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

to the isle but narrower, and the Lady was poling it with long, efficient strokes. Gawen watched her carefully. He had been too confused to really look at her when they met before. Her slender muscular arms were bare to the shoulder despite the cold; her dark hair was knotted up off her forehead, which was high and unlined, crossed with dark, level brows. Her eyes were dark too, and brilliant. She was accompanied by a young girl, sturdily built, with deep dimples embedded in pink-and-white cheeks as smooth as thick cream and fine hair, burnished copper-gold, the same color as the Lady Eilan’s-his mother’s-had been. She wore her hair, like the priestesses, in a single long braid. The young girl grinned quickly at him, her pink cheeks crinkling.
    “This is my daughter Sianna,” the Lady said, fixing him with eyes as bright and sharp as a bird’s. “What name did they give you then, my Lord?”
    “My mother called me Gawen,” he said. “Why did you-”
    The Lady’s words cut across his question. “Do you know how to pole a punt, Gawen?”
    “I do not, Lady. I have never been taught anything about the water. But before we go-”
    “Good. You have nothing to unlearn, and this at least I can teach you.” Once more her words overrode his. “But for now it will be enough to get into the boat without upsetting it. Step carefully. At this time of year the water is too cold for a bath.” She held out her small hand, rock-hard, and steadied him as he stepped into the boat. He sat down, gripping the sides as the punt lurched, but in truth it was his own response to her command rather than the motion that had unsettled him.
    Sianna giggled and the Lady fixed her with her dark eyes. “If you had never been taught, you would not know anything either. Is it well done to mock at ignorance?”
    What about my ignorance? he wondered. But he did not try to repeat his question. Maybe she would listen later, when they had gotten wherever she was taking him.
    Sianna murmured, “It was only the picture of an unexpected bath on such a day…” She was trying to look sober, but she giggled again and the Lady smiled indulgently, digging in with the pole and sending the punt gliding across the surface of the lake.
    Gawen looked back at the girl. He did not know if Sianna had been making fun of him, but he liked the way her eyes slanted when she smiled and decided that he did not mind her teasing him. She was the brightest thing in all that expanse of silver water and pale sky; he could have warmed his hands at her red hair. Tentatively, he smiled. The radiance of the grin that answered him struck through the shell with which he had tried to armor his feelings. Only much later did he realize that in this moment his heart was opened to her forever.
    But now he knew only that he felt warmer, and loosened the thong that held his sheepskin closed. The punt moved smoothly over the water as the sun climbed higher. Gawen sat quietly in the boat, watching Sianna from beneath his lashes. The Lady seemed to have no need for speech and the girl followed her example. Gawen dared not break the silence, and presently he found himself listening for the occasional call of a bird and the faint lapping of water.
    The water was calm, ruffled only by small ripples as the breeze touched it or the sliding wrinkles that the Lady told him signaled hidden snags or bars. The autumn had been rainy and the water was high; Gawen looked at the waving water grass and imagined sunken meadows. Hills and hummocks poked through the surface, linked in some places by thick reeds. It was past noon when at last the Lady sent the boat sliding up the pebbled shore of one island which-at least to Gawen-seemed no different from any other. Then she stepped out on the dry ground and motioned to the two children to follow her onto the land.
    She asked, “Can you build a fire?”
    “I am sorry, Lady. I have never been taught that either.” He felt himself blushing. “I know how