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

to keep a good blaze going, but the Druids held fire to be sacred. It was only allowed to go out at special times, and then it was the priests who rekindled it.”
    “It is like men to make a mystery of something that any farmwife can do,” said Sianna scornfully. But the Lady shook her head.
    “Fire is a mystery. Like any power, it can be a danger, or a servant, or a god. What matters is how it is used.”
    “And what kind of flame is it that we kindle here?” he asked steadily.
    “A wayfarer’s fire only, which will serve to cook our day-meal. Sianna, take him with you and show him how to find tinder.”
    Sianna stretched out her hand to Gawen, closing her small warm fingers over his. “Here, we must find dry grasses and dead leaves; anything which will burn quickly and catch fire easily; little twigs and fallen deadwood-like this.” She let go his hand and picked up a handful of twigs. Together they sought out dry stuff and piled leaves and twigs into a little heap in a charred hollow in the damp soil. Larger sticks lay in a heap nearby. This was clearly a place they had used before.
    When she judged the pile big enough, the Lady showed him how to strike fire with a flint and steel that she had in a leather bag tied at her side, and it blazed up. It seemed odd to Gawen that she should make him do a servant’s work after hailing him as a king. But, looking at the fire, he remembered what she had said about it, and for a moment he understood. Even a cookfire was a sacred thing, and perhaps, in these days when the Romans ruled in the outer world, even a sacred king might have to serve in small and secret ways.
    After a few moments a cheerful little fire was sending up narrow tendrils of flame, which the Lady fed with successively larger sticks. When it was burning well, she reached into the punt and pulled from a bag the limp headless carcass of a hare. With a little stone knife she skinned and gutted it, and strung it on green sticks over the fire, which was settling to a steady glow as some of the sticks turned to coals. After a few moments sizzling juices from the hare began to drop into the fire. Gawen’s stomach growled in anticipation at the savory smell, and he became acutely aware that he had missed his breakfast.
    When the meat was done, the Lady divided it with her knife and gave a portion to each of the children, without, however, taking any herself. Gawen ate eagerly. When they had finished, the Lady showed them where to bury the bones and fur.
    “Lady,” said Gawen, wiping his hands on his tunic, “thank you for the meal. But I still don’t know what you want with me. Now that we have eaten, will you answer me?”
    For a long moment she considered him. “You think you know who you are, but you do not know at all. I told you, I am a guide. I will help you find what it is that you are meant to do.” She stepped back to the punt, motioning them to get in.
    What about the hundred kings? he wanted to ask. But he did not quite dare.
    This time the fairy woman drove the punt across open water where the inflowing waters of the river cut a channel through the marsh; she bent deeply to catch the bottom with the pole. The island toward which she was heading was large, separated only by a narrow channel from the higher ground to the west.
    “Walk quietly,” she said as they eased up onto the shore. She led them among the trees.
    Even at the beginning of winter, when leaves were beginning to fall, slipping between the trunks and underneath low branches was no easy task, and the dry leaves crackled beneath any unwary step. For a time Gawen was too caught up in the act of moving to question where they were going. The fairy woman passed without a sound, and Sianna moved almost as quietly. They made him feel like some great lumbering ox.
    Her lifted hand brought him to a grateful halt. Slowly she drew aside a branch of hazel. Beyond it lay a small meadow where red deer were cropping the fading grass.
    “Study