Taminy (39 page)

The
girl’s gaze bounced frenetically between Calach and his companions—still
seated, still scowling. “I-I’m feeling f-fine, Master Calach. In body, at
least. It’s my spirit that’s encumbered and I must speak to you about it.”

“Ah!”
Ealad-hach produced a smile. “I was right, then. The Wicke did do some foul
craft to you.”

“The-the
Wicke? Oh, no, sir! She’s not. I mean, she didn’t. It’s not like that, at all.”
She grasped Calach’s hands and wrung them. “Please, Master Calach. I need to
tell you-”

Calach
disengaged his hands and brought a chair for Aine to sit on, placing it on the
inside curve of the table, opposite his fellow Osraed. He seated her in it,
then perched near her on the table.

“There
now. Speak to us at will. Say whatever is on your mind.” He ignored the rolling
of Faer-wald’s eyes and the twist of Ealad-hach’s lips.

“I’ve
come with a warning, masters.”

“A
warning?” Ealad-hach was suddenly interested.

“Aye,
sir. I dreamed last night—all night—of a great army that marched inland from
the Sea, from Creiddylad. It marched in the river itself and appeared to me as
a wave, sweeping aside everything in its path. It was bound for Halig-liath,
masters, growing with every mile. Higher than the cliff tops, it grew. Mightier
than the stone in these walls. It put me in dire fear and I knew I must come and
warn you.”

Calach
rubbed at his arms where the hair had risen. “Have you had this dream before,
Aine?”

“No,
sir. Not this same one, but ... others. Dark dreams, all of them—or, well, most
of them.”

“Only
now, these dreams have come to you?” asked Ealad-hach. “Since the Cusp?”

“This
dream, Master Ealad-hach. The one about the river-army. But I’ve had these
sorts of dreams since I can remember. I just never knew what to make of them.
And-and they frightened me. “

“Well,
my dear child, why should you make anything of them? Indeed, why should we?”

“Because,
sir, they always come true. One way or another, they always come true.”

oOo

They
hadn’t listened to her. She didn’t know what could have inspired her to think
they would. Ealad-hach had tried for a while to convince her the great wave had
something to say about Taminy, but she knew it didn’t. It had to do with
something else, she just wasn’t sure what. And when she told them Taminy had
said she had an aislinn Gift, she thought Osraed Ealad-hach would have her
thrown from the room.

Calach
had calmed him and had listened to her account of the accident. Someone had
thrown something at her horse, she’d said, and had spooked it. She wasn’t sure
who; she could only rule out Phelan because she’d been looking at him when it
happened. But it hadn’t been Taminy—she was sure it hadn’t been Taminy and she
said so.

They
had little use for her after that. Calach saw her to the door, ushered her out
and closed it behind her, leaving her to stand awkwardly in the hall outside
the chamber, listening to their voices rise and fall. Mostly rise.

She
turned away at last and made her way down the concourse to the main rotunda.
She was nearly across it when the patter of quick footsteps made her pause and
turn. A young Prentice slid to a stop on the worn tiles and bobbed his head at
her.

“Pardon,
young mistress, but I’ve come with a message from the Osraed Calach. He says
you must tell Osraed Bevol what you told him. All of it, he said.”

“But,
I don’t know where Osraed Bevol is.”

“Oh,
it’s all right. I’m to take you to him. Look.” The boy held up a small crystal
set onto a golden ring. “He gave me this. It’s from his own prayer chain. Can
you imagine an Osraed handing off his prayer crystal like that? This must be a
very important mission he’s given me.”

Heart
hammering in her breast, Aine smiled, encouraging the boy’s
self-congratulation. “Aye, it must be, at that.”

Material eyes perceive only material beauty;
lifeless hearts take pleasure only in the withered rose. Like seeks like and
delights in the fellowship of its own kind.

— Utterances of Osraed Gartain

Ealad-hach
had spent the night in preparation for the inquiry. His witnesses were
convincingly fearful, his line of questions carefully thought out. That was
especially critical now, when he knew he could no longer rely upon his
knowledge of the Art to tip the scales against Taminy. The hours spent in his
aislinn chamber had been fruitless; he could not recreate the vision, and
prayed he would not be called upon to do so.

