“I can’t! Please, lord, I can’t!”
“You mean you won’t. Very well, you stupid child. You’ve condemned yourself.” Feich turned to Ladhar, who was only now getting his own trembling under control. “In the morning, I’ll return, Abbod. And when I return, I will have the strength to take up that Stone of yours and Weave through it.”
He dragged the hapless girl from the floor, then, and all but carried her from the Shrine.
Ladhar could only stare after them in mute horror. Daimhin Feich meant to get his hands on the Osmaer Crystal and, short of hiding it, there was nothing he could do to prevent that. He turned his eyes to the Stone, silently beseeching its unseen Mistress to aid him.
If ever you have listened to me, he told Her, I bid you listen now. Send me your two saints, your aingeals, to keep Daimhin Feich from abusing Ochan’s Stone.
oOo
“Fhada!” Leal rattled the door of the Elder Osraed’s room a second time. “Fhada!”
The door opened and Fhada gazed out at him, bleary-eyed, a tiny light-globe clutched in his hand.
“Leal! Meri’s Breath, what is it? What’s happened?”
“We must go to Ochanshrine.”
“What? Now? . . . Wait . . . How go to Ochanshrine? We’ll be caught—”
Leal waved his hands, stoppering the uneven flow of words that poured from Fhada’s mouth. “I don’t know how . . . yet. We’ll find a way. I only know we must go.”
Fhada shook his head. “But why?”
“To retrieve the Crystal. I had an aislinn—a vision. Taminy appeared to me and told me that the Osmaer Crystal is in danger. We’re to try to get Abbod Ladhar to let us take it and conceal it.”
“Conceal it?” murmured Fhada. “Conceal it from whom?”
“From Daimhin Feich.”
Fhada blanched. “He’s still a danger, then.” He ran a hand through his unruly hair. “When shall we go?”
“Now. We must be there before dawn. We’re to take the Osmaer and replace it with this.” Leal raised his hands into the glow of Fhada’s light-globe, revealing the crystal he held. Large and clear, with a slight golden cast at its heart, it looked very much like the Osmaer.
“Where did you get that?”
“From Taminy before she fled to Halig-liath. It was the Osraed Bevol’s. It’s smaller than the Osmaer—but not by much—and the facets are very similar.”
“Similar enough to fool Daimhin Feich?”
Leal smiled, a tickle of exhilaration fanning his heart. “With a little help from Aine and the rest of us, I think it just might.”
oOo
She hadn’t meant to make the Stone light—she had wanted nothing so much as to appear powerless in its presence—but she could not dissemble before the Stone of Ochan. At first, she’d credited her lack of control to her fear of Feich. He seemed a cauldron of violent impulse, terrifyingly near a boil—a man of ferocious wants—but when the aislinn Taminy appeared over the Crystal as if her Eibhilin body contained it and grew from it, Iseabal understood that her lack of control was irrelevant.
It was Taminy who worked through the Osmaer Crystal, Taminy who consoled her and calmed her fears with words of love that were meant for her ears alone. So, when Daimhin Feich railed at her and demanded that she Weave, again, the aislinn Taminy, she knew she could not.
She was afraid for her life by the time they returned to Mertuile. Feich’s rage, rather than being spent, seemed to feed on itself and grow. He dragged her through the castle halls past blank-eyed guards from whom she expected no help and got none. The noise of their passing roused his young cousin from slumber and, for a brief, agonizing moment, Isha felt the young man’s distress and thought he might intervene. But he let them pass by him without comment, his face grimly opaque.
Feich’s curses ceased only when he had wrestled her into her chambers and thrown her to the floor. She rolled among the fine fleeces before the hearth, expecting that any moment blows would fall, but he didn’t touch her. She pulled herself to a crouch before the dying fire and gazed up at him where he stood, his back to the closed door, chest heaving, face red with exertion and fury. He did not seem quite sane.
At the point Iseabal was certain he would lash out at her either physically or through his aidan, he caught hold of his rage, closed his glittering eyes and set trembling hands to his hips. Several deep breaths later, he spoke.
“Well, cailin, I suppose I shouldn’t have expected you to aid me willingly.”
“To harm Taminy?” Isha whispered. “No, never. But in this, I could not aid you if I wanted to. Taminy worked through the Stone tonight, not I.”
