Crystal Rose (56 page)

He rose, left his tent and the two women who Wove there, and
summoned a group of black-clad men to him to issue them their orders. They
moved swiftly away toward the empty village.

oOo

In a narrow canyon mere miles below Airdasheen, the four
travelers were forced to abandon their horses and continue on foot. The night
was dark and still and already they could see the telltale glint of enemy fires
above them and to the north.

Upward they moved, and southeast toward Airdasheen. Saefren
figured on several hours of slow, tedious travel—perhaps a bit less if they
were able to slip into the village rather than having to skirt it. He assumed,
as did Aine, that Catahn would have brought the villagers into his stronghold
for safety’s sake, leaving the place empty. The question was, had Feich taken
advantage of that and stationed troops within the village itself?

In a little less than two hours the scarp upon which
Airdnasheen sat rose above them, close enough to blot out a good part of the
sky. Only by the enemy campfires could they see the lowering mist; Airdnasheen
itself was dark and still.

“I’ll go up and take a closer look,” Saefren told his
companions. “Wait here; I’ll signal.”

“I’ll go with you.” That was Aine, of course. “Then you
won’t have to signal.”

“Aine, there could be troops up there, hiding.”

“You think you’d have some advantage over them, alone? How
well can you Weave a Cloaking inyx, Saefren?” she asked, when his mouth opened
to reply.

He grimaced. “Not very well at all. Fine. I’ll be glad of
your company, then, since you’ve offered to make yourself useful.” He turned to
Leal and Iseabal. “Wait here until we see if it’s clear.”

They climbed, pushing through knee-high snow, using rocks
and brush for steps and handholds, up the flank of the escarpment until they
hunkered among a clump of scrubby pines that grew at the northwest verge of the
village. Darkness met them, a darkness so complete they could see nothing of
the village buildings save the most ghostly wash of moonlight on the roofs of
those closest to them. For some minutes they sat, side by side, listening,
watching, waiting. Aine, Saefren was certain, was scanning the place with more
than eyes and ears.

He turned to her, leaning his mouth close to her ear.
“Well?”

“It’s empty. That is, the Hillwild aren’t here, but . . .
Something’s not right. Someone’s here.”

“Feich?”

“No, not Feich. No one with aidan.”

“What do you feel?”

“Fear.” She turned to look at him, her face gleaming like a
dim moon. “I feel fear.”

“Someone hiding out from Feich?”

“I don’t know, but here. In Airdnasheen.” She made a gesture
upslope to where the southern reaches of the village huddled beneath the crags.
“Up there.”

“Do we dare travel through the village, then?”

“Do we have a choice?”

“We can move along the face of the scarp, but we’d be
exposed, hampered by the snow and the slope, and too damn close to Feich’s
camps.”

“Well, then,” Aine said and glanced back over her shoulder,
though she could surely see nothing.

Saefren assumed she had just summoned the others. “My feet
and hands are like ice,” he told her. “Have you no Weaves for warmth?”

She chuckled. “Oh, aye,” she said and took his gloved hands
between her own gloveless ones.

In a moment, he felt warmth flood his fingertips, flow up
his arms, invade his body, rush down his legs to his feet. It was an eerie
sensation, for it felt like no fire he had ever sat before, no hot bath he had
ever taken. This warmth moved from the inside out, from the red-haired girl to
him. It was as if his bones had suddenly learned to conduct heat.

He wished, for a moment, that he was not wearing gloves and
could know if her hands were as hot as it seemed they must be.

That thought led to one of a slightly more intimate nature.
One Saefren dashed away with a charge of purely personal heat, only barely
avoiding the guilty gesture of pulling his hands away. It was little more than
a flash of feeling, not even a full-fledged thought, but it shamed him and he
feared she may have caught it. Only when she didn’t pull her own hands away,
did he relax.

He was thoroughly warmed by the time the others reached
them. They paused only long enough for Leal and Iseabal to taste of
Airdnasheen’s strange quiet, then they slipped silently down from the rocks and
into the empty village. Within moments, Aine and Iseabal had oriented
themselves and led the others toward the eastern perimeter and the trail to
Hrofceaster.

