Kushiel 03 - [Moirin 01] - Naamah's Kiss

by Jacqueline Carey

  He gave a brief bow. “Come in peace and be welcome.”

  I felt dizzy with the newness of it all. The burial mound loomed. It was a calm place, a tranquil place.

  A place of death.

  And today, the Maghuin Dhonn watched over it.

  “Fainche.” A man reached out his hand. “You came.”

  “I came,” she agreed, taking his hand. “Moirin, this is Oengus.”

  He clapped my shoulder and smiled. The scent of musk and granite and pine surrounded me. “Well met, little one.”

  Others came then, gazing at me with dark, curious eyes. All of them bore the subtle stamp of the Maghuin Dhonn—a sense of wildness, untamed and dangerous. It should have been reassuring, but it wasn’t. They regarded me as though I were other, and for the first time, I felt strange and alien to myself.

  “Has she shown signs of great promise?” a woman whispered to my mother. My mother shrugged. “Ah.” The other woman turned away, disappointed.

  “Moirin!” A man with laughing eyes came forward, proffering a short bow sized for a child’s draw and a quiver of neatly fletched arrows. “Well met, little niece. I made this for you.” He kissed my mother on the cheek. “Greetings, sister. Do you prosper in your hermitage?”

  “Aye.” She smiled. “Moirin, this is your uncle, Mabon. He has a gift for working with wood.”

  I had an uncle?

  “Thank you,” I whispered, clutching the bow and quiver.

  He tousled my hair. “Fine as silk.” He lowered his voice. “Does she—?” My mother shook her head. “Ah.” The same disappointment. “Well, then.”

  The sound of a harp arose, piercing and poignant and beautiful. I knew of harps only from my mother’s tales, but even so, I could sense the mastery in the harpist’s touch. He stood apart from everyone else, eyes closed.

  “Mother?” I touched her arm. “What is it everyone expects me to be?”

  “Hush.” She rubbed my back with a soothing motion. “We will speak of it, but not now.” She nodded at the burial mound. “Now is for honoring those who lie within and remembering that such a thing should never come to pass again.”

  I gazed at the green mound.

  Our history lay buried there. A princess of the Cullach Gorrym, great with child—the half-D’Angeline child who would have grown to manhood and crushed the Maghuin Dhonn, hunting us down and destroying all our sacred places. And our last two great magicians, Morwen and Berlik, who had slain her and the child in her womb.

  They had broken binding oaths to do it.

  In the tales, they bore the mark of a magician—eyes as pale as moonlight, unheard of among our kind. My skin prickled, and I wondered again what color my own eyes were.

  We stood for a long time while the harp gave voice to a wordless song of knowledge, power, and folly, and terrible sacrifice.

  Morwen’s folly had been the most grave and her sacrifice the most terrible. By the terms of the oath she broke, her spirit was condemned to wander for ten thousand years without solace.

  Morwen… Moirin?

  I shivered some more.

  What a dire night it must have been. No wonder we were still feared in Alba. I was filled with a reverent horror at the choices Morwen and Berlik had made, and pity for the poor princess and the babe that bore the cost of them. Aye, and her husband, too. The D’Angeline prince. Morwen had died here that night, but Berlik had fled, north and ever north, mayhap seeking the land of our distant origin. The D’Angeline prince had tracked him to the snowy ends of the earth and brought back his head.

  Dusk was falling.

  One last note lingering in the air, then the harp fell silent. An entourage from the castle was approaching across the field. A woman dressed in a fine gown rode at the head of it astride a chestnut horse. The armed men fell in to flank the party. Oengus moved to meet them. He inclined his head in greeting. Her gaze swept over the assembled Maghuin Dhonn. I felt my mother’s hands on my shoulders, pulling me close to her. The twilight deepened around us as she summoned it, cloaking me as though I were still a babe.

  “Oengus, son of Niall,” the finely dressed woman said. “All is well between our people?”

  He inclined his head a second time. “By stone and sea and sky and all that they encompass, I swear it, Lady.”

