The Mists of Avalon

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Winter set in, then, in earnest. There was not much wood for fuel at Tintagel, only a kind of rock which would burn, but it smoked evilly and blackened doors and ceilings. Sometimes they had to burn dried seaweed, which made the whole castle stink of dead fish like the sea at low tide. And at last rumor began to speak of Uther’s armies, drawing near to Tintagel, ready to cross the great moors.

  Under ordinary conditions, Uther’s army could beat Gorlois’s men into submission. But if they are ambushed? Uther does not know the country! He would feel himself threatened enough by the rocky and unfamiliar terrain, knowing Gorlois’s armies would be massed near Tintagel. Uther would not be expecting a nearer ambush!

  She could do nothing but wait. It was a woman’s fate to sit at home, in castle or cot—it had been so since the Romans came. Before that, the Celtic Tribes had followed the counsel of their women, and far to the north there had been an island of women warriors who made weapons and tutored the war chiefs in the use of arms. . . .

  Igraine lay awake night after night, thinking of her husband and of her lover. If, she thought, you can call a man your lover when you have never exchanged a single kiss. Uther had sworn he would come to her at Midwinter, but how could he cross the moors and break through the trap of Gorlois, lying in wait for him . . . ?

  If only she were a trained sorceress or a priestess like Viviane. She had been reared on tales of the evil involved in using sorcery to enforce one’s own will on the Gods. Was it, then, a good thing to allow Uther to be waylaid and his men murdered? She told herself Uther would have spies and scouts and needed no woman’s help. Still she felt, disconsolate, that there must be something better for her to do than to sit and wait.

  A few days before Midwinter-night, a storm blew up and raged for two days, so fiercely that Igraine knew that northward, on the moors, nothing which was not burrowed like a rabbit in its hole could possibly live. Even safely within the castle, people crouched near the few fires and listened, trembling, to the raging of the wind. During the day it was so dark, with snow and sleet, that Igraine could not even see to spin. The supply of rushlights was so limited that she did not dare exhaust it further, for there was still a long weight of winter to bear, so most of the time they sat in the dark, and Igraine tried to remember old stories from Avalon, to keep Morgaine amused and quiet and Morgause from fretting with boredom and weariness.

  But when at last the child and the young girl had fallen asleep, Igraine sat wrapped in her cloak before the remnants of the small fire, too tense to lie down, knowing that if she did, she would lie wakeful, staring with aching eyes into the darkness, trying to send her thoughts over the leagues that lay between . . . where? To Gorlois, to find where his treachery had led? For it was treachery: he had sworn alliance with Uther as his High King, and then, because of his own jealousy and mistrust, broken his word.

  Or to Uther, trying to make camp on these unfamiliar moors, battered by the storm, lost, blinded?

  How could she reach Uther? She gathered to herself all the memories of what small training she had had in magic when she was a girl in Avalon. Body and soul, she had been taught, were not firmly bonded; in sleep the soul left the body and went to the country of dreams, where all was illusion and folly, and sometimes, in the Druid-trained, to the country of truth, where Merlin’s leading had taken her in dream that one time.

  . . . Once, when Morgaine was being born, and the pains seemed to have gone on forever, she had briefly left her body, seen herself lying down below, a racked thing fussed over by the midwives and encouraged by her women, while she floated, free of pain and elated, somewhere above; then someone had bent over her, urgently telling her that now she must work harder, for they could see the crown of the baby’s head, and she had come back to renewed pain and fierce effort, and she had forgotten. But if she could do it then, she could do it now. Shivering in her cloak, Igraine stared at the fire, and willed herself, abruptly, to be elsewhere. . . .

  She had done it. She seemed to stand before herself, her whole awareness sharply focused. The main change was that she could no longer hear the wild wailing of the storm outside the walls of the castle. She did not look back—she had been told that when you left your body, you must never look back, for the body will draw back the soul—but somehow she could see without eyes, all round her, and knew that her body was still sitting motionless before the dying fire. Now that she had done it she felt frightened, thinking, I should mend the fire first—but she knew if she went back into her body she would never have the courage to try this again.

