Colfre nodded. “Yes. Yes, and she will remember that, won’t she? There are those who hate her, but surely she realizes we did not mean to make enemies for her-”
“Sire, she understands that the enemies she has made are enemies because she threatens their authority. She doesn’t blame us for Ladhar’s implacability or Cadder’s histrionics. After all, look at her claims.”
Colfre visibly calmed himself. “Yes. Yes, of course, you’re right. She knows what’s in our hearts, after all. She knows I love her. As flesh may love the divine,” he added.
Daimhin smiled indulgently. So much for his fear that Colfre would be jealous of his own dealings with the lady.
Your flesh may love the divine as deeply as it wishes. Mine desires its like.
It was desire that led him to Taminy’s door later that same evening. That and a hope that she might capitulate to his desire. He found her with company. Not only Desary Hillwild, but the Osraed Wyth and Skeet and, most surprising of all, the Riagan Airleas. There were candles and tiny lightglobes set in a circle about the carpet of her room and he thought they must have been praying for their lost Osraed.
After a moment of discomfiture, his composure returned and he begged the lady’s indulgence and a brief audience with her. Her eyes like jewels in the unsteady half-light, she bid her companions leave her. He waited, smiling, looking like a young man in the throes of first love. He watched his own reflection in her mirror and was pleased by what she would see when she closed her door on the others and turned to look at him.
Heat licked up his spine when her eyes touched him. It was the light. It spun a sun-halo around her head and made her face seem gilded. She was dressed in a soft robe not fit for day wear; gone were the layers of skirts and laced up sous-shirts. He could make out her form beneath the fabric and it prompted the absurd thought that Colfre’s paintings were products of cowardice. A man with any blood in his veins would choose to sculpt.
He took her hands. “I had to see you once more before the great and glorious day. Tomorrow, Caraid-land receives direction.”
“Yes.” She nodded, her eyes never leaving his face.
He smiled. “I thought your eyes were jewels. I was wrong. They’re seas. Let me drown in them.”
“I drowned once,” she told him, “in the will of the Meri. In the glory of God. I live to immerse myself in that. I am immersed in that at every moment.”
He kept his smile in place, though her words annoyed him. “Of course.”
“Of course,” she repeated. “Of course, he says, as if he understands what he does not believe.”
“Believe? Taminy, beloved, I believe in you.”
“And do you then believe in the Meri? You once seemed unsure.”
“I suppose I am coming to belief.”
“I tell you She exists and that She expresses Her will to me now, as we speak. Do you believe?”
He nodded. “If you say it.”
“If I say it? Because you believe in me, you will believe in Her?”
“Yes.”
“And do you then believe in God, the Spirit of This All?”
“I ... if you say it is so.”
“I say it is so. I am the expression of That Will. I do That Will. Will you also do it?”
He wanted to drop her hands but found he could not. “What do you mean?”
“What if it is not the will of God that there be an Osric this generation?”
“What?”
“What if I tell you it is not God’s will that Colfre Malcuim be Osric? What would you say?”
“Why would it not be God’s will? Colfre has had aislinn visions-”
“Colfre has dreamed what he wishes to dream. And he plots. And you plot with him.”
“I? No, Taminy, believe me, I ...You mistake me-”
“No, but almost.” She let go of his hands, leaving him oddly bereft.
“Tell me, Taminy, tell me why Colfre may not be Osric. Tell me and I’ll try to understand.” The anguish he heard in his own voice surprised him. He prayed his Feich ancestors that it was convincing.
“Colfre is weak. Weak of spirit and conviction. Weak even, in his own avarice. His mind struggles against the real and seeks compromise where compromise should not be sought. He must not be Osric of Caraid-land. To place such power in his hands would be the undoing of everything that has been accomplished here.”
“You ... you will not confirm him?”
“I do the will of the Meri and the Spirit. Whose will do you do?”
“Don’t ask me to betray my Cyne, Taminy. It’s too much, even for your sake-”
She shook her head. “Not my sake. Yours. You try to seduce me to your will-”
Startled, he threw himself to his knees before her. “Yes! Even if it damns me, yes! And I’d do it again.” He held out his hands to her. “I am nothing but desire for you. I look at you and loyalty becomes only a word, a vague and pious concept, a shadow. Touch me,” he demanded. “Touch me and feel the truth of my words. Touch me and your will is mine.”
