Taminy (50 page)

The
Cyne’s Privy Council consisted of eight members representing, equally, the
noble Houses, the landed Eiric and merchants, the Ministers, and the Osraed. As
tradition dictated, Daimhin Feich represented his own House there, in addition
to being the Cyne’s closest advisor. If the rest of them were not Colfre’s
hand-picked men, they were at least men who had never shown any sharp
disagreement with his policies.

Except,
of course, for Iobert Claeg.

There
had always been a Claeg on the Privy Council, dating from the time it was a
Hall-appointed device to keep the Cyne’s behavior in check. They were a
disagreeable lot, an historically rebellious lot, and Daimhin Feich believed
the Claeg Chief was the only man on the Council who was not at least somewhat
intimidated by Colfre Malcuim. His eyes sought Iobert Claeg as Colfre addressed
the Council. He was a fierce looking man, nearing middle age, with steel in his
soul that made eyes, voice—everything about him—bristle like an armory. He
continued to bristle throughout Colfre’s talk of Taminy’s sweetness and the
kindness inherent in her miracles, of the fact that she harbored no animosity
toward those who had accused her of Wickery and heresy. Finding the Claeg Chief
unreadable, he turned his attention to Cyne Colfre’s words.

“You,
gentlemen,” the Cyne was saying, “will now put Taminy’s case before your peers
in the Hall. You will share with them the written record of what I found in
Nairne’s Osraed court. In a day’s time, they will be called upon to decide if
Taminy-a-Cuinn is heretic or victim of fundamentalist prejudice. Let them know
that their Cyne believes she is the latter—an innocent victim.”

“How-?”
began Ladhar and stopped, his face coloring. “And if they ask how an innocent
can perpetrate such acts, show such signs as she does?”

“Perpetrate?”
Colfre repeated. “We are speaking of miracles, Abbod. I’ve seen them. You’ve
seen them. The people of Creiddylad have seen them.” He smiled broadly. “They
love her, Osraed Ladhar, because she has befriended them. How can such a friend
be suspected of heresy? Simply tell the Osraed of the Hall how very much she is
loved.”

Ladhar
was silent after that, and all remaining questions came from Iobert Claeg.
Between them, Daimhin and his Cyne answered them one by one, not expecting for
a moment that the Claeg Chieftain believed any of it.

oOo

Outside
the gates of Mertuile, Abbod Ladhar stood and let the sea breeze cool his
heated face. He wished the chill would reach into his soul, but the fire there
burned on, oblivious to tempering winds. He felt eyes on his face and knew the
Ministers Cadder and Feanag stared at him, waiting for him to speak.

“Loved,”
he said at last, making the word repulsive. “She is loved. Loved by a blind,
irreligious mob. How badly we have done our work when people can love such an
atrocity.”

“She
serves them up magical poisons,” said Caime Cadder, “and they, gluttons, feast
and thank her for poisoning them.”

“But
how does she do it?” asked Feanag, eyes doing a nervous dance between his two
companions. “How is she allowed to do good, to call upon Blue Healing, to touch
the Stone? I understand none of this.”

“A
test,” said Cadder. “A trial of faith. This is a Cusp—such trials must be
expected. Thank God that we see her for what she is.”

Ladhar
shook with rage. “What? Thank God? Will you stand aside, pious, and thank God
while your countrymen are being led into darkness? While their ignorant souls
rush, like helpless sheep, to their own destruction? While this Dark Sister
wriggles her sweet way ever closer to our Cyne—to his heir?”

Cadder’s
eyes glinted at that—coals longing for fire; Ladhar was pleased to ignite them.
“You saw how Colfre looked at her that day in the Shrine. That was worship in
his eyes, Caime. Worship. And I’ve heard that she is a favorite with the Riagan
Airleas, as well.”

Cadder’s
voice was hushed and chill. “Worship is to be given to God alone, and to His
Scion, the Meri. Taminy-a-Cuinn is an usurper—an abomination.”

“An
abomination,” echoed Feanag.

“What
do we tell our fellows in the Hall?” asked Cadder. “Surely we can’t speak as
the Cyne bids us. Aren’t we bound to tell the truth? His so-called written
testimony of the Nairnian inquiry is incomplete. The claims of divinity Osraed
Ealad-hach alluded to in his letter are completely missing.”

“Cyne
Colfre asked only that we give his tell of her trial before the Osraed Body and
say that he believes her innocent,” Ladhar replied. “Other than that, we must
be bound only by our consciences. We will tell our peers what the Cyne
believes, then we will tell them what we believe.”

