I Am Morgan le Fay (25 page)

Then everything changed, not only for me but for all who dwelt in Avalon, never to be the same.

There was no warning. All in a moment the earth quaked, sending the minnows darting for the shallows. With a clamor the mound of Avalon blossomed open—it should never have done so under the sun, never until twilight. Then, as we scrambled to the shore and stood bare and staring, out from under a gilded archway, out of a grassy portal, a scrawny figure staggered, then stood blinking in the bright summer light.

I did not at first recognize her, for in many, many years I had not seen her in the sunshine.

She shaded her eyes from the day's glory with both brittle hands. She peered straight at me but past me. “My son!” she cried to all of us. “Arthur has drawn the sword from the stone.” Sword? Stone? The words made no sense to any of us, but Mother seemed to know what they meant. “My son!” she cried to the blue sky. “My son, they will crown him King!”

B
UT HOW WILL YOU GO?“ I ASKED MY MOTHER. MANY others had asked her the same question.

Busy sorting through a shimmering pile of gowns mounded on her bed, trying to decide what to wear to the coronation, she answered me just as she had answered them. “You will see.” Distracted, cheerful, smiling. “I am sent for. Arthur knows who his mother is now, and he wants to meet me.” And truly he would meet his mother, Igraine the Beautiful, for despite the lines of age she was beautiful again, color in her cheeks now, her hair sleek, and even a little flesh beginning to soften her thin body. Somehow Arthur had cured her when I could not.

Arthur. My half brother, a fifteen-year-old stripling who would be King while Thomas lay dead. Why should this untried youth, this Arthur, my half brother, have a throne when I, who knew much and had suffered much, had nothing? I had not met Arthur since his name-day, when he had lain a fat baby in my mother's arms, but sitting on a hard chair in my mother's chamber I still despised him every bit as much as I had then, with the fire dragon burning in my heart and vengeful thoughts blazing in my mind. Thinking of him, wishing him ill, I felt the milpreve go hot in its metal nest in the palm of my hand.

My mother sighed over the gowns the fays were offering her. “I shall look so odd,” she murmured. “No jewels... but I suppose fashions have changed. Do you know?” She turned and smiled at me, cordial.

“No.”

“You have not been out either for a long time?”

“No. I haven't.”

“Oh, well, perhaps my son Arthur will give me some jewels. Rubies would be nice. I used to have the most lovely rubies. I wonder what has become of them—”

“Mother?” I interrupted her prattling.

She looked at me blankly. Half the time I felt not at all sure she knew who I was.

“I used to have a ring made of your hair,” I told her, “but it wore out. Would you make me another one before you leave?”

“Oh? Oh, certainly, dear, when I have time. But I have so much to do. Arthur's coronation—”

I got up and wandered out of her chamber, soothing the milpreve with a fingertip. Mother had probably forgotten my request already. And the ring Thomas had given me was gone, I did not know how, probably burned right off my hand on that awful day, so that I did not have even that small circle of shining black hair to remember him by. My hands bore no ornament except the milpreve in its nest of melted orichalcum, bedded to the bone in my palm. Never before, I thought, had a lady worn a stone so strangely.

The milpreve and I both wanted to do something spiteful, but I did not yet know what. I avoided my mother during the days that followed, but I heard that she was busy embroidering a headdress for herself.

“Am I to send her off as I did you, alone on a dead knight's charger?” Cernunnos asked me, brows raised.

“I don't know.”

No one knew. And Avalon stood open night and day, and no one knew the why or how of that either. There was worried talk, then a waiting silence. Nothing untoward had yet happened, but I could feel the waiting, a silence of waiting like the silence of a heron standing in the shallows. Even the little ducks had gone silent, and even the breezes held their breath, even the windflowers stood still, waiting, and the ripples stilled in the pools and streams.

My mother finished her embroidery, I surmise, for one morning as I walked past the arbor to bathe my face in the swan pool, she issued forth with her headdress in place, mantled and gowned for a journey. The friends who had sheltered her for these many years followed her like servants, carrying her bags. All of Avalon came out to watch—something, who knew what? Igraine the Beautiful clearly and serenely expected to depart. She stood smiling before the sunny portal.

I saw this, then turned my back, sitting on the grassy verge of the swan pool and gazing at myself in the mirroring water.

The pudgy, powdered face of middle-aged Morgan smirked back at me, her hard eyes glinting with a mirth I did not like or understand.

She horrified me. But I sat silent just to see what might happen next. The fire dragon?

No. Not this time. Instead, the face turned to that of a sooty black bird, so large and near that I could see the membranes at the corners of its yellow eyes, the bony nostrils piercing its beak hard and sharp and heavy as a broadsword.

And the blue stone blazing, imbedded in its feathered forehead much as it now nestled in my palm.

The Morrigun, but—arrayed as never before.

My breath stopped, and I bit my lip to keep from crying out. I heard footsteps approaching, and I blinked; the pool showed me only my own taut, grieving face now. But the sight of my true self harrowed me only a little less than what I had seen before.

I splashed with my hands, driving the reflection away, then washed my face. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Cernunnos standing beside me. With my face dripping shards of Ladywater, I stood to see what he wanted.

He tilted his antlered head toward the mound of Avalon. “Your mother—now what?”

I looked at her standing at the portal of Caer Avalon as proudly as she had ever stood upon the steps of Tintagel. What, did she think my father was coming home to her? Crazy old woman.

“How should I know?” I grumbled. But clearly we couldn't just send her off. “Wait and—”

But there was no waiting. In that moment, Merlin, no less, stood beside Igraine.

