Then Viviane turned and smiled at her, a loving smile, and Morgaine felt again the old surge of love and tenderness. But as was fitting a younger priestess in the presence of the Lady, she waited for Viviane to speak first.
Viviane gestured to her to sit. “Have you recovered, child?”
Morgaine let herself drop to the bench, and knew that even from the short walk she was exhausted. She shook her head.
“I know,” Viviane said. “Sometimes, when they do not know how you will react, they give you too much. Next time, do not take all they give you—judge how much you can take—enough to give you the Sight, but not enough to make you so very ill. You have that right, now; you have reached a stage where obedience may be tempered with your own judgment.”
For some reason those words rang again and again in Morgaine’s mind: tempered with your own judgment, tempered with your own judgment. She thought, I am still sick from the drugs they gave me, and shook her head, impatient, to clear away the sound and listen to Viviane.
“How much did you understand of Raven’s prophecy?”
“Very little,” Morgaine confessed. “It was mysterious to me. I am not sure why I was there.”
“Partly,” Viviane said, “to lend your strength to her; she is not strong. She is still abed, and I am concerned about her. She knows how much of the herb she can take, yet even that little seemed to be too much; she vomited blood, and is passing more. But she will not die.”
Morgaine put out a hand to steady herself; she felt hollow, and a sudden wave of sickness passed over her again, leaving her pale and giddy. Without excuse she stood up, staggered outside and vomited, bringing up the bread and milk she had swallowed that morning. She heard Viviane speak her name, and when she had done and stood clutching the doorframe, retching, she found one of the young attendant priestesses there with a cloth to wipe her face; it was wet and smelled faintly of sweet herbs. Viviane steadied her step as she came back inside, then handed her a small cup.
“Sip it slowly,” she said.
It burned her tongue and for a moment exaggerated the feeling of sickness—it was the strong spirit distilled by the northern Tribes, water-of-life they called it. She had tasted it only once or twice. But when it was down she felt a strong warmth spreading out from her empty stomach, and after a few minutes she felt better, steadier, almost euphoric.
“A little more,” Viviane said. “It will strengthen your heart. Now, do you feel better?”
Morgaine nodded. “Thank you.”
“Tonight you will be able to eat,” said Viviane, and in Morgaine’s strange state it sounded like a command, as if Viviane could command her very stomach to behave itself. “So. Let us talk of Raven’s prophecy. In the ancient days, long before the wisdom and the religion of the Druids came here from the sunken temples in the western continent, the fairy people—of whom we are both born, you and I, my Morgaine—lived here on the shores of the inland sea, and before they learned how to plant the barley and reap it again, they lived by gathering the fruits of the land, and by hunting the deer. And in those days there was no king among them, but only a queen who was their mother, though they had not yet learned to think of her as the Goddess. And since they lived by hunting, their queen and priestess learned to call the deer to her, and ask of their spirits that they sacrifice themselves and die for the life of the Tribe. But sacrifice must be given for sacrifice—the deer died for the Tribe, and one of the Tribe must in turn die for the life of the deer, or at least take the chance that the deer could, if they chose, take his life in exchange for their own. So the balance was kept. Do you understand this, my darling?”
Morgaine heard the unaccustomed endearment, and wondered dimly in her sick and drunken state, Is she telling me that I am to be the sacrifice? Is my life chosen for the Tribe?
It does not matter, I am given to the Goddess for life or for death.
“I understand, Mother. At least, I think I do.”
“So the Mother of the Tribe chose, every year, her consort. And since he had agreed to give his life for the Tribe, the Tribe gave him of their lives. Even if little children at the breast starved, he always had abundance, and all the women of the Tribe were his to lie with, so that he, the strongest and best, might sire their children. Besides, the Mother of the Tribe was often old past childbearing, and so he must have the choice of the young maidens, too, and no man of the Tribe would interfere with what he wanted. And then, when the year was past—every year in those times—he would put on the antlers of the deer, and wear a robe of untanned deerskin so that the deer would think him one of their own, and he would run with the herd as the Mother Huntress put the spell upon them to run. But by this time the herd had chosen their King Stag, and sometimes the King Stag would smell a stranger, and turn on him. And then the Horned One would die.”
Morgaine felt again the ice down her spine that she had felt when, on the Tor, this ritual had been enacted before her eyes. The year’s king is to die for the life of his people. Was the drug still working in her mind, that she could see it all so clearly?
“Well, time has moved on, Morgaine,” Viviane told her quietly, “and now those old rites are no longer needed, for the barley grows and the sacrifice is bloodless. Only in times of great peril does the Tribe demand such a leader. And Raven has foreseen that this is a time of such peril. So once again there will be a testing of one who runs the risk of death for his chosen people, so that they will follow him unto death.
“You have heard me speak of the Great Marriage?”
Morgaine nodded; of this, Lancelet had been born.
“The Tribes of the fairy folk, and all the Tribes of the North, have been given a great leader, and the chosen one will be tested by the ancient rite. And if he survives the testing—which will, to some extent, depend on the strength with which the Maiden Huntress can enchant the deer—then he will become the Horned One, the King Stag, consort of the Virgin Huntress, crowned with the antlers of the God. Morgaine, I told you years ago that your maidenhood belongs to the Goddess. Now she calls for it in sacrifice to the Horned God. You are to be the Virgin Huntress, and the bride of the Horned One. You have been chosen for this service.”
