Crystal Rose Read online

  Eyslk let the teapot down onto its hearth-hook too quickly, spilling water into the flames below. They spat and hissed like disgruntled cats.

  “Ill? How ill?” She was already following him from the room, heading for their bedchamber beneath the loft stair.

  “She’s in a cold fever. Got a wretched cough. Can’t seem to keep warm.”

  She heard the cough as she entered her parents’ room; it was a terrible, dry, hacking cough that wracked the bundled form on the bed.

  “Mama?”

  Deardru gazed up at her through glazed eyes, seeming not to recognize her own daughter. She shuddered, gasped breath into her lungs and began coughing again.

  Eyslk put a hand to her forehead. It was, as her step-da had said, a cold fever, and Eyslk hadn’t a clue as to what might cause it. She’d never seen the like. She wiped her palm on her woolen breeches, chewing her lip and trying to make sense of the picture—cold sweats, ruddy face, cough, chills. She sought one of her mother’s hands to see if they might be swollen and found them both clenched fiercely beneath the covers, knuckles white.

  “You’ve some healing, Eyslk,” said her step-da. “What do you think it is?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know, da. I’ve never seen it.” She chewed another tiny strip from her lower lip. “I’ll get Roe Kettletoft. She’ll know.”

  But Roe Kettletoft was just as boggled by Deardru’s sudden illness as her daughter was. While Garradh-an-Caerluel occupied himself and his two sons with caring for their small flock of sheep, Eyslk and the village healer practiced their skills on his ailing wife with no result. She continued to cough, to shiver, to bathe herself in sweat. It seemed, in fact, as if their ministrations threw her into even deeper agony.

  Her face screwed into a horrible grimace, her eyes all but rolled back in her head, Deardru finally brought the young healer to a rueful admission of defeat.

  “I can do nothing for her, Eyslk,” Roe said. “This is no ordinary sickness. I sense magic in it. Can someone have cast inyx on your mama?”

  The very thought was terrifying. “Who’d do such a thing?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know. My aidan is for healing, Eyslk. It goes no further than that, so I can’t tell you. I’m desperate to believe no Hillwild would do such a thing to one of their own. I can only think it must be one of the strangers among us.”

  “But why? Why would any of them want to hurt my mama?”

  Roe shook her head. “I’ve not the skills to tell, Eyslk. Perhaps Mistress Taminy can.”

  Eyslk chewed yet another strip from her lip. She hated to pester Taminy with her family’s problems, but what if Roe Kettletoft said was true, if her mother’s illness was caused by a purposeful inyx?

  Her step-father came in then, to see how his wife was faring. He was beside himself when Roe told him she could be of no help. He ranted at her at first, blaming her, denigrating her skills. Then he drifted into a terrible, dark calm, and Eyslk was afraid he’d given Deardru up for lost.

  When she had seen Roe Kettletoft from their house and returned to her mother’s room, he looked up at her from the sickbed, clutching his wife’s knotted hands and said, “You must ask your Mistress to help us, Eyslk.”

  She chilled. “But, Da, she’s so much more important things to do than—”

  “Save the life of an innocent woman? I heard a bit of what Roe had to say about inyx. If someone’s Weaving against your ma, it’s sure that none of us is able to stop it. But Taminy could.”

  “I’d be afraid to ask.”

  “Afraid? Of what? If she’s so dear and kind and loving as you keep telling us, how could she not help?”

  Deardru groaned then—a horrid, thick, painful sound that rocked Eyslk to the soles of her boots.

  Her step-da continued to gaze up at her, his dark eyes hot and demanding. “Get up to Hrofceaster, girl. Beg if you have to. If that doesn’t work, I’ll beg.”

  Still, she hesitated.

  Garradh-an-Caerluel’s face twisted with anguish. “For God’s sake, child, it’s your mama’s life!”

  She ran—coatless, hoodless, ignoring the cold—all the way up the steep path to Hrofceaster. To beg.

  oOo

  “Please, mistress, do forgive me.” Airleas delivered his impassioned plea to Taminy’s back. She would not turn her face to him, gazing instead from the window of her audience chamber into the courtyard below.

  “What did you do, Airleas?”

  He held his breath, quivering. “Don’t you know?”

  “Yes. I wondered if you did.”

