Taminy (5 page)

She
returned her gaze to the rose bush, reached out a hand and broke off a new bud.
Carrying it to a gilded patch of green, she sat there, heedless of the effect
of dew on skirts, and focused her all on the flower. The bloom became her
world. She narrowed her gaze to one folded petal. The petal became her universe.
She narrowed her gaze to a dewdrop on that petal. The dewdrop became a Cosmos.
She let it fill her completely.

Think you are but a pitiful form when entire
universes are wrapped within you
? That passage from the Corah had once
comforted her. Now it seemed only to mock.

Yes, I am pitiful! A lake severed from its
river; an errant ray of light shuttered from its Sun.

Entire
universes ... and she had seen them, each and every one, ablaze with Light.

Perhaps I am not shuttered, but only
temporarily blinded. Anyone who looks into the Sun spends a moment in darkness.

Here
was a cosmos in a dewdrop ... on the petal of a rosebud ... in a hand that
quivered with half-forgotten power. Taminy felt the swelling of her heart and
soul, the quickening of her blood, the sudden acuity of her senses. She heard
the distant Halig-tyne passing regally between her banks with lady-skirt rustle
as the children atop the cliffs sang their morning songs and a falcon cried
somewhere far above and the Sun chimed softly in the dewy grass, riffling among
its jewels for the fairest and finding it on Taminy’s rose.

Here
was a cosmos in a dewdrop ... on the petal of a rosebud ... which opened slowly
to full flower in a hand that quivered with half-remembered power. A myriad
tiny worlds sparkled on each pale, spreading petal. In each world a rose had
reached sudden maturity at Taminy-a-Cuinn’s gentle urging.

It
was the long outflow of another’s breath that pulled Taminy away from the place
she had been. She turned her head and, just for an instant, saw herself through
the eyes of her watcher; a pool of vivid blue in the velvet sward, a banner of
pale golden hair, paler skin and paler rose, petals spread wide.

“Mistress,”
sighed Skeet, “that was wonderful.”

She
glanced back at the rose. “It was a start. Only a start.”

“You
feel better now, though.”

Taminy
nodded and rose, brushing at her dewy skirts. Something tugged at her mind,
then—an odd little tickle. She turned and glanced up over the wall and through
the trees toward Halig-liath.

“What
is it, mistress?” asked Skeet, eyes following.

“Curiosity,”
she said and, cupping her rose, hurried inside.

oOo

“I
am ready,” said Osraed Bevol, “to resume my duties at Apex.”

The
members of the Council glanced at each other, eyes showing relief, caution,
uncertainty, disbelief.

“Pardon,
brother,” said Osraed Faer-wald, “if I do not seem in whole-hearted agreement,
but you have recently sustained a terrible loss.”

Bevol
looked at him straight. “Pardon me, brother, if I contradict you, but I must tell
you, once again, that I have sustained no loss but that of Meredydd’s physical
presence. I do miss her, but I am not, as is popularly believed, suffering and
grieved. I am ready to resume my duties at Apex. There is nothing to keep me
from them.”

“I’m
not sure this is wise,” persisted Faer-wald. “You began teaching classes again
only yesterday. Surely, you wish to wait until you have readjusted yourself to
that schedule-”

“I
am not a frail old man!” Bevol’s eyes sparkled with pale fire. “It would please
me no end if you would cease treating me like one. There is no law or right by
which you can deny me a return to my duties if I declare myself to be fit ...
unless, of course, you are prepared to challenge either my integrity or my
sanity.”

The
council chamber echoed with the tiny shufflings of discomfiture—a cough, a
scrape, a rustling of meticulously rearranged robes.

“We
are not prepared to do anything of the sort,” said Calach firmly. “Are we?” His
eyes circled the room, resting on each face in turn. All signaled the negative.
“Then I believe we must take our brother at his word. We welcome your return,
Bevol,” he added and sent his sincerity through his warm gaze. “I gladly
relinquish the Chair to you.”

The
move was a literal one. Calach rose from the central seat at the crescent table
occupied by the Osraed Council and moved to the one he had traditionally held
to its left, the third of the seats reserved for the Triumvirate composed of
himself, Ealad-hach and Bevol. Bevol, for his part, stood down from the center
of the room and resumed his place at Apex. He had no sooner settled himself
into the high-backed chair than he turned the attention of the Council to
business.