  She thought of Morgaine, the living bond between herself and Gorlois—even though he now rejected it, spoke scathingly of the child, still the bond was there, and she could find Gorlois if she sought him. Even as the thought formed in her mind, she was . . . elsewhere.

  . . . Where was she? There was the flare of a small lamp, and by its fitful light she saw her husband, surrounded by a cluster of heads: men huddled together in one of the small stone huts on the moors.

  Gorlois was saying, “I have fought beside Uther for many years, under Ambrosius, and if I know him at all, he will count on courage and surprise. His people do not know our Cornish weather, and it will not occur to them that if the sun sets in raging storm, it will clear soon after midnight; so they will not move till the sun rises, but he will be out and about the moment the sun is above the horizon, hoping to fall on us while it is still early. But if we can surround his camp in those hours between the clearing of the sky and the sunrise, then as they break camp we can surprise them. They will be prepared for a march, not a battle. With just a little luck we can take them before they have their weapons well out of the sheath! Once Uther’s army is cut to pieces, if he himself is not killed, he will at least turn tail and get out of Cornwall, never to return.” By the dim lamp, Igraine saw Gorlois bare his teeth like an animal. “And if he is killed, his armies will scatter like a beehive when someone kills their queen!”

  Igraine felt herself shrink back; even bodiless, a wraith, it seemed that Gorlois must see her hovering there. And indeed, he raised his head and frowned, brushing at his cheek. “I felt a draught—it’s cold in here,” he muttered.

  “And how could it be otherwise? It’s cold here as the pit, with the snow raging like this,” one of his men growled—but even before he got the words out, Igraine was away from there, hovering in bodiless limbo, shivering, resisting the strong pull to return to Tintagel. She longed for the feel of flesh, of fire, not to go wandering between worlds, like some flittering wraith of the dead. . . .

  How could she come to Uther, to warn him? There was no bond between them; she had never exchanged with him so much as a kiss of passion, which would bind their bodies of flesh and so bind the bodiless spirit she was now. Gorlois had accused her of adultery; frantic, Igraine wished again that it were so. She was blind in the dark, bodiless, nowhere; she knew that the flicker of a thought would take her back to the room at Tintagel where her body, cramped and icy cold, slumped before the dead fire. She fought to remain in this deathly blind darkness, struggling, praying wordlessly, Let me come to Uther, while knowing that the curious laws of the world she was in now made it impossible; in this body she had no bond with Uther.

  But my bond with Uther is stronger than the bond of flesh because it has endured for more lives than one, Igraine felt herself arguing with something impalpable, as if appealing to a higher judge than whatever it was that made the laws for this life. The darkness seemed to press on her now, and she felt that she could not breathe, that somewhere below her the body she had abandoned was chilled, iced over, breath failing. Something in her cried out, Return, return, Uther is a grown man, he does not need you to care for him, and she answered herself, struggling, fighting to stay out where she was, He is only a man, he is not proof against treachery!

  Now in the pressing darkness there was a deeper darkness, and Igraine knew she looked not on her own invisible self, but on some Other. Chilling, trembling, racked, she did not hear with her bod
ily ears, but felt in every nerve of her whole being the command: “Go back. You must go back. You have no right to be here. The laws are made and fixed; you cannot remain here without penalty.”

  She heard herself say to the strange darkness, “If I must, I will pay the penalty that is exacted.”

  “Why do you seek to go where it is forbidden to go?”

