"I doubt it not, you are right," he said quietly. "Well, then, we will leave that to the young people. Come to bed, Morgaine." But when she lay down beside him, he lay quiet, and after a moment, he put a shy arm across her shoulders. Now Morgaine was regretting her harsh words ... she felt cold and alone, she lay biting her lip so that she would not cry, but when Uriens spoke to her, she pretended she was asleep.

MIDSUMMER DAWNED brilliant and beautiful; Morgaine, waking early, realized that, however much she might say to herself that the sun tides ran no longer in her blood, there was something within her that ran heavy with the summer. As she dressed, she looked dispassionately at the sleeping form of her husband.

She had been a fool. Why should she have accepted compliantly Arthur's word, fearing to embarrass him before his fellow kings? If he could not keep his throne without a woman's help it might be he did not deserve to hold it. He was a traitor to Avalon, an apostate; he had given her into the hands of another apostate. Yet she had meekly agreed to what they had planned for her.

Igraine let her life be used for their politics. And something in Morgaine, dead or sleeping since the day she fled forth from Avalon, bearing Gwydion within her womb, suddenly woke and stirred, moving sluggishly and slow like a sleeping dragon, a movement as secret and unseen as the first movements of a child in the womb; something that said, clear and quiet within her, If I would not let Viviane, whom I loved, use me this way, why should I bow my head meekly and let myself be used for Arthur's purposes? I am queen in North Wales, and I am duchess in Cornwall, where Gorlois's name still means something, and I am of the royal line of Avalon.

Uriens groaned, heaving himself stiffly over. "Ah, God, I ache in every muscle and there is a toothache in every toe of my foot-I rode too far yesterday. Morgaine, will you rub my back?"

She started to fling back furiously, You have a dozen body servants, and I am your wife, not your slave, then stopped herself; instead she smiled and said, "Yes, of course," and sent a pageboy for her vials of herbal oil. Let him think her still compliant to everything; healing was a part of a priestess's work. If it was the smallest part, still, it gave her access to his plans and his thoughts. She rubbed his back and kneaded salve into his sore feet, listening to the small details of the land dispute he had ridden out yesterday to settle. For Uriens, any woman could be queen, he wants only a smiling face and kind hands to cosset him. Well, he shall have them while it suits my purpose.

"And now it looks as if we would have a fine day for the blessing of the crops. We never have rain at Midsummer-day," Uriens said. "The Lady shines on her fields when they are consecrated to her-that is what they used to say when I was young and a pagan, that the Great Marriage could not be consummated in the rain." He chuckled. "Still, I remember once when I was very young, when the fields had been rained on for ten days, and the priestess and I might have been pigs wallowing in the mud!"

Against her will, Morgaine smiled; the picture he made in her mind was ludicrous. "Even in ritual, the Goddess will have her joke," she said, "and one of her names is the Great Sow, and we are all her piglets."

"Ah, Morgaine, those were good times," he said, then his face tightened. "Of course, that was long ago-now what the folk want in their kings is dignity. Those days are gone, and forever."

Are they? I wonder. But Morgaine said nothing. It occurred to her that Uriens, when he was younger, might have been a king strong enough to resist the tide of Christianity washing over the land. If Viviane had tried harder to put a king on the throne who was not bound hard and fast to the rule of the priests ... but of course, who could have foreseen that Gwenhwyfar would be pious beyond all reason? And why had the Merlin done nothing?

If the Merlin of Britain and the wise folk at Avalon had done nothing to stem this tide that was drowning the land and washing away all the old ways and the old Gods, why should she blame Uriens, who was after all only an old man, and wanted peace? There was no reason to make him an enemy. If he was content, it would not matter to him what she did ... she did not know yet what she meant to do. But she knew that her days of silent compliance were over.

She said, "I wish I had known you then," and let him kiss her on the forehead.

If I had been married to him when first I became marriageable, North Wales might never have become a Christian land. But it is not too late. There are those who have not forgotten that the king still wears, however faded, the serpents of Avalon about his arms. And he has married one who was a High Priestess of the Lady.

I could have done her work better here than all those years at Arthur's court, in Gwenhwyfar's shadow. It occurred to Morgaine that Gwenhwyfar would have been content with a husband like Uriens, whom she could keep within her own sphere, rather than one like Arthur, living an entire life in which she had no part.

And there had been a time, too, when Morgaine had had influence with Arthur-the influence of the woman he had first taken in coming to manhood, who wore, for him, the face of the Goddess. Yet, in her folly and pride, she had let him fall into the hands of Gwenhwyfar and the priests. Now, when it was too late, she began to understand what Viviane had intended.

Between us, we could have ruled this land; they would have called Gwenhwyfar the High Queen, but she would have had Arthur only in body; he would have been mine in heart and soul and mind. Ah, what a fool I was .....e and I could have ruled-for Avalon! Now Arthur is the priests' creature. And he bears, still, the great sword of the Druid Regalia, and the Merlin of Britain does nothing to hinder him.

I must take up the work that Viviane let fall ... .

Ah, Goddess, I have forgotten so much ... .

And then she stopped, shaking at her own daring. Uriens had reached a pause in his tale; she had ceased rubbing his feet, and he looked down questioning at her, and she said hastily, "I am quite sure you did the right thing, my dear husband," and spread some more of the sweet-smelling salve on her hands. She had not the slightest idea what she had agreed to, but Uriens smiled and went on with his tale, and Morgaine slid off into her own thoughts again.

I am a priestess still. Strange how I am suddenly sure of that again, after all these years, when even the dreams of Avalon are gone.

She pondered what Accolon had told them. Elaine had borne a daughter. She herself could not give Avalon a daughter, but as Viviane had done, she would bring her a fosterling. She helped Uriens to dress, went down with him, and with her own hands fetched him fresh new-baked bread from the kitchen and some of the foaming new beer. She served him, spreading honey on his bread. Let him think her the most doting of his subjects, let him think her only his sweet compliant wife. It meant nothing to her, but one day it might mean much to have his trust, so that she could do what she chose.

"Even with the summer my old bones ache-I think, Morgaine, that I will ride south to Aquae Sulis and take the waters there. There is an ancient shrine to Sul-when the Romans were here they built a huge bathhouse, and some of it is still there, unfallen. The great pools are choked, and when the Saxons came they carried off much of the fine work, and threw down the statue of the Goddess, but the spring is still there, undamaged-boiling up in clouds of steam, day after day and year after year, from the forges at the center of the earth. It is awesome to behold! And there are hot pools where a man can soak all the weariness from his bones. I have not been there for two or three years, but I shall go again, now the countryside is quiet."