"It's not the enduring that pains me. It's that I'm so hurt by it. When I'm alone sometimes, I feel ... so very human. So unwanted by the people around me."

"You are human, anwyl. Your experience in the Meri's Sea did not change that. But, make no mistake, you are wanted desperately." Bevol clasped his hands around his mug. "Do you doubt that Iseabal wants you? Or Gwynet or Wyvis or Rennie or Skeet or Wyth or myself? But most of all, Taminy, the Meri wants you."

"Yes. And because of that, I cannot afford to be human and frail and hurt. I try to pretend I'm not bothered by it, but I am. And I feel weak. I feel unworthy."

Bevol reached across the table and took her hand. "What you have described to me, anwyl, is a strength, as well as a weakness."

"But it's so selfish, this fear of mine. This hurt."

"Is it? Look at your fear, Taminy. Ask it its name. When those souls reject you, scorn you, shun you, what are they really rejecting, hmm? You know the answer to that. So ask this: Is it your own loneliness you dread, or the loneliness of those souls who will not suffer themselves to embrace you-to embrace Her?"

She pondered that. He was right, in part, she realized. She could not lay claim to being lonely or unloved. Not in any real sense. And on the deepest level of her being she could feel the Meri's breath fan her soul. A breeze. A Touch. More and more often she felt connected to the Source of her fitful Gift, but the connection was capricious, uncertain-and in those gaps of uncertainty, yawned a gulf of loneliness. And now, a fiery collision approached. Was she ready for it? Could she withstand it?

Watching her pensive face, Bevol said, "You don't have to go to worship Cirke-dag if it will distress you."

"Aye," said Skeet. "The gossip-mongery will gather there in all force with their sharp eyes and sharp tongues."

Taminy shook her head. "I have no reason to hide from them. I will not hide from them. And I can't hide from what my dreams reveal."

Bevol patted her hand. "Collisions can take many forms."

She managed a smile. "Oh, aye. That I know."

She tried not to think of collisions as the week moved by. Eyes still poked at her, tongues still wagged. Twice she walked into the Backstere's only to have silence fall among the animated patrons. Once a young woman carried her child from the place, shielding its eyes from her. Niall Backstere, himself, clucked and shook his head and confided to her in quiet tones, as he wrapped her a loaf of bread, that he didn't understand what made some folk so gullible as to believe every tale they heard. Somehow she knew that the moment the door closed behind her, he would be in the midst of it all, absorbing every rumor. Still, he did nothing to keep Cluanie from her company, so it seemed he did not believe the gossip he help spread.

Mistress Lusach, the Apothecary, pooh-poohed the whole situation, saying it was the natural thing to happen in a small town when one member, especially a new member, stood out from the ordinary folk so startlingly.

"It's jealousy, Tam, dear," she said. "You do what they can't or won't or don't dare and it sets them off. For all that the Osraed have given their cailin permission to Weave, well, you can't put aside six hundred and some years of 'we know what's right and we know what's wrong' with the flick of a tongue-even a holy one."

That much was true, Taminy knew. Terris-mac-Webber still wouldn't speak to her when she entered the shop, but his Grandmother would, and bluntly too.

"You know what's gnawing at 'im?" she asked, when Taminy's appearance to purchase some thread sent Terris scuttling for the back room. "It's the stories they're telling of you."

"Who? Who's telling stories?"

"Oh, all the young cailin. Terris is a catch, don't you know, and I doubt they want someone doing the catching who hasn't lived here all her life."

Taminy nodded and said nothing.

"They're saying you've strange powers. Well, I could've told 'em that, couldn't I?" Her thin lips cracked into a smile. "Some has it you're a Hillwild Renic in disguise. Legend says they're all fey, every one of 'em. I wouldn't know, never having met one. Their men are rare beauties, though." The smile deepened.

"Are they saying I'm Wicke?" Taminy asked.

Marnie-o-Loom screwed her wizened face into a map with a thousand tiny canyons. "No one's used the dread word, to my knowledge-least, not in any seriousness. Though Cluanie Backstere has it you're half paerie." She tilted an eyebrow at Taminy. "But what is a Wicke if girls be going to the Fortress?"

She had turned to leave when the old woman spoke again. "I owe you thanks, cailin. For the medicaments. My hands" -she held them up, fingers straight- "My hands thank you."

When Taminy smiled at her, she sobered. "Be careful, cailin. When the old meaning of Wicke fails us, we'll be quick and sure to come up with a new one."

But she could not be careful. She could only be what she was bidden to be.

