Taminy (11 page)

“You’re
going to think this odd,” he said. “But I feel ... as if I know you ... or
ought to.”

“You’re
Osraed now. There are a good many things you know ... or ought to. The Meri has
surely lifted the bar on your senses. They must thrill to have the doors and
windows of your mind thrown open so.”
And
nothing looks or sounds or feels the same, does it?

He
was shaking his head. “Even the night is different,” he said, the words pouring
from his mouth as if a bar had been lifted there too. “The darkness, the
firelight, the breezes.

“Darkness
has layers, did you know that? Layers of absence. And light-” He paused to
glance at the lanterns bobbing about the cider booth. “-light peels back the
layers and-” The words ended in a blush that spread from his nose to the
corners of his eyes. “I’m-I’m sorry. I’m babbling. You’d not care about any of
this.”

“And
the laughter,” she said, “has colors. The blues of sorrow, the reds of anger,
the gold and silver of true joy.”

Gawping
again, he shook his head. “How do you know these things?”

“I
live with an Osraed. My father ... was a Cirke-master. I’ve always been drawn
to the Meri’s doings.”

“You’re
no mimic.” The gangly gawper was gone, replaced by an astute Osraed. “You speak
as one who knows. You see the laughter with your own eyes, not Osraed Bevol’s.”

She
shrugged. “I have been accused,” she said carefully, “of being fey. Once, some
called me Wicke and charged me to prove I was not.”

“And
did you?”

“I
was unable. I tried, but the Meri’s will out. She decided my course. It brought
me here.”

“You’re
not Wicke,” he said as if his own certitude would make that true for all.

She
laughed. “No, I’m not. But you won’t convince Marnie-o-Loom of that.” Her eyes
travelled to the shadowed side of the bright booth where a pinched face trained
glitters of jet on them.

Wyth
shivered. “And she calls those eyes.” He held out his arm. “Will you have a
cider, Taminy-a-Gled?”

“Aye.
If you will have a dance.”

He
agreed with minimum awkwardness and she took his arm and let him squire her
about before all eyes. They ate, they drank, they danced, they strolled the
battlements. And when he looked at her oddly time and again, she knew it was
only because he had just realized, time and again, that she was not
Meredydd-a-Lagan.

Ah, but a part of you wants me to be that.

“What
did you say?”

She
glanced up at him. He was a layer of darkness, the Meri’s Kiss glowing from his
brow, a silhouette against the gleaming, moonlit peaks of the Gyldan-baenn. She
had been watching them, though they had neither moved nor changed for perhaps a
million years, and he had been watching her, whose changes were more recent.
She had let him watch her, let him see that even under layers of darkness, she
was not Meredydd.

“You
have sharp ears, Osraed,” she told him. “I didn’t speak.”
And a rare man, it is, who hears words that are not spoken.

“You
tease me. I can’t hear your thoughts.”

“You
feel what others feel. You see the color of their laughter, the shadings of
their words.”

“Shadings
only. But you spoke. There were words.”

“There
were words. But I thought them.”

“Why?
Why should I hear your thoughts and no others?”

I told you I was fey
. She could feel his
eyes holding her moonlit face, his other senses straining through layers of
darkness the moonlight could not penetrate. He had heard her. He had not seen
her lips move.

“Bevol
has brought you here for a reason. Why has he brought you here? Who are you?
Why do I know you? How do I know you?”

“Perhaps,”
she said aloud. “Perhaps you have seen me in a vision, as I have seen you
through someone else’s vision.”

The
Kiss between his brows puckered with thought.

Taminy
laughed and laid a hand on his arm. “Don’t glower so, Osraed Wyth. You must
learn to laugh more and frown less.”

oOo

Perhaps
it was the words or the gentle, laughing voice that delivered them or the
moonlight on pale hair. Perhaps it was all those things that set up, in Wyth
Arundel’s head, a sudden whirlpool of thought and sensation. A second of
disorientation was followed by the sharp, clear memory of Master Bevol’s
aislinn chamber, of a pool of darkness that would not be still, of a Being of
Light and a girl on a beach. No, two girls—one entering the water, one leaving
it; one familiar and beloved, the other-

“Osraed
Bevol,” said the moonlit lips, “I have not breathed for a hundred years.”

