Read Lady of Avalon for Free Online

of him and never even let him try. Now that he knew Ardanos had been his own great-grandfather, the one who wanted to kill Eilan when he knew she was with child, he understood why, but he was still wary of letting his interest show.
    “If I were called to that path,” he said carefully, “wouldn’t I know it by now?”
    The old man spat into the fire. “What do you like to do?”
    “At the Forest House I helped with the goats, and worked sometimes in the garden. When there was time the other children and I played ball.”
    “You like to be out and about, then, instead of studying?” The keen eyes fixed him once more.
    “I like doing things,” Gawen said slowly, “but I like learning things too, if they are interesting. I loved the hero-tales that the Druids used to tell.” He wondered what kind of stories the Roman children learned, but he knew better than to ask here.
    “If you like stories, then we will get on,” said Brannos, smiling. “Do you wish to stay?”
    Gawen looked away. “I think there were bards among my kin. Perhaps that is why Lady Caillean sent me to you. If I have no talent for music will you still want me?”
    “It is your strong arms and legs I need, alas, not music.” The old man sighed; then his bushy brows drew down. “You ‘think’ there were bards in your family? You do not know? Who were your parents?”
    The boy eyed him warily. Caillean had not said he was to keep his parentage a secret, but the knowledge was so new to him it did not seem real. But perhaps Brannos had lived so long that even this would not seem strange.
    “Would you believe that until this moon I did not even know their names? They are dead now, and I suppose it cannot hurt them anymore if people know about me…” He heard with surprise the resentment in his own words. “They say my mother was the High Priestess of Vernemeton, the Lady Eilan.” He remembered her sweet voice and the fragrance that always clung to her veils, and blinked back tears. “But my father was a Roman, so you can see I should probably never have been born.”
    The ancient Druid could no longer sing, but there was nothing wrong with his ears. He heard the sullen note in the boy’s voice and sighed.
    “It does not matter in this house who your parents were. Cunomaglos himself, who rules the Druid priesthood here as the Lady Caillean rules the priestesses, came from a family of potters near Londinium. None of us on this earth knows, save by hearsay, who his mother may have been, or his father. Before the gods, nothing matters save what you may create for yourself.”
    That is not completely true, thought Gawen. Caillean said she saw me born, so she knows who my mother was. But I suppose that is hearsay, for I have to trust her word that it is true. Can I trust her? he wondered suddenly. Or this old man, or anyone here? Oddly enough, the face that came into his mind at that moment was that of the Queen of Faerie. He trusted her, he thought, and that was strange, for he was not even sure that she was real.
    “Among the Druids of our order,” said the old man, “birth does not matter. All men come alike into this life with nothing, and whether you are a son of the Arch-Druid or of a homeless wanderer, every man begins as a squalling naked babe-I as much as you, the son of a beggar or a king or of a hundred kings-all men begin so, and all end the same, in a winding sheet.”
    Gawen stared at him. The Lady of the Fairy Folk had used the same phrase-“Son of a Hundred Kings.” It made him feel hot and cold at the same time. She had promised to come for him. Perhaps then she would tell him what that title might mean. He felt his heart pound suddenly and did not know if it was with anticipation or fear.
    As the moon which had welcomed her return to Avalon waned, Caillean found herself settling into its routine as if she had never been away. In the mornings, when the Druids climbed the Tor to salute the dawn, the priestesses made their