“And this distresses you? Why?”
“I have told you why. Catahn is not what he seems to be. Perhaps your Gift has bewicked him, confused him, made him seem gentle and meek. He is neither. Catahn is a man of strong will and stronger desires. He sees what he wants and takes it and what he doesn’t want, he puts aside—forever.”
Taminy tried to fan warmth into her suddenly chill core. “You speak of your husband—Catahn’s brother.”
“I do. Catahn wanted . . .” Her lips thinned, tightened. “. . . what he knew was his brother’s by right. And he did not care whose suffering he caused in having it.”
Taminy looked over at the fountain, its water bubbling clean and cleansing from the ageless rock face. There was a message in that wonder of nature, but she was unable to fathom it. What had she said to Airleas—that strong emotion and the aidan combined with difficulty?
“I have not spoken of this to Catahn,” she said. “I felt no need—”
Deardru laughed. “Liar.”
Taminy glanced at her sharply. “I felt no need to confront him with accusations or humiliate him by insisting that he resolve my—”
The older woman’s dark brows flung upward. “Your what, child? Your fears? Your distress?”
“My unease. I can’t believe Catahn guilty of what you suggest.”
“That he caused his brother’s death.”
Taminy nodded. “That he deliberately put his brother in harm’s way. I can believe that you believe it. That, mam, is what distresses me.”
“And it distresses me to see you—a young, innocent cailin—fast in the clutches of this man. A man I know to be guilty. Speak to Catahn—”
“Perhaps you should speak to him, mam.”
She shook her head, dark hair a cloud on the folds of her woolen cloak. “I have spoken to him, child. Years ago. But you see, I have a child to think of. A family. To speak further would be unwise.”
“You can’t believe yourself in danger from Catahn.” A statement of fact. Deardru-an-Caerluel did not believe herself in danger.
Still, she pretended, lowering her head and quivering as if near tears. “If he were to find me here, talking to you . . .”
Taminy rose. “Please, mam, let us stop this dance. You aren’t afraid of Catahn, but you do hate him—that much is clear. I understand that you believe he has taken your dead husband’s birth-right—”
Deardru’s head jerked up, her eyes flashing. “He took more than that, Lady Taminy. Yes, let us now stop the dance. I’ll tell you what Catahn Hageswode took from his brother—his place in my bed. It was me Catahn wanted, as he now wants you. And he had me, and fathered a child on me. Eyslk isn’t Catahn’s niece, she’s his daughter.”
It took all of Taminy’s strength not to thrust her hands over her ears, not to cry the words that shouted in her head: Stop! Oh, stop! Take back these things! Unsay them! But they could not be taken back nor could what lay beneath them in Deardru-an-Caerluel’s heart and mind—the memory of Catahn’s overwhelming presence, the galling hatred at his later betrayal.
So Taminy forced different words to her lips: “Why do you tell me this? What is it you imagine I should do?”
Deardru moved to stand before her, to take her hands in a motherly grasp. “Osmaer you may be, Lady, but you are yet a child. I cannot help but look at you and see my own daughter— Catahn’s daughter—not so much younger than you. Again, I look at you and see myself all those years ago. I cannot stand by and see your life played as mine was. You think he is a convert to your Cause.” She shook her head. “He is a convert only to his own cause. As to what you should do—I think you must free yourself from his grasp. Escape this place.”
“I’m not a prisoner here, mam, and Catahn befriends me in all sincerity.”
“You forget who you deal with, child. A Hillwild. A Hageswode. The aidan is strong in these mountains, but nowhere is it stronger than in the men of that family. They could confound the Meri, Herself, with that guile.”
Through their clasped hands, messages flowed. This is true, proclaimed one; that is not, whispered another. Which was which? Taminy, for all her attention to those messages, could not tell. Not now. Not here. Not under the barrage of Deardru-an-Caerluel’s regard. She would need to put on Truth to determine the truth, but first, she must speak to Catahn.
She composed herself carefully, looked the older woman in the eye and said, “Thank you, mam, for your concern. I will speak to Catahn of this, if nothing else, for Eyslk’s sake. Does she know . . . ?”
