Taminy (38 page)

“I
wonder what she really did.”

“According
to this, she performed secret and dangerous acts that may have resulted in
injury to another and made claims that—ah, how do they put it?—threaten the
foundations of religious faith.”

“Quite
an accomplishment for one small village girl.” Feich leaned back in his
splendid chair. “Rumor off the galleys says this Wicke of theirs is quite a
popular young lady. By all accounts, Taminy-a-Gled has turned Nairne and its
environs into a divided camp. And now, it seems, the fracas will move to a
national battlefield. Imagine it, sire, one lone, defenseless girl against a
hundred powerful men. It fairly tears at the heart.”

Colfre
laughed at that. Envisioning his Durweard’s heart being torn by anything
required more imagination than he had. But the thought of that
girl—Taminy—standing to be judged by the illustrious Osraed ... well, he could
imagine that. It was the stuff of a heroic painting. His mind provided the
scene—all those closed Osraed faces turned toward the lone, brave figure. His
mind rendered her beautiful, of course; heroic, lone female figures were always
beautiful.

He
rose and wandered the sunny breakfast room, pausing now and again to stand in a
bright patch of light, noting how the soft radiance of it diffused through the
nap of his velvet tunic. He would have to find a brush technique that could
emulate that with more truth.

“Do
you see an advantage in this, sire?” Feich asked him.

Advantage?
He paused, roughing the velvet with his fingertips. He turned and met his Durweard’s
eyes. “What advantage-” he began to say, when it came to him with the clarity
of the morning sky. He smiled. “What I see, Daimhin, is that this potentially
explosive and divisive situation has been building without my direct knowledge
and that the Osraed have been deporting themselves in a most high-handed way.
They may, for all I know, be persecuting a completely innocent girl. I should
take an interest.”

“For
the sake of the people of Caraid-land,” said Feich, “I believe you must. What
would they think if what you say is true—if this girl is an innocent victim of
... Osraed scapegoating.”

“Indeed,
what would they think?” Colfre turned in his shower of sunlight. “I believe we
must be a presence at that great assemblage, Daimhin. See to it.”

Feich
rose and bowed. “With pleasure, sire.”

oOo

The
rain beat hard upon the second floor window of the Lorimer’s house. It did not
wake his daughter, Aine, but it invaded her dreams.

The
droplets marched across the window; an army marched through the land. Driven by
the thunder of war drums, they advanced up the Halig-Tyne from Mertuile,
inexorable, light flashing from their helms, water streaming from their armor.
They marched, not on the river road, but in the river itself, or upon it, and
as they gathered momentum, they melded, as the drops of the sea, becoming a
wave that rode upstream on its own force, tumbling, rising, growing.

From
her window, Aine could see it, bearing down on Nairne, advancing on the great
bend that wove around the cliffs. Higher it grew, stronger, rolling onward to
where it would crest.

Mute.
She was mute. And her legs would not carry her with a warning to Halig-liath.
She would be trapped here in this room when that wave broke and, trapped, she
feared she would watch it breach the great stone walls and sweep Halig-liath
away.

The
army marched all through the night, never reaching the Holy Fortress. Time
after time, Aine would shut her dreaming eyes to the final cataclysm and, time
after time, the army would renew its march upriver. She woke gratefully,
cheered by the sight of Halig-liath, massive, on its cliff top, but cheer faded
quickly during her morning ablutions; the dream hung behind her eyes like a
dread curtain, reminding her of Taminy’s words to her on that evening of chaos,
reminding her of Taminy’s touch.

Her
palm tingled, still, a feeling that did not pass with the application of warm
water and soap.

Funny
...She rubbed a towel across the faint discoloration there. An odd place for a
bruise, and it didn’t hurt. She stared at the mark without seeing it. She
should go to Halig-liath. She should beg to see the Osraed. She should tell
them about her dream.

And what, Aine-mac-Lorimer, should persuade
them to listen?

She
shook her head and picked up her hair brush, sitting down before her mirror to
pull it through her thick cinnamon mane. The face that gazed back at her from
the silvered glass was pale. So pale, every freckle stood out in relief. She
stared, hypnotized by the movement of her brush sweep-sweeping through the
hair, burnishing it. It seemed to her, for a moment, that she faced someone
else in the mirror. Someone with flaxen hair and eyes like the leaves of
spring.

