A flicker of anger insinuated itself into Ealad-hach's fear. Bevol had chosen that name, like as not. Chosen it because of what it implied about that young woman. Well, he was not gullible as all that. The girl was not Taminy-a-Cuinn, that much was certain. Her name was probably not even Taminy, or hadn't been until she met Bevol-a-Gled. Taminy-a-Cuinn she could not be, but she could yet be the creature of his nightmare.

The thought did not let Ealad-hach breathe any more easily. Still, he sat more comfortably in the confines of his private chamber. It was only a matter of knowledge. He would call for the aislinn. That would tell him what to do.

He leaned forward with a will and put the crystal on the raised and tiled platform at the center of the little room. He fed it his energies then, his dreams, the floating images, the contents of his unconscious thought. Verdant light danced over and around the facets, but it was a faded light, fitful and weak. He tried harder, murmuring a duan to give force to his thoughts.

The light intensified, steadied. About the crystal, mist that was not mist began to form, spiraling slowly like a twisted wheel of cloud. It grew up, fanned out, gained substance. It separated into earth and sky and sea; a white curl of wave-foam raced up a beach, a moon burned the clouds silver, a wind stirred the air.

Yes, this was the place. Now, show me. Show me the girl.

And there was Meredydd-a-Lagan-clear, sharp, as if alive. She melted, was burned away and, burning, she walked into the waters.

There! There was the girl! Rising from the waves in what seemed a robe of translucent, lucent green. It shed like a skin and she stood, glittering, in the moonlight.

The old Osraed's lips moved more swiftly, his duan grew louder, more rhythmic. Sweat beaded on his brow and his cheeks trembled. Her face-he must see her face!

But he could not see it. No duan, no amount of concentration would show it to him, would make the moonlit phantom any more substantial. After a moment more of struggle, his concentration faltered and the vision collapsed into itself.

Ealad-hach blinked. On its pedestal, the crystal sat, lightless and inert, not even a whisper of aislinn mist clinging to its facets. He felt old. Frail. Worn. He felt barely able to gather up the crystal and return it to its carved and filigreed box, but he did. Then he knelt and prayed that he would be cursed with vivid dreams.

CHAPTER 5.

The wood of the soul can burn and be fire; the Word of the Spirit is the whirling friction rod above.

Prayer is the power that makes the Word turn round. And when the Word moves, the mystery of God comes to light.

- Prayers and Meditations of Osraed Ochan, vs. 5 Wyth found sleep difficult. The merest straying from consciousness left him literally bewildered, mired in thick emotion, or reeling on the edge of Ruanaidhe's Leap. In the chill before dawn, he pulled himself fully awake to sit, head in hands, trying not to think. His brain felt like a sodden bath fleece.

He wanted to pray, but wasn't certain he wanted the enlightenment he knew he should ask for. He wanted to draw out the visions he could feel pressing like a physical force behind his eyes, but what he fled in sleep was no easier to face awake.

The heavy pain in his head at last drove him to draw a cup of scented water from a carafe by the bed and rifle his medicament chest for some willow bark. There was none. Instead, he smudged his temples with a pungent salve and sat, coil-legged, on his bed to perform a Healweave.

Candle in hand, eyes on the flame, he breathed in and sang out, letting the duan float away from him, praying it would take the pain with it. The runesong was only six lines long; Wyth was halfway though it the second time when the pain evaporated so suddenly and completely, it stopped the duan in his throat. The salve's ice-hot touch penetrated his senses and he imagined, for a moment, that he had felt an actual caress of warm fingers. He took a deep, relaxed breath, letting some gentle force tug him upward out of his tired, awkward frame.

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.