The
whirl stopped so suddenly, he was nearly dashed from his feet. Like a man
plunged in cold water, he trembled, while just beneath his skin, blood pulsed
in fitful heat, scalding him. His face burned. He raised his hands to cover it.

Taminy.
Taminy-a-Cuinn. Gifted in the Art, decried as Wicke, condemned to a fugitive
Pilgrimage, drowned in the sacred Western Sea. Taminy, whose father returned
alone and empty-handed, a seemingly broken man, to give up his duties at
Nairne-Cirke and move his household to Ochanshrine at Creiddylad. One hundred
years ago. One hundred years.

“They
spent the rest of their days in worship and service,” said the moonlit girl. “They
wanted to be as close to me as they could. They wanted to serve the Meri’s
Cause.”

He
couldn’t reply. He had no words to speak, no mind to invent them. Overwhelmed,
he stumbled away into thicker darkness, leaving her behind him—a silky, silver
shadow against the Gyldan-baenn and a star-filled sky.

oOo

Leaving
the barrage of light and life above and behind, Osraed Ealad-hach took refuge
in the darkness of his aislinn chamber. Beneath the soft glow of several tiny
lightglobes, he sat, pondering the impenetrable black core of the room, the
crystal that would light it cupped in trembling hands.

He
hadn’t been here since the dreams began—since Meredydd-a-Lagan had had thrust
them into his nights. He had been afraid to come. Afraid to call out the ghosts
and the visions he knew were there. Now, his fear had slid headlong into
terror. Now, less than ever did he want to call up the visions; now, more than
ever, he knew he must.

Because
of that girl.

He
raised a hand from his lap, cradling the crystal toward the heart of the
chamber. The hand shook and his soul shook with it. Whimpering, he pulled the
hand back. Already images formed, but in his head, behind his eyes; the girl,
dropping her cowl, pulling off her scarf; the girl, dancing on the cobbles, her
beautiful, cwenly face alight with pleasure and excitement; the girl, walking
the battlements with Osraed Wyth, her hair pale gold in the light of moon and
stars.

Ealad-hach
moaned sickly, pressing his temples as if his hands could shove the images into
retreat. And her name—Taminy!

Why
Taminy? Why that wretched, cursed, wicked name?

A
flicker of anger insinuated itself into Ealad-hach’s fear. Bevol had chosen
that name, like as not. Chosen it because of what it implied about that young
woman. Well, he was not gullible as all that. The girl was not Taminy-a-Cuinn,
that much was certain. Her name was probably not even Taminy, or hadn’t been
until she met Bevol-a-Gled. Taminy-a-Cuinn she could not be, but she could yet
be the creature of his nightmare.

The
thought did not let Ealad-hach breathe any more easily. Still, he sat more
comfortably in the confines of his private chamber. It was only a matter of
knowledge. He would call for the aislinn. That would tell him what to do.

He
leaned forward with a will and put the crystal on the raised and tiled platform
at the center of the little room. He fed it his energies then, his dreams, the
floating images, the contents of his unconscious thought. Verdant light danced
over and around the facets, but it was a faded light, fitful and weak. He tried
harder, murmuring a duan to give force to his thoughts.

The
light intensified, steadied. About the crystal, mist that was not mist began to
form, spiraling slowly like a twisted wheel of cloud. It grew up, fanned out,
gained substance. It separated into earth and sky and sea; a white curl of
wave-foam raced up a beach, a moon burned the clouds silver, a wind stirred the
air.

Yes, this was the place. Now, show me. Show
me the girl
.

And
there was Meredydd-a-Lagan—clear, sharp, as if alive. She melted, was burned
away and, burning, she walked into the waters.

There!
There was the girl! Rising from the waves in what seemed a robe of translucent,
lucent green. It shed like a skin and she stood, glittering, in the moonlight.

The
old Osraed’s lips moved more swiftly, his duan grew louder, more rhythmic.
Sweat beaded on his brow and his cheeks trembled. Her face—he must see her
face!

But
he could not see it. No duan, no amount of concentration would show it to him,
would make the moonlit phantom any more substantial. After a moment more of
struggle, his concentration faltered and the vision collapsed into itself.