“I don’t need to touch you, Daimhin Feich. I can feel you from here, pulling at me. I’ve never known desire before,” she added, her voice a murmur.
He smiled, engagingly, he hoped. Was that vulnerability he saw in her eyes? “Am I to be damned for awakening in you what you also loosed in me?”
She was silent, gazing at him, her eyes in shadow. She shook her head. “No, not for that.”
His hands quivered between them, still reaching for her. She seemed to study them for a moment and then, with deliberate languor she reached out and brushed her fingertips across his. The shock that tore through his body stunned him almost witless. He felt scalded and frozen, certain only that that had been no mere discharge of stray static. He tried to take her hands again, to drawn her to him, but she would not allow it.
Instead, he grasped the folds of her robe and pulled her into his arms, looking up into her face. “Taminy!” He made the name a duan of desperation, crying it against her, willing to burrow into her, to strike her core.
Hands on his shoulders, she pushed him away.
He was tired. Tired and stunned to have misjudged her attraction to him so badly. He rocked back on his heels and sat looking up at her, watching her hand find the place his face had rested, the place where his tears of frustration had stained her robe.
“Is this my punishment, mistress?” he murmured. “Do you punish me?”
She shook her head, no longer looking at him, looking beyond him. “No, Daimhin Feich. You punish yourself.”
He pulled himself to his feet then, and found his way unsteadily to the door. In the mirrors he looked utterly defeated and dejected. That was good.
He paused with his hand on the door latch. “What must I do to win back your trust, Taminy-Osmaer?”
She did the most confounded thing then—she laughed. It was a bright, cold sound like a shard of crystal, and it cut.
“But I do trust you, Daimhin Feich,” she said, and turned away from him.
He watched her in the mirrors until the door closed.
oOo
Osraed Wyth could not help but be awed by the size and grandeur of the Hall. Floors of native stone and tile glistened, the wooden galleries gleamed, chandeliers composed of a myriad lightglobes added their own radiance to the warm splendor of the waning Sun that cascaded from high mullioned windows.
Everyone had spent the day in preparation. The servants had scurried and polished and cordoned and laid out food and drink in the Throne Room for what Colfre expected would be his very own jubilee. Taminy and her companions had spent the day in meditation and prayer.
Wyth would have been among them had he not now been on the Assembly. They had deliberated for some hours both in their constituencies and with the general membership, carefully drawing up their responses. Their responses were two-fold; for the Hall was split over Taminy-a-Cuinn and no amount of miracle or consultation or doctrinal exposition would mend the breach
. Wyth’s testimony of the Meri’s nature and of Taminy’s claims served only to confirm the already confirmed. Those who believed her to be both Wicke and heretic were not at all impressed.
While the clear majority affirmed that Taminy possessed powers and insights which could only come from the Eibhilin realm, they were not an overwhelming majority, and the opposition could hardly pretend to be neutral. When all was said and done, there were two implacable camps. Iobert Claeg would speak for the assenters, while Osraed Ladhar represented the dissenting view.
By sunset the Hall was aswarm with people and aswim in the warmth of their bodies. The audience had been allowed to expand onto the floor between the Assembly Galleries, leaving only a portion of the floor area before the royal dais for the Speaker’s box.
To Wyth Arundel, the babble of voices sounded like the utterances of the Bebhinn many times amplified. They hushed as the Cyne appeared with Taminy at his side, the royal family, his Durweard, and Desary Hillwild following.
Durweard Feich called the Hall to order and gave a summation of the case of one Taminy-a-Cuinn, claimant to the station of Osmaer. There was no one to whom the Durweard’s words were news, and the faces turned up to him from the floor of the Hall were eager for the proceedings to reach their climax.
As was traditional, a spokesman for each group within the Hall rose and presented the view of the constituency. Only tonight, the refrain was different. “We are divided,” said the Osraed Ladhar. “We are divided,” announced the Minister Cadder. “We, too, are divided,” agreed the Eiric Selbyr.
