Taminy (42 page)

“Taminy!”
He spat the name from his lips. “Such colossal arrogance! To call herself
Osmaer—to name herself after the most sacred relic!” Ealad-hach paused, his
hand in mid-gesture. He could see it, as clear as he could see the Sun in the
sky over Nairne—the thing that must surely, in the right hands, become the
Wicke Cwen’s nemesis.

He
lowered his arm; calm descended with it. He smoothed his chamber robes with
careful fingers. “Have I any allies, Osraed Wyth?”

“You
have.”

“You
don’t lie to me. Why not?”

“Lying
dishonors both the liar and the one lied to. I have no wish to dishonor myself
or you.”

“Is
Eadmund among them?”

“You
would have to ask Eadmund, sir. He is a quiet man.”

Ealad-hach
curled his lip. “He is a weak man. Has he left yet for the Assembly in
Creiddylad?”

“He’s
in his chambers packing. Shall I have him called?”

Ealad-hach
peered up at Wyth through the brilliant rainbow haze of sunlit dust motes that
surrounded him. “Such a strange lad, you are, even now ... especially now.”

“Shall
I-?”

“No.
I will find him myself.” He pushed back his chair then, with a difficulty he refused
to show, and left the scene of his humiliation behind.

oOo

Wyth
put his feet up on the hearth fender and listened to the complete quiet of the
house. He imagined that on most evenings it was full of laughter and life and
duans. Taminy singing and Gwyet Weaving and Bevol telling tales and Skeet ...
doing whatever it was Skeet did. Playing tricks, Wyth thought. He surely played
tricks upon the girls and his Master, making laughter bubble from their lips
and souls. But now ...

He
stretched in Bevol’s chair and found it fit his lanky frame quite well. Bevol
and Skeet and Taminy were miles downriver floating toward the Jewel, while poor
Gwynet cried herself to sleep upstairs, alone. They were alone together. Gwynet
had no family and Wyth’s had all but disowned him after he’d come home and
announced he’d be taking up Bevol’s residence and guardianship of Gwynet until
the older Osraed’s return.

His
mother had begged him to bring Gwynet and stay under her roof at first and,
flattered, he considered it ... until it became clear that she intended to
treat Gwynet like a unwanted pet and himself like a trophy. On Osraed Council,
now, by God; member pro-tem of the Triumvirate; nominally in charge of
Halig-liath. She wanted to invite the entire province to come gawk at him.

The
one evening they’d spent at Arundel, she’d tried to send Gwynet to the kitchen
for dinner, making asides about the taint of “that Wicke girl,” and Wyth, more
furious than he thought he could ever be, took the little girl and went to Gled
Manor.

He
gazed around at the high ceiling, cob-webbed and spattered with firelight.
And here I will stay
.
And wait
.

Excerpt from A History of the Royal House

by Osraed Tynedale

Cyne Siolta was dead. At the age of nine,
Riagan Thearl was made Cyneric and set before the Stone. His Regents were
three—his mother, Cwen Goscelin; her dead husband’s Durweard, Harac; and the
Chancellor, Diomasach Claeg. This arrangement caused some perplexity of
government since the Cwen’s co-partners were given to over-stepping the bounds
of their respective stations ...

The subtle battle between Harac and
Diomasach grew more earnest until, finally, the Claeg contrived to separate the
Cyneric from his mother. It took a time of pretending to bow to the Chancellor’s
will before Goscelin was even allowed to speak to her boy. She made no attempt
to subvert him, but instead bided her time. Then, under the guise of taking a
pilgrimage to Ochanshrine, the Cwen left Castle Mertuile with her son concealed
in a clothing chest. But, instead of heading for the Shrine, she made upriver
for Halig-liath.

Leal
awoke from troubling dreams to a troubling reality. Before breakfast, Buach had
spread the tell throughout Care House: The Cyne was bringing the Nairnian Wicke
to Creiddylad.

Lealbhallain
was astonished, not because of the news, but because he’d already known, bone
deep, that Taminy-a-Gled was on her way here and that Osraed Bevol was with
her. He was disturbed by the news, disturbed that it came by way of popular
rumor. The streets literally buzzed, according to Buach, despite the fact that
the Cyne had left Nairne only the evening before, despite the fact that he and
his party would not arrive in Creiddylad until the day after next.

