It was directly after the accused Wicke left Creiddylad that the Meri changed Aspect. This was the Silver Manifestation, which we now know to be linked to the person of the girl, Lufu Hageswode (called “Mam Lufu”). It is of note that this Cusp took place out of Season, in the early spring of YP 396.
The darkness was complete. Suspended within it, Lealbhallain attempted to read its limits. It was not a silent darkness. Hollow, it echoed with tiny, bright noises like the whispered notes of a harp. It was not a still darkness. Alive, it rippled with breathings and sighs.
He was no longer in his room at Care House, he knew. He was in the sea cave below Ochanshrine. The realization brought light into the place—a tiny pip of light, a seed that grew and blossomed before his eyes, unwavering. In a gold-traced pattern of glory, the gleaming petals of a crystalline rose unfolded before him in the dark, reflecting off the pool below and the glittering walls around. Drippings from the ceiling shook the reflection and shivered it into countless tiny wriggles of light.
He breathed in his awe. The Osmaer crystal. He knew it was that, though the shape was wrong; the Osmaer was not shaped like a rose. But this was the Osmaer, nonetheless. He reached out a tentative hand.
The darkness turned inside out, whirled away and regathered itself in a different form. Leal shook and shivered, blinking his eyes and struggling to make sense of his surroundings. He was standing on a tall place—a hill, a tower—and looking toward Nairne. Halig-liath sat upon its cliff top like a great, squat beast, dark and waiting. But as he watched, a light sprang up, radiant, from the ramparts—a brilliant, piercing light that appeared, at once, in the shape of a crystal and a rose.
Leal flew from his hill, sucked toward the crystal-rose as if by a silent whirlwind—a wind composed of his own passion. He turned as he ascended, his eyes finding all of Caraid-land laid out below him as if upon a gigantic, living map. And beyond Caraid-land, the Sea. He paused in his flight. The Sea was changing its color, roiling from blue-green to gold-amber, frothing in all the hues of the Sun’s journey across the sky. Like molten gold it beat upon the shores of Caraid-land and rose up in boiling waves and over-ran the dry land. Leal watched, horrified, as Mertuile and Creiddylad disappeared beneath the swell; as every village and settlement, every estate and manor, every farm and stead, every hill and valley and mountain was inundated, swallowed up.
Over the place where Caraid-land had been, the water boiled as if with great heat, as if a battle of giants raged beneath the golden tide. And then the water began to subside and the tops of the Gyldan-baenn thrust above the waves, gleaming, golden, as if the molten Sea had coated them. But in the valleys ...
Leal looked away. There would be death. Corpses would lie in the low places of Caraid-land and ruins would litter her slopes. Most especially, he could not bring himself to look at Nairne, at Halig-liath, at the place where the crystal-rose had been. He screwed his eyes tightly shut, hearing the beginnings of Caraid-land’s mourning—a high keen that lay, weeping, upon the wind, that swelled into a great, grieving wail.
Leal came upright in his bed, hands clamped over his mouth. His own throat had been the source of that horrible sound. He sweated, chill, and wondered if anyone had heard him.
oOo
Ealad-hach rubbed his arms briskly. Chill this morning ... or was it just him, reacting, again, to the events of the past days? He smiled—lips parting, tight, over fierce teeth. Victory. He had her now. It was a matter of time. Couriers had gone already, birds had been dispatched to the northlands, a Summonsweave had been performed for those who could sense such things. The Osraed Body would decide her fate and, by the time it convened, he would be strong and well-able to repeat the Weave that had unmasked her.
Taminy-a-Cuinn.
His smile spasmed and folded down at the corners. He shivered, rubbing his arms harder. Hunted. He was hunted now. He could feel eyes on him, constantly. The eyes of her minions, he was certain. He had revealed her and she had spread her dark mantle over him—a mantle full of the eyes of demons. They snatched at him. They would try to prick him, hole his Wardweaves and suck out his soul. His eyes moved furtively about the sunny room. In the corners ... yes, you had to be careful of corners.
A tiny noise at the door brought his eyes up sharply. Osraed Wyth stood there, gazing at him through his great, sad eyes.