“That she’s Catahn’s child? No. I never told her. For her own sake, it’s best she believes her ‘Uncle’ is a great man.”
“I see.” Taminy disengaged herself from Deardru’s touch. “Please, I must excuse myself. Catahn is looking for me.”
Deardru’s face blanched, betraying real fear. “Then I must go. He must not find me here.” She reached back momentarily to grasp Taminy’s hand again. “Please, don’t tell him of this visit. With your aidan, you might have gleaned this knowledge elsewhere. Please, Lady.”
“I won’t betray you,” Taminy said and watched as the other woman bolted from the courtyard.
She looked back at the bench where she had sat. The spot of sunlight was gone. Reaching to the Meri for warmth, marshaling her composure, Taminy went to meet Catahn.
oOo
In the aislinn world of Catahn’s aidan, Taminy’s distress had sounded as loud as the fortress’s alarm bell. He had no way to interpret its meaning or determine its source, he knew only that it was. Before he even knew where it had arisen, it was lidded.
He feared a physical attack on her, but couldn’t imagine who might perpetrate such an attack. Then he thought that she must have received some disturbing news from Iseabal or Aine.
He searched the fortress from bottom to top, checking her favorite haunts, asking every waljan he encountered where their Mistress might be. It was Wyth Arundel—as ever, slaving over his manuscript— who said he thought Taminy might have gone up to her garden to meditate. Catahn was headed there when he saw her coming down the stairs from the upper reaches.
She hesitated when she saw him and there was no welcoming smile on her lips when their eyes met. Instead, she searched him inside-out while he, astounded, let his guard fall open and waited, daring to think nothing.
At last, he dared speak. “My Lady, what’s happened? I felt . . .” He wasn’t sure what he had felt, so the flow of words stopped.
She beckoned him to accompany her and he did, moving in silence beside her to her private rooms. He did not come here often, had never stayed more than a second or two. It seemed inappropriate for him to see the place where she slept and bathed, where she walked clothed for sleeping . . . or unclothed. He set a guard on his thoughts, afraid what they might betray.
Once inside, he stood uncertainly by the door while she moved to rouse the embers sleeping in her hearth. She seemed preoccupied, her movements stiff and tentative. The empty time gave him a chance to study himself as he stood there, waiting. He could almost laugh at what he saw; Ren Catahn Hageswode, Chieftain of the most powerful of the Hillwild clans reduced to a large, uncertain puddle by this lowland woman.
The smile that tugged at his lips ossified. No, not a woman, a girl. Not merely a girl, but Osmaer. The Meri’s Essence, Firstborn of the Spirit, had resided in that pure form. She was a walking beam of light, compared to which he was a clot of filthy clay.
She turned to look at him, her green eyes filled with what he could only take as great sorrow.
Impulsively, he started forward. “Lady! Taminy! Please speak. You wither me with such looks.”
She did speak, then, and the words that came out of her mouth struck him all but dead. “Desary is not your only child.”
Somehow his dead husk produced a voice. “No.”
Taminy nodded. “Eyslk is also your daughter. Out of your brother’s widow, Deardru.”
He closed his eyes. Dear God, surely he would be
permitted to die now, but he doubted even that would provide escape from this. What must she think of him?
“Yes.”
“Catahn, answer me plainly. Did you keep your brother up at Moidart in the hope that he would die?”
Eyes open now, Catahn, felt a roil of anger surge beneath his shame. There was only one place she could have heard that tell. His fists clenched hard on his growing rage.
“Deardru. Only she would have laid that blame at my feet. No, Taminy. I did not deal my brother into death’s hands. I loved Raenulf, and were I not the village Father, I would have happily gone up to Moidart myself. I even offered—and I say this with shame—that I would ask one of our cousins to go in his stead. He refused. With him it was a matter of family honor, of duty to our southern kin. Only when he found his wife pregnant did he ask to return, and I agreed, gladly. I can only believe—and I’ve never understood this—that it was the will of God that he die before he could return home. Days, Lady. Mere days and he would have been home. Safe again with his wife and unborn child.”