By the end of the week, she was becoming accustomed to the ambivalent behavior of her neighbors. Besides which, in the furor over Wyth's call for female Prentices, a young woman who dabbled in the Art and taught undisciplined children how to make themselves useful was often eclipsed by debate over that mystery. Already, the Hillwild had produced a handful of candidates, and Nairnian parents fretted over what effect those half-wild females would have on their boys.

Taminy found she was still welcome at Cirke-manse, though the Mistress there was disinclined to inhabit the same room. She and Iseabal wove closer bonds along with their inyx, while Osraed Saxan looked on, alternately pleased and fretful. She hadn't seen Aine or Doireann face to face since that day at the pool, so it was a great surprise when the two of them followed her into the Apothecary's one afternoon to inquire if she'd be going out to the pool that Cirke-dag as had become her custom.

She looked at Doireann, who had asked the question in a sweet voice, and reached out questing tendrils of sense, guiltily seeking cleverness or dissimulation. All she felt from the other girl was a shimmer of anticipation. Glancing at Aine, she met a glowering mental roadblock.

She nodded slowly, not quite sure what to make of the question. "Most likely, I'll go," she said.

"Well, Aine and I," -here Doireann glanced at the other girl for support- "Aine and I would very much like to come along. After all, we may all be at Halig-liath soon and we've got to start somewhere." She smiled. "And some of our friends are going. It would be a raw shame to miss out on all the fun and let them get ahead of us."

"You're certainly welcome to come. But, Aine," -she tilted her eyes at the red-head- "I thought you'd no desire to go to Halig-liath."

Aine's jaw set. "A person can change her mind." She toyed with the laces of her vest. "What do you think you'll be doing? I mean, what are you teaching?"

"Oh, yes!" breathed Doireann. "Do tell us! Shall we learn to cast inyx?"

Taminy recoiled slightly from the sheer intensity of their energies. She offered a shy smile. "I thought we'd try some simple Wardweaves. They're not difficult and they teach discipline. Besides, they often come in good use for protection."

Aine nodded, lifting her chin. "Fine, then. We'll see you Cirke-dag. Come on, now, Doiry."

Doireann pouted. "I wanted to hear more about Wardweaves."

"You'll hear more than enough on Cirke-dag, I imagine. Now, come on." She grasped the smaller girl's arm and pulled her from the shop.

Taminy glanced across the Apothecary counter at the shop-mistress and her son. They gazed back, brows in matching furrows.

Mistress Lusach shook her head. "Odd pair, that. Like sunrise and shadow."

Taminy had to agree. They were an odd pair and an ambivalent one.

The birds were strangely silent this morning. Osraed Ealad-hach construed that as a sign. Outside his chamber window, the air hung still and damp with sun-hazed river rheum. He had spent the night in his aislinn chamber in meditation and prayer. No visions had come, save one of a piercing white light that had all but blinded him. Still, he knew what he must do.

Before him on the table he had the things he needed: a mirror and a crystal. The mirror was for the Weave he would perform to record the Wicke's doings by the pool. The crystal was protection. It had belonged to the Osraed Lin-a-Ruminea-one hundred years ago, the courageous advisor of Cyne Thearl, who had been on the Throne during the last Cusp. There was a rightness to that that brought comfort to him. Of comfort, too, was the thought that he had, among the youth of Nairne, spies and allies. He had lost Wyth Arundel, but there was still Brys-a-Lach, a young man who fulfilled where Wyth had disappointed. And when next Solstice came, he had no doubt Brys's Pilgrimage would end in his acceptance by the Meri.

Ealad-hach breakfasted in the Refectory at Halig-liath, his appetite better than it had been for months, then he took a carriage down into Nairne to the Cirke. He rarely attended worship at Nairne Cirke, preferring, instead, the less crowded, more intimate atmosphere of the small sanctum at Halig-liath. So it was that his presence caused a stir among the worshippers. It was unavoidable that the object of his presence should see him and send him an unreadable glance from those great green eyes.

He shivered at the sudden familiarity of that look, of those eyes. He met them and felt a pang of pure sadness engulf him. He blinked and it vanished and the girl looked aside.

He sat along the wall of the Sanctuary where he could see her face in profile. Brys-a-Lach sat beside him. Taminy did not look at them from her place facing the altar. In the company of Bevol, Gwynet and the boy Skeet, with Iseabal-a-Nairnecirke tight at her side, she was well-guarded. That was all very well. She could flank herself with demons if she would-it would not stop him from pursuing his duty.