In the river of mist, shops and houses loomed like shrouded
islands. They kept to the shadows, eyes open for any other presence than their
own. They were skirting the town circle when sudden light exploded across the
snow-carpeted way, resolving into a billow of flame that exposed them utterly.
In seconds, the roofs of three houses opposite them were afire. The flames
leapt up in sheets, illuminating the rocky mountainside, washing across the
circle along with a blast of heat. In a matter of seconds, they were spreading,
racing to cut off the narrow lane that ran up to Hrofceaster.

Aine froze, staring at the inferno. She did not need to see
the dark figures scurrying before the flames to know that they were being
herded like sheep. The question was, where were they expected to go? She
glanced over her shoulder, past the fire-washed startled faces of her
companions. Back the way they’d come? She made a decision, praying it was the
right one.

“Come on! This way!” She slipped into a dark cut between two
buildings, the others moving swiftly behind her.

Saefren moved to her shoulder. “Where are we going?”

“Out of the village.”

“Are you sure—?”

“No, I’m not.”

He followed without comment down the rough alley to the back
of the row of buildings. They crossed a narrow strip of bare, rocky ground,
stumbling over obstacles they couldn’t see beneath the snow, Aine concentrating
on the path, Saefren on Aine, Leal and Iseabal on a Cloakweave that would allow
them to see themselves while shielding them from the eyes of others. Through
the hemming rocks, they clambered, coming at last to the place where the
escarpment fell away toward the canyon in a snowy roil of rock and frozen
brush.

At the bottom of the track, Aine turned them eastward and
upward again, toward the fortress. Their only trail led between the burning
village above and the enemy encampments below. She could only pray that the
Cloakweave Leal and Isha supported would be enough to conceal them. She almost
dared to stretch out her aidan to Taminy, but fear of discovery forestalled
her.

The blaze of Airdnasheen lit up the snow and mist, bathing
the mountainside in glory. Aine tried to accept its light and ignore its
dangers, her attention ahead, her eyes on the narrow, rocky defile. They
rounded a large outcropping and she saw them—the ramparts of Hrofceaster,
gleaming in the fire-fed mist, tiny figures swarming along the top of its
battlements. Her heart surged with relief so strong she nearly cried out. A
second later a slim figure swaddled in red blocked their trail.

Aine stopped, weltering in confusion. Surely, this person
couldn’t see them. As she watched, quivering, others appeared, Caraidin
soldiers, Deasach corsairs.

The figure lifted an arm in a sweeping gesture and the
soldiers deployed themselves. When they were surrounded, a man in Feich colors
came to stand beside the red-robed figure—a man Aine had come to hate. He
lifted a red crystal before him, balancing it on the palm of one hand. It
glowed evilly in the orange wash of flame from the burning village. More evil
still, was the man behind the crystal, a man whose crimson face wore a smile of
triumphant delight.

oOo

He had the Osmaer crystal, well she knew. He had Airleas
Malcuim. And now he had Iseabal, Aine, Leal and Saefren Claeg. She was ready
when he called her out, arrogantly demanding that she meet him before the gates
of Hrofceaster to negotiate her surrender.

Catahn would not let her go, begged her to let the siege
continue, to let the Hillwild at his command attempt to turn the tide. They had
watched their homes burn, their village utterly destroyed, they were
determined, they would prevail. But they could not prevail. Another day,
another night, and Hrofceaster would crumble physically. Feich’s forces were
superior. With the capture of the Osmaer, there was a decision to be made and
it was Taminy’s, alone, to make.

She withdrew to her private chamber, leaving even Catahn
behind in the Great Hall. On her knees before the fire, she sought the Touch of
the Meri. She took herself to a place of light, a place beyond the room her
body inhabited.

“What must I do?” she asked, and knew the answer in a
breath.

“You wanted to strike him down.”

Taminy raised her head, turning her eyes to the hazy
shadows. Skeet stepped from them, seeming a hot, dancing flame in this Eibhilin
chamber. Through the radiance that surrounded them, he seemed to wear two
aspects, one overlapping the other like a translucent garment; a young boy, an
old man with a beard of fire and snow and eyes like a summer sky.

“I thought of it,” she admitted.

“Will you?”

“You know the answer to that. You were my example. Did you
struggle against those who came for you at Mertuile? When Feich’s men carried
you off to die, did you lay them to waste?”

The half-aislinn half-corporeal being shook his head—a
twinned movement.