Feanag
seemed uneasy. “She hasn’t won all the people. Surely when Ealad-hach brings
his charges-”

“She
has won the Cyne,” said Ladhar and added, “He paints her portrait in his
private chambers, so his servants say. A portrait even the Cwen is not
privileged to see.”

He
looked back over his shoulder at the castle rising behind them. A late mist was
twisting itself about the ramparts and bright Malcuim banners, drabbing them in
funereal grays. Ladhar felt the two men with him shiver and could not suppress
a shudder of his own. Evil had been planted in Mertuile and struggled to take
root. He felt, stronger than ever, his own divine charter—to deprive that evil
of existence.

oOo

Eadmund
turned in his bed for perhaps the hundredth time in the long, sleepless hours
since he had lain down. Truth was, he feared sleep now, for when he slept, she
would visit him to pick at his soul, to wear it away, to shock it senseless. He
couldn’t close his eyes without seeing her framed in the doorway of the Shrine,
her face gleaming with reflected Light, radiant, blinding. In that moment of
seeing, as he cowered behind the doorframe, his eyes had betrayed him
mercilessly. The Shrine had fallen away, even the Crystal had disappeared, and
Eadmund had gazed on the face of the Meri. He’d all but swooned and, swooning,
had crawled away to his room to hide.

Oh,
but not before filling his soul with her. Not before etching her in his mind.
She was there when he closed his eyes, so he couldn’t close them ... however
much he wanted to.

He
couldn’t say what pulled him from his bed to the room’s single large window or
what caused him to settle there in the embrasure, staring out toward the
estuary above which Mertuile sat astride her rocky cliff. But once there, his
sleep-starved eyes gave him reason to stay. Above the towers and spires of the
castle, an eddy of moonlit mist turned in a graceful spiral, inviting Eadmund’s
senses to dance. He smiled—his first smile in days—and followed the eddy
gratefully.

When
did he realize it had become something other than what his imagination made of
it? He couldn’t say. He could only feel cold and hot at once, could only blink
his bleary eyes and will them to see ordinary mist. But the mist above Mertuile
would not be ordinary. It took on an Eibhilin light, like the liquid in a
lightglobe, and it found its own shape—a shape that suggested simultaneously a
crystal and a rose.

Eadmund’s
tired brain boggled. Was it that the rose was made of crystal, or was the
crystal cut to the shape of a rose? Then he realized the absurdity of his
quandary, for surely a rose-shaped crystal and a crystalline rose were one and
the same.

And
there the thing was, floating over Mertuile as if it grew from her ramparts,
and he couldn’t say what it meant except that it filled him with the
irresistible urge to laugh or sing. His singing voice being what it was, he
chose to laugh. He laughed until tears ran from his eyes and his stomach hurt
and his lungs burned. He laughed himself into an exhausted sleep and, in his
sleep, he frequently chuckled.

oOo

Osraed
Bevol gazed up at the night sky over Mertuile and admired his handiwork. Light
chased light along the unfolding petal-facets of the aislinn and shimmered in
the air around it, making the night glorious.

“Will
it be seen by all, Maister?” asked Skeet from beside him.

Bevol
smiled. “I wish it could, Pov. For if it were, Taminy would not be here in this
castle surrounded by suspicion and hatred she doesn’t deserve.”

“Then
who will see it?”

“Only
those who can.”

oOo

“Oh,
look!” Wyvis had stopped her pony and pointed at the crest of the next low
ridge. She turned her head back toward the others straggling up the hill behind
her. “Look, all of you! What is it?”

“It’s
a rose,” said Iseabal.

“A
crystal,” said Aine at the same moment.

Phelan
rode up between the two of them, his eyes shining with utter amazement. “It’s
aislinn. That’s some Osraed’s doing, for certain. God-the-Spirit!—I’ve never
seen the like.”

“Why
do you suppose it’s there?” asked Wyvis, saucer-eyed.

“It’s
a beacon ... to show where Taminy is.” The deep male voice came out of the
light-sucking darkness beside the road and made everyone’s heart shy sideways.

Mam
Lusach brought her own mount to the fore and tried to present a formidable
appearance. “Show yourself!” she demanded, but the man was already leading his
horse out onto the road.

Iseabal
gasped. “Father!”

“Aye.
Father, it is,” replied Osraed Saxan. “A father who thought he’d left his
little girl at home, safe with her mother.”

