Taminy (14 page)

The
older girl chuckled. “All right. Let’s go walking and I’ll show you where the
herbs grow hereabout.”

“And
teach me more the silent history?”

Taminy
smiled all the way to her eyes. “And teach you the silent history.”

oOo

Gwynet,
for her years, was quite knowledgeable about herbs. Taminy was able to show her
a number of sun-loving plants the dank reaches of Blaec-del had not favored,
but she was pleasantly surprised with what the child had learned by
eavesdropping and experimentation.

“Well,
everyone knows ’bout willow, of course. But I got to think that if willow was
good for the head-ague and sassafras for t’other agues and the blood, well
then, why not try a bit of both? So the next time I had a bit of pain, I tried
tha’ and it seemed to work wonderful well. I even tried a cup on Mam
Airdsgainne’s poor old joints. Worked so well, she forgot to gnaw on Ruhf’s
customers when they come in.”

Taminy
smiled fondly at the golden child, watching her dabble pale toes in one of the
rare pools in the Bebhinn’s swift-flowing stream. Her hair was bright as a
newly minted ambre, but not nearly as bright as the mind it crowned.

“This
is a fey place, in’t it?” she asked.

Taminy
made herself more comfortable on her rock beside a gentle waterfall. “What
makes you say that?”

“Well
...” Gwynet swiveled her head all about to take in the dappled cup of greenery
that surrounded her. “... part of it’s the herbals. Look how many of the best
ones grow right here—fennel and sassafras and willow and even a little
marshie-mallow down there in tha’ wee still spot. It’s like ... like a Wicke or
an Osraed might’ve planted it all so they’d only have to come here and not
wander all o’er the woods.”

“Like
we did?”

“Well,
aye.” Gwynet shot Taminy a roguish glance from beneath her golden curtain of
hair. “It did come to me tha’ we might’ve come just here.”

“Oh,
but we had to come here right at the beginning of evening to watch the colors
change. You see, it is a fey place, as you say.”

“I’m
right?” squeaked Gwynet. “Are there paeries and-and aelven folk?”

Taminy
laughed.
Bless you, Gwynet. Bless you for
seeing magic in all things.
“The only aelven folk here are you and me. But
once, not that long ago, a little girl named Meredydd came here and met the
Gwenwyvar.”

Gwynet
jumped up, staring back into the pool with wide eyes. Only the rippling wake of
her hastily withdrawn toes marked the crystalline surface.

“The
Gwenwyvar lives here? But I thought she were in tha’ pool above Blaec-del—the
one Meredydd dunked me in to heal me.”

“The
Gwenwyvar lives ...” How to describe it to the child? “The Gwenwyvar lives
wherever she needs to live. She abides in the Water of Life and appears in the
aislinn mists to whatever soul the Meri wills.”

Gwynet
peered hard at the water. Already the shadows were moving—the light,
changing—and the aquas, greens and browns of the pool’s depths were growing
cooler, deeper.

“Will
I see her again?” she asked, voice wistful. “I only did see her the once, you
know, and just for a moment, and I felt so strange, like waking from a
dream—well, I thought I must’ve dreamed it, but Skeet and Osraed Bevol both say
no.”

“You
may see her again,” Taminy told her. “She’s part of every Pilgrim’s journey.”

“They
all see her?”

Taminy
smiled wryly. “I didn’t say all see her. I said she’s a part of every
Pilgrimage.”

Gwynet
shook her head, settling back on the soft summer grass.

“Not
every Prentice at Halig-liath has ... eyes that will see aislinn visions or
Eibhilin beings. Some boys are rushed into the Academy because their parents or
their Cirkemaster or the Chief of their House hopes they might have those Eyes
... or believes they ought to have them.”

Gwynet
squinted at the water-sparkles rippling away from her in the breeze. “Like
Aelder Prentice Brys, you mean? He says he saw nothing on his Pilgrimage but
some grimy ol’ Wicke in a stick shack who gabbled nonsense at him and give him
a lump of clay. ‘What’m I to do with this,’ he says, and she says, ‘Boy, it’s
what you make of it.’” Gwynet nodded emphatically. “It’s what you make of it.
Sounded wise to me. He thought it was fool-like.”

“And
what did he make of it? Did he say?”

“Oh,
he got a hole in the bottom of his shoe, he says an’ used it to patch tha’. It
come out when he crossed the Bebhinn.”