Ealad-hach pressed his lips tight together. “Yes? What is it?”
“The Ren Catahn is here.”
“Catahn? Whatever for? I thought he’d gone back up to Hrofceaster.”
“He wants an audience with the Council.”
“Oh?” Ealad-hach felt suspicion curl in his breast. “And why are you the messenger, Osraed? Could not a Prentice have carried this Tell?”
“Yes. But I wanted to bring it. Catahn says he’s had a ... a vision.”
“Catahn?” Ealad-hach uttered a rude, barking laugh. “So now we’re to be plagued with Hillwild sorceries, too, eh?”
Wyth shifted from one foot to the other. “Catahn wouldn’t be Ren if he wasn’t Gifted, Osraed. The Hillwild prize prescience just as we do.”
“Prescience! Pretense, is more like. So ... the Ren wants me to hear of this vision of his, does he?”
“He wants the Council ... and Bevol.”
“Bevol is suspended—as you would be, if I had my way.”
Wyth pulled himself fully upright. “I am Chosen, Osraed.”
“Yes ... but by what, I wonder?”
“The Kiss cannot be falsified.”
“Anything can be falsified if the right powers are applied ... or the wrong ones.”
“The Meri gave me this.” He pointed to his brow.
Ealad-hach shook his head. “Perhaps you believe that. I am almost persuaded that you do. But, if you do, you have been misled. Betrayed, as we are all being betrayed.”
“No.”
“Your mistress is strong, Osraed Wyth, but she is not invincible. The Meri will out.”
“Yes, She will.”
“I pity you.”
“And I, you.”
Ealad-hach shivered, but covered the twitching movement by coming to his feet and pushing his stool back beneath his workbench. “Where is Catahn?”
“In the small audience chamber.”
“Very well, I’ll go to him. Have the others been informed?”
“They will have been.”
Ealad-hach approached the door, but was loath to pass near Wyth. He paused, quailing a little beneath the younger man’s dark gaze.
“You’re wrong,” said Wyth. “You’re wrong about Taminy, about Bevol, about me. Caraid-land is in danger—we are all in danger—but not from her. She may be Something we don’t understand, but she is not evil.”
“You’re blocking my path, Osraed Wyth.” Ealad-hach raised pale eyes, trying, with every ounce of himself to pierce Wyth Arundel’s poise. He felt a thrill of victory when the young man dropped his gaze and stepped silently aside.
oOo
Wyth returned to the chambers in which Taminy had spent the last several days. He could think of nothing else he should do. She spent her time reading, meditating, praying, and studying the courtyard from the window embrasure. She was there when he entered, with a book she was not reading, staring through the small panes at the rain-blurred sky.
Thunder trampled through the clouds, their rumbling like hunger in their gray bellies. The air was late-summer balmy and full of the tingle of electricity. There was something else in the air, too, but Wyth could not name it. He wriggled within his clothing and watched Taminy and marveled at how calm she was.
“I wish I knew what they were going to do,” he said. “I wish I could do something to prepare.”
Taminy turned her face away from the window. “And what would you do? How could you prepare, regardless of what they do? If they find me Wicke, which they might, how would you prepare for it? And if they find me innocent, is preparation needed? Even if they were to accept what I am and have been, what
then?”
“But ... isn’t there a plan? I mean, doesn’t She have a plan?”
Taminy smiled. “Of course She does.”
“And are you part of it?”
She nodded.
“Then ... ?” He made a futile gesture, wanting her to interpret it and reassure him that everything was under the control of Someone much more powerful than he was.
“What they do is contingent upon their will. What we do is contingent both upon what they do and what the Spirit and the Meri will us to do. The future must be built moment by moment, Wyth.”
“But you have the Sight-”
“I see turmoil.”
“I see it too, but surely the will of God-”
“The will of God is known only to the Meri. That will is victorious, always, but how and when depends upon us ... and them.” She nodded toward the thick, carved door of her makeshift prison.
“If the Meri won’t let us know what to do-”
“We’ll know. Whether we do it or not is a matter of choice, for that is what we are, Wyth, creatures of choice. Creatures of will. When our will aligns with Hers, there is peace, there is wisdom and unity, there is the possibility of joy. When it doesn’t ...” She shrugged.