Cursing
his fickle Gift, he made his way down from his private rooms to the Council
Chamber. The other members of the Council were already waiting in the small
audience chamber adjacent to it. All, except for Bevol, who was excluded, and
Calach, who was probably wherever Bevol was.

Ealad-hach
wrinkled his nose, indignant, and made his way across the chamber. Though the
thick, weighted curtains that gave onto the larger hall were drawn, he could
guess the attendance at today’s event by the sheer volume of noise. He sidled
up to Ladman, who was peeking through the brocaded folds.

“Quite
a crowd,” observed the younger Osraed. “We will be much loved by the end of
this day ... or much hated.”

“Hated?
How can you mean? Who should hate us, beside the evil in the land?”

“Has
it escaped your attention, Osraed, that the lady we seek to try is vastly
popular?”

Ealad-hach
shook his head. “You are misled, Ladman. Mark where their fickle loyalties fall
when all is revealed.”

Ladman
merely let the curtain fall and moved away. Ealad-hach shuffled to take his
place, peeping through the heavy fabric to scan the chamber. Over the top of
the crescent table, which was directly before the door, he had a cross-room
view of the public galleries. Three tiers high with five rows per tier, they
marched up the western wall of the chamber. Above them, a triad of
stained-glass windows shed muted splendor. Along the northern and southern
walls of the long hall, between the crescent table and the great doors, lay the
galleries reserved for the Osraed Body. They were of a clever construct; each
gallery could be divided in twain and the section furthest from the Council
table swung in so that it sat at right angles to its stationary twin.

It
gave the members of the Body seated there nearer access to the Council in a
closed session. But today’s session was open to the public and the Osraed boxes
lay against their respective walls so that the audience in the public gallery
could view the proceedings.

It
was to that audience that Ealad-hach’s eyes moved, trying to pick out faces
down the length of the hall. He saw the Lorimers and their daughter, Aine, in
the first tier, waiting for her turn in the witness box. She was no longer a
good witness, but she would be offset by Doireann Spenser and Brys-a-Lach.

Phelan
Backstere had proved a disappointment; claiming a bad throat, he declined to
testify. Ealad-hach contemplated Aine-mac-Lorimer’s flushed face. The girl was
obviously unstable—her peculiar dreams were ample testimony to that. Perhaps he
could lay those at Taminy’s door, as well. He saw Saxan, then, speaking over
the balustrade to his wife and daughter. Iseabal ... yes, he might call her
out—show how Taminy had seduced her—but only if it was necessary. He had plans
to make his key point deftly. Two important and unimpeachable witnesses were
all he needed to do that.

He
was annoyed to note that the Hillwild Ren and his daughter were present. He
considered having them sent away, but realized such a move would hardly conduce
to his popularity. It would to suffice to prevent their testimony. He could not
have them spouting off about their dreams and visions here.

He
had just let the curtain slip from his fingers when he glimpsed a face that
sent daggers of chill all the way to his soul. Eyes like the cold, silver sky
of twilight peered at him out of a face the sun had darkened to maple, a face
framed by hair of light-drinking black. It was the smile that wounded him
deepest—the knowing, watchful smile. It held every mystery he had ever
encountered and divulged nothing.

It
was a striking face, and one he knew, for he had dreamed it, just as he had
dreamed Taminy’s. It was the face of a nightmare, the face of another Wicke
from another time. He struggled for a name; it eluded him, lost in the rolls of
a history that was nearly two centuries old.

No.
He gathered himself, closed his eyes, licked his lips. It wasn’t possible. No
more than Taminy-a-Cuinn possible.

Hand
shaking, he pulled back the curtain a second time and peered across the room.
He relaxed. No, of course it wasn’t the same girl. This was no cailin; this was
a mature woman—not aged, but much older than the Wicke of his dream. The skin
was sun-browned and wrinkling, the hair iron gray, not black. Still, the eyes
were that fierce, the smile that unreadable.

A
hand clamped on his shoulder, making him jump and choke.

Osraed
Eadmund blinked at him apologetically. “I’m sorry, Osraed, but Calach is here;
we can begin.”

