Taminy (36 page)

Silence
was the only possible answer to that. The five Osraed at their curving table
glanced at each other with unreadable expressions and found invisible threads
on the cuffs of their chamber robes and flaws in the table top.

“Really,
Ealad,” said Faer-wald at last. “Are you certain you wish to pursue this?”

“I
must pursue it. I have no choice.”

“She
is not Wicke,” said Bevol.

“You
are too close to her to-”

Wyth
interrupted. “She is absolutely not Wicke.”

Ealad-hach
ignored him. “I told you of my aislinn weeks ago, when Wyth was on his
Pilgrimage. I saw the rising of this woman from the Sea.”

“You
saw the rising of
a
woman from the
Sea,” corrected Calach. “She was faceless.”

“She
had flaxen hair.”

“Many
women have flaxen hair.”

“I
will show you her face!”

Calach
gazed around the room. Taminy followed his eyes. It was in the face of every
Osraed there: this had gotten suddenly beyond mere dabbling in the Craft by a
village cailin. Aine had become incidental; Doireann’s accusations were
forgotten; the mumblings of frightened parents were as the buzzing of bees,
mildly jarring, vaguely threatening.

Calach
dismissed everyone but the Council members and Osraed Wyth, who insisted upon
staying. The loiterers in the outer corridor would no doubt repair to the
Backstere’s or the Quayside Road House to get their ears filled with the
evening’s Tell, but Osraed Saxan made certain they did not fill them in the
hall. Taminy could hear his voice as the great doors closed behind him,
exhorting everyone to leave. Then the doors shut, cutting the grumbling like a
pair of blades.

That
Calach was at a loss was evident; he polled the other Osraed visually again,
then made a gesture that opened the floor for their input. “What shall we do,
Osraed?” he asked them, and Faer-wald provided an immediate answer.

“Why
don’t we hear him out? At the very least, it should settle this matter in his
mind. If he can show us a convincing aislinn, fine. If not, we can then request
that the matter be dropped.” He looked to Ealad-hach then, his gaze punctuating
his remarks with little subtlety.

Calach
nodded. “A sound idea ... Osraed?”

They
agreed to a man. Better, they all thought, to get this over with. Better to
placate their elder brother. Better that he be at last forced to lay these
accusations to rest.

Seated
again between Wyth and Osraed Bevol, Taminy watched as Ealad-hach took his
place at the center of the chamber. Watched him in the dimming light as he
brought out his crystal and prepared himself for the Weave, murmuring duans
that sent chills of anticipation up and down her spine. She glanced aside at
Bevol. His face was impassive, his eyelids half-closed, his mouth drawn into
almost a smile.

Ealad-hach
began his Weave, walking his circle, circumscribing its limits. He set his
crystal down in the center of it. A spark appeared at its core and light
trembled there, uncertain. He sang and the light strengthened, though it still
behaved like a candle wick in a capricious wind.

He
chanted louder, straining to steady the light, and Taminy felt a response from
Bevol—a soft pulse in his attention. She glanced at him again, found that his
eyes were locked on the crystal. The light in it steadied.

A
smile brushed Ealad-hach’s lips; his duan changed as he called upon the
Eibhilin world to intrude into his own. Within the circle he described with his
steps, a fitful image swelled—a dark, turbid phantasm that struggled to resolve
itself into something recognizable—tried and failed. Ealad-hach’s smile
stretched and grimmed.

Beside
Taminy, Bevol exhaled a long, whispered breath; a shiver of sound, accompanied
by a shiver of something else.

Ealad-hach’s
aislinn gelled, becoming surf and sand and dark, bright sky. Taminy was
certain, then, that Bevol was aiding the weakened old Osraed in his Weaving.
She was not certain why, but understood that the result was likely to be
another fiery collision.

Am I ready for that
? she wondered, and
trembled at the answer. Yet, she must trust Bevol; she had no choice.

She
held her breath and watched the surf writhe, shimmering, onto the glitter of
aislinn sand. Each wave was more luminescent than the last, infused with a
shade of gold-green that Nature used so sparingly, most human eyes had never
seen it. In a breath, gold and green seemed to bleed away from each other,
drawing into separate pools within the greater pool of the Sea. The green
deepened to emerald—a verdant, crystalline color that pulsed momentarily with
light before muting.

