Crystal Rose (22 page)

“You are.”

“Not even me.”

He looked at her then, saw the pensive look on her face, and
knew she contemplated a weak moment of her own. From something Desary had told
him of her time at Mertuile as Taminy’s companion, he suspected one such moment
had come at the hands of Daimhin Feich. The thought of it made his brain burn
with anger—with hatred. When Taminy raised her eyes to his, her gaze
extinguished the flame, leaving ashes.

He crossed to the hearth, throwing himself down before her
on the thick rug. “Forgive me, Lady. Forgive me for throwing my shame open to
you. Forgive me my weakness.”

His head in her lap he felt the soft caress of her hand upon
his hair.

“It is Eyslk who must forgive you these sins, Catahn. As she
must forgive her mother. A woman should not bear a child for honor, but for
love. She should not bear it to a family name, but to a man.” She raised his
head with her hands then, framing his face with them, gazing down at him with
eyes as deep and limitless as the Sea whose color they wore. “There is one
other whose forgiveness you must have. Yourself. Forgive yourself these things,
Catahn. Then take up your life and move forward. Move upward.”

The touch of her eyes, of her hands, opened in his soul a
great, river canyon of hope and joy—a canyon only her Sea could fill. But as
glorious as that was, it seemed to Catahn Hillwild that he stood at the bottom
of that chasm, forever staring up, unable to climb out.

Forward? Upward? How could he move in either direction when
the very Touch that warmed his soul, also heated his blood?

oOo

Cadder’s gaze leapt anxiously about Ochanshrine’s circular
sanctuary. “Please, Regent Feich!” he whispered. “Please! I can’t possibly—”

“You can. And you will. Indeed, you must.” Feich lowered his
voice a notch and lowered himself to the wooden bench next to the quivering
cleirach. “You’re holding out on me, Minister. You know more of this . . .
aislinn business than you’re telling. I’ve stared at this damned crystal, I’ve
burned incense to it, I’ve sung to it. It does nothing.”

“I don’t know what to tell you.”

“Tell me what
they
do.” Feich jerked his head toward the doorway that led to the Abbis where the
Osraed of Ochanshrine lived.

“They . . . they use duans, the-the Gift. Regent Feich, I
can’t—”

“Use that word one more time, Cadder, and I’ll start
shouting my demands. Is it the chamber? Must I also use a circular room?”

Cadder scanned the sanctuary, mouth working. “It-it could be
the chamber. The aislinn chambers of the Osraed are circular—often conical.”

“Fine, then I will build such a room. What else?”

“Of-of course, they don’t always use their aislinn
chambers,” babbled the cleirach, “but then they’re trained Osraed and you’re—”
He broke off and swallowed several times in rapid succession. “It-it could be
the duans—there are different duans for different purposes.”

“Is there a book of them somewhere? Surely, they’re
recorded.”

“I-I-I’ve seen—Yes, there are books.”

“In the library here.”

“Yes.”

“Fine. Get one for me.”

“Regent, I—”

“And I warned you what I’d do if you uttered that word
again. Think carefully before you speak.”

Cadder squirmed and sweated. “I-I shall attempt to procure
it.”

“Good. What else?”

“What else? Regent Feich, I don’t know what else. Either one
has the Gift or one has not.”

“What about the crystal itself? Might I have gotten a flawed
one?”

“I suppose that could be—”

“Here. Here is the crystal.” Before Cadder could protest,
Feich had opened the velvet bag and revealed his prize.

Cadder’s mouth clamped shut and his sweating increased.

“What? What is it?”

“An Osraed would not use that crystal. It is stained.”

“I’m not an Osraed. Can I use it?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m warning you; ‘I don’t know’ is beginning to annoy me as
much as ‘I can’t.’”

“It’s a blooded crystal, Regent Feich. No Osraed has ever
used one with that stain.”

“Does that mean it can’t be used to conjure?”

Cadder’s gaze flew, once again, around the room. “Please,
Regent! The Osraed do not conjure. They Weave. There is a great difference.”

“They are words.”

“They are the difference between the Art and Wicke craft.
I’m sorry, Regent, I cannot help you with either.”

Impatient, angry, Feich rose. “Damn you, Cadder. I should
reveal you to Ladhar this very night.”

The cleirach paled, but did not protest. “If you must.”

