Time. Taminy felt of the room and knew it was time. There was a balance here, of terror and fury and distrust and struggling belief.
“I will give,” she said, “whatever Sign is asked of me. Only ask it.”
Ealad-hach approached her again, drawing Wyth back across the hall in his wake. “What Sign?”
“Any you choose.” She gazed down into the dew dappled face; its eyes gleamed, feverish, its lips twitched. Repulsed, she raised her head and, once again, let her gaze address the Osraed Body. “Hear me, Divine Counselors. If you can agree upon a Sign that will prove I am what I claim, I will give it.”
The Osraed murmured among themselves. What would constitute a Sign of proof? For what should they ask?
“But,” she continued, slicing through the murmurs, “if I give the agreed upon Sign, you must believe.”
“Believe? Believe ... what?” asked Faer-wald.
Bevol, long silent, finally rose from his seat and came forward to speak, moving to the very center of the vast room. “Believe that she is none other than Taminy-a-Cuinn; Prentice one hundred years past, Emerald Meri for the last century, now returned to human form, but still in possession of the Eibhilin Light—a Light we must look to guide us through this Cusp. In a word, brothers, Osmaer. Not divine, but divinely glorious. That is what you must accept. And your acceptance will become the foundation of a New Covenant.”
Taminy had witnessed many storms at Sea, but this battered her as no physical storm could. The room unleashed a rage that hammered at her spirit and threatened to engulf her soul. Violence trembled in thoughts and tumbled from lips. The Osraed were engulfed in it, as well, some demanding her punishment, others shrilly and fearfully counseling agreement with her terms.
Taminy glanced about the room; brother railed against brother, shaking fists at Ealad-hach, shaking fists at her and her two defenders.
At one end of the hall their audience watched, bright-eyed and eager for the climax; at the other, Osraed Calach began to pound upon the crescent table, trying to restore order, while beside him, the Osraed Kynan and Tynedale threatened to come to blows.
“Silence! Silence!” Calach cried, but his words were lost—swept up in the squall of human voices and tossed aside. He signaled a Council Prentice and the boy moved swiftly to man the chimes behind the Council table. The sharp tones clove the storm and humbled it, at last, to a pool of trembling eddies.
“Order!” Calach’s voice could finally be heard. “We must have order!”
“Indeed we must,” agreed Ealad-hach. “But we will not have it until we are rid of her.” His out-thrust finger found Taminy, calm within her box.
“Then allow her to prove herself,” said Bevol. “Settle this once and for all.”
Ealad-hach reddened. “It would prove nothing. You said the same of Meredydd-a-Lagan. Let her take Pilgrimage, you said. Let the Meri decide her fate. Let it be decided, once and for all. That proved nothing, just as this will prove nothing but a forum for her wicked deceptions.”
“She ain’t wicked!” Marnie-o-Loom’s voice cut shrilly through the rumble and hiss of her fellow Nairnians.
“Aye!” the Apothecary agreed.
“Aw, what do you hags know of it?” asked someone else. “You’re both half-Wicke yourselves!”
“I say we accept the challenge,” said Saxan, ignoring the outburst. “How else will we know? Surely, we can devise a proof-”
“Useless,” argued Parthelan. “Entirely useless. She’s obviously powerful, be she Wicke or otherwise.”
“Is there no difference, then?” Saxan turned to look imploringly at his fellow Osraed. “Brothers, if we fail to accept this challenge, are we not admitting we can’t tell the difference between good and evil?”
“Saxan’s right,” said Osraed Tynedale. “We must surely be able to draw a distinction between darkness and Eibhilin light. And what reason have we to suspect this young woman save a handful of inconclusive rumors given us by witnesses we would normally pay no heed to? Our experience with Taminy-a-Gled is that she has used her Gift to give life, not take it. She has enemies here. Powerful though she may be, she has not harmed even one of them.”
“She tried to kill a girl who was her enemy,” protested Osraed Kynan.
“That’s a lie!” Aine-mac-Lorimer was on her feet, hands pounding on the bannister of the public gallery. “It’s a lie! She did nothing to me!” Her father grasped her wrist and reseated her roughly.
Ealad-hach turned to his brothers on the Council. “You saw my aislinn. You know this is the girl.”
