Part 47 (2/2)
”Calm yourself, Regent Feich,” she told him. ”We are not the Weavers of this inyx. Our Weaving is one you will celebrate.”
”You . . . ?” He slanted a swift glance back at the tent flap.
b.l.o.o.d.y light crept along its inner edge, the din of death lapped through it in sickening waves. ”Who, then? Who could-?”
”Your pretty Golden Wicke,” said Lilias, wine-dark lips curved in a knowing smile. ”She and her acolytes Weave this. Do you like it? Does it terrify you?”
He didn't answer. ”Doesn't it terrify you?”
The women glanced at each other and laughed. ”Come,” said Coinich Mor, gesturing at their circle of calm golden light. ”Come see what your sweet Raven has divined for you.”
He sheathed his sword and moved to sit between them, facing Aiffe. To his surprise, the two joined hands so as to frame the stone, and gazed deep into its facets. Then, Lilias's dark eyes seemed to roll back in their sockets and Coinich Mor began to sing a duan.
In the halo of light above Bevol's crystal images formed: Four riders struggled through rocky fields of snow, leaning into a wind that Feich could neither feel nor hear. Four walkers led their mounts along the treacherous ledges of the Cauldron. Four travelers sheltered beneath the pines of Baenn-an-ratha miles below where his chances of capturing Taminy were being snuffed out.
”What am I seeing?”
”Look closely,” whispered Coinich Mor, her gaze going to Lilias's flickering eyelids.
The scene s.h.i.+fted to the aislinn travelers huddled around a camp fire. Their faces revealed by the fire's warming glow.
Feich gasped aloud.
”You know them?” asked Coinich Mor.
”Saefren Claeg, Iseabal-a-Nairncirke, that idiot Osraed, Lealbhallain. The other girl I know only on sight.”
The Dearg smiled. ”They bring you a gift, Regent. The Osmaer Crystal is with them.”
He gaped at her through the aislinn scene. ”How do you know this?”
”Dear Lilias has a great gift for the Sight. I have merely added to it my own senses and this, the Osmaer's sister stone, cut from the same matrix. They are perhaps two days below us, Taminy s.h.i.+elds them from more than observation. All this”-her gesture took in the turmoil without-”is her way of clouding your vision, lord. Of frightening you into retreat. How fortunate, you were, to have us here.”
”The Osmaer,” he breathed. ”But what must I do? How can I have it?”
”Attack Hrofceaster.”
The voice was Lilias Saba's. Feich turned his gaze to her, pulling it from the aislinn vision.
”Distract them as they attempt to distract you. You have the forces at your command. Attack. When these children arrive, s.h.i.+elded though they be to outward eyes, I will see them. You will have them, you will have the Crystal, and I will have Iseabal-a-Nairncirke and revenge.”
Feich shook his head. ”Don't you realize what's happening out there? I have no more forces at my disposal. Those who have not fled in panic are dead and dying. Taminy is destroying my men and yours.”
The women smiled secretly and rose and beckoned him back outside where red tongues of light and black tongues of smoke licked at the bodies of the fallen. He shuddered as Lilias Saba knelt by the body of a Deasach corsair and turned him over to reveal his face. He was little more than a boy and Feich was startled to recognize him as the young soldier his Deasach paramour had chosen to display her displeasure at him only nights ago.
”Look,” she told him, holding a hand before the boy's face. ”He has only swooned in fear. He will wake before long and wonder, or run and hide.”
”He's not dead?”
Feich bent closer and saw that Lilias was right. Steam rose from the boy's nostrils. He had only fainted. Head raised, Feich looked out over the camp and realized that it was only the strange, squirming light that made the scene so horrible.
”Yes, you see?” asked Coinich Mor. ”They've not melted away. It is all a trick of light and shadow. You are right about your Wicke. She is constrained to be harmless.”
Feich felt laughter building in his throat. It bubbled out, sweeping him away on a tide of relieved hilarity. He let it take him, tumble him, steal his breath.
”Shall I-” he gasped. ”Shall I rally my fallen troops? Oh, but how shall they ride? How shall they fight?” He looked at the fallen bodies now and saw them as comic.
”Later,” Coinich Mor told him, and together with her Deasach ally she led him back to his tent.
Deardru lived with a strange, tight, exhilarating dread clogging her throat. Around her, Taminy's followers scurried at their Mistress's beck and call, knowing that Airleas was missing or had been taken, but not knowing how or by whom. Reaching out through the catamount totem told her why they remained in the dark. Airleas slept, deeply and completely, dreamlessly, at Coinich Mor's Weaving.
Her first reaction to that realization had been relief; she'd fully expected to return to Hrofceaster to be locked away for her part in the boy's disappearance. Now she spent every day in nervous antic.i.p.ation that the boy would awake and point an aislinn finger at her. Alternately, she prayed that Feich would take his hostage and run or that he would stay and fight and win.
When the waljan and their Mistress launched their aislinn attack on the enemy camp, she was terrified.
Corsairs and soldiers swooned away in terror or panicked and tried to run, though there was no where to go with any speed.
Unable to do anything against the strength of that combined Weaving, she had reached out to Coinich Mor and been gratified to know that the Dearg Wicke already suspected what she knew as fact-Taminy was loathe to kill even her worst enemies. The attack was intended to induce fear, not bring about death.
Yet, there was death. Fleeing down the steep, dangerous track on foot and on horseback, a number of terror-stricken souls perished. She could see them, through the eyes of the Deasach Banarigh, tossed like rag-dolls down the toothed flanks of a pa.s.s known only as the Cut-Dearg red, Feich yellow, even Deasach black.
She knew that Feich would attack once he'd regathered his scattered and trembling troops. Still she held her breath, awaiting that event, fearing that Airleas might awaken first and reveal her as his betrayer, and went about her duties at Hrofceaster-cooking, caring for the children. All the while she watched the bond between Catahn and Taminy strengthen and grow. Like a living thing, it seemed, eating away at her, growing fat on her anguish.
Yet so, her hatred of Taminy grew fat and flourished.
Chapter 23.
Those who know G.o.d know none but G.o.d; those who fear G.o.d fear none but G.o.d, though the entire world be against them.
-from the Testament of Osraed Bevol Between the three forces, they had lost less than twenty men to the canyon; another thirty or so had made their escape good and hid or fled back the way they had come toward El-Deasach. Most of the dead and missing were Dearg. Daimhin Feich did not waste time with grief or anger.
He left no one time to mourn the deaths-which were, after all, the result of cowardice-but had the men gathered before dawn, fed and ready to a.s.sault the Hillwild fortress. Here, he stepped aside, Ruadh would call the battle plan in consultation with Coinich Mor's slow but fierce husband and Lilias Saba. It amused Feich to think that the Deasach Banarigh actually commanded her own battle forces. He'd expected her to relinquish their control to a lieutenant, but she did not.
He might have teased her for such a conceit if there had been time and opportunity . . . and if he had not such an appreciation of her pride.
They attacked Hrofceaster with the first faint reddening of the eastern sky-Ruadh with his troops, Daimhin with his aidan. Now, Taminy would taste of her own tactics.
Sunrise.
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