I gave up my maidenhood to the King Stag ... yet that was different. From childhood I had known what awaited me, and I had been taught and reared in the worship of that Goddess who brings man and woman together in love or in rut ... . Elaine was reared a Christian and taught to think of that very life force as the original sin for which mankind was doomed to death ... .

For a moment she thought she should seek out Elaine, try to prepare her, encourage her to think of this as the priestesses were taught to think of it: a great force of nature, clean and sinless, to be welcomed as a current of life, sweeping the participant into the torrent... but Elaine would think that even worse sin. Well, then, she must make of it what she would; perhaps her love for Lancelet would carry her through it undamaged.

Morgaine turned her thoughts back to simmering the herbs and the wine, and at the same time, somehow, it seemed she was riding on the hills ... neither was it a fair day for a ride; the sky was dark and clouded, a little wind blowing, the hills bleak and bare. Below the hills the long arm of the sea which was the lake looked grey and fathomless, like fresh-smithied metal; and the surface of the lake began to boil a little, or was it but the water in her brazier? Dark bubbles rose and spilled a foul stench, and then, slowly, rising from the lake, a long, narrow neck crowned with a horse's head and a horse's mane, a long sinuous body, writhing toward the shore ... rising, crawling, slithering its whole length onto the shore.

Lancelet's hounds were running about, darting down to the water, barking frenziedly. She heard him call out to them in exasperation; stop dead and look down toward the water, paralyzed, only half believing what he saw with his eyes, Then Pellinore blew his hunting horn to summon the others, and Lancelot put spurs to his horse, his spear braced on the saddle, and rode at a breakneck speed down the hill, charging. One of the hounds gave a pitiful scream; then silence, and Morgaine, from her strange distant watch, saw the curiously slimed trail where half the dog's broken body lay eaten away with the dark slime.

Pellinore was charging at it, and she heard Lancelot's shout to warn him back from riding directly at the great beast ... it was black and like a great worm, all but that mockery of a horse's head and mane. Lancelot rode at it, avoiding the weaving head, thrusting his long spear directly into the body. A wild howl shook the shore, a crazed banshee scream ... she saw the great head weaving wildly back and forth, back and forth ... Lancelot flung himself from his rearing, bucking horse, and ran on foot toward the monster. The head weaved down, and Morgaine flinched, as she saw the great mouth open. Then Lancelot's sword pierced the eye of the dragon, and there was a great gush of blood and some black foul stuff ... and it was all the bubbles rising from the wine ... .

Morgaine's heart jumped wildly. She lay back and sipped a little of the undiluted wine in the flask. Had it been an evil dream, or had she actually seen Lancelot kill the dragon in which she had never really believed? She rested there for some time, telling herself that she had dreamed, and then forced herself to rise, to add some sweet fennel to the mixture, for the strong sweetness would conceal the other herbs. And there should be strong salted beef for dinner, so that everyone should thirst and drink a great deal of the wine, especially Lancelot. Pellinore was a pious man-what would he think if all his castle folk went to rutting? No, she should make sure that only Lancelot drank the spiced mixture, and perhaps, in mercy, she should give some to Elaine too ... .

She poured the spiced wine into a flask and put it aside. Then she heard a cry, and Elaine rushed into her room.

"Oh, Morgaine, come at once, we need your work with simples- Father and Lancelot have slain the dragon, but they are both burned ... ."

"Burned? What nonsense is this? Do you believe truly that dragons fly and belch fire?"

"No, no," Elaine said impatiently, "but the creature spat some slime at them and it burns like fire-you must come and dress their wounds...."

Disbelieving, Morgaine glanced at the sky outside. The sun was hovering, a bare hand span above the western horizon; she had sat here most of the day. She went quickly, calling to the maids for bandage linen.

Pellinore had a great burn along one arm-yes, it looked very much like a burn; the fabric of his tunic was eaten away by it, and he roared with anguish as she poured healing salve on it. Lancelot's side was burned slightly, and on one leg the stuff had eaten through his boots, leaving the leather only a thin jellylike substance covering his leg. He said, "I should clean my sword well. If it can do that to the leather of a boot, think what it would have done to my leg ... " and shuddered.

"So much for all those who thought my dragon only a fantasy," said Pellinore, raising his head and sipping the wine his daughter gave him. "And thanks be to God that I had the wit to bathe my arm in the lake, or the slime would have eaten my arm as it dissolved my poor dog-did you see the corpse, Lancelet?"

"The dog? Yes," said Lancelet, "and hope never to see that kind of death again.... But you can confound them all when you hang the dragon's head over your gate-"

"I cannot," said Pellinore, crossing himself. "There was no proper bone to it at all, it was all soft like a grub or an earthworm ... and it has already withered away to slime. I tried to cut the head and the very air seemed to eat away at it. ... I do not think it was a proper beast at all, but something straight from hell!"

"Still it is dead," Elaine said, "and you have done what the King bade you, made an end once and for all of my father's dragon." She kissed her father, saying with tender apology, "Forgive me, sir, I thought, too, that your dragon was all fancy-"

"Would to God it had been," Pellinore said, crossing himself yet again. "I would rather be a mockery from here to Camelot than face any such thing again! I wish I thought there were no more such beasts ... Gawaine has told tales of what lives in the lochs yonder." He signaled to the potboy for more wine. "I think it would be well to get drunk this night, or I shall see that beast in nightmares for the next month!"

Would that be best? Morgaine wondered. No, if all about the castle were drunk, it would not fit her plans at all. She said, "You must listen to what I say, if I am to care for your wounds, sir Pellinore. You must drink no more, and you must let Elaine take you to bed with hot bricks at your feet. You have lost some blood, and you must have hot soup and possets, but no more wine."

He grumbled but he listened to her, and when Elaine had taken him away, with his body servants, Morgaine was left alone with Lancelet.

"So," she said, "how would you best celebrate your killing of your first dragon?"

He lifted his cup and said, "By praying that it will be my last. I truly thought my hour had come. I would rather face a whole horde of Saxons with no more than my axe!"

"The Goddess grant you have no more such encounters, indeed," Morgaine said, and filled his cup with the spiced wine. "I have made this for you, it is medicinal and will soothe your hurts. I must go and see that Elaine has Pellinore safely tucked away for the night-"

"But you will come back, kinswoman?" he said, holding her lightly by one wrist; she saw the wine beginning to burn in him. And more than the wine, she thought; an encounter with death sends a man ready for rutting ... .

"I will come back, I promise; now let me go," she said, and bitterness flooded her.

So, am I fallen so low that I would have him drugged, not knowing? Elaine will have him that way ... why is it better for her? But she wants him for husband, for better or worse. Not I. I am a priestess, and I know this thing that burns in me is not of the Goddess, but unholy ... am I so weak that I would have Gwenhwyfar's castoff garments and her castoff paramour also? And while her scorn cried no, the weakness through her whole body cried yes, so that she was sick with self-contempt as she went along the hall to the chamber of King Pellinore.