“Did she tell you who did?”
“She didn’t know. I accepted her at her word and she left me.”
“She rode like demons hunted her,” objected Ealad-hach. “Do you claim not to know why?”
Taminy turned her head to look at him. I could blow on him and he would fold up and fly away. It was a chilling thought. She was further chilled by having had it.
“I do know why, sir. When I held her hand to read the truth in her, I sensed that she had a Gift. I knew she had been having troubling dreams and had seen portents, but hid them from everyone. I told her what I felt. My words frightened her. Then, too, she felt betrayed. If she hadn’t made that runebag and put it in her pocket, then someone else did. Someone who wanted her to be blamed. Aine was much troubled by that. Troubled and hurt.” She let her eyes wander toward Doireann, whose olive complexion had taken on the look of fresh, pale cream.
“And do you know who was responsible for the runebag last Cirke-dag?”
“The same person who was responsible for the one I found tonight on the ground by the Cirke wall. The one Ealad-hach saw in my hand.”
“And who is this person—this secret maker of fetishes?”
Taminy felt the dark eyes burring into the side of her head. “I cannot say, Osraed. I believe they must come forward of their own will.”
“She’s dissembling!” argued Ealad-hach. “She brought the runebag. She cast the inyx that toppled Aine-mac-Lorimer from her horse.”
“Who originated the idea,” Calach asked, “that Taminy was responsible for the fall?”
Ealad-hach moved to catch Doireann’s shoulder and push her forward next to Taminy where she quivered under a room full of eyes. “This girl—Doireann Spenser.”
“What put this idea into your head, child?” asked Calach gently.
Doireann cleared her throat. “They didn’t get on well. Aine was sweet on Terris-mac-Webber and-and she saw them together in his shop one day. Heard him ... heard him plead his great fondness for Taminy.” She fairly spat the name, then quailed again, her eyes darting about the floor.
Like a wild little mouse, Taminy thought. Straining to keep just ahead of the falcon.
“That was when she thought about making the runebag,” Doireann continued, her teeth near chattering. “I think that’s when, I mean—she certainly said naught of it to me. She must’ve wanted to fight Taminy on her own ground. She must’ve thought she could prove to Terris that Taminy really was a Wicke. Or-or perhaps she meant to scare her into staying away from him. But they had words up on the hill—harsh words, I think. Aine was angry and afraid.”
“Might she have made that runebag herself, thinking it would protect her from Taminy?” That was the Osraed Eadmund.
Taminy looked at him. A pale young man, awash in uncertainty.
“It was, after all, a wearding fetish similar to one she ... or someone else ... brought to Cirke.”
“I-I suppose so, Osraed.” Doireann glanced at Taminy, then aside, as their eyes nearly collided.
“May I speak?” asked Wyth.
Calach acknowledged him and he came to stand between Taminy and Doireann.
“Last Cirke-dag, Taminy is reported, by credible witnesses, to have poured more Eibhilin Light through a crystal than most of us have ever seen. This evening we experienced her handling of an Infusion Weave, which she performed while shielding herself against the attempts of Ealad-hach and others to physically remove her. Can you believe someone with that kind of ability would resort to a pungent fetish to accomplish anything?”
The men of the Council nodded their heads sagely.
“He’s right, you know,” said Faer-wald. “Runebags have traditionally been the refuge of people who have no inherent Gift, but who are trying to protect themselves from those who do. The fetish that turned up on Cirke-dag had a recipe intended to ward off Wicke; this second bag may have been created with the same intention.”
Ealad-hach all but exploded. “The damned runebag is irrelevant! What is relevant is this young woman’s power.”
“Which does not,” injected Bevol gently, “make her Wicke. Taminy is a young woman of extraordinary ability. I am well aware of that. But she is not evil. She is not a Wicke. You have built your accusations on sand, Ealad.”
“There was enmity between the two girls-”
“No,” said Taminy, “there was not. I like Aine, very much. I would never do anything to harm her.”
Calach looked around at the other members of the Council. They gazed back as if at a loss to know what to say or do next. One by one, they shrugged, passing the decision back to him.
