Lady of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley, Diana L. Paxson Read Free Book Online

be guarded like a young girl-and slipped out of the hut. The predawn light was dim, but the fresh smell of early morning scented the damp air, and he took a deep breath.
    As if at some wordless signal, the sunrise procession began to move toward the path. Gawen waited in the deeper gloom beneath the thatched overhang to the hut until the Druids had gone by, then on silent feet went down to the shores of the lake. The fairy woman had told him to wait there. Every day since he had arrived, he had come down to the water’s edge. He wondered now if she would ever come for him, but he had begun to love the slow dawning of the day above the marshes for its own sake.
    The sky was just beginning to flush over with the first rosy light of dawn. Behind him, the growing light showed him the buildings clustered below the slope of the Tor. There was the long peak of the meeting hall, built in a rectangle in the Roman way. The thatched roofs of the roundhouses behind it glistened faintly, the larger for the priestesses, the smaller for the maidens, and another small building a little apart for the High Priestess. Cooksheds and weaving sheds and a barn for the goats lay beyond them. He could just glimpse the more weathered rooftops of the Druids’ halls on the other side of the hill. Farther down the slope, he knew, was the sacred spring, and across the pastures were the beehive huts of the Christians, clustered around the thorn tree that had grown from Father Joseph’s staff.
    But he had not yet been there. The priestesses, after some debate about what tasks were suitable for a boy-child, had assigned him to help herd the goats that gave them milk. If he had gone to his Roman grandfather, he thought, he would not have had to herd goats. But the goats were not bad company. Eyeing the brightening sky, he realized the priestesses would be stirring soon and expecting him to come to the hall for his morning bread and ale. And then the goats would begin to bleat, anxious to be out on the hillside pastures. The only time he had to himself was now.
    Again he could hear in his mind the Lady’s words: “Son of a Hundred Kings.” What had she meant? Why him? His mind would not let these thoughts alone. Many days had passed since that strange greeting. When would she come for him?
    He sat for a long time on the shore, looking out over the grey expanse of the water as it changed to a sheet of silver reflecting the pale autumn sky. The air was crisp, but he was accustomed to cold, and the sheepskin Brannos had given him for a cape kept off the chill. It was quiet, but not quite silent; as he himself grew more still, he found himself listening to the whisper of wind in the trees, the sigh of the wavelets as they kissed the shore.
    He closed his eyes, and his breath caught as for a moment all those small sounds that came from the world around him became music. He became aware of a song-he could not tell if it came from outside or if something in his spirit was singing, but ever more sweetly he could hear the melody. Without opening his eyes, he pulled from his pocket the flute of willow that Brannos had given him, and began to play.
    The first notes seemed such a squawk that he almost flung the flute into the water; then for a moment the note clarified. Gawen took a deep breath, centered himself, and tried again. Once more he heard that pure thread of sound. Carefully, he changed his fingering and slowly began to coax forth a melody. As he relaxed, his breathing became deep, controlled, and he sank into the emerging song.
    Lost in the music, he did not at first realize when the Lady appeared. It was only gradually that the shimmer of light above the lake became edged in shadow, and the shadow became a form, moving as if by magic across the surface until at last it grew close enough for him to see the low prow of the boat on which she stood and the slender shaft of the pole.
    The boat was something like the barge in which Waterwalker had brought them