  He breathed again. “I Wove something bad. Without meaning too, though. I didn’t realize I was Weaving at all. I . . . I was just angry.”

  “At whom?”

  “At . . . at Broran. For mocking me. He calls me ‘midge’ and insults me every chance he gets, and—”

  “So he insulted you and you hurled inyx at him.”

  “Well . . . no. Not exactly.” Airleas shuffled his feet beneath his chair. “He walked away from me. He said he was going to tell Catahn I wasn’t learning anything.”

  “Were you—learning anything?”

  “Yes, but . . .”

  She turned to face him suddenly, her face caught half in shadow, half in light, making her expression difficult to read.

  Tentatively, he tried to touch her with his aidan.

  Blocked.

  “But?” she prompted him.

  He looked at his mud-stained knees. “I was . . . I was being stubborn, I guess.”

  “You guess.”

  Humor tickled him. He kept his mouth straight. “I know was being stubborn.”

  “So you don’t really think Broran was off the trail in walking off on you.”

  “I suppose not.”

  “Then why were you angry at him?”

  “He just makes me feel bad.”

  “How does he do that?”

  “He . . . he knew how I felt about taking lessons from him. He said I thought I was the great Malcuim and he was just a lowly mountain boy.”

  “Is that what you were thinking?”

  Airleas could feel tears pressing behind his eyes. He nodded.

  Taminy moved toward his chair then, steps measured and soft on the woven rugs. “He makes you feel bad because he can see through you. He sees some ugly things, doesn’t he, Airleas? Stubbornness, prejudice, arrogance, pride.”

  He nodded again, eyes blurring.

  “That’s not what you want him to see, is it? You want him to see courage and honor and trustworthiness—the sorts of things that inspire loyalty.” She stopped less than an arm’s reach away. “So, is it really Broran you’re angry with?”

  The tears slipped their bonds and fled down his cheeks. He shook his head.

  “Are you angry with me?”

  He shivered convulsively, realizing that he had been angry with Taminy. Angry that she had insisted he keep company with the likes of Broran; angry that she, too, saw through him; angry that she counseled him to caution and made his dreams of revenge seem like childish fantasy; angry that because of her, his father was dead and he and his mother were in exile.

  But it was a child’s anger and he saw it for what it was—shallow, ugly, unreasoning. She made him see it and that, too, made him angry.

  “I’ll take that as a ‘yes,’” she said. “Is there anyone else you’re angry with, Airleas? Your mother, perhaps, or Catahn or . . . ?”

  The tears were a flood now and, in them, his voice nearly drowned. “Me!” The word came out in a trembling wail, making Airleas Malcuim despise himself even further for sounding so infantile. “I’m angry at me! I can’t learn anything! I can’t change anything! I can’t do anything! Just-just sit up here in this heap of stone and-and hide!”

  She merely stood and watched him while he soaked himself in abject misery. Then she moved past him toward the hearth.

  He couldn’t have stopped the tears if he’d tried, so he didn’t try. He let them fall,
listening to the sounds of his own labored breathing in concert with outside wind and inside fire.

  When at last he was gutted and empty and feeling incredibly alone, he dared turn to see where Taminy had gone. She was sitting on the floor before the hearth, but her eyes were on the flames, not on him.

  He rose and went to her and, standing beside her said, “I’m sorry, Taminy.”

  She neither spoke, nor looked at him.

  He sat down next to her on the hearth rug. “Who will be Cyne of Caraid-land? Will Daimhin Feich be Cyne or the Ren Catahn?”

  The corners of her mouth twitched. “No, Airleas, neither. One way or another, you will be Cyne of Caraid-land.”

  One way or another? What did that mean?

  “But surely, I’m not worthy to be Cyne. I’m . . . I’m terrible.”

  “Airleas, have you ever seen a fledgling bird?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was it beautiful?”

  “No. It was ugly. All eyes and beak and talon.”

  “Can it fly?”

  “No.”

  “When it tries it falls out of its nest and lies, flailing, on the earth. You might look at it lying there and say that it had failed. But that is the natural course for a bird, and if it survives its trials and tests, it does learn to fly. It learns, too, how to use its beak and talons properly. It becomes a songbird or a courier pigeon or a royal falcon.”

  “I’m not a bird. I’m a person.”