He
eyed up the Apothecary and said, with some amazement, “Dear woman, what in the
name of God are you all doing here?”

Mam
Lusach cracked a smile. “Following that there aislinn beacon, it would seem.”

Let this commandment be a Covenant between
you and Me: Have faith. Let your faith be immovable as a rock that no storms
may harass, that nothing can shake, that will abide to the cessation of all
things. As your faith is, so shall your blessings and powers be. This is
Harmony. This is the greatest Duan.

— The Corah
Book I, Verse 10

Ealad-hach
shivered, though the Hall was far from chill. Giant hearths radiated warmth on
this fog-gray day, but it never reached the old Osraed in his witness box. He
fumed a bit, still, about the lateness of his arrival in Creiddylad. He’d had
time to speak to no one but Ladhar, who confirmed his worst fears: The Cyne had
been engaged in a campaign of propaganda all week—a campaign to establish Taminy-a-Cuinn
in the hearts of his people. He had primed the Assembly, as well, or at least a
good half of it, with his own version of the Nairnian trials; only the Osraed
and Cleirachs knew, with any certainty, of the abominable claims the wretched
girl had made at Halig-liath.

Ealad-hach’s
gaze drifted through the huge oblong hall from quarter to quarter. To the West
sat the Osraed; to the East, the Ministers; to the North was the Eiric quarter,
representing landowners and businessmen; to the South, the Chieftains of the
noble Houses—Claeg, Graegam, Glinne, Cuilean, Madaidh, Skarf and others, even
the Hillwild were represented by the elder Chieftain of the Hageswode, the Ren
Catahn’s blood uncle.

The
old Osraed grimaced with disgust. There was much shared blood among the
Hillwild, for they rarely married out of the Gyldan-baenn. Small wonder such
inbreds developed superstitious cravings for arboreal goddesses who would take
up Hillwild causes and empower their fey leadership. His eyes roved the public
galleries situated on two flanks of the hall between the Assembly quarters
where others, who craved a supposed saint’s benediction, jostled each other to
receive her glance.

She
came to her own box then—a flower-decked stall in the rounded northwestern
corner of the Hall, situated at the right hand of the Throne. The Hillwild girl
was at her side, as worshipful a pawn as her father, who sat in the
southwestern gallery reserved for the Throne’s special guests.

The
crowd at the far end of the Hall, seeing their miracle-worker, went into a
frenzy of adulation, calling to her, beseeching her, waving flowers at
her—roses, all. And the Cyne—the stupid, dim-sighted young Malcuim Cyne—sat and
grinned like a Prentice at Farewelling, confident he had a prize in his grasp. Whatever
did he think—that with a powerful Wicke at his side, he could overthrow the
spiritual institutions of Caraid-land and subvert its religion? Did he fancy
the Cwen Toireasa, whose father sat in the Privy Council, would simply
disappear while he pursued a relationship with this Dark Sister?

Ealad-hach
glanced furtively at the Cwen, seated to her lord’s left. Her face was
composed, as always—smooth as pale silk. There was no indication that she
sensed what her husband was about. Poor wretch. Surely the Meri would not allow
it. Surely all things would work to ultimate good.

He
heard his name called and realized the adoring crowd had been silenced. He
moved to the circular speaker’s box at the center of the room and timorously
began to present his testimony. He told the story straight out,
chronologically, from the time he first became aware of Taminy. He spoke of her
oddness, the little miracles, the runebags and his initial suspicions. He told
of how he’d tested her at Nairne Cirke and of Aine-mac-Lorimer’s accident and
of his aislinn and of the eventual trial.

All
the while, he looked to Osraed Ladhar for support and found it readily given.
Heartened, he began to give the details of the inquiry at Halig-liath when the
Cyne stopped him.

“Enough.
Enough for now. You have recounted her miracles—we, here, have seen many of
those also, have we not?”

The
crowd of observers, and indeed, some of the representatives to the Hall cheered
at that, and Ealad-hach could only stare at them mutely, his eyes hopping from
one eager face to another.

Dear
God, his testimony had only made her more a goddess. These people gazed down on
that fragile, flower-like face of hers and saw an Eibhilin personage—a
Gwenwyvar, a Gwyr, even (Spirit help them!) the Meri, Herself. And how could
they not, when that was exactly how she appeared—hair curried to a veil of pale
gold, heaven-blue dress contrasting flesh like flower petals.