Taminy (41 page)

Taminy
glanced about the room; brother railed against brother, shaking fists at
Ealad-hach, shaking fists at her and her two defenders.

At
one end of the hall their audience watched, bright-eyed and eager for the
climax; at the other, Osraed Calach began to pound upon the crescent table,
trying to restore order, while beside him, the Osraed Kynan and Tynedale
threatened to come to blows.

“Silence!
Silence!” Calach cried, but his words were lost—swept up in the squall of human
voices and tossed aside. He signaled a Council Prentice and the boy moved
swiftly to man the chimes behind the Council table. The sharp tones clove the
storm and humbled it, at last, to a pool of trembling eddies.

“Order!”
Calach’s voice could finally be heard. “We must have order!”

“Indeed
we must,” agreed Ealad-hach. “But we will not have it until we are rid of her.”
His out-thrust finger found Taminy, calm within her box.

“Then
allow her to prove herself,” said Bevol. “Settle this once and for all.”

Ealad-hach
reddened. “It would prove nothing. You said the same of Meredydd-a-Lagan. Let
her take Pilgrimage, you said. Let the Meri decide her fate. Let it be decided,
once and for all. That proved nothing, just as this will prove nothing but a
forum for her wicked deceptions.”

“She
ain’t wicked!” Marnie-o-Loom’s voice cut shrilly through the rumble and hiss of
her fellow Nairnians.

“Aye!”
the Apothecary agreed.

“Aw,
what do you hags know of it?” asked someone else. “You’re both half-Wicke
yourselves!”

“I
say we accept the challenge,” said Saxan, ignoring the outburst. “How else will
we know? Surely, we can devise a proof-”

“Useless,”
argued Parthelan. “Entirely useless. She’s obviously powerful, be she Wicke or
otherwise.”

“Is
there no difference, then?” Saxan turned to look imploringly at his fellow
Osraed. “Brothers, if we fail to accept this challenge, are we not admitting we
can’t tell the difference between good and evil?”

“Saxan’s
right,” said Osraed Tynedale. “We must surely be able to draw a distinction
between darkness and Eibhilin light. And what reason have we to suspect this
young woman save a handful of inconclusive rumors given us by witnesses we
would normally pay no heed to? Our experience with Taminy-a-Gled is that she
has used her Gift to give life, not take it. She has enemies here. Powerful
though she may be, she has not harmed even one of them.”

“She
tried to kill a girl who was her enemy,” protested Osraed Kynan.

“That’s
a lie!” Aine-mac-Lorimer was on her feet, hands pounding on the bannister of the
public gallery. “It’s a lie! She did nothing to me!” Her father grasped her
wrist and reseated her roughly.

Ealad-hach
turned to his brothers on the Council. “You saw my aislinn. You know this is
the girl.”

Tynedale
shook his head. “She doesn’t deny being the woman of your vision. She disputes
your interpretation of it. I say we must consider the challenge or admit our own
lack of discernment and wisdom.”

The
sound that came from Ealad-hach’s throat made Taminy’s heart all but melt with
pity. Face sweating, pale and red in turns, eyes glittering with tears, he
hop-hobbled toward the Council table. A comic figure, were he not so dangerous,
so full of hate.

“We
must consider nothing,” he said, “but how to be eternally rid of this creature.
The aislinn that revealed her was mine—MINE! And I interpret it as a sign of
her complete corruption. No one else may interpret it for me. No one!
Especially not those who are bewitched and besotted by her. Not those her evil
has touched!” He turned feral eyes on Bevol and Wyth, then, spittle running
along his lower lip. He licked it quickly away.

“I
vote with Ealad-hach,” said Osraed Kynan. “We will not be manipulated by this
Wicke.”

“I
did not ask for a vote,” Calach snapped.

“Vote!”
shouted someone among the Body. “I vote with Ealad-hach!”

Osraed
Comyn Hillwild rose and pounded a beefy fist on the gallery rail. “And I vote
with Tynedale and Saxan!”

More
voices were raised while Calach pounded for order. In the midst of it all,
Aine-mac-Lorimer came to her feet again and began a cry of “Cowards! Cowards!”
Marnie and the Apothecary joined her, standing in place and shaking fists at
the Osraed.

“Aye!
Cowards! They daren’t face her!”

“Cowards!
They’re afraid! Afraid of a little girl!”