  This time she inclined her head in response. “Go in peace.” She glanced once more over us. “We give greeting to our wild kin.”

  With that, she took her leave and her entourage went with her. My mother released the twilight and I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding.

  “She’s kin?” I asked.

  “Aye,” my mother said. “A descendant of Alais’ and Arwyn’s line. There’s always one in residence at Clunderry.”

  “Oh.” It meant we shared as kin my great-great-grandmother—Alais the Wise, daughter of the Cruarch of Alba and the Queen of Terre d’Ange. What tenuous place the Maghuin Dhonn held in Alba was due to her. She’d wed one of us—or at least a half-breed. Conor mac Grainne, son of the Lady of the Dalriada and a wandering Maghuin Dhonn harpist. Their eldest, their daughter Arwyn, had gone on to be named the Cruarch Talorcan’s heir and ruled Alba in the latter days of her life.

  Alais’ and Conor’s other two daughters had answered the call of their diadh-anam and gone back to the wild places we liked best. They had married and mingled with others of our kind.

  “Why didn’t you want her to see us?” I asked. “Surely we’re at peace?”

  “Aye.” My mother looked around. The Maghuin Dhonn were beginning to drift away in twos and threes. “There’s to be a revel, but there’s somewhat I wish you to see first. There, we will speak.”

  We slipped back into the twilight. She led me back toward the castle, then into the woods along a path. In an ancient oak grove, she paused and breathed deeply. I did the same.

  It was a sacred place. I could feel the slow pulse of the earth beneath my feet. The oak trees dreamed their slow dreams, roots reaching deep into the earth, remembering year upon year of libations poured in tribute.

  A good place.

  But we didn’t linger. She moved on along the path until we reached the circle of standing stones. This, too, was a sacred place. But it smelled of old blood, and the fine hairs at the nape of my neck stood on end.

  “She died here,” I whispered. “Morwen.”

  “Aye.”

  “Am I named for her?”

  My mother hesitated. “Not quite, no. Come.”

  I let her lead me into the center of the ring. There was a slab of a boulder there, half buried. Here was where the blood-smell came from. My mother sat atop it with thoughtless grace. I stood before her, still clutching the bow and quiver my uncle had given me.

  “You know the old ones were able to summon visions from the standing stones?” she asked. I nodded. “Here is where she showed the D’Angeline prince what his son would become. Only when it had come to that. Only when there were no other futures to see. And there were others at first.” She was quiet a moment. “In one, Morwen bore the D’Angeline prince a child.”

  “A daughter,” I murmured.

  My mother nodded. “She would have been a great magician who brought balance to the struggle and peace to the land. But the prince refused her, and her attempts to bind him failed in misery. That was her great folly.” Her mouth quirked. “It seems the gods of Terre d’Ange are particular in matters of love.”

  “I am named for a child that never was?”

  “Aye.”

  “Why?”

  Another silence. She let go my hand to brush fine strands of hair out of my eyes. “Your father was D’Angeline.”

  I remembered the words Oengus had spoken in the night. “You were called to him?”

  “I was.”

  “Was he a prince?”

  She shook her head. “A priest, I think.”

  “You think?”

  “Peace, Moirin.” Something unfamiliar flickered behind her smile. “It w
as a revel. Lord Tiernan’s coronation. I attended it out of respect. There were many foreign guests in attendance. I asked no questions, only answered the call. The priest felt it, too. I daresay it surprised him.”

  “A priest of what?”

  My mother shrugged and spread her hands. “I do not know. I am not versed in the ways of D’Angeline faith.”

  I took a deep, shaking breath. “Yet you and everyone else expected a great magician to come of one night’s dalliance?”

  “I did not know,” she said simply. “Only that there was some purpose in it. So aye, I named you for a child that might have been. It is not so unusual a name; others have borne it. But it is a name with hope in it.”

  I swallowed. “And being no great magician, I disappoint.”

  “No!” Her eyes stretched wide. “Stone and sea, never!”

  “Others,” I said stubbornly. “I disappoint others.”

