Naamah's Kiss (Moirin's Trilogy #1)

My mother kissed my temple. "You will always be that, too."

At peace, I slept again.

In the morning, the world seemed a different place—or mayhap it was only that my place in it had changed so greatly. Like it or not, I had a destiny. Camlan and Breidh eyed me with quiet awe, Old Nemed with pity. I wished they wouldn't. I didn't feel particularly well suited to the burden of a destiny. I was a sixteen-year-old girl who'd spent the entirety of her life living alone in the woods with her mother, not some heroine from days of yore.

And yet…..

I was curious.

I couldn't go home. Home had become a place shadowed with sorrow and grief. And even if I could endure the memories of Cillian that were everywhere, I didn't think the spark inside me would let me rest.

The wide world beckoned. I yearned to know why.

After we broke our fast, my mother presented me with a gift, pressing a small, heavy object into my hand. It was a signet ring engraved with two crests—the boar of the Cullach Gorrym and the swan of the D'Angeline royal family.

"The token," I said, remembering. "Alais' line."

She nodded. "You'll need funds if you're to cross the sea. And for other things, I reckon. I don't suppose you can live freely in the City of Elua." When I protested, she folded my hand over it. "Take it, keep it. I've no need of it."

The weight of the ring brought the reality of my situation home to me. "I don't even know where to go with it!"

"I do," Oengus said. "Shall we escort Moirin to Bryn Gorrydum?" he asked my mother.

She looked relieved. "Can we?"

Oengus smiled. "I think we ought."

Mabon played on his pipe. "I'll come," he offered. "A day or two in a city of stone always serves to remind me why I avoid them. Besides, I've a mind to make Moirin a new bow. She's outgrown the last one."

"I was ten," I reminded him. "It was some time ago."

"So it was," he agreed.

Since there seemed little point in delaying, we set out that very day. One by one, we descended the shaft and passed through the wondrous caverns of the hollow hill. Old Nemed grumbled and took forever to cross the hanging bridge over the gorge, clutching the ropes and inching her way across.

I didn't care.

There was a part of me, a large part of me, that longed to stay. In the outermost chamber, I cast a yearning look at the smooth, milky stone walls, the frozen waterfall, trailing my fingertips over the fluid stone.

Go, my diadh-anam urged.

I sighed, and went.

Outside it was all ordinary brightness. Nemed seized me in her hard, wiry embrace. "Her blessing on you, child," she muttered. "If it should come to pass that you inherit my gift, use it well."

I returned her embrace. "I'll try."

She gave me a shake. "Do better than try!"

I laughed. "Aye, my lady!"

Nemed snorted through her nose. "My lady, is it?"

"It is," I said firmly.

I do not think she was displeased, although she snorted contemptuously a second time. The young ones made their farewells and left with her; and then there were only four of us alone on the mountainside.

Oengus took a deep breath. "On to Bryn Gorrydum?"

I nodded. "On to Bryn Gorrydum."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

City of stone. That was what my uncle Mabon had called it—and it was. Cobbled streets, stony and hard beneath our feet. We walked them warily. Passersby gave us curious glances. It wasn't that we looked so altogether different from them. Oengus or Mabon or my mother could almost have passed for one of the folk of the Cullach Gorrym. The physical differences were slight—the angle of their cheekbones, the tilt of their eyes. No, it had more to do with the stamp of wilderness that marked them like a scent.

And of course there was me, looking like none of the folk of Alba.

Oengus led us to the D'Angeline quarter. There, for the first time, I saw my father's people strolling the streets, speaking in their fluting tongue. And they, too, looked like and unlike the rest of the folk of Alba, the fair-skinned tribes. My mother had said it well many years ago. There was a keenness to their beauty, an almost too-perfect symmetry, sharp and deadly as a blade.

I found myself staring at them in fascination. A good number of them stared back, albeit with considerable more subtlety than I managed.

We stopped outside an elegant building with a stone plaque engraved with the words Bryony Associates, encircled by a trailing relief of bryony flowers.