Taminy
laughed. A clever young man, Aelder Prentice Brys. Clever, but not wise. She
sighed soul-deep, then. Year after year they came to the Sea, bright-eyed and
dreaming. And she would peek into their dreams and hear and see and touch the
aislinn spirits they entertained there. Such spirits: Glory and Power and
Wealth; Respect and Prestige; Beauty and Knowledge. And once in a long, long
while, Love, Passion, Wisdom, a real and urgent Desire for Her.

Taminy
shook herself. No, nor for her—for the Meri, for the Animator.

How
few and far between those had been in the last hundred years, those earnest,
hungering, thirsting souls; souls to whom a full cup was not a chalice
overflowing with jewels, but enough Wisdom to be held in the palm of one hand.
Jewels. Jewels like Gwynet or Bevol or—bless them—Calach and Tynedale, were
rare. So rare.

“He
helps out in Osraed Tynedale’s class sometimes,” Gwynet was saying. “Aelder
Brys, I mean. An’ he knows a powerful lot about—oh, everything. I think he
could mouth the herbals in order and not miss a one, but ... he doesn’t seem to
care. And Tam-tun, he’s another. He says he’d be in Seamaster’s school in Eada
if he had to pick. But for his mam and da, you know.”

Taminy
nodded. “I know. It’s painful to have to follow someone else’s path in life, no
matter what the circumstances. What about you, Gwynet? Do you care to be
learning the Art?”

Gwynet
gazed up at her with the full force of a child’s amazement in her eyes. “Oh,
Taminy-mistress! I do care to learn. And I can’t image at all how someone could
not.” She puzzled for a moment then said, very gravely, “It was when Osraed
Wyth come home. Prentice Aelbort took me to watch. And in he come with his face
all light. And I thought, “Gwynet, tha’s for you. You must look for tha’ light
and you must find it.’” Again that emphatic nod, as if she was making a pact
with herself.

Taminy
gazed at the child wonderingly, running aislinn fingers through the warm,
silken flow of her thoughts—pure, they were, and unvarnished and untrained.
And I am feeling them. And that is the most
wonderful thing of all.

“I
only hope,” Gwynet went on, “tha’ my eyes can see the aislinn things.”

Taminy,
caught off guard, laughed aloud. “How much proof of your own Gift do you need,
Gwynet-a-Gled? You drew fire through a crystal with no tutoring. You found your
own way to the use of the herbs and medicaments. And you knew by instinct what
I had forgotten.”

She
leaned out from her rock and extended one hand into the gentle tumble of water
cascading over its stony ledge. It came back cupped around a tiny pool of water
that sparkled in the slanting sunlight like a palmful of jewels. Droplets fell,
crystal-bright, from between her curving fingers.

“I
learned it from the Gwenwyvar, who bid me take a handful of water from her pool
and said that if a crystal could not be had, pure water might be used to focus
the Weave.”

“Water!”
marveled Gwynet, scooping of a handful of her own. “Then when I was praying
peace to my dewdrops ...”

“You
were weaving inyx, even then.”

Taminy
gazed across the glittering liquid in her hand and tried to conjure the
sensation, the aura, of the Weave. She watched the tiny points of light dance,
out of focus, and emptied her mind of anything else. In a heartbeat she was
wrapped in a sparkling veil, shrouded in a teeming world of radiance. The Sun
was warmer here and brighter and the gurgle of water became song. Her heart
beat faster, buoyed by the ease with which she had come here. Perhaps the
sundered pool could someday reunite with the Sea.

“What
do they see?” Gwynet’s voice floated, disembodied, into Taminy’s aislinn state.
“People like Prentice Brys, I mean. When the Gwenwyvar comes up from her pool,
what do they see?”

“Perhaps
they see nothing,” said Taminy. “Or perhaps they see only a wisp of cloud or a
clot of steam. And when she speaks ...” She hesitated, feeling something kiss
the fringes of her perception: Curiosity. Suspicion. “... perhaps they hear
only the wind. The Meri gives a call, Gwynet. As you called the fire to your
crystal, the Meri breathes a call into the world. It is a whisper—a sweet,
still song like a breeze from the Sea. It summons those who hear it. It draws
them to the Water of Life and bids them drink.”

In
a sudden flutter of wings, a blue-black bird dropped from the trees to settle
on the rim of Taminy’s cupped hand and sip the water there.

Indecision—she
felt it, sharp and clear, on the periphery of her awareness. Indecision and
thirst. “You see, even the creatures feel the summons and, as they have no
taught fears, they come.”

