Taminy (47 page)

Carried
to his feet by that Voice singing, again, in his own blood, Colfre paced back
to the garden window where Day could be seen to pull in her skirts; where Night
spread hers out, layer upon layer.

“Sire,”
Daimhin said in the most diplomatic of voices. “Sire, I thought the point of
the interview with Ladhar was to gain Taminy an ally. Do you think you
succeeded in that?”

“Don’t
patronize me, Daimhin. Of course, I didn’t succeed in that. So, he fears her.
That may be better.”

“Better?”
Feich repeated. “My lord, had you no ... control over the situation?”

Colfre
laughed, exhilarated. “Not as far as that damned Crystal was concerned.”

“I
thought you said she controlled the Crystal.”

Colfre
shrugged. “That was the impression I had.”

“Then,
perhaps you should endeavor to control her.”

Colfre
turned to regard his Durweard with mild bemusement. “We wanted miracles,
remember?”

“Little
miracles. ‘Oh-and-ah’ miracles. Not stupefying, mind-boggling miracles.”

“You
have no sense of mystery!”

“And
you have no-!” Feich turned his head and gazed momentarily at a muraled panel.
He took a deep breath and looked back to his Cyne, smiling. “You have no idea,
my lord, what the superstitious mind can make of such wonders. We are
attempting to display a lovable Taminy, an innocent Taminy, not a fire-slinging
hellion who knocks Cleirachs about like rumble pins. Our purpose is to prove
the Osraed to be inept and fanatical stewards of Caraid-land’s spiritual life.”

“Our
purpose was. I think that is changing. I think I see other possibilities.”

Feich
gazed down at the rich folds of his tunic. “I’m sure you do. I see ... other
possibilities, also. But if you terrify the Osraed, you risk uniting them. You
can’t afford to unite them now. United, and still a force in government, they
will fight you tooth and claw over the situation with the Deasach, and they
will never allow you to declare yourself Osric. Your greatest and best weapon
against them is their own disunity.”

Ah,
damn, the man had a point. Colfre came back to the couch again, to sit and try
to appear relaxed. Inside, he churned. “Well, Daimhin Feich, Durweard, what do
you propose I do about it? Taminy-a-Cuinn performs ostentatious miracles
completely at will. I couldn’t have stopped her from healing that boy this
morning. Nor could I have stopped what happened with the Stone. I saw what it
did to that idiot Cleirach, and I had no reason to believe it would show any
more respect for a mere Cyne. So tell me: What can I do?”

“Try
harder to control her.”

Colfre
nodded, mouth a-twist. “Oh, yes. I see. I’ll have to book up on my Runeweaves.”

“There
are ways. I shouldn’t need to remind you, my lord, that women—particularly very
young women—find you most ... winning. Win her.”

Colfre,
to whom such an observation was usually Sun to a seedling, could only stare at
his Durweard in gut-tickling unease. “Absurd idea.”

Daimhin
Feich’s surprise seemed genuine. “Why? Do you not find her attractive?”

Did
he not-? He pulled his arms about himself, suddenly chill. “She’s beautiful.
Lightning in flesh. She excites me in ways I didn’t know a man could be
excited.”

Feich
spread long delicate fingers. “Well, then ... ?”

Colfre
stood, putting his Durweard behind him. “No, I can’t.” He raised a hand. “Don’t
ask why. I couldn’t invent an answer that would make sense. I can’t because I
saw her in the Shrine today making love to that Stone. Because I saw her in the
street wearing a robe of blue glory and doing things no seventeen year old girl
should be able to do. She is more than an embarrassment to the Osraed, Daimhin.
She is their nemesis.”

Colfre
could almost hear Feich’s eyebrows cresting. “Superstition, my lord?”

“Awe,
my Durweard. You saw her this afternoon—a tired little girl. You didn’t see her
this morning when she was ... I don’t know what.” He turned to intercept his
companion’s troubled gaze. “Lay it at the feet of my Hillwild mother. Perhaps
it is superstition. And perhaps superstition is in the blood she passed on to
me. Whatever it is, it is. I recognize, of course, that you’re right. We must
control her. We’ve befriended her; that’s a start. But perhaps more is needed.
You’re a capable man, Daimhin. A more reasonable man than I am, obviously, and,
I am told, as winning.”

“My
lord, I-”

“No,
no. It’s true. Perhaps you could succeed at what I will not even dare.”

