Taminy (6 page)

“In
Nairne?” asked Kynan. “Where in Nairne will we find a Wicke? Meredydd-a-Lagan
is gone.”

Bevol
ignored the barb, focusing his eyes entirely on Ealad-hach. “Oh, yes. But there
is Gwynet. Perhaps she must be a Wicke to have survived her master’s ill
treatment. Perhaps our brother has seen Gwynet in the future.... Well, surely
we must banish the child then, or perhaps imprison her in the Cirke cellar.”

Tynedale
snorted loudly. The sound reverberated gratingly from every hard, polished
surface in the vaulted room. “The wee cailin, a Wicke? Ludicrous. She’s as
sweet and gentle as a morning breeze. Besides that, she hasn’t the Gift. I’m
sorry, Bevol, but it’s true. She’s got not a midge of talent, not a morsel.”

“You’re
wrong, as it happens,” said Bevol, “but don’t apologize, you may have just saved
her life.”

Ealad-hach
exploded in a controlled rage. “I am not suggesting we do anything heinous to
Gwynet! Not even that we eject her from Halig-liath. Gwynet is a child. She’s
not at issue, here.”

“Then
who is?
What
is?” Bevol stood, facing
his sudden adversary across the gleaming expanse of the Triumvirate bench, his
arms outstretched in entreaty. “You say we are in danger from Wicke—the very
Cwen of Wicke, according to your aislinn self. You equate my Prentice,
Meredydd, with this Wicke Cwen, and accuse her of heresy—monstrous heresy. You
identify this monstrous heresy with allowing cailin at Halig-liath, yet you
balk at equating Gwynet, a cailin at Halig-liath, with this monstrous heresy.
Are you suggesting, Ealad, that you will only fight evil as long as it is
faceless? Why will you not put a face to this heresy? Why will you not put a
name to it?”

“Because
I have none!” Ealad-hach trembled like a tree in a stiff breeze, every leaf
shifting. “The only name I know is Meredydd-a-Lagan. The only face I see is one
I have never met. My soul tells me this is the foulest evil. But it is
nameless, faceless, without identity!” He dropped his eyes to perform a
feverish search of the darkness near the floor, as if that might yield some
answer. “It cannot be a person, surely,” he murmured. “No, no, it must be a
construct. A metaphysical construct.”

“A
construct?” repeated Faer-wald. He shook his head. “We must have more than
that.”

“I
have no more.” The whimper of defeat was followed by silence.

A
chime sounded, brassily, and a light glowed above the door.

Saving us
, thought Bevol,
from having to know what to do next
. “Come!”
he said, aloud.

An
awed-looking Aelder Prentice thrust his head into the room, his adam’s apple
bobbing like a fishing buoy. “Pardon, Osraed, but I have just come from the
front gate. Prentice Wyth —that is, Osraed Wyth—has come home.” His face split
in a sudden, unabashed grin and he ducked out of sight.

“Osraed
Wyth,” repeated Bevol. “Well, Ealad. Perhaps now we’ll get a sensible tell for
your aislinn.”

oOo

“Now
then, Gwynet ...” Aelder Prentice Aelbort smiled sweetly and tapped his pointer
gently into one lanky hand. “What is the most important quality of a good
Weaving stone, eh?”

Gwynet
blinked. Aelbort’s habit of ending nearly every question that way made him
sound like Ruhf Airdsgainne’s aged mam—an association neither pleasant nor
funny. Yet, she nearly giggled when the student behind her mimicked a squeaky
hinge.

She
poked herself mentally. That would never do—to be thought disrespectful of her
betters. Her mouth a straight, solemn line, Gwynet said, “Why, purity, maister.”

“Once
again,” said Aelbort gently, “I am not your ‘maister.’ ‘Aelder’ or ‘Prentice’
is quite sufficient.”

Gwynet’s
brow wrinkled. Sufficient. Yes, well, whatever that was.

“But
you’re right, of course,” the Aelder Prentice continued.

“And
how is purity determined? Anyone? Anyone?”

No
one.

He
turned his benign, canine gaze back to Gwynet. “If you please, child.”

Did
the Prentice want to be old, she wondered. Would he be pleased to waken one
morning to discover his hair gone white and his firm young cheeks, just now
showing more than adolescent down, sunken?

“I
asked,” he reiterated when she continued to gawp at him, “if you would tell us
how we determine the purity of a crystal.”

“Pictures,”
said Gwynet immediately. “Em, ‘imagey,’ I think Osraed Bevol called it.”

“Huh?”
grunted the boy to her right and, “No, it isn’t,” insisted another. “It’s
refractive precision.”