It was very still in the room, as if they stood again in the center of the ring stones in ritual. Morgaine dared not break the silence. At last, knowing that Viviane was waiting for some word of consent—what had the words been, so long ago? It is too heavy a burden to be borne unconsenting—she bowed her head.
“My body and my soul belong to her, to do with as she will,” she whispered. “And your will is her will, Mother. Let it be so.”
15
Since she had come there, Morgaine had left Avalon only two or three times, and then only for short journeys into the countryside at the edges of the Summer Sea, so that she could become aware of the nearby sites which retained, despite disuse, their old power.
Time and place were now none of her concern. She had been taken from the Island at dawn in silence, cloaked and veiled so that no unpriestly eye might see the consecrated one, and carried in a closed litter so that not even the sun might shine on her face. In less than a day’s journeying from the enclosure of the sacred island she had lost all awareness of time and space and direction, lost in meditation, dimly aware of the beginning of the magical trance. There had been times when she had fought against the onset of the ecstatic state. Now she welcomed it, opening her mind full to the Goddess, inwardly imploring the Goddess to come into herself, the instrument, and possess her, body and soul, so that she might act in all things as the Goddess herself.
Nightfall; a moon nearly at full came dimly between the curtains of the litter. When the runners stopped, she felt it bathing her in cold light, like the kiss of the Goddess, and felt faint with the beginnings of ecstasy. She did not know where she was, nor did she care. She went where they led her, passive, blinded, tranced, knowing only that she went to meet her destiny.
She was inside a house, then she was put into
the hands of a strange woman, who brought her bread and honey, which Morgaine did not touch—she would not break her fast again until she did so with the ritual meal—and water, which she drank thirstily. There was a bed, so placed that the moon fell upon her; the strange woman moved to draw the wooden shutters closed and Morgaine stopped her with an imperious gesture. She lay much of the night tranced, feeling the moonlight like a visible touch. At last she slept, but fitfully, wandering in and out of sleep like an uneasy traveller, strange images flickering in her mind—her mother, bending over the fair hair of the intruder Gwydion, her white breasts and coppery hair somehow forbidding instead of welcoming; Viviane, only somehow she was a sacrificial beast and the Lady of Avalon was leading her somewhere on the end of a rope, and she heard herself say fretfully, You needn’t pull, I am coming; Raven, soundlessly screaming. A great horned figure, half man, half animal, suddenly thrusting aside a curtain and striding into her room—she woke and half sat up, but there was no one there, only the moonlight, and the stranger woman sleeping quietly at her side. Quickly she lay down again and slept, this time dreamlessly and deep.
About an hour before dawn they awakened her. Now, in contrast to the tranced unawareness of the previous day, she was wide awake and sharply aware of everything—the cold fresh air, the mists stained with pink where soon the sun would rise, the strong smell of the little dark women in their garments of badly tanned skins. Everything was clean-edged and brilliantly colored, as if fresh this moment from the hand of the Goddess. The dark women whispered among themselves, not presuming to disturb the strange priestess; she heard them, but she knew only a few words of their language.
After a time the eldest of them—the one who had welcomed her and led her inside on the previous night, and whose bed she had shared—came to Morgaine and brought her fresh water. Morgaine bowed to thank her, the salute, priestess to priestess, and then wondered why. The woman was old; her hair, long and tangled and fastened with a clasp of bone, was almost all white, and her dark skin bore faded blue stains. Her garment was of the same imperfectly dyed skin of the others, but over it she wore a cloak of deerskin, the hair still clinging to it, painted with magical symbols; and about her neck were two necklaces, one of beautiful amber beads—Viviane herself owned none finer—and the other of bits of horn alternating with exquisitely chased gold bars. She carried herself with the authority of Viviane herself, and Morgaine knew that this was the tribal Mother and priestess of the people.
With her own hands, the woman began to prepare Morgaine for the ritual. She stripped her naked, and painted the soles of her feet and the palms of her hands with blue dye, and renewed the crescent moon on her brow; on her breast and belly she outlined the full moon, and just above the dark patch of Morgaine’s body hair she painted the dark moon. Briefly, almost perfunctorily, she parted the girl’s legs and probed a little: Morgaine, beyond embarrassment, knew why she was searching. For this rite, the priestess must be a virgin. But the tribal priestess would find nothing wrong; Morgaine was untouched, but she felt a sudden half-pleasurable moment of fear, and at the same moment she was conscious that she was almost fiercely hungry. Well, she was trained to ignore hunger, and after a time the hunger left her.