She
blinked and the illusion passed. The freckled face stared back at her, its
hazel eyes wide and haunted, the bruises and lacerations from the fall all but
faded.

She saved your life. Could you make some
effort to save hers
?

Oh,
but that was arrogant thinking. How could she, the daughter of a Lorimer, hope
to impress the Osraed of Halig-liath with her testimony? Would they even care
that Taminy had had nothing to do with her fall? Had only to do with bringing
her back from death? She shivered, her whole body convulsing with chill. Death.

She
dropped the hairbrush to the little dressing table and went downstairs, rubbing
her tingling hand against the fabric of her breeches.

Her
mother was downstairs alone; her father and brothers had already gone to the
shop. She ate a small breakfast—too small for her mother’s liking.

“Are
you feeling ill, Aine? You look right enough, but you’ve eaten barely enough to
fill a nutshell these last days.” She smoothed her daughter’s hair, lifting it
away from her eyes, so she could peer into them. “Maybe you should see Osraed
Torridon.”

Aine
lowered her eyes. “I do want to see the Osraed, mother. I ... I need to tell
them what I remember about the fall. I need to tell them Taminy didn’t have
anything to do with it.”

Her
mother nodded. “I was wondering when you’d come to that. Are you sure, Aine?
Are you sure she had nothing to do with it?”

“I’m
sure, mam. I wish da would believe me.”

“He
thinks you may be inyxed.”

“No.
Taminy didn’t do anything to harm me. She only saved me from harm. I have to
tell the Osraed that.”

Her
mother nodded. “They said they were going to call you before the Body meets.”

“I
want to go now—today. I ... need to-to ...” How to say it:
Mother, I dream. Mother, I see visions. Mother, Taminy says I have the
Gift of divination
.

The
Mistress Lorimer caught her daughter’s face between her hands and captured her
eyes. “What is it, Aine? Something is troubling you, and you might as well tell
me now, what it is, as tell me later. For I will find out.”

Aine
hesitated.

“Please,
Aine, things have happened I don’t understand. And I’m worried for you, and for
that girl up there at Halig-liath.”

That
decided her. “Mam, I’ve been dreaming. Clear dreams and awful dreams. They’ve
come to me for some time now, and I’ve been silent about all of them. But now,
I know something is wrong and I’ve got to go to the Osraed and try to warn them
of it.”

“Wrong?
What is it? What have you dreamed?”

She
described the dream army then, and its watery march upriver. And she told of
other dreams as well. She did not say that Taminy had told her she was
Gifted—she hadn’t the courage for that.

When
she was done, her mother let her go and said, “If you feel you must try to warn
the Osraed, then you must. But go quietly and don’t ride past the shop—your
father would stop you if he knew what you were set off to do. He still believes
Taminy-a-Gled is your enemy.”

“But
you don’t, do you, mother?”

Her
mother sat down at the kitchen table and gazed at her, looking wearier and
older than she had only a week past. “I don’t know what to believe, Aine,
except that Torridon took you from my arms dead, and Taminy put you back into
them alive. And that, I suppose, is all I need to believe. Go tell your dreams
to the Osraed, daughter. I will pray that they listen to you.”

oOo

“This
letter is most disturbing, Ealad.” The Osraed Calach smoothed the pages upon
the table, as if by doing so he might also smooth out the situation at
Creiddylad. “Osraed Lealbhallain has confirmed what we have chosen to regard as
rumor. We shall have to bring this before the Body-”

“We
shall do nothing of the sort. Not now. Not in the midst of all this other
business.” Ealad-hach paced the Council chamber, empty but for the three Osraed
who made up the current Triumvirate.

Faer-wald,
senior of the remaining Council Osraed, sat in Bevol’s chair. “Are you sure
that’s wise?” he asked. “Surely we can’t let the Cyne blithely rewrite the
rituals of the Cirke to suit his own whims. Nor can we afford to have men like
Abbod Ladhar turning a blind eye to it.”

“I’m
not suggesting we do that. Only that we table this matter until we’ve dealt
with Taminy-a-Cuinn.”

Faer-wald’s
face flushed. “You believe her, then. You believe she is Taminy-a-Cuinn.”

“Don’t
you?”

