“Eat,” I told him.
He could not. He lay flat on the ground under a willow tree and did not move. I ate from the knight’s provisions, cheese and siege bread, both as hard as Uther Pendragon’s heart. I could not eat much. Worry for Thomas tightened my gut, and at the same time my hands trembled, my arms trembled, I quivered like a ringing bell pealing Avalon, Avalon, Avalon . . .
I thought of using the milpreve to cure Thomas, but I did not feel strong enough. This place of wild magic frightened me; what might happen if I succeeded only in hurting myself? Who would help Thomas and me then? Anyone? Or would some black horse spirit from out of watershadow pull us under and eat us?
Thomas was sleeping, or so I thought. I sat against the trunk of the willow, laid back my head, sighed and tried to close my eyes.
“Ride,” Thomas said.
I helped him onto the bay, and we rode. We did not speak. Ahead of us I could see a great mound rising now, a green up-swelling like a woman’s breast, like the breast of earth herself. The streams curved wider now, and deeper, and from one pool a slender white arm pierced the surface and stretched toward me, then sank with barely a ripple. I watched the water closing in from both sides, forming a sort of moat around the mound, leaving only a narrow approach. From the corner of my eye I watched Thomas, noting how his face paled, then flushed, then paled again, how he shivered with fever, how he fixed his eyes on his horse’s ears and saw nothing else.
As the sun slipped toward the edge of the western sky I saw him falter, sway and grasp his horse’s mane to keep from falling.
“Stop,” I ordered.
He mumbled, “... almost there . . .”
It was no use trying to argue with him. I yanked the black charger in a circle to make it listen to me, urged it close alongside the bay, dropped the reins, put both arms around Thomas’s waist and lifted him off the bay and onto my horse in front of me.
He struggled, of course, blast his stubborn pride. But he was too weak to struggle much. Within a moment he settled sideways between me and the pommel, laid his head on my shoulder and let go of consciousness and pain. I took the reins in one hand and let the steed set his own black-charger pace. The bay trailed along behind.
At sunset I rode into Avalon that way, on a black stallion with an empty mount trotting after me and Thomas unconscious in my arms.
11
IT WAS A CASTLE AFTER ALL. AND ALSO A LAKE. AND A great lofty mound. Avalon can be many places.
Here is how it was for me: I rode toward the mound with Thomas in my arms, and as the slanting rays of the setting sun touched the blunt stone at the apex of the mound and turned it golden, I felt a vibration like earth humming a primrose song and the mound bloomed open. The greensward parted like petals, lifted like leaves, and from within issued the warm light of many white candles in golden sconces, and I glimpsed the pillars and carved gilt groins of the great hall I remembered from years ago.
People, or perhaps I should say beings, moved about in the candlelight, but I saw only shimmers of them, for a man stepped forth to meet me. A tall, brown man, naked except for a deerskin. A man with a lined face and eyes like wells in forest shadow and the faerie sheen all over him. A man with the antlers of a stag growing out of his grizzled hair.
A fay.
That is to say, one who had been a god.
I halted the black charger, which for once seemed pleased to obey me; maybe the sight of the antlered god gave him pause the way it did me. From some long-ago triad in Ongwynn’s tome of threes I remembered a name. “Cernunnos,” I whispered.
Three there be who wear the horned crown:
The moon white stag of the holy grove,
The leaping hart of true love,
And Cernunnos the antlered one.
In the leaf brown depths of his eyes there showed a gleam when I said his name. “At your service, Lady Morgan.” The shining tips of his antlers traced a hint of a bow.
I shook my head. Such a being could never be at my service. “Are you—was it you who summoned me here?” How otherwise did he know my name? But I remembered nothing of him in the dream, the sending.
“No. She’s within.” He walked forward to stand beside my steed and held up his arms to take my burden from me. His hands were all brown callus, I noted, grained like wood. On the third finger of his left hand he wore a ring that seemed made out of moonlight, and on the ring glimmered a blue stone. A milpreve.
I do not know why I trusted him, but I did. Utterly. Without question I lowered Thomas to Cernunnos, who cradled him in his arms like a baby.