“You
have all heard the rumors from Creiddylad,” he said and waited for affirmation.
It came, reluctantly, via mumbles and head-nods.

“Rumors,”
repeated Ealad-hach. “Do you honestly believe they are significant?”

“Yes,
I believe they’re significant. Especially significant because of their source.”

“I
heard about the murals months ago,” said Ealad-hach dryly, “from Niall
Backstere. What’s significant about that? He’s the biggest gossip in Nairne.”

Several
of the other Osraed chuckled.

“What
is significant,” said Bevol, “is that we have heard none of this from our
brothers at Ochanshrine.”

A
murmur circled the crescent table.

“I
wonder, myself,” said Calach, with obvious trepidation, “if we need to be
concerned about the lack of official news from the capitol. The communications
from the Brothers of the Jewel have been both sporadic and uninformative.”

“The
time element involved ...” began one of the two junior Osraed, Kynan.

“This
latest incident with the Holy Water purportedly took place at Waningfeast last
moon,” said Bevol. “A Speakweave could have been performed or a bird could have
been dispatched or a messenger could have come up with the teamsters. The point
is, we should have been informed by the Osraed at Creiddylad, not the village
magpie.”

Ealad-hach
cut across the murmur of assent, his voice waspish. “What incident with the
Holy Water?”

“According
to Niall Backstere’s uncle,” said Osraed Kynan, “Cyne Colfre performed a ...
new rite at Waningfeast that involved his, em, sipping Holy Water from the Star
Chalice.”

Ealad-hach’s
face paled. He opened his mouth and spluttered. “An outrageous report! By the
Kiss, if it were true, the Abbod Ladhar would surely have let us know. Look,
Osraed, if the Backstere’s uncle is anything like his nephew, he’s not likely
to let the truth get in the way of a good story. He must be exaggerating the
event.”

“Can
we be certain of that?” asked Osraed Tynedale.

“Perhaps
the question should be,” suggested Bevol, “
how
can we be certain of that?”

Osraed
Faer-wald snorted. “I wager you have formed some opinion about that.”

Bevol
nodded. “We have a new Osraed, Lealbhallain, leaving for Creiddylad directly
after Pilgrim’s Tell. I suggest that we authorize him as our official agent to
the capitol.”

“Lealbhallain
will have his own mission to tend to,” said Ealad-hach. “We should not burden
him with another. Besides, which, I know Osraed Ladhar. If there were anything
worth mentioning going on in his bailiwick, he would mention it. He has not. I
say we must disregard the rumors as the work of a bored imagination. We are
Osraed; if our brothers were disturbed by any goings-on in Creiddylad, we would
know of it.”

There
was an awkward moment of silence, during which throats were cleared, robes
rearranged and glances exchanged. It was Osraed Calach who destroyed the
silence.

“I
don’t know how disturbed our brethren in Creiddylad are, Ealad, but I will
admit to some anxiety. The night before last, I dreamed a horrible chasm opened
up in the heart of Caraid-land. I intended to bring it to this meeting—now
seems the appropriate time. It wasn’t clear whether the disaster was a physical
or spiritual one. I begin to believe it is the latter.”

“Aye,”
agreed Osraed Tynedale and was echoed by at least one other voice. “I too, must
admit to some peculiar unease of late. I have no aislinn to report”—he dipped
his head toward Calach, who was charged with recording such visions—”but I am
not content with these rumors, no not at all. It distresses me to hear them. We
have never had a Cyne like Colfre-”

“He
is a little eccentric,” objected Faer-wald. “Surely that is preferable to
someone of Earwyn’s ilk who would throw Caraid-land into senseless battles with
her neighbors.”

“Is
it his eccentricity,” asked Bevol, “that causes him to repeatedly postpone the
General Assembly?”

“I
have also been visited by visions,” announced Ealad-hach and, with his somber,
elegant bass, drew the attention of the entire seven man Council. “I would
speak of them now, if you please. They are pertinent.”

When
all had consented, he rose and circled the Triumvirate’s long table to stand at
the center of the room—a place where light and shadow struggled and found,
each, its own level. Sun from the high windows dappled his green robe, making
him appear to be clothed in a sylvan sward.

A tree
, thought Bevol. An oak—knotted of
thought, rooted in habit, covered with lichen. They do not bend, these knotty
old oaks.

