The Awakening (The Dragon Heart Legacy #1) - Nora Roberts

PART I

CHANGES

A lie which is half a truth

is ever the blackest of lies.

—Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Presume not that I am the thing I was.

—William Shakespeare

PROLOGUE

VALLEY OF THE FEY

Mists, shimmering silver fingers, rose over the pale green water of the lake. They twined and twisted toward a sky quietly gray, while in the east, over the hills, a pink blush waited, like a held breath, to waken.

In the chill of dawn, Keegan O’Broin stood by the lake and watched the day become. A day, he knew, of change and choice, of hope and power.

He waited, like that held breath, to do his duty, and his hope was he’d be back at the farm before noon. Chores to do, he thought, and more training, of course.

But at the homeplace.

At the signal, he stripped off his boots and his tunic. His brother, Harken, did the same, as did near to six hundred others. They came not just from the valley, the young and the not-so-young, but from every corner of Talamh.

They came from the south where the Pious prayed their secret prayers, from the north where the fiercest of warriors guarded the Sea of Storms, from the Capital in the east, and from here in the west.

For their chieftain, their taoiseach, was dead, his life given to save the world. And as it was written, as it was told, as it was sung, a new one would rise, like those mists, on this day, in this place, in this way.

He didn’t want to be taoiseach any more than Harken did. Harken, a cheerful boy of twelve years—the youngest allowed to participate in the ritual—was a farmer, blood and bone. Keegan knew his little brother thought of the day, of the crowds, of the leap into the lake as great fun.

For Keegan, today he would keep an oath given to a man dying, a man who’d stood as his father since his own went to the gods, a man who’d led Talamh to victory over those who would enslave them, though it cost him his life.

He had no desire to lift up the staff of the taoiseach, to take up the sword of the leader of the clann. But he’d given his word, and so he’d dive into the water with all the other boys and girls, men and women.

“Come on then, Keegan!” Harken grinned, his raven-wing mop of hair blowing in the spring breeze. “Think of the fun of it. If I find the sword, I’ll declare a week of feasting and dancing.”

“If you find the sword, who’ll tend the sheep and milk the cows?”

“If I rise up as taoiseach, I’ll do all of that and more. The battle’s done and won, brother. I grieve for him as well.” And with his innate kindness, Harken wrapped an arm around Keegan’s shoulders. “He was a hero, and never to be forgotten. And today, as he would want, as must be done, a new leader comes.”

With his blue eyes bright as the day, Harken looked around at the crowd on the shores of the lake. “We honor him, and all who came before him, all who will come after.”

Now Harken jabbed an elbow in Keegan’s side. “Leave off the brooding, it’s not as if either of us will come out of the water with Cosantoir in our hand. More like to be Cara, as she’s as clever in the water as a mermaid, or Cullen, who I know’s been practicing holding his breath under the water these past two weeks.”

“So he would,” Keegan muttered. Cullen, as fine a soldier as was born, wouldn’t make a good chief. He’d rather fight than think.

Keegan, a soldier himself at fourteen, one who’d seen blood, spilled it, knew power, felt it, understood that thinking mattered as much as the sword, the spear, the powers.

More, come to that.

Hadn’t he been taught just that by his father, and by the one who’d treated him like a son?

As he stood with Harken, with so many others, all chattering like magpies, his mother moved through the crowd.

He wished she would dive today. He knew no one who could settle a dispute as handily, who could deal with a dozen tasks at one time. Harken had her kindness, their sister, Aisling, her beauty, and he liked to think he had at least some of her canniness.

Tarryn paused by Aisling—who chose to wait with her friends rather than the brothers she currently disdained. Keegan watched her tip up Aisling’s chin, kiss her cheeks, say words that made