The sun was rising as they led her outdoors, robed in a cloak like the old woman’s, with the magical signs painted on it—the moon, the antlers of the deer. She was aware of the stiff astringency of her painted body, and some part of her mind, very far away, stared with amazement and a moment’s contempt at these symbols of a mystery far older than the Druidic wisdom in which she had been so carefully schooled. That was momentary and vanished at once; the belief of generations ancient past knowing invested this rite with its own power and holiness. She saw the round stone house behind her; across from her was another, and they were leading forth a young man. She could not see him clearly; the rising sun was in her eyes, and she could see only that he was tall, with a shock of fair hair, and strongly built. He is not one of their own people, then? But it was not for her to question. The men of the tribe—and especially an old man, with the gnarled swollen muscles of a smith, blackened like his own forge—were painting the youth’s body from head to foot with the blue woad, covering him with a cloak of untanned raw skins, smearing his body with the deer fat. On his head they fixed antlers; at a low word of command, he swung his head to make certain they could not be dislodged, no matter how he moved. Morgaine looked up to see the proud swing of that young head, and suddenly she felt a ripple of awareness run down her body, cramping her calves, running into the secret parts of her body.
This is the Horned One, this the God, this the consort of the Virgin Huntress. . . .
They wound her hair in a garland of crimson berries and crowned her with the first of the spring flowers. The precious necklace of gold and bone was reverently taken from the neck of the Mother of the tribe and placed around her own; she felt its weight like the very weight of magic. Her eyes were dazzled with the rising sun. They placed something in her hand—a drum, taut skin stretched over a hooped frame. As if it came from somewhere else, she heard her own hand strike it.
They stood on a hillside, overlooking a valley filled to the brim with thick forest, empty and silent, but within it she could sense the life in the forest—the deer moving on silent, slender feet, the animals climbing in the trees, and the birds nesting, darting, moving, asurge with the life of the first running tide of the full moon of spring. She turned for a moment and looked behind, on the hillside. Above them, carved white in the chalk, was a monstrous figure, human or animal she could not tell, her eyes were blurred; was it a running deer, was it a striding man, phallus erect and filled with the spring tide, too?
She could not see the young man at her side, only the surge of the life in him. There was a solemn, waiting hush all over the hillside. Time ceased, was again transparent, something in which she moved, bathed, stepped freely. The drum was in the old crone’s hands again, but she had no awareness of having given it over to her. Her eyes were dazed with sun as she felt the God’s head between her hands, blessing him. Something in the face . . . of course: before these hills were raised, she had known this face, this man, her consort, from before the beginning of the world. . . . She did not hear her own ritual words, only the surge of force behind them: Go forth and conquer . . . run with the deer . . . swift and strong as the very tides of the spring . . . forever blessed be the feet that brought you here. . . . She was not conscious of speech, only of the power, of her own hands blessing, of the force that streamed out of her body, through her body as if the very strength of the sun poured through her and into the man before her. Now the power of the winter is broken and the new life of the spring shall go with you and bring you to victory . . . life of the Goddess, life of the world, blood of the earth our Mother, shed for her people. . . .
She raised her hands, casting the blessing on the forest, on the earth, feeling the surges of power rushing through her hands like visible light. The young man’s body was glowing like her own in the sunlight; around them none dared speak until, pulling her hands back with a rush, she felt the surge of power flung over them all, releasing the chant that rose around them. She could not hear the words, only the thrum of power within them:
Life surges in the spring, the deer run in the forest, and our life runs with them. The King Stag of the world shall bring them down, the King Stag, the Horned One blessed by the Mother shall triumph. . . .
She was drawn to the last notch of tension, a strung bow pregnant with the arrow of power that must be sped. She touched the Horned One, releasing the power, and as if it sped through them all, they were off, running like the wind down the hillside, racing as if the very spring tides bore them. Behind them, feeling the power leave her, Morgaine crumpled and lay silent on the earth, feeling its damp chill strike up through her body. But she was unaware, tranced in the Sight.
She lay as if lifeless, but a part of her went with them, raced with them, speeding down the hillside,
racing with the men of the tribe, flooding after the Horned One. Barking cries, as if they were hounds, sped after them, and a part of her knew that the women were crying out, speeding on the chase.
Higher in the sky the sun rose, the great Wheel of Life spinning in the heavens, fruitlessly speeding after her divine consort, the Dark Son. . . .
The life of the earth, the pounding tides of the spring, flooded and pounded in the hearts of the running men. Then, as the ebb followed the flow, from the sunlit hillside the darkness of forest closed over them and swallowed them, and from running they moved swiftly on noiseless feet, imitating the delicate step of the deer; they were the deer, following the antlers of their Horned One, wearing the cloaks which held the deer spellbound, the necklaces signifying life as endless chain, live and feed and bear and die and be eaten in turn to feed the children of the Mother.
. . . hold thy children, Mother, thy King Stag must die to feed the life of her Dark Son . . .
Darkness, the inner life of the forest closing around them; silence, the silence of the deer. . . . Morgaine, aware now of the forest as life and the deer as the heart of the forest, cast her power and her blessing through and over the forest. A part of her lay on the sunlit hillside, tranced, exhausted, letting the life of the sun flood through her, body and blood and inner being, and a part of her ran with deer and men until both were one . . . blending into one . . . the surges of life that were the quiet deer in their thicket, the little does, smooth and slender, the life racing in them as it raced in her body, the surges of life that were the men, slipping silent and intent through the shadows. . . .