She had killed before this. She had sent Avalloch without hesitation to his death, and not three days since, she had slain the harmless child in her womb ... he who lay sleeping before her was the greater traitor, surely. One stroke, swift and quiet... ah, but this was the child Igraine had placed in her arms, her first love, the father of her son, the Horned God, the King ... . Strike, fool! For this you came here!
No. There has been too much death. We were born from a single womb and I could not face my mother in the country beyond death, not with the blood of my brother on my hands, and for a moment, knowing she moved at the very edge of madness, she heard Igraine calling impatiently, Morgaine, I told you to take care of the baby ...
It seemed to her that he stirred in sleep, as if he too heard that voice; Morgaine slid the dagger back into its sheath, reached out her hand, and took the scabbard. This at least she had a right to take-with her own hands she had fashioned it, the spells she had woven into it were her own.
She hid the scabbard under her cloak and went swiftly out through the thinning darkness to the ferry. As the ferryman rowed her across, she felt the prickling of her skin and seemed to see, like a shadow, the barge from Avalon ... on the far shore they were all around her, the crew of the Avalon barge. Now quickly, quickly, she must get back again to Avalon ... but the sun was rising and the shadow of the church lay across the water, and suddenly the sun flooded the landscape and with the dawn a ringing of church bells was everywhere. Morgaine stood as if paralyzed; through that sound she could not summon the mists, nor speak the spell.
She said to one of the men, "Can you take us to Avalon? Quickly?"
He said, shivering, "I cannot, lady. It grows harder, without a priestess to speak the spell, and even so, at dawn and at noon and at sunset, when they ring the bells for prayer, there is no way to cross the mists. Not now. The spell no longer opens the way at these times, although, if we wait till the bells are silent, it may be that we can manage to return."
Why, Morgaine wondered, should this be so? It had to do with the knowledge that the world was as it was because of what men believed it was ... year by year, these past three or four generations, the minds of men had been hardened to believing that there was one God, one world, one way of describing reality, and that all things which intruded on the realm of that great one-ness must be evil and of the fiends, and that the sound of the bells and the shadow of their holy places would keep the evil afar. And as more and more people believed this, it was so, and Avalon no more than a dream adrift in an almost inaccessible other world.
Oh yes, she could still call the mists ... but not here, not where the shadow of the church's spire lay across the water and the clamor of the bells struck terror into her heart. They were trapped on the shores of the Lake! And now she was aware that a boat was pushing out from the shores of the priests' Isle, to cross the Lake and find her here. Arthur had wakened and found her scabbard gone from him, and now would pursue her ... .
Well, let him follow her as he could, there were other ways into Avalon where the shadow of the church did not prevent her passage. She climbed quickly into her saddle and began to ride along the shores of the Lake, circling; she would come at last to a place where, at least in summer, she could cross through the mists; the place where she and Lancelet had once found Gwenhwyfar strayed from the nunnery. It was not Lake but swampland, and they could get into Avalon by the back way, behind the Tor.
She knew that the little dark men were running behind her horse, that they could run for half a day at her horse's tail if they must. But now she heard hoofbeats ... she was pursued, Arthur was hard on her heels, and there were armed knights with him. She dug her feet into the horse's side, but this was a lady's horse, not intended for the chase ... .
She slid down her horse's side, the scabbard in her hand. "Scatter," she whispered to the men, and one by one it was as if they melted into the trees and mists... they could move like shadows if they must, and no man alive could find them if they did not want to be found. Morgaine grasped the scabbard in her hand and began to run along the shores of the Lake. In her mind she could hear Arthur's voice, feel his rage ... .
He had Excalibur; she could feel it, like a great shining in her mind, the holy thing of Avalon ... but the scabbard he should never bear again. She took it in both hands, whirled it over her head, and flung it, with all her strength, far out into the Lake, where she saw it sink into the deep and fathomless waters. No human hand could ever reclaim it-there it would lie till leather and velvet rotted and the silver and gold thread tarnished and twisted and at last the spells woven into them vanished utterly from the world.
Arthur was riding in pursuit, Excalibur naked in his hand ... but she and her escort were gone. Morgaine drew herself into silence, a part of shadow and tree as if some essential part of herself had gone into Fairy; while she stayed there motionless, covered in the silence of a priestess, no one from the mortal world could see so much as her shadow ... .
Arthur shouted her name.
"Morgaine! Morgaine!" A third time he called, loud and angry; but the very shadows were still, and at last, confused from riding in circles- once he came so close that Morgaine could feel the breath of his horse- he wearied, and called to his escort, and they came to find him swaying in his saddle, the bandages slowly soaking through with blood, and they led him away the way they had come.
Then Morgaine raised her hand, and once again the normal sound of bird and wind and tree came back into the world.
MORGAINE SPEAKS ...
In later years I heard the tale told of how I took the scabbard by sorcery, and how Arthur rode after me with a hundred knights, and I too had a hundred fairy knights all round me; and when Arthur's pursuit grew near, I turned myself and my men into ring stones ... . Someday, no doubt, they will add that when I had done, I called for my chariot with the winged dragons, and flew away into Fairy.
But it was not so. It was no more than this, that the little people can hide in the forests and become one with tree and shadow, and that day I was one of them, as I had been taught in Avalon; and when Arthur had been taken away by his escort, near to fainting with the long pursuit and the cold in his wound, I said farewell to the men of Avalon, and rode away to Tintagel. But when I came to Tintagel it mattered little to me what they did in Camelot, for I was sick even to death for a long time.
I know not, even now, what ailed me; I know only that summer faded and the leaves began to fall while I lay in my bed, tended by the servants I had found there, neither knowing nor caring whether I would ever rise. I know I had a low fever, a weariness so great that I could not force myself to sit upright or to eat, a heaviness of mind so great that I cared not whether I would live or die. My servants-one or two of them I recalled from the days when I lived there as a little child, with Igraine-thought me enchanted; and it may even have been true.