  She sighed. “They dream foolish dreams of glory, even as they remind themselves of ambition’s folly.” She gestured around at the massive stones standing sentinel in the twilight. “I wanted to bring you here, to tell you here. That whatever you become, that whatever destiny awaits you, no matter how great or how small, you understand in your bones the dangers of knowledge and power, and the toll they may take if used unwisely. Do you?”

  I breathed in the scent of old blood and nodded.

  Ten thousand years of wandering without solace…

  I understood.

  “Good lass,” my mother said softly. “Wise child.”

  My curiosity wasn’t satisfied. “Why did you not wish the Lady of Clunderry to see us?”

  “Ah.” She touched my cheek. “You bear the stamp of Terre d’Ange on your features, Moirin mine. One of royal blood might question your presence among the Maghuin Dhonn. Our lives are our own. And I am not fond of answering questions.”

  “Not even mine?” I inquired.

  She smiled. “Yours, I tolerate.”

  “What color are my eyes?”

  My mother cupped my face and kissed my brow. “Green,” she whispered. “Green as grass, green as the rushes grow.”

  Before that night, the revel that followed would have been the single greatest experience of my life. The glade in which it was held was spellbound, wrapped in a shroud of twilight that would render it visible as nothing more than a glimmering in the air to anyone without the gifts of the Maghuin Dhonn in their blood. There must have been almost a hundred people there—a great gathering for our folk. There were even a dozen or more children present, some near my age. I should have enjoyed the novelty.

  But I felt strange to myself.

  My father was a D’Angeline priest.

  I was half-D’Angeline.

  And I had no idea what that meant—or why, indeed, it should mean anything. Surely there were others.

  I searched the memory of my mother’s tales. No, never such a pairing. Not between an almost pure-blooded Maghuin Dhonn and a pure-blooded D’Angeline.

  So? Why should it matter?

  It shouldn’t and it didn’t—except that my mother had been called to him and he to her, and she had named me for a child that never was. Now the words whispered in the long-ago night and today’s disappointed looks made sense. For ten years, the Maghuin Dhonn had hoped I would prove to be a great magician. It made me angry—at them, at my mother. They had no right to place such expectations on me. She had no right to withhold such a great truth from me.

  “Pouting, little one?” Oengus stooped to crouch before me.

  “No,” I lied.

  “Ah, she told you.” He turned his head to gaze at my mother. A trick of the moonlight through the branches laid shadows like antlers over his tangled hair. “She’s a deep one, Fainche.”

  There was a fire in the center of the glade, burning silvery beneath twilight’s cloak. Bare-chested young men were leaping through the flames to the accompaniment of clapping hands and skirling pipes. One swaggered up to my mother and bowed to her, holding out one hand. She shook her head, laughing. Oengus’ eyes narrowed.

  “Do you love her?” I asked him.

  “Aye,” he said simply. “I’d have her to wife if she’d let me. But she’s solitary and set in her ways.” He looked back at me. “Do not judge her harshly. She bears a great love for you and in her own way seeks only to protect you.”

  It made me feel ungracious. “I will try.”

  “Good lass.” He rose and moved away.

  The revel wore on into the small hours of the night. There was music and dancing and an abundance of food—even roasted venison, which we seldom had. There were stone jugs of uisghe, a strong spirit begged or bartered from elsewhere, or stolen from tribute-gifts left by other folk. I found a jug with a scant inch left in the bottom and sampled it when no one was looking. It tasted unpleasant, but it blazed a trail into my belly where it simmered nicely, smoothing away the prickly edges of my temper.

  I decided I liked it.

  The children I’d been too sullen to attempt to befriend began to yawn and crumple, curling up in the grass to sleep beneath the stars. Men and women smiled at one another and went into the darkness together. When Oengus held his hand out to my mother, she gave me an inquiring glance from across the glade.

  I shrugged.

  She took his hand and went with him.

  I should have been weary, but my heart and mind were too full for sleep. I found another jug that sloshed a bit when I shook it and wandered into the night. The charm of concealment had darkened to the deepest purple twilight. Here and there couples were sighing. I found a place on the outskirts of the glade with long grass and sank into it. In the tree above me, an owl hooted softly.

