The Dark Mirror (9 page)

“She’d have to be crazy,” muttered
Mara. “Who’d offer to nurse one of
them?
” But it seemed to Bridei her words were only half meant, otherwise why would she be trying so hard to get the baby to suck, and nodding encouragement at each successful swallow? The little basket stood empty by the
hearth, the key well hidden in its network of tangled foliage. It was true, what Broichan had told him. Sometimes simple hearth magic is the
strongest of all.

The day seemed very long. Cinioch snatched a quick breakfast and headed off down the lake. The baby was quiet at first, but later she cried and cried until she had no strength left for it. She would not take the honey water. Bridei took his turn at holding her and patting her. She seemed to get heavier as the day went on. Her little, hiccupping wails made him want to cry, too,
but he did not.

In the early evening, Cinioch came home with a pale-faced young woman who was heavily shawled against the chill outside. Her features were pinched with cold, her nose and eyes were red and she was shivering under her layers of clothing. Nonetheless, as soon as she spotted the infant in Ferat’s arms, it was off with cloak and shawl, and three steps across the floor to gather the
child to her breast.

“Ah, poor mite, poor bairn,” Brenna crooned, and the babe hiccupped weakly in response. “I’ll take her off to a quiet corner, if you’ll show me where,” the young woman added. “Wee thing’s starving, but we’ll soon put that to rights.” And she did; while Bridei was bid to stay in the kitchen when the women went through by the hall fire, he could hear the baby’s voice subside
through thin wails to a gasping, snuffling, desperate sort of sound to blissful silence. He let out his breath in a great sigh; Ferat, stirring up the soup, was nodding to himself in a satisfied way.

“We’d best get a joint of mutton on the spit,” the cook said. “When a woman’s in milk she eats like a horse. Your wee one’ll do just fine now, lad, see if she doesn’t.”

IN THE WINTER
woods outside Broichan’s house, two presences hovered as the short day drew to its close.

“It’s done,” said the first. “He’s taken her in, and nobody’s put her back out again. And the crying’s over. She’s got a big voice for such a scrap of a thing.”

“I won the wager,” said the other. “I told you they’d keep her.”

“Bridei’s doing, no doubt. For one of the human kind, that child’s
canny beyond his years. A wee charm the druid taught him, no doubt . . . They’d never have held on to her otherwise. One look at her must have told them she’s ours.”

The other glanced across. “In a way she is. In a way she isn’t. Now we’ve discharged our duty to the Shining One, and that’s an end of it.”

The first being gave a peal of tinkling laughter. “Hardly! This is just the beginning. The
two of them have a long road ahead of them, long and hard. And we’ll be there every step of the way. We all want the same ending for this, even the druid. Of course, the manner of it may come as a surprise to him.”

“Come, let’s for home. That was a long night. I tire of these human folk. They can be so foolish; so slow to comprehend.”

“The longest night,” the first being said gravely. “Night
of the full moon; night of change; the start of a great journey.”

“Bridei’s journey”

“His, and hers, and all of ours. We walk forward to a new age, no less. The feet that make the pathway are small. Let us hope they do not falter. Let us hope they do not fail.”

THE MAGIC SEEMED
to be holding. Brenna settled into the household
as if she belonged there. She was very quiet and always had a sad look in her eyes, not surprising for a widow only nineteen years of age who had just lost her firstborn. Mara refused to share her own sleeping quarters, declaring that she’d no mind to be up half the night when the child woke for feeding. So Ferat had his assistants clear out a little storeroom, and here Brenna unpacked her
pitifully few possessions and settled with apparent gratitude. At night the babe slept by her side, not in its original strange bed woven from forest magic, but in a fine cradle of oak wood with sprays of leaves and acorns carved at head and foot. The farmer, Fidich, had surprised them all one morning by appearing with it and offering it rather shyly as his contribution to the small one’s upkeep.
That was useful for Bridei. When the new cradle came, Mara had muttered something about burning the old one to get the last of its influence out of the household before Broichan returned home. Bridei ensured the basket disappeared while Mara was busy elsewhere. Now it lay in his own chamber, safe within his storage chest, hidden key and all.

Ferat was not well pleased the day he needed spices
and could not open his little coffer. He blamed the kitchen lads, at first, for the key’s loss, cursing the two of them as he forced the box open with a knife, scratching the wood.
The sight of the contents, arrayed in their neat packets and quite undisturbed, calmed his temper miraculously. As a cook, he considered the small collection of nutmeg, cinnamon, cardamom, and fine peppercorns infinitely
more precious than the polished box that held it. Grudgingly he acknowledged that maybe the key’s disappearance had been an accident of some kind; who would bother to steal it then leave the prize untouched? By the time he’d made his apple pie, he was humming again. Since the babe’s arrival he seemed a new man.

