The Mists of Avalon

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Impatiently, Viviane passed her hand over the surface of the water. This was no time to stand here, seeking guidance from visions which seemed to bear no meaning for the moment. She walked quickly down the hill toward her dwelling and summoned her attendant priestesses.

  “Dress me,” she said curtly, “and send for the Merlin; he must ride for Caerleon, and bring the young Arthur to me here before the moon is more than a day old in the sky. There is no time to waste.”

  18

  But Arthur did not come with the new moon to Avalon. Morgaine, in the House of Maidens, saw the new moon born, but she did not break the moon-dark fast. She felt faint, and knew that if she ate she would only be sick. Well, perhaps it was to be expected. She sometimes felt this way when her monthly courses were about to begin; later she would feel better. And later in the day she did feel better, and drank a little milk, and ate some bread; and that afternoon, Viviane sent for her.

  “Uther lies dead in Caerleon,” she said. “If you feel you must go to your mother—”

  For a short time Morgaine considered that, but at last she shook her head. “I had no love for Uther,” she said, “and Igraine knows it well. The Goddess grant that some of her priestly counselors may comfort her better than I could.”

  Viviane sighed. She looked tired and worn, and Morgaine wondered if she, too, felt sick with the aftermath of the stressful time of the moon’s darkening. Viviane said, “Sorrow that I must say it, but I fear you are right. I would have spared you to her, if need be. There would be time for you to return to Avalon, before—” She broke off and then said, “You know that Uther, in his lifetime, kept the Saxons at bay, though with constant battle; we have not had more than a few moons of peace at any time. Now, I fear, it will be worse; they may come even to the doors of Avalon. Morgaine, you are full priestess, you have seen the sacred weapons—”

  Morgaine replied with a sign, and Viviane nodded and said, “A day may come when that sword must be lifted in defense of Avalon and of all of Britain too.”

  Morgaine thought, Why say this to me? I am priestess, not warrior; I cannot take the sword in defense of Avalon.

  “You remember the sword.”

  Barefoot, cold, tracing the circle with the weight of the sword in her hand, hearing Raven, the silent, cry aloud in terror . . .

  “I remember.”

  “Then I have a task for you,” Viviane said. “When that sword is carried into battle, it must be circled with all the magic we have. You are to fashion a scabbard for the sword, Morgaine, and set into it every spell you know, that he who bears it into battle shall lose no blood. Can you do that?”

  I had forgotten, Morgaine thought, that there might be a task for a priestess as well as a warrior. And, with her trick of following a thought, Viviane said, “So you, too, shall have a part in the battle to defend our country.”

  “So be it,” Morgaine said, wondering why Viviane, who was the great priestess of Avalon, did not take this task for herself. The older woman gave her no answer, but said, “For this you must work with the sword before you; come, and Raven shall serve you, within the silence of magic.”

  Although she tried to remember that she was only a vessel of power and not the power itself, that the power itself came from the Goddess, Morgaine was young enough to feel exalted when she was conducted in silence to the secret place where work like this must be done, and surrounded by the priestesses who were to anticipate her every need so that she might not break the silence which would build the necessary power for the setting of spells. The sword was laid on a linen cloth before her; beside it, the low-brimmed chalice, fashioned of silver with gold beading around the edge. It was filled with water from the Holy Well; not for drinking—food and water were set aside for her—but that she might look into it and see within it such things as were needful for the work she must do.

  On the first day, she cut, using the sword itself, an undersheath of thin doeskin. It was the first time she had had fine tools to work with, and she took pleasure in the special iron needle she had been given to stitch the sheath together; she took a pride which she knew was childish in that when she pricked her finger once or twice she did not utter even a momentary cry. She could not restrain a little caught breath of pure pleasure when she was shown the priceless piece of deepest crimson velvet, dyed with colors which, she had once been told, cost more money for an ounce than would buy a villa and hire men to work the land on it for a year. This would cover the doeskin, and on it she must work, in the golden and silken threads provided, the magical spells and their symbols.

  Fashioning the shapes of doeskin sheath and velvet to cover it, she spent the first day; and before she slept, deep in the meditation of what she must do, almost in trance, she cut her arm a little and smeared the doeskin with her blood.

  Goddess! Great Raven! Blood has been shed upon this scabbard, so that none need be spilt upon it when it is carried into battle.

  She slept fitfully, dreaming that she sat on a high hill overlooking all of Britain and stitched spells, weaving them like visible light into the fabric of the earth itself. Below her the King Stag was running, and a man came striding up the hill to her, and took the sword from her hand. . . .

  She woke with a start, thinking: Arthur! It is Arthur who will bear the sword, he is the son of Pendragon . . . and as she lay in the darkness, she thought that was why Viviane had given it to her, to make the magical scabbard for the sword he should bear in symbol of all his people. It was Arthur who had shed the blood of her virginity, and it was she, also of the sacred line of Avalon, who must fashion the spell-scabbard of his safety, guarding the royal blood.

