Taminy (30 page)

Of
all things here, that altar stone was the constant. It had not been renewed or
refurbished since its placement there by Cyne Kieran, called the Dark, in
response to a prophecy that made him fearful of wedding at Halig-liath or
Ochanshrine. It was Cyne Saeward who enlarged the Cirke from those original,
relatively humble beginnings, and who retiled the floors, replaced the paneling
and added the largest of the windows. Since then, no major changes had been made.

Colfre’s
alterations, Fhada had told him, lay concealed behind a great tapestry that
hung just beyond the altar. Leal couldn’t imagine what changes the Cyne
believed justified the tariffs he was levying against local merchants. Surely
nothing, Lealbhallain thought, could increase the grandeur of the place or
enhance its sense of history.

He
heard the wind-bells, then, from their aerie above the altar, and realized the
Sanctuary had all but filled with worshippers. Beside him, Osraed Fhada, who
had been lost in his own meditations, stirred and glanced around.

“Ah,”
he said, “the Cyne.”

Leal
turned to glance up the broad central aisle. It was, indeed, the Cyne and, with
him, an entire entourage. Before him a pair of boys carried the standards of
the House Malcuim and Colfre’s personal crest—a dove bearing in its beak a wild
sea-rose. Thereafter came the Cyne’s Durweard, Daimhin Feich, followed by the
Cyne himself and the Cwen Toireasa, both borne on thrones of gilt wood. Behind
them, on a smaller throne, was the young Riagan, Airleas.

Leal
ogled. He had worshipped at Ochanshrine these weeks past in the small seaside
chapel called Wyncirke. Only this Cirke-dag had an invitation from Mertuile
brought him and Fhada to Cyne’s Cirke. He had never imagined this pageantry;
down the broad central aisle the Royal Family was borne, followed by a troupe
of court Eiric, Ministers and Osraed. The less impressive members of the
congregation merely watched.

Osraed
Fhada leaned close to Lealbhallain. “The first alteration our Cyne made here
was to have the great aisle made greater that he and his Cwen might travel it
enthroned.”

Leal
watched, as he was intended to, while the courtiers found themselves seats in
the front row—cordoned off for them, Fhada said. The thrones continued on, to
be set upon the altar itself, flanking the great stone. The standards, too,
were placed there, one to each side of the golden staff which held the Meri’s
effigy.

Leal
glanced sideways at Fhada. The older Osraed’s face was flushed and his jaw set.
He shook his head. “Sacrilege,” he murmured. “Placing himself on the same altar
as the Meri’s Star.”

Leal
faced front again as the Cyne’s Cirkemaster took his place at the altar stone
and began the devotions. The worship was traditional; there were readings from
the Corah and the Book of the Meri interspersed with congregational lays and
stunning chants from the Cirke chorus, accompanied by fine musicians on fiddle,
pipe and drum. It was, in all, a glorious worship, and Leal lost himself in the
weave of sunlight, incense and song until the final prayers had been offered.
Then, when traditionally the Cirkemaster would offer a blessing or commend some
thought for the personal meditation of the worshippers, he instead placed an
ornate wooden box upon the altar stone.

Leal
recognized the motif upon its carved panels and a chill coursed up his spine.
The Cyne rose then, to place himself, kneeling, before the altar stone.
Whereupon, the Cirkemaster opened the box and removed from it a chalice. Water
lapped gently at the sides of the cut crystal bowl while skillfully channeled
sunlight leapt from the facets and raced like wildfire along the curves of the
graceful stem.

The
Star Chalice. A relic beneath which a war had once been fought. A ceremonial
goblet created for the ascension of Cynes and Osraed. A vessel which Osraed
Lealbhallain’s lips had touched but once, upon his arrival at Ochanshrine. That
sacred vessel was now lifted up before the crowd while the Osraed of Cyne’s
Cirke intoned the words usually reserved for coronations.

“Behold,
Caraid-land. Behold your Cyne—Colfre, son of Ciarda of the House of Malcuim.”

He
gave the Chalice into the Cyne’s hands and watched expressionlessly as Colfre
raised it to his lips and sipped from it a draught of water taken from the
place were the Halig-tyne and the Sea commingled.

Lealbhallain’s
senses halted. His lungs recalled on their own how to breathe, but he could no
longer feel them. The Universe lay between his eyes and the Chalice and the
beatific expression on Cyne Colfre’s face.

