“Aye, and so what do you want me to do, the first time you’ve serious words for me? You want me to change. You want me to behave another way. Think another way. Ponder that, Terris. You like me being different, but you want to take the things that make me different away. Now, I thank you for your kind concern, but it will not change me or the things I do.”
She left him standing, stunned, in the middle of his family’s shop, and prayed only that he’d not withhold her medicines from his grandmother.
oOo
Osraed Lealbhallain swept a grimy wrist across his forehead and succeeded in doing nothing more than grinding filthy sweat into his skin. His face and forehead itched abominably, but there was little he could do just now but scratch it. The huge kitchen of the Creiddlylad Care House was too hot, kept that way by an eternally roaring fire. There was only one other usable fireplace on this level. It was at the other end of the long children’s ward and it, too, burned night and day in an attempt to keep the sea-damp chill from the bones of the ward’s inmates.
Leal scratched at his forehead and looked doubtfully at the last bundle of herbs he had extracted from the larger bale beside him on the floor. “How is it these supplies come to you in this condition?” he asked the dour Aelder Prentice working across the table from him.
The young man shrugged and flung a limp, beetle-infested flower head into the refuse bin. “What other condition might they be in ... Osraed Lealbhallain?” he added.
“Well, the herbs and roots might be washed, the buds might be healthy, instead of diseased and dried out. The foodstuffs might not be half-rotted or desiccated or worm-eaten or” —he held up an apple with a very distinct bite removed— “sampled.”
The Aelder Prentice’s mouth twitched. “Osraed, these aren’t so much foodstuffs as they are refuse. If it falls off the cart, or gets crushed at the bottom of the wagon, it comes to us. Merchants aren’t likely to give their best to them.” He jerked his head toward the ward. The gesture was timed perfectly to coincide with a wild bleat of pain and fear from that dismal place.
Lealbhallain cringed, feeling as if someone had dug a fork into his ribs. He tried to concentrate on the herbs. “How long has it been like this?”
The Aelder Prentice looked at him strangely. “Always. As long as I’ve been here, anyway. You’d have to ask Osraed Fhada about before that.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Three Solstices past.” The youth’s eyes shifted aside, glancing off the crystal hanging from Leal’s prayer chain.
Leal felt sudden recognition. Of course, he should have made the connection; Aelder Buach had been Prentice Buach-an-Ochmer three Seasons ago at Halig-liath. A most promising student, according to all accounts, yet the Meri had twice passed him over. And now, he was here—a weary drudge, up to his armpits in grime and unhappiness.
“Well, three years is plainly too long for this to continue. I must be intended to remedy the situation.” Leal realized how arrogant that sounded as the words left his mouth. “There was a time,” he went on, quickly, “when the Merchants cut their best from the very top to send to the Care House.”
Buach’s brow knit. “Why ever would they do that?”
Leal was at a loss to know how to answer. He was framing a set of words when another shriek of agony from the ward tore through his head. He clutched his side.
“It would be a hardship for them, after all,” Aelder Buach said, as if he’d heard nothing. “Market tariffs being what they are.”
“Market tariffs?” Leal glanced uneasily toward the ward’s rumbling archway. Torchlight flickered eerily across the floors, making him imagine that ghostly snakes crawled there.
Buach nodded, reaching down from his stool to toss another bale of weedy-looking dried flowers onto the table. “To sell their wares in the Cyne’s Market.”
“They have to pay to bring their wares to market? Why?”
Buach shrugged. “Cyne Colfre needs the revenue for the work going on at Mertuile. For the Cirke, too.”
“The Cirke?”
“Cyne’s Cirke. He’s adding to the Sanctuary and rebuilding the altar. And there’s to be statues.”
“Statues?” repeated Lealbhallain, beginning to feel like a mynah-bird.
Buach’s lips twisted wryly. “A fine artist is our Cyne,” he said, “as you’ve seen.”
Leal nodded and reached out to grab a handful of stems. His ribs erupted with sudden pain, forcing a cry from his lips and all but toppling him from his rickety stool. Buach stared, his mouth open, but before he could say anything, the lanky silhouette of Osraed Fhada appeared in the kitchen archway. His leonine head tilted toward Lealbhallain, firelight haloing the shock of gold-red hair.