"That's it," Oengus announced.

A little bell played a merry tune as we entered. Mabon smiled to himself and played it back on his pipe. A D'Angeline woman with shiny brown hair coiled in a complicated manner hurried into the salon to greet us, stopped short, and stared blankly at us, too startled for subtlety.

It had been a long journey. Now that I thought on it, I realized we all looked unkempt and travel-worn.

"May I—" She cleared her throat. "May I be of assistance?"

"Aye," I said. Mabon had strung the ring on a length of sinew for me since it was too big for my finger. I fished it out of my bodice, pulled it over my head, and handed it to her. She took it in bewilderment. "I've need of money."

She glanced at the ring and turned pale. "Is this what I think it is?"

"As to that I cannot say, for I've no idea what you might think," I said mildly. "But it is a token given to my mother by her mother and her mother's mother before her, back to Alais the Wise."

"Henri!" The woman called out in a stream of D'Angeline so swift and lilting I couldn't make out a word. Cillian had been a good teacher, but I suspected he'd a dreadful accent. A youngish man came at a run. He stared, too. "They've come to make a claim on her highness Alais' historic fund," the woman said in careful Alban. "They come bearing her token."

He blinked. "Truly?"

"So it seems." She turned back to us and inclined her head. "I pray you, forgive our rudeness. I am Caroline no Bryony and I am at your service. It's only that none of Alais de la Courcel's descendants for whom the trust is marked have surfaced before today, so your appearances comes as somewhat of a surprise." She hesitated, eyeing me. "You're….. of the Maghuin Dhonn?"

Oengus gave her a bright, feral smile that did nothing to ease her nerves. "We are and she is."

"Moirin is my daughter," my mother said calmly. "Moirin, daughter of Fainche, daughter of Eithne, daughter of Brianna, daughter of Alais."

"Brianna's line, then." Caroline no Bryony squared her shoulders. "Right. The signet will have to be authenticated, of course. If you'll come with me, Henri will fetch the original imprint of the seal."

We followed her deeper into the building. Feeling the stone walls close around us, I forced myself to breathe slowly and evenly. If I was bound for the City of Elua, I was going to have to become accustomed to being enclosed behind man-made walls.

The room to which she led us was richly appointed. The wooden desk and chairs were polished and gleaming. She took her seat behind the desk and invited me to sit across from her. I stroked the arms of the chair, appreciating the satiny finish. An ornate lamp burned oil that was pure and odorless and gave a remarkably clear flame. There was a carpet on the floor with an intricate pattern like nothing I'd ever seen before. Running my gaze over the pattern was oddly soothing.

"Lovely, isn't it?" Caroline noticed me eyeing it. "It's Akkadian."

"From Khebbel-im-Akkad?" I remembered maps that Cillian and I had pored over. "It must have come a very long way."

"Yes, indeed." She sounded a little surprised. "Ah, good! Here's Henri with the seal."

He carried it on a tray and set it down on her desk with great care. Small wonder, for the wax was ancient and brittle. Caroline no Bryony produced a fresh sheet of paper and a red wax taper. She lit the taper and let a precise amount of wax drip onto the clean paper. I sat, waiting while it cooled. My mother and Oengus and Mabon stood uneasily near the closed door. I could feel their discomfort. Caroline breathed on the surface of my ring and pressed it firmly into the soft red puddle before giving it back to me.

"Is that a piece of magic?" I inquired. "Blowing on it?"

She gave me a bewildered look. "Magic? No. A trace of moisture helps keep the seal from sticking to the wax."

"Ah," I said.

Her assistant Henri produced a funny little object, a round glass in a handheld frame—like a mirror, only clear. For long moments, Caroline no Bryony peered through it, comparing the new seal imprint with the old. She looked up and smiled at the curiosity on my face. "No magic here either, only science." She gave me the object to examine."'Tis but a magnifying glass to let me see the detail more clearly."

I held it to my eye and startled at the sight of her face, looming and blurred. "Stone and sea! So you say. It seems a fine piece of magic to me."