Colfre
opened his mouth and cried, “Ecstasy, O Meri! Your Voice is ecstasy! How
beautiful to the ears is Your Song. I am moved! I am moved to tell of troubled
and uncertain times. There are changes upon us, people of Caraid-land. Great and
puzzling changes. The order of things is challenged!”

In
the swell of murmurs that surrounded this pronouncement, Lealbhallain shook his
head. Of course there were changes. They were in a Cusp. There were always
changes in a Cusp. Why was the Cyne putting on the pretense of prophesying?

Rise
.

Leal
heard the word as clearly as if it had been shouted in his ear. No, he more
than heard it—he felt it vibrate his frame.

Rise
.

He
rose.

To the altar
.

He
left his seat and slid out into the central aisle. Answering a prompting only
he could hear, he moved toward the Cyne, amazed at his own audacity. He felt
men leap to approach him, but none touched him or impeded his progress in any
way. In a heartbeat he was face to face with the Cyne.

As
Colfre, his eyes rolled blissfully back into his head, opened his mouth to
speak again, Lealbhallain took the Chalice from his hands and held it aloft. In
some fiery confluence of sun and crystal, a shaft of light caught the stone set
in the heart of the Meri’s Star and leapt from there to the Chalice. The bowl
filled with glory, exciting in the congregation cries of astonishment.

Over
the flurry of reaction, Lealbhallain heard himself say, “The Meri speaks
through the mouths of Her Chosen. The Meri is known through the Counsel of the
Divine. ‘No man among you knows the changes I have wrought.’ These are the
words of the Meri.”

He
lowered the Chalice then, and, looking his Cyne squarely in the eye, took a sip
of its contents. Salt and sweet. The warm wash of flavor embraced his
tongue—the meeting place of the Halig-tyne and the Sea. He rolled the liquid in
his mouth before swallowing it. Then, he handed the Chalice to the Cirkemaster.

“Return
it to its place, Osraed,” he said, then turned and left the Sanctuary.

Fhada
met him at the doors. The older Osraed said nothing at first, preferring to
watch him from the corner of one eye as they strode the Cirke’s broad plaza
toward the Cyne’s Way. When his eyes touched the spires of Mertuile rising
above the Way’s nether end, Fhada’s silence broke.

“What
have you done, Osraed? And what, in the Meri’s fair Name, prompted you to do
it?”

“
She
prompted me.” Leal’s limbs shook
with a sudden trembling realization of what he had just done. Adrenaline washed
through his core, freezing him.

“She?
The Meri, you mean?” Fhada’s eyes seized his. “She spoke to you? You heard Her?
There—in the Cirke?”

“She
bid me rise, then She-She simply moved me.”

“And
the words?”

And
the words. Leal grasped the links of his prayer chain, his eyes on Mertuile’s massive
landward flank. “Were not mine.”

“Cyne
Colfre won’t know that. He will lay blame on you. Dear God, how will he
interpret this?”

“To
his advantage.”

Fhada
stopped and stared at him. “Those were not your words, either, I think.”

“No,
I suppose not. These are. What difference does it make how the Cyne interprets
my actions? If my words are from the Meri, She has already taken his
interpretation into account. And his reaction.” Leal took a deep breath. “Yes.
The Meri’s will cannot be thwarted. Regardless of what may happen to me, Her
will is served.”

Fhada
shook his head. “You shame me, Leal.”

Leal
was aghast. “What? No, Osraed Fhada. Don’t say that.”

Fhada
laid a hand on his shoulder. “Let me speak. You shame me by being what I should
be—what I should have been. Perhaps, even
could
have been. Cirke-dag after Cirke-dag I have sat in that Sanctuary watching the
Cyne mold the worship to his own will. First the aisle and the thrones—they
were set below the altar at first, you know, creeping closer with time until
finally they appeared upon the altar itself. And the standards preceded them,
growing taller by degrees until, as you saw, they fall just short of the Meri’s
standard. And to watch him drink from the Chalice-!” He shook his head. “He was
to drink from that cup once in his life. Once, only, as he stood before the
Stone to receive the Circlet of his office. And I, Fhada, sat and watched those
things and did nothing.”

“The
Meri did not expect-”

“She
did
expect, Lealbhallain. Once, I
could feel Her. Then. Now, there is only a guilty niggle. But even then—damn
me!—even then, I resisted. And do you know why?”

“No,
sir.”

