oOo
Lealbhallain sat uneasily on the padded bench and tried to concentrate on his devotions. It was difficult and, in the end, he had to beg the Meri’s forgiveness for his inattention. He glanced sideways at Osraed Fhada, wondering if he was similarly troubled. Leal’s mind slipped, unbidden, back to yesterday’s session in Fhada’s aislinn chamber when they had seen, not Bevol, but something Bevol surely wanted them to see. That something had been the Cyne’s walk with Taminy atop the battlements of Mertuile.
Leal could see her now, flaxen hair in breeze-blown banners, waving at the people far below the great walls. Smiling. He had been struck by a sense of familiarity. A familiarity which had nothing to do with their brief meeting at Tell Fest. Both he and Fhada had been overwhelmed by a frenzied need to meet Taminy-a-Cuinn face to face. They were here now, at Ochanshrine, shifting restlessly on their benches, because they knew she would be here and knew, also, that Osraed Bevol must have some reason for giving them that knowledge.
Leal tensed and felt an answering awareness in Fhada; Osraed Ladhar had entered the Shrine in the company of a pair of Cleirachs and now lumbered down one sloping aisle. They were speaking in murmurs and Leal knew a guilty desire to eavesdrop. Ears sharp, he groped in his mind for an inyx he might Weave, but before he could recall one, the Shrine’s solitude was shattered. The pounding of feet in the outer corridor was accompanied by a hubbub of voices, the loudest of which cried hoarsely for Abbod Ladhar.
Before the Abbod could do more than turn and glower up the aisle, a middle-aged Osraed appeared in the doorway at the receiving end of that dark gaze. His face was bright red, save for the pinched brackets of white around his nostrils, and shone with a heavy dew of sweat.
“Abbod! Dear God-! Abbod!” He rushed down the aisle toward the elder Osraed, oblivious to the commotion he caused in this sacred Place. “I’ve seen—oh, dear God, what I’ve seen! The Cyne—the girl-!”
Abbod Ladhar was a bulwark of stone. “Calm, Tarsuinn,” he said. “Calm! Tell us what you’ve seen.”
“The Cyne is coming,” stammered Osraed Tarsuinn, “and the girl is with him.”
“Yes, Tarsuinn, I know this. I am to meet with them. The girl, as I’m sure you’ve heard, is suspected of Wicke Craft by some members of the Osraed Council.”
Osraed Tarsuinn let out a wild moan. “Oh, she’s more than suspect, Abbod! I’ve seen it!”
Ladhar’s face flamed. “You’ve seen what?”
“A healing! Oh, dear Meri—such a healing! In the middle of the street a sweep-woman stopped the Cyne’s carriage and thrust her crippled child at him, begging healing of-of that girl! And she took the boy into her arms, at the Cyne’s say-so-”
“The girl did—this Taminy?”
Tarsuinn nodded vigorously. “And she put her hands on him and pulled Blue Healing out of the Beyond like it was in full flood. Oh, blinding, she was, blinding!”
“And the boy?” asked Ladhar. “The cripple?”
“Whole and fit and straight.”
“A trick?”
“Oh, I think not, Abbod. I fear not. I’ve seen the child before, in the streets, at Care House. He was run down by a jagger’s dray, his left hip and leg mangled.”
Ladhar scowled. “And no Osraed could help him?”
The flustered Tarsuinn shrugged and dithered. “His mother took him to a physician first, I’m told. By the time he went to Care House, he was beyond even Osraed effort.”
Ladhar’s pale eyes seemed to turn inward, then. “And this girl from Nairne heals him at a touch ... .” The icy marbles snapped back to Tarsuinn’s face. “Using what Runeweave?”
“Using none I’ve ever heard. She spoke the old tongue—words I know only from long hours in the library.”
Abbod Ladhar’s broad face was set in inscrutable lines Leal couldn’t begin to penetrate. “We must be sure,” he said. “We must know she is a Wicke. If she is a Wicke she may be destroyed, or at least rendered harmless.”
“How, Osraed?” asked the Cleirach nearest him. “Now may she be neutralized?”
“The greatest evil is neutralized by the greatest good.”
Ladhar glanced back over his shoulder at the Osmaer Crystal.