Ealad-hach
nodded, patting his portfolio, adjusting his prayer chain, and cursing whatever
foul demon had tricked his eyes into seeing some long-dead Wicke girl.

oOo

Walking
to the little wooden stand she would inhabit during the inquiry, Taminy had
felt the hush in the chamber as a physical presence. She knew the feeling well.
On more than one occasion her appearance in a room had caused all conversations
to cease, breaths to be drawn, eyes to be narrowed balefully, suspiciously,
speculatively. When the hair on her neck rose and her spine tingled and her knees
threatened treason, she remembered that not all of those eyes were hostile.

Seated
now, alone in her box, with Wyth and Bevol at floor-level below her, she dared
to glance down the room into the public gallery. She saw Iseabal and Aine and,
above them in the second tier, Catahn and Desary Hillwild. She could close her
eyes and still see the Hillwild there, see them with a sense clearer and
sharper than sight. Aidan, the Hillwild called it—”little fire”—and it made
flames of both the Ren and his daughter. But, above them, in the third tier,
was a Sun.

She
was older, her hair shot through with gray, but Taminy knew her, would have
known her if two hundred years had passed since their last meeting instead of a
century. They exchanged a long look and Taminy recalled another Exchange—a
seaside Exchange of flesh for Eibhilin glory.

She
was still lost in that gaze when Osraed Calach began to read the charges. There
were three: promoting Wicke Craft, perversion of the Divine Art, and heresy.
The charge that she had willfully harmed Aine-mac-Lorimer had fallen by the
wayside.

Witnesses
came forward then, to point fingers and make claims. People she barely knew
swore they had seen her walking upon the air or conversing with strange animals
in the wood. Some she did know claimed she was misleading their children,
teaching them strange home magics and stranger philosophies, suggesting that
the Meri might visit other shores or the Gwenwyvar appear in the pools of the
Gyldan-baenn as the Gwyr.

Taminy
listened attentively to all, trying not to react to the shrill accusations,
trying not to cry out against the lies or beg to correct the half-truths.
Presumably, she would have a turn, a time when Bevol and Wyth would produce
those who would speak kindly of her.

Ealad-hach,
oddly, did not pursue the stories his witnesses told. He merely let them pass,
one after the other, until their tales were exhausted. It was then that he
called down Osraed Saxan and bid him describe Aine-mac-Lorimer’s accident and
Taminy’s subsequent appearance and performance of the Infusion Weave. Just
that, nothing more; he asked no questions. And so, Osraed Torridon followed the
Cirkemaster to the witness box amid speculative murmurs.

“Osraed,”
Ealad-hach said, his voice smooth as the velvet of his chamber robes, “does our
brother Saxan do this episode justice?”

Torridon
nodded, lank, just-greying locks brushing his shoulders. “Yes. It happened,
incredibly, just as he said.”

“The
girl, Taminy, re-animated Aine-mac-Lorimer with an Infusion Weave you had
neither heard nor seen before.”

“Yes.”

“Tell
me, Osraed, why did you not perform such an Infusion on the girl?”

Torridon
blushed. “I ... couldn’t do it.”

“You
couldn’t do it?”

“No.
The damage to the girl’s neck and throat was severe—the Heal Tell revealed
that. I tried a Healweave. It simply didn’t work.”

“Yet
this girl not only repaired the damage you say was so severe, she restored life
to the body?”

“Yes.”

“She
did something, then, that was beyond your Gift as an Osraed.”

“Again,
yes.”

“And
what sort of being could accomplish that?”

Torridon
wriggled in his robes, glancing aslant at Taminy. “I couldn’t say ...We are
told the Gwenwyvar has such powers.”

“The
Gwenwyvar?” Ealad-hach had clearly not expected such a reply, but recovered
himself immediately. “The Gwenwyvar, brother, is seen only on Pilgrimage by
especially perceptive Prentices. Are you suggesting that she has abandoned her
woodland environs and put on flesh?”

Torridon
blanched. “I said, I don’t know what sort of being she is. I know only that she
possesses a Gift I do not.”

“Thank
you, Osraed Torridon, for you bring up a most critical point. I will now inform
you, and the Body, what this cailin claims, for it is more strange, more
outrageous, than even you suggest.”

“I
do not suggest-” Torridon began, but Ealad-hach, rising from his place at the
Council table, waved him a dismissal. The old Traditionalist came to stand
before Taminy, putting her even more on display, while she, feeling a strange
awakening at the core, ever aware of the tingling web of support that touched
her from a handful of souls, watched in silence.