Taminy

by Bohnhoff, Maya Kaathryn

  Taminy spoke, then. “She has a Gift, Osraed Saxan. I’ve seen the evidence of it. Seen it and felt it.”

  Iseabal’s mother uttered a cry of complete disbelief. “What evidence? What evidence could you have seen—or understood? These things are for the Osraed, not for children.”

  Osraed Saxan rose from the table, then, and left the room, leaving his wife and young guests in unanswered turmoil.

  “What is it, Saxan?” his wife cried. “Where are you going? What is the girl talking about?”

  She had risen and trailed her husband as far as the gracefully arched doorway to the central hall when he reappeared from the room opposite, carrying something in his hands. Ardis-a-Nairnecirke glanced at his face as he passed her, then, hand over her mouth, followed him silently back to the table.

  Iseabal’s eyes were on the thing in his hands—a wooden box carved with Runes. She knew it had a green velvet lining, and she knew what nested in that green velvet lining. She had spent hours in childhood staring at it. Now, her father opened the box and held it out to her. The egg-sized crystal in its verdant glen winked and sparkled and played with the light of candle and globe.

  “Take it,” he said. “Hold it in your hands.”

  The crystal swam out of focus. Iseabal blinked and raised her eyes to her father’s, trying to read them—to read him. She could not. With trembling hands, she lifted the crystal from its bed and cupped it. She held it before her face, barely aware that the lights in the room were dimming; that her father called them down, hand raised, fingers flexed as if pulling light from the room. She kept her eyes on the crystal, quivering, aware only of it and of a warm presence at her shoulder.

  Taminy. Taminy watched her. Smiled on her.

  She heard her mother gasp, saw Aine rise slowly from her chair. In her hands the crystal, Perahta, threw forth a sudden pulse of warm light—light that kissed her face and heated her palms. Forgetful of everything but the crystal, blind to everything but its light, deaf to her mother’s sobs and her father’s murmured prayer, Iseabal smiled.

  oOo

  She stood with her back to the room and wondered at how autumn seemed to be creeping up on them early this year. Already there was a sharpness to evenings, and mornings were reluctant to shed their chill. Saxan had set a fire which now rustled in the grate across the room, but she did not feel warm. Outside their bedroom window, the Cirkeyard was all black and silver-white, there was no warmth in the moonlight that lay, gauzy and snow-like, over gravestone and runepost.

  The dead slept or lived elsewhere, unbothered by today’s revelations. They had no reason to care that Ardis-a-Nairnecirke’s conceptions of right and wrong had been challenged and toppled by the words of an eighteen-year-old youth.

  And her daughter—she’d raised her well, she’d thought, with a sense of propriety. No, it was more than a matter of propriety, this. There were deeper issues. Iseabal, hankering to Weave! When had it begun? Mustn’t it have to do with Bevol and his freakish wards?

  “I’ve seen the evidence,” that strange girl had said.

  Iseabal had the Gift. Such evidence she could have seen only if she possessed that Gift herself. Only if she new exactly what to look for. Only if she was- Ardis couldn’t allow herself to even think the word. Iseabal would have to be kept from her, of course. Then the odd attraction would fade.

  “Well, Ardis?”

  Her back went up straight at the sound of his voice. She strove to make it relax. “Well, what, Saxan?”

  “What do you think of our Iseabal going up to Halig-liath in the fall?”

  As if he was discussing her taking a jaunt to Tuine! “I think it shall not happen.”

  She heard the whisper of cloth as he shrugged or gestured. “And why not? She wants to go.”

  “There is no reason. It’s unwarranted.”

  “Unwarranted? Ardis, she has the Gift.”

  “I won’t believe it. That girl of Bevol’s only makes her think she has a Gift.”

  His breath rode out on a sigh. “Ardis, Ardis, dear, you saw with your own eyes how the crystal behaved in her hands.”

  “It was Bevol’s girl. I should have known better than to let her befriend someone from that household. I should have known that any child Osraed Bevol brought to Nairne must be dyed to the same hue as Meredydd-a-Lagan. We were foolish enough to think a friendship with Iseabal would bleach that stain. I made the same mistake with this one. It’s the dark of the dye that spreads, not the whiteness of the pure cloth.”

