Aine froze, staring at the inferno. She did not need to see the dark figures scurrying before the flames to know that they were being herded like sheep. The question was, where were they expected to go? She glanced over her shoulder, past the fire-washed startled faces of her companions. Back the way they’d come? She made a decision, praying it was the right one.
“Come on! This way!” She slipped into a dark cut between two buildings, the others moving swiftly behind her.
Saefren moved to her shoulder. “Where are we going?”
“Out of the village.”
“Are you sure—?”
“No, I’m not.”
He followed without comment down the rough alley to the back of the row of buildings. They crossed a narrow strip of bare, rocky ground, stumbling over obstacles they couldn’t see beneath the snow, Aine concentrating on the path, Saefren on Aine, Leal and Iseabal on a Cloakweave that would allow them to see themselves while shielding them from the eyes of others. Through the hemming rocks, they clambered, coming at last to the place where the escarpment fell away toward the canyon in a snowy roil of rock and frozen brush.
At the bottom of the track, Aine turned them eastward and upward again, toward the fortress. Their only trail led between the burning village above and the enemy encampments below. She could only pray that the Cloakweave Leal and Isha supported would be enough to conceal them. She almost dared to stretch out her aidan to Taminy, but fear of discovery forestalled her.
The blaze of Airdnasheen lit up the snow and mist, bathing the mountainside in glory. Aine tried to accept its light and ignore its dangers, her attention ahead, her eyes on the narrow, rocky defile. They rounded a large outcropping and she saw them—the ramparts of Hrofceaster, gleaming in the fire-fed mist, tiny figures swarming along the top of its battlements. Her heart surged with relief so strong she nearly cried out. A second later a slim figure swaddled in red blocked their trail.
Aine stopped, weltering in confusion. Surely, this person couldn’t see them. As she watched, quivering, others appeared, Caraidin soldiers, Deasach corsairs.
The figure lifted an arm in a sweeping gesture and the soldiers deployed themselves. When they were surrounded, a man in Feich colors came to stand beside the red-robed figure—a man Aine had come to hate. He lifted a red crystal before him, balancing it on the palm of one hand. It glowed evilly in the orange wash of flame from the burning village. More evil still, was the man behind the crystal, a man whose crimson face wore a smile of triumphant delight.
oOo
He had the Osmaer crystal, well she knew. He had Airleas Malcuim. And now he had Iseabal, Aine, Leal and Saefren Claeg. She was ready when he called her out, arrogantly demanding that she meet him before the gates of Hrofceaster to negotiate her surrender.
Catahn would not let her go, begged her to let the siege continue, to let the Hillwild at his command attempt to turn the tide. They had watched their homes burn, their village utterly destroyed, they were determined, they would prevail. But they could not prevail. Another day, another night, and Hrofceaster would crumble physically. Feich’s forces were superior. With the capture of the Osmaer, there was a decision to be made and it was Taminy’s, alone, to make.
She withdrew to her private chamber, leaving even Catahn behind in the Great Hall. On her knees before the fire, she sought the Touch of the Meri. She took herself to a place of light, a place beyond the room her body inhabited.
“What must I do?” she asked, and knew the answer in a breath.
“You wanted to strike him down.”
Taminy raised her head, turning her eyes to the hazy shadows. Skeet stepped from them, seeming a hot, dancing flame in this Eibhilin chamber. Through the radiance that surrounded them, he seemed to wear two aspects, one overlapping the other like a translucent garment; a young boy, an old man with a beard of fire and snow and eyes like a summer sky.
“I thought of it,” she admitted.
“Will you?”
“You know the answer to that. You were my example. Did you struggle against those who came for you at Mertuile? When Feich’s men carried you off to die, did you lay them to waste?”
The half-aislinn half-corporeal being shook his head—a twinned movement.
“No more can I. It’s part of the Pattern. To represent the Spirit, to lay claim to Its wisdom and wield Its power, I must reflect Its qualities. To do otherwise would destroy what I am consecrated to establish. The Tapestry would unravel. Six hundred years undone in a moment of vengeance and anger.”
