For Kevin I was Morgaine, thus and no other. It came to me that even if I stretched forth my hand to him as the Death-crone he would see nothing but my own face, Morgaine. ... I had always felt that love was other than this, was that burning I had felt for Lancelet,for Accolon. For Kevin I had felt little save for that detached compassion, friendship, kindness; what I had given him had meant but little to me, and yet... and yet he alone had taken thought to come to me, to care whether or no I died here of grief.

  But how dared h
e break in upon my peace, when I had almost won through to that utter quiet which was beyond life? I turned away from him and said, "No." I could not come back to life again, could not struggle and suffer, and live with the hatred of those who had once loved me ... . If I lived, if I returned to Avalon, I must enter again into a death struggle with Arthur whom I loved, I must see Lancelet still in Gwenhwyfar's prison of love. I had ceased to care, I could endure no further the pain that was in my heart ... .

  No. I was here, in silence and peace, and before long, I knew it now, I would pass even further into peace ... the dizziness that was near to death was drawing closer and ever closer, and this Kevin, this traitor, would bring me back? I said, "No," again and turned away, my hands covering my face. "Leave me in peace, Kevin Harper. Hither I came to die. Leave me now."

  He did not move, nor did he speak, and I sat very still, my veil over my face. After a little time, surely, now he would arise and leave me, for I had not the strength to go forth from him. And I... I would sit here until I was carried back to my bed by the women, and then I would never rise again.