Taminy Read online

  The flame of his candle, steady one moment, guttered and died as if unseen fingers had snuffed it. In his advanced state of relaxation, he could only stare at the glowing wick with mild bemusement, and wonder why, with the candle out, the room seemed to be growing lighter. He would turn his head and glance at the window, he decided. He would see that the Sun was rising.

  But his head would not turn, and at the foot of his bed a soft, golden radiance manifested itself in a way that no sunrise ever had, looking like airborne gold-dust or a galaxy of golden stars. He felt it then, the dawn of a sweet, savory terror. A rapture of quaking awareness. She was here, and his desire for Her flowed, pure and shining, toward the gilded whorl that seemed always and never on the verge of taking shape.

  She sang in his head, voice crystal-bright. Without words, She communicated perfectly what he must know to take his next several steps down Her Path. He tasted bits of the future, saw it, smelled it, heard it sing and roar and wail. He trembled with a thousand kinds of joy and pain and anger. He laughed and wept and both at once, and woke lying on his face across his coiled legs while the Sun filled his room with solid light.

  He blinked at its brightness, feeling at once reassured and barren. The pain and weariness were gone, but so was that warm touch. He schooled himself to patience, knowing he would feel it again.

  He was down early for his breakfast, before his sisters could be up—he hoped before his mother. Industrious Fleta, Adken’s wife, had already fed her own family and the other servants and hands, releasing them to their play or chores. She was fussing about the spotless tiled kitchen with Wyth wandered in. Adken sipped tea by the broad hearth.

  “Master Wyth!” Fleta dropped the skirts of her apron, on which she’d been dusting flour-coated hands, and set to trying to sweep the apron clean. Adken came to his feet, sloshing tea about.

  Wyth laughed.

  Both servants looked absolutely stunned. Then Adken’s face split in a grin. “Ye sound like a boy again, if I may say it, Master. That laugh of yers has gone long disused.”

  Fleta’s eyes grew big and round. “Is that the way you speak to a Holy One, you daft old boy? Ah, Master Osraed, forgive him; he’s wind-kissed. Too many falls from the roof, like as not.”

  “There’s nothing to forgive, Fleta,” Wyth told her, loving the kitchen’s heat and apothecary smell and the way Fleta’s graying hair stuck out about her round, pink face like the wool of a silver ewe.

  Was all this here before? Was I senseless and blind?

  “I’ve just come in search of some breakfast-”

  “Say no more, Master. I’ll have a platterful in a gnat’s age. Will you have tea?”

  “Oh, yes, please,” said Wyth and moved to sit by the huge brick hearth, across from Adken.

  Fleta goggled. “Won’t you wait in the dining chamber, Master? This place is-”

  “This place is warm and bright and happy. And there are people in it. The dining chamber is cold and empty and ... overwhelming.”

  Fleta speared her mate with practiced eyes. “Adken, you dimity! Did you not start the fires?”

  Adken’s dappled-banner brows sailed into a frown. “And when might I’ve done such a thing? You’ve had your beadies on me since I quit the sheets. None’s ever up at such an hour most days.” He cocked a half-contrite, half-reproachful eye at Wyth. “I’ll be choring earlier now, it seems.”

  Wyth shook his head, fighting, for the sake of Adken’s dignity, the urge to laugh. “You’ll do no such thing. I’d like, if I could, to have my breakfasts here in the kitchen ... with you and Fleta and the boys. Would that be all right?”

  The couple gaped at each other.

  As if, Wyth thought, I’d just performed some amazing Weave. He waited, hands folded, eyes hopeful, while a gamut of emotions ran willy-nilly over Fleta’s face and her good husband’s eyebrows popped up and down like a pair of mottled ferrets. Fleta blushed, then smiled, then shot her husband a most beguiling look. Suddenly, Wyth could see her as a young girl—buxom, winsome and sweet-eyed, wooing the spry lad with the flaming hair.

  “Well,” she said, smoothing her apron with very real grace. “Well, Master, it would be such an honor. Such.” She turned her gaze to him and he knew, with some surprise that her pleasure was sincere, albeit tinged with anxiety. What would she, after all, have to say to an Osraed?

  “You used to call me Wyth ... long ago,” he said, and let his voice be wistful.

