I Am Morgan le Fay Read online

  Yet I sat by my mother. “What are you doing, Mama?” I coaxed.

  Perhaps it was because I called her Mama. I had never done so before. At first she kept silence as usual, but then she murmured, “Looking for Arthur.”

  I was woman enough now to sense how it might feel to have a child, a baby. For the first time I caught half a notion, not just a thought but a deeper knowledge, of what it might mean to be Queen Igraine, and pain squeezed my chest. “Oh,” I breathed.

  She whispered, “I want my son.”

  “Of course.”

  “They took him away.”

  “Yes.”

  “My son. My son. I must find him.”

  “But how ... in the mirror?”

  “Yes.” She gave me a flickering glance. “Scrying. The fays taught me.”

  “They did?”

  “Yes.” She turned back to the shadowy mirror lying there like a silver pool, no, more like a well of water deep, deep, deep, only its surface glimmering in the candlegleam. “Arthur,” she whispered.

  “Do you see him?”

  She shook her head just once, left to right and left again.

  I asked, “Do you see anything?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “What have you seen?”

  She said nothing.

  “Teach me to scry,” I demanded.

  She said nothing.

  I moved my chair close to hers, so that I saw the mirror as she did, slantwise, with the candle out of my view. I sat as silent as she did, gazing.

  Sleepy. I wished the mother-hunger in me would cease and let me just go to sleep. My eyes blinked, but I willed them to stay open.

  Teach me power.

  This scrying, if it worked ... What else might the fays teach Mother?

  Or me?

  Teach me power.

  Maybe the reason I was here...

  In the depths of the mirror, shadows swirled. I stared, without speaking, without moving, thinking hazily of the day I had dropped a dirty brown round thing in the washbasin and the dark covering had swirled and parted and I saw—not a blue stone this time, but a picture that seemed made of jewels and light. It was like seeing piskies, or so I would imagine seeing piskies, small yet oh so real. I saw Ongwynn standing at the hearth of Caer Ongwynn, and lovely Morgause sitting at the rude old table with a book in her hands, and on the table the chessboard, and sitting there—the other girl so much like Morgause, beautiful, yet so different, with a willful brow and the sheen of faery power all over her—and as I watched, Ongwynn spoke to the girls. I heard her as clearly as I had many times heard the piskies giggling. Ongwynn said, “I think both of you will need to live by your wits. Be secret and strong.”

  I gasped, and the vision shattered.

  I babbled, “I saw—was that me? But that was months ago! Last winter!”

  My mother did not move. “Arthur,” she whispered, gazing at the shadowy mirror. “Show me Arthur. I want my son.”

  “By what title may I call you, holy one?” I asked the primrose fay.

  Splashing in a candlelit fountain that hadn’t been there the day before, naked in the water with golden flowers and her own auburn hair floating around her, she smiled at me like a happy child. “You know my name, Morgan.”

  “But—”

  “I daresay you know many of my names. Call me by any of them, Morgan, and I’ll answer.”

  Sitting on the tourmaline stones at the fountain’s edge, I knew I had to be careful. She was testing me. I had asked her name because I did not want to offend, but she had turned the question back on me.

  And she was right to think that I knew her. I knew that she had been a goddess, or one face of the triple goddess; she was the maiden, the ever-crescent moon, the silver boat on a black sea, the springtime rose in bud.

  I remembered the first triad Ongwynn had ever read to me. “Rhiannon,” I said softly.

  Her smile widened. “If I am Rhiannon, where is my silver bow?” Then she splashed water at me. “But you are right; that is one of me. What is it that you want of me, Morgan?”

  I had not said that I wanted anything, but she knew.

  I took a deep breath. “Teach me power,” I whispered.

  She laughed like the fountain chuckling, like silver bells ringing. “But power is everywhere, Morgan!” she cried, laughing, splashing. “You have only to learn!”

  “But someone must teach me ...”

  “No one can teach you until you are ready.”

  “But I am ready!”

