And now it was not the harp alone but the voices of the dead and the living crying out to me: "Return again, return, life itself is calling you with all its pleasure and pain ..." and then a new note came into the voice of the harp.

"It is I who calls you, Morgaine of Avalon ... priestess of the Mother ..."

And I raised my head, seeing not Kevin's twisted body and sorrowing features, but where he had stood was Someone, tall and shining, a sunlit glory about his face and in his hands the shining Harp and Bow. I caught my breath before the God, as the voice sang on ... "Return to life, return again to me ... you who have sworn ... life awaits you beyond this darkness of death. ..."

I struggled to turn away. "It is not the God who can command me, but the Goddess. ..."

"But," said the familiar voice in the silence of that eternity, "you are the Goddess and it is I who call you ..." and for a moment, as if in the calm waters of the mirror of Avalon, I saw myself robed and crowned with the high crown of the Lady of Life ... .

"But I am old, old, I belong now to death, not to life ... "I whispered, and in the silence, words heard again and again in ritual suddenly came to life on the lips of the God.

" ... she will be old and young as it shall please her ..." and before my eyes my own mirrored face was again young and fair as the maiden who had sent forth the young stag to challenge the running deer ... yes, and I had been old when Accolon came to me, yet I had sent him forth to the challenge heavy with his child ... and even old and barren, yet life pulsed within me as within the eternal life of the earth and the Lady ... and the God stood before me, the eternal One who summoned me forth to life ... and I took one step and then another, and then I was climbing, climbing from the darkness, following the distant notes of the harp that sang to me of the green hills of Avalon, and the waters of life ... and then I found I was on my feet, reaching for Kevin ... and he put the harp gently aside and caught me, half-fainting, in his arms. And for a moment the shining hands of the God burned me ... and then it was only Kevin's sweet, musical, half-mocking voice that said, "I cannot hold you, Morgaine, as well you know," and he placed me gently into my chair. "When did you eat last, Morgaine?"

"I cannot remember," I confessed, and suddenly I was aware of my deathly weakness; he called the serving-woman and said, speaking in the gently authoritative voice of a Druid and a healer, "Bring your mistress some bread and some warmed milk with honey."

I raised a hand to protest, and the woman looked indignant, and now I remembered that twice she had tried to coax me to eat with these very things. But she went to do his bidding, and when she returned, Kevin took the bread and soaked it in the milk and fed it to me, gently, a few mouthfuls at a time.

"No more," he said. "You have been fasting too long. But before you sleep, you must drink a little more milk with an egg beaten into it... I will show them what to do. The day after tomorrow, perhaps, you will be strong enough to ride."

And suddenly I began to cry. I wept, at last, for Accolon lying dead on his pall, and for Arthur who hated me now, and for Elaine who had been my friend ... and for Viviane, lying dead beneath a Christian tomb, and for Igraine, and for myself, for myself who had lived through all these things ... and he said again, "Poor Morgaine, poor girl," and held me against his bony breast, and I cried and cried until at last I was quiet, and he called my women to carry me to my bed.

And for the first time in many days, I slept. And two days later, I rode to Avalon.

I remember little of that northward journey, sick in body and mind. I did not even wonder that Kevin left me before I came to the Lake. I came to those shores at sunset, when the waters of the Lake seemed to run crimson and the sky was all afire; and out of the flame-colored water and sky appeared the barge, painted and draped all in black, oars muffled to the silence of a dream. And for a moment it seemed to me that it was the Sacred Boat on that shoreless sea of which I may not speak, and that the dark figure at the prow was She, and that somehow I bridged the gap between earth and sky ... but I do not know whether that was real or a dream. And then the mists fell over us, and I felt within my very soul that shifting which told me I was once again within my own place.

Niniane welcomed me at the shore, taking me in her arms, not as the stranger I had seen but twice, but as a daughter greets a mother she has not seen for many years; then she took me away to the house where once Viviane had dwelt. She did not, this time, send young priestesses to tend me, but cared for me herself, putting me to bed in the inner room of the house, bringing me water from the Sacred Well; and when I tasted it, I knew that although the healing would be long, I was not yet beyond healing.

I had known enough of power. I was content to lay down the burdens of the world; it was time to leave that to others, and to let my daughters tend me. Slowly, slowly, in the silence of Avalon, I recovered my strength. There at last I could mourn for Accolon-not for the ruin of my hopes and plans ... I could see now what madness they had been; I was priestess of Avalon, not Queen. But I could mourn the brief and bitter summer of our love; I could grieve, too, for the child who had not lived long enough to be born, and suffer once again that it had been my own hand that had sent him into the shades.

It was a long season of mourning, and there were times when I wondered if I should mourn all my life and never again be free of it; but at last I could remember without weeping, and recall the days of love without unending sorrow welling up like tears from the very depths of my being. There is no sorrow like the memory of love and the knowledge that it is gone forever; even in dreams, I never saw again his face, and though I longed for it, I came at last to see that it was just as well, lest I live all the rest of my life in dreams ... but at last there came a day when I could look back and know that the time for mourning was ended; my lover and my child were on the other shore, and even if I should somehow meet them beyond the gates of death, none of us would ever know ... but I lived, and I was in Avalon, and it was my task now to be Lady there.

I do not know how many years I dwelt in Avalon before the end. I remember only that I floated in a vast and nameless peace, beyond joy and sorrow, knowing only serenity and the little tasks of every day. Niniane stood ever at my side; and I came, too, to know Nimue, who had grown to a tall, silent, fair-haired maiden, as fair as Elaine when first I knew her. She became to me the daughter I had never known, and day after day she came to me, and I taught her all those things I had learned from Viviane in my own early years in Avalon.

In those last days, too, there were some who had seen the tree of the Holy Thorn in its first flowering for the followers of Christ, and worshipped their Christian God in peace, seeking not to drive out the beauty of the world, but loving it as God made it. In those days they came in numbers to Avalon to escape the harsh and shrivelling winds of persecution and bigotry. Patricius had set up new forms of worship, a view of the world wherein there was no room for the real beauty and mystery of the things of nature. From these Christians who came to us to escape the bigotry of their own kind I learned something, at last, of the Nazarene, the carpenter's son who had attained Godhead in his own life and preached a rule of tolerance; and so I came to see that my quarrel was never with the Christ, but with his foolish and narrow priests who mistook their own narrowness for his.