  “Oh, but you were a child then, Master. Now, you’re ... well, you’re Eiric of Arundel, first of all and-and Osraed.”

  “Osraed Wyth, then? I don’t really like ‘Master.’ You’re not my hunting dogs or my pupils.”

  Fleta smiled, broadly this time, and bobbed a self-conscious curtsey. “I’ll have your tea in a shake, Osraed Wyth.”

  Wyth returned the smile and settled back in his chair. Adken crumpled back into his own, shaking amazement from his face.

  “Wonders,” he murmured. “Wonders, the Meri does.”

  Wyth met his gaze, making his own as open as possible, willing the older man to confidences.

  Adken sighed and shifted his gaze to his tea cup. “When you were a boy, it was like this.”

  “Before father died.”

  “Aye.” He nodded. “He wasn’t a bad man, Wyth. Leastwise, I didn’t think he was. But he was surely a scared man. At the end ... at the end, I think fear sat on his shoulder continual.” His mouth puckered into a fretful knot.

  Wyth caught a niggle of disapproval there. “I think mother frightened him sometimes,” he offered. “She’s ... a powerful woman. Strong-willed, confident. I think he loved her strength. I think he also feared it.”

  Adken looked relieved to hear this confidence. “Aye,” he said, nodding. “Aye, that rings a true bell, well enough.”

  Yes, and I see it now. When I was a boy, I saw nothing. “I don’t remember a lot of what happened before that. It’s as if father’s death ... wiped it all away.”

  “No, lad. Not wiped it away. Made you pack it all up with your child-things and lay it aside, is all. Grow up, like. And quick. Too quick. Remember when you used to come down here to play with Cian? Ah, you two boys sure could put terror into the livestock.”

  Wyth blushed. He did remember. “I was constantly underfoot. Bothering you, hanging on Fleta’s apron, begging baking scraps.”

  “Someone had to pass judgment on Fleta’s goods before they left the kitchen,” said Adken, chuckling. “Oh, and that old dog, what was his name?”

  “Wolf-Cyne.”

  “Wolf-Cyne, indeed. A very grand name for a burr-boggled brindled sheep-cur.”

  “He was a very grand cur,” said Wyth, glowing with the memory.

  Adken looked at him a trifle more seriously. “Cian’d be pleased to see you at table. He missed your grand times when you went up to the Fortress.”

  “I missed him,” Wyth admitted. “But this house was a hard place to come home to.”

  “Aye, has been.”

  Wyth felt a sudden urge to ask Adken the Question. The Question that had lain in the back of his mind for seven years. He grimaced. No. He didn’t really want it answered. What he wanted was to hear someone he could trust say, “No, Wyth. It was not your fault. Nothing you did caused your father to take his own life. And nothing you did could have saved him.”

  And that was it, he realized, as Fleta, smilingly handed him a cup of steaming tea. What he’d wanted to know, more than anything, was that no power at his command—perhaps none in the Universe—could have saved Rowan Arundel from self-immolation.

  “It’s like having the years back,” murmured Adken, and Wyth nodded, noticing, distantly, that he had burned his hand.

  He lingered too long over breakfast, chatting with Adken and Fleta. He spoke, too, to their midmost son Cian, come up to the house to fetch his hat. Spoke and shook his calloused hand and got past the bowing and scraping to a back-slapping embrace.

  He would not be late to Halig-liath.
He had no classes to prepare for (an odd freedom) and did not really need to be there until the Council session that afternoon. He tried to tell himself his anxiousness to be off had more to do with seeing his private chambers for the first time than with avoiding the Moireach, but the sight of her at the top of the stairs as he fled out the front door destroyed that petty illusion.

  Her face was beaming smiles (God, how long since he’d seen that, let alone been the cause of it?), and she descended grandly and gracefully, her hands outstretched toward him, tugging at his heart.

  “Wyth! Dear! Off so early? I thought we’d dine together this morning.”

  “I’ve eaten, mother. And Osraed Bevol will show me my rooms today.” He tried not to gush boyishly, but between the pull of those rooms and the push of the Moireach ...

  She spread her hands, loosing a wave of dismay. “Rooms? Is that so exciting? What about our journey to Creiddylad? We’ve yet to plan it.”

  He opened his mouth slowly in his reluctance to disappoint her, but she bowled him over with more enthusiasm than he’d seen her show for anything in a very long time.