“Has she got you all so completely dazzled?” Ealad-hach cried.
Calach leaned forward, his bony elbows propped upon the gleaming crescent table. “Osraed, what is to be gained from this exercise? No one has been harmed. If there was any mischief done, it does not seem to have been done by Taminy. Indeed, it appears that Taminy has thwarted any such mischief. Unless you can offer some more substantial proof-”
Ealad-hach ground his teeth. “Would you accept an aislinn?”
Calach sat up straight in his chair. “To prove that Taminy used the Craft to harm Aine?”
“No. To prove that she is not what she seems. To prove that she is not merely a Wicke, but a Cwen Wicke, a supremely powerful Wicke, and that she is a chief architect of this Cusp we are now in.”
Silence was the only possible answer to that. The five Osraed at their curving table glanced at each other with unreadable expressions and found invisible threads on the cuffs of their chamber robes and flaws in the table top.
“Really, Ealad,” said Faer-wald at last. “Are you certain you wish to pursue this?”
“I must pursue it. I have no choice.”
“She is not Wicke,” said Bevol.
“You are too close to her to-”
Wyth interrupted. “She is absolutely not Wicke.”
Ealad-hach ignored him. “I told you of my aislinn weeks ago, when Wyth was on his Pilgrimage. I saw the rising of this woman from the Sea.”
“You saw the rising of a woman from the Sea,” corrected Calach. “She was faceless.”
“She had flaxen hair.”
“Many women have flaxen hair.”
“I will show you her face!”
Calach gazed around the room. Taminy followed his eyes. It was in the face of every Osraed there: this had gotten suddenly beyond mere dabbling in the Craft by a village cailin. Aine had become incidental; Doireann’s accusations were forgotten; the mumblings of frightened parents were as the buzzing of bees, mildly jarring, vaguely threatening.
Calach dismissed everyone but the Council members and Osraed Wyth, who insisted upon staying. The loiterers in the outer corridor would no doubt repair to the Backstere’s or the Quayside Road House to get their ears filled with the evening’s Tell, but Osraed Saxan made certain they did not fill them in the hall. Taminy could hear his voice as the great doors closed behind him, exhorting everyone to leave. Then the doors shut, cutting the grumbling like a pair of blades.
That Calach was at a loss was evident; he polled the other Osraed visually again, then made a gesture that opened the floor for their input. “What shall we do, Osraed?” he asked them, and Faer-wald provided an immediate answer.
“Why don’t we hear him out? At the very least, it should settle this matter in his mind. If he can show us a convincing aislinn, fine. If not, we can then request that the matter be dropped.” He looked to Ealad-hach then, his gaze punctuating his remarks with little subtlety.
Calach nodded. “A sound idea ... Osraed?”
They agreed to a man. Better, they all thought, to get this over with. Better to placate their elder brother. Better that he be at last forced to lay these accusations to rest.
Seated again between Wyth and Osraed Bevol, Taminy watched as Ealad-hach took his place at the center of the chamber. Watched him in the dimming light as he brought out his crystal and prepared
himself for the Weave, murmuring duans that sent chills of anticipation up and down her spine. She glanced aside at Bevol. His face was impassive, his eyelids half-closed, his mouth drawn into almost a smile.
Ealad-hach began his Weave, walking his circle, circumscribing its limits. He set his crystal down in the center of it. A spark appeared at its core and light trembled there, uncertain. He sang and the light strengthened, though it still behaved like a candle wick in a capricious wind.
He chanted louder, straining to steady the light, and Taminy felt a response from Bevol—a soft pulse in his attention. She glanced at him again, found that his eyes were locked on the crystal. The light in it steadied.
A smile brushed Ealad-hach’s lips; his duan changed as he called upon the Eibhilin world to intrude into his own. Within the circle he described with his steps, a fitful image swelled—a dark, turbid phantasm that struggled to resolve itself into something recognizable—tried and failed. Ealad-hach’s smile stretched and grimmed.
Beside Taminy, Bevol exhaled a long, whispered breath; a shiver of sound, accompanied by a shiver of something else.