  I summoned my own twilight and spotted it. “Hello.”

  The owl hooted again. It sounded disapproving. The glade was its nightly hunting ground and we were disturbing it.

  “I’m sorry.” I let my twilight go and sensed a rush of powerful wings as the owl launched itself. “Good hunting.”

  There was only a little uisghe in the jug, but it was late and I was growing tired after all. After I drank it, my head spun. I curled on my side in the tall grass and thought about all the coupling in the glade, all the Midsummer coupling in the tame fields beyond the woods. I knew what men and women did together. I’d seen frogs mating. There was that queer fluttering feeling in my belly again. Combined with the uisghe, it made me feel excited and sick.

  Not yet, the bright lady whispered in my memory.

  I closed my eyes and listened to the grass crackling beneath my ear. I thought about the other one, the one I’d seen in my mind’s eye earlier. The man. Bright, though not so bright as the lady. His gentle smile. The seedling cupped in his palm. I opened my eyes and gazed at the grass. There was a tiny, half-opened buttercup nestled amid the long stems, colorless in the fading twilight. I breathed in the remembered scent of sunlight warming the ripe fields, taking it deep into me where it mingled with the warmth of the uisghe. There was no sick feeling left, only calm and goodness.

  I cupped my hand around the blossom and blew out softly.

  The buttercup opened.

  Well, well, I thought. Mayhap I wasn’t a great shapeshifting magician like those from the days of old, but mayhap I had some small magic that was all my own.

  Or was it?

  Was it a gift of the Maghuin Dhonn? Or the mysterious, unknown gods of Terre d’Ange?

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

  I murmured a prayer to my diadh-anam and sought refuge in sleep, comforted by the rustling grasses.

  THREE

  It was a blessed relief to return to the solitude of our cave.

  I spoke less than was my wont on our long journey home and my mother did not press me. She spoke only of inconsequential things. She taught me to use the short bow that my uncle Mabon had given me, praising my fledgling skills. As we travelled, I got to be quite good with it.

  She did not speak of my father and I d
id not ask.

  I did not speak of the buttercup.

  Nor did I seek to repeat the attempt, not during our journey. But I paid greater attention to the world around me than I had paid before. Raised from childhood in the wilderness, I had always been attuned to it. Now it seemed that awareness had deepened, as though a sense I’d always possessed had awakened more fully. When I concentrated hard, I heard the songs trees sang to themselves, reaching their leafy crowns toward the sky, sinking their roots deep into the earth with a slow, satisfying slither.

  Not heard, not exactly. But it was a sense like hearing.

  A stand of birch trees grumbled in the shadow of a great spruce. The grasses and scrub of wide-open spaces flourished with a brief, exuberant shout. Wildflowers whispered delicately and perished.

  And animals…

  It was harder because they moved, but I could sense them, too—if I stayed still enough.

  Once, a fox-vixen trotted across our path, a grouse hanging from her narrow chops. She saw us and froze, one forepaw raised.

  “She’s got kits,” my mother murmured. “Half-grown, I reckon. Needs to feed them with autumn coming.”

  I felt relieved that I wasn’t alone in my ability to sense such things. “You can tell, too?”

  “Aye, of course. And you’re growing into your skills if you can.” She looked at me sidelong, then addressed the fox conversationally, summoning a flicker of twilight and making a shooing gesture. “Go on, you.”

  It trotted away fearlessly.

  “Do you hear the trees grow?” I asked her. “The grass speak?”

  My mother shook her head. “No. Do you?”

  I took a deep breath. “I do.”

  She eyed me. “Well, that’s a fine thing, isn’t it?”

  “Is it?”

  My mother smiled. “To be sure, Moirin mine.”

  “But it’s not a gift of the Maghuin Dhonn?” I pressed her.

  She walked without answering for a while. “I cannot say for certain. Surely, there have been those among us tied to the sacred places—the springs and groves and the standing stones. But you sense this everywhere?”

  “Aye,” I murmured. “Not easily, but aye.”