Upward and upward in the darkening twilight, with a few stars pale in the indigo dome above them. The ring stones were grey and shadowy, a single pallid flicker within them-not fire; some will-o'-the-wisp, witch fire, sorcery, gleaming out from within the magical circle.
By the last flicker of the setting moon, reflected for a moment in the shining Lake below, a silent maiden priestess moved toward them, only a little girl, robed in undyed wool, her shorn hair no more than a wisp of darkness. She offered Morgaine a cup and Morgaine accepted it and drank in silence, then handed the cup to Raven, who drained its last drops. Silver and gold gleamed in the dying light. Morgaine took, from unseen hands, the great cross-handled sword, gasping a little at the unexpected weight. Barefoot, cold but not aware of it, she traced out the circle under the ring stones. Behind her, Raven took the long spear, thrust it into the heart of the witch fire. Light sprang up on the bit of tow there and she carried it, after Morgaine, all around the circle, a dim line of pale witch fire springing up around the dimness. Returning to the center by the dimmest of pale lights, they saw the face of Viviane; ageless, timeless, floating in midair disembodied-the face of the Goddess, shining. Although Morgaine knew that the effect was produced by a luminous substance smeared on cheeks and brow against the darkness of the circle and the dark garments, it never failed to make her catch her breath.
Bodiless, shining hands laid something in Morgaine's hands, then in Raven's. Morgaine bit into the sharp wooden bitterness, forced herself, past sickness, to swallow. Silence descended. Eyes gleamed in the dark, but no faces could be seen. She felt as if she were standing among multitudes beyond multitudes thronging the top of the Tor, but she could see no single face among them. Even Viviane's bodiless face had vanished into the dark. She could feel the warmth of Raven's body near hers, though they nowhere touched one another. She tried to keep her mind still, in meditation, moving into the schooled silence, not sure why she had been brought here.
Time passed; stars brightened against the ever-darkening sky. Time, Morgaine thought, time runs differently in Avalon, or perhaps it does not exist. Many nights during the long years she had traced out the spiral paths up the Tor, probing the mysteries of time and space within the circle of the ring stones. Yet tonight seemed stranger, darker, somehow more weighted with mystery; never before had she been called out from the other priestesses to play the major part in ritual. She knew that what she had been given the magical feast, was an herb used to strengthen the sight; that did not diminish its power or its magic.
After a time, in the darkness, she began to see pictures in her mind, small colored pictures as if at a very great distance. She saw a herd of deer running. She saw again the great darkness that had descended upon the land when the sun went out and a cold wind blew, and she had been afraid that the world was ending; but the older priestesses had explained to her, as they gathered in the courtyard, that the Moon God was effacing the brightness of the Goddess, and she ran out with them joyously to join in the shrieks of the women to frighten him away. Later it had been explained to her how the sun and moon moved, and why, now and again, one of them crossed the face of the other; that it was in the way of nature, and the common people's beliefs about the face of the Gods were symbols which these people, at the current state of their evolution, needed to visualize the great truths. Some day all men and women would know the inner truths, but now they needed them not.
She watched in the inner Sight, as she had done in life, while again and again the cycles of the year swung around the great ring stones; she watched the birth and fecundity and at last the dying of the God; she saw the great processions winding up the spiral toward the oak grove before the ring stones had been set here ... time was transparent, it ceased to have meaning as the little painted people came and ripened and were cut down, and then the Tribes, and after them the Romans in their turn, and tall strangers from the coast of Gaul, and after them ... time ceased, and she only saw the movement of peoples and the overgrowth of the world, ice came and receded and came again, she saw the great temples of Atlantis now drowned forever between the covering oceans, saw new worlds rising and setting ... and silence and beyond the night the great stars wheeled and swung ... .
Behind her she heard an eerie wailing cry and her skin iced. Raven cried out, Raven whose voice she had never heard; Raven, who once, when they were serving together in the Temple, had caught a lamp about to overflow, and, scalded with the burning oil, had sat smothering her screams with her two hands while her burns were bandaged, that she might not break the vow which had given her voice to the Goddess. She would always bear the scars; once, looking at her, Morgaine had thought, The vow I made was a little thing next to that, and yet I came so near to breaking it for a dark and sweet-voiced man.
And now Raven, in the moonless night, screamed aloud, a high, eldritch crying, like a woman in childbed. Three times the shrill cry trembled over the Tor, and Morgaine shivered again, knowing that even the priests on the other island that lay corresponding to their own must waken in their solitary cells and cross themselves, hearing that haunted cry that rang between the worlds.
After the cry, silence, a silence which seemed to Morgaine filled with breathing, with held breath even, from the unseen initiates who now surrounded the dreadful solitude inhabited only by the three motionless priestesses. Then, gasping and choking, as if her voice were long disabled from the silence, Raven cried out:
"Ah-seven times the Wheel, the Wheel with thirteen spokes, has turned about in the sky ... seven times the Mother has given birth to her dark son ... ."
Again the silence, deepening in contrast, except for the choking gasps of the entranced prophetess. She cried out, "Ah-ah-I burn-I burn-it is time, it is time ... " and lapsed again into the clotted silence, pregnant with terror.
"They run! They run in the spring rutting, they run-they fight, they choose their king-ah, the blood, the blood-and the greatest of them all, he runs, and there is blood on the antlers of his pride ... ."
Again the silence lengthened, and Morgaine, seeing in the darkness behind her eyelids the spring running of the deer, saw again what she had seen in a half-forgotten glimpse in the silver bowl-a man among the deer, struggling, fighting ... .
"It is the child of the Goddess, he runs, he runs ... the Horned One must die ... and the Horned One must be crowned ... the Virgin Huntress must call the king to her, she must lay down her maidenhood to the God ... ah, the old sacrifice, the old sacrifice ... I burn, I burn ... " and the words began to choke over one another and die in a long, sobbing scream. Behind her, through her closed eyes, Morgaine saw Raven fall senseless to the ground and lie there, gasping, her gasps the only sound in the deepening silence.
Somewhere an owl called; once, twice, three times.
Out of the darkness, priestesses came, silent and dark, blue gleams on their brow. They lifted Raven tenderly and bore her away. They lifted Morgaine too, and she felt her throbbing head tenderly held to a woman's breast as they carried her away. Then she knew no more.
THREE DAYS LATER, when she had recovered her strength somewhat, Viviane sent for her.
Morgaine rose and tried to dress herself, but she was still weak, and accepted the help of one of the young priestesses, grateful that the girl was under silence and did not speak to her. The long fasting, the terrible sickness brought on by the ritual herbs, the strung tension of the ritual, still gripped at her body; she had eaten a little soup the night before, and some bread soaked in milk this morning, but she still felt sick and empty after the long strain, and her head throbbed, and her moon-dark bleeding had seized her with a violence never felt before; this too, she knew, might be the aftereffect of the sacred herbs. Sick and incurious, she wished that Viviane had left her to recover in peace, but she did Viviane's will as she would have done that of the Goddess, had the Goddess leaned down from Heaven and spoken a wish aloud. When she was dressed, and had braided her hair and wound it with a deerskin thong, and painted the blue crescent on her forehead with fresh blue dye, she went along the trail to the house where the High Priestess lived.