Naamah's Kiss - Jacqueline Carey [42]
Tears brightened her eyes. "No?"
"No." I closed my own eyes against the anguish in her face.
Sleep took me.
I woke in the small hours of the night. Casting my senses over the cavern, I found all sleeping but one. I rose, wrapping a blanket around me to ward off the night's chill, and joined my mother where she sat on the ledge of the cavern mouth. We sat together in silence, watching the stars move over the glade and the moon's sliver ascend into the night sky.
"I would have told you if ever you had asked about finding your father," my mother said eventually. "About the temple."
"I know," I said.
She looked at me, her dark gaze searching. "Are you sure?"
I knew what she meant. I took her hand in mine and laid it on my chest so she might feel the spark of the diadh-anam beneath it. "I am."
She sighed. "I'll miss you, Moirin mine. So very, very much."
I wanted to cry; I wanted to tell her that I would miss her, too; to tell her I was frightened, that I didn't want to venture across the sea all by myself in search of an unknown destiny. But I didn't want to make her feel worse. Instead, I curled into a ball and laid my head in her lap. "I will always be your daughter," I murmured. "Now and always and forever. But tonight, for one last night, let me be your child."
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