Taminy (24 page)

“How
easily you spout the words.”

“Well,
they are easier spouted than taken to heart. This is not an easy change of
season for me, Ardis. But the Meri bids me believe my daughter’s Gift is
acceptable-”

Ardis
wheeled on him, her face chill-hot, her eyes shedding tears. “She has no Gift!
Stop saying that she has! Our girl is innocent! Innocent!”

White-faced,
he nodded. “Of course, she is innocent. But she also has a Gift. Perahta lit
for her. That proves-”

“Nothing!
You were there. It might’ve lit for you. Or Taminy or-”

“If
Perahta had lit for me, I would have known it.” He came to her then, and took
her hands in his. She twisted her neck, looked away, but did not move.

“Listen,
Ardis. When Iseabal traveled with me to Ochanshrine, I took her to see the
Osmaer. The Sanctum was dimly lit and empty of any but her and I and a few
Prentices engaged in prayer. I took Isha’s hand and led her up to the altar
and, as we drew near, the Stone took fire. She cooed and ah-ed at it, and
turned to me and cried, ‘Oh, Papa, see how it glows for you!’ But it wasn’t me,
Ardis. It wasn’t me the Osmaer reached out to with Her fire. It was Iseabal.”

“No,”
she said.

“I
didn’t want to believe it, either. But I had the evidence of my own senses.
Somehow, I hoped it would go away. That she would never understand what she
had. That she would grow up without having to know. I’ve always been very
careful about keeping Perahta out of her hands, but-” He paused, searching her
face. “Do you think it’s easy for me to change the beliefs of a lifetime? I
have struggled to pretend that Isha is an ordinary girl. I have done so because
I believed that if she was not ordinary, she would be condemned. And since I’m
her father, the fault could only be mine.”

She
looked at him then, met his eyes. “And mine,” she whispered. “Oh, Saxan, what
have we done?”

He
put his arms about her and kissed her hair. “We have raised a beautiful
daughter who has a Gift granted only to the pure. That is what we have done.”

She
wept, willing herself to believe. But her will failed her and she wept harder
for that.

Everything I unveil to you,
every duan I sing to you,
is in conformity with your capacity to
comprehend,
not with My condition or the melody of my
Voice.

— The Book of the Meri
Chapter I, Verse 1

The
Library was empty at this hour, early sunlight illuminating untenanted tables
and scattering a myriad shadows onto floor and wall and ceiling. On a table
near the shelves, the Osraed Wyth’s work lay in a curiously rhythmic clutter of
sheafs and stacks. It looked as if he had left but a moment ago, but he was
nowhere in sight of the door where Osraed Ealad-hach stood peering.

It
was not curiosity that had brought him here, nor anticipation of Wyth’s
progress. It was fear. He was honest enough to admit that, even to himself, but
there was enough anger in his fear to make him bold and toothy.

They
should never have allowed Wyth to blurt his pronouncements at Council. Never.
They should have tested them first—tested him. That had never been done before.
There was no precedent for it in the annals of Halig-liath. The Kiss of the
Meri was its own proof. It could not be falsified—and there had been those who
had tried.

No
precedent! The old man fumed. There was no precedent for the changes Wyth
Arundel demanded in the Meri’s name. None. And they were in a Cusp—an
auspicious Cusp, if the appearance of a Golden Meri meant aught. Tests came at
such times; heinous trials calculated to separate the true from the false, the
blessed from the cursed.

He
had been Osraed for six decades. Did his word mean nothing? But, no. He would
not let himself be personally slighted. It was the time; it was the
circumstance. He would never be so roundly ignored by his peers unless
Something, Someone, some Power was at work. Sane men would have listened to him
when he suggested that Wyth be proved. Faer-wald had listened, and Parthelan
and the other Tradists. But even among that brotherhood within the Brotherhood,
there were cowards, weaklings, men easily swayed by Wyth’s ingenuous sincerity,
men who wished to ignore the strangeness of this time, men only too willing to
countenance sweeping change when it dressed itself in the trappings of
authority. They resisted questioning the Meri’s will—and rightly so. They would
need proof that Wyth Arundel did not represent that. That he brought them, not
new Doctrine, but an old challenge, a test, a touchstone.