Turmoil. “What do you suppose they will do? There hasn’t been a serious charge of Wickery brought against anyone since the time of Liusadhe. What ... what would they do with a Wicke?”
Taminy chuckled. “Odd, isn’t it—Ealad-hach is convinced I am some powerfully evil creature and yet he expects me to be contained by four stone walls.”
Wyth glanced at her sharply. She was smiling a girlish smile of pure humor. And she was right; it was a ludicrous idea. He laughed for the first time in days. “There isn’t even a decent lock on the door,” he said. “Anyone with a midge of the Art and a crystal can get in-”
As if to prove his words, the door opened, admitting Skeet and Gwynet. They had food and drink and gossip with them and used all three to nurture the levity Taminy had released into the somber place. As they ate, Skeet talked, his words punctuated by peals of laughter, rain and thunder. It was all over town, of course—Ealad-hach’s accusation before the Council—and the opinions about it were as various as those carrying them. Marnie-o-Loom had it that Ealad-hach was a senile old wind-bag and really ought to be ignored. The Spensers insisted that he was right, as they’d always known. To hear them talk, they’d sensed something wrong about Taminy from the beginning. Niall Backstere, meanwhile, blithely passed gossip both ways, while the Lorimer family was irritatingly silent.
“How is Aine?” asked Taminy. “Has anyone said?”
“Closed up in her room, seeing none,” Skeet said. “Not a peep out of her. Maybe not a peep into her, either, for what her ma and da seem bent on protecting her.” Skeet leaned across the table toward her as if someone who oughtn’t might overhear. “I’ve heard she’s to have an audience with the Council before the Body meets.”
“I tried to see her,” said Gwynet. “Her ma was kindly enough, but she wouldn’t let me.”
“Ah, now, here’s a noodle you’ll be interested in!” Skeet fairly bounced in his chair. “Seems Brys-a-Lach and young Phelan have had a falling out and Phelan’s place has been usurped by Scandy-a-Caol.”
Wyth blinked. That was an interesting piece of gossip, if for no other reason than that Phelan and Brys had been inseparable since he had known them. He’d had to separate them in class several times for behaving as if no one else existed. “That is odd,” he murmured and glanced at Taminy. “Do you think Phelan was sincere in his attachment to you?”
She didn’t answer him, in fact, he thought she might not have heard him. She was gazing at a point in mid-air, her brows drawn into a slight frown, her eyes bemused.
“Taminy?”
She shook herself. “Sorry, I ...There’s something ...”
He nodded, some inner sense coming to sudden life. “I feel it, too. That is, I feel something. A sort of-of quivering in the air.”
She came to her feet, glanced at him oddly, then moved to the window, peering down through the panes. Before he could guess her intent, she pulled the window open, admitting rain and a clammy breeze, and leaned out, eyes on the narrow stone walk that ran beneath the window one long story down. For an instant, Wyth was taken with the absurd conviction that she meant to jump or fly from the window. He hurried to her side, looked where she looked.
There was someone standing below them on the walk—a girl with a wild mass of black hair and eyes like jet. He could see those eyes because she was staring up at them, her face glistening with rain, her riding breeches and jacket water-stained. She made no gesture, spoke no words, only gazed upward while her eyes filled with water that may or may not have come from the sky. The air around her seemed to shimmer, to pulse.
Distrusting his eyes, Wyth blinked, but the shimmer persisted.
“Who is she?” Taminy asked, finally, her voice barely louder than the breeze or the soft whisper of rain.
“Her name is Desary,” Wyth told her. “She’s the Ren Catahn’s daughter.”
“Hillwild, then,” said Taminy and smiled. “Of course.” She held out her hand, then, beyond the window frame. Held it out palm downward as if bestowing a blessing.
The Hillwild girl’s lips parted soundlessly and she ran, disappearing into the fortress where the walkway met the wall. A moment later, she reappeared with a man the size of a small mountain. A man whose hair sparkled with interwoven jewels and whose broad shoulders were mantled by a leather cape. The Ren Catahn.