Following his gaze, the Cleirach’s eyes lit with the radiance of pure zeal. A hard radiance, it glittered like the points of false glory reflected from the Osmaer’s dark facets. Fever-hot, it shivered like Sun on baked cobbles. Leal was amazed to feel all that in one glance at a man he’d only just noticed.
The Cleirach was nodding now, his eyes narrowed to slits. “Please, Holy One, may we observe your audience with this Wicke?”
Ladhar merely inclined his head and indicated the Cleirach and his companion should seat themselves. This they did, while all others within earshot, politely, or fearfully, removed themselves from the chamber. Leal, for his part, scrambled to remember an invisibility Weave and began to run the duan through his mind. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see that Fhada’s lips were also moving silently. And none too soon. With the air of someone announcing the dawn of doom, an Aelder Prentice entered the Shrine and proclaimed the arrival of the Cyne.
He appeared with all the dignity befitting a Malcuim and, if he was smaller in stature than his father or his father’s father, his silhouette, starkly filling the doorway, didn’t show it. Then, a female figure appeared next to the Cyne. Both stepped down into the artificial light of the Shrine and Leal held his breath.
Abbod Ladhar waited at the bottom of the aisle, his back to the Osmaer Crystal. His fatherly smile, the expansive sweep of his arms, displayed nothing but welcome. “Cyne Colfre,” he said, “you honor this Threshold. This is the young woman you spoke to me about?”
Cyne Colfre returned the smile. “Indeed, Abbod. This lovely child is Taminy-a-Cuinn.”
“This lovely child,” repeated Ladhar, his smile not altering, “is accused of heresy and practicing the Wicke Craft, if I am not mistaken.”
The Cyne and Taminy continued to descend. “Wrongfully accused, I am convinced.”
Leal stirred. That sound ...Like ... like singing. He heard Fhada gasp, saw his arm out-thrust, toward the Shrine’s Heart. He tore his eyes from Taminy’s face and followed Fhada’s gesture.
A cry was lifted from his throat before he could stop it. “The Crystal!”
The Crystal pulsed at its core with a light that increased in steady, rhythmic increments—brighter, brighter. Fire traced its facets, jumped from point to point, while the sound of singing—or was it wind-chimes?—shimmered in the semi-darkness of the Holy Place.
Ladhar turned as swiftly as his bulk allowed and stared at the brilliant thing. His face, his eyes, glowed with astonishment—an astonishment which gave quick way to triumph.
He swung back to face the Cyne. “Let the Crystal decide if she is wrongly accused.”
He doesn’t understand, Leal thought. He doesn’t see ...
He didn’t see that Taminy-a-Cuinn’s face glowed the same brilliant gold as the Stone she now gazed upon. He didn’t see that that face wore an expression, not of fear or distress, but of pure joy. It was the face of a lover reunited with her Beloved.
The Cyne stopped halfway down the aisle, uncertain, but Taminy continued on, her eyes on the Crystal, feeding back its glory. She raised her hands to it and Ladhar sidled out of the way. The singing increased volume, a sound like a chorus of flutes and pipes and voices wrapped in and around a fine spring breeze and the Solstice peal of Cirke chimes. Eibhilin fire leapt from Stone to cailin and embraced her, twining her in its golden arms, spangling the still room with glory. It rose to the curved rafters, it painted the walls, it must surely have poured from the windows.
Leal forgot his invisibility Weave altogether and came to his feet, quaking. “Oh, it’s true!” he said. “It’s true!” He looked up at Fhada, who had also risen; the older Osraed’s eyes streamed tears that turned to honey in the Osmaer gleam. He looked at the Cyne and saw a man frozen in disbelief. He loo
ked at Osraed Ladhar and his companion Cleirachs and saw men whose entire world had come undone.
Abbod Ladhar’s mouth was open and above the singing of the Stone, Leal heard his voice raised in a shrill litany: “Away, demon! Take her away! Take the demon away!”
The Cleirach who had begged to stay rose from his seat and advanced on Taminy who, oblivious within her now blinding cloak of Eibhilin gold, continued to caress the Stone. Leal tried to cry out, to warn her, but his throat made only a wild croak. The Cleirach lunged. There was a flash of light, a sizzle of sound, and the man toppled backwards as if he’d collided with a solid wall.
