I Am Morgan le Fay (15 page)

“Did she have food?”

“I don't know.”

“A mount?”

“I don't know, Morgan. I'm sorry.”

“Was this last winter?”

“Yes.”

I nodded, nudged my horse with my heels and rode on in silence, thinking of Igraine the Beautiful alone and fleeing like a deer on the moor in the freezing storms that lashed up like a fist from the sea. My mother, facing mortal peril rather than facing one more day as a lord‘s—as a slave.

I said softly, “She might be dead.”

 

We traveled late, under the light of a waning moon, for the tors dropped steeply and there was nowhere to stop until we had reached the foothills.

In the morning I awoke when the sunlight shone in my eyes, and I got up to see Thomas lying on the far side of a sheltering tree from me, still sleeping. I stood gazing at his face, fairer than that of any prince in any tale I had ever imagined, and I saw some color in his cheeks today, in his brow—

He stirred and gave a sigh almost like a moan, and I saw how his skin glistened with sweat. I stepped swiftly to him, crouched and laid my hand on his forehead.

Fever.

At my touch he opened his blue eyes and looked blankly up at me.

“Thomas, your arm, your shoulder,” I said, “are they worse? Do they hurt?”

Looking too dazed to answer, he sat up, his face tightening—yes, he hurt. As gently as I could I slipped off his sling and removed his bandaging. The wounds had been healing well when last I had wrapped them, the morning we left our camp on the mountain—yesterday. It seemed long ago. Now Thomas's arm and shoulder were swollen and streaked with red.

“Contagion,” I whispered, misery squeezing at my chest. Curses on me and everything about my harebrained journey. Annie dead, Thomas hurt, and now this. “Lie down, go back to sleep.” I spun away and started rummaging in our baggage, my mind going like a squirrel,
flask of cold water, cloth of some sort, cold compresses, poultices
—

Thomas stood beside me. “Bind me up again and let's ride,” he said.

“You can't ride!”

“Yes, I can.”

“Thomas—”

“Just patch me together and put me on a horse! We can't stop now. We're almost there.”

He could be very stubborn, my Thomas. So could I, but not this time, for the summons of Avalon sang to me like a harp string rooted in my heart, its pull stronger than ever. I could even sense the direction whence it came. It was as Thomas said, we were close. How he knew I cannot say. Thomas knew of many mysteries.

So we rode on, downhill and out of the forest and onto the plain, among a labyrinth of winding streams.

At the first stream I halted my horse and got down. Where the bank curved and a thick willow tree crouched over a deep pool, I knelt and soaked my shawl in the cold water. I pushed the cloth under the dark willow-shaded surface, and then, as I lifted it, dripping, I saw a face looking up at me.

A pale green face with hair that floated darker green, like waterweed. She looked at me with no expression, like an idiot, her mouth slack and lipless, her nose half eaten away by minnows. But she was not a corpse. Her pale, lashless eyes, one fishbelly white, one as brown as a tadpole, blinked and focused on me from under the water.

An odd calm came over me. I said, “Hello,” stood up with my dripping shawl in my hands, and turned to Thomas—he sat on his horse in a near stupor; he had noticed none of this. I laid the sopping-wet shawl on his arm and shoulder, and with a corner of it I reached up to comfort his fevered face.

“I can do it myself,” he mumbled, taking the wet cloth from me.

I, Lady Morgan, standing there in my sea green gown with my black charger's reins in hand—I confess I stuck out my tongue at him.

He smiled. “Let's ride.”

The sun shone hot on the green plains of Avalon that day. A green-gold day, perhaps a trick of fate. The summons pulled me straight toward the green-moon place, the mound I had seen from the mountaintop, but the streams curved, curved, curved in the way, and the sun rays struck off their blue crescents like swords.

Within a few hours Thomas could no longer smile. He rode with his eyes half lidded against the glare and his own pain. I rode with mine wide open.

As we rode along one stream searching for a place to ford it, I saw what looked at first like a log of wood rise out of the water. It was the head of a black horse, its white-rimmed eyes watching me. Glinting eyes peered out of its flaring water-flooded nostrils as well. When my charger saw it, he shied so hard he almost threw me. I curbed him, and we rode on.

We rode through rocky shallows to cross. Nothing could harm us there, I thought. But when I glanced down, the water around the horses' hooves ran red, like blood.

There were the ordinary sights as well. Fish jumped, tall gray herons stood like druids in the shallows while in the deeper pools swans floated—

Wait. A white swan drifted as fair as the pearly moon, yet I stared, for on the surface of the water its reflection shimmered starry black.

I shivered with fear and wonder. But I said nothing to Thomas of anything I had seen, for nothing so far had offered to harm us, not the green woman who breathed water or the stream that ran red or any of it. Water, it all had to do with water, and I remembered a triad:

When the sun stood overhead and beamed down most hotly, I called a halt. Thomas wanted to ride on. I took him by the waist and pulled him off the horse. He was so weak I could do that.

“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.

I
T 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.

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.