His eyes opened to fix her with a gaze like shadow on snow. “Yet, you have a great Gift. I’ve seen you use it . . . to disappear as if made of smoke. That is a trick I’d like to learn.”
Isha took a deep, steadying breath. “Would you have me teach you?”
He chuckled. “No need, child. I have a tutor. A woman who has taught me . . . a good many things—not the least of which is how to harness the power of others. Or, rather, to assimilate it, to make it my own.”
Isha shifted uneasily among her fleeces. She’d learned no such discipline and knew it was no part of the Divine Art. “You Weave . . . without drawing on the Spirit? How is that possible?”
He was smiling at her now, looking impossibly relaxed. It was a fiction—within him a fierce, nervous energy was building. It tingled in the air around them, making it seem to move and flicker.
“I told you, pretty Iseabal. I draw on others to feed my aidan. I draw on Ladhar’s stupid fears, on the Deasach boy’s brash pride, on Blair Dearg’s stupidity . . .” The smile widened. “ . . .on his wife’s lust. But, you see, I have learned to draw on much deeper wells. When I am one with Coinich Mor, I am one with her aidan and it feeds into mine, makes it grow great and deep.”
He wandered a few steps toward her—to the edge of her woolly defense—his smile a warm, lazy lie. He squatted there, meeting her eye to eye, reaching out to take a lock of her hair in gentle fingers and rubbing it between them.
“Coinich Mor is a second rate Wicke, a petty sorceress with barely a midge of power. You, on the other hand, are very powerful, indeed. Powerful and disciplined and in touch—” He stroked the tip of her nose. “—with Taminy-Osmaer, the most powerful source of all. And you are much more desirable than Coinich Mor.”
The words made no sense to her. Even so, they inspired terror. They were the last words he spoke to her that night before showing her that to be fed upon by Daimhin Feich was to be devoured by darkness.
oOo
The Osraed Ladhar had been praying for hours, yet dawn seemed no closer than when he had first started. He lifted bleary eyes to the open arch of the eastern doorway of the Shrine, certain that merely wishing it would cause the Sun to rise. The corridor remained dark, but in it, obscured by the veil of incense . . .
Ladhar squinted. Vague shapes that might have been part of the smoky pall seemed to hesitate within the open arch. They coalesced even as he watched, wavering toward clarity. He made out two forms, and his heart and soul leapt. Were these the helpers promised in his vision? Were these the saints he awaited? A glance at the Osmaer Crystal assured him; there was fire deep in its heart—a warm, gentle glow that grew and steadied with the moments.
He came to his feet, heart tripping over itself as it raced to meet the visitation. “Pray enter, good spirits. I am in much need. Praise Meri, you have been sent!”
There was a moment more of hesitation, during which Ladhar thought he heard whispers from the aislinn-cloaked figures. Then they began to move down the sloping aisle toward him, step by step. Odd that spirits should exhibit such human movement. He had opened his mouth to offer another greeting when the veil they moved in was whisked aside, leaving only the very physical smoke from the censers around their too-human frames.
Ladhar staggered back a step, nearly falling over the bench behind him. “Fhada. Lealbhallain. Why are
you here? How did you get past the sentries?”
The two glanced at each other, then took the last several steps into the circle of the Crystal—a circle still lit by a wash of Eibhilin radiance.
“I can hardly think,” Fhada replied, “that it matters how we got past the sentries. Obviously we got past them. The point is, we are here. To help.”
Ladhar’s face flushed with clammy heat. “To help? What are you talking about?”
Leal pressed forward, a pup’s eagerness sparkling in his eyes. “Daimhin Feich means to lay hands on the Stone of Ochan—to control it as he tried to control Taminy. You know this.”
“How do you know what I know?” Ladhar growled. “How do you dare suggest—”
“The knowledge has been given to us,” Leal persisted. “Daimhin Feich is a danger to the Stone, to you, to all you hold dear. As loathe as you are to believe it, Abbod,” the boy added, insolently, “those are the same things we love. The Meri has sent us to your aid. Give us the Stone and we’ll see that Daimhin Feich never touches it.”