A new sound invaded the room. It took Leal a moment to realize, incredulously, that it was laughter—the Cyne’s laughter. Colfre Malcuim came down the aisle to the circular Shrine, circled to where Taminy could see him, and held out his hand to her. She shivered like someone shaking off a dream, glanced about, then took the proffered hand. The encompassing globe of Eibhilin light shattered like so much ephemeral glass and showered, in a myriad tiny, gleaming, silent shards to the floor. The golden aura faded, melted away into the flagged stones, under the benches, out of the air.
But Ochan’s great Crystal still throbbed with a rhythmic aurora, dimmer than before, but still strong. It was like an echoed heartbeat, Leal thought, when he could think. He didn’t need to ask whose.
Cyne Colfre led her away then; before the Cleirach could rise from the floor; before his companion could find the courage to move to his aid; before Ladhar, his face convulsing in fits of disbelief and rage, could utter further condemnation. Light left the Stone in a receding tide. When Taminy left, she took the Light with her.
“My God,” whispered Fhada. “What is she?”
Leal barely heard him. He stared at the Osmaer Crystal and wondered only how he might go and throw himself at her feet.
oOo
“I am only saying, sire, that it might not have been wise to ...”
“To push Ladhar’s chubby face into his own ineptitude?” Colfre smiled, enjoying the memory of those fat jowls flapping like an empty bellows. God, had anyone ever before rendered the man speechless?
He postured, puffing out his stomach and cheeks. “‘Let the Crystal decide if she is wrongly accused!’ Well, it damn well decided something!” He dropped the pose and came back to sit on the couch across from his Durweard, his heart galloping at the mere thought of what she had done. “I tell you, Daimhin, she held that Stone in the palm of her hand. She controlled it! She made it sing! Sing! I swear by the Malcuim line, I have never heard it sing, and neither had our porcine Abbod.”
Carried to his feet by that Voice singing, again, in his own blood, Colfre paced back to the garden window where Day could be seen to pull in her skirts; where Night spread hers out, layer upon layer.
“Sire,” Daimhin said in the most diplomatic of voices. “Sire, I thought the point of the interview with Ladhar was to gain Taminy an ally. Do you think you succeeded in that?”
“Don’t patronize me, Daimhin. Of course, I didn’t succeed in that. So, he fears her. That may be better.”
“Better?” Feich repeated. “My lord, had you no ... control over the situation?”
Colfre laughed, exhilarated. “Not as far as that damned Crystal was concerned.”
“I thought you said she controlled the Crystal.”
Colfre shrugged. “That was the impression I had.”
“Then, perhaps you should endeavor to control her.”
Colfre turned to regard his Durweard with mild bemusement. “We wanted miracles, remember?”
“Little miracles. ‘Oh-and-ah’ miracles. Not stupefying, mind-boggling miracles.”
“You have no sense of mystery!”
“And you have no-!” Feich turned his head and gazed momentarily at a muraled panel. He took a deep breath and looked back to his Cyne, smiling. “You have no idea, my lord, what the superstitious mind can make of such wonders. We are attempting to display a lovable Taminy, an innocent Taminy, not a fire-slinging hellion who knocks Cleirachs about like rumble pins. Our purpose is to prove the Osraed to be inept and fanatical stewards of Caraid-land’s spiritual life.”
“Our purpose was. I think that is changing. I think I see other possibilities.”
Feich gazed down at the rich folds of his tunic. “I’m sure you do. I see ... other possibilities, also. But if you terrify the Osraed, you risk uniting them. You can’t afford to unite them now. United, and still a force in government, they will fight you tooth and claw over the situation with the Deasach, and they will never allow you to declare yourself Osric. Your greatest and best weapon against them is their own disunity.”
Ah, damn, the man had a point. Colfre came back to the couch again, to sit and try to appear relaxed. Inside, he churned. “Well, Daimhin Feich, Durweard, what do you propose I do about it? Taminy-a-Cuinn performs ostentatious miracles completely at will. I couldn’t have stopped her from healing that boy this morning. Nor could I have stopped what happened with the Stone. I saw what it did to that idiot Cleirach, and I had no reason to believe it would show any more respect for a mere Cyne. So tell me: What can I do?”
“Try harder to control her.”
Colfre nodded, mouth a-twist. “Oh, yes. I see. I’ll have to book up on my Runeweaves.”
“There are ways. I shouldn’t need to remind you, my lord, that women—particularly very young women—find you most ... winning. Win her.”