“I
don’t know what to believe. That a cailin could walk into the Sea and walk out
again over one hundred years later, that she was, during that century,
transformed into what we know as the Meri-”

“I
don’t believe that!” said Ealad-hach pointing a rigid finger at Faer-wald’s
broad nose. “Not now, not ever, will I believe it.”

“There
is power in the Meri’s Sea,” observed Calach quietly. “There is power all about
us. You saw the evidence of your own eyes, Osraed—a girl died, then lived
again. In all my years, I have seen two men perform Infusions—Torridon and
Bevol. But even they could not mend the sort of damage that killed Aine-mac-Lorimer’s
body.”

“You
exaggerate.”

Faer-wald
shook his head. “No, he doesn’t. It’s true. Dear God, what is she?”

“She’s
a Wicke, a demon. What else could call the damned Hillwild down from their
aerie?”

“Perhaps
what she claims to be.”

Ealad-hach
speared Calach with gimlet eyes. “An ex-regeneration of the Meri? Do you want
to believe that? Do you want to believe that those arrogant young females who’ve
marched to the Sea and wrought havoc in Caraid-land are the vessels of That?”

“It
makes very little difference whether I want to believe it or not, Ealad. If it
is so, it is so.”

Ealad-hach
rounded on him, placing his gnarled hands flat upon the crescent table. “Do you
realize the implications of that? I have dreamed, Calach, of the Wicke of
Liusadhe. I have seen one of them—a girl with eyes like the belly of a cloud
and hair like the night wind—stand up by the Sea with arrogant smile, waiting
for the touch of God. Waiting for the embrace of perfection and power. If what
Bevol claims is true, then how do you explain the tragedy that followed? How do
you explain the Purge? The Meri eschewed every Osraed connected with those
Wicke.”

“Connected?”
Calach’s colorless eyebrows crept beneath his fringe of matching hair. “Aye,
they were connected. They tried to have the Wicke executed instead of merely
exiled. The Purge touched nearly every Osraed in Caraid-land, Ealad.”

“Because
they failed to convince Liusadhe to act with conviction.”

“Or
because they tried to have innocent women murdered and, failing that, consented
to having them tortured and banished from all they held dear.”

Ealad-hach
covered his ears. “I won’t hear this, it is blasphemy!”

“Oh,
stop it, both of you!” Faer-wald pounded one hammy fist on the table. “What
about this other thing? What about Colfre? We cannot let him continue on in
this—starving the poor in his charge, twisting the Holy Rites as if they were
so much cheap rope, letting the affairs of Caraid-land fall into the hands of a
select committee. We must act.”

“You
have no conception, have you,” said Ealad-hach, “of the gravity of this
situation with the girl. We can let nothing else distract us from it. Nothing!”

The
silence held only the labored breathing of three men struggling with their
particular passions. Finally, Faer-wald said, “I say we put it before the
Council.”

“After
the convening of the Body,” amended Ealad-hach.

“No,
before. It makes no sense to call everyone back a second time if the Council
decides the Body must consult over this business in Creiddylad.”

“You
stubborn old-”

Scowling,
Faer-wald pointed at Calach. “Tie-breaker.”

Calach
folded his arms across his narrow chest. “I agree with Faer-wald. When the
Council meets to interview witnesses tomorrow, they can consider Lealbhallain’s
report as well.”

Ealad-hach
all but ground his teeth. “Very well.”

A
chime interrupted them and a pale-faced Prentice peeped his head gingerly
around the half-open door. “Osraed? I-I beg your pardon, but there’s a young
cailin to see you. It’s Aine-mac-Lorimer, masters,” his eyes adding awe to his
timorousness. “She’s mighty distrait.”

“We’ll
see her tomorrow-” began Ealad-hach, but the Apex pro-tem interrupted him.

“Send
her in please, Luc.”

Ealad-hach
shut his mouth and returned to his seat.

A
moment later, the girl entered. Whatever passion had propelled her through the
doorway faded as she came further into the room. She had not reached the table
when it gave out altogether and left her trembling in the middle of the
polished floor.

Realizing
how imposing they must look, seated, scowling behind the gleaming expanse of
wood, Calach rose and moved about the table to meet her, a smile creeping to
his lips. “Aine! How do you feel today? Are you sure you’re quite ready to be
out and about?”