“Pardon, Osraed,” he said, tugging at his prayer chain, “but are you well-practiced at the Healweave?”
Leal blinked and straightened, rubbing his rib cage. “Yes, sir.”
“Could I presume upon you to assist us?” Fhada made an uncertain gesture in the direction of the ward.
Leal’s agreement was immediate. He followed Fhada from the kitchen, through the pitiful, over-full ward into a cluster of chambers that served as a clinic. In one of these rooms, attended by an Aelder Prentice and an aging Osraed, a small boy lay atop a table, surrounded by blood-soaked rags.
“What happened to him?” Leal asked, feeling, again, the gouging in his side.
“We think he was in a fight,” said Fhada. “He came in with the wagon of provisions. The jagger found him on the edge of the Marketplace.”
Leal didn’t comment that the Osraed was charitable to call what they had received from that wagon “provisions,” though he thought it. He moved to the table and shifted aside the wads of rag. The wound was horrid. Rag-edged and oozing, it looked as though a powerful set of jaws had taken a bite out of the boy’s flesh.
Leal’s bowels trembled in a fit of weakness and his own flesh took fire. Swallowing bile, he glanced up at the child’s face. It was pale, and dark, frantic eyes stood out in it like red-rimmed coals.
“You’ve cleaned the wound thoroughly?” Leal asked, and the attending Osraed nodded. “I’ll need to wash my hands—could you bring hot water?” He looked to the Aelder Prentice. The boy hesitated. Leal lowered his voice, attempting to sound less like a squeaky adolescent. “In the kitchen, over the fire, there’s a pot-” He added a mental shove.
The youth nodded and scrambled through the door. While he was gone, Leal tried to survey the wound without touching it, holding, on a tight rein, the anger that had begun to roil in his breast.
“Osraed Fhada,” he said finally, because he found silence impossible, “conditions here are wretched. No, worse than that, they’re unbearable. This clinic is ill-provisioned and filthy, you can’t afford hot tap water—and the pipes are too pitted, if you could—you can’t afford proper medicines, what passes for food here, is barely that, you’re understaffed, and the staff you’ve got, if I may say so, sir, is uninspired.”
Fhada’s angular face reddened. “Yes, you may say so. It’s only true. No one wants to serve here.”
“But the lack of funds—how is it this Care House is so poor when Ochanshrine is so near by?”
The Aelder Prentice reentered the room, then, with the pot of water and some fresh rags, and Fhada’s eyes followed him momentarily before he answered.
“It is precisely because Ochanshrine is so near by that we find ourselves in these circumstances, Osraed Lealbhallain—or at least in part. The Cyne has determined, along with his Privy Council, that the Shrine and Abbis need repair and redesign. They are, in his words, ‘relics.’ They do not ‘show well.’ That is where the preponderance of the Osraed monies go these days—to the refitting of the Shrine and the Abbis.”
Leal finished scrubbing his hands and dried them before he moved back to the table. The child, watching him, whimpered.
“Who makes these decisions—about the funding?”
Fhada shrugged. “I know I don
’t. The Cyne, the Council, the Chancellor. He has signatory authority.”
“Over Osraed funds? Why? How? Why are you not in charge of your own monies?”
“Some years ago, the Osraed committee in charge of our financial matters was accused of mismanagement.” Fhada glanced at the elder Osraed, who merely grunted. “Much was being spent here, then.”
There was a wealth of sad irony in those words. Leal knew he must pursue the subject further with Fhada. Now, however ...He laid gentle hands on the little boy’s forehead and closed his mind to the others. “What’s your name?” he asked the child.
“Leny.” The answer was a raw whisper.
“Leny, I’m Osraed Leal. I’m going to take the pain away and help your wound heal.”
“Please,” said Leny. He shivered convulsively in his own sweat.
Leal didn’t ask himself if he really could perform the Weave. He simply decided he must perform it. Meredydd had told him once that he had a Healer’s hands. He chose, now, to believe her. He chose, also, to believe that the Meri would aid him, whatever he had to do.