  Behind her, Saxan moved further into the room. “Ardis, you haven’t listened. There is no stain. It’s all right for Taminy to be gifted. It’s acceptable for Iseabal, as well.”

  “How easily you spout the words.”

  “Well, they are easier spouted than taken to heart. This is not an easy change of season for me, Ardis. But the Meri bids me believe my daughter’s Gift is acceptable-”

  Ardis wheeled on him, her face chill-hot, her eyes shedding tears. “She has no Gift! Stop saying that she has! Our girl is innocent! Innocent!”

  White-faced, he nodded. “Of course, she is innocent. But she also has a Gift. Perahta lit for her. That proves-”

  “Nothing! You were there. It might’ve lit for you. Or Taminy or-”

  “If Perahta had lit for me, I would have known it.” He came to her then, and took her hands in his. She twisted her neck, looked away, but did not move.

  “Listen, Ardis. When Iseabal traveled with me to Ochanshrine, I took her to see the Osmaer. The Sanctum was dimly lit and empty of any but her and I and a few Prentices engaged in prayer. I took Isha’s hand and led her up to the altar and, as we drew near, the Stone took fire. She cooed and ah-ed at it, and turned to me and cried, ‘Oh, Papa, see how it glows for you!’ But it wasn’t me, Ardis. It wasn’t me the Osmaer reached out to with Her fire. It was Iseabal.”

  “No,” she said.

  “I didn’t want to believe it, either. But I had the evidence of my own senses. Somehow, I hoped it would go away. That she would never understand what she had. That she would grow up without having to know. I’ve always been very careful about keeping Perahta out of her hands, but-” He paused, searching her face. “Do you think it’s easy for me to change the beliefs of a lifetime? I have struggled to pretend that Isha is an ordinary girl. I have done so because I believed that if she was not ordinary, she would be condemned. And since I’m her father, the fault could only be mine.”

  She looked at him then, met his eyes. “And mine,” she whispered. “Oh, Saxan, what have we done?”

  He put his arms about her and kissed her hair. “We have raised a beautiful daughter who has a Gift granted only to the pure. That is what we have done.”

  She wept, willing herself to believe. But her will failed her and she wept harder for that.

  CHAPTER 9

  Everything I unveil to you,

  every duan I sing to you,

  is in conformity with your capacity to comprehend,

  not with My condition or the melody of my Voice.

  — The Book of the Meri

  Chapter I, Verse 1

  The Library was empty at this hour, early sunlight illuminating untenanted tables and scattering a myriad shadows onto floor and wall and ceiling. On a table near the shelves, the Osraed Wyth’s work lay in a curiously rhythmic clutter of sheafs and stacks. It looked as if he had left but a moment ago, but he was nowhere in sight of the door where Osraed Ealad-hach stood peering.

  It was not curiosity that had brought him here, nor anticipation of Wyth’s progress. It was fear. He was honest enough to admit that, even to himself, but there was enough anger in his fear to make him bold and toothy.

  They should never have allowed Wyth to blurt his pronouncements at Council. Never. They should have tested them first—tested him. That had never been done before. There was no precedent for it in the annals of Halig-liath. The Kiss of the Meri was its own proof. It could not be falsified—and there had been those who had t
ried.

  No precedent! The old man fumed. There was no precedent for the changes Wyth Arundel demanded in the Meri’s name. None. And they were in a Cusp—an auspicious Cusp, if the appearance of a Golden Meri meant aught. Tests came at such times; heinous trials calculated to separate the true from the false, the blessed from the cursed.

  He had been Osraed for six decades. Did his word mean nothing? But, no. He would not let himself be personally slighted. It was the time; it was the circumstance. He would never be so roundly ignored by his peers unless Something, Someone, some Power was at work. Sane men would have listened to him when he suggested that Wyth be proved. Faer-wald had listened, and Parthelan and the other Tradists. But even among that brotherhood within the Brotherhood, there were cowards, weaklings, men easily swayed by Wyth’s ingenuous sincerity, men who wished to ignore the strangeness of this time, men only too willing to countenance sweeping change when it dressed itself in the trappings of authority. They resisted questioning the Meri’s will—and rightly so. They would need proof that Wyth Arundel did not represent that. That he brought them, not new Doctrine, but an old challenge, a test, a touchstone.

