Free Blade of Fortriu by Juliet Marillier Page A

not name. The two of them matched gesture for gesture. They turned flowers into glowing, mysterious insects; they made shadows creep across the grass and retreat again. A toad hopped onto Derelei’s knee, then vanished. A mouse ran up Broichan’s arm and disappeared into the hood of his robe. It was not the magic, the facility of it, that held Tualaspellbound. It was the uncanny resemblance, the exact echo of stance, posture, movement, expression, for all the stark contrast between tall, robed mage and short-legged, bulkily swathed infant. This was uncanny. It was unsettling. What she saw had a strange beauty, an odd symmetry; it was the stuff of an impossible tale or a disturbing dream. Tuala felt an eldritch prickling sensation in herspine, almost like the feeling she had experienced in the forest by the seeing pool, the Dark Mirror, when she first encountered the Good Folk.
    “Mama,” Derelei said, turning to look at her, and the spell was broken. The birds flew off and Broichan rose to his feet, not quite as easily as he might once have done. Tuala found herself able to move forward, to kneel beside her son and speak to thedruid in civil tones.
    “Where is the serving woman, Orva?”
    “Not far off; she’s sitting over there by the long pond. I gave her leave to go, but she won’t let him out of her sight.”
    Derelei was tired now; he wilted in Tuala’s arms. Such concentrated practice of the craft was draining. It was too much for a little child. Tuala drew a breath to tell Broichan so; even now, it took all her courageto confront him.
    “It’s as well,” Broichan said before she could speak, “that he cannot be a candidate for kingship. The child has a future, perhaps an exceptional one. He should be raised in the nemetons.”
    “He’s not going anywhere,” Tuala snapped, clutching her son so tightly he began to whimper in fright. “There, there,” she muttered, patting him. “It’s all right.”
    “There’s time,” Broichansaid. “He need not go until his sixth or seventh year; the training is arduous, and should wait until he is strong enough to endure it. You cannot deny his natural talent, Tuala.”
    “I don’t,” she said. “But he’s only a baby, and he can be anything he wants, a scholar, a warrior, a traveler, a craftsman. A druid, if that’s the path he chooses.”
    “Will he choose wisely at six years of age? Willit not rather be the path chosen for him by his elders?”
    Tuala thought of the child Bridei and the choices he had not been given. “It will be up to his mother and father to guide him,” she said as firmly as she could. “I do not think Bridei would be happy to see his son sent away at so tender an age. Family is precious to him.”
    Broichan did not answer for a moment. He was twisting his silversnake ring around and around on his finger and frowning. He would not meet her eyes. After a little, he said, “I would teach him. With Bridei’s permission. And yours. There would then be no need to send him away, at least not until he was old enough to make up his own mind.”
    Tuala was startled, as much by his seeking of her sanction as by the proposal itself. There was no doubt in her mind thather son was destined for a future in which his particular talents would find a use. She did not, in fact, want him to become a warrior. She had seen the pitiful, ruined survivors who limped or were carried home from Fortriu’s encounters with its enemies, and she did not see how any mother could be content for her son to become a fighting man. A druid, a scholar, a craftsman, those were good occupations.There was only one problem. “He is the king’s son—” she began.
    “Yes,” Broichan agreed gravely, “and he is your son, and we both know my opinion on that issue, although I do not express it publicly, having kept a promise I made to Bridei long ago. There is no reason why the king’s son cannot enter the service of the gods. There are precedents. And if his talent