Colfre, to whom such an observation was usually Sun to a seedling, could only stare at his Durweard in gut-tickling unease. “Absurd idea.”
Daimhin Feich’s surprise seemed genuine. “Why? Do you not find her attractive?”
Did he not-? He pulled his arms about himself, suddenly chill. “She’s beautiful. Lightning in flesh. She excites me in ways I didn’t know a man could be excited.”
Feich spread long delicate fingers. “Well, then ... ?”
Colfre stood, putting his Durweard behind him. “No, I can’t.” He raised a hand. “Don’t ask why. I couldn’t invent an answer that would make sense. I can’t because I saw her in the Shrine today making love to that Stone. Because I saw her in the street wearing a robe of blue glory and doing things no seventeen year old girl should be able to do. She is more than an embarrassment to the Osraed, Daimhin. She is their nemesis.”
Colfre could almost hear Feich’s eyebrows cresting. “Superstition, my lord?”
“Awe, my Durweard. You saw her this afternoon—a tired little girl. You didn’t see her this morning when she was ... I don’t know what.” He turned to intercept his companion’s troubled gaze. “Lay it at the feet of my Hillwild mother. Perhaps it is superstition. And perhaps superstition is in the blood she passed on to me. Whatever it is, it is. I recognize, of course, that you’re right. We must control her. We’ve befriended her; that’s a start. But perhaps more is needed. You’re a capable man, Daimhin. A more reasonable man than I am, obviously, and, I am told, as winning.”
“My lord, I-”
“No, no. It’s true. Perhaps you could succeed at what I will not even dare.”
Feich inclined his head. “Yes, my lord. But in view of how you feel about the girl, how could I presume-”
Colfre glanced at him aslant. “You’re a free man, Daimhin. Scion of a noble and powerful House. I may be Cyne, but I can hardly dictate your fancies, especially if they fall on a commoner.”
He turned back to his darkened window, then. All color had drained from the garden as if lapped up by an invisible beast. He wondered if it was the same beast, sated, that now curled up in his stomach and slept.
oOo
She was exhausted, but sleepless, and felt like nothing so much as a woolly fleece sponge that had been wrung dry. Or a riverbed, she thought, after a spring flash flood. Such had been the rush of Eibhilin energies through their human channel that she vibrated, still, from the Touch of the Stone. No, not the Stone, but the Stone’s Mistress.
Channels. It took a ser
ies of them to filter the Messages of the Spirit that some men might hear them: Spirit to Meri, Meri to Osmaer-Stone, Osmaer-Stone to Taminy-Osmaer. And from Taminy-Osmaer to ...?
She shivered, recalling the face of the Abbod Ladhar, sweat-polished and wild-eyed. The Message could not be filtered enough for that soul to find it comprehensible ... or acceptable. She could not reach a man like Ladhar, she could only expose him. She knew that after stepping into the embrace of the Crystal.
She knew other things, as well, of other souls. Of the two watching, unseen, from behind their simple Weaves, she knew earnestness and purity. Sharp contrast then, the Cleirach’s soul—a soul condemned by its own sense of worthlessness. A soul who fought that strangling emotion with the unlikely weapons of suspicion and self-righteousness. Those were the wrong weapons, but he had no others. That made Caime Cadder pitiful. It also made him dangerous.
A frisson prickled up the back of her neck. She rose swiftly from the bed, exhaustion forgotten, and moved with silent feet to the door. She opened it. The Riagan Airleas stood outside in the dim-lit corridor, his hand outstretched toward the door latch. Their eyes met in an almost audible collision.
Airleas lowered his, then quickly raised them again. “I would have knocked,” he said
“Oh? And why would you have knocked, Riagan Airleas? What can you want with me?”
He jutted his chin up and out, fixing her with a gaze he’d no doubt seen his father use on recalcitrant Eiric. “They say you did a miracle today in the Cyne’s Way.”
“Are miracles not permitted there?”
He blinked at her, looking momentarily like a little boy. “I ... I suppose the Cyne must have permitted it. Did you?”
“What am I to have done that was so miraculous?”
“They say you healed a little boy.”
“God healed the boy. I was only an instrument.”
“I don’t believe it. I don’t believe you can heal people. I want you to prove it to me.” The brave little Riagan shuddered like a breeze-blown poplar, but stood his ground.
Taminy Page 35