It
was as if the entire city of Creiddylad had been made party to Leal’s aislinn—a
vision thrust on him in some way by Wyth Arundel, and which seemed to invade
his thoughts further, moment by moment. That was impossible, of course, and
Leal couldn’t help but wonder: Where had the rumors arisen? According to Buach’s
testimony, they were all over the Cyne’s Market.

Duty
drew Leal there in the late morning, where he shopped for medicinal herbs and
where he heard the same tell repeated ad infinitum with various permutations:
The Wicke had been near death at the hands of the Nairnian villagers when the
Cyne had rescued her—he’d saved her right from the Cirke chime tower where they’d
planned to hang her; or he’d saved her from the Council Chamber where the
Osraed were planning to burn her; or he’d come across her abandoned in a wooded
glen and been bewicked by her beauty; or ...

Curious,
Leal asked a vegetable-pinching merchant where he’d heard the story, and was
pointed toward a fish vendor. That was it, then, Leal thought. The story must
have floated down river on the weeklies from Nairne. He asked the fish vendor,
anyway, and got an unexpected reply.

“Ah,
that! Why the Gatekeep told me when I came in this morning. ‘Have you heard,’
he says, ‘about the doings in Nairne?’ Well, I’d heard plenty of Nairne these
last weeks, I’d say, with all this about cailin taking the Kiss—Lord! what a
stew! But you’d know about all that, young Osraed.”

“The
Wicke?” prompted Leal.

“Oh,
aye, that. Saucy bit of news, isn’t it? Gatekeep had it the poor girl was
headed for the gallows when the Cyne stepped in and took her out of Osraed
hands.” He paused, looking suddenly uncomfortable. “No offense, Osraed, but
that’s the tell. They’ll be here day after tomorrow. It’s going to the Hall, or
so I’ve heard.”

“The
Gatekeep told you?” asked Leal and the vendor nodded.

He
didn’t talk to the Gatekeep himself, but dispatched one of the Care House
orphans to it. He wasn’t sure the man would be quite so open with an Osraed,
and he was more than open with the ragged little urchin who asked him,
wide-eyed, all about the Wicke-lady coming from the east.

“Pigeons,”
said the child, dark eyes like saucers in her pale face. “They got the tell by
pigeons late last night.”

Leal
frowned, puzzled. “The gatekeepers?”

“No,
no! In the castle. At Mertuile. Gatekeep said the Cyne’s Steward told him
before he opened up the Market grounds this morning. Pigeons!” she repeated,
awfully impressed. “Be they magical pigeons d’you think, Osraed Leal?”

He
shook his head absently. “I don’t suppose so ...” The child’s face rippled with
obvious disappointment. “Then, again, I suppose they could be magical pigeons.”

The
little girl brightened. “Well, at least they be royal ones. That’s almost
magical.”

She
went off to play among the bright market stalls then, leaving Leal surrounded
with his own uneasy thoughts. Royal courier pigeons, magical or not, had
brought the rumor of Nairne’s Wicke to Creiddylad—a rumor it seemed Cyne Colfre
had some interest in spreading.

oOo

She
stood in the galley’s prow looking as if she had been carved there—a living,
breathing figurehead. That was appropriate, he thought, for a figurehead she
would become. He shook the cynical thoughts aside and settled himself near her
along the starboard rail, where he could see her in full profile. He took out a
graphus and, balancing his drawing pad on one knee, he began to sketch her.

She
was wearing green for her entry into Creiddylad; he had made certain of it. The
dress was simple—sinfully so, when one considered who wore it—but of the most vivid
green he could imagine. It was a color he could not capture, for his oilsticks
were in his studio at Mertuile and he had only graphus and smudges. Against
that green, her yard or so of pale gold hair was a banner of precious metal
silk and her eyes, if she would only look at him, would be emeralds.

His
graphus stilled. She was looking at him. His thumb moved reflexively to rub the
chalcedony set into the gold band on his middle finger—proof against Wicke. He
resisted the reflex and nearly dropped the graphus.

“Good
morning,” he said and smiled. He had a dazzling smile and knew it; many women
had told him. “Please don’t move. I wanted to capture you just as you were.”

She
responded with an almost courtly bowing of her head (although it was hardly
deep enough to be awarded a Cyne), and turned her face down river again, not
quite hiding her smile.

Tease
, he thought, and continued his
sketch. “What were you thinking before I interrupted you?”

“I
was listening to the duans the river sings.”

That
raised an eyebrow. “Duans? So, the mighty Halig-tyne is a Weaver of inyx, is
it?”