  “Really?” She gave me her sweetest, most mischievous grin and tossed a golden blossom so that it hit me in the middle of my chest, leaving a wet spot on my silk-and-lace bodice. “Then why do you hide a pretty blue pebble under your gown?” She ducked beneath the surface of the water. For a moment her pearly nakedness shimmered in the fountain like dawn, and then she was gone. Where or how I did not know.

  But why should anything surprise me in this place?

  I sat where I was, staring at the water, not blinking, not really thinking, not even trying to scry—this was not a pool fit for scrying anyway, not smooth enough to show me reflections from afar, intimations of distant truths unseen. This was whispering water fluffed and ruffled by its own spray, scattering the light of many candles and the glint of many gilt pillars. Still, staring at that water, I caught a shadow somehow, an intimation of what I must do.

  From under my gown I drew forth my milpreve dangling on its shabby cord. In the moon-silvered, candle-gilt, silken night of Avalon it shone like a steady blue star. No heat to it tonight, only an expectancy that was almost the same as happiness. It liked being out, finally, in the night air and the candlelight.

  With the same cord I bound it to the third finger of my left hand, wearing it like a ring. Perhaps the fays would think me an upstart—or perhaps not. As soon as I had tied the stone in place on my finger, the ends of the old cord fell off, dropped into the fountain and swam away like eels.

  The next dusk, when Avalon opened to the fragrance of water lilies, I left the candlelit hall and walked toward the arbor. Lying near the rushes that fringed the waterways, ducks tucked their heads beneath their jewel-colored wings to sleep. Rhiannon, or the presence I called Rhiannon, had given me a blue gown the colors of deep water in sunlight, a gown made of weightless gauze that floated and streamed and trailed in the soft grass around my bare feet the way my hair trailed around my bare shoulders. The druid stone on my finger lit my way in the twilight with a blue-gold glow.

  I met Cernunnos walking toward me as he approached the mound, or hollow hill, or Caer Avalon, call it what you will. He walked tall, handsome, nearly naked, his gleaming antlers echoing the silver crescent in the sky. The consort, going in to his beloved.

  The glow of his milpreve shifted as he lifted a hand to greet me. The starry points of his antlers sketched a bow. “Lady Morgan,” he greeted me, glancing at the mystic stone displayed on my finger. “So you have decided? You will be a fay?”

  I paused to look into his wise, not-quite-human eyes as I would not have dared a few days before, as I still might not have dared in daylight. “I must follow my fate,” I said.

  “But we all choose our fates, is it not so, Morgan?”

  “I—I suppose so.” It was a riddle worthy of the book of threes, but—yes, in a way I had chosen my fate the day I had healed Ongwynn.

  “And choose, and choose, and choose again,” Cernunnos said. “The time may come when you will choose to throw that away.” He inclined his regal head toward my druid stone.

  “No,” I blurted, for I could not imagine throwing away my milpreve, the treasure that had come to me as a kind of recompense on the day my father had died, the talisman that had waited through millennia for me, Morgan. It was mine, mine alone, emblem and agent of my power to heal Ongwynn, my power to save Thomas—it was life to me. “No, I could never throw it away.”

  “Some have done so,” Cernunnos said.

  “But why?”
/>   “Because, for a fay, there are ever harder choices,” he said. “We all have shadows, is it not so? And we all must choose how to use our shadows.”

  I said slowly, “I do not understand.”

  “We all must choose whether to be content or unhappy. The ancient magic of the moon or the striving, aspiring way of sorcery.”

  I thought of merry Rhiannon with the druid stone banded on her hand, and of Merlin as I had seen him the night he took Arthur away, with just such a stone banded on his forehead above the black pits that were his eyes. I shuddered as Cernunnos saluted me once more and passed by. Surely I would never choose the way of sorcery.

  With the grass soft under my bare feet and the springtime air soft on my bare shoulders and my magical gown soft around me, I walked on to the arbor. To Thomas. And my heart felt like water within me, for I knew that I loved him, and I knew that he must not love me. Not here, not in Avalon. In this holy dwelling of the moon mother, even a whisper of manhood might endanger him. So the fays had instructed me.