By the time I slipped down off my steed, Thomas stood conscious and upright, gazing at me with dazed eyes, steadying himself with one hand on Cernunnos’s shoulder. Healed. Or at least much better. But still weak and so bewildered that perhaps he did not realize what it was that he touched. Or what it was that had touched him.
“Thank you, Lord of the Beasts,” I said to Cernunnos.
Again the shining tips of his antlers traced a hint of acknowledgment. “Who is this one?” Unspoken were the words: This is not one whom Avalon has summoned.
Thomas turned to look at Cernunnos, and his face went white. He tried to step back, but swayed as if he would fall. Cernunnos put out his harsh hand to support him.
Thomas moved his lips as if trying to speak, but he could not. I answered for him. “This is Thomas, to whom I owe my life. Will he—is he in peril here?”
“Perhaps. But peril comes from within the mortal heart. The pure of heart have nothing to fear.”
“Then Thomas will be all right,” I said.
I knew myself not to be pure of heart, not at all. I scorned my sister, I harbored secret thoughts of Thomas, and at heart I was no better than a seven-year-old jealous of baby Arthur, that same dragon of resentment still fiery in me. Too many times I had wished evil on others. The sheer power of my rage had killed a man. I was not a good person, I knew, so I felt more than a little fear as I walked into Avalon by myself.
I walked in between two pillars—the whole candlelit magnificence of that earth-dome castle stood open to the twilight summer air scented by water lilies. I stood hesitating and looking around—the many tables, the trays of sweetmeats and quail and marzipan, the candlelit throng were eerily as I remembered from that childhood day, years ago. But instead of king and lords and nobles and ladies, now I saw a laughing, feasting throng of—ladies? Goddesses? Women, at any rate, with not a man among them, women richly garbed and some gloriously ungarbed, old women and matrons and damsels and some maidens barely more than girls, queenly women and simple, pretty peasant women, some wearing the milpreve and some not, some with the sheen of faerie on them and some wearing a shadow I could not name and some as plain as Ongwynn. After three years with Morgause and Ongwynn and myself for company, I felt my heart lift and yearn at the sight of all those women so merry with nary a man to constrain them, so many that I could barely take them in with my eyes and mind.
None of them saw me or welcomed me, for I kept like a pisky to the shadows, shy. The primrose fay, I thought, was the one who had summoned me, so I scanned the hall for her—
I gasped.
At the circular table on the dais, straight-backed and staring down at her own white hands, alone within herself despite the maidens singing by her sides, sat a slim, regal woman with dark hair but a pale, pale face.
“Mother!” I cried.
My call echoed in Avalon’s golden dome. I think every head except my mother’s lifted or turned to look at me, but I did not care. Heeding no one’s stares, I darted across the great hall to the table where my mother, Igraine the Beautiful, sat staring at her hands. I lifted my skirt and leaped like a boy onto the dais. I plunged to my knees by my mother’s side.
Igraine the Beautiful—but the title was a mockery now. Every bone showed through her skin, lines harrowed her white face, streaks of gray sullied her long, limp hair, and her eyes stared as dull as a cow’s.
“Mother,”
I appealed.
Her head turned slowly, as if fearing it might lose its balance on her narrow neck. She looked at me with vague surprise.
“Mother, it’s me!”
“Morgause,” she murmured.
“Morgan. It’s Morgan, Mother.”
She nodded as if it were all the same. “What are you doing here?” She leaned toward me, suddenly eager. “Did you bring Arthur with you?”
“No, I . . .”
“Oh.” Plainly disappointed, she turned away.
“Mother.” I scrambled to my feet, put my arms around her thin shoulders and embraced her and kissed her hollow cheek. But she seemed not to notice.
Someone touched my shoulder gently, so gently I hazily thought it was Thomas, even though Cernunnos had been showing him to a bath and a bowl of soup and a bedchamber the last I knew. But because I thought it was him, I turned without alarm.
It was she. The primrose fay with leaf-green eyes as deep as wells. Merry and sly and wise and sad.
I felt my knees weaken as if I should fall at her bare feet, but I did not. I only stood and stared.
“Come eat and bathe and rest, Morgan,” she said.