Ealad-hach
blinked. On its pedestal, the crystal sat, lightless and inert, not even a
whisper of aislinn mist clinging to its facets. He felt old. Frail. Worn. He
felt barely able to gather up the crystal and return it to its carved and
filigreed box, but he did. Then he knelt and prayed that he would be cursed
with vivid dreams.

The wood of the soul can burn and be fire;
the Word of the Spirit is the whirling friction rod above.

Prayer is the power that makes the Word turn
round. And when the Word moves, the mystery of God comes to light.

— Prayers and Meditations of Osraed Ochan, vs. 5

Wyth
found sleep difficult. The merest straying from consciousness left him
literally bewildered, mired in thick emotion, or reeling on the edge of
Ruanaidhe’s Leap. In the chill before dawn, he pulled himself fully awake to
sit, head in hands, trying not to think. His brain felt like a sodden bath
fleece.

He
wanted to pray, but wasn’t certain he wanted the enlightenment he knew he
should ask for. He wanted to draw out the visions he could feel pressing like a
physical force behind his eyes, but what he fled in sleep was no easier to face
awake.

The
heavy pain in his head at last drove him to draw a cup of scented water from a
carafe by the bed and rifle his medicament chest for some willow bark. There
was none. Instead, he smudged his temples with a pungent salve and sat,
coil-legged, on his bed to perform a Healweave.

Candle
in hand, eyes on the flame, he breathed in and sang out, letting the duan float
away from him, praying it would take the pain with it. The runesong was only
six lines long; Wyth was halfway though it the second time when the pain
evaporated so suddenly and completely, it stopped the duan in his throat. The
salve’s ice-hot touch penetrated his senses and he imagined, for a moment, that
he had felt an actual caress of warm fingers. He took a deep, relaxed breath,
letting some gentle force tug him upward out of his tired, awkward frame.

The
flame of his candle, steady one moment, guttered and died as if unseen fingers
had snuffed it. In his advanced state of relaxation, he could only stare at the
glowing wick with mild bemusement, and wonder why, with the candle out, the
room seemed to be growing lighter. He would turn his head and glance at the
window, he decided. He would see that the Sun was rising.

But
his head would not turn, and at the foot of his bed a soft, golden radiance
manifested itself in a way that no sunrise ever had, looking like airborne
gold-dust or a galaxy of golden stars. He felt it then, the dawn of a sweet,
savory terror. A rapture of quaking awareness. She was here, and his desire for
Her flowed, pure and shining, toward the gilded whorl that seemed always and
never on the verge of taking shape.

She
sang in his head, voice crystal-bright. Without words, She communicated
perfectly what he must know to take his next several steps down Her Path. He
tasted bits of the future, saw it, smelled it, heard it sing and roar and wail.
He trembled with a thousand kinds of joy and pain and anger. He laughed and
wept and both at once, and woke lying on his face across his coiled legs while
the Sun filled his room with solid light.

He
blinked at its brightness, feeling at once reassured and barren. The pain and
weariness were gone, but so was that warm touch. He schooled himself to
patience, knowing he would feel it again.

He
was down early for his breakfast, before his sisters could be up—he hoped
before his mother. Industrious Fleta, Adken’s wife, had already fed her own
family and the other servants and hands, releasing them to their play or
chores. She was fussing about the spotless tiled kitchen with Wyth wandered in.
Adken sipped tea by the broad hearth.

“Master
Wyth!” Fleta dropped the skirts of her apron, on which she’d been dusting
flour-coated hands, and set to trying to sweep the apron clean. Adken came to
his feet, sloshing tea about.

Wyth
laughed.

Both
servants looked absolutely stunned. Then Adken’s face split in a grin. “Ye
sound like a boy again, if I may say it, Master. That laugh of yers has gone
long disused.”

Fleta’s
eyes grew big and round. “Is that the way you speak to a Holy One, you daft old
boy? Ah, Master Osraed, forgive him; he’s wind-kissed. Too many falls from the
roof, like as not.”

“There’s
nothing to forgive, Fleta,” Wyth told her, loving the kitchen’s heat and
apothecary smell and the way Fleta’s graying hair stuck out about her round,
pink face like the wool of a silver ewe.

Was all this here before? Was I senseless
and blind?

“I’ve
just come in search of some breakfast-”