"Good cannot bring itself to perform the acts evil commits without conscience. I know you could wrest the Stone from me and use it to destroy me utterly. I even know you want to do that, but that would be failure, wouldn't it? So you do nothing. That makes you weak-a sheep facing its shearer. The seeds of your undoing are within you, dear Taminy. They are inherent in your nature."

She seemed to consider that, her effigy's sea-green eyes never leaving his face. "The seeds of my undoing," she murmured.

Her voice was like the soughing of the wind or the surge of the sea, magical, musical.

A sigh escaped his lips. "Unbind your hair." It was a demand, yet even he heard the raw pleading in his voice.

She studied him a moment, then reached up and tugged the leather thong from her braid, loosing it to fall about her shoulders in a pale gold cascade.

"You are exquisite," he told her. "A living a.n.a.logy for Ochan's Crystal. When I have you-"

"You have Ochan's Crystal," she interrupted. "Why have you not tried to use it?"

"Ah, that I am saving, so that all eyes may see my triumph complete. Most especially that your eyes may see it."

She nodded and, nodding, began to fade from view.

"Stay!" he cried.

"Tomorrow," she said and disappeared.

Feich blinked into the darkness of her pa.s.sing and trembled. Desire pulsed through him, carried in his blood. He would go to Coinich Mor. No, to Lilias. But no. Neither of those poor subst.i.tutes would do now, not when he was so close to having the ultimate desire. A memory stirred in him of a long ago nightmare-a hunt, a chase, a Quarry he had been bent on destroying.

He smiled at himself. How transparent all that was now. It was not Taminy's death he wanted, nor her destruction. It was her submission, perhaps even . . . her love?

Coinich Mor and Lilias both forgotten, he left the tent with its pair of guards and went to gaze upon the Osmaer Crystal, never noticing that a certain baleful pair of eyes no longer gleamed at him from the tent's darkest corner.

Saefren lay upon the ground behind the hostage tent, gathering his senses, letting the cold wet of the snow drive them into a tight, obedient, quivering herd. He didn't have time to ponder what he'd seen-Feich talking to a gossamer being, an aislinn projection of Taminy. She had given him the opportunity for escape, an opportunity he had only because Feich thought him Giftless and dull.

He had to make good with it, somehow.

He wriggled his hands, bound tightly behind his back. d.a.m.n! If he had even a midge of Aine's Gift, he could untie himself and find a weapon. As it was, only his feet were free and so, with immense difficulty, he raised himself to his knees, then to his feet, desperate not to cry out or grunt with the exertion.

He stood for a moment, trembling. The wind pirouetted playfully about him, poking icy fingers through the sodden weave of his clothing. It was pitch black where he stood. A large boulder squatted a few feet away at the edge of the tent's long shadow.

He shook himself and made for it with unsteady steps. From there, each rock, each puff of scrub, each twist of tree became the focus of his every thought and move. He floundered from one to another in silence, ignoring the cold, the wet, the bruises and cuts of his pa.s.sing. Closer to Hrofceaster's walls.

Closer.

It was when he reached the last vestige of cover that he realized how futile had been his quest. Ruined Airdnasheen still cast a faint glow over the snowy flat between the trail head and the fortress's gates and, though no soldiers battered at them this moment, a dozen or so men camped just outside. All his painstaking struggle had been for naught. Giftless, he could not hope to pa.s.s by Feich's men unseen.

Frustrated and exhausted he huddled in the lee of a broad, twisted oak, staring up at the unreachable. He could even see the shadows of the defenders walking the battlements for all the good it did him.

Wait. Perhaps his lack of aidan was not an issue. Hadn't Aine found him in the bowels of Mertuile?

He trained his eyes on the towers behind and above the looming walls and concentrated all his thought on Taminy, concentrated it there until he was sweating with the effort. At length he lay back, exhausted. How easy they made it look-speaking without words, touching across miles. He focused his eyes on the gates. If someone came for him, would he see them open? Would he see phantom footprints in the snow? Shadows stretched across the fire-lit surface?

His mind wandered and he found himself slipping toward sleep. The realization shocked him awake. If he slept here, he'd never wake again. Already his feet and hands were beyond feeling. He scrambled to think of some way of staying awake until help came.

If help came. He aimed another plea at the fortress.

How long had he been here? Minutes? Longer?

He squinted at the fortified walls until his eyes ached, felt himself slipping again, and was shocked to full consciousness by the touch of a hand on his shoulder. He jerked, nearly crying out. The cry died in his throat; bending over him was a hooded figure. Within the recesses of the hood, the face was a young man's, lit by the glowing star between his brows. He attached a name to the face-Osraed Wyth. Another figure hovered, the face swaddled in darkness.

Hands moved him; voices prodded gently; he became aware that his hands were free, that he was on his feet, that he was moving across that yawning open area in clear sight of the enemy encampment. He watched their shadows stretch before the glow of their fires and wondered that no alarm was being raised behind them.

They pa.s.sed through the gates unmolested.

Some time later, before a roaring fire in Hrofceaster's Great Hall, Saefren sipped hot tea and tried not to betray the pain of returning sensation in his feet and hands.

"I don't know what good I thought it might do," he murmured between swallows. "I probably should have stayed with them. But when the opportunity presented itself . . ."

Seated beside him, Taminy pressed a hand to his shoulder. "You could do little there but welter in frustration. He won't harm the others . . . not yet."

"He's given them a sleeping draught, you said," said Osraed Wyth. "Any idea what might have been in it?"

Saefren shook his head. "It was the Dearg woman who came up with it. I'm sure it was full of inyx."

Taminy's brow knit with puzzlement. "The Dearg woman? She wasn't the one who saw you on the trail . . ."

