Merlin's Mirror Read Free Page B

the onset of that, the fear that the next would be worse and worse. Yet she set her teeth and would not cry out. If one bore a god’s son one did not wail him into the world.
    Her body heaved again and Julia was quick beside her. Then Lugaid somehow was there also, his dark eyes holdinghers. And from that meeting of their gaze came a strangeness which removed her from the pain, sent her spinning far out among sparks of light which might be stars. . . .
    “A son.” Julia placed the baby on the fair piece of linen ready to receive it.
    “A son.” Lugaid nodded as if he had had no doubts from the first that this would be so. “His name is Myrddin.”
    Julia looked at him with hostility. “It is the father who names the son.”
    “His name is Myrddin.” The Druid dipped a finger into the bowl of water and touched the baby’s breast. “His father would have it so.”
    Julia hunched a shoulder. “You talk of Sky Lords,” she sniffed. “I am not denying that you saved my lady from shame with such, when there were those who believed. But there is not one even under this roof who believed wholly, or will ever do so. They will say ‘son of no man’ and talk tattle afar.”
    “Not long.” Lugaid shook his head. “This will be the first of his kind and through him the old days will return. Those tales of the past are not only the words of bards meant to amuse. Within them lies a core of truth. Look to the babe, and your mistress.” He glanced at Brigitta with less interest, as if, having served her purpose, she was of lesser account now.
    Julia made a sound close to a snort. She bustled about caring for the child, who did not cry, but lay looking about him. In those few moments after his entrance into the world, he seemed far more aware of his surroundings than any infant should rightfully be. And the nurse, noting that odd awareness, made a certain sign before she gathered him up. Brigitta slept heavily.
    It would seem that in Myrddin’s early childhood Julia had the right measurement of the feeling within the kin house. He was indeed “son of no man,” but since the chief accepted—outwardly at any rate—Lugaid’s assurance that his daughter had been impregnated by a Sky Lord, the boy was not openly shamed. Neither did he find any ready acceptance among those of his own generation, however.
    In the first place he was oddly slow to learn. The women of the house looked on his backwardness as a fittinganswer to the mystery of his conception. Nor was he forward in walking either. Had it not been for the fierce championship of Julia he might have been neglected, allowed to fade away into early death. For within six months of his birth Brigitta had been given in marriage to a widowed clan leader old enough to have fathered her. She left Nyren’s fortress and her son behind.
    She had made no protest over his separation for, from the hour of his birth, after she had awakened from the swoon into which she was always sure Lugaid had sent her, she had had no feeling of tenderness toward the baby. Rather the Druid appeared to have taken her place, with Julia to supply those comforts of physical existence Myrddin needed most at his age. And it was Julia who became most fiercely maternal when comments about the child’s slowness were voiced aloud. It was to Lugaid that Julia appealed when her own faith in Myrddin’s intelligence wavered.
    “Leave him be.” Lugaid had taken the child on his knee, was locking eyes with eyes. “He lives by another time, this one. You shall see. When he talks it will be clearly and with purpose; when he walks it will be straightaway walking, not crawling about after the manner of the animals. His heritage is not ours, so we cannot judge him by the actions of those wholly of this world.”
    Julia sat quiet for a moment, glancing from Druid to child and back again.
    “I have thought sometimes,” she confessed, “that the tale you told was to save my young lady from shame. But that is not