Lugad paused on a high ridge overlooking Kells castle, and looked
back at the place that could have been his second home. Lugad wouldn't
miss the island where Numaine had raised him, he was sure of that. It
was a prison, made to hold Lugad until he was ready to fight for Temra,
like a barrel was made to hold apples. Kells castle, though... that was
a place to be proud to come from. Deirdre lived in Kells castle. That
made it special. Kells castle was also the place where he had stood
with his brother Rohan for the first time, together against Maeve, their
mother. Blood was strange. Rohan said that having the same blood made
them brothers, and that meant they shouldn't fight each other. Maeve
was their mother, and had the same blood as Lugad and Rohan, but that
didn't mean they shouldn't fight her. Lugad had given this problem a
lot of thought. Thinking was not an easy task, but this was important.
Lugad decided that blood was not as important as keeping a promise.
Maeve had lied to him, and so she had become Lugad's enemy, even though
they had the same blood. Rohan had never lied to him, and neither had
the other mystic knights, so they were Lugad's friends. Numaine, too,
had kept her promise to help Lugad get revenge on Maeve, but something
about what Numaine said when she appeared to them after Maeve's defeat
still troubled him. Lugad trusted Numaine to tell him the truth, but
trusting Deirdre hadn't made him weak, it had given him revenge on
Maeve, and now all the mystic knights were his friends. Lugad decided
that Numaine had just been wrong about how much human feelings were
worth. Anybody could make a mistake.
Lugad looked down at the castle again, and sighed, a deep, unhappy
note rising from inside his thick yellow chest. Going away from
Numaine's island had been easy, but going away from Kells castle was
very, very, hard. Lugad had made up his mind the night before, and told
his brother Rohan that he was going away to find his own destiny, but
now, looking back at the castle from this high, cold place, Lugad just
wanted to see Deirdre and the rest of his friends again.
Rohan had fulfilled his destiny though, and somewhere out over the hills
at his back, Lugad's destiny waited as well. He didn't know what it
would be yet, but he could feel it, like the feeling in the air after he
fired a lightning bolt with his axe. "Some day," Lugad promised himself, "I will come back and tell them what
my destiny was." Lugad turned away from the castle, and started walking
down the ridge, towards the setting sun. Lugad did not look back,
because he knew that he would see Kells castle again.
He had promised.