Ealad-hach’s aislinn gelled, becoming surf and sand and dark, bright sky. Taminy was certain, then, that Bevol was aiding the weakened old Osraed in his Weaving. She was not certain why, but understood that the result was likely to be another fiery collision.
Am I ready for that? she wondered, and trembled at the answer. Yet, she must trust Bevol; she had no choice.
She held her breath and watched the surf writhe, shimmering, onto the glitter of aislinn sand. Each wave was more luminescent than the last, infused with a shade of gold-green that Nature used so sparingly, most human eyes had never seen it. In a breath, gold and green seemed to bleed away from each other, drawing into separate pools within the greater pool of the Sea. The green deepened to emerald—a verdant, crystalline color that pulsed momentarily with light before muting.
In the midst of the aislinn depiction, out of the rippling water, appeared a pale form. Ealad-hach’s eyes seized on it, his words came more quickly, his steps quickened on their circular path. A sizzle of Eibhilin vigor shot from Bevol, tingling up the back of Taminy’s neck and raising the hair on her arms. The form tightened, became a woman’s head and shoulders, glittering with Sea jewels and irradiated with light.
She waded to shore, dripping radiance and salt water, stepping, at last, onto the beach, gleaming, naked except for a gown of sea tears. Hair the color of moonlit wheat cascaded down her back and over her shoulders, chastely mantling her breasts. She looked up, her eyes focused on someone the aislinn did not show, and laughed. “Ah, Osraed Bevol! I have not breathed for a hundred years!”
Taminy heard and felt the collective gasp that circled the room. She was looking into her own face, blushing at the sight of her own body, naked before all these eyes. She felt Wyth, sitting to her left, coil defensively. To her right, Bevol relaxed, nodding.
“There!” Ealad-hach’s voice issued out on a hiss of breath. He cased his pacing of the circle and turned to appraise what he thought to be his own handiwork. “You can now see it with your own eyes.”
Indeed, they could. And he let them see it long enough that there could be no doubt whose face that was—no doubt whatever who was receiving a warm robe from unseen hands.
Yet, he asked her, his voice trembling with effort, “Taminy-a-Gled, are you that cailin?”
She thought her voice might fail her, but it did not. “I am that cailin,” she answered.
Ealad-hach took his attention from the aislinn and focused it on Calach. The supporting aura from Bevol faded, and with it, the Woven vision. Taminy all but held her breath as the globes in the room shed more light, revealing the stunned and very sober expressions of the Osraed.
Ealad-hach struck a pose, hand outstretched toward her, palm up. “Have you any doubts now?” he asked, holding her in that palm, offering her up to the Council. “Have you any doubts that she is the Cwen Wicke I have dreamed? Have you any doubt that Osraed Bevol is involved in her deception?”
Osraed Calach, his face pale as the whites of his eyes, looked to Bevol. “Bevol, what is this? What have we been shown? Is this young woman the Wicke of Ealad’s aislinn?”
Bevol stood and moved from Taminy’s side to share the floor with Ealad-hach. “She is obviously the young woman of his aislinn, but she is not a Wicke.”
“Then what? Surely we have never seen this before ... did this cailin arise from the Sea as the vision suggests?”
“The vision mirrors reality, Osraed. She arose, just as you saw. What you did not see is what happened just before. You did not see Meredydd-a-Lagan go into the water.”
Calach shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
“Isn’t it obvious?” asked Ealad-hach. “Meredydd-a-Lagan was also a Wicke.”
Bevol shook his head.
“Then where is she now?” asked Osraed Kynan.
“She is in the Sea,” said Ealad-hach. “Drowned. Dead.”
Again, Bevol shook his head. “She is in the Sea, but she did not drown and she is not dead. That is the truth.”
Ealad-hach pointed a shaking finger at his colleague. “You! You dare speak to this Council? You presume to speak about what is true when you have been consorting with evil?”
“I have not consorted with evil, Ealad. Could I wear this and do so?” He pointed to the vivid star upon his forehead, then turned to the Council. “Will you hear me out? Will you let me tell you what you have seen here this evening?”
There was a moment of indecision, then the Council gave their consent, man by man.