“With his child? You said Eyslk was your daughter.”
Catahn’s face reddened. “Eyslk is my daughter—I admit that—but the child Deardru carried then was Raenulf’s, not mine. God take my soul if I would lie with my brother’s wife while he lived.” The anger turned another time, trying to unseat shame. “Deardru led you to think I coveted her and made her an adulteress. I did not. She was not. She was true to my brother’s love as I was true to my wife’s, until Raenulf died.”
Taminy sat down on a couch near the hearth.
He sensed that, heard it rather than saw it, for he could not bear to look at her. He listened to the fire whispering in the hearth, the wind prodding the windows. In a moment, he began to fill the silence with words. They were difficult words, each a sliver of shame, extracted with pain.
“When news came to us that Raenulf had been killed, Deardru fell ill with grief. She lost the child she carried—their first child. It all but killed her. Desary was above a year old then, and Geatan was pregnant a second time. I think it was more than Deardru could stand to see our happiness. She came to me one day and begged me to father a child on her. She’d been deprived of bearing a child to the Hageswodes; she made it no secret that she thought I bore some fault for it. It seemed right to her that I should replace what she had lost. I was stunned mute.”
His face burned now as it had burned then. Then, he had felt as if the Baenn-an-ratha had heaved beneath his feet—now it seemed to shudder like a sick dog.
“I could only believe she was grief-kissed. I bid her think what she was asking. When she pressed me, I told her what she wanted was unthinkable. I was husband to Geatan; it was Geatan I loved. I had no desire for Deardru—none. I tried to stay aloof from her—hard, as she lived at Hrofceaster—and, for her part, she reminded me constantly of her plight.
“Some months after, Geatan sickened. She lost our child and grief stole away her health. I lived in fear that I would lose her as well. For a while, it seemed she lingered between life and death. Deardru began to nurse her then, and was a great help—a great solace to us both. I thought she had forgotten her desire for a Hageswode child until one day Geatan . . .”
Possessed by a sudden nervous energy, he tugged at his heavy wool tunic, at his belt. He moved restively to the window.
“Geatan?” Taminy prompted him, her voice gentle.
He closed his eyes momentarily. Such was his shame, even that gentleness was brutal.
“Deardru had laid her case before my wife. My wife who, in her weakness, could not fulfill my desires. Spirit! My only true desire was for her health. But Geatan saw that Deardru was bereft, while she had a husband and a daughter and her own life, now mending. She saw a family obligation to be met. And she . . . saw that, in my own weakness, I now found Deardru appealing. She added her voice to Deardru’s and begged me to give her a child.”
He shook his head, making the silver bells woven into his hair sing. “Such a twist dance the mind does when it seeks to convince the heart a foul path is fair. Who was to be harmed? My own wife had given me leave, my daughter need never know. I was not unfaithful. Deardru needed what I had to give—a seed, nothing more. Pretty speeches, all, but what it came to was my own desire. Need, I called it, as Geatan had. I went to Deardru, burning beforehand, cold as ice, after. I was glad when she conceived. I didn’t touch her after that.
“Soon, Geatan’s health returned and I thought it was over. But Geatan’s sickness had ended her childbearing days. She grieved a bit for it, but we were happy. We had Desary. We were a family. Not long after Eyslk’s birth, Deardru came to me again and, again, asked me for a child. For my sake, she said. She knew Geatan could have no more babies; she offered for the sake of the Hageswodes. I refused. Again, she asked, and again I refused. She began to hound me, to speak to me of love and desire. I believed she saw my brother in me and that her grief had overpowered her. I felt pity for her, but when she tried to get to me once again through Geatan, I sent her from the fortress to live in the village.”
“And she has never forgiven you.”
“She has never forgiven me.”
“This is your horrible, shameful secret?”
