Lion of Ireland by Morgan Llywelyn Page A

last he became aware of her body beneath his, a separate person, pressed by his weight into the damp, cold ground. He had not even thought to spread his cloak beneath her ...
    He tried to say something, find some phrase of tenderness
    and gratitude. But his mouth was dry and his throat as dusty as a summer road. “Fiona .. .”
    “Hush, it’s all right. I wanted you to do it.” She opened her eyes inches from his face, and he saw the glitter of tears. But her lips were smiling.
    Alone in his sacred grove, Gamin prayed. On the soot-blackened surface of a holy stone he built a fire, using twigs from three different species of tree. Carefully he fed the flame, diminishing the three piles of kindling in scrupulously even amounts, chanting into the smoke as he measured the twigs and broke them into their proper lengths.
    The last rising of the sap of spring moved in his old body, even as the first flowering had come to his granddaughter. The magic circles closed again, life speaking to life; his sacrifice was made. Death and birth in their endless cycle moved before his eyes.
    “As the bee to the flower,” he intoned solemnly, feeling the ancient forces move tidally within him, “as the sun to the grain. Bring life to this, your consecrated daughter; welcome her as part of the chain. Give her her place in the circle, that she may add life to life and move through all her deaths unafraid.”
    He prostrated himself before the stone. In his mind he saw again Brian’s strong young face. He envisioned himself touching hands with the boy through Fiona’s body, their linked lives going forward into the future together, passing through death, stronger with each rebirth. The sacrificial defloration was accomplished. The first connection had been made, the line of Camin would take part in the special immortality he foresaw for Brian of Boruma. In time they would merge and become one with all living things, and it would be good.
    Above him, a slender coil of blue smoke spiraled upward until it was lost from sight in the branches of an oak tree that had stood in that place since before the before.
    They sat shoulder to -shoulder, hands interlocked, talking about themselves. Brian told her of the rocky, windswept land of Thomond, and compared it to the lushness of woods and watercourses that surrounded them. “This is such a fertile land,” he said. “It must be easy for people to make their living here.”
    Fiona shrugged; a small gesture that emphasized the thinness of her shoulders. “We see so few other people, I scarcely know how they fare. My grandsire is a Druid, and he has been forced to live as a hermit because the bishop accused him of sins and blasphemy. Hardly anyone seeks him out anymore; he spends most of his wisdom on me.” Her large brown eyes were wistful, saddened by the ignorance of the people who refused to accept Gamin’s priceless knowledge. “What of your parents, where are they?”
    “Oh, my mother died when I was born. I think my father was disappointed in me, because he just left me with Camin and never came back.” She said it simply, a fact of her life that she did not mind revealing, but it shocked Brian.
    How could she admit such a thing so casually? To be considered unsatisfactory by one’s own sire . ..
    how could the girl accept that rejection, and how could she bear to speak of it to him?
    A picture formed in his mind. A sunlit road; Cennedi and Mahon marching away from him. Mahon the valuable one, the star in his father’s sky. Cennedi had taken him and left his youngest son forever, without a backward glance.
    He shook himself as one does when rousing from a bad dream. “You say old Camin is a Druid?” he asked quickly. It was surprising to hear of such a thing; a practitioner of the ancient religion was an exotic being to a boy raised within the monastic confines of Clonmacnoise. It was as if a giant elk had appeared, walking in stately grandeur among the trees, when no man alive