  All that day, in silence, she worked, gazing into the chalice, letting the images rise, now and then stopping to wait for inspiration in the meditative flow; she worked the horned moon, so that the Goddess should always watch over the sword and guard the sacred blood of Avalon. She was so wrapped in the magical silence that every object on which her eyes gazed, every movement of her consecrated hands, became power for the spell; it seemed at times as if visible light followed her fingers as she followed the horned moon with the full moon, and then with the dark moon, for all things must follow in season. Then, because she knew that a High King in Britain must rule in a Christian land, and because when first the followers of the Christ had come to Britain they had come here to the Druids, she worked in the symbol of Christian and Druid in friendship, the cross within the three-winged circle. She worked into the crimson velvet the signs of the magical elements, of earth and air and water and fire, and then figured the low-handled cup before her, in which visions moved and entwined, coming in and out of darkness: wand and earth platter, serpent of healing and wings of wisdom and the flaming sword of power . . . there were times when it seemed that needle and thread moved through her own flesh or through the flesh of the land, piercing earth and sky and her own blood and body . . . sign upon sign and symbol upon symbol, each marked with her blood and with the water of the Holy Well. Three days in all she worked, sleeping little, eating only a few bites of dried fruit, drinking only the water of the Well. There were times when, from a great distance within her own mind, she seemed to look out on her fingers working without any conscious choice, the spells wove themselves, blood and bone of the land, blood of her maidenhood, strength of the King Stag who had died and shed his blood so that the champion might not die. . . .

  By sunset of the third day it was finished, every inch of the scabbard covered with twining symbols, some of which she did not even recognize; surely they had come directly from the hand of the Goddess through her hands? She lifted it, slid the sword into it; weighted it in her hands; then said aloud, breaking the ritual silence, “It is done.”

  Now that the long tension was broken she was aware that she was exhausted, shaken and sick. Ritual and prolonged use of the Sight could do this; it had, no doubt, interrupted her courses too, for they usually came on at moon-dark. This was said to be lucky, for the priestesses went apa
rt to shield their power at this time, and it was the same as the ritual seclusion of the dark moon, when the Goddess herself secluded herself to safeguard the source of power.

  Viviane came and took the scabbard. She could not suppress a little cry of astonishment as she looked upon it, and indeed it seemed even to Morgaine, who knew her own hands had fashioned it, to be a thing surpassing human work, pregnant with magic. Viviane touched it only briefly before wrapping it in a long, white silken cloth.

  “You have done well,” she said, and Morgaine thought, her mind spinning, How is it that she thinks she can judge me? I too am a priestess, I have gone beyond her teaching . . . and was shocked at her own thought.

  Viviane touched her cheek gently. “Go and sleep, my dearest; you have wearied yourself in this great work.”

  Morgaine slept deeply and long, without dreams; but after midnight, suddenly, she woke to the sudden wild clamor of alarm bells, alarm bells, church bells, a terror out of childhood, The Saxons are upon us! Get up and arm yourselves!

  It seemed that she woke out of a start, and she was not in the House of Maidens, but in a church, and on the altar stone of the church lay a set of weapons; and on a trestle nearby lay a man in armor, covered with a pall. Above her head the warning was still pealing and clamoring, fit to wake the dead . . . no, for the dead knight did not stir, and with a sudden prayer for forgiveness, she snatched up the sword . . . and woke fully this time, to light in her room, and quiet. Not even the church bells from the other island penetrated the quiet of her stone-floored chamber. She had dreamed the bells, the dead knight, and the chapel with burning tapers, the arms on the altar, the sword, all of it. How did I come to see that? The Sight never comes upon me undesired . . . was it just a dream then?

  Later that day, she was summoned; with her conscious mind, she remembered some of the visions which had floated half-seen through her mind as she wrought the scabbard with the sword before her. Fallen to earth in a falling star, a clap of thunder, a great burst of light; dragged still smoking to be forged by the little dark smiths who had dwelled on the chalk before the ring stones were raised; powerful, a weapon for a king, broken and reforged this time into the long, leaf-shaped blade, tooled and annealed in blood and fire, hardened . . . a sword three times forged, never ripped out of the earth’s womb, and thus twice holy. . . .

  She had been told the name of the sword: Excalibur, which meant cut steel. Swords of meteorite iron were rare and precious; this one might well be the price of a kingdom.

  Viviane bade her cover herself with her veil and come. As they moved slowly down the hillside, she saw the tall figure of Taliesin, the Merlin, Kevin the Bard at his side, moving with his hesitant, grotesque walk. He seemed more than ever clumsy and ugly, as out of place as a lump of tallow clinging to the edge of a fine-wrought silver candlestick. And at their side—Morgaine froze, recognizing that slender muscular body, that shining silver-gilt hair.

  Arthur. But of course she had known the sword was for him. What was more natural than that he should come here to receive it?