A
second bird, this one a bright red, fluttered down to join the first. Wonder
washed over the indecision.

Taminy
withdrew from her gem-scattered veil and turned her head. Her eyes touched the
fringe of brush and fern that ringed the glen Nairne-side and, from the place
where her gaze lit, appeared a girl of perhaps seventeen or eighteen—timid,
wary, but drawn.

The
birds fled Taminy’s fingertips and sailed skyward, and the girl’s eyes followed
them out of sight. Finally, she brought her gaze back to Taminy, seated on her
rock.

“Are
you ... are you a Wicke?” she asked and Taminy felt as much anticipation as
fear in the words.

She
smiled. “No. Are you?”

“But
you ... you
called
me.”

“Does
that make me a Wicke? You came.”

The
gray eyes widened. “I’m the Cirkemaster’s daughter, Iseabal.”

“Yes,
I know. I’m Taminy. I’m Gwynet’s tutor.” She gestured at the little girl, who
was regarding Iseabal with open-mouthed astonishment.

The
Cirkemaster’s girl glanced back and forth between them, picking the leaves from
her skirt. “I’m intruding,” she said and licked her lips. “I beg pardon.”

“Not
at all. Please, don’t go.” Taminy slid down from her perch onto the grass
behind Gwynet, then lowered herself to a mossy rock.

Across
the pool, Iseabal vacillated. “May I ... may I stay and listen?”

Well, Iseabal
, thought Taminy,
perhaps you are to be dedicated to God,
after all.
Aloud she said, “Of course you may stay and listen. Come,
Iseabal, and sit with us.”

A
shy smile preceded the girl from the hedge of brush and trees as she came
lightly, with lifted skirts, across the bridge of stone at the head of the pool
and over into Taminy’s verdant classroom.

oOo

The
Council session had been relatively sedate. Osraed Wyth had appeared long
enough to announce his intention of compiling a Book of the Covenant, and
confirmed that he would lead a class on the Covenant for first year Prentices.
There was no mention of Meredydd’s fate or her guilt or innocence as a Wicke.
The subject of formally opening Halig-liath to girls had been broached and a
reluctant discussion begun when a dispatch from Creiddlylad curtailed it.

Bevol
was first to read it, his face opaquely denying the other Osraed access to his
thoughts.

“Well,”
asked Ealad-hach. “What is it?”

“The
General Assembly has been postponed again due to ongoing diplomatic overtures
to the Deasach. Oh, and there is also the matter of a new wing the Cyne is
adding to the Castle to house his collection of historical and artistic
objects. He’s overseeing that project personally, of course.”

“This
is the third time he has postponed the summer Assembly,” observed Faer-wald. “If
he waits much longer, we’ll be into the harvest. Forecasts indicate a wet, cold
autumn is to be expected—with early snows. That could make travel very
difficult for the members.”

“Well,
travel we must,” said Bevol, “unless we yield to the idea that this summer’s
agenda will have to be carried over to the next spring session.”

“But
we have a full agenda,” objected Eadmund who, with Bevol, represented
Halig-liath in the Assembly Hall. “After Tell Fest, Ren Catahn Hillwild
presented us with an entire list of issues the Hillwild wish to address in the
Hall. I assure you, they are not minor ones. Add to that what the villages
bring and we could be in session from now until next Solstice. How does Cyne
Colfre propose to put these issues off?”

“He
does not propose to put them off,” said Bevol, eyes still on the dispatch. “He
includes a list of items he has gathered for the agenda and proposes to poll
the Assembly by post to obtain permission for some of these matters—the ‘more
mundane among them,’ as he puts it—to be fielded by the Privy Council.”

“The
Privy Council?” repeated Faer-wald. “But that’s hardly appropriate. The Privy
isn’t an elected body; it’s not representative. It’s purpose is to advise the
Cyne in personal diplomacy and the civic affairs of Creiddylad.”

“Might
we hear the Cyne’s agenda?” asked Calach.

Bevol
passed the dispatch back to the Chamber Prentice and bid him read it aloud.
This he did, while the Osraed scribbled their notes and furrowed their brows
and pulled at beards and lips.

When
the reading was finished, Bevol shook his head. “He’s asking for a blank slate.
He’s asking us to leave the selection of items for the Privy Council’s agenda
to their discretion.”

“That
is unacceptable,” murmured Calach. “We must know what issues the Privy Council
is to act upon. Most of those items are of regional or even national interest.”