  “Wish for death if you are men of truth,” Ealad-hach murmured, the words a soft susurration in the empty, cavernous room—a breeze through cobwebs. He shivered slightly and stepped down into the play of light and shadow. Soft soles whispering, eyes darting, he moved to Wyth’s tidy work table and hung there, tingling, peering.

  Delicately, he lifted a freshly copied page, taken by the cleanliness of it—absolute black on absolute white. His eyes seduced, he read: You, O God and Lord, have sent down the Book—the Corah—that My Cause may be manifest and My Words glorified. Through this Book, You did enter into a Covenant concerning Me and concerning those created in Your Kingdom. You see, O Divine Beloved, how Your people have made of that Covenant a stronghold for their own desires. Into this place, they have withdrawn from Your Glory; secure, they ignore Your signs. You are the One, O Spirit, who instructed them in Your Book, saying, “Hear the Voice of the Merciful One, O people of the Corah, and deny not She whom I have sent you.”

  A chill rippled down Ealad-hach’s arm, shuddering the page from his fingers. He frowned, rubbing his hands together. No coincidence, his reading those words. They spoke to him—to his very soul—shaking him. A stronghold for their own desires ...He had seen that, had he not? The desire of Bevol, of Calach, of Tynedale and others, to admit cailin to the Brotherhood? Had that desire now taken such hold of Wyth Arundel that he became its unwitting instrument? Had it so blinded the young Osraed and his elders that they now failed to perceive the clear signs?

  This new policy of Wyth’s was an assault on the very Covenant he was ordained to protect. And none but this unworthy old man was able to see it. The Meri was allowing another Power to play the field—a Power whose goal was the corruption of the Osraed through the influence of Gifted women. A Power he had seen personified in his dreams.

  Ealad-hach wrung his hands, whispering a prayer of thanks that his eyes, at least, were open. That he could see the calamity nearing. Aye, and he could feel it, hear its whispered approach.

  A shiver scurried up his spine. He turned, quickly, expecting to see nothing but the vapors of his imagination. He found himself staring, open-mouthed at Osraed Wyth. While he struggled to collect himself, the young Osraed smiled at him, disarmingly. He blanched. In abstract terms he could cast Wyth as a traitor to the Covenant; in flesh and blood, he found that conviction difficult to uphold. He had liked the boy, had thought him a young man of staunch principle. And though he had been disappointed when the Meri had passed him over the first time, he had not, then, seen the flaw, the weakness that made Wyth Arundel easy prey for someone like Meredydd-a-Lagan. And after that unfortunate episode, after the young Wicke had tried (aye, and succeeded!) to seduce him, it seemed more than passing strange that he should suddenly find favor with the Meri.

  “Hello, Osraed Ealad-hach,” said Wyth and put a slight bow into his words.

  “How goes the work?” Ealad-hach asked, and found his eyes drawn to Wyth’s forehead. It could not be falsified, that Kiss. Not falsified, but false, nonetheless. It must be false. There was no other possibility.

  The younger man stepped down into the room and crossed to the table where Ealad-hach stood and willed himself not to flinch.

  “Much more quickly since the advent of the Copyweave,” Wyth said, and the smile deepened.

  “The Copyweave?” inquired Ealad-hach, glad for the introduction of a non-threatening subject.

  Wyth lifted an odd little frame of wood and metal from the table and held it out to him. There was a piece of crystal-glass set into the top of the frame and its collapsible, jointed legs sported four wooden feet with leather pads.

  “Osraed Saer built it for me,” Wyth said. His eyes were bright with boyish enthusiasm. “You see, you place it over the text you wish to copy, then draw a circumscription on the glass, so you only get the part you need. Then, you draw the text into the glass and deposit it on the new page. The frame unfolds” —he demonstrated— “so you can expand or contract the image, as you desire.”

  Ealad-hach was impressed without intending to be. “A marvelous device, Osraed Wyth. You are a clever young man, to have developed such a Weave.”

  The boy looked suddenly gawky and uncomfortable. “Well, sir, I must be honest, It wasn’t completely my conception.”

  “Oh? Whose, then?” Was it his imagination, or had the young man tensed? Did the brown eyes dodge his?

  “Oh, a-a friend.”

  “Ah. Bevol, I presume.”

  Wyth turned the frame in his hands, his expression suddenly opaque. Ealad-hach cursed his lack of Thought Tell ability.