  “Actually, I’ve done a little planning on my own, figuring you had enough on your mind.” She stroked his cheek. “I assumed you’d rather travel by river—I know I would—so I booked us passage on the mid-week packet. It’s not much more than a ferry, hardly worthy of Halig-liath’s newest Osraed, so we shall just have to pretend it’s the Cyne’s galley.”

  “Mother,” he said.

  “We’ll spend a night in Tuine, I think. I was there once when I was a girl. I remember the little altar they put up where Cyne Ciaran died. A tragic spot, it is, and so beautiful, so full of history. Oh, and I thought we might stay a day or two after in Creiddylad, as well. I’d love to take worship at the Cyne’s Cirke and visit the Hall and the Playhouse—oh! and Ochanshrine, too, of course-”

  “Mother ...”

  Her hands came up to cup his face. “Oh, Wyth! To see you go before the Cyne-”

  “Mother!” He raised his hands to cover hers and smiled, as if that might take the sting out of the words he would have to say. “Mother, we may go to Creiddylad, if you wish—although, it will have to be after I’ve settled into Halig-liath and have some sense of my duties.” He plowed on, past the look of bewilderment that cloaked her face. “There will be no Grand Tell at Creiddylad this year.”

  The Moireach wrenched her hands from beneath his. “What? But that’s ... unthinkable! There has always been a Tell at Creiddylad. Even in Regency years. Is-is the Cyne ill? Is there trouble at court? What’s wrong? Why can’t he see you?”

  “He is ... involved—or so I’ve been told—with some very important, very delicate diplomacy just now.”

  “With whom? Surely, the Claeg aren’t rising again. His Durweard is a Feich, so they can’t be the problem. And the Hillwild-”

  “It’s none of those things, mother. Osraed Bevol mentioned the Sutherlanders.”

  “The-?” She raised her hands in a gesture of pure bafflement. “What in the world can they have to say to him that is more important than what you have to say to him? What is it to be Osraed, if you cannot command the respect and attention of the Cyne?”

  Wyth studied the grain of the entry’s polished pine floor. “Commanding the Cyne’s respect and attention is not the purpose of being Osraed, Mother.”

  “No? Then what was Ochan-a-Coille sent to do, if not that?”

  “He was sent to command the Cyne’s attention-”

  “Ah!”

  “-to certain spiritual matters that were critical to the unity and prosperity of his people and his continuance as their Cyne. The first thing Osraed Ochan did, if you recall, was to alert Cyne Malcuim to a conspiracy against him—to warn him and advise him about the Claeg and the Feich. He performed the Cyne a service.”

  The Moireach’s expression was black and sour as a bird-pecked fruit. “And I suppose Cyne Colfre needs no one at Court to advise him about the Sutherlanders.”

  “If he needs them, they will be sent. Perhaps that’s part of Leal-mac-Mercer’s mission.”

  “And why not yours?” she asked, red-faced. “Why can’t you go to Creiddylad to advise the Cyne?”

  “Because that is not my mission. My mission is here.”

  She took a step back from him. “But what glory is there in that? To be locked up in that musty old fortress your whole life? It’s all over that you’ve declined a position on the Osraed Council.” Her eyes accused him. “I thought that meant you had some greater calling to answer. Am I wrong?”

  “No, Mother, you are not wrong. But I am not here for glory. At least, I’m not here for what you would call glory. I am here to serve the Meri as She dictates. She dictated that I not hold a position on the Osraed Council.”

  She made no reply to that, which relieved Wyth immeasurably, so he bid her a polite good morning and left, kissing her cool cheek. He wasn’t certain, but he thought she called him a fool.

  He knew she thought him one.

  oOo

  “A problem with the Sutherlanders?” Osraed Bevol tugged at his beard and glanced at Wyth over one shoulder. “No, I can’t say as I’ve gotten wind of any thing like that. Although, there might arise one if we Caraidin continue to call them that.”

  His eyes were glancing mirth and Wyth smiled, abashed. “The Deasach, I mean. But they do live beyond our southern reaches.”

  “And we live beyond their northern ones. I suppose that makes us Northerlanders, eh? Each man’s ground-”

  “Is the center of his world,” finished Wyth.