“So then, what will you do?” The voice was Skeet’s, the soul-piercing gaze was Bevol’s.
“I will surrender.”
oOo
“I accede to your demand, Daimhin Feich.”
He whirled, all but leaving his skin behind, and peered into the darkness of the hostage tent. She, the Divine Quarry, floated before him in the stygian gloom like a golden rose, watching him with grave, sad eyes. Forgetting the hostages he had been gloating over, he reached out a hand to the image—aislinn, of course—a mirage, but so real, so close. He groped after her.
“You will meet me tomorrow, before the fortress gates?”
“I will.”
“A wise choice. For their sake.” He gestured at the drugged forms of Airleas, Aine, Iseabal and Leal.
The Claeg, Saefren, was Giftless as a post and so had been spared Coinich Mor’s sleeping draught. He huddled in a corner of the tent, eyes glaring sullenly at his captor. Feich enjoyed his wakeful hatred.
“You cannot withstand me, Taminy. Do you understand why?”
She grimaced. “I understand that there is a test in this for me, perhaps I have failed it.”
“You fail because you are weak, dear Lady. Oh, I don’t mean your powers or your wisdom. You are powerful enough. But your wisdom is based on a fallacy—that good is inherently more powerful than evil. You are wrong, of course.” He smiled. “Shall I tell you why you are wrong?”
“I suppose you shall.”
“Good cannot bring itself to perform the acts evil commits without conscience. I know you could wrest the Stone from me and use it to destroy me utterly. I even know you want to do that, but that would be failure, wouldn’t it? So you do nothing. That makes you weak—a sheep facing its shearer. The seeds of your undoing are within you, dear Taminy. They are inherent in your nature.”
She seemed to consider that, her effigy’s sea-green eyes never leaving his face. “The seeds of my undoing,” she murmured.
Her voice was like the soughing of the wind or the surge of the sea, magical, musical.
A sigh escaped his lips. “Unbind your hair.” It was a demand, yet even he heard the raw pleading in his voice.
She studied him a moment, then reached up and tugged the leather thong from her braid, loosing it to fall about her shoulders in a pale gold cascade.
“You are exquisite,” he told her. “A living analogy for Ochan’s Crystal. When I have you—”
“You have Ochan’s Crystal,” she interrupted. “Why have you not tried to use it?”
“Ah, that I am saving, so that all eyes may see my triumph complete. Most especially that your eyes may see it.”
She nodded and, nodding, began to fade from view.
“Stay!” he cried.
“Tomorrow,” she said and disappeared.
Feich blinked into the darkness of her passing and trembled. Desire pulsed through him, carried in his blood. He would go to Coinich Mor. No, to Lilias. But no. Neither of those poor substitutes would do now, not when he was so close to having the ultimate desire. A memory stirred in him of a long ago nightmare—a hunt, a chase, a Quarry he had been bent on destroying.
He smiled at himself. How transparent all that was now. It was not Taminy’s death he wanted, nor her destruction. It was her submission, perhaps even . . . her love?
Coinich Mor and Lilias both forgotten, he left the tent with its pair of guards and went to gaze upon the Osmaer Crystal, never noticing tha
t a certain baleful pair of eyes no longer gleamed at him from the tent’s darkest corner.
oOo
Saefren lay upon the ground behind the hostage tent, gathering his senses, letting the cold wet of the snow drive them into a tight, obedient, quivering herd. He didn’t have time to ponder what he’d seen—Feich talking to a gossamer being, an aislinn projection of Taminy. She had given him the opportunity for escape, an opportunity he had only because Feich thought him Giftless and dull.
He had to make good with it, somehow.
He wriggled his hands, bound tightly behind his back. Damn! If he had even a midge of Aine’s Gift, he could untie himself and find a weapon. As it was, only his feet were free and so, with immense difficulty, he raised himself to his knees, then to his feet, desperate not to cry out or grunt with the exertion.
