The Awakening (The Dragon Heart Legacy #1) - Nora Roberts Page 0,1
her daughter smile before she moved on to her sons.
“And here I have a scowl and a grin.” Tarryn ruffled Harken’s mop, gave the warrior’s braid on the left side of Keegan’s head a light tug. “Remember the purpose of this day, as it unites us, and speaks to who and what we are. What you do here has been done by those before for a thousand years and more. And all who took the sword from the lake, their names were written before ever they were born.”
“If the fates deem who rises, why can’t we see? Why can’t you,” Keegan insisted, “who sees the before and the yet to come?”
“If I could see, if you could, or any, it would take the choice away.” As a mother would, she put an arm around Keegan’s shoulders, but her eyes—bright and blue like Harken’s—looked out over the lake and through the mists.
“You choose to go into the water, do you not? And who lifts the sword must choose to rise with it.”
“Who wouldn’t choose to rise with it?” Harken wondered. “They would be taoiseach.”
“A leader will be honored, but a leader carries the burden for us all. So they must choose to lift that as well as the sword. Quiet now.” She kissed both her sons. “Here is Mairghread.”
Mairghread O’Ceallaigh, once a taoiseach herself, and mother to the one now buried, had shed her mourning black. She wore white, a simple gown with no adornments but a pendant with a stone as red as her hair.
They seemed to flame—the stone and her hair—as if they burned away the mists as she walked through them. She wore her hair as short as that of the faeries who streamed in her wake.
And the crowd parted for her, the chattering ceased to silence that spoke of respect and of awe.
Keegan knew her as Marg, the woman who lived in the cottage in the woods not far from the farm. The woman who would give a hungry boy a honey cake and a story. A woman of great power and courage, who had fought for Talamh, brought peace at deep personal cost.
He’d held her as she’d wept for her son, as he kept his word again and brought her the news himself. Though she had known already.
He’d held her until the women came to comfort.
And then, though he was a soldier, though he was a man, he’d gone deeper into the woods to shed his own tears.
Now she looked magnificent, and he felt a shudder of that awe inside his belly.
She carried the staff, the ancient symbol of leadership. Its wood, dark as pitch, gleamed in the sun, through the mists that thinned and broke in pieces.
Its carvings seemed to pulse. Inside the dragon’s heart stone at its tip, power swirled.
When she spoke, even the wind fell silent.
“Once more we have brought peace to our world with blood and sacrifice. We have, through all ages, protected our world, and through it all the others. We chose to live as we live, from the land, from the sea, from the Fey, honoring all.
“Once more we have peace, once more we will prosper, until the time comes round again for blood and sacrifice. Today, as it was written, as it was told, as it was sung, a new leader will rise, and all here will swear their fealty to Talamh, to the taoiseach who will take the sword from the Lake of Truth and accept the Staff of Justice.”
She lifted her face to the sky, and Keegan thought her voice, so clear, so strong, must reach all the way to the Sea of Storms and beyond.
“In this place, in this hour, we call upon our source of power. Let the one chosen and choosing this day, honor, respect, and guard the Fey. Let the hand that lifts the sword be strong and wise and true. This, only this, your people ask of you.”
The water, pale and green with its power, began to swirl. The mists over it swayed.
“So it begins.” She lifted the staff high.
They raced toward the water. Some of the younger ones laughed or whooped as they dived, as they jumped. Those on shore cheered.
Keegan heard the din of it all as he hesitated, as his brother went into the water with a cheerful splash. He thought of his oath, thought of the hand that had gripped his in those last moments of life on this plane.