Here was a cosmos in a dewdrop ... on the petal of a rosebud ... which opened slowly to full flower in a hand that quivered with half-remembered power. A myriad tiny worlds sparkled on each pale, spreading petal. In each world a rose had reached sudden maturity at Taminy-a-Cuinn’s gentle urging.
It was the long outflow of another’s breath that pulled Taminy away from the place she had been. She turned her head and, just for an instant, saw herself through the eyes of her watcher; a pool of vivid blue in the velvet sward, a banner of pale golden hair, paler skin and paler rose, petals spread wide.
“Mistress,” sighed Skeet, “that was wonderful.”
She glanced back at the rose. “It was a start. Only a start.”
“You feel better now, though.”
Taminy nodded and rose, brushing at her dewy skirts. Something tugged at her mind, then—an odd little tickle. She turned and glanced up over the wall and through the trees toward Halig-liath.
“What is it, mistress?” asked Skeet, eyes following.
“Curiosity,” she said and, cupping her rose, hurried inside.
oOo
“I am ready,” said Osraed Bevol, “to resume my duties at Apex.”
The members of the Council glanced at each other, eyes showing relief, caution, uncertainty, disbelief.
“Pardon, brother,” said Osraed Faer-wald, “if I do not seem in whole-hearted agreement, but you have recently sustained a terrible loss.”
Bevol looked at him straight. “Pardon me, brother, if I contradict you, but I must tell you, once again, that I have sustained no loss but that of Meredydd’s physical presence. I do miss her, but I am not, as is popularly believed, suffering and grieved. I am ready to resume my duties at Apex. There is nothing to keep me from them.”
“I’m not sure this is wise,” persisted Faer-wald. “You began teaching classes again only yesterday. Surely, you wish to wait until you have readjusted yourself to that schedule-”
“I am not a frail old man!” Bevol’s eyes sparkled with pale fire. “It would please me no end if you would cease treating me like one. There is no law or right by which you can deny me a return to my duties if I declare myself to be fit ... unless, of course, you are prepared to challenge either my integrity or my sanity.”
The council chamber echoed with the tiny shufflings of discomfiture—a cough, a scrape, a rustling of meticulously rearranged robes.
“We are not prepared to do anything of the sort,” said Calach firmly. “Are we?” His eyes circled the room, resting on each face in turn. All signaled the negative. “Then I believe we must take our brother at his word. We welcome your return, Bevol,” he added and sent his sincerity through his warm gaze. “I gladly relinquish the Chair to you.”
The move was a literal one. Calach rose from the central seat at the crescent table occupied by the Osraed Council and moved to the one he had traditionally held to its left, the third of the seats reserved for the Triumvirate composed of himself, Ealad-hach and Bevol. Bevol, for his part, stood down from the center of the room and resumed his place at Apex. He had no sooner settled himself into the high-backed chair than he turned the attention of the Council to business.
“You have all heard the rumors from Creiddylad,” he said and waited for affirmation. It came, reluctantly, via mumbles and head-nods.
“Rumors,” repeated Ealad-hach. “Do you honestly believe they are significant?”
“Yes, I believe they’re significant. Especially significant because of their source.”
“I heard about the murals months ago,” said Ealad-hach dryly, “from Niall Backstere. What’s significant about that? He’s the biggest gossip in Nairne.”
Several of the other Osraed chuckled.
“What is significant,” said Bevol, “is that we have heard none of this from our brothers at Ochanshrine.”
A murmur circled the crescent table.
“I wonder, myself,” said Calach, with obvious trepidation, “if we need to be concerned about the lack of official news from the capitol. The communications from the Brothers of the Jewel have been both sporadic and uninformative.”
“The time element involved ...” began one of the two junior Osraed, Kynan.
“This latest incident with the Holy Water purportedly took place at Waningfeast last moon,” said Bevol. “A Speakweave could have been performed or a bird could have been dispatched or a messenger could have come up with the teamsters. The point is, we should have been informed by the Osraed at Creiddylad, not the village magpie.”
Ealad-hach cut across the murmur of assent, his voice waspish. “What incident with the Holy Water?”
“According to Niall Backstere’s uncle,” said Osraed Kynan, “Cyne Colfre performed a ... new rite at Waningfeast that involved his, em, sipping Holy Water from the Star Chalice.”