“Of
course. Listen. You can hear it.”

He
did listen and heard the rush of the water beneath the keel, the lapping of
wavelets as they curled away from the galley’s bluff prow, the soft, silken
sound of wind in the trees along the shore, the flutter of the loose sails on
their spars.

“Duans,
eh? And what do they Weave?”

“Peace.
Contentment. Solace. Whatever inyx is needed.”

“Perhaps
I think they are just the inarticulate yammerings of nature. Saying nothing;
meaning nothing.”

She
didn’t rise to his bait. “Your ancestors would disagree with you, Cyne Colfre.”

“My
ancestors?”

“Aye.
Cyne Paeccs, for example. Where would he have been without the yammerings of
the river? Imagine him, the brave young man, leading his little family out of
besieged Mertuile, down the steep cliff path, out to his galley on the
Halig-tyne. What chance would he have had to glide unseen past his enemies if
Ochan and the river hadn’t sung to each other? Dorchaidhe Feich was a mighty
warrior and peerlessly cunning. What else but a Weaving could cause those sharp
eyes to miss such a thing as the Malcuim’s royal galley creeping through his
blockade?”

“Legend,”
said Colfre. “Myth. It was a fog. A simple river mist.”

“Quite
a fog. And was it a simple river mist that concealed Cwen Goscelin the Just
when she spirited little Thearl away from his kidnappers?”

“A
simple river mist,” he repeated, smiling.

“‘To
muffle the sound of oars in their locks? To quiet the cry of a babe in a box?’”

Colfre
chuckled. “I know the old lay. And you obviously know your legends. But they
are only legends.” She didn’t answer, so he continued, applying a smudge to the
penciled lines of her dress. “And you believe in them, don’t you?”

“Aye.”

“Aren’t
you afraid your Cyne will think you a simpleton?”

“Do
you fear me thinking you a jade?”

He
did fear it. “Do you think me a jade?” She didn’t answer, so he asked, “Do you
also believe in your own mythology, Taminy-a-Cuinn?” He watched her face
closely, but it gave up nothing.

“My
mythology,” she repeated.

“Do
you believe you are one hundred thirty-some-odd-years-old?”

“I
have little choice.”

“And
that you spent one hundred fifteen of those years ... beneath the Sea?”

“In
the Sea,” she said. “In the Sea of Life. The spiritual fact underlies the
physical one.”

“You
were a silkie.”

“I
was not.”

“Ah,
no. You were the Meri.”

“I
was.”

“And
what is that? Explain it to me.”

“When
I cannot explain it to myself?”

“You
perplex me.”

“I
perplex myself,” she said. “In that Form I contained all things and
comprehended all things. In this form, I am merely aware that I once
comprehended them. I am memories and yearnings and bright flashes of meaning.
But I know what I was and why. I was Caraid-land’s Beloved ... . I was your
Beloved, Colfre Malcuim. Why did you not return My love?”

He
stopped sketching and stared at the beautiful profile, sudden desire struggling
with that niggling sense of dread. He laughed, falsely. “I should have you
thrown overside for that heretical outburst, young woman, but I’ve not finished
my sketch.” He returned to it, then, but the graphus refused to behave.

“Will
you make a mural of me, Cyne Colfre?” she asked. “Will I share a wall with your
kinswoman, Goscelin, and little Thearl in his clothes chest? Will you paint me
as a legend, also?”

The
dread doubled. “How do you know I have painted the Flight of Thearl?”

In
answer she merely turned her face to him and smiled. It was a girl’s smile,
innocent and perverse and enigmatic.

He
closed the drawing pad. “We’ll arrive soon. I must go below and prepare.”

“Cyne
Colfre.” She stopped him before he reached the forward cabin. “Why do you bring
me to Creiddylad?”

“You
don’t know?”

“Why?”

His
smile did not fit his lips well. “To make a mural of you, perhaps. Or perhaps,
a legend.”

He
went below then, only to half-collide with Osraed Bevol, whose insolent smile
and barely appropriate greeting set his teeth on edge. Damn the man, he
thought, for he knew that to his late father’s spiritual advisor, he would
forever be “Ciarda’s little boy”. He ground his teeth and swore again,
consoling himself that to Creiddylad, he would soon be Cyne Colfre Malcuim,
Peacemaker, Savior of the Innocent, by the grace of God, Divine Ruler of
Caraid-land.