“Worm. Haven’t you even the courage to defend yourself?
You’re pathetic. It’s no wonder the Meri rejected you.”

Cadder’s eyes, fixed now on the Osmaer crystal, misted.
“Yes, Regent. I’m sure that’s true.”

To be confronted with such complete self-abnegation, such
unabashed cowering, drove Daimhin Feich to rage.

“Damn you, man! Have you no spine? Have you no dignity?” He
moved closer to the quivering cleirach, turning his back on the Osmaer, and
lowered his voice to a growl. “You are everything I despise about the
religious. Instead of giving you strength, your faith makes you weak and
useless. It must give Ladhar great personal pleasure to have you about—someone
who will be kicked and cuffed and murmur only ‘thanks’ for the abuse. You are a
poor excuse for a Caraidin, Cadder, and a poorer excuse for a man. You make a
god of me.”

Cadder’s only reaction to this tirade was a sudden widening
of his eyes. His lips, open now, moved without sound. It took Feich an angry
moment to realize that the miserable little creature was reacting to something
other than his cruelty.

He turned, and was struck with quaking; deep within its
translucent facets, the Osmaer Crystal’s heart glowed a deep, ruddy gold.

oOo

Taminy was nearly asleep when she felt it—a glacial wind
that caught her tethered loosely to her body, and slapped her back to
wakefulness.

Shuddering, she sat up—would have flown from the bed had she
wings. It was like nothing she had felt before, that chill-hot kiss of terror.
Its touch was unclean, horrific, a finger of pure malice that trailed along her
spine and dug at her heart. It told her, wordlessly, what she did not want to
know; a connection had been made between Daimhin Feich and the Osmaer Crystal.
And in contact with that, he was somehow, hideously, connected with her.

The touch was brief; ambient anger faded swiftly as it was
swallowed by surprise. Still, it left Taminy shaking, holding her breath. When
it was gone, she dared breathe. Then she reached out shaking hands and called
silently for aid. It came in the form of Skeet, who scratched softly at her
bedroom door and came to sit upon the foot of her bed. As she looked at him, it
seemed an Eibhilin radiance rose from him to embrace her.

“Feich,” she murmured. “Feich has touched the Osmaer Crystal
with his aidan. I felt it. It . . . it connected us for a moment. He has the
Gift.”

Skeet nodded, shedding boyhood as if it were a costume he
wore. “It’s a capricious Gift. Unsettled, disloyal, as treacherous as its
master.”

“And just as dangerous.”

“In every age,” said Skeet softly, “there is an Adversary.
One who, out of desire for what he does not understand, makes himself an enemy
of desire’s Object.”

“I once thought Osraed Ealad-hach was the Enemy,” Taminy
whispered.

“He was once. That changed. He changed. In the twinkling of
an eye, you changed him. Now, there is a new Enemy, dangerous because he knows
no Law above his own.”

Taminy studied the young-old face. “Does that grant him
power?”

“It grants him license. He may not accomplish what you
can’t, but he can assuredly accomplish what you won’t.”

“I must thwart him. The Stone. He mustn’t get his hands on
it.”

Skeet’s brows rippled—a peculiar expression reminiscent of
the Osraed Bevol. Such tiny things had given birth to the rumor around Nairne
that Skeet was not a boy at all, but a golem created by Bevol to take the place
of a lost child.

“Then,” he said, tilting his head so that she must see Bevol
in him again, “it must be got into other hands.”

In an instant the boy was back, grinning at her. “Sleep well
for the rest of the night. It seems the enemy is gone, for now.”

“For now,” Taminy echoed. “But not for long.”

Anything, no matter how
wonderful, no matter how good, can be misdirected and abused. A lamp in the
hands of the blind will more likely burn its bearer than light his way. To the
sighted and wise, the lamp is a guide, to the blind and ignorant it is a
danger.

—Utterances of the Osraed Ochan #19

The Jura were a House of poets and musicians, scholars and
storytellers. They’d produced a good many Prentices and Osraed over the
centuries, but few great warriors. The bright-eyed Osraed Tynedale was a
Jura—historian and philosopher, Osraed and Taminist. Mystics, all of them, and
therefore incomprehensible to Saefren Claeg.