“
SHE NEEDS A
name,” Bridei had said on the second day, as they ate supper in the warmth of the hall. Brenna was managing to work through a generous serving of Ferat’s special seethed mutton with dumplings, while cradling the infant with one arm. The baby herself was awake, her small features calm, her clear eyes watchful under what had been revealed as a generous thatch of soot-black curls. Even now that she
was well fed, there was not a trace of rose in her cheeks; her complexion was milk-pale. Since yesterday she had cried very little; not so surprising, since her main need was for feeding, and Brenna had that well under control. In fact, now that Bridei’s little sister was getting all the milk she wanted, she hardly seemed to need him anymore. Bridei knew that he must not be jealous. He sat beside
Brenna now on the bench, and from time to time he looked down at the baby and she gazed up at him, and he knew she recognized him and understood the promise he had made by moonlight. Perhaps she did not really need him now, but when she did, he would be there.

“We should give her a name,” he said again, and as he spoke there was a name in the back of his mind, one that suited the baby’s pallor,
her coal-black hair, her look of being very much herself.

“Huh,” said Mara, “names, is it now? I know one thing. That’s not the kind of child you name after your mother or your grandmother.”

“Why not?” asked Bridei.

“Because she’s not one of us,” Mara said. “Probably she’s not ours to name. Got one already, I expect, something outlandish like the folk that put her here. Black Crow protect us,”
she added hastily, making the sign of ward with her fingers.

Brenna spoke seldom, and mostly to say please and thank you. Her voice was soft, almost apologetic. “What name would you give her, Bridei?” she asked him.

Bridei put a finger to the baby’s white cheek; she waved her small hands, and her mouth curved in what might possibly have been a smile.

“Tuala,” he said firmly. “That’s an old
name, from a story. It means princess of the people. Broichan would like that.”

“He won’t like squalling infants in the house, and him some kind of invalid,” Mara said drily. “Princess, is it? Poor little thing, she won’t be much of a princess if she stays here with us. Princess of the pigsties, is about all.”

“It’s a pretty name,” Brenna whispered.

“Aye,” put in Uven. “It suits her. Leave
off, Mara. You know you’re as besotted with the mite as the rest of us.”

So the foundling got her name, and Broichan’s household expanded its number by two, and Bridei, reminded that his foster father had been near death, applied himself in earnest to his studies once again in an effort to ensure Broichan would not be disappointed in his progress, even if he was displeased with the new arrivals.
It was hard to practice combat skills without Donal; instead, he helped Fidich around the farm. In the afternoons he perfected his storytelling. This was a time when the infant tended to be awake, and Brenna, who still tired easily after her recent confinement and the death of her own babe, was generally content to leave Tuala with Bridei while she retreated to her tiny chamber for a rest.

He
knew quite a lot of tales already, for tales are the foundation of a druid’s wisdom, containing as they do layer upon layer of understanding, symbol within symbol, code within code. Every time he told one it seemed to mean something different. For Tuala, Bridei did not choose tales full of battles and gore, nor tales of monsters and wraiths, losses and ancient griefs. He told her funny tales, silly
tales, leavened with stories of heroic deeds and dreams come true. When he could remember no more, he made them up as he went along. Tuala was an excellent listener. She grew better and better at keeping quiet and watching with rapt attention as he spoke. Her bright eyes followed the movement of his hands as he illustrated a dramatic event; her small voice contributed here a gurgle, there a squeak.
True, there were some tales that sent her to sleep. When that happened, Bridei simply turned his story into a song, which he sang quietly as he rocked the cradle. He was not
sure where the song came from, only that it was not a thing Broichan had taught him.

Hee-o, wee-o
Spinner come and spinner go
Weave a cobweb fine and thin
Fit to wrap my princess in

Hee-o, wee-o
Feather from the blackest
crow
Plume of swan all snowy white
Fit to clothe my baby bright

Hee-o, wee-o
Frond of elder, birch and yew
Garland woven fresh and fair
Fit to crown my lassie’s hair
.

And as she slept, she seemed to smile.

THEY BROUGHT THE
druid home on a day when the air was clear and a cold wind whipped down the Glen from the northeast,
harrying birds before it. It was at the travelers’ backs as they came along the path that skirted the dark lake and wound up through the deceptive pattern of the oaks to Broichan’s house. Bridei’s stomach was churning with nervousness. He had longed for this day; had, indeed, counted each night with a mark scratched into the stone of his chamber wall, until Broichan and Donal should at last come
home. But his anticipation was mixed with fear now. What if his foster father took one look at the baby and decreed she had to go? Nobody in the household ever disobeyed Broichan. They were not afraid, exactly. It was just that the druid was powerful and wise. It was just that he was always right.