  “Ah, and speaking of the center of the world ...” Osraed Bevol stopped in his subterranean wanderings at a doorway of hewn stone and polished tile. “This is it.” He turned to Wyth and indicated the brass latch on the heavy wooden door. “The private chambers of Osraed Wyth. Go on, open.”

  Heart beating almost audibly, Wyth fumbled his prayer chain and at last grasped its pendant crystal. The crystal, itself, was the key to his rooms. A unique form it had and, pressed into the latchbox, meshed exactly with that mechanism’s inner workings. A breath of pressure and the latch slipped, letting Wyth into his suite.

  The main study had one great window of thick, mullioned glass that over-looked the southern end of the river bend and the sweep of the Gyldan-baenn running southward into the distance. The large room was filled with books—rows of them on tall shelves along one wall. There was a workbench with drawers and an apothecary table with a medicaments chest above. Furs and braid rugs warmed the floors and a tapestry map of Caraid-land hung on the wall by the door.

  “Whose chambers were these before?” Wyth asked, nearly whispering.

  Bevol chuckled. “They belonged to Osraed Leodeach the Harper. He taught music. That’s one of his favorite instruments.” He indicated a beautifully wrought lap harp that sat canted against the wall in a corner near the window. “It was a gift from Cyne Ciarda, whom he taught to play. Quite a pepper pot, old Leodeach. In his old age, that is. In his youth, he was a lot like you. Very serious. Very grave.”

  Wyth blushed under the teasing and Bevol clapped him soundly on the shoulder. “Come. Let me show you the center of your new world.”

  They by-passed what Wyth took to be the door to the bath chamber and pushed through a darkly carved and filigreed door into the conical aislinn chamber.

  Wyth’s limbs began to quake. The little room was well-lit now, with sunlight pouring into it like hazy liquid from the canted shafts in the sloping ceiling. The tile gleamed from wall and bench, while the worn ring of flooring glowed with the satiny sheen of aged wood. It had an odd non-pattern, Wyth thought, of small burls like eyes gazing up forever into the vault of the ceiling. He followed the eyelets’ gazes without thinking and heard Bevol laugh.

  “Yes, you do wonder, don’t you, what they’re all gawping at. That was Osraed Ochan’s doing, of course. It is said this wood is from the Saewode where he lived before the Pilgrimage.”

  Wyt
h stared down into the wooden eyes with a thrill of appreciation. “This was Osraed Ochan’s chamber? Oh, Osraed Bevol, I’m hardly worthy-”

  “Nonsense. You are the first Osraed commissioned to Halig-liath in seven seasons and the first after a Cusp. You have been appointed Weard to the Covenant Ochan established and ... you loved Meredydd.” He canted his head to one side, his eyes hazing slightly.

  “And still do,” said Wyth. “But ... do the other Osraed feel this is appropriate?”

  “I didn’t make the decision unilaterally. The Triumvirate appointed you these rooms by unanimous vote.”

  Wyth sat down on the tiled bench. “I’m grateful. Thank you.” How inadequate words are, he thought, running fingertips over the bright glazed tiles.

  “So.” Bevol dropped down across from him, hands on knees, beard and hair turned to hazy flame by the falling shafts of sunlight. “What will your first task be?”

  In Wyth’s head an aislinn book opened and he read what was plain upon the page. “I’m to study the histories and the Holy Treatises and collect all writings pertaining to the Covenant. Then they shall all be brought together in one place and organized.”

  “And safe?” Bevol suggested.

  Wyth frowned. “And safe, yes. And available to all who would read them.”

  “Ah, if only all could read them. It is a fair portion of our populace, even in this day and age, that cannot or will not read.”

  “The Cirke-school in Nairne does well.”

  Bevol made a moue with his lips. “Well enough, yes. But not all villages lie in the shadow of Halig-liath. They have not the resources or the will, often enough, to teach what needs to be taught.” He tapped his chest. “My commission that, in part. To teach those outside these walls. A sometimes difficult task that all the vigorous cleirachs and ministers in Caraid-land cannot move forward.” He shrugged. “Would you have your sons at school when they ought to be tilling the field or minding the shop? And as to daughters—hoo!—Gwynet’s lot is not as unusual as it ought to be. And in Creiddylad, take the problem and multiply it by the stars. Leal will have his young hands full, there, I can tell you ... You’re wandering, Wyth. Is the old scir-loc boring you?”