Taminy (12 page)

“Say
no more, Master. I’ll have a platterful in a gnat’s age. Will you have tea?”

“Oh,
yes, please,” said Wyth and moved to sit by the huge brick hearth, across from
Adken.

Fleta
goggled. “Won’t you wait in the dining chamber, Master? This place is-”

“This
place is warm and bright and happy. And there are people in it. The dining
chamber is cold and empty and ... overwhelming.”

Fleta
speared her mate with practiced eyes. “Adken, you dimity! Did you not start the
fires?”

Adken’s
dappled-banner brows sailed into a frown. “And when might I’ve done such a
thing? You’ve had your beadies on me since I quit the sheets. None’s ever up at
such an hour most days.” He cocked a half-contrite, half-reproachful eye at
Wyth. “I’ll be choring earlier now, it seems.”

Wyth
shook his head, fighting, for the sake of Adken’s dignity, the urge to laugh. “You’ll
do no such thing. I’d like, if I could, to have my breakfasts here in the
kitchen ... with you and Fleta and the boys. Would that be all right?”

The
couple gaped at each other.

As if
, Wyth thought, I
’d just performed some amazing Weave.
He
waited, hands folded, eyes hopeful, while a gamut of emotions ran willy-nilly
over Fleta’s face and her good husband’s eyebrows popped up and down like a
pair of mottled ferrets. Fleta blushed, then smiled, then shot her husband a
most beguiling look. Suddenly, Wyth could see her as a young girl—buxom,
winsome and sweet-eyed, wooing the spry lad with the flaming hair.

“Well,”
she said, smoothing her apron with very real grace. “Well, Master, it would be
such an honor. Such.” She turned her gaze to him and he knew, with some
surprise that her pleasure was sincere, albeit tinged with anxiety. What would
she, after all, have to say to an Osraed?

“You
used to call me Wyth ... long ago,” he said, and let his voice be wistful.

“Oh,
but you were a child then, Master. Now, you’re ... well, you’re Eiric of
Arundel, first of all and-and Osraed.”

“Osraed
Wyth, then? I don’t really like ‘Master.’ You’re not my hunting dogs or my
pupils.”

Fleta
smiled, broadly this time, and bobbed a self-conscious curtsey. “I’ll have your
tea in a shake, Osraed Wyth.”

Wyth
returned the smile and settled back in his chair. Adken crumpled back into his
own, shaking amazement from his face.

“Wonders,”
he murmured. “Wonders, the Meri does.”

Wyth
met his gaze, making his own as open as possible, willing the older man to
confidences.

Adken
sighed and shifted his gaze to his tea cup. “When you were a boy, it was like
this.”

“Before
father died.”

“Aye.”
He nodded. “He wasn’t a bad man, Wyth. Leastwise, I didn’t think he was. But he
was surely a scared man. At the end ... at the end, I think fear sat on his
shoulder continual.” His mouth puckered into a fretful knot.

Wyth
caught a niggle of disapproval there. “I think mother frightened him sometimes,”
he offered. “She’s ... a powerful woman. Strong-willed, confident. I think he
loved her strength. I think he also feared it.”

Adken
looked relieved to hear this confidence. “Aye,” he said, nodding. “Aye, that
rings a true bell, well enough.”

Yes, and I see it now. When I was a boy, I
saw nothing
. “I don’t remember a lot of what happened before that. It’s as
if father’s death ... wiped it all away.”

“No,
lad. Not wiped it away. Made you pack it all up with your child-things and lay
it aside, is all. Grow up, like. And quick. Too quick. Remember when you used
to come down here to play with Cian? Ah, you two boys sure could put terror
into the livestock.”

Wyth
blushed. He did remember. “I was constantly underfoot. Bothering you, hanging
on Fleta’s apron, begging baking scraps.”

“Someone
had to pass judgment on Fleta’s goods before they left the kitchen,” said
Adken, chuckling. “Oh, and that old dog, what was his name?”

“Wolf-Cyne.”

“Wolf-Cyne,
indeed. A very grand name for a burr-boggled brindled sheep-cur.”

“He
was a very grand cur,” said Wyth, glowing with the memory.

Adken
looked at him a trifle more seriously. “Cian’d be pleased to see you at table.
He missed your grand times when you went up to the Fortress.”

“I
missed him,” Wyth admitted. “But this house was a hard place to come home to.”

“Aye,
has been.”