  “I must warn him,” she said frantically, and then, suddenly, like a moth spreading its wings over the cocoon, something in Igraine that was greater than herself opened and spread its wings and the darkness around her was gone, and the fearsome shape warning her was no more than a veiled shape, a woman like herself, a priestess, certainly not a Goddess nor the Old Death-crone. Igraine said steadily, “We are bound and sworn, life to life and beyond; you have no right to forbid.” Suddenly Igraine saw that about her arms were twining the golden serpents which she had worn in her strange dream of the ring stones. She raised her arms and cried out a word in a strange language. She could never, afterward, remember more than half a syllable, only that it began with a great “Aaahhh . . .” and that it was a word of power; nor did she know how the word had come to her in this extremity, to her who was not even a priestess in this life. The forbidding shape before her was gone, and Igraine saw light, light like the rising sun. . . .

  No, it was the dimmest of lantern lights, a rushlight shielded crudely with a thin slice of horn in a wooden box, no more than a glimmer in the icy shadows of a small, stone-walled hut, tumbledown and roughly repaired with bundles of reeds. But by some curious, nonexistent light—or did she, bodiless, see in the dark without eyes?—she could make out a few faces in the shadows, faces she had seen around Uther in Londinium: kings and chiefs and soldiers. Exhausted and icy cold, they crouched around the tiny lantern as if its flickering fire could somehow warm them. And Uther was among them, gaunt and exhausted, his hands bleeding with chilblains, his woolen plaid drawn up closely over his head and around his chin. This was not the proud and kingly priest-lover she had seen in her first vision, not even the clumsy and boorish young man who had come into church disturbing them all; but this weary, haggard man, damp hair straggling around his nose, reddened with the cold, somehow seemed to her more real, more handsome than ever before. Igraine, aching with pity, longing to take him in her arms and warm him, felt as if she had cried out Uther!

  She knew he heard, for she saw him raise his head and look all about the cold shelter, shivering as if some colder wind stirred there; and then she saw, through the cloaks and plaids huddled around his body, the serpents twining about his arms. They were not real; they writhed like living snakes where no snake ever known to humanity would leave its burrow in such weather. But she saw them, and somehow Uther saw her, and opened his mouth to speak. Imperatively, she gestured him to silence.

  You must arouse, and make ready to march, or you are doomed! The message did not form itself in her mind as words, but she knew that it moved directly from her thoughts to his. The snow will cease soon after midnight. Gorlois and his soldiers think you are pinned down where you are now, and they will fall upon you and cut you to pieces! You must be ready to meet their attack.

  The words pressed upon him, soundless, with her last remnant of strength. And even as they formed, she knew that the strength of will which had brought her here across the gulf, against the laws of this world, was fading. She was not accustomed to this work, and she struggled, not wanting to leave with her warning unspoken. Would they believe him, would they be ready to meet Gorlois? Or would they stay there, motionless in the darkness after the storm, and Gorlois find them like hens huddled on their roost for the fox? But she could do no more. A deathly cold, the faintness of utter exhaustion, came over her; she felt herself fading into icy cold and darkness, as if the storm were raging through her entire body . . .

  . . . she was lying on the stone floor, before the cold ashes of the fire. Over her an icy wind was blowing, as if the storm which had followed her all through her vision was raging here too, inside her body. . . . No, it was not that. The wooden shutters of the room had blown open in the dying frenzy of the storm; they were slamming back and forth, and slashes of icy rain were blowing into the room.

  She was cold. She was so cold she felt she would never move again, that she would lie there and freeze and that the cold of her body would gradually change to the sleep of death. At the moment she did not care.

  There must be punishment for breaking a taboo; that is the law. I have done the forbidden thing, and I cannot emerge scatheless from it. If Uther is safe, I accept it, even if my punishment be death . . . and indeed, Igraine, huddling and trying to cover herself with the inadequate warmth of her cloak, felt that death would be merciful. At least she would not feel the cold. . . .

  But Morgaine, Morgaine who slept in the bed near to that window, if the window were not closed she would take a chill and perhaps have the lung fever. . . . Igraine would not, for her own sake, have moved. But for her child and her innocent sister she forced herself painfully to stir, to make her numbed hands and feet move. Clumsy, moving as if drunken, she stumbled to the window and fumbled with her frozen hands to draw it closed. The wind twice tore it from her fingers, and she heard herself sobbing as she wrestled with it. She could not feel, but she knew she had torn away a fingernail in the struggle with the shutter, which fought her like a living thing. At last, capturing the clasp between her hands, she drew it shut by main force, pinching a finger, cold and blue, in the frame, as she managed to fasten the wooden hasp.