  Now she did look at him. “You’re a boy. A boy who is endowed with a fierce, strong Gift—a Gift you must learn to control. A bird can’t decide not to fly. But you can decide not to learn what you need to know to become Cyne of Caraid-land. What you did to Broran this morning was not evil. But it was irresponsible. Now you know you have a very strong aidan. What do you choose to do with it?”

  He looked down at his hands, folded meekly now in his lap, and he realized something else. Those were the hands that controlled his fate, not Taminy’s. As much as he wanted to deed his destiny into her hands or the Ren Catahn’s or his mother’s, he knew he could not. The choice Taminy held out to him now was his alone to make.

  “I choose to learn how to be a Cyne. A good Cyne, pleasing to the Meri.”

  “Then learn from those who have things to teach you. Learn swordsmanship from Broran; statesmanship from Catahn; discipline from me; love from your mother. Learn from anyone who offers you knowledge, Airleas. No matter how lowly you esteem them to be.”

  He mulled all that over as he slept away his emptiness, his head cradled in Taminy’s lap. He dreamed pleasantly of galloping his horse across a great meadow of rippling grass, hands firm on the reins, the animal solid between his knees. The grass rose up in waves and became an ocean and the horse became a fantastic boat, whose tiller he leaned upon. Wind filled its sails and pulled it toward a great, gleaming moonrise.

  But the journey was interrupted by a terrible pounding, and Airleas feared he had run his magical barque hard aground. The deck shifted beneath him and he was falling and a voice was calling, “Come!”

  He woke with a start, blinking groggily as he made out Eyslk coming through the chamber door, twisting the hem of her sweater in her hands.

  “Mistress,” she said, and he realized that her voice trembled no less than the rest of her did.

  Her distress washed over him in a great tide, waking him completely. He sat up; just as swiftly, Taminy came to her feet.

  “Eyslk! We missed you this morning, whatever is wrong?”

  The girl paled. “It’s my mother, Mistress, she—”

  “She’s ill.” Taminy went to the girl, took her hands. “What’s wrong with her?”

  “I don’t know. There’s this terrible cough and she seems to be in such pain. She sweats buckets, but she’s cold as ice and shivering herself all apart. I called the village healer first thing, but she says she can’t do aught. She says she thinks it’s an inyx. That someone’s put magic on Mama.”

  Taminy’s brow furrowed. “Who would want to do anything like that?”

  “I can’t think, Mistress. My mama’s a good woman. Fierce sometimes, but good. I can’t think anybody we know’d want to harm her. But . . . but she’s awful sick and I’m afraid, and Step-da’s afraid—”

  “I’ll come at once, of course.”

  Eyslk wobbled with relief. “If it’s no trouble, Mistress.”

  Taminy fixed the younger girl with a penetrating gaze. “You were afraid to ask me.” She put a hand on Eyslk’s shoulder. “Don’t ever be afraid to ask me anything, Eyslk. Ever again. And Eyslk, why ever did you run all the way from Airdnasheen? You could have Woven a message and I’d’ve gotten it just as clearly.”

  Even in her anxiety, the girl nearly giggled. “I . . . I didn’t even think of it.”

  “Next time you need me, or any of the waljan, do think of it, please. It could mean all the difference in the world.”

  They left together, hurrying out into the afternoon chill, while Airleas went in search of his Hillwild swordmaster.

  oOo

  Taminy stepped across the threshold into Deardru-an-Caerluel’s small bedchamber and knew that Roe Kettletoft was right; the place quivered with the tension of a tightly directed aidan. A strong will worked here.

  Her gaze traveled from the two sad-eyed little boys huddled by the door, to the handsome, stocky man who had leapt up from the bedside to face her. They came to rest at last on the woman shivering on the bed. From the man and the boys she sensed only fear and distress mixed, now, with a modicum of hope. From the woman . . .

  Puzzled, she turned to the husband. “May I be left alone with her, sir?”

  He raised dark eyebrows. “Whatever is best, Mistress. Thank you for coming here. For helping us.”

  “I’m more than happy to help, sir. And Eyslk, might I have you boil these herbs for a tea?”

  She laid a fragrant pouch in the girl’s outstretched hands, then saw the others from the room. Only then did she turn her eyes and senses back to the woman in the bed.

