Rather contrary to her usual custom, however, Viviane did not invite her kinswoman to sit, but kept her standing there, regarding her evenly for a moment.
Morgaine was not tall; she would never be that, and in these years in Avalon she had grown as tall as she would ever be, a scant inch taller than the Lady. Her dark hair was plaited down the back of her neck and wrapped with a deerskin thong; she wore the dark-dyed blue dress and deerskin overtunic of any priestess, and the blue crescent shone darkly between her brows. Nevertheless, smooth and anonymous as she was among them, there was a glint in her eyes which answered to Viviane's cool stare, and Viviane knew from experience that, small and delicately made as she was, when she wished she could throw & glamour over herself that made her appear not only tall but majestic. Already she appeared ageless, and she would, Viviane knew, look much the same even when white appeared in her dark hair.
She thought, with a flicker of relief, No, she is not beautiful, then wondered why it should matter to her. No doubt Morgaine, like all young women, even a priestess vowed lifelong to the service of the Goddess, would prefer to be beautiful, and was intensely unhappy because she was not. She thought, with a slight curl of her lip, When you are my age, my girl, it will not matter whether or no you are beautiful, for everyone you know will believe that you are a great beauty whenever you wish them to believe it; and when you do not, you can sit back and pretend to be a simple old woman long past such thoughts. She had fought her own battle more than twenty years ago, when she saw Igraine growing to womanhood with the tawny and russet beauty for which Viviane, still young, would gladly have bartered her soul and all her power. Sometimes, in moments of self-doubt, she wondered if she had thrust Igraine into marriage with Gorlois so that she need not be endlessly taunted with the younger woman's loveliness, mocking her own dark severity. But I brought her to the love of the man destined for her before the ring stones of Salisbury plain were piled one upon another, she thought.
She realized that Morgaine was still standing quietly, awaiting her word, and smiled.
"Truly I grow old," she said. "I was lost, for a moment, in memories. You are not the child who came here many years ago; but there are times when I forget it, my Morgaine."
Morgaine smiled and the smile transformed her face, which in repose was rather sullen. Like Morgause, Viviane thought, though otherwise they are nothing alike. It is Taliesin's blood.
Morgaine said, "I think you forget nothing, kinswoman."
"Perhaps not. Have you broken your fast, child?"
"No. But I am not hungry."
"Very well. I want you to go in the barge."
Morgaine, who had grown used to silence, answered only with a gesture of respect and assent.
It was not, of course, a request unusual in any way-the barge from Avalon must always* be guided by a priestess who knew the secret way through the mists.
"It is a family mission," Viviane said, "for it is my son who is approaching the island, and I thought it well to send a kinswoman to welcome him here."
Morgaine smiled. "Balan?" she said. "Will his foster-brother Balin not fear for his soul if he goes beyond the sound of church bells?"
A glint of humor lighted Viviane's eyes, and she said, "Both of them are proud men and dedicated warriors, and they live blameless lives, even by the standards of the Druids, harming none and oppressing none, and ever seeking to right a wrong when they find it. I doubt not that the Saxons find them four times as fearsome when they fight side by side. In fact, they are afraid of nothing, except the evil magic of that wicked sorceress who is mother to one of them ... " and she giggled like a young woman, and Morgaine giggled with her.
Then, sobering, she said, "Well, I do not regret sending Balan to fosterage in the outer world. He had no call to become a Druid, and he would have made a very bad one, and if he is lost to the Goddess, no doubt she will watch over him in her own way, even if he prays to her with beads and calls upon her as Mary the Virgin. No, Balan is away on the coast, fighting against the Saxons at Uther's side, and I am content to have it so. It is of my younger son I spoke."
"I thought Galahad still in Brittany."
"So did I, but last night with the Sight I saw him ... he is here. When last I saw him, he was but twelve years old. He is grown considerably, I should say; he must now be sixteen or more, and ready for his arms, but I do not know for certain that he is to bear arms at all."
Morgaine smiled, and Viviane remembered that when Morgaine had first come here, a lonely child, she had sometimes been allowed to spend her free time with the only other child fostered here, Galahad.
"Ban of Benwick must be old now," Morgaine remarked.
"Old, yes; and he has many sons, so that my son, among them, is just one more of the king's unregarded bastards. But his half-brothers fear him and would rather he went elsewhere, and a child of the Great Marriage cannot be treated like any other bastard." Viviane answered the unspoken question. "His father would give him land and estates in Brittany, but I saw to it before he was six years old that Galahad's heart would always be here, at the Lake." She saw the glint in Morgaine's eyes and answered, again, the unspoken.
"Cruel, to make him ever discontent? Perhaps. It was not I that was cruel, but the Goddess. His destiny lies in Avalon, and I have seen him with the Sight, kneeling before the Holy Chalice ... ."
Again, with an ironic inflection, Morgaine made the little gesture of assent with which a priestess under vows of silence would have acquiesced to a command.
Suddenly Viviane was angry with herself. I sit here justifying what I have done with my life, and the lives of my sons, to a chit of a girl! I owe her no explanations! She said, and her voice was chilled with sudden distance, "Go with the barge, Morgaine, and bring him to me."
A third time the silent gesture of assent and Morgaine turned to go.
"One moment," Viviane said. "You will break your fast here with us when you bring him back to me; he is your cousin and kinsman too."
When Morgaine smiled again, Viviane realized that she had been trying to make the girl smile, and was surprised at herself.
MORGAINE WENT down along the path toward the edge of the Lake. Her heart was still beating faster than usual; often, these days, when she spoke with the Lady, anger was mixed with affection, to neither of which she was allowed to give voice, and this did strange things to her mind. She wondered at herself, because she had been taught to control her emotions as she controlled her words and even her thoughts.
Galahad she remembered from her first years in Avalon-a scrawny, dark, intense boy. She had not liked him much, but because her heart hungered for her own small brother, she had let the lonely boy run about after her. Then he had been sent away to fosterage and she had seen him only once since, when he was twelve years old, all eyes and teeth and bones thrusting through outgrown clothes. He had grown into an intense disdain of anything female, and she had been occupied with the most difficult part of her training, so she had paid him little heed.
The small, dark men who poled the barge bent before her in silent respect to the Goddess whose form the higher priestesses were supposed to wear, and she signed to them without speaking and took her place in the prow.
Swiftly and silently the draped barge glided out into the mist. Morgaine felt the dampness coalescing on her brow and clinging to her hair; she was hungry, and chilled to the bone, but she had been taught to ignore that too. When they came out of the mist, the sun had risen on the far shore, and she could see a horse and rider waiting there. The barge continued its slow strokes forward, but Morgaine, in a rare moment of self-forgetfulness, stood unguarded, looking at the horseman there.