  It was still cold in the room, cold as ice, and she knew that without the fire, Morgaine, and Morgause too, would be ill . . . she wanted nothing more than to creep into bed between them, still wrapped in her cloak, warm herself between their young warm bodies, but it was hours till morning, and she had been the one who left the fire untended. Shivering, pulling her cloak close, she took a fire pan from the hearth and stole down the stairs, feeling her icy feet bruised as they stumbled on the stone. In the kitchen, three serving women curled close like dogs in front of the banked fire; it was warm there, and a steaming pot hung on a long hook over the fire—gruel for the morning meal, no doubt. Well, it was her own kitchen and her own gruel. Igraine dipped a cup into the pot and drank the hot, unsalted oatmeal broth, but even that could not warm her. Then she filled the fire pan with red-hot coals and covered the fire, covered the fire pan, and, holding it in a fold of her skirt, went up the stairs again. She was weak and shaking, and, despite the hot drink, shuddering so hard she feared she would fall. I must not fall, for if I fall I will never get up again, and the fire pan will set something afire. . . .

  She knelt before the cold hearth in her room, feeling the great shudders take her body and rack her with pain in her chest; but she was not cold now, she felt hot throughout her body. She fed the coals patiently with bits of tinder from the bin, then with small sticks; at last the log caught and roared up toward the ceiling. Igraine was so hot now that she flung off her cloak, stumbling toward the bed; lifted Morgaine and lay down with the child in her arms; but she did not know whether she slept or died.

  No, she was not dead. Death would not bring this racking, shuddering heat and cold. . . . She knew that she lay a long time, wrapped in steaming cloths, which grew cold and were taken away and renewed; she knew that they forced hot drinks down her throat, sometimes nauseous herbal mixtures against fever and sometimes strong spirits mixed with hot water. Days, weeks, years, centuries, passed over her while she lay and burned and shivered and suffered the horrid stuff they poured down her throat when she was too weak even to vomit it up. Once Morgause came and asked her fretfully, “If you were ill, Igraine, why did you not wake me and send me to mend the fire?” The dark shape who had forbidden her the road was standing in one corner of the room, and now Igraine could see her face: it was the Death-crone who guards the doors of the forbidden, and now would punish her. . . . Morgaine came and looked down at her, her small, somber face frightened, and Igraine wanted to reassure
her daughter, but she was too weak to speak aloud. And Uther was there too, but she knew that no one else could see him, and it was not seemly to call out any man’s name save that of her own wedded husband . . . no one would think worse of her if she should call out Gorlois’s name. But even if she was dying, she did not want to call out the name of Gorlois, she wanted no more of him, in life or in death.

  Had she betrayed Gorlois, with her forbidden sorcery? Or had that been only a dream, no more real than her attempt to warn Uther? Had she saved him? It seemed that she was wandering in the icy spaces again, trying blindly to force herself through the storm to give her warning, and once Father Columba came and mumbled Latin at her, and she was frantic. By what right did he come to worry her with the last rites when she could not defend herself? She had meddled in sorcery, by his standards she was an evil woman, and he would condemn her for betraying Gorlois, he would come to avenge his master. The storm was back again, raging through her, she was wandering endlessly in the storm, trying to find Morgaine who was lost in it, only Morgause was there, wearing a crown, the crown of the High Kings of all Britain. Then Morgaine was standing at the prow of the barge which passed over the Summer Sea to the shores of Avalon, Morgaine wearing the robes of a priestess, the robes Viviane wore . . . and then all was darkness and silence.

  And then there was sunlight in the room and Igraine stirred, only to discover that she could not sit up.