Tynedale shook his head. “She doesn’t deny being the woman of your vision. She disputes your interpretation of it. I say we must consider the challenge or admit our own lack of discernment and wisdom.”
The sound that came from Ealad-hach’s throat made Taminy’s heart all but melt with pity. Face sweating, pale and red in turns, eyes glittering with tears, he hop-hobbled toward the Council table. A comic figure, were he not so dangerous, so full of hate.
“We must consider nothing,” he said, “but how to be eternally rid of this creature. The aislinn that revealed her was mine—MINE! And I interpret it as a sign of her complete corruption. No one else may interpret it for me. No one! Especially not those who are bewitched and besotted by her. Not those her evil has touched!” He turned feral eyes on Bevol and Wyth, then, spittle running along his lower lip. He licked it quickly away.
“I vote with Ealad-hach,” said Osraed Kynan. “We will not be manipulated by this Wicke.”
“I did not ask for a vote,” Calach snapped.
“Vote!” shouted someone among the Body. “I vote with Ealad-hach!”
Osraed Comyn Hillwild rose and pounded a beefy fist on the gallery rail. “And I vote with Tynedale and Saxan!”
More voices were raised while Calach pounded for order. In the midst of it all, Aine-mac-Lorimer came to her feet again and began a cry of “Cowards! Cowards!” Marnie and the Apothecary joined her, standing in place and shaking fists at the Osraed.
“Aye! Cowards! They daren’t face her!”
“Cowards! They’re afraid! Afraid of a little girl!”
The jeers mounted and did battle with warring cries of “Wicke!” and demands that Taminy be drowned or burned or banished. The battle moved to envelop the Osraed in their galleries and rose to such a pitch that even the shrill ringing of the chimes could not halt its progress.
Calach stood, helpless, amid the fury, his eyes turned to Bevol, pleading. Taminy looked up into the public boxes. There was movement there as a number of people made their way down to the floor. Her eyes scanned the top row, finding, again, the face of an elder Sister. The silver-eyed, iron-haired woman nodded once and faded away into the clamoring crowd.
On the floor, Taminy could see the Ren Catahn making his way toward her, Desary at his side. But there were others who would reach her first; two tall men in cowled robes the color of periwinkles. Taminy knew them, though she had met neither. She awaited them with curious eyes and a calm heart, her hands crossed on the bannister of her box, her ears closed to the pandemonium around her.
The men reached the box and gazed up at her through the folds of their cowls, while Wyth eyed them suspiciously in turn. Two fox faces peered up at her, enough alike to be brothers; but she knew it was a brotherhood of spirit, not of blood. Both were fair-skinned and dark-haired, one with eyes piercing pale, the other sunlit gold. She revised her assessment—fox and falcon.
The fox eyed her with open appraisal, the falcon smiled. Then he mounted her box, holding to the rail with one hand, reaching to drop his cowl with the other. The cowl fell away and a roomful of light gathered to dance on the skillfully carved facets of the Circlet upon his head.
Wyth gasped. “The Cyne!” Then, more loudly. “The Cyne!”
Soon half the people on the floor were bawling the words. The cry circled the room but once, reaching up into its recesses and dragging all throats to silence.
Cyn
e Colfre, royal falcon, gazed around the chamber, fixing all with a stern, raptor eye. “If Malcuim and Ochan, together, came before me and described this scene,” he said, his voice ringing well on the tense hush, “I would not have believed it.”
Taminy, her own eyes fixed on the royal profile, knew the consternation to be false. Beneath Colfre Malcuim’s Circlet, gears spun intricately; beneath his periwinkle robes, a boyish eagerness gamboled and rubbed gleeful hands.
“I would not have believed it,” he repeated, shaking his head. “Have you all gone mad?”
oOo
It was better than he had hoped, dreamed. Far better. The Osraed of Halig-liath, in their inept wisdom, had already done half his work for him. Those who had looked upon them with awe and honor now heckled and turned away with disgust. And the Osraed themselves were divided—hopelessly, passionately and impotently, divided. And all because of a seventeen year old girl.
