Spirit of the Mist (22 page)

His left eye, the one normally covered by his leather strip, was still half-shut and watering. Perhaps Brendan had been right—perhaps he had gotten a bit of straw into his eye, or the remnants of it. Gently she reached out and lifted the lid, then looked closely at his eye, an eye that was whole and perfect and undamaged…
 

An eye that was brilliant blue.
 

The full moon drifted high over the beach, bright white against the night sky, only occasionally shadowed by the faint gray-black shadows of the clouds. The air was unusually cool and a mist was rising, rolling along the sand at the very base of the cliffs, where a few wild grasses grew.
 

Muriel waded barefoot into the sea, dipped her bronze basin into the cold water, and carried it to a large seaweed-draped boulder. For the space of several heartbeats she closed her eyes and stood with her head lowered, bracing herself with both hands against the cold, rough surface of the rock.
 

She did not know if she could do this. She was afraid to think that perhaps the water mirror would fail her this time—and equally afraid to think that it would not.
 

Muriel became aware that two druids stood on either side of her. She looked up and saw a large group of men and women gathered at the edge of the beach. Nearly all of the warriors and druids and their wives, it seemed, had come out to witness this. And in front of them, standing on the sand between the crowd and the sea, stood Brendan and Gill.
 

Muriel took a deep breath of the cool sea air and then stood up straight. “Take them to stand at the place where the sea meets the land,” she commanded. “That is the place that is not the sea, for a man can stand upon it; but neither is it land, for the sea washes over it. It is a place that is both land and sea, and a place that is neither. It is a place of power.”
 

She watched as the two men walked together and stood barefoot and ankle-deep in the rushing surf. Both were dressed only in simple linen tunics and breeches with no gold or bronze or any other metals anywhere on their bodies, their heads and faces bare and open to the night wind and rising mist. They were two men of equal height, one with short white hair ruffled by the night breeze and the other with golden brown locks flowing nearly to his shoulders.
 

“Stand back-to-back, though with a little space between you,” Muriel told them. “The older man faces east, while the younger one faces west, in the same path as the moon—and at this moment it will shine down equally upon you both.”
 

The two men did as she commanded, with Gill facing east and Brendan looking out to sea to the west.
 

Muriel gazed down at the dark surface of the water in her bronze basin, willing herself to see nothing else, and lowered her fingertips until they touched the cold liquid surface.
 

“Gill…show me who you are.”
 

The moon shone down bright and clear, and an image soon formed in the water mirror. Muriel saw a young boy, a child with golden brown hair and one eye of brown and the other of bright blue, wearing the plain ragged clothes and iron bands of the lowest servant class—the class of slaves—working to carry feed for animals and haul water into the fortress where he labored.
 

Odhran’s fortress.
 

In a moment the image changed, and Muriel saw Gill as he had been in his twenties. Except for the rough clothes and perpetual exhaustion from his endless hard work, the man was the image of Brendan: he had the same golden brown hair, the same strong jawline, the same height and broad shoulders and, of course, the same eyes.
 

The image changed again. She saw Gill with a young woman, a woman holding an infant child only a few months old—and as that child gazed up at them, Muriel could clearly see its one blue and one brown eye.
 

The woman handed the child over to Gill, turning away and hiding her face as she did so, her shoulders shaking with grief. Gill took the infant and slipped away into the night-shrouded forest behind him.
 

The images faded, but Muriel knew that the power remained. She lifted her hands and held them still for a moment, waiting while drops of water fell back into the mirror; and then she touched her fingers to the water’s surface again.
 

“Brendan…show me who you are.”
 

Now she saw an infant left in the night at the gates of Dun Bochna. A man’s strong arm, with an iron band at the wrist, pounded on the gates above the child, and then the man fled unseen just as the portal began to open.
 

Another image came, this time of a queen in childbed, newly delivered of a stillborn son. Mercifully she did not know, for the midwives had given her a draft to let her sleep. In the room was a king whom Muriel recognized—it was a young Galvin, dark-haired and vital, struggling with his grief and loss as he dreaded telling the truth to his wife.
 

A third vision now, this time of Galvin placing an infant boy into the arms of his spouse…a boy now wrapped in new linen and a fine woolen blanket of purple and blue…a boy with one blue eye and one brown. The queen took this smiling, happy child, she took him in her arms and held him close, even as Galvin placed his hand on the child’s light hair.
 

The water stilled and the clouds covered the moon. The images faded and Muriel fell to the sand.
 

She awoke cradled in Brendan’s arms, her head resting against his broad chest. With a gasp she sat up and then pushed away from him, swinging her feet down to the ground and standing on the beach before him as he reached to steady her. “Muriel! Let me help you—”
 

He tried to catch hold of her, but she backed away, holding up her hands. “I must tell you what I have seen,” she said. The others had gathered around, druids, and warriors, and wives.
 

“Of course,” her husband said. “But sit down first; let me—”
 

“I must tell you now!” Muriel walked away from them and found her way back to the rock where the water mirror still rested. She stopped there, placing her hands on the boulder on either side of the mirror, staring down at its dark surface as she tried to catch her breath, tried to think of what to do next.
 

“Muriel…please. Tell me what you have seen.”
 