“Why do you listen to him?” asked Ealad-hach. “He will tell you nothing but nonsense calculated to confuse.”
“We are already confused, Ealad,” said Faer-wald. “Nothing you have shown us makes sense, either. Why should this Wicke come up out of the Sea? The Sea is the province of the Meri.”
“She competes with the Meri.”
“She does not,” said Bevol. “Osraed, may I speak before you condemn me for my part in what you’ve witnessed? All will be made clear, if not acceptable.”
Calach gestured for him to begin.
“What you saw, Osraed, was a ritual. A ritual that results, as Ealad-hach believes, in what we have come to refer to as a Cusp. A young woman who possesses both Gift and devotion goes to the shore of the Sea and there, she is transformed. In her new state, she enters the ocean, there she meets and exchanges places with the one who came before her. And that one is also transformed and arises from the Sea, as you have witnessed through Ealad-hach’s aislinn. Meredydd went to the Sea and was transformed, exchanging places with this young woman.” Bevol paused.
“But ...” Eadmund gazed about at his fellows before asking, “who is this young woman?”
“Hers is a name I think you will recognize, if only from legend. This, Osraed, is Taminy-a-Cuinn.”
Their astonishment could not have been more profound. Taminy felt it rock her, as if their sudden regard possessed a physical weight and force.
Ealad-hach’s mouth moved soundlessly before words finally formed. “Taminy-a-Cuinn died over one hundred years ago.”
“No, Ealad. She stands before you. Not dead. No more dead than Meredydd. And you know it, too. You’ve suspected it.”
“You have only wanted me to suspect it.”
“Come, old friend, you’ve had other aislinn, other dreams. You’ve seen other cailin perform this ritual, have you not? Have you not dreamed of the time of Liusadhe the Bard? Liusadhe, whose condemnation of women he supposed to be Wicke earned him the title of the Purifier? An unwarranted title, as he understood in later life.”
Ealad-hach paled. “How do you know my dreams?”
Bevol ignored his question, turning instead to Osraed Calach. “What will convince you?”
Calach’s eyes had not left Taminy’s face. “Speak, cailin. Is what Bevol says true? Are you Taminy-a-Cuinn?”
She rose and all eyes fol
lowed her. “I am. What Osraed Bevol says is true.”
The Osraed Ladman smote the table and Kynan expressed his disbelief loudly. “This is absurd! No—it is obscene!”
Calach raised his hands, clapping them together to restore order. “Let her speak! Let her speak!” He gestured at Taminy. “Go on, cailin. Give us your Tell.”
Taminy gathered herself, ignoring the dagger glares of Ealad-hach and the disbelieving Osraed. “In the Year of Pilgrimage four hundred ninety, I went to the Sea on a forbidden Pilgrimage with my father acting as my Weard. The Meri came to me on the second day of my waiting, wearing the silver of the clouds. She called me into the water, into Her Sea. She breathed Her knowledge into my soul. She changed my very nature. She passed on to me all that She was. We embraced and we parted. And when we parted, it was I that remained behind in the Sea and she that returned to the land on the same two legs that carried her in nearly one hundred years before.”
“What do you mean?” Calach’s voice was a raw whisper. He turned stricken eyes to Bevol. “What is she saying? What did we witness?”
Bevol smiled. “Isn’t it obvious? You have witnessed the regeneration of the Meri.”
CHAPTER 13
A STUDY OF THE BLUE CUSP
from Cusp to Cusp by Osraed Tynedale
By the twenty-fifth year of the reign of Cyne Liusadhe, Creiddylad was host to a number of women who possessed the Gift of Runeweaving. Though the Osraed tried to raise the Cyne’s suspicions against these women, he remained, at first, uncondemning of them. It was not until he discovered a connection between one of the accused young women and his unscrupulous ex-Chancellor (a man who had abused his position sorely) that he became agitated and brought the women to trial.
This resulted in a dozen or so women, including Lufu Hageswode, fourteen year-old daughter of the Renic Bana-Meg, being banished into a hard, biting winter. Also among the exiles were several members of the ex-Chancellor’s immediate family, one of whom died of exposure during the ordeal.
Taminy Page 27
