Quite deliberately she bent down and kissed him on the lips, pulled his hand to her and kissed the scars there. "Never doubt it, to me you are a man, and the Goddess has prompted me to do this." She lay down again, turning toward him.

He looked sharply at her in the growing light. For a moment she flinched at what she saw in his face-did he think she pitied him? No: she shared the awareness of his suffering, which was another thing. She looked him directly in the eyes ... yes, if his face had not been so drawn with bitterness, so twisted with suffering, he might have been handsome; his features were good, his eyes very dark and gentle. Fate had broken his body, but not his spirit-no coward could have endured the ordeals of the Druids.

Under the mantle of the Goddess, as every woman is my sister and my daughter and my mother, so must every man be to me as father and lover and son ... . My father was dead before I could remember him, and I have not seen my son since he was weaned ... but to this man I will give what the Goddess prompts me ... . Morgaine kissed one of the scarred hands again and laid it inside her gown, against her breast.

He was inexperienced-which seemed to her strange for a man of his age. But how, Morgaine wondered, could he possibly have been anything else? And then she thought, This is the first time, really, that I have done this of my free will, and had the gift taken simply, as it was offered. It healed something in her. Strange, that it could have been so with a man she scarcely knew, and for whom she felt only kindness. Even in his inexperience he was generous and gentle with her, and she felt, welling up within her, a great and unspeakable tenderness.

"It is strange," he said at last, in a quiet, musing voice. "I had known you were wise and a priestess, but somehow I had never thought you were beautiful."

She laughed harshly. "Beautiful? Me?" But she was grateful that, to him, at that moment, she seemed so.

"Morgaine, tell me-where have you been? I would not ask, but that whatever it is, it lies heavy on your heart."

"I do not know," she blurted out. She had never thought she would tell him. "Out of the world, perhaps-I was trying to reach Avalon-and I could not come there, the way is barred to me, I think. Twice now, I have been-elsewhere. Another country, a country of dreams and enchantments-a country where time stands still and is not, and there is nothing but music-" And she fell silent; would the harper think her a madwoman?

He traced a finger along the corner of her eye. It was cold, and they had thrown the covers off them; he tucked the cloaks gently round her again. "Once I too was there, and heard their music ... " he said, in a distant brooding voice, "and in that place I was not near so crippled, and their women did not mock me ... . Some day, perhaps, when I have lost my fear of madness, I shall go to them once again ... they showed me the hidden ways and said I might come because of my music ... " and again, his soft voice dropped into a long silence.

She shivered and looked away from him. "We had better get up. If our poor horse has not quite frozen in the night, we will arrive at Camelot this day."

"And if we arrive together," Kevin said quietly, "they may believe that you have come with me from Avalon. It is none of their affair where you have dwelt-you are a priestess, and your conscience is not in the keeping of any man alive, not even of their bishops, or of Taliesin himself."

Morgaine wished she had a decent dress to put on; she would arrive at Arthur's court in the garb of a beggar woman. Well, it could not be helped. Kevin watched as she arranged her hair, then held out his hand, and she helped him to his feet, matter-of-factly; but she saw that the bitter look was in his eyes again. He was guarded behind a hundred fences of reserve and anger. Yet just as they were crawling out the door he touched her hand. "I have not thanked you, Morgaine-"

She smiled. "Oh-if there are thanks, they are to be spoken both ways, my friend-or could you not tell that?"

For a moment the scarred fingers tightened on hers... and then it was like a blaze of fire, she saw his ravaged face circled with a ring of fire, contorted with shrieking, and all about and all around him fire ... fire ... she stiffened and snatched her hand away, staring at him in horror.

"Morgaine!" he cried. "What is it?"

"Nothing, nothing-a cramp in my foot-" she lied, and avoided his hand when he would have put it out to steady her. Death! Death by burning! What did it mean? Not even the worst of traitors died that death ... or had she seen only what had befallen him when he was lamed as a boy? Brief as the moment of Sight had been, it left her shaken, as if she herself had spoken the word that would deliver him to his death.

"Come," she said, almost brusquely. "Let us ride."

15

Gwenhwyfar had never wished to meddle with the Sight; did it not say in Holy Writ that no man knew what a day might bring forth? Yet she had hardly thought of Morgaine in the last year, not since they had moved the court to Camelot, but this very morning she had wakened remembering a dream she had had of Morgaine-a dream in which Morgaine had taken her hand, leading her to the Beltane fires and bidding her lie with Lancelet there. When she was well awake she could laugh at the madness of that dream. Surely dreams were sent from the Devil, for in all of hers that gave her such evil counsel that no Christian wife could heed, oftenest it was Morgaine who spoke it.

Well, she is gone from this court, I need never think of her again ... no, I do not wish her ill, I wish she might repent of her sins, and find peace in a nunnery ... but one very far from here. Now that Arthur had given over his pagan ways, Gwenhwyfar felt that she would even be happy if it were not for these dreams in which Morgaine led her into shameful things. And now the dream haunted her while she sat working at the altar cloth she was making for the church, haunted her so deeply that it seemed wicked to sit working a cross in gold thread while she thought of Lancelet. She put down her thread and whispered a prayer, but her thoughts went on, relentless. Arthur, when she begged him at Christmas, had promised her that he would put down the Beltane fires in the countryside; she thought he would have done it before this, except that the Merlin had forbidden him. It would be hard for any, Gwenhwyfar thought, not to love the old man-he was so gentle and good; if only he were Christian, he would be better than any priest. But Taliesin had said it was not fair to the countryfolk, either, to take from them a simple awareness of a Goddess who cared for their fields and their crops and the fertility of their beasts and their own wombs. Surely there was little that such folk could do in the way of sin, they had all they could do to toil in the fields and till their crops for enough bread to keep them out of death's reach; it was not to be looked for that the Devil should trouble himself with such people, if there was a Devil at all. But Gwenhwyfar said, "I suppose you think they do no sin, when they go to the Beltane fires and there do lewd and heathen rites and lie with other than their husbands-"

"God knows they have little enough joy in their lives," Taliesin responded tranquilly. "I cannot think it very wrong that four times in a whole year, when the seasons turn, they should make merry and do what pleasures them. I could not find much reason to love a God who took thought about such things and would call them wicked. Do you call them wicked, my queen?"

And she did; any Christian woman must think so, to go into the fields and dance naked and lie there with the first man sent to her ... immodest and shameful and wicked. Taliesin shook his head, sighing.