Columb cleared his throat. “It is about time for you to leave,” he said.
Gwydion hugged his friends. “Can I have a moment with my son?” he asked Columb.
“Of course.”
Gwydion moved a little away from everyone and knelt down to look in the boy’s eyes. “Hello,” he said tentatively.
“Are you my Da?” the boy asked.
“I am that,” Gwydion said.
“You took a long time getting here.”
Gwydion smiled crookedly. “I didn’t know I was supposed to come, or else I would have been here sooner.”
The boy patted him on the shoulder. “That’s okay. Do I get a name now?”
Gwydion shook his head. “Only your mother can do that now. But I can call you something other than boy. Would that help?”
The boy looked like he might cry. “I want my true name.”
“Well that’s something else entirely,” Gwydion said.
The boy swallowed his tears, and composed himself. Then he leaned close and whispered, “When no one’s around, Aunt Mari calls me Melyn. She says it means blonde.”
“It does indeed,” Gwydion said. “Your aunt is a wise woman. I think I shall call you Melyn for now as well.”
“But that’s not my permanent name.”
“No, only your mother can give you your permanent name now,” Gwydion said. “But don’t worry about it. We will make a plan, you and I, to get it from her.”
The boy hugged him tightly, and Gwydion picked him up. “I think we’re ready to go,” he said.
Ard Righ Fergus called a couple of more fians. “These men will escort you out of Glencairck.”
“Thank you, but I think I can make my own way.”
“I’m more inclined to trust you than Arianrhod,” Fergus said. “But I have to make sure you follow the law.” The fians took positions on either side of him, looking at him menacingly.
“I intend to,” Gwydion said, feeling the Cymric magic welling up inside him. “So I will leave your demesne this very moment.”
He formed a bridge to another world. No one seemed to notice except the boy, who whispered, “What’s that?”
“Our next step,” Gwydion said.
“It looks scary.”
“Do you trust me?” he whispered into the boy’s ear.
“More than anything,” the boy said.
“Then here we go,” Gwydion said. He smiled at his friends, nodded to Columb and Fergus, and walked out of Glencairck and across the Pale into a new life. He never looked back.
The Bardic Academy (A Bard Without a Star, Book 3) Page 15
