Page 160 of The Daughters of Avalon
Chapter
Seven
No friend ever served me,
no enemy ever wronged me,
whom I have not repaid in full.
—Sulla
Ihave been called many names:
The Dark Goddess, the Shadow Crone, the Shapeshifter of Legend. I am the Mother of Avalon, Keeper of the Cauldron, Defender of the Grail. I am, and ever shall be, the most gifted dewine to walk the realms of men.But for love of a man, I found myself in a watery grave…
Pity me not.
Pity yourself.
My heart is basalt, forged by the fires of vengeance and rage.
Today I will be released from my shackles, and whatever traitor has betrayed my weakness to this metal, I will repay him in kind.
Biding my time, I brush a finger across the inscription so delicately etched into the silver-infused metal—hallowed words imbued, but not by thehudorhud du, only by holy writ. Therough edges catch the light like tiny diamonds. Untrained eyes might see glitter against the light, but I do not need light to read these words; I know what they say:
Hic est Draco,
Ex undis,
Tenetur in argenteas
A capite ad calcem, tace, et sile
Only one woman I know could have prescribed these words, and she suffered the consequences only to spite me… my mortal mother, Morgan Pendragon, she who birthed my body, but not my soul, and if aught remains of her inside me, I will suffocate her until she turns blue.
Here be the dragon,
From the waves of the sea,
Bound in silver,
From head to toe, silent and still
Silent and still.
Upon the high window, seven of my ravens sit, peering within, eyes black and shining.
There are no bars mounted here, for the window is too high and only winged creatures may come and go.
I could go, too… but for these shackles.
Soon, I think. Soon.
Resting my head back on the wooden chair… I wait… silent and still… like a fat bellied spider…remembering the moment of my mother’s demise.
Little more than twenty years ago, they burned that bitch on a stake while she wore these very shackles—bindings sheconspired to create. And perhaps she breathed her last on that pyre, hoping that someday I, too, would don them as she did. I offered her up as a sacrifice, and in the end, it was she who was destroyed… and all because she forgot a woman’s most seductiveglamour: I spread my legs for a king, whelped him a litter of bastards, and so of course, who was he to believe? But for that look upon her face, it was worth the loss of my most precious possession…
Blackwood, Blackwood… there she remains…