Wyth
felt a sudden urge to ask Adken the Question. The Question that had lain in the
back of his mind for seven years. He grimaced. No. He didn’t really want it
answered. What he wanted was to hear someone he could trust say, “No, Wyth. It
was not your fault. Nothing you did caused your father to take his own life.
And nothing you did could have saved him.”

And
that was it, he realized, as Fleta, smilingly handed him a cup of steaming tea.
What he’d wanted to know, more than anything, was that no power at his
command—perhaps none in the Universe—could have saved Rowan Arundel from
self-immolation.

“It’s
like having the years back,” murmured Adken, and Wyth nodded, noticing,
distantly, that he had burned his hand.

He
lingered too long over breakfast, chatting with Adken and Fleta. He spoke, too,
to their midmost son Cian, come up to the house to fetch his hat. Spoke and
shook his calloused hand and got past the bowing and scraping to a
back-slapping embrace.

He
would not be late to Halig-liath. He had no classes to prepare for (an odd
freedom) and did not really need to be there until the Council session that
afternoon. He tried to tell himself his anxiousness to be off had more to do
with seeing his private chambers for the first time than with avoiding the
Moireach, but the sight of her at the top of the stairs as he fled out the
front door destroyed that petty illusion.

Her
face was beaming smiles (God, how long since he’d seen that, let alone been the
cause of it?), and she descended grandly and gracefully, her hands outstretched
toward him, tugging at his heart.

“Wyth!
Dear! Off so early? I thought we’d dine together this morning.”

“I’ve
eaten, mother. And Osraed Bevol will show me my rooms today.” He tried not to
gush boyishly, but between the pull of those rooms and the push of the Moireach
...

She
spread her hands, loosing a wave of dismay. “Rooms? Is that so exciting? What
about our journey to Creiddylad? We’ve yet to plan it.”

He
opened his mouth slowly in his reluctance to disappoint her, but she bowled him
over with more enthusiasm than he’d seen her show for anything in a very long
time.

“Actually,
I’ve done a little planning on my own, figuring you had enough on your mind.”
She stroked his cheek. “I assumed you’d rather travel by river—I know I
would—so I booked us passage on the mid-week packet. It’s not much more than a
ferry, hardly worthy of Halig-liath’s newest Osraed, so we shall just have to
pretend it’s the Cyne’s galley.”

“Mother,”
he said.

“We’ll
spend a night in Tuine, I think. I was there once when I was a girl. I remember
the little altar they put up where Cyne Ciaran died. A tragic spot, it is, and
so beautiful, so full of history. Oh, and I thought we might stay a day or two
after in Creiddylad, as well. I’d love to take worship at the Cyne’s Cirke and
visit the Hall and the Playhouse—oh! and Ochanshrine, too, of course-”

“Mother
...”

Her
hands came up to cup his face. “Oh, Wyth! To see you go before the Cyne-”

“Mother!”
He raised his hands to cover hers and smiled, as if that might take the sting
out of the words he would have to say. “Mother, we may go to Creiddylad, if you
wish—although, it will have to be after I’ve settled into Halig-liath and have
some sense of my duties.” He plowed on, past the look of bewilderment that
cloaked her face. “There will be no Grand Tell at Creiddylad this year.”

The
Moireach wrenched her hands from beneath his. “What? But that’s ...
unthinkable! There has always been a Tell at Creiddylad. Even in Regency years.
Is-is the Cyne ill? Is there trouble at court? What’s wrong? Why can’t he see
you?”

“He
is ... involved—or so I’ve been told—with some very important, very delicate
diplomacy just now.”

“With
whom? Surely, the Claeg aren’t rising again. His Durweard is a Feich, so they
can’t be the problem. And the Hillwild-”

“It’s
none of those things, mother. Osraed Bevol mentioned the Sutherlanders.”

“The-?”
She raised her hands in a gesture of pure bafflement. “What in the world can
they have to say to him that is more important than what
you
have to say to him? What is it to be Osraed, if you cannot
command the respect and attention of the Cyne?”

Wyth
studied the grain of the entry’s polished pine floor. “Commanding the Cyne’s
respect and attention is not the purpose of being Osraed, Mother.”

“No?
Then what was Ochan-a-Coille sent to do, if not that?”

“He
was sent to command the Cyne’s
attention
-”

“Ah!”

“-to
certain spiritual matters that were critical to the unity and prosperity of his
people and his continuance as their Cyne. The first thing Osraed Ochan did, if
you recall, was to alert Cyne Malcuim to a conspiracy against him—to warn him
and advise him about the Claeg and the Feich. He performed the Cyne a service.”

