Crystal Rose (31 page)

Ladhar put his eye to the gap. The Dearg woman was there,
just as Caime had said. She sat opposite Feich beside a small brazier,
conversing in low tones. So soft was their discourse that the voice of the
river obscured it. Ladhar could only tell that the Wicke was reporting
something to Feich, her hands weaving illustrations in the air between them.
For his part, Feich merely nodded, uttered a word or two here and there or
laughed. His eyes were bright—too bright, Ladhar thought—and his body twitched
as if in unbidden reaction to his companion’s words.

When the Wicke’s hands at last fell still, Feich brought a
box into view. It was a small box, and covered with beaten gold.

Ah, now!
Ladhar
thought.
He pays for her report
.

Desperately, he wished to know what intelligence she had
brought her lord. Had she some knowledge of treachery within the House Dearg?

Feich lifted the lid of the box, and the brazier glow picked
flashes of sequined light from its contents.

Jewels! Jewels for a
damned Wicke! Is there no end to the man’s outrageous—?

Ladhar’s innards were at once as chill as his corpulent
body. Breath froze in his lungs. No. It was clear, there was no end—no depth to
which Daimhin Feich would not go. For the gilt box contained only a single
jewel—a large, blood red crystal that Daimhin Feich now removed from its velvet
bed and held before him in cupped hands.

How—? How had he gotten the stone? Dear God, did he intend
to give it to this creature? Or had she brought it to him herself?

Ladhar all but gasped when the woman, a taunting smile on
her broad face, took a second, smaller stone from a pouch that hung between her
ample breasts. She held the little yellow crystal up before Daimhin Feich’s
eyes, smile deepening, and spoke. Ladhar made out only the word “warm.”

Feich laughed and shook his head and the two of them began
to Weave.

Afterward, Ladhar would wonder how he had stayed still
through what followed—how he had not cried out with each new outrage. For the
couple practiced Weaving an array of inyx: They caused the fire to dwindle to
an ember then flare blindingly in its bowl; they made the brazier itself to
rise from the carpeted ground cover, then descend as if winged; they riled the
winds outside the tent so that they beat at Ladhar and whispered to him in
turns; they woke day birds from their slumber and coaxed them to light upon the
center pole of their garish tent.

Last of all, and more unsettling than their Weaving of the
wind, they caused a sleep-befuddled Ruadh Feich to stumble from his own small
tent to the Regent’s grand shelter. Bewicked, he asked why he had been summoned
inquired after his lord’s pleasure. His lord’s pleasure was to send him away again,
back to his tent, but not before bidding him remove his night robe and dance
naked upon it in the brazier-lit doorway.

Gales of laughter followed Ruadh Feich, still unclad, back
to his tent. The entire storm was from his elder cousin’s throat; the Dearg
monster only sat and smiled that secret, know-all smile with her cat’s eyes as
bright and hot as the flames leaping in the brazier at her side. When Feich
turned to her from his cousin’s humiliation, he was jubilant, his face alive
with mirth, with exultation.

Dear Meri, he was drunk with power, intoxicated beyond
reason. Ladhar quaked like the breeze-blown trees overhead, horrified.

His horror would only grow. For now the Dearg Wicke laid her
yellow stone aside on the thick carpet Feich had carried from Mertuile and
wordlessly removed her clothing, eyes gleaming with feral light. Daimhin Feich
watched her, his own crystal clutched in his hands, his eyes mirroring Coinich
Mor’s heat and brightness.

Ladhar watched, too, as the woman began to weave and dance,
sporting her abundant, rounded body before the rapt gaze of Caraid-land’s
Regent and would-be Cyne. Her movements grew in wantonness, her gestures
gracefully obscene, until at last she lay beside the brazier, writhing in the
wash of kinetic light, there giving her companion mute intimation of her
desire. Feich complied, laying his glowing stone beside Coinich Mor’s,
stripping his own garments in fevered haste, lowering himself to her undulating
body.

Their joining was violent, Feich assaulting the woman as he
must dream of assaulting Halig-liath. Ladhar barely saw them as they writhed in
the crawl of firelight. His eyes were on those two crystals, covered now by the
lewdly shifting shadows, but blazing-bright nonetheless. They pulsed with their
own commingled fire—the red and the yellow-gold—power upon power, feeding on
itself, growing fat on its own heat and light.