“Wish
for death if you are men of truth,” Ealad-hach murmured, the words a soft
susurration in the empty, cavernous room—a breeze through cobwebs. He shivered
slightly and stepped down into the play of light and shadow. Soft soles
whispering, eyes darting, he moved to Wyth’s tidy work table and hung there,
tingling, peering.

Delicately,
he lifted a freshly copied page, taken by the cleanliness of it—absolute black
on absolute white. His eyes seduced, he read:
You, O God and Lord, have sent down the Book—the Corah—that My Cause
may be manifest and My Words glorified. Through this Book, You did enter into a
Covenant concerning Me and concerning those created in Your Kingdom. You see, O
Divine Beloved, how Your people have made of that Covenant a stronghold for
their own desires. Into this place, they have withdrawn from Your Glory; secure,
they ignore Your signs. You are the One, O Spirit, who instructed them in Your
Book, saying, “Hear the Voice of the Merciful One, O people of the Corah, and
deny not She whom I have sent you.”

A
chill rippled down Ealad-hach’s arm, shuddering the page from his fingers. He
frowned, rubbing his hands together. No coincidence, his reading those words.
They spoke to him—to his very soul—shaking him. A stronghold for their own
desires ...He had seen that, had he not? The desire of Bevol, of Calach, of Tynedale
and others, to admit cailin to the Brotherhood? Had that desire now taken such
hold of Wyth Arundel that he became its unwitting instrument? Had it so blinded
the young Osraed and his elders that they now failed to perceive the clear
signs?

This
new policy of Wyth’s was an assault on the very Covenant he was ordained to
protect. And none but this unworthy old man was able to see it. The Meri was
allowing another Power to play the field—a Power whose goal was the corruption
of the Osraed through the influence of Gifted women. A Power he had seen
personified in his dreams.

Ealad-hach
wrung his hands, whispering a prayer of thanks that his eyes, at least, were
open. That he could see the calamity nearing. Aye, and he could feel it, hear
its whispered approach.

A
shiver scurried up his spine. He turned, quickly, expecting to see nothing but
the vapors of his imagination. He found himself staring, open-mouthed at Osraed
Wyth. While he struggled to collect himself, the young Osraed smiled at him,
disarmingly. He blanched. In abstract terms he could cast Wyth as a traitor to
the Covenant; in flesh and blood, he found that conviction difficult to uphold.
He had liked the boy, had thought him a young man of staunch principle. And
though he had been disappointed when the Meri had passed him over the first
time, he had not, then, seen the flaw, the weakness that made Wyth Arundel easy
prey for someone like Meredydd-a-Lagan. And after that unfortunate episode,
after the young Wicke had tried (aye, and succeeded!) to seduce him, it seemed
more than passing strange that he should suddenly find favor with the Meri.

“Hello,
Osraed Ealad-hach,” said Wyth and put a slight bow into his words.

“How
goes the work?” Ealad-hach asked, and found his eyes drawn to Wyth’s forehead.
It could not be falsified, that Kiss. Not falsified, but false, nonetheless. It
must be false. There was no other possibility.

The
younger man stepped down into the room and crossed to the table where
Ealad-hach stood and willed himself not to flinch.

“Much
more quickly since the advent of the Copyweave,” Wyth said, and the smile
deepened.

“The
Copyweave?” inquired Ealad-hach, glad for the introduction of a non-threatening
subject.

Wyth
lifted an odd little frame of wood and metal from the table and held it out to
him. There was a piece of crystal-glass set into the top of the frame and its
collapsible, jointed legs sported four wooden feet with leather pads.

“Osraed
Saer built it for me,” Wyth said. His eyes were bright with boyish enthusiasm. “You
see, you place it over the text you wish to copy, then draw a circumscription
on the glass, so you only get the part you need. Then, you draw the text into
the glass and deposit it on the new page. The frame unfolds” —he demonstrated— “so
you can expand or contract the image, as you desire.”

Ealad-hach
was impressed without intending to be. “A marvelous device, Osraed Wyth. You
are a clever young man, to have developed such a Weave.”

The
boy looked suddenly gawky and uncomfortable. “Well, sir, I must be honest, It
wasn’t completely my conception.”

“Oh?
Whose, then?” Was it his imagination, or had the young man tensed? Did the
brown eyes dodge his?

“Oh,
a-a friend.”

“Ah.
Bevol, I presume.”

Wyth
turned the frame in his hands, his expression suddenly opaque. Ealad-hach
cursed his lack of Thought Tell ability.

