Balin bent his head. His nose had been broken by Lancelet's blow; his mouth was streaming blood, and he spoke thickly through a broken tooth. "I hear you, my lord King. I will go." He sat with his head bowed.

Arthur gestured to the servants. "I beg you, bring someone to remove her poor body-"

Morgaine broke away from the hands that held her and knelt beside Viviane. "My lord, I beg you, allow me to ready her for burial-" and struggled to hold back the tears she dared not shed. This was not Viviane, this broken dead thing, the hand like a shrunken claw still clutching the sickle dagger of Avalon. She took up the dagger, kissed it, and slid it into her own belt. This, and only this, would she keep.

Great merciful Mother, I knew we could never go together to Avalon ... .

She would not weep. She felt Lancelet close beside her. He muttered, "God's mercy Balan is not here-to lose mother and foster-brother in one moment of madness-but if Balan had been here it might not have happened! Is there any God or any mercy?"

Her heart ached for Lancelet's anguish. He had feared and hated his mother, but he had worshipped her, too, as the very face of the Goddess. A part of her wanted to pull Lancelet into her arms, comfort him, let him weep; yet there was rage too. He had defied his mother, how dared he grieve for her now?

Taliesin was kneeling beside them, and he said, in his broken old voice, "Let me help you, children. It is my right-" and they moved aside as he bowed his head to murmur an ancient prayer of passage.

Arthur rose in his place. "There will be no more feasting this day. We have had too much tragedy for a feast. Those of you who are hungry, finish your meal and go quietly." He came slowly down to where the body lay. His hand rested gently on Morgaine's shoulder; she felt it there, through her numb misery. She could hear the other guests quietly leaving the hall, one after another, and through the rustle she heard, softly, the sound of a harp; only one pair of hands in Britain played such a harp. And at last she melted and tears streamed from her eyes as Kevin's harp played the dirge for the Lady, and to that sound, Viviane, priestess of Avalon, was slowly borne from the great hall of Camelot. Morgaine, walking beside the bier, looked back only once at the great hall and the Round Table, and the solitary, bowed figure of Arthur, standing alone beside the harper. And through all her grief and despair, she thought, Viviane never gave to Arthur the message of Avalon. This is the hall of a Christian king, and now there is no one who will say otherwise. How Gwenhwyfar would rejoice if she knew.

His hands were outstretched; she did not know, perhaps he was praying. She saw the serpents tattooed about his wrists and thought of the young stag and the new-made king who had come to her with the blood of the King Stag on his hands and face, and for a moment it seemed to her that she could hear the mocking voice of the fairy queen. And then there was no sound but the anguished lamenting of Kevin's harp and Lancelet weeping at her side as they bore Viviane forth to rest.

MORGAINE SPEAKS ...

I followed the body of Viviane from the great hall of the Round Table, weeping for only the second time that I could remember.

And yet later that night I quarrelled with Kevin.

Working with the Queen's women, I prepared Viviane 3 body for burial. Gwenhwyfar sent her women, and she sent linen and spices and a velvet pall, but she did not come herself. That was just as well. A priestess of Avalon should be laid to rest by attendant priestesses. I longed for my sisters from the House of Maidens; but at least no Christian hands should touch her. When I was done, Kevin came to watch by the body.

"I have sent Taliesin to rest. I have that authority now, as the Merlin of Britain; he is very old and very feeble-it is a miracle that his heart did not fail this day. I fear he will not long outlive her. Balin is quiet now," he added. "I think perhaps he knows what he did-but it is sure that it was done in a fit of madness. He is ready to ride with her body to Glastonbury, and serve such penance as the Archbishop shall decree."

I stared at him in outrage. "And you will have it so? That she shall fall into the hands of the church? I care not what happens to that murderer," I said, "but Viviane must be taken to Avalon." I swallowed hard so that I would not weep again. We should have ridden together to Avalon ... .

"Arthur has decreed," said Kevin quietly, "that she shall be buried before the church at Glastonbury, where all can see."

I shook my head, unbelieving. Were all men mad this day? "Viviane must lie in Avalon," I said, "where all the priestesses of the Mother have been buried since time began. And she was Lady of the Lake!"

"She was also Arthur's friend and benefactor," said Kevin, "and he will have it that her tomb shall be made a place of pilgrimage." He put out his hand that I should not speak. "No, hear me, Morgaine-there is reason in what he says. Never has there been so grave a crime in Arthur's reign. He cannot hide away her burial place out of sight and out of mind. She must be buried where all men may know of the King's justice, and the justice of the church."

"And you will allow this!"

"Morgaine, my dearest," he said gently, "it is not for me to allow or to refuse. Arthur is the High King, and it is his will that is done in this realm."

"And Taliesin holds his peace? Or is this why you have sent him to his rest, so that he might be out of the way while you do this blasphemy with the King's connivance? Will you have Viviane buried with Christian burial and Christian rites, she who was Lady of the Lake-buried by these folk who imprison their God within stone walls? Viviane chose me after her to be Lady of the Lake, and I forbid it, I forbid it, do you hear me?"

Kevin said quietly, "Morgaine. No, listen to me, my dear. Viviane died without naming her successor-"

"You were there that day she said she had chosen me-"

"But you were not in Avalon when she died, and you have renounced that place," Kevin said, and his words fell on my head like cold rain, so that I shivered. He stared at the bier and Viviane's body which lay covered there; nothing I could do could make that face fit to be seen in death. "Viviane died with no successor named to her place, and so it falls to me, as the Merlin of Britain, to declare what will be done. And if this is Arthur's will, only the Lady of the Lake-and, forgive me, my dear, that I say it, but there is now no Lady in Avalon-could speak out against what I say. I can see that the King has reason for what he wishes. Viviane spent all her life to bring about a peaceful rule of law in this land. ..."

"She came to reprove Arthur that he had forsaken Avalon!" I cried in despair. "She died with her mission unfinished, and now you would have it that she should lie in Christian ground within the sound of church bells, so that they should triumph over her in death as in life?"

"Morgaine, Morgaine, my poor girl!" Kevin held out his hands to me, the misshapen hands which had so often caressed me. "I loved her too, believe me! But she is dead. She was a great woman, she spent her life for this land-do you think it matters to her where her empty shell shall lie? She has gone to whatever awaits her beyond death, and, knowing her, I know that it can only be good that awaits her. Do you think she would grudge it, that her body should lie where it can best serve those purposes she spent her life to accomplish-that the King's justice should triumph over all the evil in this land?"

His rich, caressing, musical voice was so eloquent that I hesitated for a moment. Viviane was gone; it was only those same Christians who made much of consecrated or unconsecrated ground, as if all the earth which is the breast of the Mother was not holy. I wanted to fall into his arms and weep there for the only mother I had ever known, for the wreck of my own hopes that I might return to Avalon at her side, weep for all I had cast away and the breaking of my own life ... .