Brighter than the brazier light the crystal glory grew,
until the tent blazed with it. Near blinded, Ladhar at last tore his eyes away
and sank back on his fat haunches, chilled to the soul, numb to the core of his
being. He barely managed to haul himself to his feet, not caring that he made
loud scuffling noises—they would be covered by the river’s murmurs and Daimhin
Feich’s fierce cries—but he must get away, because the light had blinded him
and the sights he had witnessed were now burnt into the darkness behind his
eyes. Worse, the Dearg woman had begun to whimper and moan and the old Abbod
could not bear the sound. A moment more and the rhythmic keening would become
shrill enough for others to hear and he could not be caught here, cowering in a
frozen heap.

So, he willed his rebellious legs to obey him and dragged
himself from tree to tree, from bush to bush, away into the darkness to a place
where the sound of the Holy River might wash over him and soothe the tumult of
his soul.

He had been there for some time when he realized that he
could still hear the sobs of the Dearg Wicke. The sound tore at his ears. Holy
of Holies, how could he yet be hearing that terrible sound?

Shuddering, he forced his hands over his ears . . . and
discovered that the pitiable cries were his own.

oOo

Ladhar was alone in the Inner Chamber of Ochanshrine.
Alone, but for the seemingly sentient Stone. But no, he was in a tent on the
banks of the Halig-tyne, the uneven ground wreaking havoc with his back,
exhaustion putting sand beneath eyelids too heavy with fatigue to open.

A dream. He was dreaming.

Dear God-Spirit, Precious Meri, he did not want to dream.
Perhaps, if he whimpered he might wake himself, or Cadder might hear and wake
him. But he could make no sound, so the dream claimed him.

Alone in the Shrine, his eyes on the Great Crystal, he
sensed danger all around him. He could hear deceit whispering in the halls
above and behind, and perfidy scuttling in the eaves. Profanity quivered in
every dark nook; blasphemy shivered invisibly in the air.

As he stood guard here, the shadowy forces coalesced and
took on a loathsome form. Ladhar could not see it, but he knew its aspect; it
was writhing darkness and flame; it smelled of incense, oils and lust-born
sweat; it sang lewd duans and whispered obscenities. It fed on power—the sort
of power that could be channeled and amplified through the Crystal on which he
now fixed his eyes.

It was approaching from behind him. Coming to steal the
Stone. And he was alone.

Not alone.

A voice. A thought.

“Mistress!”

But no. A pair of eyes gazed at him from the dark beyond the
Stone, seeming to float in it’s gentle aurora. Icy, blue eyes.

Familiar? He was unsure.

Never alone
, the
Voice insisted.

Behind him, Ladhar heard the obscene darkness laugh.
Reflexively, he reached out to the Stone. He would perform a Wardweave.

Quivering, he drew upon the Crystal, but the Weave was weak
with panic. He cried out to the Spirit—to the Meri—begging more strength. Why
did They not give it?

The cord is frayed,
brother. The bond is weak. You have only your own resources to draw on, as you
have done for many, many years.

My own . . . ?

No. He rejected the idea. If that were true, then he really
was alone.

There is help
. The
eyes vanished.

Help? From where? He could feel the foul, hot breath of the
Darkness, sense its desire for the Stone. It was then that he saw the two
shadowy figures—one on each side of the Stone’s pedestal. Like silvery phantoms
they shimmered in mid-air, seeming not even to touch the earth. Yet, they had
hands, and those hands reached toward him (in supplication?) or toward the
Osmaer Crystal—he could not tell which.

Was this his help? The Darkness breathed and shuffled. The
silvery figures gestured at him to do something—to . . . to give them the Stone?
The Darkness pressed at his back.

No, he couldn’t. He would let no one touch the Stone. Not
the grotesque Darkness, not the unknown shades. No one. No one!

Something seized him and shook him, prying him from his
vision. Darkness was everywhere, formless, void. Blessedly void.

“Abbod!” The frantic voice was Cadder’s. His, too, were the
hands that shook Ladhar to grateful waking. “Abbod, are you . . . ?”

Ladhar forced his eyes open, certain they would spill sand
onto his cheeks, and croaked, “I’m . . . all . . . right.”

Later, as he sipped hot tea, he told Cadder of the dream,
for the second time this night, sincerely glad of the man’s presence. For it
was Cadder who had found him quaking and muttering by the river and
unquestioningly brought him to his bed. For all his faults, the man was a good
listener.