Ealad-hach’s face paled. He opened his mouth and spluttered. “An outrageous report! By the Kiss, if it were true, the Abbod Ladhar would surely have let us know. Look, Osraed, if the Backstere’s uncle is anything like his nephew, he’s not likely to let the truth get in the way of a good story. He must be exaggerating the event.”
“Can we be certain of that?” asked Osraed Tynedale.
“Perhaps the question should be,” suggested Bevol, “how can we be certain of that?”
Osraed Faer-wald snorted. “I wager you have formed some opinion about that.”
Bevol nodded. “We have a new Osraed, Lealbhallain, leaving for Creiddylad directly after Pilgrim’s Tell. I suggest that we authorize him as our official agent to the capitol.”
“Lealbhallain will have his own mission to tend to,” said Ealad-hach. “We should not burden him with another. Besides, which, I know Osraed Ladhar. If there were anything worth mentioning going on in his bailiwick, he would mention it. He has not. I say we must disregard the rumors as the work of a bored imagination. We are Osraed; if our brothers were disturbed by any goings-on in Creiddylad, we would know of it.”
There was an awkward moment of silence, during which throats were cleared, robes rearranged and glances exchanged. It was Osraed Calach who destroyed the silence.
“I don’t know how disturbed our brethren in Creiddylad are, Ealad, but I will admit to some anxiety. The night before last, I dreamed a horrible chasm opened up in the heart of Caraid-land. I intended to bring it to this meeting—now seems the appropriate time. It wasn’t clear whether the disaster was a physical or spiritual one. I begin to believe it is the latter.”
“Aye,” agreed Osraed Tynedale and was echoed by at least one other voice. “I too, must admit to some peculiar unease of late. I have no aislinn to report”—he dipped his head toward Calach, who was charged with recording such visions—”but I am not content with these rumors, no not at all. It distresses me to hear them. We have never had a Cyne like Colfre-”
“He is a little eccentric,” objected Faer-wald. “Surely that is preferable to someone of Earwyn’s ilk who would throw Caraid-land into senseless battles with her neighbors.”
“Is it his eccentricity,” asked Bevol, “that causes him to repeatedly postpone the General Assembly?”
“I have also been visited by visions,” announced Ealad-hach and, with his somber, elegant bass, drew the attention of the entire seven man Council. “I would speak of them now, if you please. They are pertinent.”
When all had consented, he rose and circled the Triumvirate’s long table to stand at the center of the room—a place where light and shadow struggled and found, each, its own level. Sun from the high windows dappled his green robe, making him appear to be clothed in a sylvan sward.
A tree, thought Bevol. An oak—knotted of thought, rooted in habit, covered with lichen. They do not bend, these knotty old oaks.
“My aislinn was crystalline,” said the deep, ringing voice—crystalline, itself. “The images, fearfully clear. They had nothing to do with Cyne Colfre. They were not of murals or of the drinking of Holy Water or even of chasms. They were of Mered
ydd-a-Lagan.”
“Meredydd!” exclaimed Osraed Kynan and the slightly elder Eadmund echoed.
Bevol gazed at the table top, noticing how fine was the grain. Ealad-hach, in turn, gazed at him.
“They were visions of a monstrous heresy,” he finished dramatically.
Bevol nearly applauded the performance, but restrained himself. “Describe them to us, Ealad. We cannot interpret what we haven’t seen.”
“You saw.” It was an accusation delivered to Bevol on the tip of a finger that trembled with emotion.
Fear, Bevol thought, though Ealad-hach was holding it severely in check behind a shield of anger. He spread his hands, palms up. “Tell us what I saw.”
“I’ll do better. I will Weave it for you.” He paced the invisible perimeter of a circle, etched in the pattern of dark and light by the tapping of his feet. He stopped where he had begun the circuit. “She awaited the Meri, as woman was never intended to do. She waited in the darkness for the Light. And the Light came ...” From the tips of his outstretched fingers, colors flew and danced into the circle, becoming a shore with a lone occupant, and waters suffused with emerald and spangled with bits of fire.
Calach gasped and Tynedale breathed out sibilantly.
Ealad-hach divined the reason for their excitement immediately. “Oh, yes, she came! She came and drew the heretic into the water ... to drown.”
