Page 2 of The Faerie Morgana
He blinked owlishly, as if the slanting afternoon light dazzled his eyes. “I remember the lecture. Not the day.”
“It rained.”
“That’s what you remember?”
“I think you know, dear sir, that I remember it all.”
“Tell me, then.” He didn’t smile, but his beard twitched, rather like the tail of a cat stalking a bird. She understood him, perhaps better than anyone still living, and she knew he enjoyed this sort of exchange.
She said, “The waning moon hung in the sky after the rain cleared.”
His beard twitched again. “Did it?”
“Yes. The full moon was a week past. The ripples in the lake had subsided, and the mist lay on smooth water. You and I left the shelter of the sanctuary and walked here, in the garden. You mentioned the power of thyme to ease congestion, and rosemary to reduce inflammation. You spoke of the soothing effects of eucalyptus on the chest, and how difficult it is to grow. And you told me that mistletoe must be measured carefully, because it is dangerous if overused.”
“Your recall is impressive, Morgana.”
“My recall is perfect, sir.” He snorted at that, but he didn’t argue. Morgana never forgot anything. Could not forget anything, even if she would have preferred a memory to fade. She would like to forget how cruel Preela had been to her when she first arrived at the Isle as a small, homesick girl. She would be content not to remember how Iffa had mocked her for crying into her pillow at night. It would be better for them all if she no longer recalled the slaps and pinches and braid-pulling of the older acolytes, all things that had hardened her heart against them, taught her to gloat when she bested them in their studies. They soon learned that her remedies were swifter than theirs, her potions stronger. She surpassed them all in scrying and in her deep sight, but her gifts made her no friends. She was the perpetual outsider. She had no confidant, no one to listen to her troubles, no one to laugh with or whisper with or even just to walk with. Her work was her only comfort. She had grownstronger than any of them, but still, though they could no longer abuse her, every blow, every insult lived on in her mind.
Sometimes her memory was part of her gift. At other times it was part of her curse. And at this moment, when the Blackbird was about to speak to her at last about what had happened at Camulod, she wished she did not already recall the event with agonizing clarity.
BOOK ONE
THE PRIESTESS MORGANA
1
On the day Morgana turned four, her mother sent her away. The day was dark and wet, the most miserable day of a miserable season. Storm clouds hulked above the keep of Camulod, as they had done for weeks. Wind drove the rain slantwise and soaked the scarlet banners that hung, sodden and limp, above the courtine. Little Morgana clutched at her mother’s hand until the brown-robed man with the long gray beard and stooped shoulders tugged it free.
Ygraine stood preternaturally still, a slender statue, beautiful even with her yellow hair dripping rain and her blue gown bedraggled by it. She watched without a word, without a tear, without even a wave as the old man pulled her child away. There was no kiss, no embrace. Morgana looked back as she stumbled behind the brown-robed man but saw no hint of regret or sorrow in her mother’s stance, or any more emotion than a statue might have had. When the baby, Morgana’s new half brother, began to wail from inside the tower, Ygraine turned. Neck stiff and back rigid, she disappeared inside before her little daughter was out of sight.
“Never mind,” the old man said, in a voice that cracked with age. Morgana had not yet learned his name. “You will soon forget.”
The child Morgana had no idea if that was true. She barely grasped that she was leaving her home for good, that she had to go with the graybeard whether she wanted to or not. Numb with confusion, she let him pull her along the path through the woods toward the lake.
She twisted her neck to steal one more glance at the castle where she had lived all her short life. Rain-washed and massive, Camulod perched on an enormous promontory of rock, like a great ship cresting a huge wave. The castle’s towers and gates, the courtine that shielded the keep, all seemed to grow organically from the gray stone, as if they had always been there. As if they would be there forever.
Morgana understood, even at her tender age, that Ygraine had chosen her infant son over her daughter. Ygraine had sacrificed her first child to placate the domineering man she had married after Morgana’s father died.
“I need a husband,” Ygraine had said to her sister Ylaine. “I cannot hold this kingdom without a man by my side.”
Morgana had been huddled behind a wardrobe, listening, every word recorded forever in her prodigious memory. She heard Ylaine answer, “You will have your pick of men, Ygraine, but take care how you choose. Their lust for the crown makes liars of them all.”
Ygraine had not heeded her sister’s advice. Widowhood had confounded and confused her, and she had accepted the suit of Uther Dragoun in haste. Uther had been gentle in his wooing and ardentin his lovemaking, but once he and Ygraine were wed, everyone at Camulod learned how harsh a man he was. He was cruel to servants and children and jealous of his wife. He wanted nothing around to remind him that he was not Ygraine’s first husband, that he had not earned his crown but obtained it only through his marriage. It was at his command, not to be disobeyed on pain of a blow from one of his hard fists, that Morgana be sent away. Eventually, she would know that Uther could have simply had her killed, had he so wished. She would not have been the first to suffer such a fate.
But at four, bewildered and bereft, she didn’t know this. Her throat ached as she watched her mother disappear inside the tower, letting the heavy door close behind her. Morgana lagged behind the brown-robed man, making him tighten his grip on her hand. Once, she tripped on a tree root and fell to her knees. She would have fallen headlong except for the support of the graybeard. As he pulled her to her feet, she looked up into his face for the first time, hidden until now by the drooping brim of his black hat. It was not an unkind face, but it was remote, as if he had withdrawn from the world, as if he could no longer be touched by what other people felt.
He urged her on through the rain, and she had to force her short legs to move faster to keep up with him. They wound through the trees and down the slippery bank of the lake to where a simple rowboat waited at the dock, its bowline tied to an ancient wooden bollard. Raindrops peppered the surface of the water as Morgana stepped down into the boat, and the graybeard seated her on a plain wooden bench. He draped a hooded cloak over her before he shipped the oars and began to row.
She twisted on the bench to try to see where they were going, but the rain was a curtain, parting only when the prow of the boat pushed through it. Her vision blurred with tears, and she swiped at her eyes with her little fingers. When she dropped her hands, she gazed blindly into the shimmering curtain of mist that lay ahead, beyond the rain, and without knowing what she was about to do, she scried for the very first time.
There would be thousands of other such events in her life, but she was yet to learn what they meant.
She perceived an image of another place, another time, a scene she could not have imagined. It seemed to be painted upon the gray mist. Her mouth fell open as she stared, and wayward raindrops moistened her tongue. She pressed her palms to her temples, struggling to understand what she saw.
Ygraine lay motionless on a bier. Her blue skirts fell over the sides to sweep the ground, and her yellow hair spilled across the funeral pillow. Six men carried the bier away from the castle and toward the woods, where the flames of a funeral pyre already towered in the dusky sky. The child Morgana had seen funeral pyres from her window in the castle, and she understood that in this scene, this image that had sprung into being against the silvery mist, Ygraine no longer lived, and the bier that carried her was destined for the fire.
Mercifully, Morgana did not comprehend that this was a true vision, a spontaneous one, born from her nascent gift of deep sight. Nevertheless, she remembered it always, as sheremembered everything, absolutely and in detail. When she recalled it in later times, she tasted the rain in her mouth once again, and felt its cold drops sliding down her neck. She heard the rattle of the oars in their locks and the splash of the blades in the lake water. She smelled the tang of the hood draped over her head, a scent left by whoever had worn it last, and she heard the rasp of the graybeard’s breath as he rowed.