Colfre looked on her where she stood on the deck of his galley. Looked on her with a strange, quaking mixture of anticipation and dread. She was beautiful—every bit as beautiful as he had imagined in his mind’s eye. And she was gallant—ah, and heroic—standing up to the bluster and the cries for her blood. More than that, he knew, she had the Gift. She dazzled him with it; the very atmosphere around her was charged with a soft, warm lightning. A breath of the aidan, his Hillwild mother would have said. Nay, more than a breath, a storm. And he was bringing the storm to Creiddylad.
Shivering, he pushed dread aside, unread, and surveyed the party that would accompany him downriver to his capitol. She, of course, was foremost, but there was Bevol, renegade Osraed, and his boy-servant—an underfoot rascal named Skeet. Osraed Calach had tapped the young Osraed Wyth to take Bevol’s place on the Council and Triumvirate. It had infuriated the old fool, Ealad-hach and his crony, Faer-wald, but pleased the Cyne. A young man was an inexperienced man, a man who would vacillate and hesitate. And the young Osraed, like Calach, seemed quite timorous.
Colfre smiled, recalling the expression on Ealad-hach’s wizened face when that appointment had been made and confirmed by the Cyne, himself. He could not despise the old man, though, for he owed him much. He, more than any other, had forced the situation with Taminy into a shape pleasing to his Lord.
“Everyone’s aboard, sire.” Daimhin Feich stood beside him, now, at the galley’s oaken rail. Enigmatic, his gaze moved among the crowd still roiling upon the dock.
Colfre glanced aside at him. “Are we not right to be pleased, Daimhin? Have we not taken a great stride forward today?”
Feich smiled. “We have, indeed, my lord.”
“I could never have dreamed such a windfall. Never ...” The Cyne let his gaze drift back along the dock, beholding faces filled with perplexity, disgust, fear, anger, even grief. One thing was certain, the eyes of the people of Nairne would never again see their Osraed as they once had. “Never,” he repeated.
“One might almost think ... it was ordained.”
Feich’s smile rippled, assuming a slightly different shape. “One might, indeed, my lord.”
oOo
The Council Chamber was empty now. Bright sunlight cascaded through the stained-glass windows above the public gallery, blazing a trail of glory across the polished agate of the floor. Ealad-hach, still seated in his place behind the crescent table, was blind to its beauty. To him, all was dark; the sun was an intrusion in the black world he inhabited.
He tried, but could not comprehend how everything had come so completely apart in his hands. No, not in his hands, for in the end, it had been ripped from them. By whom, he wasn’t certain. He had laid the blame at Colfre’s door initially, but when the crowd and clamor had cleared from his mind, he acknowledged the possibility that the Cyne was doing a will other than his own.
The thought terrified him. But more terrifying, still, was his own trembling impotency. He was a pile of pebbles, waiting to be scattered by the next wave—no cement to bind, annihilation its only possibility. He could do nothing against Something so strong, so ancient. That face he had seen in the crowd haunted him. One of Liusadhe’s Wicke, still alive; Taminy-a-Cuinn, still alive. And able to manipulate even the Osraed—even the Meri’s elect.
He had thought himself alone and was jolted by the soft sounds of feet upon the floor—encroaching, intruding, as the sunlight did, inexorably. He shifted uncomfortably and glanced toward the doors, blinking against the Sun’s glare. Someone stood there in the blaze of colorful light, haloed like the Eibhilin, but obviously and solidly human. Though unable to see his face, Ealad-hach knew Wyth Arundel by his stature.
He turned his eyes away. “Come to scoff at the old fool, Osraed Wyth? Come to lay blame?”
“No, sir. Neither. I merely came to see if you were all right. This day’s events have posed a great strain on all of us ...”
Ealad-hach glanced at Wyth sharply, but his expression was lost in a warp of light and shadow. “The Council met just now, did it?”
Wyth nodded. “Just long enough to plan a meeting. Tomorrow morning, if that’s agreeable to you.”
“I hardly care. It’s out of our hands now, isn’t it?”
“There are other things to be discussed,” Wyth reminded him.
Ealad-hach ignored him. “What are the others saying? Do they blame me? Is it my fault the Osraed have been censured and called into doubt?” He hadn’t meant it to come out like that, so pleading, so desperate. It wasn’t his fault, of course, but that the others might think it was ...
“Some of them ... blame you for ... for pursuing Taminy so relentlessly.”
