Taminy Read Online Free PDF Page B

two years time.”
    Leal
grinned. “Well, there, you see? That must be why the Meri assigns me to the
capitol. I’m to keep an eye upon the Cyne for Her. Yes, I can see clearly that
Creiddylad needs Osraed Lealbhallain-mac-Mercer desperately.”
    Absurdly
pleased to see the impish glint in his son’s eye, Giolla Mercer laughed aloud
and tried not to think how much he would miss the boy when he was gone.
    oOo
    Taminy
saw the Osraed Bevol and his small would-be Prentice off to Halig-liath after
breakfast, then retired to the garden behind Gled Manor. The sun shone on the
heights above Nairne, warming the centuries-old stones of the Academy and
dusting the eons-old rock beneath it with a blush of rose. She could just make
it out through the garden’s clustered trees—the rounded walls of the central
rotunda, a bit of slate gray roof, a glisten of aged pines.
    Memory.
Odd, how it could evade you when you reached for it and overtake you when you
glanced aside. She could hear Halig-liath in mind’s ear; the scuff and clatter
of dutiful feet—fewer now in the summer months when only the first year
students attended; the chatter and laughter of young voices; the atonal song of
the morning bells calling assembly. She could see, too, the upturned faces, a
myriad eyes raised to the Osraed Gallery, waiting to hear invocation from the
lips of the Apex of the Triumvirate, Convener of the Divine Council.
    Osraed
Kinsel had been at Apex in her time at Halig-liath, a position Osraed Bevol now
held. She had never been able to please Osraed Kinsel—or so she’d thought. Yet,
when others had decried her as Wicke, he had been the only one to reserve judgment.
The only one to suggest that the Meri should condemn or absolve her of the
charge.
    She
listened to the drowsing silence. Yes, she could hear them now, the bells; like
the shimmer of sun on water, translated to sound. In a moment, the small
aspirants to Prenticeship would gather for prayer and morning song.
    Lift up, lift up heads, hands and hearts.
    The Meri wills the day to start.
    Raise up, raise up heads, hearts and hands.
    The Meri wills us understand—
    Toward the Light we ever turn.
    Her Knowledge is the lamp we burn.
    She
found herself humming the pretty little melody and broke off, smiling, but
rueful. Oh, the things one remembered ...and oh, the things one forgot.
    She
rose and crossed to where a climbing white rose twist itself about a thick oak.
Dew sparkled in its petals—gems for the dawn, her mother had always called
them. A heart-thorn of pain pricked her. Mother and father were gone now—their
bodies returning to the earth, their spirits loosed in Realms she could no
longer reach. They had been so near not that long ago, but in shaking the Sea
from her flesh, it seemed she had shaken their souls from her embrace.
    Blinking
back tears, she turned her eyes from the roses and sought the Sun in the green
of Bevol’s garden. It was there, lying amid a veritable platter of
jewels—emeralds most of them—scattered in the grass. The lawns blurred to
velvety splendor for a second, but a blink made it be grass again. No, self
pity was unforgivable in a place of such beauty and peace. Doubly or triply so
for one who knew what Taminy knew, had been where she had been.
    She
returned her gaze to the rose bush, reached out a hand and broke off a new bud.
Carrying it to a gilded patch of green, she sat there, heedless of the effect
of dew on skirts, and focused her all on the flower. The bloom became her
world. She narrowed her gaze to one folded petal. The petal became her universe.
She narrowed her gaze to a dewdrop on that petal. The dewdrop became a Cosmos.
She let it fill her completely.
    Think you are but a pitiful form when entire
universes are wrapped within you ? That passage from the Corah had once
comforted her. Now it seemed only to mock.
    Yes, I am pitiful! A lake severed from its
river; an errant ray of light shuttered from its Sun.
    Entire
universes ... and she