That they accepted Taminy’s “talisman” did not surprise him,
though he was a bit taken aback by the amount of celebrating it engendered. The
fiery scroll was immediately affixed to a standard and paraded through the Jura
holt, collecting a parade of curious and jubilant folk who followed the new
icon from village to manse. There, in a great, walled court, a bonfire was set
and the Jura Chieftain, Mortain, his young heir at his side, recited the story
of Taminy’s escape from Mertuile and how the Eibhilin scroll and sacred Shard
(which he now wore in a small bag dangling from a cord about his neck) had come
to be among them.

The Jura were impressed with their Chieftain’s Tell. He was,
Saefren had to admit, an impressive figure—a young man with gleaming red-gold
hair and large, pale green eyes that made the recipient of their gaze feel as
if they had just been read, mind, heart and soul. Many of his people came
forth, both men and women, young and not-so-young, and pledged themselves to
travel with him to Creiddylad to impress their petition upon the Feich Regent.
The celebration of their journey, intermixed with preparation for it, lasted
the night.

After a night of feasting and fest, Saefren felt barely able
to drag himself out of the fine bed The Jura had put him in for his meager
hours of sleep. Yet, not long after sunrise, he found himself on the road,
headed for the Graegam holdings by way of Claeg, where Uncle Iobert expected to
take on more men.

That the Jura contingent was made up of both men and women
was a source of bemusement to the Claeg kinsmen, but put the annoyingly
clear-eyed Aine in a high mood. She spent the traveling day chattering with the
Jura cailin and flirting outrageously with the Jura youth.

Saefren was tired, hungry and in a foul mood when they
stopped to make their evening camp. He fully intended to retire early to the
tent he shared with his uncle, but the Jura Elders, seemingly none the worse
for the wear of the previous night, set up a great, roaring fire in the midst
of their colorful tents and settled down for a round of tales.

As Aine-mac-Lorimer was the guest of honor at these
proceedings (the Jura even called her Alraed Aine, according her a station on a
par with the Osraed), Mortain Jura asked her to settle on a Tell. She
diplomatically chose the story of Bearach Malcuim and the Jura ancestor, Osraed
Gartain. Obviously pleased, The Jura launched into the Tell while Saefren
sullenly chewed at his stew.

oOo

It was during the reign of Kieran the Dark (said the
Storyteller), son of Niall Cleirach, grandson of Bitan-ig, called the
Preserver. Kieran was a much weaker Cyne than his father and owed much to the
solid framework his grandfather had built and his father built upon. Alas, his
weakness did not go unnoticed by those who watched for such things. These bided
their time and, upon the death of Bitan-ig’s old advisor, the Osraed Abhainn,
the rebellious House Claeg arose to establish control over the Throne.

(Looks were passed here between Claeg and Jura, and Saefren
thought his uncle’s face darkened, though he said nothing. There was nothing to
be said to the truth.)

In a handful of years (continued The Jura) the Claeg had
reduced Kieran to a mere puppet, through the agency of a sooth-sayer named
Suardalin-a-Troddan, for Kieran was a superstitious man, easily led when it
came to protecting his timid self.

In those days, it was the custom for the Cyne to be married
at Halig-liath. But Suardalin prophesied that if Kieran was wed in the Holy
Fortress, the roof of the Sanctuary would fall in upon the guests. Kieran
consulted the Osraed, who protested that they’d been given no such aislinn
message, but so fearful was he of Suardalin, that he rejected the Osraed
counsel and had a chapel hastily built at Creiddylad in which he and his
betrothed, Ailis Graegam, were married.

In this way, the Claeg began to drive the wedge of distrust
between the Throne and the Osraed. A further prophecy that Kieran would fall
from the battlements of the Holy Fortress when he next ventured there, kept him
from ever again entering its sacred precincts. Thereafter, he presided over
Farewellings from Nairne’s village green.

The Claeg Chieftain, Buchan by name, saw to it that the Cyne
was surrounded at court by Claeg advisors and, using the soothsayer, Buchan had
himself put in a position to defend the Cyne’s gates against all others. Kieran
Malcuim was quick to make Buchan his Durweard at Suardalin-a-Troddan’s say-so.

Yet even timid Kieran had his limits. Realizing how he’d
been led, galled by his own cowardice, he at last sought counsel from the
Osraed at Ochanshrine. With their strength, he was able to stand up for
himself. He sent his family away into hiding, then attempted to throw off the
yoke of Claeg domination by ejecting Buchan Claeg from his position as Durweard
and barring all Claeg kinsman from Mertuile.