“You suppose,” murmured Bevol and the woven image wavered like smoke.
Ealad-hach pitched it more fuel. “She walked beneath the waves and was sucked from sight. And then, the most puzzling, horrific image of all—a girl rose from the waves, shedding light as a bather sheds water. She came from the waves naked, and stood, laughing, on the shore, flaunting herself.”
“Meredydd?” asked Calach in a whisper, squinting at the misty face. For the image of the girl was watery, vaporous, and dark.
“No. Not Meredydd. Another, older cailin. A girl with pale hair and eyes like the sea.”
“Pale hair?” repeated Tynedale. “What are you saying? Gwynet-a-Blaecdel has pale hair, surely you don’t think this is her.” He waved a meaty hand at the ambivalent form.
“It was not her. She’s a child. This was a young woman. A stranger to me.” The figure lengthened, but showed no more solidity.
“Who then?”
“Not who, I think, but what. Woman, she was, and Wicke. The Cwen of Wicke, my aislinn self knew her to be.”
“Knew her to be,” echoed Bevol, sounding faintly amused.
“Without doubt.”
“I had thought,” said Bevol quietly, “that you were at a loss to interpret this vision. That you were waiting for Wyth to come home so that he could give the Tell.”
“I still intend that he should do so. But I was moved to speak here and now.” He glared at his peer. “I do not question the promptings of the Meri.” Within the half-light circle, the aislinn folded in on itself and disappeared.
“No, no, of course not.”
“If,” said Calach, “the figure in the vision is symbolic of all women, do you take this to mean that we must expel Gwynet-a-Blaecdel from Halig-liath?”
Ealad-hach shrugged. “I would have it so, but that is at the discretion of the entire Council. However, an issue such as the presence of cailin at Halig-liath could be the source of the rift you envisioned in your aislinn.”
Calach pondered, frowning, then shook his head. “The logic is sound, but the tell refuses to fit.”
“I dreamed,” murmured Kynan, almost defensively, “that one of the Cyne’s murals came to life.”
“You’ve never seen one!” Faer-wald exclaimed.
“In the dream it was most vivid,” continued the young man, “although ... when I awoke ... I couldn’t remember much about it. Which is, more or less, why I neglected to mention the dream in the first place. And also ... well ... I was ashamed. It was such a-a sensual image, I thought ... I thought it must be a personal test. But now, when I hear the Osraed Calach speak of chasms-”
“It is Wicke we must fear, not our own Cyne! Not even his outrageous murals!” Ealad-hach’s voice was belligerent. “Let us deal with the issue of Wicke.”
“In Nairne?” asked Kynan. “Where in Nairne will we find a Wicke? Meredydd-a-Lagan is gone.”
Bevol ignored the barb, focusing his eyes entirely on Ealad-hach. “Oh, yes. But there is Gwynet. Perhaps she must be a Wicke to have survived her master’s ill treatment. Perhaps our brother has seen Gwynet in the future.... Well, surely we must banish the child then, or perhaps imprison her in the Cirke cellar.”
Tynedale snorted loudly. The sound reverberated gratingly from every hard, polished surface in the vaulted room. “The wee cailin, a Wicke? Ludicrous. She’s as sweet and gentle as a morning breeze. Besides that, she hasn’t the Gift. I’m sorry, Bevol, but it’s true. She’s got not a midge of talent, not a morsel.”
“You’re wrong, as it happens,” said Bevol, “but don’t apologize, you may have just saved her life.”
Ealad-hach exploded in a controlled rage. “I am not suggesting we do anything heinous to Gwynet! Not even that we eject her from Halig-liath. Gwynet is a child. She’s not at issue, here.”
“Then who is? What is?” Bevol stood, facing his sudden adversary across the gleaming expanse of the Triumvirate bench, his arms outstretched in entreaty. “You say we are in danger from Wicke—the very Cwen of Wicke, according to your aislinn self. You equate my Prentice, Meredydd, with this Wicke Cwen, and accuse her of heresy—monstrous heresy. You identify this monstrous heresy with allowing cailin at Halig-liath, yet you balk at equating Gwynet, a cailin at Halig-liath, with this monstrous heresy. Are you suggesting, Ealad, that you will only fight evil as long as it is faceless? Why will you not put a face to this heresy? Why will you not put a name to it?”