He withdrew his rune crystal from its pouch and cupped it in his hands. Before his eyes it glowed gently, but enough. He could feel it through his palms, through his fingertips. Holding the crystal in one hand, he laid the other, once again, on Leny’s head and began a painblock inyx. Beneath the fingers of his left hand he felt the boy’s frenetic energy calm, his trembling subside. When the small body had completely relaxed, he moved his free hand to the wound.
In his right hand, the crystal burned amber, pulsing with his heartbeat. He reached upward, then, with fingers of thought, feeling for the stream of energies he knew was there. Fishing, he’d called it in school, and had joked that he’d be lucky to catch a minnow. There were more than minnows in the stream today. There were energies he swore he’d only just realized existed in more than theory. He caught them, channeled them, and flooded Leny’s wound with them. He heard the old Osraed murmur, the Aelder Prentice draw a sharp breath. Fhada was silent.
He ignored them all, singing out his duan, calling for the cohesion and healing of the boy’s torn flesh. The energies answered, danced to his music and wove together the torn edges into a new, pink, tender cloth.
Later, Leal walked the dismal halls of the Care House with Osraed Fhada, trying to frame questions.
“You have a remarkable Gift, Osraed Lealbhallain,” Fhada told him. “We’ve not seen its like here for some time.”
“Why? Have you no one who can perform a Healweave?”
Fhada’s mouth twitched. “We have you. At least for the time being.”
“And no one else?”
“Yes, there are the Osraed Dhui and Piobair, but they’re on mercy rounds just now, tending those too sick to be moved. I was once able to perform a Healweave—though never so efficiently as you did. Now, I can deal with cuts and bruises. There are a few others—again, none of them as accomplished as you. The Meri has not blessed Creiddylad with many Osraed of late—your arrival was quite a surprise. And the ones that are sent eventually take up work in the Abbis or in Mertuile, at the Cyne’s ... request. The Eiric hereabouts appreciate having their children educated by select Osraed and Cleirachs.”
“But what about the children here? They must be educated, too; they need healing. Does the Cyne offer these Osraed no choice?”
Fhada glanced at him askew. “Would you decline an offer to work in the Cyne’s Clinic or the Eiric’s schools to work here?”
“Yes.”
Fhada stopped walking and gave him a long look. “I believe you would. But why?”
“Because this is what the Meri has commissioned me to do.”
“To squander your talents among the ruins?”
“To improve the lot of those I am sent to serve. My talents are hardly squandered if I can do that.” He peered into Fhada’s face, trying to read his expression. He was able to read more than that. “Why are you here, Osraed Fhada?”
The older man raised his eyes to the shadow-pocked ceiling of the corridor. “Because I once felt as you do. That this was my place. That I had a ... mission, I suppose. As I said, I once could perform a Healweave. But over the years, it seems I’ve lost my ability to concentrate, to feel the Touch ... Her Touch.”
Leal felt the bitterness of that—the loneliness. Impulsively, he reached out his hand and laid it on Fhada’s arm. “She is nearer than your own soul, Osraed. Reach for Her and She will answer.”
Fhada shook his head, “I’ve reached for Her in desperation for ten years. I’m exhausted with the effort. Once in a while I think I’ve recaptured something—a spark, a warmth—then things conspire to snuff it out. She no longer speaks to me.”
“Perhaps She is speaking to you now,” said Leal, and was stunned by his own audacity.
Fhada’s brows ascended. “And what does She say to me?”
“That this is wrong.” Leal’s gesture took in the crumbling building around them.
“That I see, already, Osraed Lealbhallain. My question has always been—what can I do about it? Except for a few tough-minded souls, like our Hillwild Dhui, I have had the best talent siphoned away to the schools of the wealthy, to the halls of Mertuile.”
“You could have spoken to the Brothers at Ochanshrine.”
“Why do you assume I haven’t?”
Leal blushed. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed that. Did you go to them?”
“Yes, and they spoke to the Cyne and the Cyne pledged his support. But then came the rebuilding of the Abbis and the changes to the Cyne’s Cirke—surely more important than feeding and educating a handful of orphans or the sons and daughters of un-landed commoners.”