He stood for a moment, trembling. The wind pirouetted playfully about him, poking icy fingers through the sodden weave of his clothing. It was pitch black where he stood. A large boulder squatted a few feet away at the edge of the tent’s long shadow.
He shook himself and made for it with unsteady steps. From there, each rock, each puff of scrub, each twist of tree became the focus of his every thought and move. He floundered from one to another in silence, ignoring the cold, the wet, the bruises and cuts of his passing. Closer to Hrofceaster’s walls.
Closer.
It was when he reached the last vestige of cover that he realized how futile had been his quest. Ruined Airdnasheen still cast a faint glow over the snowy flat between the trail head and the fortress’s gates and, though no soldiers battered at them this moment, a dozen or so men camped just outside. All his painstaking struggle had been for naught. Giftless, he could not hope to pass by Feich’s men unseen.
Frustrated and exhausted he huddled in the lee of a broad, twisted oak, staring up at the unreachable. He could even see the shadows of the defenders walking the battlements for all the good it did him.
Wait. Perhaps his lack of aidan was not an issue. Hadn’t Aine found him in the bowels of Mertuile?
He trained his eyes on the towers behind and above the looming walls and concentrated all his thought on Taminy, concentrated it there until he was sweating with the effort. At length he lay back, exhausted. How easy they made it look—speaking without words, touching across miles. He focused his eyes on the gates. If someone came for him, would he see them open? Would he see phantom footprints in the snow? Shadows stretched across the fire-lit surface?
His mind wandered and he found himself slipping toward sleep. The realization shocked him awake. If he slept here, he’d never wake again. Already his feet and hands were beyond feeling. He scrambled to think of some way of staying awake until help came.
If help came. He aimed another plea at the fortress.
How long had he been here? Minutes? Longer?
He squinted at the fortified walls until his eyes ached, felt himself slipping again, and was shocked to full consciousness by the touch of a hand on his shoulder. He jerked, nearly crying out. The cry died in his throat; bending over him was a hooded figure. Within the recesses of the hood, the face was a young man’s, lit by the glowing star between his brows. He attached a name to the face—Osraed Wyth. Another figure hovered, the face swaddled in darkness.
Hands moved him; voices prodded gently; he became aware that his hands were free, that he was on his feet, that he was moving across that yawning open area in clear sight of the enemy encampment. He watched their shadows stretch before the glow of their fires and wondered that no alarm was being raised behind them.
They passed through the gates unmolested.
Some time later, before a roaring fire in Hrofceaster’s Great Hall, Saefren sipped hot tea and tried not to betray the pain of returning sensation in his feet and hands.
“I don’t know what good I thought it might do,” he murmured between swallows. “I probably should have stayed with them. But when the opportunity presented itself . . .”
Seated beside him, Taminy pressed a hand to his shoulder. “You could do little there but welter in frustration. He won’t harm the others . . . not yet.”
“He’s given them a sleeping draught, you said,” said Osraed Wyth. “Any idea what might have been in it?”
Saefren shook his head. “It was the Dearg woman who came up with it. I’m sure it was full of inyx.”
Taminy’s brow knit with puzzlement. “The Dearg woman? She wasn’t the one who saw you on the trail . . .”
“No, that was the Deasach Banarigh.”
“She must have the Sight,” said Wyth.
“She has something,” Saefren agreed. “She saw us. Iseabal and Leal were both Weaving and still she saw us. Then there was Daimhin Feich with that red crystal, and it seemed he could see us too.”
Taminy nodded—absently, Saefren thought—her eyes not on anything in the room. “Yes, sometimes a person with a specialized Gift can enable other Gifted souls to share their ability . . .” Her eyes took on sudden clarity and moved to his face. “More than that. Iseabal and Leal were using a Cloakweave coming up the mountain and Aine used one to free you from Mertuile.”
He nodded.
“You were very likely part of that Weave. Aine might very well have drawn on you to help her maintain the Cloak.”
“Me? But I’ve no Gift. Not a shred.”