Osraed Saxan had selected Scriptural passages that spoke of callings and duties. This, he said, in light of the recent mandate from the Meri (here, a nod to Osraed Wyth, seated in the midst of the worshippers) to bring girls to Halig-liath. He had selected several Prentices to read or recite from the Holy Books, but a mild furor arose when the final reader stood, for Saxan had given to his daughter, Iseabal, the task of reading a dissertation on Occupation revealed by the Meri through the Osraed Gartain.

Iseabal, black hair curried to the gleam of hard coal, waited out the murmurs that her journey to the altar caused and, when the congregation had quieted, she read in a clear, unwavering voice: "That one who puts forth his best effort in the line of duty, then gives his work to the Spirit of All, attains perfection in service. This service is the great sacrifice of life which each soul must offer to the Source of Life. It is better by far for one to perform his duty in the world, no matter how lowly or faulty, than to perform the duty of another. That one who does the work indicated by his own nature errs not, but follows the guidance of the Spirit. Natural inclination toward a calling when yoked to the ability for its performance is worthy to be performed and, indeed, becomes duty. Let all remember that ..." Iseabal blinked and cleared her throat, glancing across at Taminy. "That every calling, every duty, every life, has its pain and its joy, its hindrances and its helps, its sorrow and its triumphs."

Iseabal returned to her seat and her father assumed, again, his position at the altar stone. "Osraed Wyth ..." He picked the younger man out of the rows of upturned faces. "If you would be so kind as to share with us a bit of the Meri's wisdom from your own Pilgrimage, we would be grateful. I fear my secondhand comments could hardly be adequate."

Wyth rose, tentatively, it seemed, and Ealad-hach's spirit roiled. He wanted to cry out, "Blasphemy!" He wanted to shake the Sanctuary with the thunder of reason-shake it until he'd toppled every stone and awakened them all to what was being played out in Nairne. But a calmer voice prevailed. Soon, it said, soon they would see. There were still Wicke in the world and they had now been given permission to masquerade as something else. He glanced down his row and caught the Osraed Faer-wald's eye. He was not alone.

"The Meri," Wyth was saying with some diffidence, "the Meri has given me this about the calling of our young men and women."

He paused and, in that pause, a visible change overcame him. His entire frame, his expression, his eyes, shed all hint of timorousness. Light from the windows played through the strands of his dark hair and made his angular face appear to glow. His prayer crystal, on its long, complex chain, followed suit, causing all who saw it to draw admiring and awful breaths.

Ealad-hach's jaw tightened against his will and he wondered if he oughtn't listen, if instead he should recite a duan to keep the words from affecting him. In the end, he listened.

"True faith, O People of the Corah," said Wyth in a voice that rang with music, "is for each soul to pursue its calling in the world as dictated by the gifts bestowed by its Creator. Hold fast to the Spirit of the Universe, treasure His gifts among you and use them in accordance with His desire, not with your own. Seek His grace, which is My grace, for in Our hands lies the destiny of the world."

There was a silence, like the silence of the morning's birds, in which no adult spoke and no child shuffled its feet. Then Wyth sat and the congregation murmured in complex harmonies until Osraed Saxan recaptured their attention. He spoke then, of the things the Scriptural passages alluded to and announced, to the surprise of many, that his own child, Iseabal, had a Gift for the Art and that he had decided to offer her the opportunity to attend Halig-liath.

It was during this disturbing revelation that Osraed Ealad-hach first noticed the peculiar odor in the room. At length, he began to think that it, and not Wyth's "revelation" was the cause of the continued undercurrent of unease. It came to him especially strongly when they rose to sing the lays. He glanced at Brys, intending to ask if he smelled anything odd, but the expression on the boy's face made the question unnecessary.

Ealad-hach tried to cull the scents as he sang. He made out bay laurel, he thought, and perhaps garlic, but beneath that was a fetid, almost putrid odor that grew stronger and more unbearable with each moment.

The relief in the room when Saxan intoned the homeward blessing was palpable; worshippers streamed toward the door the moment they were free to do so. Ealad-hach, hampered by his location and age, was one of the last to reach the door and was puzzled to find that here, near a knot of young people, the horrid stench was concentrated. Phelan was there and Terris-mac-Webber and Scandy-a-Caol and two girls he barely knew-the Spenser's daughter and a taller girl with stridently red hair which, coupled with that odor, annoyed him almost beyond patience.

As he approached along the back wall of the Cirke, he saw the youngster's eyes move in unison to the central aisle where Iseabal and Taminy walked, engaged in conversation. He paused, thinking perhaps he could glean something from their interaction.