“Actually,”
Wyth said, raising his eyes a little, “it was Taminy-a-Gled who helped me with
the Weave.”

Ealad-hach
thought his heart would stop and fall to the floor. “Taminy ...” he repeated,
and wondered that he didn’t stammer. “The girl Bevol brought to Nairne?”

Wyth
nodded, eyes watchful.

“She
... Weaves?”

“She
knew a couple of duans. One, she adapted from a Water Draw, the other, I think
she might have composed ... although she could have learned it from Bevol.” His
eyes slid away again. “Perhaps she was only parroting.”

“Very
likely,” Ealad-hach said. He could not quite make himself feel relief. He
wanted it; it refused to come. Still, he gave lip service to the safe
interpretation, even in his own soul.

“Bevol
mentioned,” Wyth said, “that you had an aislinn you wanted me to Tell.”

Ealad-hach
peered at him.
So. You want to read my
dreams, do you? Are you being sly, boy? Are you being clever? If I give you my
aislinn, what will you do with it? What will you try to make me believe?

He
almost said “no.” He almost pulled back from the prospect of letting this
anomaly into his nightmares. But a sense of duty drove him on. This was a
riddle he must solve.

“Yes,”
he said. “I have dreamed. Let me tell you what I have dreamed.”

Oddly,
the boy’s face seemed to close in on itself. “Are you certain, Osraed, that you
wish me to give the Tell?”

Why
was he wriggling away? Surely, he would want to interpret the aislinn to the
advantage of his cause. “Yes, of course. You were always excellent at the Dream
Tell.”

Wyth
dipped his head. “As you wish.”

Ealad-hach
told him then, of the Sea and the Shore and the girl upon it. He showed him,
too, or tried to, but his Weave was weak and lacked depth and clarity. And when
he was finished, he looked at Wyth’s face and saw reluctance—no, more than
that—distress.

The
boy fingered his Copyweave frame and stared at his neat stack of papers and
said nothing.

“Well?”
prompted Ealad-hach. “Well, what do you say? Give me your Tell.”

“I
can’t, Osraed.” Wyth raised his eyes to Ealad-hach’s face. “I cannot Tell this
aislinn. It-”

“It
what? What do you mean, you can’t Tell it?”

Wyth
shook his head. “It’s too confused. Too confusing. The images are ... too thick
with personal meaning. It is beyond me.”

“Confusing
how?” persisted Ealad-hach. “Do you balk at Telling a portent of evil?”

Wyth’s
eyes met his, sharp and probing. “Is that what you perceive it to be, Osraed? A
portent of evil?”

“Whatever
else is muddled, that much is clear.”

“And
if I told you it was not a portent of evil?”

“I
would not believe it.”

Wyth’s
shoulders moved in what was almost a shrug. “Then any Tell I might give would
be irrelevant to you.”

“Do
you say it is a portent of good?”
He
cannot say that, surely. He won’t say it.

Wyth
frowned, his gaze suddenly turned inward. “The same Sun that warms the earth
and ripens the crops, burns to ashes the dry grass and blinds the creatures of
shadow.”

Ealad-hach
tried to pry at the boy’s narrow face, tried to divine his meaning. The attempt
was futile. “Who is the girl?” he asked sharply. “Tell me that much. Who is
this Wicke?”

Wyth
shook his head. “There is no Wicke in your aislinn, Osraed.”

“Then
what?”

“I
... cannot say.”

“You
mean, you
will
not.”

Wyth
shook his head again and lowered his eyes to the tidy mess atop the table. “If
you’ll excuse me, Osraed, I have much work to do.”

Ealad-hach
withdrew silently, though his spirit was not silent; it roared in ragged
frustration. He went away to his chambers, then, to pursue a peace that no
longer lived there. Later, he thought, later, when he was calm, he would tell
the others what he had gleaned from Wyth.

oOo

“And
then,” panted Aine, “and then, she took the crystal out of the box and it lit
up like a lightbowl!”

“No!
It didn’t!” Doireann’s eyes all but started from her face. She lifted her
skirts higher as they cut through ripening wheat toward the verdant line of the
Bebhinn Wood.

Skittering
sideways, Aine bobbed her bright head, her voice coming out in short puffs. “And
Taminy said ... Taminy said ... she’d seen that Isha ... Isha had the Gift.”