“My
aislinn was crystalline,” said the deep, ringing voice—crystalline, itself. “The
images, fearfully clear. They had nothing to do with Cyne Colfre. They were not
of murals or of the drinking of Holy Water or even of chasms. They were of
Meredydd-a-Lagan.”

“Meredydd!”
exclaimed Osraed Kynan and the slightly elder Eadmund echoed.

Bevol
gazed at the table top, noticing how fine was the grain. Ealad-hach, in turn,
gazed at him.

“They
were visions of a monstrous heresy,” he finished dramatically.

Bevol
nearly applauded the performance, but restrained himself. “Describe them to us,
Ealad. We cannot interpret what we haven’t seen.”

“
You
saw.” It was an accusation delivered
to Bevol on the tip of a finger that trembled with emotion.

Fear,
Bevol thought, though Ealad-hach was holding it severely in check behind a
shield of anger. He spread his hands, palms up. “Tell us what I saw.”

“I’ll
do better. I will Weave it for you.” He paced the invisible perimeter of a
circle, etched in the pattern of dark and light by the tapping of his feet. He
stopped where he had begun the circuit. “She awaited the Meri, as woman was
never intended to do. She waited in the darkness for the Light. And the Light
came ...” From the tips of his outstretched fingers, colors flew and danced
into the circle, becoming a shore with a lone occupant, and waters suffused
with emerald and spangled with bits of fire.

Calach
gasped and Tynedale breathed out sibilantly.

Ealad-hach
divined the reason for their excitement immediately. “Oh, yes, she came! She
came and drew the heretic into the water ... to drown.”

“You
suppose,” murmured Bevol and the woven image wavered like smoke.

Ealad-hach
pitched it more fuel. “She walked beneath the waves and was sucked from sight.
And then, the most puzzling, horrific image of all—a girl rose from the waves,
shedding light as a bather sheds water. She came from the waves naked, and
stood, laughing, on the shore, flaunting herself.”

“Meredydd?”
asked Calach in a whisper, squinting at the misty face. For the image of the
girl was watery, vaporous, and dark.

“No.
Not Meredydd. Another, older cailin. A girl with pale hair and eyes like the
sea.”

“Pale
hair?” repeated Tynedale. “What are you saying? Gwynet-a-Blaecdel has pale
hair, surely you don’t think this is her.” He waved a meaty hand at the
ambivalent form.

“It
was not her. She’s a child. This was a young woman. A stranger to me.” The
figure lengthened, but showed no more solidity.

“Who
then?”

“Not
who, I think, but what. Woman, she was, and Wicke. The Cwen of Wicke, my
aislinn self knew her to be.”

“Knew
her to be,” echoed Bevol, sounding faintly amused.

“Without
doubt.”

“I
had thought,” said Bevol quietly, “that you were at a loss to interpret this
vision. That you were waiting for Wyth to come home so that he could give the
Tell.”

“I
still intend that he should do so. But I was moved to speak here and now.” He
glared at his peer. “I do not question the promptings of the Meri.” Within the
half-light circle, the aislinn folded in on itself and disappeared.

“No,
no, of course not.”

“If,”
said Calach, “the figure in the vision is symbolic of all women, do you take
this to mean that we must expel Gwynet-a-Blaecdel from Halig-liath?”

Ealad-hach
shrugged. “I would have it so, but that is at the discretion of the entire
Council. However, an issue such as the presence of cailin at Halig-liath could
be the source of the rift you envisioned in your aislinn.”

Calach
pondered, frowning, then shook his head. “The logic is sound, but the tell
refuses to fit.”

“I
dreamed,” murmured Kynan, almost defensively, “that one of the Cyne’s murals
came to life.”

“You’ve
never seen one!” Faer-wald exclaimed.

“In
the dream it was most vivid,” continued the young man, “although ... when I
awoke ... I couldn’t remember much about it. Which is, more or less, why I
neglected to mention the dream in the first place. And also ... well ... I was
ashamed. It was such a-a sensual image, I thought ... I thought it must be a
personal test. But now, when I hear the Osraed Calach speak of chasms-”

“It
is Wicke we must fear, not our own Cyne! Not even his outrageous murals!”
Ealad-hach’s voice was belligerent. “Let us deal with the issue of Wicke.”