Ealad-hach curled his lip. “As I suppose you do.”
“Blame is too strong a word, Osraed. I suppose I ... understand that you must do what you feel is right.”
“What are they saying about me?”
“Some of them believe you were ... over zealous. That bringing Taminy to trial was a mistake. They feel it would have been better if you had allowed time to reveal her.”
“Time! There is no time! They’re fools not to understand that! Do they think the Cyne came here of his own accord? A man who has avoided Nairne as if it was plague-ridden? He wouldn’t come for Farewelling; he wouldn’t receive you and Lealbhallain for the Grand Tell. Why should he come here now? Do they believe that a coincidence? Do they believe it is he who has taken Taminy out of our hands?”
Wyth’s silhouette stiffened. “But, that’s what happened, isn’t it?”
Ealad-hach smiled bitterly. “Fool. You’re all fools to believe that. There are powerful and awful forces at work here. Forces we dimly perceive. It is those forces that will decide the outcome, not the Cyne and not the Assembly.”
“Yes,” Wyth said, “that much is true.”
Ealad-hach stood, quaking. “This is the Most Holy Fortress, Osraed Wyth. This is the most holy spot on the face of this world.” He jabbed a finger at a point on the glossy table top to which the sunlight had laboriously crawled to meet shadow. “If we could not control those forces here, where and how and when shall we ever control them?”
Wyth shook his head. “The evil is not what you imagine it to be, Osraed. You imagine a friend your enemy and prepare to take an enemy to your bosom. But you are right, I think, in one thing—Taminy is not for us to control, or perhaps even to understand.”
“Taminy!” He spat the name from his lips. “Such colossal arrogance! To call herself Osmaer—to name herself after the most sacred relic!” Ealad-hach paused, his hand in mid-gesture. He could see it, as clear as he could see the Sun in the sky over Nairne—the thing that must surely, in the right hands, become the Wicke Cwen’s nemesis.
He lowered his arm; calm descended with it. He smoothed his chamber robes with careful fingers. “Have I any allies, Osraed Wyth?”
“You have.”
“You don’t lie to me. Why not?”
“Lying dishonors both the liar and the one lied to. I have no wish to dishonor myself or you.”
“Is E
admund among them?”
“You would have to ask Eadmund, sir. He is a quiet man.”
Ealad-hach curled his lip. “He is a weak man. Has he left yet for the Assembly in Creiddylad?”
“He’s in his chambers packing. Shall I have him called?”
Ealad-hach peered up at Wyth through the brilliant rainbow haze of sunlit dust motes that surrounded him. “Such a strange lad, you are, even now ... especially now.”
“Shall I-?”
“No. I will find him myself.” He pushed back his chair then, with a difficulty he refused to show, and left the scene of his humiliation behind.
oOo
Wyth put his feet up on the hearth fender and listened to the complete quiet of the house. He imagined that on most evenings it was full of laughter and life and duans. Taminy singing and Gwyet Weaving and Bevol telling tales and Skeet ... doing whatever it was Skeet did. Playing tricks, Wyth thought. He surely played tricks upon the girls and his Master, making laughter bubble from their lips and souls. But now ...
He stretched in Bevol’s chair and found it fit his lanky frame quite well. Bevol and Skeet and Taminy were miles downriver floating toward the Jewel, while poor Gwynet cried herself to sleep upstairs, alone. They were alone together. Gwynet had no family and Wyth’s had all but disowned him after he’d come home and announced he’d be taking up Bevol’s residence and guardianship of Gwynet until the older Osraed’s return.
His mother had begged him to bring Gwynet and stay under her roof at first and, flattered, he considered it ... until it became clear that she intended to treat Gwynet like a unwanted pet and himself like a trophy. On Osraed Council, now, by God; member pro-tem of the Triumvirate; nominally in charge of Halig-liath. She wanted to invite the entire province to come gawk at him.
The one evening they’d spent at Arundel, she’d tried to send Gwynet to the kitchen for dinner, making asides about the taint of “that Wicke girl,” and Wyth, more furious than he thought he could ever be, took the little girl and went to Gled Manor.
He gazed around at the high ceiling, cob-webbed and spattered with firelight. And here I will stay. And wait.
Taminy Page 31