  What Roe Kettletoft had called magic was strong here. Oddly, Taminy found it had a different quality and texture than the workings of the Divine Art practiced by the Osraed. Like a basket held together with pitch and twine, or a patchwork garment, it was rough to the touch and straining at its joints.

  Taminy sat on the edge of the bed and looked into Deardru-an-Caerluel’s half-closed eyes. “Now, mam, will you tell me why you’ve inyxed yourself into a sickbed?”

  The aidan-thick atmosphere quivered momentarily, further straining its crude seams. On the heavy quilt covering her chest, Deardru’s knotted fists relaxed, loosing their hold on the inyx. She breathed deeply, closing her eyes. When she opened them again, gone was the glaze of concentration. In its place was a bright, voracious curiosity and a small, grudging respect.

  “Well, Mistress Taminy, you do have a mighty touch of the aidan. Even Roe Kettletoft couldn’t tell the inyx I was suffering was my own.”

  She opened her left hand, causing the small amulet she held there to fall and bob at the end of its leather thong. The jet catamount caught light from the chamber’s single deep window and glittered. A family icon, Taminy realized, and knew it to be the Hageswode totem.

  “But why, mam?” she asked. “Why put yourself in a sickbed?”

  “I only wanted to meet you, Taminy-Osmaer.”

  “You could have come to Hrofceaster with Eyslk.”

  “I avoid Hrofceaster. I wanted you to come here.”

  Into your territory. Taminy smiled. “You might have simply invited me.”

  The woman’s eyes glinted. “And you’d’ve come, would you?”

  “Yes.”

  “To break bread with the likes of us? You, who count Cynes and Cwens and Osraed in your circle? Who break bread each day with The Hageswode, himself? You’d sit at table with your own serving maid?”

  Taminy shook her head. “Eyslk is not my serving maid, mam. She’s my student and my friend. She
has a fine Gift.”

  Deardru’s chin lifted. “She’s a Hageswode.”

  Taminy tilted her head toward the jet catamount now lying atop the quilt. “I recognize the totem. Is that your family?”

  “My first husband’s. He was killed when we were quite young. Eyslk never knew him.”

  There was bitterness in that, and anger. Taminy felt immediate sympathy. “How did he die?”

  “A border skirmish with the Deasach Kartas. He was pledged to the clan forces under Ren Morgant. When I became pregnant, he pleaded release to his family obligations and was granted the request. But before he could come home to me he was killed. His family was less family than I thought them. After Eyslk was born it was as if neither of us existed. She was twelve years old before Hrofceaster paid her any notice, and then it was Desary who spoke for her. You’ve noticed they look a great deal alike. They should. They’re cousins.”

  Frowning, Taminy sifted through the other woman’s splintered thoughts and feelings. “You brought me here to tell me this? Why?”

  “So you understand what sort of man Catahn Hageswode is. A man who would pledge his only brother, newly married, to a dangerous posting far from home, while he basked in the glory of his station and the adoration of his own wife and child. A man who then treated his kin as if they were clanless strangers. If Desary hadn’t possessed her mother’s good heart, Eyslk would have never met you or placed her Gift in your hands.”

  Stunned, Taminy could only think to ask, “And why would Catahn do such a thing to his own brother—to his brother’s family?”

  Deardru’s smile was grim. “Pride. What else would make a man like Catahn Hillwild behave so?”

  Taminy turned the words in her mind as if they contained poison; she could feel the blood draining from her face. She had never known Catahn to be a pride-driven man. Had he been that different as a youth?

  Deardru’s eyes acknowledged that they hadn’t missed her discomfiture. “I neglect to mention that Raenulf was Catahn’s older brother. It was he who should have been Village Elder, Catahn who should have been bound by his pledges. For his own reasons, Raenulf rejected the status Catahn craved. Old biddies like Gram Long and Aeldress Levene will tell you that it was strength of character that brought Catahn Hageswode early power. It was not. It was Raenulf’s yielding nature. Because of that, Catahn stood to be Ren and Raenulf willingly served him. Both knew the truth, and it ate at Catahn, so he put Raenulf away from him into Morgant’s hands. And when Raenulf was killed, guilt drove Catahn to ignore his second family. I married Garradh, because Catahn could not be bothered to care for us.”