Spirit of the Mist (33 page)

All of them knew what had happened when Odhran and his men crept in to attack Dun Camas and burned its wooden palisades: its people were killed or driven off, its women enslaved by Odhran’s men…and its king, Fallon, was blinded by the point of the heavy gold brooch that Odhran so proudly wore on his cloak.
 

“My wounds tormented me, but not half as much as the knowledge that I had not been able to protect my kingdom. As Grania so often reminded me in those days, I did not lose it in a fair fight. No warriors met each other on the fields in lawful combat. Instead, great hordes of Odhran’s men attacked in the night without warning, torching the fortress and swarming in through the broken gates.
 

“There were simply too many of them. They used the lowest of tactics at every turn. Yet the fact remained that in the end, I could not protect Dun Camas. When its people needed me the most, I failed them.”
 

“You did not fail them, King Fallon,” Brendan said. “No man—no king—no people—could have known that even Odhran would do such a cowardly thing as to attack and burn a sleeping fortress in the night. Fair and lawful combat is one thing. But he would have had no chance against you in an open battle, and he well knew it.
 

“All of us underestimated his treachery. This was not your failing. It was Odhran’s failing, and that of every last man who chose to follow him.”
 

Fallon smiled. “I thank you, Brendan. Though you may be able to forgive me, I cannot forgive myself—not unless I can do something to right the wrong of having lost my kingdom, no matter what the cause.
 

“When I knew that I had lost my place as king, never to regain it, my only thought was to walk to the edge of the cliffs and continue to walk until I fell into the sea. If I did not, it was for one reason only: because Grania begged me not to.
 

“I stayed alive for her sake, and I became as I was when you knew me at Dun Bochna …a displaced king living in the shadows, a man who should have been dead but remained among the living for love of his wife and no other reason.”
 

“Are you so certain there is no other reason?” Muriel asked gently. “I can certainly understand your wish to stay with Grania…yet I know how the loss of your kingdom weighed upon you.”
 

The old king turned to face her. “You are nothing if not perceptive, Lady Muriel. It is true that I would have walked off the cliffs if not for Grania—but in addition to her, there was the hope, however faint, that I might find some way to help my kingdom before my death. And that hope sustained me, too.”
 

There was another silence. Then Darragh spoke. “King Fallon… I can only say that I would rather have one such as you as my king, even with a blemish, than most other men, physically perfect as they may be.”
 

Fallon nodded. “I thank you, Darragh,” he said. “You are a good and loyal man. But there is a reason why a king must be whole and strong, and why those who are crippled or disfigured cannot serve their people in this way.” The old ruler faced Brendan, apparently knowing where he was though he could see nothing. “The king is the symbol of his people, of his land. If he is complete, if he has the strength a man should have both of body and of mind, then his people and his lands will be likewise vital.
 

“But if he is lacking somehow—if he is broken, if he is maimed, if he is weakened or incomplete in any way, whether physical or mental—his kingdom will soon become the same. This is what we have all been taught, and this is the truth. Odhran knew exactly what he was doing when he took away my sight.”
 

“I wish that it were in my power to restore it,” murmured Brendan. “It is a tragedy that you are exiled, while a man like Odhran—”
 

“I can never become whole again,” Fallon interrupted. “My kingdom is lost…lost to me forever. You, too, are a wounded king, Brendan, but yours is a different kind of imperfection.”
 

Brendan looked up at him.
 

“Yours is a wound of the spirit,” Fallon said. “You are not crippled or maimed. You are not blind or broken.”
 

“But I am false,” Brendan whispered. “I had no right to be a prince or a king. I will never have that right. My blood family is not a noble one.”
 

Fallon seemed to look right at him. “Did you believe yourself to be false when you served and defended the people of Dun Bochna? Did your lady ever doubt your worth, your right, to serve as king?”
 

Muriel thought her heart would stop. “I am ashamed to say that I did doubt his right to kingship. My water mirror showed me his true family. And I was afraid.”
 

“Yet you married him in spite of this, and served at his side at Dun Bochna—and here on this island.”
 

She smiled a little. “I did.”
 

“Do you still doubt that he is a king, Lady Muriel?”
 

“I do not.” She looked at Brendan, sitting close beside her, and reached for his hand. “Not any longer.”
 

Fallon turned back to Brendan. “We brought you here to hide you, to save your life, that is true—but Grania and I had another reason. We saw in you not a false king, but a wounded one.
 

“Not wounded as I am, beyond hope of ever being whole again, but one who might come to a place such as this to heal as well as hide…and then, one day, return to reclaim his kingdom.”
 

Brendan stared at him. “I do not know how such a thing could be possible. Once a kingdom is lost, it is lost forever.”
 

Fallon smiled a little, shook his head. “Only if the king is unwilling or unable to fight. I was—and still am—willing to fight for my kingdom, but I am no longer able. You, Brendan, are still a warrior like no other. If any man could hope to defeat Odhran and free Dun Camas from his foul grip, it is you.
 

“Grania and I both understood this. We chose to come here with you not just to hide you, but to heal you. Dun Bochna is not the only land in need of a true and powerful king.”
 

Brendan seemed to struggle to draw breath. “Two kingdoms? You believe I could save two kingdoms?” he said at last.
 

Fallon nodded. “Two kingdoms. I believe you are one who can do this. Grania believed it, too. Perhaps you see now, Brendan, why a king must always be a warrior—a whole, strong warrior who will fight to the end for what is rightly his.”
 