He listened now, and when Ladhar had finished, he asked,
“What do you take the two phantoms to be, Abbod?”

“I don’t know. Though the Voice hinted that they were
allies.”

“And the Darkness?”

Ladhar shivered, reliving those hideous moments when he had
cowered outside Daimhin Feich’s tent. His mind’s eye could see her, the Dearg
Wicke, her broad, homely face alive with pleasure as she witnessed Ruadh
Feich’s humiliation, as she enjoyed his cousin’s carnal worship.

“Perhaps,” he said, “it is that Dark Force you spoke to me
of. Perhaps I am finally coming to believe in it.” He hesitated, wondering how
much he could confide in the cleirach. “Daimhin Feich . . . has a rune crystal
and he has learned how to Weave.”

Caime Cadder’s face was as gray as the coming dawn. “He
has . . . But how . . . ?”

“Apparently, this Dearg seeress he’s brought along gave it
to him and . . . is schooling him in its use.”

The color came slowly back into Cadder’s narrow face. “Then
he has a Gift?”

“So it would seem.”

“Then perhaps all is not lost.”

Ladhar glanced sharply at his companion. “Whatever can you
mean?”

“Only that armed with the ability to Weave, he may be able
to defend against this Evil Force.”

“Not if he is co-opted by it.”

Cadder’s small eyes flashed fear. “Regent Feich is a man of
strong will, Abbod. If his Gift is equally strong . . .”

Ladhar shivered despite his many layers of clothing, the
stoked brazier and the cup of steaming liquid between his trembling hands.

“Pray that it is, Caime. No. Pray it is
stronger
.”

oOo

“Then there is still a force outside Creiddylad?” The
Osraed Fhada digested this intelligence with a furrowing of his Meri-Kissed
brow.

“This displeases you?” Saefren asked.

Fhada smiled and shook his leonine head. In the spot of late
morning sunlight that pooled about his desk, he looked less a man and more a
creature of legend—an aingeal, a paeri. “I was merely concerned that your uncle
felt the need to leave a force behind, especially since, as you say, our Regent
specifically asked him not to.”

Saefren answered the smile. “I believe Uncle Iobert may have
left a force behind chiefly
because
‘our Regent’ asked him not to. But they are deployed on House lands as the
contract stipulated—Madaidh lands, to be exact.”

Fhada laughed at that, but the girl Aine—Alraed Aine,
Saefren reminded himself wryly—sat in her own puddle of comparative gloom
looking taciturn and even disapproving.

“I don’t understand any of this,” she said sharply. “And
less than I understand why the Chieftains left men here, do I understand why
they took men with them on Feich’s march to Halig-liath. The man means to harm
Taminy.”

“Who is no longer at Halig-liath,” said Saefren reasonably.
“As long as Feich believes she is, he’ll be unable to cause her any real harm.”

“Moreover,” Fhada added, “he may reveal his deeper
intentions and plans to his supposed allies.”

Saefren shook his head. “Doubtful, Osraed. Feich is a sly
man, to all accounts. Sly men rarely confide their deeper intentions to
anyone.”

“What happens when this sly man realizes Taminy is not at
Halig-liath, but at Hrofceaster?” Aine asked. “What’s to stop him from taking
his forces there?”

“The winter snows, for one thing; the trail all but closed
behind us as we descended. My uncle and the combined forces of the Claeg, the
Graegam, the Gilleas and the Jura, for another.”

“All well and good, unless Feich can call up an equal force.
In which case . . .”

“Civil war,” murmured Fhada. “Unless some other Force
prevails.”

Aine shifted in her seat. “I must let Taminy know what’s
going on.”

“How do you propose—?” Saefren halted. She wasn’t listening.
Her eyes were closed and her lips moved silently. He glanced at Fhada.
What
? he mouthed, but the Osraed merely
raised a finger to his lips. Saefren turned his attention back to Aine.

Head back, eyes open again, she stared fixedly at a point on
the ceiling. Saefren watched, unsure whether to be amazed or amused as a cascade
of expressions flowed across the girl’s face—concentration, pleasure, concern,
outright glee, concern again.

For several minutes this went on, then Aine lowered her eyes
and turned them to Saefren. “How long before they reach Nairne?”