The
jeers mounted and did battle with warring cries of “Wicke!” and demands that
Taminy be drowned or burned or banished. The battle moved to envelop the Osraed
in their galleries and rose to such a pitch that even the shrill ringing of the
chimes could not halt its progress.

Calach
stood, helpless, amid the fury, his eyes turned to Bevol, pleading. Taminy
looked up into the public boxes. There was movement there as a number of people
made their way down to the floor. Her eyes scanned the top row, finding, again,
the face of an elder Sister. The silver-eyed, iron-haired woman nodded once and
faded away into the clamoring crowd.

On
the floor, Taminy could see the Ren Catahn making his way toward her, Desary at
his side. But there were others who would reach her first; two tall men in
cowled robes the color of periwinkles. Taminy knew them, though she had met
neither. She awaited them with curious eyes and a calm heart, her hands crossed
on the bannister of her box, her ears closed to the pandemonium around her.

The
men reached the box and gazed up at her through the folds of their cowls, while
Wyth eyed them suspiciously in turn. Two fox faces peered up at her, enough
alike to be brothers; but she knew it was a brotherhood of spirit, not of
blood. Both were fair-skinned and dark-haired, one with eyes piercing pale, the
other sunlit gold. She revised her assessment—fox and falcon.

The
fox eyed her with open appraisal, the falcon smiled. Then he mounted her box,
holding to the rail with one hand, reaching to drop his cowl with the other.
The cowl fell away and a roomful of light gathered to dance on the skillfully
carved facets of the Circlet upon his head.

Wyth
gasped. “The Cyne!” Then, more loudly. “The Cyne!”

Soon
half the people on the floor were bawling the words. The cry circled the room
but once, reaching up into its recesses and dragging all throats to silence.

Cyne
Colfre, royal falcon, gazed around the chamber, fixing all with a stern, raptor
eye. “If Malcuim and Ochan, together, came before me and described this scene,”
he said, his voice ringing well on the tense hush, “I would not have believed
it.”

Taminy,
her own eyes fixed on the royal profile, knew the consternation to be false.
Beneath Colfre Malcuim’s Circlet, gears spun intricately; beneath his
periwinkle robes, a boyish eagerness gamboled and rubbed gleeful hands.

“I
would not have believed it,” he repeated, shaking his head. “Have you all gone
mad?”

oOo

It
was better than he had hoped, dreamed. Far better. The Osraed of Halig-liath,
in their inept wisdom, had already done half his work for him. Those who had
looked upon them with awe and honor now heckled and turned away with disgust.
And the Osraed themselves were divided—hopelessly, passionately and impotently,
divided. And all because of a seventeen year old girl.

Colfre
looked on her where she stood on the deck of his galley. Looked on her with a
strange, quaking mixture of anticipation and dread. She was beautiful—every bit
as beautiful as he had imagined in his mind’s eye. And she was gallant—ah, and
heroic—standing up to the bluster and the cries for her blood. More than that,
he knew, she had the Gift. She dazzled him with it; the very atmosphere around
her was charged with a soft, warm lightning. A breath of the aidan, his
Hillwild mother would have said. Nay, more than a breath, a storm. And he was
bringing the storm to Creiddylad.

Shivering,
he pushed dread aside, unread, and surveyed the party that would accompany him
downriver to his capitol. She, of course, was foremost, but there was Bevol,
renegade Osraed, and his boy-servant—an underfoot rascal named Skeet. Osraed
Calach had tapped the young Osraed Wyth to take Bevol’s place on the Council
and Triumvirate. It had infuriated the old fool, Ealad-hach and his crony,
Faer-wald, but pleased the Cyne. A young man was an inexperienced man, a man
who would vacillate and hesitate. And the young Osraed, like Calach, seemed
quite timorous.

Colfre
smiled, recalling the expression on Ealad-hach’s wizened face when that
appointment had been made and confirmed by the Cyne, himself. He could not
despise the old man, though, for he owed him much. He, more than any other, had
forced the situation with Taminy into a shape pleasing to his Lord.

“Everyone’s
aboard, sire.” Daimhin Feich stood beside him, now, at the galley’s oaken rail.
Enigmatic, his gaze moved among the crowd still roiling upon the dock.

Colfre
glanced aside at him. “Are we not right to be pleased, Daimhin? Have we not
taken a great stride forward today?”

Feich
smiled. “We have, indeed, my lord.”

