Taminy Read Online Free Page A

you?”
    “Used
it? Oh, mistress Taminy, I wasn’t using it. I don’t know how.”
    The
other girl sat beside her on the braid rug, the crystal still in her hand. “You
mean you’re not supposed to know how.
And the Osraed won’t deign to teach you for another year or more. You’ll cull
them, sort them, type them and codify their uses, but you’ll not weave one tiny
inyx through them, oh, no. And that” —she nodded toward the innocent flames—”is
probably why. Half the houses in Nairne and the Cirke stable, besides, would be
burnt to the ground the eve of the day you lot were turned loose with these.”
    Gwynet
blushed. “But what’d I do?”
    Taminy
held the crystal up before her eyes and frowned into its faceted depths. “What did you do?”
    “I
was just picturing.”
    “Picturing?”
    “Aye.
Like I used to do in leaf dew. I pictured the crystal was all these little
worlds with bright, hot waters flowing out the skies and then-” She shook a
hand at the fire and peeked up at Taminy’s pensive face. “Are you sure it weren’t
demons? Dew never done that.”
    “There
are no demons, Gwynet.”
    “My
old guardian, Ruhf said-”
    “Your
old guardian Ruhf was making excuses, Gwynet. There are no demons, only wicked
people ... and weak ones.”
    “Am
I wicked, Taminy?”
    “No.
You’re not. But even innocence can be dangerous. You must be very careful with
this crystal. Careful not to ‘picture’ in it without Osraed Bevol about to
guide you. You wouldn’t want to burn Gled Manor down.”
    “No,
mistress!”
    Taminy
fell silent then, her eyes locked on the stone in her hand. Puzzled, she seemed
to Gwynet, as if she grasped for something that eluded her; as if she had lost
something and thought the crystal must contain it. She wilted just a little,
like a flower set too long on a sunny sill. Then she blinked, shook her head
and handed the rune crystal back to Gwynet.
    “What
you just did, Gwynet, without meaning to, was start a Weaving. You reached
through the crystal and wove your will to the flames and pulled them to you.”
    Gwynet
was stunned. “I did? I ...? But, mistress, I don’t know any-any spells—any
inyx, I mean. And I don’t know any of the runesongs—the duans. How could I
Weave when I don’t sing and I don’t know the words?”
    “You
said your dewdrops never did anything like that. What did they do?”
    Gwynet
studied the other’s fire-lit face and tried to remember. Remembering was hard
sometimes. It was all bound up in pain and feeling like a rabbit in a hunter’s
snare, but she remembered going to the rill in the early morning to bathe and
she remembered the dewdrops.
    “They
... they made me feel all wonderful. Like I were happy. Sometimes I might wish
that the sun’d shine all day and Ruhf’d not be like to lay hands on me.” She
lowered her head and blushed. “Sometimes I let myself fancy it worked. That he
were lookin’ askew at me and might will to touch me, but couldn’a. I’d pretend
my wishing done it.”
    “Perhaps
it did.”
    Gwynet
puzzled that. “But how?”
    Taminy
stood, her face fading back into the shadows of the dusky room. “Ah, Gwynet,
some people are born singing duans. They breathe them in from the ether and
breathe them out into the world.”
    “Meredydd
was like tha’, weren’t she?”
    “Yes,
she was.”
    “And
you. Are you like tha’?”
    Taminy
was already moving toward the door, receding completely from Gwynet’s fire-lit
patch.
    “I
was once,” she said, and was gone.
    oOo
    Osraed
Bevol arrived home a bit late that evening, his mind still picking its way
through the signs and portents of his last meditation. Gwynet was engaged in
the sage pursuit of practicing her alphabet, while Skeet, upon seeing him,
commented reproachfully on his tardiness and began scurrying to put the meal on
the table.
    “Where
is Taminy?” he asked the boy, watching him ferry pots of hot food into the
large dining chamber.
    “Upstairs.”
He