Ladhar’s body shook, evading his best attempts at control. “Ah, but your sly Mistress will, won’t she? That’s your plan, is it? You knew of the aislinn I have received or—dear God, worse!—you caused it! Was it you who put the idea into my head that I would be sent aingeals to help me?”
The idea was stunning, but made a certain perverse sense. More than that . . .
“Ah, now, Lealbhallain, now, I recognize the voice that spoke to me out of that vision, the cold eyes that pierced me as I prayed. It was Bevol, whom I thought dead! Bevol is the one who controls you! Admit it!”
The two exchanged a look of sheer astonishment and Ladhar flushed in triumph. “Aha! I’m right! Bevol lives! Hiding in that filthy warren of yours, no doubt. Collecting heretics and Wicke to himself, pledging them to her service. Tell me the truth, if you’re able, Fhada. Is this not so?”
Fhada was not able to tell the truth as Ladhar now perceived it. “Abbod, Bevol is dead—taken by stealth and force at Daimhin Feich’s order, butchered and fed to the Sea.”
Ladhar rejected that tell. “And his body lost forever, no doubt. Convenient. You couldn’t tell me where it is or show it to me.”
Fhada blinked as if a strong light had been shone in his eyes and said, “In the depths of Mertuile there is a chamber, open to the Sea by vents and sluices—”
Blood rushed from Ladhar’s face and extremities as if sucked through a hole beneath his feet. “Enough! I’ve heard of this chamber. Believe me, I’ll go there and expose your tell for the lie it is. Daimhin Feich would never have dared to murder an Osraed of Bevol’s stature. After all, he expected Bevol to be discredited—”
“How so?” asked Fhada. “Cyne Colfre had taken Taminy into his house and his heart, insofar as he was able. Bevol was Taminy’s champion. A persuasive champion, if the reaction of the Hall was any indication. A threat to all Daimhin Feich held dear.”
Ladhar put up his hands. “Past history. You try to confuse me. Get out of here, before I call down the guard. There are Malcuim regulars here now, you know.”
Fhada nodded. “Yes. We walked past them on our way in. Listen to us, Osraed. Do not dismiss us so quickly.”
“Why should I not?”
“Can you deny that Feich is a threat to the Crystal, to the Throne, to the fabric of our society?”
“I . . . I do not deny it, but he is a threat I can handle.”
“He has powers,” said Lealbhallain, his verdant eyes on the Stone. It turned them to topazes and his hair to flame.
“I have seen them. They are . . . limited.”
“They are stronger than you think, Ladhar,” said Fhada. “Strong and capricious and uncontrollable.”
“He lacks discipline. He has no real training.”
“Which makes him even more dangerous. Perhaps he would be less a danger if you were to teach him some discipline—or have you already tried and failed?”
“I wouldn’t teach him to squat in the privy!”
“Will you let him have the Stone?”
“I . . .”
“He will take it.”
“I won’t let him take it. I will Weave a Ward for it.”
“Please, let us hide it,” said Lealbhallain, begging now. “Replace it with this. He need not know.”
Ladhar’s eyes widened at the sight of the crystal the boy clutched in his hands. It was identical to the Osmaer in every way.
“Where did you get that? Whose crystal is it?”
“Bevol’s.”
Quivering, Ladhar sat hard upon his bench. “You mock the Osmaer.”
“We try to save her.” Lealbhallain moved to sit beside him, cradling Bevol’s accursed Stone in open hands. “From Daimhin Feich, Abbod. Think of it. Look into your heart. Your soul. Tell me you don’t see the danger here.”
“Oh, I see the danger, boy. As well I see that you have given me a choice that is no choice.”
“Still, you must choose.”
Ladhar snorted. “The lesser of two evils? That is a choice I decline to make.”
The young heretic gazed up at his elder, resignation in his eyes, the sign and symbol of his heresy bright upon his brow.
Fhada, gazing back, shook his head. “You make a choice in not choosing, Abbod. You make Feich the victor by your inaction.”
“If,” Ladhar said, barely understanding why he said it, “if this matter is so vital, so grave, why do you not force me to part with the Stone? Why do you not take it from me unwilling?”
Lealbhallain rose. “That isn’t the Meri’s way, Abbod Ladhar. You know that. Violence is the way of evil.” With another glance at Fhada, the boy held Bevol’s crystal out to him. “If you will not let us take the Stone, at least let me give you this one.”