“Because
men I respected told me to. Oh, I am not excusing myself, no. I merely want you
to understand how I let myself be led astray—how I rationalized my inaction.”
He made a disgusted face. “The Osraed Ladhar said it. The Abbod, himself. ‘Question
these promptings, boy. They test you.’ If you cannot trust the Abbod, I
reasoned, who can you trust?”

Leal
licked his lips, stunned to sweat by the implications of Fhada’s words. “Osraed
Ladhar is still Abbod.”

“Indeed.
He’s aged now, certainly, but powerful.”

Powerful.
Fhada did not mean that, Leal knew, as once he had naively defined power.

“What
did he tell you?”

Fhada
began walking again, slowly now, into the shadow of Mertuile. “When I went to
him with my first great tremulous dilemma, he told me I was being tested. He
instructed me to question the Voice I heard, to resist it, to seek to
understand its dark origins. He said there were portents of great calamity in
the future of Caraid-land. He said my testing was surely a part of that.”

“Did
he know-?”

Fhada
shrugged. “How can I know what he knew?”

“What
did you feel?”

“That
he had the means to be certain of the Voice I heard and Its message, but did
not use it. I told myself that was because he did not need to use it. He had
seen portents; that was enough. I wanted to believe he was certain of what he
told me. I couldn’t contemplate anything else then.”

“And
now?”

“Now,
I accept that we were both wrong—Osraed Ladhar for dissuading me, and I for
letting him.”

Leal’s
body wanted to fold in on itself. A vacuum existed where his heart had been. “Perhaps
... perhaps you were not wrong. Perhaps I am being tested too.”

“Perhaps
you are, but you are passing your test, where I failed mine.”

Leal
laid a desperate hand on the other man’s arm. “No! You’re too young a man to
give yourself up. The Meri still speaks to you, I know She does.”

Fhada
disengaged himself, gently. “Don’t trust me, Leal. Don’t see in me what is no
longer there. What was, perhaps, never there to begin with.”

“It’s
there, Fhada,” Leal said, as they took the turn away from Mertuile toward the
Care House. “And I’m not the only one who sees it.”

Do you imagine that the secrets of your
souls are hidden? Know with certainty that what you have concealed in your
hearts is as clear as day to the Spirit. That it remains hidden is pure mercy.

— Utterances of Osraed Wyth
Verse 13

The
sky did not fall. Ealad-hach did not pursue her with chains and fetishes,
though she knew from the talk passed by Brys to Scandy and Phelan and, thence,
to all of Nairne, that he had constructed any number of Wardweaves. She knew
from Bevol that Ealad-hach had also closeted himself immediately after the
Cirke incident with some of his Tradist comrades.

“He
will not,” Bevol told her, “let it lie. He’s just regrouping.”

“But
I held the stone,” Taminy observed. “I stepped right over that horrid runebag.”

“And
you are not so naive as to believe that means aught to Ealad-hach. His judgment
has been impugned, anwyl. He said a Wicke could not hold Lin’s crystal or Weave
through it or exit a Cirke when confronted by a moleskin-covered, marinated
snake’s head.” His mouth twitched into a grin. “It appears he was wrong. Wicke
can do those things.”

“I’m
not,” said Taminy, “a Wicke.”

“I
think it would be harder for Ealad-hach to believe that—to believe himself
wrong about that—than it would be for him to believe he merely underestimated a
Wicke’s powers.” He paused and cocked an eye at her. “You put on, to all
descriptions, an amazing display. He can’t doubt that he underestimated you.”

Taminy
tilted back her head and peered up into the high-beamed ceiling of their
parlor.
Ah, yes, as even I did
! A
smile intruded when her lips would be serious.

“I
meant for nothing to happen, really. A simple schoolroom Weaving, I said to
myself. A spark of light in a bit of stone. Gwynet might have done as much. But
instead, a shower, a fountain—nay, a-a downpour!” She was laughing now,
remembering their faces—startled, perplexed, awful, astonished—gleaming in the
Eibhilin light of Taminy-a-Cuinn.

“They
say you were a rare wonder with crystals, when you used them.”

A
rare wonder. Had she been? The laughter stilled and she lowered her eyes. “I
couldn’t control it, Bevol. I took that stone in my hands and completely lost
control. It was like a-an Eibhilin sneeze. Forgive me,” she added when Bevol
began to chuckle. “I don’t mean to make light of it.”