“I
could never have dreamed such a windfall. Never ...” The Cyne let his gaze
drift back along the dock, beholding faces filled with perplexity, disgust,
fear, anger, even grief. One thing was certain, the eyes of the people of
Nairne would never again see their Osraed as they once had. “Never,” he
repeated.

“One
might almost think ... it was ordained.”

Feich’s
smile rippled, assuming a slightly different shape. “One might, indeed, my
lord.”

oOo

The
Council Chamber was empty now. Bright sunlight cascaded through the
stained-glass windows above the public gallery, blazing a trail of glory across
the polished agate of the floor. Ealad-hach, still seated in his place behind
the crescent table, was blind to its beauty. To him, all was dark; the sun was
an intrusion in the black world he inhabited.

He
tried, but could not comprehend how everything had come so completely apart in
his hands. No, not in his hands, for in the end, it had been ripped from them.
By whom, he wasn’t certain. He had laid the blame at Colfre’s door initially,
but when the crowd and clamor had cleared from his mind, he acknowledged the
possibility that the Cyne was doing a will other than his own.

The
thought terrified him. But more terrifying, still, was his own trembling
impotency. He was a pile of pebbles, waiting to be scattered by the next
wave—no cement to bind, annihilation its only possibility. He could do nothing
against Something so strong, so ancient. That face he had seen in the crowd
haunted him. One of Liusadhe’s Wicke, still alive; Taminy-a-Cuinn, still alive.
And able to manipulate even the Osraed—even the Meri’s elect.

He
had thought himself alone and was jolted by the soft sounds of feet upon the
floor—encroaching, intruding, as the sunlight did, inexorably. He shifted
uncomfortably and glanced toward the doors, blinking against the Sun’s glare.
Someone stood there in the blaze of colorful light, haloed like the Eibhilin,
but obviously and solidly human. Though unable to see his face, Ealad-hach knew
Wyth Arundel by his stature.

He
turned his eyes away. “Come to scoff at the old fool, Osraed Wyth? Come to lay
blame?”

“No,
sir. Neither. I merely came to see if you were all right. This day’s events
have posed a great strain on all of us ...”

Ealad-hach
glanced at Wyth sharply, but his expression was lost in a warp of light and
shadow. “The Council met just now, did it?”

Wyth
nodded. “Just long enough to plan a meeting. Tomorrow morning, if that’s
agreeable to you.”

“I
hardly care. It’s out of our hands now, isn’t it?”

“There
are other things to be discussed,” Wyth reminded him.

Ealad-hach
ignored him. “What are the others saying? Do they blame me? Is it my fault the
Osraed have been censured and called into doubt?” He hadn’t meant it to come
out like that, so pleading, so desperate. It wasn’t his fault, of course, but
that the others might think it was ...

“Some
of them ... blame you for ... for pursuing Taminy so relentlessly.”

Ealad-hach
curled his lip. “As I suppose you do.”

“Blame
is too strong a word, Osraed. I suppose I ... understand that you must do what
you feel is right.”

“What
are they saying about me?”

“Some
of them believe you were ... over zealous. That bringing Taminy to trial was a
mistake. They feel it would have been better if you had allowed time to reveal
her.”

“Time!
There is no time! They’re fools not to understand that! Do they think the Cyne
came here of his own accord? A man who has avoided Nairne as if it was
plague-ridden? He wouldn’t come for Farewelling; he wouldn’t receive you and
Lealbhallain for the Grand Tell. Why should he come here now? Do they believe
that a coincidence? Do they believe it is he who has taken Taminy out of our
hands?”

Wyth’s
silhouette stiffened. “But, that’s what happened, isn’t it?”

Ealad-hach
smiled bitterly. “Fool. You’re all fools to believe that. There are powerful
and awful forces at work here. Forces we dimly perceive. It is those forces
that will decide the outcome, not the Cyne and not the Assembly.”

“Yes,”
Wyth said, “that much is true.”

Ealad-hach
stood, quaking. “This is the Most Holy Fortress, Osraed Wyth. This is the most
holy spot on the face of this world.” He jabbed a finger at a point on the
glossy table top to which the sunlight had laboriously crawled to meet shadow. “If
we could not control those forces here, where and how and when shall we ever
control them?”

Wyth
shook his head. “The evil is not what you imagine it to be, Osraed. You imagine
a friend your enemy and prepare to take an enemy to your bosom. But you are
right, I think, in one thing—Taminy is not for us to control, or perhaps even
to understand.”