The last to stand was Iobert Claeg. Clutching the hilt of a sword whose only purpose was supposedly ceremony, he rose and glanced at the watchful faces in his gallery. His eyes rested longest on Catahn Hillwild, whom he had invited to sit next to him, then he turned to the Throne and announced, “We, the Chieftains of the noble Houses of Caraid-land and of the free kindred of the Gyldan-baenn are not divided. We offer up our lives and our loyalty to Taminy-Osmaer—with one accord.”
And so a Claeg, for not the first time in Caraidin history, brought down the roof the Assembly Hall. The crowd, by and large, was jubilant, and the royals were obviously pleased. Those who had reason to be uneasy, were—and Wyth could not help but notice that Daimhin Feich was among them.
Odd. Why would the Cyne’s man be uneasy in the face of success?
Iobert Claeg remained standing during the uproar, waiting with rock-like patience for the room to quiet. When, at last, it did, he continued. “I, Iobert Claeg, speak now as representative of a clear majority of the General Assembly of Caraid-land. We hereby declare that to the best of our determination, Taminy-a-Cuinn’s claims as to her existence and nature are authentic and faithful. We recognize her as Taminy-Osmaer, Voice of the Meri, and we await her good-pleasure.” He then offered Taminy, seated at the Cyne’s right hand, the deepest bow anyone had ever seen a Claeg perform.
To the crowd and the Throne, this was reason for further celebration. People on the floor had risen and, forgetting that there was another quarter unheard from, began to dance about and sing. At this point, the Osraed Ladhar rose ponderously to his feet and began to stamp in a slow, measured cadence. Other members of his constituency followed suit until the great chamber echoed with the sound of his army’s stationary march. Everyone in the Hall turned to look at the dissenters; everyone quieted and waited for the march to end.
When it did, Ladhar trundled to the lip of the Osraed gallery and addressed the crowd. His face glistened with sweat, but the light of righteousness was in his eye. Wyth, standing near him, saw clearly that he was a believer in his own cause. The younger Osraed could hardly despise him for his words.
“I, Osraed Ladhar-a-Storm, represent the minority of the General Assembly of Caraid-land. We hereby declare that, to the best of our determination, Taminy-a-Cuinn’s claims as to her existence and nature are incredible and insupportable. We deny that she has any station that we, as members of the Assembly, should recognize, and do declare that we believe her to be both Wicke and heretic and the majority of this Council to be misled.”
Ladhar’s pronouncement was met with a barrage of jeers. The Cyne, obviously pleased by that, rose languidly from his throne and came to the edge of the royal dais, his hands raised as if to bestow a benediction on the teeming crowd which, seeing him, quieted respectfully.
Colfre smiled and spoke out in a loud voice. “Friends! The Osraed Ladhar and his constituents have a right to their beliefs, however much they depart from ours. There is but one more quarter to be heard from. The Lady Taminy-Osmaer will now address this assemblage.”
There was silence as Taminy rose and came to stand at the lip of the Cyne’s dais. All faces turned toward her, faces of both friend and enemy. All waited eagerly or anxiously to hear what she would say.
Pulled as if by a magnet, Wyth slipped from the Osraed gallery and moved toward the head of the Hall. He dimly perceived movement elsewhere, as well, but his eyes were for Taminy this moment, and would not be pulled away. She looked out over the crowd, and Wyth knew that each person in the room would feel that he or she had been the special recipient of her gaze. Then she spoke.
“People of Caraid-land, your Osraed have told you that we are in a Cusp. They have not lied. This is the Golden Cusp, a time of challenge and of change. A time when discerning truth from error is nearly impossible. A time when men’s hearts have grown tepid and their minds are caught in the snares of tradition and complacency. A time when mortals reach out their hands and attempt to wrest sovereignty from the Eternal.”
She glanced back over her shoulder toward Durweard Feich, who had straightened, gripping the arms of his chair. When she faced the crowd again she said, “I am Osmaer, living symbol of the New Order, center of the Covenant between God and Meri, Meri and Man. My purpose among you is to refresh and renew and protect your faith, to clear the dross from the mirrors of your souls.
