Naamah's Blessing

reckon we’d encounter any dangers. Eschewing the offer of a royal coach, we rode beneath the open skies, crossing the land that had become a second home to me since first I set foot on it.
    Seven years.
    When all was said and done, it was a short length of time in which to have lived so very much, and gone so very, very far from home. With Bao at my side, I retraced my passage across the breadth of Terre d’Ange, remembering how terribly young and incredibly naïve I had once been.
    I breathed in the scent of lavender blooming under the hot sun. I savored once more the sharp, piney taste of rosemary flavoring a roasted capon, remembering my first taste of it, and how oddly the woman at the inn had looked at me when I’d inquired after the name of it.
    Now it was all different. Herbs such as rosemary and basil were old, familiar friends, and the bear-witch from the back of beyond had served as a companion to Queens and Emperors alike.
    Betimes we stayed at inns, and often we were recognized there from the tales that had begun to spread across the realm. But more often than not, Bao and I made camp in a stretch of wilderness or a fallow field, passing across the land like a rumor. When I could, I posted ward-stones and summoned the twilight to conceal us.
    The closer we drew to the Straits, the more I felt the pull of my
diadh-anam
beckoning me home. By the time we reached the port city of Bourdes, it was a bright flame in my breast; not a blaze, but a steady beacon, like a lamp burning in a distant window, summoning a weary traveller homeward.
    Which was a piece of irony, since the Maghuin Dhonn did not dwell in houses with windows.
    Exactly where and how Bao and I were to live in Alba, I didn’t know. I reckoned there would be time and more to worry about it after Bao had endured the trial of the stone doorway, assuming he survived as I fervently prayed he would. In the meantime, there were vast reaches of
taisgaidh
land where the Maghuin Dhonn were allowed to dwell undisturbed.
    Bao was less sanguine regarding the matter.
    “It is good to know that the Cruarch of Alba respects the ways of your ancestors, Moirin, but I am not raising my children in a cave,” he said to me in our chamber at an inn in Bourdes where we had lodged for the night after booking passage across the Straits. “You’re not thinking of it, are you?”
    I toyed with one of the gold hoops in his ears, giving it a tug. “I had a joyful childhood, Bao. Can you say the same?”
    “No.” He kissed me. “But do you not think you have grown too civilized for caves?”
    I smiled. “Actually, I hope not.”
    Bao eyed me. “We will see.”
    I returned his kiss. “Aye, we will.”
    We set sail from Bourdes the following morning, travelling a day and a night across the choppy grey water of the Straits. I could feel my
diadh-anam
quicken further, and I knew Bao felt it, too. And my heart… my heart soared at the first sight of Alba’s shores, of the green and lovely isle where I had been born, the sanctuary to which the Maghuin Dhonn Herself had led Her children thousands and thousands of years ago, when the world was covered with ice. A wild energy coursed through my veins.
    “Do you not feel it?” I asked Bao.
    He was silent a moment. “Aye,” he said at length. “I do.”
    When we made port in Bryn Gorrydum, a part of me wanted to leap and shout for gladness, to announce to the world that I was
home
, truly home, at last. But I was mindful that whatever Bao might feel, he was a very long way from the land of his birth, and that he had given up any life he might have had there to be with me.
    And so I restrained myself, which was all to the good as shortly after disembarking, while we waited for our mounts and goods to be unloaded, we were greeted by a representative of the Cruarch of Alba.
    He was a dark, wiry fellow with the elaborate woad-markings of a warrior on his face, half a dozen men attending him, one of them carrying a standard flying the Black Boar of the Cullach Gorrym. His dark gaze skated over us, taking in my green eyes and half-D’Angeline features, Bao at my side with his staff lashed across his back.
    “Lady Moirin mac Fainche?” he inquired in Alban.
    I smiled at him for the sheer pleasure of being addressed in my mother-tongue. “Aye, indeed.”
    The fellow bowed. “On behalf of his majesty Faolan mab Sibeal, allow me to welcome you home, and invite you to partake of his hospitality.” He grinned, teeth