No whirlwind, no flash of light, no commotion. He appeared, that was all, with his staff in his hand and his black dog with the fey white eyes sitting mannerly by his side. Merlin, unchanged in many years, his eyes still like black pits in his bearded face and his druid stone glowing on his forehead.

All those who stood near him gasped and stepped back, but Mother turned to him without fear, smiling. “Well met, sorcerer,” she said, her voice queenly.

“Greetings, Igraine the Beautiful.” With his starry robe flowing around him, Merlin bowed over her gloved hand. Even in the sunlight, shadows shifted around his head and shoulders.

“You have come to escort me to my son's coronation?”

“Indeed so.”

“It was you who sent to me the vision I scried?”

“You guess well, my queen.” That sere voice, I had never forgotten it, or the dawn I had first heard it. “Shall we be going?”

I called, “Merlin, wait.”

All eyes turned to me as I strode barefoot up the grassy slope to speak with the sorcerer. But I felt Merlin's stare most of all. Still, other than knowing myself to be almost naked compared to my gloved and mantled mother, I did not feel much. I did not shrink, I did not tremble. I had no plan, expected nothing. I wanted to hear what he might say to me, that was all.

He turned his shadowed head toward me, and I looked straight into the blank blackness of his eyes. It was like looking into the endless depth of a starless night sky. “Lady Morgan?” To my surprise, Merlin bowed—but I suppose he was on his best behavior that day. “I beg pardon, Lady Morgan; I did not know you were here! Avalon has sheltered you well.”

“I am no lady any longer,” I told him.

I suppose there was an edge in my voice, and now I saw black ice in his stare. Still, I faced him levelly. “We have met before,” I remarked. “Do you remember?”

“Yes. On the moor, the day of your father's death.”

As if it also remembered, the black dog stood up and sniffed my bare knee. I remember the touch of its cold nostrils and the warmth of its breath, although at the time I barely noticed.

Merlin was saying, “You were a child then, and frightened of me.” His bearded lips stirred; he smiled like a skull. “But you are not frightened any longer.”

I searched inwardly and found no fear. “True.”

Merlin asked, “What have you seen in the swan pool, Morgan?”

I smiled, almost laughed. “Horrors—as you know well, is it not so?”

The tautness of his face, like mine. His smile, like mine. “Yes.” He looked away. “They tell us to embrace,” he said, his voice low, “that darkness we all harbor in our dragonish hearts, they tell us to accept it, befriend it, love it as ourselves. And so they do. To find peace they weaken the beast within, they tame it. But you, Morgan—”

Standing by, my mother interrupted, “Good sorcerer, will you soon be ready to escort me to my son?”

Merlin ignored her, his gaze on me. I grew aware of the circle of fays all around, silent and watching, of Rhiannon standing by my mother's side murmuring something to her to soothe and quiet her.

But most of all I was aware of Merlin, mighty Merlin, standing an arm's reach away from me with the druid stone winking at me like a third eye from his forehead ... why was I not afraid? Because already I had lived through the worst that could happen to me?

“I, Morgan,” I echoed Merlin, mocking, “what do I care for peace, or love either? Look what love has done to me.” I thrust my crippled right hand toward him so that he could see the milpreve couched in my palm.

His eyes widened, and his spangled robes rustled as he swayed. I had staggered him.

“They say we choose our fates,” I remarked, “but I wonder.”

He raised his stare from my hand to my face, and his eyes were not quite blank, black nothings after all; I saw wonder in them. “Morgan,” he asked, pointing with his beard toward my palm, “was that done destroying Redburke's army?”

“Yes.”

“Then indeed you have reason to question the ways of fate. If it were not for your making away with his most powerful enemy, Arthur would likely not be King today.”

His words turned a bitter knife in me, and I think he knew it. I saw the shadow of a smile beneath his beard.

“Would you like to come with us to the coronation?” he asked courteously. “Your sister will be there.”

Although I was Arthur's half sister, it had not once occurred to me to be a presence at his king-day. Now I felt a dare and the prodding of a doom I did not understand and a reckless willingness to embrace both. Perhaps I could wreak mischief upon this upstart Arthur? I would enjoy that. “Why not?” I said, very cool, very much the lady indeed. “Yes, thank you for thinking of it. I will go with you.”

“You are very welcome.” Merlin reached toward my right hand. “May I try my powers upon that?”

All ladylike indifference deserted me. My chest gulped breath and kept it a moment longer than usual. My lips parted but did not speak. I felt some fear now, yet I nodded and lifted my hand toward him.

He clasped it in both of his, and the feel of his hands surprised me, as dry as his voice yet warm and calming. He closed his fearsome eyes, and I saw the shadows gathering thicker around his shoulders—then I closed my eyes as well, for I did not want to see the forms shaping around him. I heard a confused clamor of voices, chitter squeak giggle too dark to be piskies. And I heard fays exclaiming, Merlin chanting, and I felt—power, power almost as fearsome as that of my stone but more controlled, force running up my arm clear to my heart, my shoulder blades, my spine.

Although it did not hurt, I think I screamed, and then there was a weight dropping away from me, and silence in which I felt the black dog licking my knee.

I opened my eyes, my left hand reaching down of its own accord to pat the dog, my right hand hovering before my face whole, healed, as well as the other.

A sunlit gleam of orichalcum drew my glance to the ground. My milpreve lay there in a mass of the silvery metal. As I looked, it fell loose and rolled a few inches into the grass.

I stared at it.

Then I looked up at Merlin. He had stepped back, and it was hard to tell with the shadows settling like a mantle around him, but I thought his face looked gray. Weary.