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 G.o.d'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.

"Please, mistress, do forgive me." Airleas delivered his impa.s.sioned 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 gra.s.s, hands firm on the reins, the animal solid between his knees. The gra.s.s 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."