Morgaine stared in horror, remembering Arthur's kingmaking. Even Uther had not so pledged himself to the folk of Avalon! And he had betrayed that pledge? She whispered, "And the Tribes did not desert him?"

Kevin said in great anger, "Some of them came near to it; some of the Old People from the Welsh hills did indeed go home when the cross was raised-King Uriens could not stop them. As for the rest-well, we knew that day that the Saxons had us between the hammer and the anvil. We might follow Arthur and his knights into battle, or live thereafter under Saxon rule, for this was the great battle that had been prophesied. And he bore the sacred sword Excalibur from the Holy Regalia. Like enough the Goddess herself knew that she would be the worse if the land was ruled by the Saxons. So he fought, and the Goddess gave him victory." Kevin offered the wine flask to Morgaine, and when she shook her head, he drained it.

"Viviane would have come from Avalon to charge him with oath-breaking," he said, "but she is reluctant to do so before all his people. And so I am for Camelot, to remind him of his vow. If he heeds not that, then Viviane has sworn she will come to Camelot herself, on the day when all people present their petitions, and Arthur has sworn he himself will hear and judge them, at Pentecost. And then, she said, she would stand before him as a common petitioner, and claim his oath, and remind him of what must befall him who forswears his word."

Morgaine said, "The Goddess grant that the Lady of the Lake need never humble herself so far."

"I too would speak to him with wrath, not soft words, but it is not mine to choose," said Kevin. He held out his hand. "Will you help me to rise? I think my horse will bear two, and if not, when we come to a town we must get you a horse. I should be gallant even as the great Lancelet, and let you ride mine, but"-he pointed to his crippled body.

Morgaine pulled him to his feet. "I am strong, I can walk. If we must barter anything in the town, we should find shoes for me and a knife. I have not a single coin with me, but I will repay you when I can."

Kevin shrugged. "You are my vowed sister in Avalon-what I have is yours, so runs the law. There is no talk of payment between us."

Morgaine felt herself coloring in shame, that Kevin should so remind her of what she had sworn. I have been out of the world, in truth. "Let me help you to mount your horse. Will she stand, so?"

He smiled. "If she would not, she would be little use to me in travelling such roads as I go alone! Let us go-I would like to reach Camelot tomorrow."

In a town nestled in the hills, they found a cobbler to mend Morgaine's broken shoes, and an old bronze dagger; the man who had these things for sale said there was no dearth of them in this country since the great battle. Kevin bought her a decent cloak too, saying the ragged one she had found in the farmhouse would scarce make a saddle blanket. But the stop had delayed them, and once on the road again, it began to snow heavily, and the dark closed in early.

"We should have stayed in that town," said Kevin. "I could have bartered harp music for supper and bed for us both. Alone, I could sleep under a hedge or in the shelter of a wall, wrapped in my cloak. But not a lady of Avalon."

"What makes you think I have never slept so?" Morgaine asked.

He laughed. "You look to me, Morgaine, as if you had slept so all too often of late! But no matter how swiftly we press the horse, we cannot come to Camelot this night-we must look somewhere for shelter."

After a time, through the fast-falling snow, they could make out the dark shape of an abandoned building. Not even Morgaine could enter it walking upright; likely it had been a cattle byre, but the beasts had been gone so long that there was not even a smell, and the thatch-and-daub roof was mostly in place. They tethered the horse and crawled in, Kevin directing her with a gesture to lay the old ragged cloak on the filthy floor, and they each wrapped themselves in their cloaks and lay down side by side. But it was so cold that at last, hearing Morgaine's teeth chattering, Kevin said they must spread the two cloaks over them both and lie close together for warmth. "If it will not sicken you to be so close to this misshapen body of mine," he said, and she could hear the pain and anger in his voice.

"Of what is misshapen about you, Kevin Harper, I know only that with your broken hands you make more music than I, or even Taliesin, with hands that are whole," Morgaine said, and moved gratefully into his warmth. And at last she felt she could sleep, her head resting in the curve of his shoulder.

She had been walking all day and was weary; she slept heavily, but wakened when the light began to steal through the cracks in the broken wall. She felt cramped from the hard floor, and as she looked around the mud-daubed walls she felt a surge of horror. She, Morgaine, priestess of Avalon, Duchess of Cornwall, lying here in a beast shelter, cast out from Avalon ... would she ever return? And she had come from worse places, from the Castle Chariot in the fairy country, out of all knowledge of Christendom and heathendom alike, out of the very doors of this world ....he who had been so delicately reared by Igraine, she who was sister to the High King, schooled by the Lady of the Lake, accepted by the Goddess ... now had she cast it all away. But, no, she had not cast it away, it had been taken from her when Viviane sent her to the kingmaking and she had come away with child by her own brother.

Igraine is dead, my mother is dead, and I cannot come again to Avalon, never in this world ... and then Morgaine was weeping hopelessly, muffling her sobs in the coarse stuff of the cloak.

Kevin's voice was soft and husky in the half-light.

"Do you weep for your mother, Morgaine?"

"For my mother-and for Viviane-and perhaps most of all for myself." Morgaine was never certain whether she had spoken the words aloud. Kevin's arm circled her, and she let her head fall against his chest and wept and wept until she could weep no more.

He said, after a long time, still stroking her hair, "You spoke truth, Morgaine-you do not shrink from me."

"How could I," she said, nestling closer, "when you have been so kind?"

"All women think not so," he said. "Even when I came to the Beltane fires, I heard-for some folk think that because my legs and hands are lame, I am also deaf and dumb-I heard more than one, even of the maidens of the Goddess, whisper to their priestess that she should place them afar from me, so that there would be no chance I would look upon them when the time came to go apart from the fires ... ."

Morgaine sat straight up in dismay. "Were I that priestess, I would drive such a woman forth from the fires, because she dared to question the form in which the God might come to her ... what did you do, Kevin?"

He shrugged. "Rather than interrupt the ritual or put any woman to such a choice, I went away so quietly that none knew. Even the God could never change what they see or think of me. Even before I was forbidden by the Druid vows to couple with women who barter their bodies for gold, I could pay no woman to accept me. Perhaps I should seek to be a priest among the Christians, who, I have heard, teach their priests the secret of living without women. Or perhaps I should wish that when the raiders broke my hands and body they had gelded me too, so that I should not care one way or the other. I am sorry-I should not speak of it. But I wonder if you consented to lie at my side because you thought this crooked body of mine was not a man's, and did not think of me so ... "

Morgaine listened to him, appalled at the agony of bitterness in his words, the wounds dealt to his manhood. She knew the awareness that lived in his hands, the quick emotion of the musician. Even before the Goddess, could women look only at a broken body? She remembered how she had flung herself into Lancelet's arms, and the wound to her pride which, she knew, would never cease to bleed.