Muriel thought her husband would speak…but he kept his silence, as all of them did, staring into the rising white mist.
 

“I can only imagine how terrible this journey has been for you, King Fallon,” said Muriel. “I hope you know what a great help you have been to us all—you and Queen Grania both. She helped me to bear this place when my own resolve began to fail.”
 

Fallon turned in her direction. “She knew a queen when she met one. She knew what you are, what you will always be.”
 

Muriel could not help glancing at Brendan, but he looked only at Fallon. “Muriel is a queen,” he said firmly. “She deserves to be a queen, but finds herself married to a man who never was a king and never will be—no matter how much he desires it. The law is the law. Unless Muriel can start her life anew, she cannot take what is her right. She cannot be a queen.”
 

Fallon raised his head and turned back to Brendan. “All this time you knew her, Grania was no longer the wife of the ruler of Dun Camas,” he said, his voice as strong and firm as any warrior’s. “Did any of you believe that she was not a queen?”
 

The others glanced around. “We did not,” Brendan said. “If any woman was a queen, it was Grania.”
 

“Then how can you say your own wife is not a queen?”
 

“She married a man who she thought was a tanist—a man awaiting kingship. But you all know how it turned out. I am nothing now. I am not even a free man—”
 

“The druids said you were to live as a free man.” Gill’s contradiction echoed through the mist. “They gave you that much.”
 

Slowly Fallon stood, and it seemed to Muriel that he glared straight at her husband. “Have you not been listening? Are you nothing more than what other men choose to give you?”
 

“I have no choice in the matter,” he said quietly. “You know the laws as well as I.”
 

“Those laws did not prevent you from coming here. And there is nothing in them to prevent you, a free man, from going where you wish with your wife and starting life anew.”
 

Brendan bowed his head. “Did my wife not tell you of the curse that rests on the women of her family? That those who marry any man but a king are doomed to lose their power of magic and walk through life as a gray and fragile shell?”
 

“She spoke of it to Grania, and Grania whispered it to me. And I also know, Lady Muriel, that you have made no effort to use any of your powers since we set foot on this island.”
 

Muriel looked away. “The power I had was over the sea,” she said. “There has been no reason for me to try it while we are up here.”
 

“Your water mirror holds nothing but rain,” the old man snapped.
 

“The moon has been hidden behind the clouds.”
 

“Tonight it will be full.”
 

“The mist—”
 

“Blinds you?” Fallon stepped closer.
 

“Do you believe that because I am blind, I can no longer see? Listen to me, Lady Muriel: when Odhran took my sight, I thought I had become weak and helpless—a man who no longer had any reason to live, for he had lost all of his power. But Grania soon taught me that far worse than losing the power of sight was the fear I had of doing without it.” He motioned emphatically. “I had not become powerless because I was blind. It was because I had become afraid. If anything can take away power, it is fear.”
 

Muriel stared at him, her breath coming quickly as she searched for words. “King Fallon… I thank you for your wisdom. But…but I believe our situations are far different. Your blindness was the result of an enemy’s violent act, while mine is…is from—”
 

“Lady Muriel,” the old sovereign said. “These women of your family whose lives became so empty—did any of them try to use their powers, once married? Or did they simply fear that they could not?”
 

She started to speak, and then she paused. “I do not know,” she said at last. “I know only that my sisters became like two who hardly knew they were alive, much less that they could wield any power of magic.” She shook her head. “I do not believe they ever tried it again.”
 

“Then do you not understand why their magic left them? Muriel, my wife and I spoke of this at length. It was not because of the men they married. I believe it was because they feared it had left them! The presence of that fear was, in itself, enough to drive their magic away!
 

“The women of your family were not cursed with powerlessness. It is clear to me that they were cursed with fear. Nothing leads to powerlessness like fear. They too were blind, as blind as Odhran left me, as blind as you believe you are when the mist shuts out the moon.”
 

Carefully, but confidently, Fallon walked over the mossy, rocky ledge until he stood directly in front of Muriel. “Sometimes you must be willing to walk headlong into the mist and test yourself, to trust your inner sight while outwardly blind. You may be surprised to find that your spirit will rise up even stronger each time you do so. There are other battles than those that come on horseback to steal your cattle. A spirit of the sword is one sort of power—a spirit of the mist is quite another.”
 

All of them sat in silence for a time. The fog continued to move and weave around them, as if the cold breath of the sea had risen up from far below to envelop them and hold them prisoner. It only grew thicker and colder as they waited.
 

“It is a mist that holds us captive now, King Fallon,” Brendan said at last. “I have never seen any so heavy, so thick, so white.”
 

“Each of us will walk out of the mist when it is time to do so,” said Fallon. “When it is time, you will know.” He took one more step toward Muriel and reached out to touch her sleeve.
 

“I thank you all for remembering Queen Grania this night. I will go now and rest for a time, and remember her in my own way.” He bent down and placed gentle hands on either side of Muriel’s face, then kissed her forehead. “Do not fear the mist, Lady Muriel.”
 

Next he moved to Brendan and touched his shoulder.
 

“Let no man tell you what you are.” Muriel’s husband returned the gesture, placing his own hand briefly atop the old king’s arm. Then Fallon turned and walked away toward the center of the little campsite, soon disappearing into the thick white fog.
 

The weariness of the day hung heavy on Muriel. She leaned her head on Brendan’s shoulder and closed her eyes, trying to think of nothing else but the strength of his arms around her and the warmth of his skin against her cheek…and trying to shut out the sight of the unnerving, all-encompassing mist.