Aelder
Prentice Aelbort smiled with sweet irritation and bent his golden head toward
the speaker. “I didn’t ask you, Tam-tun. I asked Gwynet. I’m sure you’ll answer
me many questions before the year is out. Now, Gwynet, what do you mean by ‘imagey,’
eh?”

“Well,
Aelder Prentice, just tha’, don’t you see? ‘If in the stone, you see the
mirrored mind, then it be the truest of its kind.’” There! She had remembered!
She smiled, momentarily pleased with herself.

The
Prentice was also smiling. “Very good, child. A delightful saying. Where did
you get it?”

“Oh,
Tam-” Gwynet’s blue eyes blanked. She wasn’t supposed to mention Taminy. Taminy
wasn’t ready, yet, to come out. “A friend ... em ... once taught me tha’. To
help me word out what I was thinking. And I was thinking that in the crystals,
there are these little bits of the world and when a crystal’s pure, the little
bits become mirror glasses for your imagey.”

Tam-tun
tittered. “She means imagination!”

“Yes,
sir. Tha’s the word.” Gwynet blinked up at the Aelder, ingenuous and wide-eyed.
“Imagey-whatsit.”

Aelbort’s
smile edged toward the beatific. “A mirror for the imagination,” he
paraphrased. He put a hand on Gwynet’s shoulder and gazed about, spraying the
other students with his delight. “A perceptive comment. Which proves something
I have always believed—that education can
release
perception, but it cannot
produce
it.”
His eyes fell at last to Gwynet’s upturned face.

She
smiled, trying not to show how little she understood what he had just said.

“Gwynet,
do you think you could show the class how to select a pure crystal?”

“Oh,
no, maister!” she said, aghast.

“No?”
He moved briskly to his workbench and removed two stones from its polished
surface. Holding them out on the flat of his hand, he advanced toward Gwynet,
tiny spots of red and purple light dancing about his palm.

She
ought really look away, she thought. Ought to screw up her eyes or close them
altogether, but there was some horrible fascination in those two colorful
shards and a perverse little demon wondered if she could really tell which of them
would make the finest focus. Compromising, she drew back, her eyes fastened,
out of focus, on the Aelder’s hand.

“Come,
Gwynet. See if you can’t decide between these two specimens. There, there! You
can’t be afraid of them.”

“Well,
I’m not afraid, quite, Aelder, sir. It’s just ...” She paused to lick her lips.
“Well, my maister Bevol said I oughtn’t be too free with imagey around crystals
as I might burn down a house or some’at.”

Tam-tun
let out a crack of laughter. “She must think she’s Wicke! ‘Burn down a house or
some’at!’”

Aelbort
did not censure his student. He merely stared at Gwynet owlishly and continued
to hold the crystals out in her general direction.

She
thought,
Now I’ve done some bad business.
If only I knew what it was.

Aelder
Prentice Aelbort had no opportunity to tell her what she had done, for while he
froze in mid-aisle, a younger Prentice popped into the room as if on a spring
and said, “Have you not heard! Wyth Arundel is come home an Osraed! He’s in the
courtyard this moment. Won’t you come see, Aelbort?” And he was gone.

Half
the class jumped to their feet, the other half wavered between sitting and
leaping.

“Might
we go, Prentice Aelbort?” begged one boy. “Might we go and see?”

Aelbort,
his beatific smile vanished, nodded a stiff assent.

The
boys disappeared as swiftly as the Aelder’s smile, leaving Gwyent to wonder if
she should have joined them.

“Aren’t
you going too?” The question came out in a petulant rush, destroying the Aelder
Prentice’s pretense of maturity.

Gwynet
put out a hand and grasped his empty one. “If you will come, too, Aelder.”

The
benign smile returned. The crystals stuffed into a pocket and forgotten, they
went down to the courtyard hand in hand.

Gwynet
did not quite know what to make of the scene on the sunny cobbles. A tall young
man was making his way slowly through a small throng of students and Prentices,
answering questions in monosyllables and working toward the staircase where she
and Aelder Prentice Aelbort stood. It certainly looked like the Wyth Arundel
she had met, but she was amazed at the change in him.

She’d
thought him a somber old thing and had wondered through the wee hours of
several mornings what had made him that way and if anything could be done about
it. Osraed Bevol had spoken of his family—his dead father, his regal mother,
the estate he would inherit, but didn’t want. He had told her, too, that Wyth
Arundel had loved Meredydd-a-Lagan, and Gwynet thought it sad that he would
never see her again in this life.