“What am I to do with that?”
“Replace the Osmaer with it before Daimhin Feich returns. Hide the Osmaer in some safe place.”
When Ladhar made no move to take the crystal from the boy’s hands, he laid it in the Abbod’s broad lap.
“Don’t let him get his hands on the Stone, Osraed Ladhar. For love of the Meri, don’t let him.”
They left him then, and were wrapped in their aislinn veil before they reached the outer corridor. The weak light of dawn rippled with their passing.
Ladhar opened his mouth to give alarm, but uttered no sound. It would do no good. The guards’ eyes would not penetrate the Weave of the heretics’ inyx. Besides, he no longer had the strength. Instead, he sat and stared at the thing in his lap—Bevol’s crystal. Aiffe, it was named—“life-giver.” Ironic, since its master was dead.
He laid a hand to the facets. Beneath his fingers, the stone warmed, emitting a soft glow. Still, Ladhar shivered, wrapped in the chill of a dank, sea-fed chamber below the foundations of Mertuile.
oOo
Dawn brought storm, if only to Daimhin Feich’s soul. Lightning lashed his mind and thunder shook his bones. He was beset by demons; he was in the company of aingeals and saints. They shrieked at him; they sang to him, and when he emerged from the cacophony, leaving even the quiet sobs of the Cirkemaster’s daughter behind a closed door, he was certain of his invincibility.
And hungry. God-the-Spirit, but he was hungry! He returned to his own rooms long enough to bathe and change his clothing, then he ordered up a breakfast fit for two men. Ruadh came down while he was eating, but didn’t stay. With a mumbled “good morning,” he slunk off to the kitchen to scavenge a meal.
“Not hungry,” he said.
Jealous, Daimhin thought, savoring his tea. Everything tasted glorious this morning. His senses were sharper, clearer. Sounds, sights, smells—all held a pungency he had never known. He basked in all of it, knowing without looking in any mirror, that he fairly glowed.
“So . . . you had the child.”
He glanced up from his tea. Coinich Mor stood at the end of the table, smiling at him, the bruises on her face a soft pattern that contrived to look more gold tha
n yellow. The smile annoyed him. Somehow, he had been hoping she would snarl and snap at him when she learned of his new conquest.
He nodded.
She returned the nod. “You think you no longer need Coinich Mor?”
“I suppose I could still make use of an able tutor.”
“Make use of an able tutor,” she parroted. “The girl satisfied you so with her virgin tears and innocent screams? I had thought you more worldly than that.”
“The girl is a fountain of Eibhilin power. While it’s true the fleshly satisfaction was . . .” He paused to search for the right word. “ . . . meager, there was abundant compensation for its lack.” He took a deep breath, stretched his muscles, feeling every ripple. “I tingle with the energies she gave up. They pulse in my blood, race through my mind. Can’t you feel it, Coinich? Can’t you see it in me?”
He stood, imagining how he must look to her with Eibhilin potency leaking through every pore. He laughed and the Wicke laughed with him.
“Oh, I see, Regent Feich. I see more than you imagine.” She shifted her shoulders in a manner that brought his attention to her full breasts—as it was intended to do, of course. “You can yet make use of me, lord,” she murmured, and let him see the flame in her strange eyes.
He moved around the table to her side, aware, with every stride, of the power flowing through him. She watched him, smiling her cat-smile, her eyes caressing. Her desire was a drug, a euphoric, and he savored it as he savored all else on this extraordinary morning.
He stopped close enough to her that their bodies just touched, cloth kissing cloth, heat mingling with heat, her spice wrapping him pleasurably. She gazed up into his face, telling him wordlessly that he could have her right there upon the table if he wished and to hell with whoever might find them.
He didn’t wish. Not at that moment. He was on his way to take the Stone; he was on the verge of reaching out to the Wicke of Hrofceaster in her own medium. He had no time now for Coinich Mor. She was a pleasure that would taste just as sweet later. Nor could he be certain her tainted energies wouldn’t corrupt the pure power he now cradled within. But, so that she’d understand her place at Mertuile, he kissed her hard enough to punish her bruised lips.
Crystal Rose Page 28