  “Actually,” Wyth said, raising his eyes a little, “it was Taminy-a-Gled who helped me with the Weave.”

  Ealad-hach thought his heart would stop and fall to the floor. “Taminy ...” he repeated, and wondered that he didn’t stammer. “The girl Bevol brought to Nairne?”

  Wyth nodded, eyes watchful.

  “She ... Weaves?”

  “She knew a couple of duans. One, she adapted from a Water Draw, the other, I think she might have composed ... although she could have learned it from Bevol.” His eyes slid away again. “Perhaps she was only parroting.”

  “Very likely,” Ealad-hach said. He could not quite make himself feel relief. He wanted it; it refused to come. Still, he gave lip service to the safe interpretation, even in his own soul.

  “Bevol mentioned,” Wyth said, “that you had an aislinn you wanted me to Tell.”

  Ealad-hach peered at him. So. You want to read my dreams, do you? Are you being sly, boy? Are you being clever? If I give you my aislinn, what will you do with it? What will you try to make me believe?

  He almost said “no.” He almost pulled back from the prospect of letting this anomaly into his nightmares. But a sense of duty drove him on. This was a riddle he must solve.

  “Yes,” he said. “I have dreamed. Let me tell you what I have dreamed.”

  Oddly, the boy’s face seemed to close in on itself. “Are you certain, Osraed, that you wish me to give the Tell?”

  Why was he wriggling away? Surely, he would want to interpret the aislinn to the advantage of his cause. “Yes, of course. You were always excellent at the Dream Tell.”

  Wyth dipped his head. “As you wish.”

  Ealad-hach told him then, of the Sea and the Shore and the girl upon it. He showed him, too, or tried to, but his Weave was weak and lacked depth and clarity. And when he was finished, he looked at Wyth’s face and saw reluctance—no, more than that—distress.

  The boy fingered his Copyweave frame and stared at his neat stack of papers and said nothing.

  “Well?” prompted Ealad-hach. “Well, what do you say? Give me your Tell.”

  “I can’t, Osraed.” Wyth raised his eyes to Ealad-hach’s face. “I cannot Tell this aislinn. It-”

  “It what? What do y
ou mean, you can’t Tell it?”

  Wyth shook his head. “It’s too confused. Too confusing. The images are ... too thick with personal meaning. It is beyond me.”

  “Confusing how?” persisted Ealad-hach. “Do you balk at Telling a portent of evil?”

  Wyth’s eyes met his, sharp and probing. “Is that what you perceive it to be, Osraed? A portent of evil?”

  “Whatever else is muddled, that much is clear.”

  “And if I told you it was not a portent of evil?”

  “I would not believe it.”

  Wyth’s shoulders moved in what was almost a shrug. “Then any Tell I might give would be irrelevant to you.”

  “Do you say it is a portent of good?” He cannot say that, surely. He won’t say it.

  Wyth frowned, his gaze suddenly turned inward. “The same Sun that warms the earth and ripens the crops, burns to ashes the dry grass and blinds the creatures of shadow.”

  Ealad-hach tried to pry at the boy’s narrow face, tried to divine his meaning. The attempt was futile. “Who is the girl?” he asked sharply. “Tell me that much. Who is this Wicke?”

  Wyth shook his head. “There is no Wicke in your aislinn, Osraed.”

  “Then what?”

  “I ... cannot say.”

  “You mean, you will not.”

  Wyth shook his head again and lowered his eyes to the tidy mess atop the table. “If you’ll excuse me, Osraed, I have much work to do.”

  Ealad-hach withdrew silently, though his spirit was not silent; it roared in ragged frustration. He went away to his chambers, then, to pursue a peace that no longer lived there. Later, he thought, later, when he was calm, he would tell the others what he had gleaned from Wyth.

  oOo

  “And then,” panted Aine, “and then, she took the crystal out of the box and it lit up like a lightbowl!”

  “No! It didn’t!” Doireann’s eyes all but started from her face. She lifted her skirts higher as they cut through ripening wheat toward the verdant line of the Bebhinn Wood.

  Skittering sideways, Aine bobbed her bright head, her voice coming out in short puffs. “And Taminy said ... Taminy said ... she’d seen that Isha ... Isha had the Gift.”