"I would have come to you when Morgaine was born," Viviane said, "but I was pregnant, too. I bore a son that year. I have put him out to nurse, and I think his foster-mother may send him to the monks. She is a Christian."
"Don't you mind his being reared as a Christian?" Morgause asked. "Is he pretty? What is his name?"
Viviane laughed. "I called him Balan," she said, "and his foster-mother named her son Balin. They are only ten days apart in age, so they will be reared as twins, no doubt. And no, I do not mind that he is reared a Christian, his father was so, and Priscilla is a good woman. You said the journey here was long; believe me, child, it is longer now than it was when you were wedded to Gorlois. Not longer, perhaps, from the Isle of the Priests, where their Holy Thorn grows, but longer, far longer, from Avalon ..."
"And that is why we came here," said the Merlin suddenly, and his voice was like the tolling of a great bell, so that Morgaine sat up suddenly and began to whimper in fright.
"I do not understand," said Igraine, suddenly uneasy. "Surely the two lie close together ... ."
"The two are one," said the Merlin, sitting very erect, "but the followers of Christ have chosen to say, not that they shall have no other Gods before their God, but that there is no other God save for their God; that he alone made the world, that he rules it alone, that he alone made the stars and the whole of creation."
Igraine quickly made the holy sign against blasphemy.
"But that cannot be," she insisted. "No single God can rule all things ... and what of the Goddess? What of the Mother ... ?"
"They believe," said Viviane, in her smooth low voice, "that there is no Goddess; for the principle of woman, so they say, is the principle of all evil; through woman, so they say, Evil entered this world; there is some fantastic Jewish tale about an apple and a snake."
"The Goddess will punish them," Igraine said, shaken. "And yet you married me to one of them?"
"We did not know that their blasphemy was so all-encompassing,"
Merlin said, "for there have been followers of other Gods in our time. But they respected the Gods of others."
"But what has this to do with the length of the road from Avalon?" asked Igraine.
"We come, then, to the reason for our visit," said the Merlin, "for, as the Druids know, it is the belief of mankind which shapes the world, and all of reality. Long ago, when the followers of Christ first came to our isle, I knew that this was a powerful pivot in time, a moment to change the world."
Morgause looked up at the old man, her eyes wide in awe.
"Are you so old, Venerable One?"
The Merlin smiled down at the girl and said, "Not in my own body. But I have read much in the great hall which is not in this world, there the Record of All Things is written. And also, I was living then. Those who are the Lords of this world permitted me to come back, but in another body of flesh."
"These matters are too abstruse for the little one, Venerable Father," Viviane said, gently rebuking him. "She is not a priestess. What the Merlin means, little sister, is that he was living when the Christians first came here, and that he chose, and was allowed, to reincarnate at once, to follow his work through. These are Mysteries, which you need not try to understand. Father, go on."
"I knew that this was one of those moments where the history of all mankind would be changed," the Merlin said. "The Christians seek to blot out all wisdom save their own; and in that strife they are banishing from this world all forms of mystery save that which will fit into their religious faith. They have pronounced it a heresy that men live more than one life -which every peasant knows to be true-"
"But if men do not believe in more than one life," Igraine protested, shaken, "how will they avoid despair? What just God would create some men wretched, and others happy and prosperous, if one life were all that they could have?"
"I do not know," said the Merlin. "Perhaps they wish men to despair at the harshness of fate, so that they may come on their knees to the Christ who will take them to heaven. I do not know what the followers of Christ believe, or what they hope for." His eyes were closed for a moment, the lines of his face bitter. "But whatever it is that they believe, the views they hold are altering this world; not only in the spirit, but on the material plane. As they deny the world of the spirit, and the realms of Avalon, so those realms cease to exist for them. They still exist, of course; but not in the same world with the world of the followers of Christ. Avalon, the Holy Isle, is now no longer the same island as the Glastonbury where we of the Old Faith once allowed the monks to build their chapel and their monastery. For our wisdom and their wisdom-how much do you know of natural philosophy, Igraine?"
"Very little," said the young woman, shaken, looking at the priestess and the great Druid. "I have never been taught."
"A pity," said the Merlin, "for you must understand this, Igraine. I will try to make it simple for you. Look you," he said, and took the gold torque from his throat, then drew his dagger. "Can I put this bronze and this gold into the same place, at once?"
She blinked and stared, not understanding. "No, of course not. They can be side by side, but not in the same place unless you move one of them first."
"And so it is with the Holy Isle," said Merlin. "The priests swore an oath to us, four hundreds of years ago, before even the Romans came here and tried to conquer, that they would never rise against us and drive us forth with weapons; for we were here before them, and then they were suppliants, and weak. And they have honored that oath-so much I must give to them. But in spirit, in their prayers, they have never ceased to strive with us for their God to drive away our Gods, their wisdom to rule over our wisdom. In our world, Igraine, there is room enough for many Gods and many Goddesses. But in the universe of the Christians-how can I say this?-there is no room for our vision or our wisdom. In their world there is one God alone; not only must he conquer over all Gods, he must make it as if there were no other Gods, had never been any Gods but only false idols, the work of their Devil. So that, believing in him, all men may be saved in this one life. This is what they believe. And as men believe, so their world goes. And so the worlds which once were one are drifting apart.
"There are now two Britains, Igraine: their world under their One God and the Christ; and, beside it and behind it, the world where the Great Mother still rules, the world where the Old People have chosen to live and worship. This has happened before. There was the time when the fairy folk, the Shining Ones, withdrew from our world, going further and further into the mists, so that only an occasional wanderer now can spend a night within the elf-mounds, and if he should do so, time drifts on without him, and he may come out after a single night and find that his kinfolk are all dead and that a dozen years have gone by. And now, I tell you, Igraine, it is happening again. Our world-ruled by the Goddess and the Horned One, her consort, the world you know, the world of many truths-is being forced away from the mainstream course of time. Even now, Igraine, if a traveller sets out with no guide for the Isle of Avalon, unless he know the way very well, he cannot come there, but will find only the Isle of the Priests. To most men, our world is now lost in the mists of the Summer Sea. Even before the Romans left us, this was beginning to happen; now, as churches cover the whole of Britain, our world grows further and further away. That is why it took us so long to come here; fewer and fewer of the cities and roads of the Old People remain for our guide. The worlds still touch, still lie upon one another, close as lovers; but they are drifting apart, and if they are not stopped, one day there will be two worlds, and none can come and go between the two-"