Feich
inclined his head. “Yes, my lord. But in view of how you feel about the girl,
how could I presume-”

Colfre
glanced at him aslant. “You’re a free man, Daimhin. Scion of a noble and
powerful House. I may be Cyne, but I can hardly dictate your fancies,
especially if they fall on a commoner.”

He
turned back to his darkened window, then. All color had drained from the garden
as if lapped up by an invisible beast. He wondered if it was the same beast,
sated, that now curled up in his stomach and slept.

oOo

She
was exhausted, but sleepless, and felt like nothing so much as a woolly fleece
sponge that had been wrung dry. Or a riverbed, she thought, after a spring
flash flood. Such had been the rush of Eibhilin energies through their human
channel that she vibrated, still, from the Touch of the Stone. No, not the Stone,
but the Stone’s Mistress.

Channels.
It took a series of them to filter the Messages of the Spirit that some men
might hear them: Spirit to Meri, Meri to Osmaer-Stone, Osmaer-Stone to
Taminy-Osmaer. And from Taminy-Osmaer to ...?

She
shivered, recalling the face of the Abbod Ladhar, sweat-polished and wild-eyed.
The Message could not be filtered enough for that soul to find it
comprehensible ... or acceptable. She could not reach a man like Ladhar, she
could only expose him. She knew that after stepping into the embrace of the
Crystal.

She
knew other things, as well, of other souls. Of the two watching, unseen, from
behind their simple Weaves, she knew earnestness and purity. Sharp contrast
then, the Cleirach’s soul—a soul condemned by its own sense of worthlessness. A
soul who fought that strangling emotion with the unlikely weapons of suspicion
and self-righteousness. Those were the wrong weapons, but he had no others.
That made Caime Cadder pitiful. It also made him dangerous.

A
frisson prickled up the back of her neck. She rose swiftly from the bed,
exhaustion forgotten, and moved with silent feet to the door. She opened it.
The Riagan Airleas stood outside in the dim-lit corridor, his hand outstretched
toward the door latch. Their eyes met in an almost audible collision.

Airleas
lowered his, then quickly raised them again. “I would have knocked,” he said

“Oh?
And why would you have knocked, Riagan Airleas? What can you want with me?”

He
jutted his chin up and out, fixing her with a gaze he’d no doubt seen his
father use on recalcitrant Eiric. “They say you did a miracle today in the Cyne’s
Way.”

“Are
miracles not permitted there?”

He
blinked at her, looking momentarily like a little boy. “I ... I suppose the
Cyne must have permitted it. Did you?”

“What
am I to have done that was so miraculous?”

“They
say you healed a little boy.”

“God
healed the boy. I was only an instrument.”

“I
don’t believe it. I don’t believe you can heal people. I want you to prove it
to me.” The brave little Riagan shuddered like a breeze-blown poplar, but stood
his ground.

“And
how may I do that?” Taminy asked.

“I
have a friend—the son of my mother’s First Maid. He’s sick. Very sick. I’ll
believe you, if you can heal him.” He glared at her, daring her to accept his
challenge.

She
felt her exhaustion keenly, then—a weight pulling at her, holding her to the
stone floors of Mertuile. Prove yourself, Taminy. Proof! Proof! For some there
will never be enough proof. Are you one of those, Airleas Malcuim?

“All
right,” she said. “Only let me get a coat. It’s chill in the corridors.”

Snug
in a felt panel coat, Taminy followed the Riagan down half-lit hallways, up a
long flight of stone stairs, to the level above the Royals. Into a darkened
apartment he led, silent and secret, showing with gestures that he intended her
to be as quiet. Finally, they stood in a small room in which a single candle
burned. Odd, since the entire castle had the benefit of lightglobes. There were
two in this room, both dark. On a bed beneath a narrow window, a small figure
lay, covered with a mountain of blankets.

“That’s
my friend,” murmured Airleas, his young face long and solemn. “He’s got a
terrible disease.”

“Ooo-oh!”
said the form on the bed, and shivered violently.

“If
you’re so magical, heal him.” The imperious scion of the House Malcuim was
back, peering at Taminy through glittering, slitted eyes.

She
inclined her head. “Yes, sire.” At the bed, she paused to look down at its
occupant. “Are you in much pain?” she asked.

“Oh,
ye-es!”

She
listened carefully to the small, tremulous voice. “Where is the pain?”

“Oh,
everywhere!” said the pile of blankets.

Airleas
uttered a chuff of exasperation. “Can’t you tell how much pain he’s in? Can’t
you tell where it is? Isn’t that part of the Wicke Craft?”