In
the midst of the aislinn depiction, out of the rippling water, appeared a pale
form. Ealad-hach’s eyes seized on it, his words came more quickly, his steps
quickened on their circular path. A sizzle of Eibhilin vigor shot from Bevol,
tingling up the back of Taminy’s neck and raising the hair on her arms. The
form tightened, became a woman’s head and shoulders, glittering with Sea jewels
and irradiated with light.

She
waded to shore, dripping radiance and salt water, stepping, at last, onto the
beach, gleaming, naked except for a gown of sea tears. Hair the color of
moonlit wheat cascaded down her back and over her shoulders, chastely mantling
her breasts. She looked up, her eyes focused on someone the aislinn did not
show, and laughed. “Ah, Osraed Bevol! I have not breathed for a hundred years!”

Taminy
heard and felt the collective gasp that circled the room. She was looking into
her own face, blushing at the sight of her own body, naked before all these
eyes. She felt Wyth, sitting to her left, coil defensively. To her right, Bevol
relaxed, nodding.

“There!”
Ealad-hach’s voice issued out on a hiss of breath. He cased his pacing of the
circle and turned to appraise what he thought to be his own handiwork. “You can
now see it with your own eyes.”

Indeed,
they could. And he let them see it long enough that there could be no doubt
whose face that was—no doubt whatever who was receiving a warm robe from unseen
hands.

Yet,
he asked her, his voice trembling with effort, “Taminy-a-Gled, are you that
cailin?”

She
thought her voice might fail her, but it did not. “I am that cailin,” she
answered.

Ealad-hach
took his attention from the aislinn and focused it on Calach. The supporting
aura from Bevol faded, and with it, the Woven vision. Taminy all but held her
breath as the globes in the room shed more light, revealing the stunned and
very sober expressions of the Osraed.

Ealad-hach
struck a pose, hand outstretched toward her, palm up. “Have you any doubts now?”
he asked, holding her in that palm, offering her up to the Council. “Have you
any doubts that she is the Cwen Wicke I have dreamed? Have you any doubt that
Osraed Bevol is involved in her deception?”

Osraed
Calach, his face pale as the whites of his eyes, looked to Bevol. “Bevol, what
is this? What have we been shown? Is this young woman the Wicke of Ealad’s
aislinn?”

Bevol
stood and moved from Taminy’s side to share the floor with Ealad-hach. “She is
obviously the young woman of his aislinn, but she is not a Wicke.”

“Then
what? Surely we have never seen this before ... did this cailin arise from the
Sea as the vision suggests?”

“The
vision mirrors reality, Osraed. She arose, just as you saw. What you did not
see is what happened just before. You did not see Meredydd-a-Lagan go into the
water.”

Calach
shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

“Isn’t
it obvious?” asked Ealad-hach. “Meredydd-a-Lagan was also a Wicke.”

Bevol
shook his head.

“Then
where is she now?” asked Osraed Kynan.

“She
is in the Sea,” said Ealad-hach. “Drowned. Dead.”

Again,
Bevol shook his head. “She is in the Sea, but she did not drown and she is not
dead. That is the truth.”

Ealad-hach
pointed a shaking finger at his colleague. “You! You dare speak to this
Council? You presume to speak about what is true when you have been consorting
with evil?”

“I
have not consorted with evil, Ealad. Could I wear this and do so?” He pointed
to the vivid star upon his forehead, then turned to the Council. “Will you hear
me out? Will you let me tell you what you have seen here this evening?”

There
was a moment of indecision, then the Council gave their consent, man by man.

“Why
do you listen to him?” asked Ealad-hach. “He will tell you nothing but nonsense
calculated to confuse.”

“We
are already confused, Ealad,” said Faer-wald. “Nothing you have shown us makes
sense, either. Why should this Wicke come up out of the Sea? The Sea is the
province of the Meri.”

“She
competes with the Meri.”

“She
does not,” said Bevol. “Osraed, may I speak before you condemn me for my part
in what you’ve witnessed? All will be made clear, if not acceptable.”

Calach
gestured for him to begin.

“What
you saw, Osraed, was a ritual. A ritual that results, as Ealad-hach believes,
in what we have come to refer to as a Cusp. A young woman who possesses both
Gift and devotion goes to the shore of the Sea and there, she is transformed.
In her new state, she enters the ocean, there she meets and exchanges places
with the one who came before her. And that one is also transformed and arises
from the Sea, as you have witnessed through Ealad-hach’s aislinn. Meredydd went
to the Sea and was transformed, exchanging places with this young woman.” Bevol
paused.