  He sat at the entrance of the arbor watching twilight and candlelight play on the surface of the water. But when he saw me walking toward him with the milpreve glimmering blue on my finger, he rose to his feet, his face a white oval gazing at me, then knelt before me and bowed his head.

  Who had shorn his hair? It was cut square in the shape of a helm, all the curl gone.

  “Thomas,” I whispered.

  “Lady Morgan.” He kept his eyes on the grass. He was wise, my Thomas, perhaps as wise as Cernunnos, with whom he had lately been conversing. Perhaps Cernunnos had instructed him as the women within Avalon had instructed me.

  “Thomas, you must go from me,” I said. Commanded, rather. And please, let him not raise his gaze to see how my heart was breaking, breaking, all made of salt tears like waves on the shore of Caer Ongwynn, so that in my weakness I might tempt him to his own doom. I told him, “You must leave Avalon. At once. Tonight.”

  He lifted pleading eyes, but looked down again quickly. “Lady Morgan,” he requested, “if I must go—”

  “You must.” By Avalon’s law, any man who desired a fay was desiring his way to death. This was a place of moon magic, a place of women’s power, and all women know men live to take away such power. Love of a man weakens a woman, as Ongwynn had said.

  I loved Thomas, and desire for him washed through me.

  I told him, my voice not quite steady, “I am a deathly danger to you.” I was Morgan le Fay, but I could not yet say what I might do, or might be unable to prevent. Morgan le Fay had been with me all my life, riding my chest, as near as my own heartbeat, yet she was a stranger to me.

  “If I must go, Lady Morgan,” Thomas said softly, “let me be your knight.”

  I stood not quite understanding.

  Still kneeling, Thomas lifted his face to gaze up into mine. And his face was lovely, so lovely, as pale and pure as the moon, and I thought I saw a single tear like a clear jewel below one shadowy eye. “Let me serve you as your champion, my lady,” he requested. “Give me a worthy quest to sustain me while I am away from you.”

  I could not think. I could not imagine the future. I knew it might be years before I saw him again. If I ever saw him again.

  Yet—could I not make it happen, that I would see him again?

  Teach me power.

  Power is everywhere, Morgan. Learn.

  I was learning quickly. I nodded. I whispered, “Bring me your sword.”

  He fetched it from the arbor, and bowed again before me on bended knee. I laid the sword gently upon his shoulder. “Sir Thomas,” I told him, my voice firmer now, “true knight of Avalon, arise.”

  He rose to his feet. For some reason I felt surprised that he stood taller than I.

  “At your service, Lady Morgan,” he murmured.

  “You must go now.”

  “On what quest, my lady? To what purpose?”

  To save his noble life? But I could not tell him that. I thought feverishly: purpose? Did his life have a purpose, or mine? For what purpose was I here? To become a fay? To save my mother?

  “Seek my half brother who was taken away as a baby,” I told him. “Seek Arthur.”

  He bowed. “I will be honored to do so.”

  “Thank you, Sir Thomas.” My voice faltered. I turned away before he might see—

  “Morgan,” he said softly.

  I stiffened. “Please go,” I whispered, not daring to look at him.

  “Take this to remember me by, Morgan, my heart. Please.” He held out a small something toward me.

  I took it blindly, then held it between both my hands, staring: It was a ring. A ring woven of his crisp black hair.

  The night held its breath, waiting.

  I slipped the ring on my finger. I breathed out.

  “Farewell,” Thomas said, very low, turning away.

  “Wait.” The word shot out of me, perilous. And still I could not look at him, for the tears I held back were more dangerous still. Quickly, he must be gone quickly. I stooped and plucked a violet from the grass, purple blossom and heart-shaped leaves and all. He had once said that my eyes were like violets at midnight, darkest green, darkest porphyry. I offered to him the little rag of a flower and whispered, “A knight needs a token.” My voice trembled only a little.

