Free Crystal Rose by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff Page B

of the mountains, strewing the snowy peaks with Eibhilin wealth.
    Leal puzzled. Where was this? He tried to distinguish the
mountains, number them, name them, but they remained huge, dark and anonymous
beneath the spreading splendor. He remembered Catahn Hillwild and tried to
recall where his capitol lay among those titanic shapes, but could not.
    Fhada! Fhada would know. If he could only wake.
    Wake! He willed his eyes to open.
    Wake! He tried to
conjure a bright sunrise, a splash of cold water.
    WAKE!
    He sat up abruptly, brain reeling from the sudden charge of
warm energy that flushed him. The room was not dark, for someone stood beside
his bed with a lamp.
    He blinked. No. There was someone by his bed, but there was
no lamp. The light he saw radiated from the figure itself.
    He choked, suddenly unable to breathe. “Taminy! Mistress!”
    She raised a radiant hand. “Peace, Lealbhallain.”
    He felt peace. Like warm water, like soft sunlight, it
poured over him. He smiled.
    “I’m sending you someone,” she said, and in that moment, he
saw Aine-mac-Lorimer as clearly as if she stood before him. A wash of
indecipherable sensation came with the vision. “Listen to her. Learn what she
has to teach. Teach her what she must learn . . . Be patient with her. She comes
with the Claeg.”
    “Wha—?” Leal’s eyes stared into complete darkness. He was
surprised to find himself still lying flat on his back on his low pallet in his
room at Carehouse. Windowless, the chamber admitted daylight only through a
narrow aperture high on the western wall. In a flutter of stunned blinks, that
feature appeared as a gray, poorly defined rectangle. In the meager light, Leal
could see the solid shapes of his sparse furnishings.
    He suspected it was near dawn, but it hardly mattered.
Regardless of the time, Fhada must be told of the aislinn. Leal scrambled to
find his boots and coat and hurried to the elder Osraed’s room. It took several
moments of tapping before a groggy Fhada let him in.
    “Taminy-Osmaer has left Halig-liath,” he blurted, before
he’d even cleared the door.
    “She—what? How-how do you know this?”
    “I had a dream. An aislinn. She’s gone to the Gyldans.”
    “Hush!” Fhada pulled Leal completely into the chamber and
shut the door firmly behind him. “Are you certain?”
    Leal nodded emphatically—flopping unruly red hair
into his eyes—and rubbed his coated arms against a frenetic chill. The aislinn
still held him, rattling his teeth and quivering his innards.
    “I saw the Crystal Rose high over the mountains. Then
Taminy, herself, appeared to me and told me she was sending Aine-mac-Lorimer to
Creiddylad to teach us.”
    “To teach us what?” asked Fhada.
    Leal scraped the suddenly empty insides of his mind. “I . . .
I’m not sure . . . No, wait. Yes! So we might speak with her as clearly as we
speak to each other now.”
    The older Osraed peered at him in the mellow light of his
single light-bowl, then threw back his head and laughed. “My dear Leal, I hope
it’s somewhat clearer than that!”
    oOo
    Leal came down to breakfast to find an unusually somber
Osraed Fhada sitting in the small refectory, staring from the window. His tea
mug, clutched in both hands, was quickly losing the heat of its contents to the
chilly room.
    “Your tea’s getting cold,” Leal told him when he sat down
with his breakfast some minutes later.
    Fhada’s eyes dropped to the cup; Leal wasn’t sure he
actually saw it. “Daimhin Feich paid a visit to Ochanshrine yesterday,” he
said.
    Leal set down his spoon. “And?”
    “According to Osraed Eadmund, he entered the Shrine and
displayed some interest in the Stone.”
    “Interest?” Leal shrugged. “He’s an unbeliever. What
interest could he possibly have in it, other than as a means of coronation?”
    “He didn’t mention a coronation, at least not in Eadmund’s
hearing. He did express concern that the Crystal seemed . . . lifeless, dark.