Naamah's Kiss Read Free Page B

him failed in misery. That was her great folly." Her mouth quirked. "It seems the gods of Terre d'Ange are particular in matters of love."
    "I am named for a child that never was?"
    "Aye."
    "Why?"
    Another silence. She let go my hand to brush fine strands of hair out of my eyes. "Your father was D'Angeline."
    I remembered the words Oengus had spoken in the night. "You were called to him?" 1 was.
    "Was he a prince?"
    She shook her head. "A priest, I think."
    "You think ?"
    "Peace, Moirin." Something unfamiliar flickered behind her smile. "It was a revel. Lord Tiernan's coronation. I attended it out of respect. There were many foreign guests in attendance. I asked no questions, only answered the call. The priest felt it, too. I daresay it surprised him."
    "A priest of what? ."
    My mother shrugged and spread her hands. "I do not know. I am not versed in the ways of D'Angeline faith."
    I took a deep, shaking breath. "Yet you and everyone else expected a great magician to come of one night's dalliance?"
    "I did not know," she said simply. "Only that there was some purpose in it. So aye, I named you for a child that might have been. It is not so unusual a name; others have borne it. But it is a name with hope in it."
    I swallowed. "And being no great magician, I disappoint."
    "No!" Her eyes stretched wide. "Stone and sea, never!"
    "Others," I said stubbornly. "I disappoint others."
    She sighed. "They dream foolish dreams of glory, even as they remind themselves of ambition's folly." She gestured around at the massive stones standing sentinel in the twilight. "I wanted to bring you here, to tell you here. That whatever you become, that whatever destiny awaits you, no matter how great or how small, you understand in your bones the dangers of knowledge and power, and the toll they may take if used unwisely. Do you?"
    I breathed in the scent of old blood and nodded.
    Ten thousand years of wandering without solace
    I understood.
    "Good lass," my mother said softly. "Wise child."
    My curiosity wasn't satisfied. "Why did you not wish the Lady of Clunderry to see us ?"
    "Ah." She touched my cheek. "You bear the stamp of Terre d'Ange on your features, Moirin mine. One of royal blood might question your presence among the Maghuin Dhonn. Our lives are our own. And I am not fond of answering questions."
    "Not even mine?" I inquired.
    She smiled. "Yours, I tolerate."
    "What color are my eyes?"
    My mother cupped my face and kissed my brow. "Green," she whispered. "Green as grass, green as the rushes grow."
    Before that night, the revel that followed would have been the single greatest experience of my life. The glade in which it was held was spellbound, wrapped in a shroud of twilight that would render it visible as nothing more than a glimmering in the air to anyone without the gifts of the Maghuin Dhonn in their blood. There must have been almost a hundred people therea great gathering for our folk. There were even a dozen or more children present, some near my age. I should have enjoyed the novelty.
    But I felt strange to myself.
    My father was a D'Angeline priest.
    I was half-D'Angeline.
    And I had no idea what that meantor why, indeed, it should mean anything. Surely there were others.
    I searched the memory of my mother's tales. No, never such a pairing. Not between an almost pure-blooded Maghuin Dhonn and a pure-blooded D'Angeline.
    So? Why should it matter?
    It shouldn't and it didn'texcept that my mother had been called to him and he to her, and she had named me for a child that never was. Now the words whispered in the long-ago night and today's disappointed looks made sense. For ten years, the Maghuin Dhonn had hoped I would prove to be a great magician. It made me angryat them, at my mother. They had no right to place such expectations on me. She had no right to withhold such a great truth from me.
    "Pouting, little one?" Oengus stooped to crouch before me.
    "No," I lied.
    "Ah, she told you." He turned his head to gaze at my mother. A