“There is more. When Desary was twelve, Geatan died.” Dear God, he could still feel the shaft of bereavement. “It was a stupid thing—a fall from her horse. The village Healer was away at Lac-an-ghlo. On the night we buried her, Deardru came to me to offer comfort . . . and more. Perhaps I thought that in the dark I could pretend that Deardru was Geatan. Whatever the dance my mind did, I took Deardru into my bed. Once. Once was all. In the morning, she put to me the idea that I should marry her and acknowledge Eyslk as my own. She was already married to Garradh-an-Caerluel—had two sons by him—but for me, she would let them go. I put her out of Hrofceaster and have not spoken to her from that day to this.”
“But you brought Eyslk here to be educated.”
“Eyslk is my daughter. She shouldn’t be punished for the manner of her birth; for her mother’s willfulness and her father’s weakness. I sometimes fear that there is a poison in Deardru. If I can keep that poison from infecting Eyslk . . .”
“Eyslk is a good child, sweet and bright and true. She doesn’t carry her mother’s poison. Nor do you.”
“I carry my own.”
“Poison? Weakness, you called it. Is it so evil to be weak? No one is entirely without weakness.”
“You are.”
“Not even me.”
He looked at her then, saw the pensive look on her face, and knew she contemplated a weak moment of her own. From something Desary had told him of her time at Mertuile as Taminy’s companion, he suspected one such moment had come at the hands of Daimhin Feich. The thought of it made his brain burn with anger—with hatred. When Taminy raised her eyes to his, her gaze extinguished the flame, leaving ashes.
He crossed to the hearth, throwing himself down before her on the thick rug. “Forgive me, Lady. Forgive me for throwing my shame open to you. Forgive me my weakness.”
His head in her lap he felt the soft caress of her hand upon his hair.
“It is Eyslk who must forgive you these sins, Catahn. As she must forgive her mother. A woman should not bear a child for honor, but for love. She should not bear it to a family name, but to a man.” She raised his head with her hands then, framing his face with them, gazing down at him with eyes as deep and limitless as the Sea whose color they wore. “There is one other whose forgiveness you must have. Yourself. Forgive yourself these things, Catahn. Then take up your life and move forward. Move upward.”
The touch of her eyes, of her hands, opened in his soul a great, river canyon of hope and joy—a canyon only her Sea could fill. But as glorious as that was, it seemed to Catahn Hillwild that he stood at the bottom of that chasm, forever staring up, unable to climb out.
Forward? Upward? How could he move in either direction when the very Touch that warmed his soul, also heated his
blood?
oOo
Cadder’s gaze leapt anxiously about Ochanshrine’s circular sanctuary. “Please, Regent Feich!” he whispered. “Please! I can’t possibly—”
“You can. And you will. Indeed, you must.” Feich lowered his voice a notch and lowered himself to the wooden bench next to the quivering cleirach. “You’re holding out on me, Minister. You know more of this . . . aislinn business than you’re telling. I’ve stared at this damned crystal, I’ve burned incense to it, I’ve sung to it. It does nothing.”
“I don’t know what to tell you.”
“Tell me what they do.” Feich jerked his head toward the doorway that led to the Abbis where the Osraed of Ochanshrine lived.
“They . . . they use duans, the-the Gift. Regent Feich, I can’t—”
“Use that word one more time, Cadder, and I’ll start shouting my demands. Is it the chamber? Must I also use a circular room?”
Cadder scanned the sanctuary, mouth working. “It-it could be the chamber. The aislinn chambers of the Osraed are circular—often conical.”
“Fine, then I will build such a room. What else?”
“Of-of course, they don’t always use their aislinn chambers,” babbled the cleirach, “but then they’re trained Osraed and you’re—” He broke off and swallowed several times in rapid succession. “It-it could be the duans—there are different duans for different purposes.”
“Is there a book of them somewhere? Surely, they’re recorded.”
“I-I-I’ve seen—Yes, there are books.”
“In the library here.”
“Yes.”
“Fine. Get one for me.”
“Regent, I—”
“And I warned you what I’d do if you uttered that word again. Think carefully before you speak.”
Cadder squirmed and sweated. “I-I shall attempt to procure it.”
“Good. What else?”
“What else? Regent Feich, I don’t know what else. Either one has the Gift or one has not.”
“What about the crystal itself? Might I have gotten a flawed one?”
“I suppose that could be—”
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