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."

"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?"

The girl's gaze bounced frenetically between Calach and his companions-still seated, still scowling. "I-I'm feeling f-fine, Master Calach. In body, at least. It's my spirit that's encumbered and I must speak to you about it."

"Ah!" Ealad-hach produced a smile. "I was right, then. The Wicke did do some foul craft to you."

"The-the Wicke? Oh, no, sir! She's not. I mean, she didn't. It's not like that, at all." She grasped Calach's hands and wrung them. "Please, Master Calach. I need to tell you-"

Calach disengaged his hands and brought a chair for Aine to sit on, placing it on the inside curve of the table, opposite his fellow Osraed. He seated her in it, then perched near her on the table.

"There now. Speak to us at will. Say whatever is on your mind." He ignored the rolling of Faer-wald's eyes and the twist of Ealad-hach's lips.

"I've come with a warning, masters."

"A warning?" Ealad-hach was suddenly interested.

"Aye, sir. I dreamed last night-all night-of a great army that marched inland from the Sea, from Creiddylad. It marched in the river itself and appeared to me as a wave, sweeping aside everything in its path. It was bound for Halig-liath, masters, growing with every mile. Higher than the cliff tops, it grew. Mightier than the stone in these walls. It put me in dire fear and I knew I must come and warn you."

Calach rubbed at his arms where the hair had risen. "Have you had this dream before, Aine?"

"No, sir. Not this same one, but ... others. Dark dreams, all of them-or, well, most of them."

"Only now, these dreams have come to you?" asked Ealad-hach. "Since the Cusp?"

"This dream, Master Ealad-hach. The one about the river-army. But I've had these sorts of dreams since I can remember. I just never knew what to make of them. And-and they frightened me. "

"Well, my dear child, why should you make anything of them? Indeed, why should we?"

"Because, sir, they always come true. One way or another, they always come true."

They hadn't listened to her. She didn't know what could have inspired her to think they would. Ealad-hach had tried for a while to convince her the great wave had something to say about Taminy, but she knew it didn't. It had to do with something else, she just wasn't sure what. And when she told them Taminy had said she had an aislinn Gift, she thought Osraed Ealad-hach would have her thrown from the room.

Calach had calmed him and had listened to her account of the accident. Someone had thrown something at her horse, she'd said, and had spooked it. She wasn't sure who; she could only rule out Phelan because she'd been looking at him when it happened. But it hadn't been Taminy-she was sure it hadn't been Taminy and she said so.

They had little use for her after that. Calach saw her to the door, ushered her out and closed it behind her, leaving her to stand awkwardly in the hall outside the chamber, listening to their voices rise and fall. Mostly rise.

She turned away at last and made her way down the concourse to the main rotunda. She was nearly across it when the patter of quick footsteps made her pause and turn. A young Prentice slid to a stop on the worn tiles and bobbed his head at her.

"Pardon, young mistress, but I've come with a message from the Osraed Calach. He says you must tell Osraed Bevol what you told him. All of it, he said."

"But, I don't know where Osraed Bevol is."

"Oh, it's all right. I'm to take you to him. Look." The boy held up a small crystal set onto a golden ring. "He gave me this. It's from his own prayer chain. Can you imagine an Osraed handing off his prayer crystal like that? This must be a very important mission he's given me."

Heart hammering in her breast, Aine smiled, encouraging the boy's self-congratulation. "Aye, it must be, at that."

CHAPTER 14.

Material eyes perceive only material beauty; lifeless hearts take pleasure only in the withered rose. Like seeks like and delights in the fellowship of its own kind.

- Utterances of Osraed Gartain Ealad-hach had spent the night in preparation for the inquiry. His witnesses were convincingly fearful, his line of questions carefully thought out. That was especially critical now, when he knew he could no longer rely upon his knowledge of the Art to tip the scales against Taminy. The hours spent in his aislinn chamber had been fruitless; he could not recreate the vision, and prayed he would not be called upon to do so.

Cursing his fickle Gift, he made his way down from his private rooms to the Council Chamber. The other members of the Council were already waiting in the small audience chamber adjacent to it. All, except for Bevol, who was excluded, and Calach, who was probably wherever Bevol was.

Ealad-hach wrinkled his nose, indignant, and made his way across the chamber. Though the thick, weighted curtains that gave onto the larger hall were drawn, he could guess the attendance at today's event by the sheer volume of noise. He sidled up to Ladman, who was peeking through the brocaded folds.

"Quite a crowd," observed the younger Osraed. "We will be much loved by the end of this day ... or much hated."

"Hated? How can you mean? Who should hate us, beside the evil in the land?"

"Has it escaped your attention, Osraed, that the lady we seek to try is vastly popular?"

Ealad-hach shook his head. "You are misled, Ladman. Mark where their fickle loyalties fall when all is revealed."