The
Moireach’s expression was black and sour as a bird-pecked fruit. “And I suppose
Cyne Colfre needs no one at Court to advise him about the Sutherlanders.”

“If
he needs them, they will be sent. Perhaps that’s part of Leal-mac-Mercer’s mission.”

“And
why not yours?” she asked, red-faced. “Why can’t
you
go to Creiddylad to advise the Cyne?”

“Because
that is not my mission. My mission is here.”

She
took a step back from him. “But what glory is there in that? To be locked up in
that musty old fortress your whole life? It’s all over that you’ve declined a
position on the Osraed Council.” Her eyes accused him. “I thought that meant
you had some greater calling to answer. Am I wrong?”

“No,
Mother, you are not wrong. But I am not here for glory. At least, I’m not here
for what
you
would call glory. I am
here to serve the Meri as She dictates. She dictated that I not hold a position
on the Osraed Council.”

She
made no reply to that, which relieved Wyth immeasurably, so he bid her a polite
good morning and left, kissing her cool cheek. He wasn’t certain, but he
thought she called him a fool.

He
knew she thought him one.

oOo

“A
problem with the Sutherlanders?” Osraed Bevol tugged at his beard and glanced
at Wyth over one shoulder. “No, I can’t say as I’ve gotten wind of any thing
like that. Although, there might arise one if we Caraidin continue to call them
that.”

His
eyes were glancing mirth and Wyth smiled, abashed. “The Deasach, I mean. But
they do live beyond our southern reaches.”

“And
we live beyond their northern ones. I suppose that makes us Northerlanders, eh?
Each man’s ground-”

“Is
the center of his world,” finished Wyth.

“Ah,
and speaking of the center of the world ...” Osraed Bevol stopped in his
subterranean wanderings at a doorway of hewn stone and polished tile. “This is
it.” He turned to Wyth and indicated the brass latch on the heavy wooden door. “The
private chambers of Osraed Wyth. Go on, open.”

Heart
beating almost audibly, Wyth fumbled his prayer chain and at last grasped its pendant
crystal. The crystal, itself, was the key to his rooms. A unique form it had
and, pressed into the latchbox, meshed exactly with that mechanism’s inner
workings. A breath of pressure and the latch slipped, letting Wyth into his
suite.

The
main study had one great window of thick, mullioned glass that over-looked the
southern end of the river bend and the sweep of the Gyldan-baenn running
southward into the distance. The large room was filled with books—rows of them
on tall shelves along one wall. There was a workbench with drawers and an
apothecary table with a medicaments chest above. Furs and braid rugs warmed the
floors and a tapestry map of Caraid-land hung on the wall by the door.

“Whose
chambers were these before?” Wyth asked, nearly whispering.

Bevol
chuckled. “They belonged to Osraed Leodeach the Harper. He taught music. That’s
one of his favorite instruments.” He indicated a beautifully wrought lap harp
that sat canted against the wall in a corner near the window. “It was a gift
from Cyne Ciarda, whom he taught to play. Quite a pepper pot, old Leodeach. In
his old age, that is. In his youth, he was a lot like you. Very serious. Very
grave.”

Wyth
blushed under the teasing and Bevol clapped him soundly on the shoulder. “Come.
Let me show you the center of your new world.”

They
by-passed what Wyth took to be the door to the bath chamber and pushed through
a darkly carved and filigreed door into the conical aislinn chamber.

Wyth’s
limbs began to quake. The little room was well-lit now, with sunlight pouring
into it like hazy liquid from the canted shafts in the sloping ceiling. The
tile gleamed from wall and bench, while the worn ring of flooring glowed with
the satiny sheen of aged wood. It had an odd non-pattern, Wyth thought, of
small burls like eyes gazing up forever into the vault of the ceiling. He
followed the eyelets’ gazes without thinking and heard Bevol laugh.

“Yes,
you do wonder, don’t you, what they’re all gawping at. That was Osraed Ochan’s
doing, of course. It is said this wood is from the Saewode where he lived
before the Pilgrimage.”

Wyth
stared down into the wooden eyes with a thrill of appreciation. “This was
Osraed Ochan’s chamber? Oh, Osraed Bevol, I’m hardly worthy-”

“Nonsense.
You are the first Osraed commissioned to Halig-liath in seven seasons and the
first after a Cusp. You have been appointed Weard to the Covenant Ochan
established and ... you loved Meredydd.” He canted his head to one side, his
eyes hazing slightly.