Spirit of the Mist (11 page)

“Father!” Brendan ran to the white-haired man and clasped him by the wrists—but then found himself steadying the older man instead of embracing him. “Father, it’s good to be home.”
 

“Brendan…” King Galvin reached up to touch his son’s shoulder, and Brendan could feel the faint trembling in his hand. “So many thought we would not see you again…but I never doubted it.”
 

For a moment Brendan could not speak. He was shocked to see how much his father had changed in the days since he himself had been away. The man’s hair was whiter, his skin paler and more deeply lined, his touch frail and old.
 

Brendan glanced at Killian and Darragh, who nodded slightly. So this was why they had insisted he come back immediately. Age was rapidly overtaking his father, and would catch up to him soon.
 

But not today.
 

“Colum! I am happy to see you too,” Brendan said, turning to embrace his older brother.
 

“Welcome home,” said Colum, returning the affection. “You are just in time to hear the new poem I have created.”
 

“Wonderful! I suppose it is all about me and the marvelous adventures I have had?”
 

Colum grinned. “That would be such a long poem that no bard in Eire could remember it all. You will have to settle for the shorter one that I have made, and the music of my harp while you eat.”
 

“I suppose it will have to do,” said Brendan with a laugh. “Though I have so much to tell that you will never again be without a story to create!”
 

“Come inside, come inside, all of you,” said the king, taking a careful step up inside the house.
 

“When you have eaten, Brendan, you will tell us of these adventures of yours. I’m sure they are many.”
 

“They are,” agreed Brendan, walking inside with his father. “And I will take all the time I have to tell you all you wish to hear.”
 

“Do not take too much time, my son,” said King Galvin. Then together they sat down on the leather cushions placed on the rushes of the floor.
 

The sky had turned black and the plates of food were long since cleared away by the time Brendan finished telling his story. Colum played gentle notes on his harp as the rest of the men relaxed on their cushions.
 

“You are a fortunate young man,” said King Galvin, taking a sip of honey wine from his small gold cup. “I am happy that you are still among us. Now, if you will, tell me more of this lady who rescued you from the storm.”
 

“Ah,” said Brendan, taking a drink from his own gold cup. Setting it down, he gazed at its finely worked surface shining in the soft firelight, and let his thoughts travel to the fortress far across the wide bay. “That was the Lady Muriel.”
 

Galvin smiled. “Muriel, bright as the sea,” he murmured. “A lovely name.”
 

“A lovely and secretive lady, to whom I owe my life, as I have said. And in the days that I spent in her company while I stayed at Dun Farraige, I came to know that I wanted to marry her.”
 

“Marry?” The old king smiled. “Now, that is not a word I ever thought to hear you say. She must be very special.”
 

“Oh, she is! She—”
 

“Then bring her here, Brendan. Let me see her. Bring her here, to your home.”
 

“I would like nothing better! But I am not sure that she will have me. She is determined to marry no man but a king…and never hesitates to remind me that I am not a king yet.” He smiled a little and shrugged his shoulders.
 

His father blinked and raised his eyebrows. “Only a king?” He smiled then, too, regarding Brendan with pale gray eyes. “You will be a king in good time…but I would like to meet this lady before that time comes. Go to her and ask her to marry you; then bring her here. Go to her and bring her home.”
 

For nineteen days after Brendan’s departure, Muriel made herself get up each morning and dress herself, made herself eat a few bites of the oat bread and baked eel or boiled crab that Alvy always left out for her. She would then go about her daily tasks as she always did, though it seemed to her that the world was somehow different now.
 

On this particular afternoon she carried a basket of fabric and good wool thread out to the hilltops overlooking the bay, where she had so often sat with Brendan. She sat down and began to piece together a new gown, this one of heavy wool dyed a dark blue. Though it was summer now, the cold days would be here soon enough.
 

After a time she glanced up to look out over the water. Thoughts of winter seemed to have affected the way the world looked to her today. The sky was a solid gray, and it seemed that the land and the sea and even the grass had taken on that same shade of gray. The waves now seemed dull and monstrous, and the wind had lost the warmth it should have had with summer.
 

Muriel sat up straight and stopped her sewing. The bone needle hovered above the linen fabric as she stared down at it.
 

She raised up one hand and studied it, looking to see if it still held the warmth and color it had always held, or whether it too was becoming faded and worn and gray the way the world seemed to look on this day—the way her mother had become, the way her sisters were now— Muriel clenched her hand into a fist and hid it within her sleeve. She had been so determined to keep from marrying a man who was not a king—but was it enough simply to avoid a marriage? If she had begun to fall in love with the wrong man, one who might well be a prince but was still not a king, would that alone be enough to drain her magic and leave her with a cold and empty world?
 

Muriel bowed her head, then raised it again so that the wind from the sea struck her full in the face. Brendan was gone, and she had no doubt he had forgotten her the moment she was out of his sight. There was no danger of his taking her love and, with it, her power and her magic. There was no reason for her to think of him ever again.
 

On the morning of the twentieth day, Muriel opened her door and stepped out of her house—and there, on the flat stepping-stone set into the damp earth in front of the door, was a little bunch of flowers.
 

