Spirit of the Mist

by Janeen O'Kerry

  “The kingmaking is in another twenty-eight nights. What could happen in only twenty-eight nights?” And for that, Muriel had no answer.

  She would simply go on inspecting the houses for any holes in the thatch or for hinges that had rusted through. She would count the number of wooden buckets, discard those beyond repair and order new ones to be made. And she would walk through the souterrains, the cool, dark, underground hallways where most of the food was stored, looking at the rows of apples, the heaps of dried seaweed, the baskets of hard cheeses, and the hanging sides of beef.

  Muriel was especially pleased to see that the people they had brought back from the woods near Odhran’s fortress were now decently dressed in newly made clothes of dark, undyed wool, with belts and boots of sturdy leather and long rectangular cloaks of the same dark brown cloth. The cloaks would serve to keep the rain off and keep them warm while sleeping in the clean rushes of the hall each night, and she even found simple bronze circular brooches to pin the cloaks over each person’s shoulder.

  And as the days went by, it seemed to her that their faces looked less pale and gaunt, especially those of the children, for she saw to it that they got their share of the plain but nourishing food that was always there in abundance for the other servants.

  Soon the ex-slaves blended in so well with the other servants that Muriel could hardly tell them apart—all except Gill, the white-haired man who always wore a strip of leather over his left eye and a dark woolen hood over his head.

  All of her work made the time pass quickly. It made Muriel feel needed; it made her feel that she truly had a place here at Dun Bochna. But at the end of each day, she still went to her bed alone…and at the end of each progressive night she had slept less and less.

  Finally, as Muriel lay down on the ledge in the darkness of their home and pulled the furs over herself yet again, she reached out to touch the empty space where Brendan should have been and felt her eyes begin to burn with tears. Tomorrow night, the moon would be full. If Brendan had not returned by moonrise then, she would use the water mirror and seek him out herself.

  The next morning Muriel stood beside one of the houses, anxiously looking up at Gill as he climbed up an old wooden ladder with a tightly bound bundle of straw over his shoulder. “Do be careful,” she called as he stretched out facedown on the slick straw roof. “That ladder is old and worn. I should have someone bring another.”

  “Please don’t worry, my lady,” said Gill “This will be done in no time. You need not worry over me.”

  She shook her head. “I cannot help it. I do not like the look of this ladder. I’ve been inspecting many things these last days and have seen much that needs replacement. This is one of them. Wait, I will go and have someone bring you another.”

  Muriel turned to go, looking around for another servant who could bring out another ladder, but then she saw Brendan riding in through the gates, followed by his four men.

  “Brendan!” She hurried from behind the house, moving to stand where he could see her, and felt as though a great weight had been lifted.

  Instantly he turned his horse and cantered toward her, swinging down to the ground even before the animal could stop. He caught her in his arms and held her close. Then, just as he leaned down to kiss her, Muriel heard a commotion from behind them at the house.

  There was the crack of wood and the sound of tearing straw. Someone shouted and there was a thud as something heavy fell to earth.

  Brendan gripped her by the shoulders as he drew back, and then let go and dashed off toward the sound, around to the other side of the dwelling.

  Muriel’s instincts about the ladder had been right. Gill lay sprawled facedown on the earth, the broken contraption lying half across him. Brendan rushed over to the old man and placed his hands on his shoulders. “Lie still, lie still,” he said as Gill tried to sit up. “We’ll send for a physician. Lie still!”

  But Gill pushed himself up to his hands and knees and began running his fingers through the grass, clearly searching for something. “Do not move!” Brendan said again, more urgently this time. “Whatever it is, we’ll find it. Alvy! Go and bring a physician. Hurry!”

  Muriel watched Gill closely, wondering what the man could be searching for. His cloak was still fastened—it was not his bronze brooch that had fallen—and then she realized what it must be.

  His ever-present hood had fallen back to reveal thick white hair, cut above his shoulders in the manner of a slave, but the leather strip that was always tied over his left eye was gone.

  Brendan moved to Gill’s head. “Let me see you,” he said, crouching down to look closely at the man’s face. “Ah, you must have slid against the straw—you are scraped and cut—is there anything in your eyes? Here, let me see…”

  There was a long pause. Brendan stared at Gill’s face, then slowly stood up, and, to Muriel’s surprise, he backed away and stood a few paces from the ex-slave. Standing and staring, Brendan was clenching and unclenching his fists.

  Why would he do such a thing? Gill obviously had a missing or disfigured eye, for he was never without the leather strip to cover it. Surely Brendan had seen horrible things as both a warrior and a prince. Why would he recoil in horror from the sight of a crippled servant?

  Near the wall of the house lay Gill’s strip of leather. Muriel walked over and picked it up, then took it to Brendan. “This is what he is searching for,” she said, holding out the leather piece. She looked at Gill and tried to smile at him, but his head was down and turned away.

  Brendan was pale and still, almost as pale as he had been on the night she had found him on the sea. “What is it?” Muriel asked more insistently. “It should come as no surprise if he is scarred—think of what his life has been up to now. What is wrong?”

  “Gill,” Brendan said. “Look up at your queen. Look up at my wife.”

  Slowly Gill raised his head and peered up at Muriel with one brown eye. She crouched down to look closely at him, prepared for whatever Brendan might have seen.

  His face was scraped and cut from where he had slid across the straw when the ladder snapped. He would have a few bruises, too, but he was able to move, with nothing broken.

  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 e
choed 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.”