I whispered, “My mother . . .”
The fay smiled, but there was more sadness than gaiety in her smile. “Now you know why we summoned you,” she said.
“Why me? Why not Morgause?” It was Morgause whom Mother seemed to want. Morgause more likely to be pure of heart.
The primrose fay’s smile grew gay again, and mischievous. “You know why,” she said.
I felt the milpreve stirring, warm with the heat of its own life, upon my chest.
“Thomas.” I spoke softly, but when I caught sight of him, I broke into a run.
In an arbor by the water’s edge, where the primrose fay had promised I would find him, he lay sleeping. Someone, Cernunnos probably, had seen to fresh clothing for him, and the arch of the arbor sheltered him, but he had no bedding. Perhaps he needed none, upon that soft green grassy bed. These fay folk seemed kind in their way. I had bathed, or rather I had been bathed most tenderly by the damsels of Avalon, my hair washed and scented and braided, and I had eaten, but I would not sleep until I had spoken with Thomas.
The dawn light gilded the grass on which he lay slumbering as deeply as if it were a bed of eiderdown. All was grass now; the mound of Avalon had closed behind me at the first touch of the morning sunlight.
“Thomas.” I knelt beside him and touched his shoulder.
He opened his clear eyes. “Morgan?” He sat up at once, with no sign of pain, no sling or even bandaging any longer on his arm. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Everything. I don’t know. Have you eaten?”
“Yes, of course.” He paused, tilting his head as if listening to the echo of his own words, and smiled. “Yes, Cernunnos fed me well. Are they fattening me for slaughter?”
“I hope not.” I sat down on the ground next to him. “That is what I want to tell you. Those knights who came here and—and were killed, or went mad . . .”
Tilting his head toward the mound, Thomas said, “Cernunnos has told me that no man is allowed within.” He understood that much, then, that this was a place for women, ruled by women’s magic, not like any other place anywhere that I knew of—but did he know what those doomed knights had done?
Or would he be safer not knowing?
Much more softly Thomas said, “Last night I saw the Morrigun crouching by the stream yonder.” He looked a small way upwater of the arbor, where stones formed steps into a pool, where tiny ducks colored like jewels floated amid water lilies. In a tone oddly flat for him, Thomas said, “The Morrigun in her human form. She was washing the bodies of warriors who will die in battle.”
I gawked at him.
“The water ran dark with blood,” he added just as flatly.
I stammered, “Who—what did she look like?”
“She was just a hunched old woman keening like a ghost. But when she had finished she flew away in the form of a raven. I think it was a raven. Hard to tell for sure in the dark of the moon.” He quirked his gentle smile at me. “Why are you surprised at anything that happens here, Morgan?”
I brought my faltering mouth under control, beginning to feel foolish that I had come running out to warn him. He knew more than I had thought. “Your arm—it’s all healed?”
He nodded, raising it and smoothing the sleeve with his other hand as if to cherish it.
“Strong again?”
“Strong and not even scarred.”
From the shade of the arbor I looked out upon sunshine and a plain like green velvet and our two horses, the scrawny bay and the sturdy black, grazing in the bend of a waterway. I blinked; in satin blue water the black horse cast a white reflection. In Avalon, I sensed, bright was dark and dark was bright. This was a place of warm light and cold shadow, peace and greatest peril. The black horse’s white reflection glittered so much like a sword that I shut my eyes and shook my head.
“What?” Thomas asked.
“Nothing.” I opened my eyes and did not look at the water again; I looked at Thomas. I swallowed, opened my mouth and made myself say, “You’re strong enough to ride ...” I ought to tell him to ride away to Caer Ongwynn, where it was safe.
“But I’m very weary. All I want is to rest.”
I said nothing more. I could not. I did not want him to leave me.
“And you, Morgan?” He scanned my hair, my gown, with a shy wisp of a smile. “They welcomed you?”
I nodded, then blurted, “I—I suppose you’re not in danger as long as you stay out here in the arbor....”
He glanced behind him as if on guard, looking over his shoulder at the mound of Avalon, breast of earth. He whispered, “Who are they who live there?”