For a long time she could only stand and look at them. They seemed to be violets, carefully tied together with a strip of fine blue linen, their tiny purple and white petals fluttering in the sea breeze. Then, slowly, she reached down and picked them up, holding them close and studying them as though she had never seen violets before.
 

Then Muriel closed her eyes. She feared to look up, fearing she would see him walking across the grass and smiling at her with the dawn light gilding his hair, see his fair face smiling down at her, see his one blue eye and one brown eye shining as he held out his hand to her—
 

Abruptly she raised her head. She saw only a few of the servants moving about the dun, carrying wooden buckets for hauling water or armloads of feed for the animals.
 

Brendan was not here.
 

Of course he wasn’t. How could he be? He had ridden away and forgotten her long ago. Someone was playing a little trick on her by leaving a bunch of violets on her doorstep. Perhaps it was Alvy, in a rather misguided attempt to cheer her up.
 

She took the violets back inside the house, placed them on the sealskin furs strewn on her bed, and walked outside again. Just as she tried to close the door, a shadow fell across her and blocked out the light.
 

“Good morning to you, Lady Muriel.”
 

Blinking, she looked up at a tall, strong figure backlit by the early-morning sun. Golden brown hair ruffled across his face, and the deep blue cloak across his shoulders flapped in the breeze.
 

“Brendan,” she whispered.
 

He stepped forward, and now she could get a better look at him. His tunic was a soft plaid of gray and green and was made from the finest wools, as was his long blue cloak, which was so wide that it had to be folded several times across his shoulder. A heavy round brooch, gleaming with gold, fastened the cloak through the folds.
 

Black leather pants and folded boots, no doubt the same ones he had received here at Dun Farraige, completed the outfit. She saw gold rings on the small fingers of his hands and a wide gold band around the muscles of his bare upper arms—and a heavy gold torque at his neck, a torque with the heads of sea dragons at each curving end. Only a king—or a tanist—would wear something like that.
 

But, most of all, those strange and otherworldly eyes shone down on her once again, irises the colors of the water and of the earth, the strangest and most beautiful eyes she had ever seen.
 

Muriel smiled back at him, which set him to beaming. “I did not expect to see you again,” she admitted.
 

“Why, I cannot believe you would say such a thing! Did I not promise that I would return?”
 

“You did. But I know how rare it is for men to keep promises made to women they have only just met.”
 

“Yet I have told you, I am not an ordinary man. I am—”
 

“Oh, a king, a king—as you have told me many times. And I will admit to you, on this day you do indeed look like one.” She smiled up at him again, for one moment allowing him to see a little of her happiness at finding that he had indeed returned. “Yet, as I have told you just as many times, a prince is not a king.”
 

He sighed, though his eyes still sparkled as he gazed back at her. “Lady Muriel—please tell me what I can do, once and for all, to convince you that I am worthy of you.”
 

She turned away, carefully arranging the folds of her deep blue gown, smoothing the lightweight wool and inspecting it for any flaws. “Why, Prince Brendan, I was about to ask the same question of you. I was about to ask what you can do to convince me that you truly are— or will be—a king.”
 

She peered up at him again, pleased at the somewhat disconcerted look on his face. “Even my old serving woman tells me that I should take no chance. She says that I should not consider your offer of marriage—if indeed you still intend to make one—until after your king making, whenever that might be.”
 

He cocked his head. “Are you certain that I will wait that long for you? There are others who would have a prince, and gladly.”
 

Muriel nodded.
 

“I see. Well, that is all that I need to know. Good luck to you, Brendan, in choosing but one of the great crowd of young women who simply cannot wait to be your wife. Good morning to you.”
 

She turned to go back inside the house, but a gentle hand on her arm made her pause. “Please…do not go,” he said. “I have only just arrived. And you are right. Though I could no doubt find another to marry, there is only one whom I truly want at my side. That is why I have come back to you this day…and that is why I have brought this.”
 

Muriel turned to see what he wished to show her. From his black belt he untied a leather case, opened it, and held it out.
 

She saw a collection of beautifully worked objects in gold and copper and bronze—brooches and rings, armbands and beads, all of them gleaming and new. “Never have I seen finer work,” she whispered.
 

Brendan smiled. “These I intend to offer to King Murrough to secure your contract. I have come back to ask you to return to Dun Bochna with me, there to become my bride.”
 

Chapter Seven
 

Bride. The word echoed in Muriel’s mind. She turned to meet Brendan’s eyes and knew that he meant what he had said.
 

She had a decision to make.
 

“Brendan…you already know my story. You have seen my sisters. You know why I fear to marry any man but a king.”
 

“I know all these things. But do I know whether you love me?”
 

He stepped close to her and placed his hands on her shoulders, bending his head down so that he could look directly into her eyes. He was so close that she could sense the warmth of his body in the cool morning air, feel the heat of his hands through the fabric of her gown, see the gleam in his eyes and the warm color spreading through the fair, smooth skin of his face and throat—
 

“Brendan of Dun Bochna!”
 

Then was a flash of movement, then strong hands grabbed him from both sides, pulling him away from Muriel. He clenched his fists and started to fight back, but then kept still.
 

“What is this about?” he demanded, looking from one captor to the other. He twisted about to look at the little group of warriors who stood behind the two who held him, but kept still when he saw that they all had their swords drawn.