“But
...” Eadmund gazed about at his fellows before asking, “who is this young
woman?”

“Hers
is a name I think you will recognize, if only from legend. This, Osraed, is
Taminy-a-Cuinn.”

Their
astonishment could not have been more profound. Taminy felt it rock her, as if
their sudden regard possessed a physical weight and force.

Ealad-hach’s
mouth moved soundlessly before words finally formed. “Taminy-a-Cuinn died over
one hundred years ago.”

“No,
Ealad. She stands before you. Not dead. No more dead than Meredydd. And you
know it, too. You’ve suspected it.”

“You
have only
wanted
me to suspect it.”

“Come,
old friend, you’ve had other aislinn, other dreams. You’ve seen other cailin
perform this ritual, have you not? Have you not dreamed of the time of Liusadhe
the Bard? Liusadhe, whose condemnation of women he supposed to be Wicke earned
him the title of the Purifier? An unwarranted title, as he understood in later
life.”

Ealad-hach
paled. “How do you know my dreams?”

Bevol
ignored his question, turning instead to Osraed Calach. “What will convince
you?”

Calach’s
eyes had not left Taminy’s face. “Speak, cailin. Is what Bevol says true? Are
you Taminy-a-Cuinn?”

She
rose and all eyes followed her. “I am. What Osraed Bevol says is true.”

The
Osraed Ladman smote the table and Kynan expressed his disbelief loudly. “This
is absurd! No—it is obscene!”

Calach
raised his hands, clapping them together to restore order. “Let her speak! Let
her speak!” He gestured at Taminy. “Go on, cailin. Give us your Tell.”

Taminy
gathered herself, ignoring the dagger glares of Ealad-hach and the disbelieving
Osraed. “In the Year of Pilgrimage four hundred ninety, I went to the Sea on a
forbidden Pilgrimage with my father acting as my Weard. The Meri came to me on
the second day of my waiting, wearing the silver of the clouds. She called me
into the water, into Her Sea. She breathed Her knowledge into my soul. She
changed my very nature. She passed on to me all that She was. We embraced and
we parted. And when we parted, it was I that remained behind in the Sea and she
that returned to the land on the same two legs that carried her in nearly one
hundred years before.”

“What
do you mean?” Calach’s voice was a raw whisper. He turned stricken eyes to
Bevol. “What is she saying? What did we witness?”

Bevol
smiled. “Isn’t it obvious? You have witnessed the regeneration of the Meri.”

A STUDY OF THE BLUE CUSP

from Cusp to Cusp by Osraed Tynedale

By the twenty-fifth year of the reign of Cyne Liusadhe,
Creiddylad was host to a number of women who possessed the Gift of Runeweaving.
Though the Osraed tried to raise the Cyne’s suspicions against these women, he
remained, at first, uncondemning of them. It was not until he discovered a
connection between one of the accused young women and his unscrupulous
ex-Chancellor (a man who had abused his position sorely) that he became
agitated and brought the women to trial.

This resulted in a dozen or so women,
including Lufu Hageswode, fourteen year-old daughter of the Renic Bana-Meg,
being banished into a hard, biting winter. Also among the exiles were several
members of the ex-Chancellor’s immediate family, one of whom died of exposure
during the ordeal.

It was directly after the accused Wicke left
Creiddylad that the Meri changed Aspect. This was the Silver Manifestation,
which we now know to be linked to the person of the girl, Lufu Hageswode
(called “Mam Lufu”). It is of note that this Cusp took place out of Season, in
the early spring of YP 396.

The
darkness was complete. Suspended within it, Lealbhallain attempted to read its
limits. It was not a silent darkness. Hollow, it echoed with tiny, bright
noises like the whispered notes of a harp. It was not a still darkness. Alive,
it rippled with breathings and sighs.

He
was no longer in his room at Care House, he knew. He was in the sea cave below
Ochanshrine. The realization brought light into the place—a tiny pip of light,
a seed that grew and blossomed before his eyes, unwavering. In a gold-traced
pattern of glory, the gleaming petals of a crystalline rose unfolded before him
in the dark, reflecting off the pool below and the glittering walls around.
Drippings from the ceiling shook the reflection and shivered it into countless
tiny wriggles of light.