  He is a warrior, a king. The little brother I held upon my lap. It seemed unreal to her. But through that Arthur, and the solemn-faced boy who walked now between the two Druids, she saw some trace of the youth who had taken upon himself the antlers of the Horned God; quiet and grave as he was, she saw the swing of the antlers, the deadly desperate fight, and how he had come to her bloodied with the stag’s blood—no child but a man, a warrior, a king.

  At a whisper from the Merlin he bent the knee before the Lady of the Lake. His face was reverential. No, of course, she thought, he has not seen Viviane before, only me, and I was in darkness.

  But he saw Morgaine next; she saw recognition move across his mobile features. He bowed to her too—at least, she thought irrelevantly, where he was fostered they taught him manners befitting a king’s son—and murmured, “Morgaine.”

  She bowed her head to him. He had known her even through the veil. Perhaps she should kneel to the King. But a Lady of Avalon bends the knee to no human power. The Merlin would kneel, and so would Kevin if he were asked; Viviane, never, for she was not only the priestess of the Goddess, but incorporated the Goddess within herself in a way the man-priests of male Gods could never know or understand. And so Morgaine also would never kneel again.

  The Lady of the Lake held out her hand to him, bidding him rise. “You have had a long journey,” she said, “and you are wearied. Morgaine, take him to my house and give him something to eat before we do this.”

  He smiled then, not a king in the making, nor a Chosen One, but just a hungry boy. “I thank you, Lady.”

  Inside Viviane’s house he thanked the priestesses who brought him food, and fell to hungrily. When he had satisfied his first hunger, he asked Morgaine, “Do you live here too?”

  “The Lady dwells alone, but she is attended by the priestesses who serve her in turns. I have dwelt here with her when it was my turn to serve.”

  “You, a queen’s daughter! You serve?”

  She said austerely, “We must serve before we command. She herself served in her youth, and in her I serve the Goddess.”

  He considered that. “I do not know this Great Goddess,” he said at last. “The Merlin told me that the Lady was your . . . our . . . kinswoman.”

  “She is sister to Igraine, our mother.”

  “Why then, she is my aunt,” Arthur said, trying the words out on his tongue as if they didn’t quite fit. “All of this is so strange to me. Somehow I always tried to think of Ectorius as my father and Flavilla my mother. Of course I knew there was some secret; and because Ectorius wouldn’t talk to me about it, I thought it must be something shameful, that I was a bastard or worse. I don’t remember Uther—my father; not at all. Nor my mother, not really, though sometimes, when Flavilla punished me, I used to dream I lived somewhere else, with a woman who petted me, then pushed me away—is Igraine our mother much like you?”

  “No, she is tall, red-haired,” Morgaine said.

  Arthur sighed. “Then I suppose I do not remember her at all. For in my dreams it was someone like you—it was you—”

  He broke off, his voice had been trembling. Dangerous ground, Morgaine thought, we dare not talk about that. She said calmly, “Have another apple; they are grown on the island.”

  “Thank you.” He took one and bit into it. “It’s all so new and strange. So many things have happened to me since—since—” His voice faltered. “I think of you all the time. I cannot help myself. It was true what I said, Morgaine—that all my life I shall remember you because you were the first, and I shall always think of you and love you—”

  She knew she should say something hard and hurtful. Instead she made her words kind, but distant. “You must not think of me in that way. For you I am not a woman, but a representative of the Goddess who came to you, and it is blasphemy to remember me as if I were only a mortal woman. Forget me and remember the Goddess.”

  “I have tried—” He broke off, clenching his fists, then said gravely, “You are right. That is the way to think of it—only one more of the strange things that have come to me since I was sent for from Ectorius’ house. Mysterious, magical things. Like the battle with the Saxons—” He held out his arm, rolling back the tunic to reveal a bandage thickly smeared with pine-pitch already blackened. “I was wounded there. Only it was like a dream, my first battle. King Uther—” He looked down and swallowed. “I came too late. I never knew him. He lay in state in the church, and I saw him dead, his weapons lying on the altar—they told me it was the custom, that when a brave knight lay dead, his arms should watch with him. And then, even while the priest was chanting the Nunc Dimittis, all the alarm bells rang, there was a Saxon attack—the watchmen came right into the church and snatched the bell ropes out of the hands of the monk who was tolling the passing bell to ring the alarm, and all the King’s men caught up their arms and ran out. I had no sword, only my dagger, but I snatched up a spear from one of the sold
iers. My first battle, I thought, but then Cai—my foster-brother, Caius, Ectorius’ son—he told me he had left his sword behind at their lodging, and I should run and fetch it for him. And I knew this was just a way to get me out of the battle; Cai and my foster-father said I was not yet ready to be blooded. So instead of running back to the lodging house I went into the church and snatched the King’s sword off the stone bier. . . . Well,” he defended himself, “he fought Saxons with it for twenty years, he’d certainly be glad to have it fight them again, instead of lying useless on an old stone! So I ran off and was going to give it to Cai as we were all gathering against the attack, and then I saw the Merlin, and he said in the biggest voice I have ever heard, ‘Where got you that sword, boy?’