“There are more than a handful of orphans here, Osraed Fhada.”
The older man turned his face into the shadows. “That is pathetically true.”
“The Cyne must know.”
Fhada uttered a bark of laughter. “He knows. He doesn’t care.”
“Then, Osraed Fhada, he must be made to care.”
CHAPTER 10
The Shrine of your heart opens to your enemy and closes in the face of your Friend, for you have taken the love of another into your heart. Listen to the True Friend Who loves you for your own sake and not for your possessions. Will you show disloyalty to such a Friend?
— Utterances of Osraed Aodaghan, Verse 24
Alone in the sunny classroom, Ealad-hach forced himself to relax. He was almost happy here among scattered books and papers, with light from the tall windows flooding every corner. He came here now to think and plan, and told himself it was because of the sunlight. He had not been inside his aislinn chamber for three days.
With his students gone, he found his mind revolving, again, toward what he now believed was a dark conspiracy. He knew not who, among the conspirators, were culpable and who were ignorant puppets, but he knew that at the core must be a powerfully gifted Wicke who wanted her prodigies at Halig-liath, who surely had designs on Halig-liath itself. He must find her, expose her.
Again, he murmured a prayer to the Meri to open a door in the wall of uncertainty he pressed against. Sighing, he rose to erase the white wall; the names of Cynes, of great Osraed, the history of Caraid-land, disappeared under the powdered fleece.
Malcuim, who first heard the Meri’s chosen; Bearach Spearman, who, with the great Osraed Gartain, protected the Osmaer crystal from Claeg usurpers; Liusadhe the Purifier, who checked the influence of the Wicke in his time. There had always been heroic Cynes to be found at previous Cusps. He erased the name of Colfre and wondered if this Cyne would be equal to the task.
He moved to the shelves near the door next, replacing text books, gathering written assignments. It put him in precisely the right spot to hear the conversation in the hallway. Later, he would think it the answer to his fevered prayers.
“Will you tell none, then?” Scandy-a-Caol’s Northern accent was unmistakable.
“Who am I to tell?” That was Brys-
a-Lach. “She’s an Osraed’s pet. He no doubt taught her everything she knows.”
“In the time she’s been here?” Phelan’s reedy whine ended in a pronounced squeak. “I don’t believe it.”
“Why not? She didn’t do aught that were so grand.”
“She mended a broken tree branch,” said Brys dryly. “That’s more than you or I could do.”
“Mended it and put it back on!” snorted Phelan.
“Aye,” said Scandy, “and I heard Cluanie Backstere say she healed a sheep’s broken fetlock.”
“That’s not all Cluanie said. Did you catch that twaddle about the Meri regenerating?” Brys uttered a sharp laugh. “Osraed Ealad-hach would have a fit if he heard her version of history.”
The volume of their voices was falling; they were moving off down the hall. Ealad-hach hurried to the door and peeked through. They were headed away from him toward the main corridor.
“Look Brys,” Scandy was objecting, “shouldn’t we tell someone?”
“It wouldn’t do any good. Especially since Wyth’s grand announcement. We’re to have female Prentices. Next thing you know we’ll have female Osraed.”
The three boys disappeared around the corner. Ealad-hach, shamefaced, scurried to keep within earshot.
“But this in’t the same thing, Brys. She’s saying and doing stuff I never learnt, and you saw the way of things there, in tha’ damn glen o’ hers. There was a gatherin’ a’ tha’ pool, Brys. I’d swear’t. Tha’ Taminy’s calling up a coven. And on Cirke-dag, more’s the sin. God-the-Spirit, I’m wishin’ we ne’er went poking after ’em.”
Ealad-hach all but choked on the air he breathed. He heard the boys steps cease and Phelan ask, “Did you hear something?”
Afraid they might turn back and find him cowering there, Ealad-hach slipped into an empty classroom. His shame at hiding from a trio of mere boys was quickly eclipsed by a dreadful rapture. It was certain now; Taminy-a-Gled was a Wicke. But was she the Wicke? Was she the power source he sought, or merely a gifted minion? Either way, his course was clear. He must find a reason to call the girl out and expose her.
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