“Because I have none!” Ealad-hach trembled like a tree in a stiff breeze, every leaf shifting. “The only name I know is Meredydd-a-Lagan. The only face I see is one I have never met. My soul tells me this is the foulest evil. But it is nameless, faceless, without identity!” He dropped his eyes to perform a feverish search of the darkness near the floor, as if that might yield some answer. “It cannot be a person, surely,” he murmured. “No, no, it must be a construct. A metaphysical construct.”
“A construct?” repeated Faer-wald. He shook his head. “We must have more than that.”
“I have no more.” The whimper of defeat was followed by silence.
A chime sounded, brassily, and a light glowed above the door.
Saving us, thought Bevol, from having to know what to do next. “Come!” he said, aloud.
An awed-looking Aelder Prentice thrust his head into the room, his adam’s apple bobbing like a fishing buoy. “Pardon, Osraed, but I have just come from the front gate. Prentice Wyth —that is, Osraed Wyth—has come home.” His face split in a sudden, unabashed grin and he ducked out of sight.
“Osraed Wyth,” repeated Bevol. “Well, Ealad. Perhaps now we’ll get a sensible tell for your aislinn.”
oOo
“Now then, Gwynet ...” Aelder Prentice Aelbort smiled sweetly and tapped his pointer gently into one lanky hand. “What is the most important quality of a good Weaving stone, eh?”
Gwynet blinked. Aelbort’s habit of ending nearly every question that way made him sound like Ruhf Airdsgainne’s aged mam—an association neither pleasant nor funny. Yet, she nearly giggled when the student behind her mimicked a squeaky hinge.
She poked herself mentally. That would never do—to be thought disrespectful of her betters. Her mouth a straight, solemn line, Gwynet said, “Why, purity, maister.”
“Once again,” said Aelbort gently, “I am not your ‘maister.’ ‘Aelder’ or ‘Prentice’ is quite sufficient.”
Gwynet’s brow wrinkled. Sufficient. Yes, well, whatever that was.
“But you’re right, of course,” the Aelder Prentice continued.
“And how is purity determined? Anyone? Anyone?”
No one.
He turned his benign, canine gaze back to Gwynet. “If you please, child.”
Did the Prentice want to be old, she wondered. Would he be pleased to waken one morning to discover his hair gone white and his firm young cheeks, just now showing more than adolescent down, sunken?
“I asked,” he reiterated when she continued to gawp at him, “if you would tell us how we determine the purity of a crystal.”
“Pictures,” said Gwynet immediately. “Em, ‘imagey,’ I think Osraed Bevol called it.”
“Huh?” grunted the boy to her right and, “No, it isn’t,” insisted another. “It’s refractive precision.”
Aelder Prentice Aelbort smiled with sweet irritation and bent his golden head toward the speaker. “I didn’t ask you, Tam-tun. I asked Gwynet. I’m sure you’ll answer me many questions before the year is out. Now, Gwynet, what do you mean by ‘imagey,’ eh?”
“Well, Aelder Prentice, just tha’, don’t you see? ‘If in the stone, you see the mirrored mind, then it be the truest of its kind.’” There! She had remembered! She smiled, momentarily pleased with herself.
The Prentice was also smiling. “Very good, child. A delightful saying. Where did you get it?”
“Oh, Tam-” Gwynet’s blue eyes blanked. She wasn’t supposed to mention Taminy. Taminy wasn’t ready, yet, to come out. “A friend ... em ... once taught me tha’. To help me word out what I was thinking. And I was thinking that in the crystals, there are these little bits of the world and when a crystal’s pure, the little bits become mirror glasses for your imagey.”
Tam-tun tittered. “She means imagination!”
“Yes, sir. Tha’s the word.” Gwynet blinked up at the Aelder, ingenuous and wide-eyed. “Imagey-whatsit.”
Aelbort’s smile edged toward the beatific. “A mirror for the imagination,” he paraphrased. He put a hand on Gwynet’s shoulder and gazed about, spraying the other students with his delight. “A perceptive comment. Which proves something I have always believed—that education can release perception, but it cannot produce it.” His eyes fell at last to Gwynet’s upturned face.
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