“No more can I. It’s part of the Pattern. To represent the Spirit,
to lay claim to Its wisdom and wield Its power, I must reflect Its qualities.
To do otherwise would destroy what I am consecrated to establish. The Tapestry
would unravel. Six hundred years undone in a moment of vengeance and anger.”

“So then, what will you do?” The voice was Skeet’s, the
soul-piercing gaze was Bevol’s.

“I will surrender.”

oOo

“I accede to your demand, Daimhin Feich.”

He whirled, all but leaving his skin behind, and peered into
the darkness of the hostage tent. She, the Divine Quarry, floated before him in
the stygian gloom like a golden rose, watching him with grave, sad eyes.
Forgetting the hostages he had been gloating over, he reached out a hand to the
image—aislinn, of course—a mirage, but so real, so close. He groped after her.

“You will meet me tomorrow, before the fortress gates?”

“I will.”

“A wise choice. For their sake.” He gestured at the drugged
forms of Airleas, Aine, Iseabal and Leal.

The Claeg, Saefren, was Giftless as a post and so had been
spared Coinich Mor’s sleeping draught. He huddled in a corner of the tent, eyes
glaring sullenly at his captor. Feich enjoyed his wakeful hatred.

“You cannot withstand me, Taminy. Do you understand why?”

She grimaced. “I understand that there is a test in this for
me, perhaps I have failed it.”

“You fail because you are weak, dear Lady. Oh, I don’t mean
your powers or your wisdom. You are powerful enough. But your wisdom is based
on a fallacy—that good is inherently more powerful than evil. You are wrong, of
course.” He smiled. “Shall I tell you why you are wrong?”

“I suppose you shall.”

“Good cannot bring itself to perform the acts evil commits
without conscience. I know you could wrest the Stone from me and use it to
destroy me utterly. I even know you
want
to do that, but that would be failure, wouldn’t it? So you do nothing. That
makes you weak—a sheep facing its shearer. The seeds of your undoing are within
you, dear Taminy. They are inherent in your nature.”

She seemed to consider that, her effigy’s sea-green eyes
never leaving his face. “The seeds of my undoing,” she murmured.

Her voice was like the soughing of the wind or the surge of
the sea, magical, musical.

A sigh escaped his lips. “Unbind your hair.” It was a
demand, yet even he heard the raw pleading in his voice.

She studied him a moment, then reached up and tugged the
leather thong from her braid, loosing it to fall about her shoulders in a pale
gold cascade.

“You are exquisite,” he told her. “A living analogy for
Ochan’s Crystal. When I have you—”

“You have Ochan’s Crystal,” she interrupted. “Why have you
not tried to use it?”

“Ah, that I am saving, so that all eyes may see my triumph
complete. Most especially that your eyes may see it.”

She nodded and, nodding, began to fade from view.

“Stay!” he cried.

“Tomorrow,” she said and disappeared.

Feich blinked into the darkness of her passing and trembled.
Desire pulsed through him, carried in his blood. He would go to Coinich Mor.
No, to Lilias. But no. Neither of those poor substitutes would do now, not when
he was so close to having the ultimate desire. A memory stirred in him of a
long ago nightmare—a hunt, a chase, a Quarry he had been bent on destroying.

He smiled at himself. How transparent all that was now. It
was not Taminy’s death he wanted, nor her destruction. It was her submission,
perhaps even . . . her love?

Coinich Mor and Lilias both forgotten, he left the tent with
its pair of guards and went to gaze upon the Osmaer Crystal, never noticing
that a certain baleful pair of eyes no longer gleamed at him from the tent’s
darkest corner.

oOo

Saefren lay upon the ground behind the hostage tent,
gathering his senses, letting the cold wet of the snow drive them into a tight,
obedient, quivering herd. He didn’t have time to ponder what he’d seen—Feich
talking to a gossamer being, an aislinn projection of Taminy. She had given him
the opportunity for escape, an opportunity he had only because Feich thought
him Giftless and dull.

He had to make good with it, somehow.

He wriggled his hands, bound tightly behind his back. Damn!
If he had even a midge of Aine’s Gift, he could untie himself and find a
weapon. As it was, only his feet were free and so, with immense difficulty, he
raised himself to his knees, then to his feet, desperate not to cry out or
grunt with the exertion.