He joined his daughter on the walk below Taminy’s window—joined her in staring upward, while she, holding up her clasped hands, fell to her knees.
“My Lady,” she said in a clear voice. “My Lady of the Crystal-Rose!”
oOo
It was just one more proof—as if he needed any more proof—that the Osraed were inept. In a week’s time the entire Osraed Body would sit in judgment at a Wicke trial. A Wicke trial. How antiquarian. There hadn’t been any real Wicke trials since the heady days of Liusadhe. There had been mutterings—there were always mutterings—but no trials had taken place.
“Interesting tidings, aren’t they?” Daimhin Feich watched his Cyne’s face with amusement spread across his own. “One lonely little heretic—and a girl, at that.”
“According to this,” —Colfre waved the letter brought to them that morning by Abbod Ladhar— “she was aided and abetted by Osraed Bevol.”
Feich’s brows twitched. “Does that distress you?”
“Why should it? He was my father’s advisor, not mine. Although he tried to advise me once upon a time. I believe he gave it up as a bad job and scurried off to Halig-liath to sit at Apex.” Colfre shook his head. “It’s the Cusp, you know. It makes them see heretics and Wicke everywhere. It makes them jump at their own shadows.”
“I wonder what she really did.”
“According to this, she performed secret and dangerous acts that may have resulted in injury to another and made claims that—ah, how do they put it?—threaten the foundations of religious faith.”
“Quite an accomplishment for one small village girl.” Feich leaned back in his splendid chair. “Rumor off the galleys says this Wicke of theirs is quite a popular young lady. By all accounts, Taminy-a-Gled has turned Nairne and its environs into a divided camp. And now, it seems, the fracas will move to a national battlefield. Imagine it, sire, one lone, defenseless girl against a hundred powerful men. It fairly tears at the heart.”
Colfre laughed at that. Envisioning his Durweard’s heart being torn by anything required more imagination than he had. But the thought of that girl—Taminy—standing to be judged by the illustrious Osraed ... well, he could imagine that. It was the stuff of a heroic painting. His mind provided the scene—all those closed Osraed faces turned toward the lone, brave figure. His mind rendered her beautiful, of course; heroic, lone female figures were always beautiful.
He rose and wande
red the sunny breakfast room, pausing now and again to stand in a bright patch of light, noting how the soft radiance of it diffused through the nap of his velvet tunic. He would have to find a brush technique that could emulate that with more truth.
“Do you see an advantage in this, sire?” Feich asked him.
Advantage? He paused, roughing the velvet with his fingertips. He turned and met his Durweard’s eyes. “What advantage-” he began to say, when it came to him with the clarity of the morning sky. He smiled. “What I see, Daimhin, is that this potentially explosive and divisive situation has been building without my direct knowledge and that the Osraed have been deporting themselves in a most high-handed way. They may, for all I know, be persecuting a completely innocent girl. I should take an interest.”
“For the sake of the people of Caraid-land,” said Feich, “I believe you must. What would they think if what you say is true—if this girl is an innocent victim of ... Osraed scapegoating.”
“Indeed, what would they think?” Colfre turned in his shower of sunlight. “I believe we must be a presence at that great assemblage, Daimhin. See to it.”
Feich rose and bowed. “With pleasure, sire.”
oOo
The rain beat hard upon the second floor window of the Lorimer’s house. It did not wake his daughter, Aine, but it invaded her dreams.
The droplets marched across the window; an army marched through the land. Driven by the thunder of war drums, they advanced up the Halig-Tyne from Mertuile, inexorable, light flashing from their helms, water streaming from their armor. They marched, not on the river road, but in the river itself, or upon it, and as they gathered momentum, they melded, as the drops of the sea, becoming a wave that rode upstream on its own force, tumbling, rising, growing.
From her window, Aine could see it, bearing down on Nairne, advancing on the great bend that wove around the cliffs. Higher it grew, stronger, rolling onward to where it would crest.
Mute. She was mute. And her legs would not carry her with a warning to Halig-liath. She would be trapped here in this room when that wave broke and, trapped, she feared she would watch it breach the great stone walls and sweep Halig-liath away.
Taminy Page 28