She looked up to see Brendan gazing down at her from the other side of the rock—he had waded out to her. The dark sea glistened behind him and the high white moon shone bright above his head. His face was solemn and still, but the wind stirred his hair as he waited for her to speak. As she looked at Brendan, Gill came to stand beside him, and the two of them stood side by side.
 

Their shadowed faces were reflections of each other.
 

“Gill.” Muriel’s voice was faint as she struggled for words. “This began many years ago, when you and your wife lived and served in King Odhran’s fortress.”
 

“I lived there all my life,” he said quietly. “As did Brona, who was my wife.”
 

Brendan looked over at him, but Muriel pressed on. “You lived in cruelty. In suffering. In pain.”
 

“We knew no other way.”
 

“And so…when a son was born to you, you and your wife decided that he would not grow up as you did. You yourself took him in the night to Dun Bochna, to King Galvin, in the hope that someone there would foster him, even though he was the child of slaves.”
 

“I did,” whispered Gill. “The life of the lowest servant at Dun Bochna would be far better than that of any of Odhran’s slaves.”
 

“Did you know what became of the child you left at the gates?”
 

Slowly Gill shook his head. “I know that the gates opened and someone came and took him in. But no more. I never expected to know. The only thing I had was the hope that his life would be better than mine.”
 

“It was better than you dreamed,” Muriel said. “Better than you could know. Not long after you left your son at the gates, the queen of Dun Bochna was delivered of a stillborn child…and to save her the grief, the king gave her your child to love and to raise as her own.
 

“A child who grew up not as a slave but as a cherished prince…a tall, strong, happy child, with one eye of blue and one eye of brown. A child whom the king and queen named Brendan.”
 

The two of them stood motionless, side by side, transfixed by her words. “Look at your father. Look at your son,” she commanded them. “Gill, you have known who he was since the night of the cattle raid out on the mountain, when first you saw his face by the light of the moon. That is why you followed us, when I traveled with Brendan to become his wife. That is why you waited for us in the woods that night… That is why you were so willing to come with us and live here among us.”
 

Gill looked straight at her, though his voice began to fail. “I knew that if hope lay anywhere…it lay with him.”
 

Muriel paused and breathed deeply of the cool smell of the surf. “Brendan,” she said. “Brendan. Surely now you know who you must be.”
 

His voice was so faint that she could scarcely hear it. “I know,” he said. “I know it now.”
 

He raised his face to look up at the moon, then lowered his gaze once more. “I laughed when you had your doubts, Muriel, about whether you were really marrying a king. I thought nothing of the signs at our marriage, dismissed the incident at Galvin’s interment, and forced myself to ignore the message of the fidchell game. I never had any doubt at all about who or what I was…until this day, when I saw my true father’s eyes.”
 

The two men looked at each other, and then the son reached for the father. Muriel watched them embrace in the shadowed moonlight…until her eyes filled with tears and she could no longer see them at all.
 

Chapter Fourteen
 

Somehow they found their way back to the fortress gates in the darkness, following the torches that a few of the warriors carried. From a great distance, it seemed, Muriel heard the voices of the druids as they walked. “We will hold a council among ourselves tomorrow,” one of them said, though he was nothing more than a faraway voice. “We will consult the laws and decide what must be done.”
 

What must be done… The words echoed in Muriel’s mind as she and the rest of the group walked mutely through the gates of Dun Bochna. The party quietly drifted apart and melted into the darkness once they were inside, the druids and warriors going to their houses, and Gill to his place in the King’s Hall. He paused once, looking at Brendan as though he wanted to say something, but the subservient habits of a lifetime were still strong in him, and so he went on in silence.
 

Muriel and Brendan found themselves alone in front of their house. They stood face-to-face, the sky black and cloud-covered now, the only light coming from the flickering torches scattered around the grounds. Muriel reached for the door and started to push it open, but he stopped her, catching her hand and drawing her back to again stand in front of him.
 

“This is no longer my home,” he said.
 

“Brendan—of course this is your home. It is our home—”
 

He shook his head. “It is the home of a man of the warrior class and his wife…and we have learned that I am not a man of the warrior class.”
 

“Please,” she whispered. “Nothing has been decided yet. Please come inside.”
 

“We both know what they will decide. There is only one choice before them.”
 

“Brendan—”
 

“They have no choice,” he repeated. “A tanist must be of the king’s family—a son, a cousin, a brother. I am nothing of the king’s family. I am the son of slaves.”
 

“Your father and mother did a great thing for you,” Muriel said, tightening her grip on his hand. “They risked everything to give you a better life than any they had known—and they succeeded.”
 

But her husband only shook his head. “It would have been better if they had kept me with them and let me live the life I was supposed to live…let me know only a simple life of labor, with no one for companionship but other slaves and servants…no heavy gold around my neck, no fine clothes on my back, no thoughts in my head of bold actions and cattle raids and men following me into battle. Most of all, no beautiful queen at my side, no noble wife with the power of magic to come into my life and my heart.”
 

He released her hand and turned away, head bowed, his shoulders rising and falling as he struggled for breath.
 

She started to go to him, but then heard his voice again. “Tell me, Lady Muriel…is it better to have nothing and be content with it, or to have everything and watch it disappear? Who is happier—my father, or me?”
 

She caught her breath as the pain of his words filled her heart. “Those are terrible questions. I do not believe that any answer is a good one when it comes to such things.”