Mabon stirred restlessly. "Does the seal match?"

"It does." She folded her hands on the desk. "So. You have considerable funds at your disposal, Moirin daughter of Fainche. I am here to make them available to you and assist you in any way I might. That was the pledge my predecessors made to Alais de la Courcel. Tell me, what will you? Do you seek to make an entrance into Alban society? I can provide you with letters of authentication to present to the Cruarch."

"No, no." I shook my head. "I am not here to trouble the Cruarch on behalf of his wild kin. I need money, that's all."

Caroline tilted her head. "May I ask what you intend?"

This business of having a destiny was infernally complicated. "I don't know, exactly," I admitted. "I'm bound for Terre d'Ange to start. The City of Elua. Do you know it?"

Henri smirked.

Oengus shot him a look that drove the smirk from his face.

"Henri, leave us, please." Caroline no Bryony pointed at the door. He went, suppressing a scowl. "So." She refolded her hands, her gaze intent. "You seek funds sufficient to grant you passage to the City of Elua?"

"Aye." I nodded. "And mayhap to dwell there for a time."

"How long?"

I hadn't the faintest idea. "I don't know."

"Elua have mercy!" Unexpectedly, she laughed; but it was a nice laugh with no malice in it. Her brown eyes sparkled, and I suddenly decided I liked her after all. She smiled at me with genuine warmth, enough that it set the doves fluttering in my belly for the first time since Cillian's death. "What did I do to deserve you turning up on our doorstep, Moirin of the Maghuin Dhonn?"

I smiled back at her. "I can't imagine."

My mother coughed.

"All right, then." Caroline no Bryony sobered. "If you're willing to hear it, I'll give you my counsel. Will you all be travelling together?"

I shook my head. "Only me."

She gave me a sharp look and plucked a fresh sheet of paper from a drawer, dipping a pen into an inkwell. "As a young woman travelling on her own, I'd caution you not to carry overmuch in the way of hard coin. A hundred ducats should suffice to book you passage to Terre d'Ange and the City of Elua. For the rest….." Her hand moved over the paper, writing in a smooth, steady hand. "I'll issue you a letter of credit. Will that suffice?"

I peered at the number written there. "No doubt."

"Have you the first idea what you're about, Moirin?" Caroline asked.

"No," I said honestly.

She studied me. "Would you like me to arrange for your passage across the Straits?"

"It would be a kindness," I said.

"No." Caroline no Bryony smiled wryly. "A kindness would be to urge you and your kin to retreat to whatever wilderness you came from, for I see the lot of you itching to be gone from this place and I fear the City of Elua will give you no better welcome than Henri did here today. What I am doing is my job."

I shrugged. "Nonetheless."

"Nonetheless," she echoed. "So be it."

I left the offices of Bryony Associates with a purse of a hundred gold ducats jingling at my belt and a letter of credit for five thousand more in the City of Elua. It seemed amply fair, given that I'd done nothing to earn it. Bidding us farewell on the doorstep of the building, Caroline paused and pressed my hands between hers.

"Do you have lodging here in Bryn Gorrydum?" she inquired.

"Oh, aye." I smiled. "Oengus says there's a goodly park in the center of the city that's taisgaidh land."

Her face went blank. "The park."

"Aye," I said, puzzled.

"Elua have mercy," she said for a second time, half-dismayed and half-amused. "Would that I could hear the gossip you'll provoke. Come tomorrow afternoon, Moirin of the Maghuin Dhonn. I'll see to what arrangements I may."

"My thanks," I said politely.

The park was a little piece of wilderness in the heart of the stone city. We made camp there unmolested. I went hunting with my uncle Mabon and we shot a pair of pigeons apiece. The new bow he'd made me on the journey had a heavier draw and a greater range. It suited me, but I was still getting used to it. We walked back to the campsite in the dusk. He summoned the twilight in slow, rolling waves, letting it trail and dance behind him like a shimmering wake. It reminded me of the music he played on his pipe. I'd never seen the like and tried to emulate it.