  Bless Thomas, he understood at once; he smiled. I will never forget that smile, brave and warm and innocent and—No. I must not see the rest. Must not see the yearning, the longing, the desire.

  “Thank you, Lady Morgan,” he said, taking the violet from me with a bow. “May all blessing abide with you while I—while I am away.”

  I nodded, no longer trusting my voice to tell him any of my whirling thoughts—go quickly, be safe, come back to me. I turned away from him and walked toward Caer Avalon, my head erect and my bare feet sure on the grass but my sight blurred by tears. I did not see him go.

  13

  AVALON OFFERED ME POWER AND PEACE. THE POWER I learned eagerly, but the peace I could not learn.

  I could not even recognize it as the deep magic it was, peace everywhere in Avalon, in the glowing candlelight, the lilting voices, the calm dawns, the sunlit streams and calm pools. I could not see how peaceful were the streams that ran with blood from the Morrigun’s washing, the pools from which green-faced women and black, horselike water devils peered. How these things swam in peace I did not understand.

  Cernunnos tried to teach me such peace one day early in my stay at Avalon. That dawn I sat on the grassy bank of the pool near the arbor, weary yet not ready to sleep, missing Thomas, watching the swan float like a white feather-flower with its reflection mocking it, glossy black, on the winking water. What depths of mystery hid beneath that bright surface?

  Staring bleary-eyed, I thought I saw an image of a towering tree with white branches, living, moving—then I blinked and looked up. Cernunnos stood beside me.

  “So, Morgan.” He sat down on the bank with me, so tall that his antlers spread over my head. “What are you thinking?”

  “This water frightens me,” I said.

  “She does? Ladywater? Why do you sit by her, then?”

  I bristled, hearing a quirk of fun in his voice. “I am trying to understand!”

  “Understand Ladywater? Impossible, Morgan. You can love her, and you can surrender to her as to fate, but you can never understand her.”

  I scowled, for I did not like his teasing tone or his words. “Surrender? What is Ladywater that she should have her way with me?”

  He sobered. “Her way is the way of peace, Morgan. You are right to sit by her side. Hearken to her, and she will make you well and whole.”

  “I am whole!”

  He neither smiled nor frowned. “Look at yourself in the pool.”

  Oh, for the love of mercy... but I did as he said, leaning forward to look down at my own reflection atop the winking water. I gasped. A plump middle-aged woman looked back at me, not just an image but a soul, as alive as I was, smil
ing at me with glinting serenity across a distance of time. I gawked at her. She seemed smug, like a kitchen cat, with bright predatory eyes, white-powdered cheeks, a rich rouged mouth. With a shock to my heart I recognized her, I knew her quite surely: myself. Morgan, in a few decades.

  No. No, I did not want to be like that. I did not like her.

  “Go away!” I exclaimed. Her smile widened, and the surface of the water rippled. She vanished from my sight. That was a long, long time ago. I remember looking at the black reflection of the white swan, then at Cernunnos, then at the water, which showed him truly, a harsh brown handsome man with the crown of a stag.

  “Try again,” Cernunnos told me.

  “Try what?”

  “To be whole, you must embrace her.”

  “But it’s all a lie! I am not going to be like that!” I wanted to be loved, lovable.

  “You must be all your selves before you can choose, Morgan.”

  I stared at him, feeling mulish and stupid. My look made him smile.

  “You are woman,” he said, not without reverence. “All the cycles, the phases of the moon are in you. Try again.”

  I sighed and looked again for my reflection on the water. And I did not find it. Instead, this time it was as if I looked up into sky instead of down into sunrise-lit water, and as if from far below I saw a great bird flying, a raptor the color of nightfall ashes with its head surrounded by a crown of azure light. I did not understand that blue halo, but I knew that dark, ominous bird.

  “The Morrigun,” I breathed.

  Cernunnos said nothing.

  “Me?” I looked to Cernunnos. “But how?”

  “Fate?” He echoed my questioning tone.