Priestess of Avalon: Avalon

Marion Zimmer Bradley · Diana L. Paxson

Apr 2013 · Hachette UK

About this ebook

As the Merlin of Britannia keeps his vigil atop the Tor of Avalon, Rian, the High Priestess of Avalon, dies giving birth to her fifth child. The girl, named Eilan with her mother's dying breath, takes life. From the stars the Merlin draws forth her prophecy: 'The child that was born at the Turning of Autumn, just as the night gave way to dawn, shall stand at the turning of the Age, the gateway between two worlds.' A prophecy of greatness, but it seems that she is destined to walk a path unlike any trodden by a Priestess of Avalon before...

Eilan is taken to her father, King Coel, and raised in the Roman way as Helena, but in the year A.D. 259 the ten-yaer-old girl is returned to Avalon, the mystical place of her birth, to begin her training as a priestess and learn the ways of the Goddess. Yet her Aunt Ganeda, now High Priestess, is determined that Helena shall fail.

Despite the odds, Helena grows to be a skille healer and a compassionate and gifted priestess, and on the moonlit night of her initiation she sees the face of the Roman, Constantius, the man she will love for the rest of her life. Her vision also reveals that he will be the father of the one whose light will blaze across the world, the one who will free Britannia from Roman tyranny.

Constantius is lured to Avalon to fulfil his role in this but Helena joins him in a night of illicit passion. When this deceit is discovered they are banished from Avalon forever. Soon Constantius is drawn back to the politics of Rome, the ill fortunes of war and the irresistible rise of a powerful new religion, and as Helena contends with the dangers that surround them, it seems that the Merlin's prophecy is about to come true...

About the author

Marion Zimmer Bradley (1930 - 1999)

Marion Zimmer was born in Albany, New York, in 1930, and grew up across the Hudson River on a farm in East Greenbush. She married Robert Alden Bradley in 1949. She received a B.A. from Hardin Simmons University, Texas, and did post-graduate work at the University of California, Berkeley, during which time she helped found the Society for Creative Anachronism. She sold her first story in 1952 and was a writer of note for over four decades. Bradley is best known for two signature series: the 'Darkover' science fantasy series and her Arthurian masterpiece, The Mists of Avalon and its sequels. She also edited anthologies for 14 years and published Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine, which ran for 50 quarterly issues between 1988 and the end of 2000. Marion Zimmer Bradley died in Berkeley, California, on September 25, 1999, four days after suffering a major heart attack.

For more information see www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/bradley_marion_zimmer

Diana L. Paxson (1943 - )

Born in 1943, Diana Lucile Paxson is an author primarily in the area of Paganism. She co-authored, with Marion Zimmer Bradley, the sequels to Bradley's The Mists of Avalon.