"No, that was the Deasach Banarigh."

"She must have the Sight," said Wyth.

"She has something," Saefren agreed. "She saw us. Iseabal and Leal were both Weaving and still she saw us. Then there was Daimhin Feich with that red crystal, and it seemed he could see us too."

Taminy nodded-absently, Saefren thought-her eyes not on anything in the room. "Yes, sometimes a person with a specialized Gift can enable other Gifted souls to share their ability . . ." Her eyes took on sudden clarity and moved to his face. "More than that. Iseabal and Leal were using a Cloakweave coming up the mountain and Aine used one to free you from Mertuile."

He nodded.

"You were very likely part of that Weave. Aine might very well have drawn on you to help her maintain the Cloak."

"Me? But I've no Gift. Not a shred."

"Everyone possesses a shred, Saefren. Everyone. The more they possess, the more a talented Weaver such as Aine can draw on them." She rose from her chair. "Rest now. I should say you've earned that."

Saefren grimaced. "I haven't earned anything."

"You got away from Daimhin Feich. Which shows me how distracted he is."

"He's a boiling pot, Mistress," Saefren told her. "A pot that thinks it contains the entire universe."

Chapter 24.

Pay no heed to your frailty; keep your eyes, instead, on the invincibility of the Spirit. Did She not subject the militant Houses to the Divine discipline of the Meri through the first Osraed, Ochan?

Rise up in the name of the Spirit of this all, put your faith completely in Her, and let your soul be a.s.sured.

-Book of Pilgrimages

Osraed Aodaghan

"You believe she will concede to your demands this time?" Lilias did not seem convinced.

To Daimhin Feich that hardly mattered, she'd be convinced soon enough. He gestured up the trail toward Hrofceaster, hunkered balefully at the foot of her crags.

"We will parade her beloved waljan before her; she will concede. Then Coinich Mor will bring the Stone of Ochan to me and I shall perform a great Weaving. Something that will put fear into the Hillwild and cause Taminy to recognize that I wield a power superior even to hers."

"Yet, her power is the Meri's, is it not? Do you believe yourself superior to that?"

He considered the question. Well, he had the upper hand, didn't he? The Meri hadn't struck him dead; Taminy hadn't lifted a violent hand against him. He had won. Simply and completely. Bested the Meri's vice-regent, and therefore, bested the Meri Herself. The minion of some Dark Power, was he?

Or perhaps-the thought excited him-perhaps he was, himself, the Power of Darkness, the anti-Meri, Her equal opposite and nemesis.

"Yes. I do believe I have that power. Have I any choice?"

"What will you do after your great Weaving?"

"I will take Taminy back to Creiddylad."

"Do you intend to set her disciples loose as you promised?"

"Why not? It hardly matters. If their Mistress can't stop me, what can they possibly do?"

Lilias laid a firm hand on the hilt of her sword. "I will not give up the girl, Iseabal. She will be made to pay for Sorn's death."

He opened his mouth to argue with her, then realized there was no point to the argument. Iseabal didn't matter. None of them mattered. Not even Airleas Malcuim mattered to him at that moment.

"Very well, she's your responsibility. If Taminy ever asks after her, I'll refer her to you. Still, I remind you that it was, to all accounts, Rodri Madaidh who put an end to your little brother's life."

"For her. He did it for her."

"Strictly speaking, he did it for Taminy. Of course, if you look at it another way, your dear brother would be alive today if he hadn't allowed himself to be smitten with the girl."

"Yes, but that, I am certain, was due only to a Weaving on her part. She made him become smitten with her. She used him to escape Creiddylad. And when she had brought her Madaidh rescuer to her, she had him slaughter Sorn as if he were a fatted sheep."

Daimhin considered telling Lilias just how ridiculous that sounded. After all, the Cirkemaster's daughter had not a mote of guile in her. The thought that she had engineered her own escape-no, it was ludicrous. She'd been barely aware of her surroundings when he'd packed her off in the tribute caravan.

Then again, telling Lilias Saba anything at all-besides that she was unutterably beautiful, of course-produced no result. That hardly mattered now.

"Believe what you will, my dear. Only now, it's nearly time for the fateful meeting. Where's Coinich Mor?"

"Near by, Regent," said the Dearg's voice practically in his ear. "Always near by." Though they were several yards from the nearest tent, she appeared beside him as if she had but to take one step from concealment.

He nearly snapped at her that she had startled him, but didn't wish to admit he hadn't sensed her there.

"Have you given our guests an antidote to the sleeping draught?"

"Aye, but, I've kept the inyx upon them-bound to that silly boy's cat amulet. Gullible, that one."

Feich frowned. "I want them to appreciate their predicament."

"Oh, they will, soon enough. By the way, the Claeg is gone."

"What do you mean, the Claeg is gone?"

"What I said. The nephew of Iobert Claeg has escaped."

"How?"

She shrugged. "You would not have him be drugged."

"He was tied. I put an inyx on him."

Coinich Mor's dark brows rose. "Did you? To what did you bind this inyx, Regent?"

"Why to . . . to the ropes." He had, in fact, thought it particularly clever to have done that. Rather like an aislinn pun.

"Well, he isn't in the tent. Neither are his ropes. He must have taken your inyx with him."

Her eyes glinted with wry humor, making him despise her.

"Taminy came to me last night in a vision. She must have aided him to unravel the Weave I set."

The Dearg Wicke nodded, her eyes gliding past him to Lilias. "Ah, yes. I can see that's what has happened. Well, it matters not a bit. There's no aidan in him. It's likely we'll find his body wherever it was he froze to death."

"They're ready to go, then?"

She nodded.