That
was the miracle, so far as Gwynet was concerned; this Wyth Arundel smiled and
laughed and accepted his congratulations with back-slapping joy. Her eyes went
to his face and clung. Radiant as that was, more blazing, still, was the
stellate mark between his brows. A star of rose-gold, it was —of blushing
amber—not unlike the one of emerald tint on the foreheads of the Osraed here,
but newer, sharper, brighter.

Oh, wonder
, she thought. To have such a
Being as the Meri press Her burning lips to your brow and breathe knowledge into
your soul! To no longer be ignorant and slow—aye, that would be the greatest
favor of all: Knowledge. She longed for it with every fiber of her young self.

Then
and there, as she gazed up into the triumphant face of the new Osraed Wyth
Arundel, she knew he possessed something she must have for herself.

There is a sign from God in every condition.
The sign of intelligence is meditation and the sign of meditation is silence,
since it is impossible for one to both speak and reflect.

This is truth: that when one reflects, he
speaks with his own spirit. In that condition, one can question the spirit and
receive its answers.

— Book of the Meri
Chapter One, Verses 24,25

His
insides were quivering, but not with fear or dread or even timorousness. Not
this time. Reborn—that was how he felt. Recreated and given new eyes and ears
and mind, and a new, brave heart to go with them. He stood in the vaulted
chamber and watched the Council rise to greet him and thought,
I am one of them now. I am a Divine
Counselor.

The
Osraed Bevol came forward to meet him and draw him into the half-circle and
seat him in a tall carved chair at its center. He accepted the elder man’s
embrace with delight and shared a glance which spoke volumes about their common
bond.

Seated,
Wyth watched Bevol return to his own chair at the Apex of the Council and
recalled an earlier time when he had stood, quaking here, while his mother’s
voice accused him of being bewitched by his fifteen year old student,
Meredydd-a-Lagan, labeling Meredydd a Wicke. He
had
been bewitched, he realized, and it was as pure and clean and
holy an inyx as had ever been woven. He was bewitched now, too. Possessed by
the Possessor of all things. In thrall to That. Fear was a memory, only.

Did
they, he wondered, gazing at the seven Osraed arrayed about him, feel as he now
felt? Or had the years between now and their Moment of Great Light dimmed the
flame of their faith? His eyes were drawn to the Kisses they wore, to a man,
between their brows—emerald to his rose-amber and seemingly dimmer. They
varied, he realized in bemusement. Some were a smudged-looking peridot,
others—like Calach’s and Tynedale’s and especially Bevol’s—were more vivid in
both hue and clarity.

“Welcome,
Osraed Wyth,” said Bevol, beginning the formal Pilgrim’s Greeting. “The Meri
has crowned you with Her Kiss—the culmination of your Journey. Speak to us,
Pilgrim, of that Journey.”

He
did speak—of spiritual trials and tests of wisdom and patience. Of being sent
by the Eibhilin Gwenwyvar, the White Wave, to be the easing of a child’s pain.
And at last, he spoke of reaching the Meri’s Shore.

“Indeed
you have reached the Shore of faith, Pilgrim,” said Bevol. “Indeed you have
found the end of the Path of steadfastness. Speak to us, Pilgrim, of your
Vigil. What dreams were you given? What visions, what gifts?”

Wyth
blushed. “It wasn’t much of a vigil,” he admitted, and wondered momentarily if
they would believe what he had to tell them. But, of course, they had to
believe him; he wore the Kiss of the Meri on his brow. “We reached the sands,
Prentice Killian and I, and he went to gather firewood. I sat and watched the
sun set and recalled a dream I had had once—a horrible, arrogant dream of
entering the Meri’s Ocean without getting wet. Meredydd told me I had missed
the point of my Pilgrimage. I thought of that as I sat there in the sand and
laughed at myself.”

He
smiled at the looks of disbelief that admission garnered. Wyth Arundel had
laughed little, once, least of all himself.

“I
suppose that is one gift I took from the Shore—the gift of laughter. I had no
visions.”

He
paused a moment, then continued. “The sun set and the moon rose over the
water—or so I thought. But the moon, I recalled, was behind me in the East and
this was the Light of the Eibhilin world—the Light of the Meri. Bright and
golden, it came, flooding the water with glory. The Sea was like a golden broth
or a cup of spring wine. I could see every pebble beneath the water—jewels, all
of them—and garlands of seaweed. And then, the waters began to froth and foam.
I thought I would faint, but I didn’t. I thought the brilliance would blind me,
but it didn’t. Then She slipped from the waves and stood before me.”