“Everyone possesses a shred, Saefren. Everyone. The more they possess, the more a talented Weaver such as Aine can draw on them.” She rose from her chair. “Rest now. I should say you’ve earned that.”
Saefren grimaced. “I haven’t earned anything.”
“You got away from Daimhin Feich. Which shows me how distracted he is.”
“He’s a boiling pot, Mistress,” Saefren told her. “A pot that thinks it contains the entire universe.”
Chapter 24
Pay no heed to your frailty; keep your eyes, instead, on the invincibility of the Spirit. Did She not subject the militant Houses to the Divine discipline of the Meri through the first Osraed, Ochan?
Rise up in the name of the Spirit of this all, put your faith completely in Her, and let your soul be assured.
—Book of Pilgrimages
Osraed Aodaghan
“You believe she will concede to your demands this time?” Lilias did not seem convinced.
To Daimhin Feich that hardly mattered, she’d be convinced soon enough. He gestured up the trail toward Hrofceaster, hunkered balefully at the foot of her crags.
“We will parade her beloved waljan before her; she will concede. Then Coinich Mor will bring the Stone of Ochan to me and I shall perform a great Weaving. Something that will put fear into the Hillwild and cause Taminy to recognize that I wield a power superior even to hers.”
“Yet, her power is the Meri’s, is it not? Do you believe yourself superior to that?”
He considered the question. Well, he had the upper hand, didn’t he? The Meri hadn’t struck him dead; Taminy hadn’t lifted a violent hand against him. He had won. Simply and completely. Bested the Meri’s vice-regent, and therefore, bested the Meri Herself. The minion of some Dark Power, was he?
Or perhaps—the thought excited him—perhaps he was, himself, the Power of Darkness, the anti-Meri, Her equal opposite and nemesis.
“Yes. I do believe I have that power. Have I any choice?”
“What will you do after your great Weaving?”
“I will take Taminy back to Creiddylad.”
“Do you intend to set her disciples loose as you promised?”
“Why not? It hardly matters. If their Mistress can’t stop me, what can they possibly do?”
Lilias laid a firm hand on the hilt of her sword. “I will not give up the girl, Iseabal. She will be made to pay for Sorn’s death.”
He opened his mouth to argue with her, then realized there was no point to the argument. Iseabal didn’t matter. None of them mattered. Not even Airleas Malcuim mattered to him at that moment.
“Very well, s
he’s your responsibility. If Taminy ever asks after her, I’ll refer her to you. Still, I remind you that it was, to all accounts, Rodri Madaidh who put an end to your little brother’s life.”
“For her. He did it for her.”
“Strictly speaking, he did it for Taminy. Of course, if you look at it another way, your dear brother would be alive today if he hadn’t allowed himself to be smitten with the girl.”
“Yes, but that, I am certain, was due only to a Weaving on her part. She made him become smitten with her. She used him to escape Creiddylad. And when she had brought her Madaidh rescuer to her, she had him slaughter Sorn as if he were a fatted sheep.”
Daimhin considered telling Lilias just how ridiculous that sounded. After all, the Cirkemaster’s daughter had not a mote of guile in her. The thought that she had engineered her own escape—no, it was ludicrous. She’d been barely aware of her surroundings when he’d packed her off in the tribute caravan.
Then again, telling Lilias Saba anything at all—besides that she was unutterably beautiful, of course—produced no result. That hardly mattered now.
“Believe what you will, my dear. Only now, it’s nearly time for the fateful meeting. Where’s Coinich Mor?”
“Near by, Regent,” said the Dearg’s voice practically in his ear. “Always near by.” Though they were several yards from the nearest tent, she appeared beside him as if she had but to take one step from concealment.
He nearly snapped at her that she had startled him, but didn’t wish to admit he hadn’t sensed her there.
“Have you given our guests an antidote to the sleeping draught?”
“Aye, but, I’ve kept the inyx upon them—bound to that silly boy’s cat amulet. Gullible, that one.”
Feich frowned. “I want them to appreciate their predicament.”
“Oh, they will, soon enough. By the way, the Claeg is gone.”
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