She
turned her head to look at him. “But Riagan, I’m not a Wicke.”

“So
you keep saying. Very well, the Art then. Isn’t that called a Heal Tell?”

“Yes,
it is. And the questions I ask are part of that Tell.”

She
lowered herself onto the edge of the bed. The blanketed child shivered harder.

“See,”
said Airleas. “He has a horrible ague.”

Taminy
stretched out her hands and pulled back the blankets a bit. A ghost-pale face
peeked out at her from the folds, its forehead misted with perspiration.
Feverless perspiration.

“What’s
your name?” she asked.

The
eyes, dark and clear, blinked. “Beag ... mam.”

“Well,
Beag, it’s not hard to see what’s wrong with you. You’ve piled on too many
blankets. Take them off and you’ll recover quickly enough from this horrible
ague.”

“W-what?”
asked Beag, and Airleas said, “But he has a fever! See how he shakes?”

Taminy
turned to face the Riagan squarely. “That’s fear, not fever. Your friend isn’t
sick. Nor is he really your friend. He’s the child of your mother’s servant
which, to your mind, makes him your servant. You pressed Beag into service to
test me.”

Airleas
looked like a landed fish, all eyes and mouth. Beag began to cry. Shrugging off
his encumbering blankets he sat up and clutched at Taminy’s sleeve. “Oh, mam, I’m
sorry! But he told me I must. He’s the Cwen’s son—what could I do?”

“Lie
beneath a pile of blankets and quake, it would seem.” The female voice came to
them from the doorway. It belonged to a shadow that, once in candlelight,
became the Cwen Toireasa.

Beag
whined and cowered. Airleas had the good grace to look contrite. Cwen Toireasa
surveyed them both with bland bemusement.

“To
bed with you, Airleas,” she told her son. “Taminy, you will accompany me ...
please.” Both obeyed immediately.

The
Cwen said nothing more to her as they navigated the resplendent halls and wound
down the stairs to the level below. At the bottom of the stairs, Cwen Toireasa
paused. “May we talk in your chambers? They would be more private.”

Taminy
nodded. “As you wish, mistress.”

“My
son,” said the Cwen, when they had closeted themselves in Taminy’s rooms, “trusts
only the conviction of his own senses. I suppose he resembles me in that.
Colfre is likely to believe what he has not seen and disbelieve what he has
seen with his own eyes.” She moved to seat herself on a low settle by the
hearth. Firelight and lightglobes set her golden hair aflame, making her seem
more Eibhilin than human.

Like
the Gwenwyvar, Taminy thought. She seated herself across from the Cwen and
asked, “What do you believe, mistress?”

“I’m
not sure. I’ll tell you what I don’t believe. I don’t believe you’re merely a
madwoman or a zealot. Zealots and madwomen don’t perform miracles. I was in the
crowd today, along the Cyne’s Way,” she explained. “I saw what you did for the
boy. I followed you on to Ochanshrine, too.”

Taminy’s
surprise must have shown in her face, for the Cwen smiled and said, “You find
that shocking? I don’t trust my husband, Taminy-a-Cuinn. Or perhaps I should
say, I trust him to follow his desires. He follows them all over Creiddylad and
beyond. Sometimes he even exports them to the Abbis. I thought he was doing
that this morning. It seems I was wrong.”

Taminy
said nothing, for she could think of nothing to say. She understood Toireasa’s
antipathy now, and that comprehension made her uncomfortable.

“I
don’t know if you are my husband’s lover.” Toireasa continued. “I do know that
you’re more than that. I might believe you,” she added, “if you told me you
were not his lover.”

Taminy
flushed. “I am not, mistress. I beg you to believe me. The Cyne has befriended
me for reasons that have nothing to do with his affections.”

Cwen
Toireasa laughed. “How charmingly you put it! No, cailin. Colfre’s affections
are never involved in his plots and projects; only his passions are involved.
And he has many of those. I think I know which one caused him to ‘befriend’
you—his passion to govern ... . No, that’s naive of me. Not to govern, to rule.
And to rule by popularity. Colfre Malcuim fancies himself to be carved from the
same wood as Buidhe Harpere or Liusadhe or, God help us, the Malcuim, himself.”
She shook her head. “The artist warrior. He would like to see himself as a bit
of each of them. A strange admixture—gentle artistry, passionate zeal, a little
blood-lust for spice—but pure Malcuim—golden-haired, visionary eyes the color
of the sea.”