She thought with satisfaction, He himself, of his own free will, has put his soul into my hands. When he sent for the harp, she caressed it; small and crudely made as it was, the post had been worn smooth with resting against his body, and his hands had touched the strings with love ... even now they lingered on it tenderly.
She touched the strings, testing their music. In truth, the tone of the harp was good; he had somehow managed that perfect curve and structure that made the soundingboard echo the strings with the sweetest tone. And if he had done this as a boy, with those mutilated hands ... again Nimue felt the surge of pity and pain, Why did he not keep to his music and meddle not in the high affairs of state?
"You are too kind to me." She let her voice tremble, hoping he would think it was passion instead of triumph ... with this, soon he will be mine, possessed body and soul.
But it was too soon. The great tides of Avalon running in her blood told her that the moon was waxing; such great magic as this could be worked only in moon-dark, the slack time when the Lady sheds none of her light on the world, and her hidden purposes are made known.
She must not let his passion grow beyond bounds, nor her own sympathy with him.
He will desire me at full moon; this bond I am forging is a double-edged sword, a rope with two ends ... I will desire him as well, I cannot prevent that. For an enchantment to be total, it must involve both enchanter and enchanted, and she knew, with a spasm of terror, that this spell she was weaving would work on her too, and rebound on her. She could not pretend passion and desire; she must feel them as well. She knew, with a fear that wrung her heart, that even as the Merlin would be helpless in her hands, so it might well be that she would come to be helpless in his. And what of me, O Goddess, Mother ... that is all too great a price to pay ... let it not come on me, no, no, I am afraid ... .
"Well, Nimue, my dear," Gwenhwyfar said, "now that you have the harp in your hands, will you play and sing for me?"
She let her hair curtain her face as she looked timidly at the Merlin and murmured, "Shall I, then?"
"I beg you to play," he said. "Your voice is sweet and I can hear that your hands will bring enchantment from the strings ... ."
They will indeed if I am favored of the Goddess. Nimue set her hands to the strings, remembering that she must not play any song of Avalon that he would remember and recognize. She began to play a drinking song she had heard at the court, with words none too proper for a maiden; she saw Gwenhwyfar looking scandalized, and thought, Good, if she is shocked by my unmaidenly behavior, she will not inquire too deeply into my motives. Then she played and sang a lament she had heard from a northern harper, the mournful song of a fisherman out on the sea, looking for the lights of his home on the shore.
At the end of the song she rose, looking shyly at him. "I thank you for the use of your harp-may I borrow it again, that my hands may keep their skill?"
"It is my gift to you," said Kevin. "Now that I have heard what music your hands can bring from it, it could belong to no other. Keep it, I beg you-I have many harps."
"You are too kind to me," she murmured, "but, I beg you, now that I can make music for myself, do not abandon me or deprive me of the pleasure of listening to yours."
"I will play for you whenever you ask me," Kevin said, and she knew that his heart was in the words. She contrived to brush against him as she leaned forward to take the harp.
She murmured, softly so Gwenhwyfar would not hear, "Words alone cannot express my gratitude to you. Perhaps a time will come when I can express it more fittingly."
He looked at her, dazed, and she discovered that she was returning his gaze with the same intensity.
A double-edged spell indeed. I am victim too ...
He went away, and she sat obediently by Gwenhwyfar and tried to turn her attention to her spinning.
"How beautifully you play, Nimue," said Gwenhwyfar. "I need not ask where you learned ... I heard Morgaine sing that lament once."
Nimue said, averting her eyes, "Tell me something of Morgaine. She had departed from Avalon before I came there. She was married to a king in-Lothian, was it?"
"In the north of Wales," Gwenhwyfar began.
Nimue, who knew all this perfectly well, was still not completely false. Morgaine remained a puzzle to her, and she was eager to know how the lady Morgaine had appeared to those who knew her in the world.
"Morgaine was one of my ladies-in-waiting," Gwenhwyfar was saying. "Arthur gave her to me as such on our wedding day. Of course he had been fostered apart from her and hardly knew her, either ... ."
As she listened attentively, Nimue, who had been trained to read emotions, realized that beneath Gwenhwyfar's dislike for Morgaine, there was something else: respect, awe, even a kind of tenderness. If Gwenhwyfar were not so fanatically, mindlessly Christian, she would have loved Morgaine well.
At least while Gwenhwyfar was talking of Morgaine, even though she condemned her as an evil sorceress, she was not mouthing the pious nonsense that bored Nimue almost to weeping. But she could not give Gwenhwyfar's tales her full attention. She sat in an attitude of passionate interest, she made the proper sounds of attention or astonishment, but within, her mind was in turmoiclass="underline"
I am afraid; I can come to be the Merlin's slave and victim as I would have him mine ... .
Goddess! Great Mother! It is not I who must face him, but you ... . The moon was waxing; four nights until full, and she could already feel the stirring of that tide of life. She thought of the Merlin's intent gaze, his magical eyes, the beauty of his voice, and knew that already she was deeply entangled in her own spell weaving. Already she had ceased to feel the slightest revulsion against his twisted body, feeling only the strength and life force flowing within it.
If I give myself to him at full moon, she thought, then will the tides of life within us both be taken at the flood, then will my purposes become his own, then will we blend together as one flesh ... she felt an ache and agony of desire, longing to be caressed by those sensitive hands, feel his warm breath against her mouth. Everything in her ached together in hunger which, she knew, was at least partly an echo of his own desire and frustration; the magical link she had created between them meant that she too must be tormented with his torment.
When life runs full at the rounding of the moon, then shall the Goddess receive the body of her lover ... .
It was not altogether beyond belief. She was the daughter of the Queen's champion and the King's closest friend. Kevin, the Merlin, unlike a Christian priest, was not forbidden to marry. The court would be pleased at a marriage so high-placed, even though some of the ladies would be shocked that she could yield up her delicate body to a man they considered a monster. Arthur surely knew that Kevin could not, after what he had done, return to Avalon, but he had a place at court as the King's councillor. Also, he was a musician of surpassing skill. There would be a place for us, and happiness ... when the moon is full, brimming with life, he will plant a child in my womb ... and I will bear it joyfully ... he is not monster born, his deformity is from childhood injuries ... his sons would be handsome ... and then she stopped herself, disturbed by the power of her own fantasies. No, she must not become so deeply entangled in this spell. She must deny herself, even though the waxing moon made the surging blood in her veins a very agony of frustration. She must wait, wait ...
As she had waited all those years.... There is a magic that comes with yielding to life. The priestesses of Avalon knew it when they lay in the fields at Beltane, invoking the life of the Goddess in their own bodies and hearts ... but there is a deeper magic which comes from guarding the power, damming up the stream. The Christians knew something of this, when they insisted that their holy virgins live in chastity and seclusion, that they might burn with the darker flame of that harnessed force; that their chaste priests might pour all their contained power into their Mysteries, such as they were. Nimue had felt that power in the lightest word or gesture from Raven, who had never wasted words on anything trivial, so that her force, when she spent it, was tremendous. She had wondered often, alone in the temple at Avalon, when she was forbidden to mingle with the other maidens or to go to the rites, when she felt that life force in her veins with such power that she sometimes burst into hysterical crying or tore at her hair and her face ... why had they set her aside for this, why must she bear the terrible weight of all this without relief? But she had trusted the Goddess and obeyed her mentors, and now they had entrusted this great work to her, and she must not fail them through her own weakness.