“She,” I said just as softly. “Women. Ladies. Fays. She, in many forms.”
“Would you not speak in riddles?”
I gave up trying to explain and said plainly what I had come to tell him. “Those knights who died gave offense to her, sometimes only by a thought.” And how was he to guard his thoughts even while he slept?
“Offense?”
I lowered my eyes.
He sat gazing not at the mound but at me, without speaking. He seemed to know that, as a maiden, I could say no more. “You’re one of them,” he said finally, “being woman.”
“I—I’m not sure.”
“It’s because of the—the blue stone, then.” He watched me steadily. “Or your changeling eyes. Something makes you one of them. That is why they summoned you here, is it not?”
“No.” I shook my head too vehemently. “It’s because my mother is here!”
Once again I failed to surprise him. He only nodded.
“You knew?”
“Cernunnos told me.”
“Cernunnos this, Cernunnos that! Where is he? Inside? Why do they let him inside and not you?”
“Shhh!” Thomas stiffened and looked all around as if he feared Cernunnos might hear, although we could see for half a league in all directions: winding blue water, sunlight on the reeds, blackbirds whistling, golden fish, a white swan with a black reflection, the green mound with the standing stone on its apex, nothing more. Thomas told me softly, “You must not speak of him so freely.”
“But he has been kind to you—”
“Morgan, there is danger everywhere. In Ongwynn. In you. Perhaps even in me. Certainly in Cernunnos.”
“Would you not speak in riddles?”
Thomas smiled, sat with his back against a vine-wreathed pillar and told me what he knew of the Lord of the Beasts.
Cernunnos, the antlered consort of—the moon, the goddess, the dweller in Avalon. The one who was many, with many forms, many names. When the crescent moon lifted its two silver horns over Avalon, Cernunnos would go in to her. And under the full milky moon he would ride the nights on a white mare whose mane and tail trailed to the ground; sometimes he would ride as far as land’s end. I
t was on such a night that he had found my mother crouching as wild and matted and louse-ridden as a starveling rabbit upon the moor, and it was he who had brought her to Avalon, where she was safe even from Penzance, even from Redburke. He had carried her there in his arms on a white horse.
But in the dark of the moon, Cernunnos rode a black steed with eyes that blazed like coals. On those nights he galloped with the fire-eyed pack, the hounds of the underworld, in their chase across the black sky as they chivvied the souls of the newly dead. Dwellers on the moors warned one another not to look up when they heard the yelping of hounds in the sky; those who witnessed that unearthly hunt ran mad.
As Thomas spoke of that uncanny ride, I shuddered and the day darkened in my sight. But then I blinked and looked around at bright sunshine, bright water, a white heron wading.
“Wasn’t last night the dark of the moon?” I asked.
He nodded.
“I thought so. The Morrigun ...”
“Yes.” The Morrigun did her grisly washing in the dark of the moon. Thomas turned his eyes away from the mention of her name and said, “I’m weary, Morgan.” He slipped sideward from the post against which he had set his back, and lay down in the grass again.
So was I, very weary, and too much in need of him to let myself know how much he was not saying. Within moments I fell asleep in the grass by his feet.
Only later, far too late, did I learn all that he had seen in that night of the dark of the moon. He had seen Cernunnos ride off upon the wild hunt, and he had not run mad, for Thomas was strong and pure of heart. If anything could drive him mad, it would have been this: Also that same night, he had seen the Morrigun washing a dead body he had recognized. It was his own.
12
WHAT ARE YOU DOING?“ I ASKED MY MOTHER, SITTING beside her in darkness lit only by a single candle.
She did not answer, only gazed upon the mirror—not the queenly silver mirror I remembered from when I was a child, but a smaller one, far plainer. It lay flat on the table before her, and the candle stood to one side, and Mother—had her back ever touched the back of any chair? Like a narrow pillar carved in the shape of a queen she sat, and it was as if she did not hear me at all. Why did I bother? Outside it was daylight. It had become hard for me to keep track when nights were bright and days dark and I wanted to sleep, but yes, it was day, and outside were Thomas and sunlight.
I Am Morgan le Fay Page 11