“There are some among you who doubt that purpose. I am saddened by that, but I cannot judge you for what you truly believe—the Spirit will judge the depth of your faithfulness. There are others among you who would subvert that purpose and use it to your own advantage. I cannot judge you for your lack of belief—the Spirit will judge the depth of your faithlessness.
“There is a man among us,” she said, and both the Cyne and his Durweard leaned forward in their seats, “who aspires to share my purpose. Who desires to stand beside me and guide the souls in this room and beyond. Who wishes to hold Caraid-land in the palm of his hand, like the jewel it is, and to possess it.”
She turned and pointed to the throne and the man in it, the yards of pristine silk in the sleeves of her gown making her look like some white, winged being stretching itself toward flight. “Cyne Colfre is the man. He is now Cyne of Caraid-land, lord of the House Malcuim, descendant of Cynes, but he would be more. He would be Osric—Cyne over you all by divine right.”
She gave the crowd a moment to assimilate that. Behind her, Colfre beamed. He came to his feet amid the growing swarm of murmurs.
Then Taminy raised her hands, bringing the crowd’s attention firmly back to herself. “People! Listen to the words of the Meri: Neither Cyne Colfre nor any other man shall be Osric of Caraid-land!”
Colfre’s smile froze in place, then shattered as if struck from his mouth. He came to Taminy’s side on uncertain feet.
Wyth felt his muscles coil and he edged closer to the dais.
“What? Why? Why have you done this? Have I not been faithful? Have I not believed? Have I-”
“DEMON!” The shout came from Daimhin Feich’s throat. He rose from his chair, face radiating red fury, finger pointed at Taminy. “Foul demon!”
Wyth’s body was a pillar of ice. The cry was suddenly in the air all about the hall as people darted out of the crowd toward the dais—toward Taminy. There was hatred in their faces; more terrifying still, there were weapons in their hands. Wyth had none. Empty-handed he leapt to Taminy’s defense, praying he
would reach her with a Shieldweave before that maddened Cleirach could reach her with his pike.
Cries of outrage rose all about him, the chamber seemed to spin and the floor to shrug under his feet. He cut in front of the Cleirach, certain that any moment the pike would be buried in his back. But it wasn’t, and he reached the dais without harm. Desary Hillwild was there before him, struggling with Daimhin Feich, who was trying to push her over onto the floor several feet below.
Then a hand overshot Wyth’s shoulder. It belonged to the wild-eyed Minister. Grasping for Taminy’s arm, he caught the folds of her sleeve and, for a sickening moment, Wyth feared he would wrench her from the platform. He reached up his own hands, struggling to break the hold the other man now had on Taminy’s wrist. He could feel the other’s weight upon his back, hear his hoarse yelling in his ear.
“Demon! Die, demon!”
People milled frantically about them while, above them on the royal dais, Daimhin Feich turned hate-filled eyes on Taminy and raised his staff to strike her. Light, sharp and clear and painful, exploded from Taminy’s body, and from her forehead the Meri’s Kiss shone like a great, blinding jewel.
Feich dropped his staff. The Cleirach wailed in agony and fell away from Wyth’s back. In the confusion, Wyth was able to drag himself up onto the dais, where he stood shoulder to shoulder with Desary Hillwild and others that appeared like wraiths about them. He glanced wildly about, squinting in the glare of Taminy’s glory; there was Aine-mac-Lorimer and Iseabal-a-Nairnecirke and even her father, Saxan. There were others he knew and more he didn’t know, and all were coming to stand in the radiance of Taminy-Osmaer.
Their enemies, seeing this, raised their weapons and pressed forward, trying to shield their eyes. The Cleirach with the pike clambered onto the dais and raised his weapon over his head. The Ren Catahn appeared behind him, sword drawn, his arm cocked for a strike.
“NO!” Taminy’s voice washed over them as if in chorus. “No, Catahn, there must be no blood spilled on my behalf!”
She raised her left hand. Beside her, Aine-mac-Lorimer echoed the movement, and from their palms shot two agonizingly glorious beams of light. They smote the Cleirach in the eyes and all but felled him. The others around Taminy followed suit. One by one, they raised their left hands. One by one, they added to the streams of glory until the royal dais gave birth to a sunrise.
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