Marion Zimmer Bradley's Ancestors of Avalon (56 page)

Web of Darkness
was originally written in the 1950s. It was a story of occult mysteries, pride and power and redemption, and above all love, set in the temples of the Ancient Land, parent to the Sea Kingdoms of Atlantis. In the 1980s, when the emerging adult fantasy market made publication of such a story possible, Marion was busy with other projects, and asked her son David, who had read the original version as a child, to revise it. It is David’s knowledge of this material that has made it possible to write
Ancestors of Avalon.

In 1983, the year after
The Mists of Avalon
began its ascent to fame, the book, in two trade paperback volumes from Donning Press,
Web of Light
and
Web of Darkness,
at last emerged. A mass-market version was published by Pocket Books the next year. Later it was reissued by Tor in a single volume under the title
The Fall of Atlantis.
The struggles of the characters in that book result in the birth of two children who, according to the prophecies, will survive the cataclysm in which Atlantis is destined to be destroyed.

When I was working with Marion on the revision of
The Forest House,
she told me that she had always felt that two of the main characters, Eilan and Caillean, were reincarnations of the sisters Deoris and Domaris, who in
Web of Darkness
bind themselves and their offspring to each other and to the Goddess for eternity. We concluded that their children, Tiriki and Micail, had reappeared in that book as Sianna and Gawen. After that it was easy to trace the line of reincarnations through
The Mists of Avalon, The Forest House, Lady of Avalon,
and
Priestess of Avalon.

Clearly there was a connection between Atlantis and Avalon. How, I wondered, did the Sea Kingdoms fall? And how did the survivors of that cataclysm reach the misty islands to the north and find the magical Tor that would one day be known as the isle of Avalon? Clearly another story was waiting to be told.

To interlace legend with archaeology has been a challenge. I am grateful to Viking Books for asking me to tell that story, and to David Bradley for his insight and assistance in developing the setting and characters in a spirit consistent with Marion’s original vision. Thanks also to Charline Palmtag for permission to use the solstice hymn in Chapter Nine.

To those who would like to know more about prehistoric Britain, I would recommend
The Age of Stonehenge
by Colin Burgess;
Hengeworld
by Mike Pitts;
Stonehenge
by Leon Stover and Bruce Kraig; and the English Heritage volumes on Bronze Age Britain and Glastonbury. For the Tor,
The Lake Villages of Somerset
by Stephen Minnitt and John Coles; John Michell’s
New Light on the Ancient Mystery of Glastonbury;
and the books on Glastonbury by Nicholas Mann are recommended. The article “Sounds of the Spirit World” by Aaron Watson (
Discovering Archaeology
2:1, January/ February 2000), which I encountered in my doctor’s office after I had already decided that the structure of Stonehenge
had
to have had some interesting effects on sound made within the circle, reports on experiments into its acoustic properties.