He was rewarded but surprised. The youngsters by the door purposefully blocked the girls' exit and encircled them in sly smiles and confrontative glares.

"So, Taminy," said the boy, Scandy, "tell us, are ye off to your Wickie glen today?"

"Please, say you aren't," insisted mac-Webber.

But the Spenser's girl said, "Tell us you are." She pouted her lower lip and added, "You promised us, didn't she, Aine?"

The red-haired cailin nodded, frowning. "Aye. I suppose she did."

"Oh, might we come?" Scandy asked. "Can we see you cast a love inyx? We know you must've tossed one a' poor Terris, here."

He clapped the other boy on the back, making him shrug away.

"Wheeze!" said Phelan, screwing up his face. "Whatever's that smell?"

"You just noticed it?" asked Scandy. "Maybe it's the foul odor o' Wicke." He looked straight at Taminy.

Iseabal-a-Nairnecirke went white, then red. "Taminy's no Wicke. She's just Gifted. Tell them, Taminy. Tell them you're not Wicke."

"No, I'm not Wicke."

"It's sinful to lie in a Cirke," said Scandy.

Again Phelan whined, "What's that smell?"

The Spenser's girl left the redhead's side to glide between Taminy and Iseabal. "Well, it's not Taminy or Iseabal, so there's that idea put to rest." She gave Scandy a supercilious glance then turned her eyes back to the girl, Aine. Her nose wrinkled and she thrust out her arm, pointing at the other girl.

"Aine-mac-Lorimer, whatever is that on your skirt?"

All eyes were drawn to the redhead then, as she stared down, herself, at the horrid-looking stain spreading from the large, square pocket in the apron of her skirt. She reached a hand in, face covered with dread. Her expression altered swiftly to a wide-eyed grimace and she jerked the hand out again with a wild croak. A dark egg-sized object flew from her hand to land with a grotesquely wet plop at Taminy's feet.

The Spenser's girl screamed and leapt back. "What is it? Oh, Aine, what is it?"

The other girl just shook her head mutely, her eyes on the sodden lump at their feet. Scandy picked it up.

"It's furry!" he said. "Gah! An' it stinks rotten!"

"Why, it's a runebag, isn't it?" asked the Spenser's girl. "Aine, what are you doing with it?"

Ealad-hach stepped forward as swiftly as his aging bones and muscles allowed and snatched the wretched wad from Scandy's hand. It was, indeed, the source of the rancid smell. He held it up to the light from the nearby window.

"It's an animal skin," murmured Brys, at his shoulder.

It was a mole skin, to be exact and, seeing it, Ealad-hach suspected he knew what it contained. He peeled back enough of the putrefying skin to see what lay beneath. "Bay leaves," he murmured, "soaked in garlic, it would seem. And would there be a snake's head wrapped inside?" he asked Aine.

The girl merely gawped at him, her mouth open.

"A snake's head?" asked Brys, and the other boys made sick faces.

"A snake's head wrapped in garlic-soaked bay leaves and a fresh mole skin. If I am not mistaken, this runebag is intended to keep any Wicke present in this Cirke from leaving it." Ealad-hach turned his gaze to Taminy, who stood with Iseabal clinging to her arm. "Are there Wicke in this Cirke, cailin?"

She met his eyes, then, and a chasm seemed to open up beneath his feet, leaving him teetering on the edge of vertigo.

"There may be Wicke here, Osraed," she said, "but I am not among them."

"No?" Ealad-hach looked around at the group of youth. His eyes found Aine again. "Do you think this girl is Wicke, cailin?"

In answer, the girl screwed up her face and bolted out through the half-open sanctuary door.

Ealad-hach turned back to Taminy, holding up the horrid fetish. "Someone is accusing you of practicing the Wicke Craft, Taminy-a-Gled. Do you deny the accusation?"

"I have studied the Art, Osraed, both under my father and Osraed Bevol. It is the Art I practice, in my small way, not Wicke Craft."

"You do claim a Gift, then?"

Taminy nodded. "A small Gift, Osraed. I understand herbs and healing. Is there something harmful in that?"

"You cast no love inyx on young Terris, as this lad suggested?"

Terris-mac-Webber blushed profusely. "That was a tease, is all, Master. He meant nothing by it, but to twit me."

"Are you certain?"

"I cast no such inyx, Osraed," Taminy said. "That would be an abuse of the Art."

"Will you suffer yourself to be tested, cailin? Before witnesses?"

The girl didn't blink. "If it's your wish, Osraed."