Meri (10 page)

“I felt different, suddenly—transformed. I was calm,
assured, joyous, but still full of wonder. I knew things I’d never even
suspected before. I saw what holds the stars in their courses and makes the
planets dance in their orbits, paying court to their Suns. I knew the names of
lands I’d never visited. I knew what makes some men hate and fear and other men
love. I knew that the best of all treasures was the love of God and that it was
also the best of all gifts. I knew that the first thing a true man or woman
must possess was a pure, kindly and radiant heart. I knew the will of the First
Being for Caraid-land and for Nairne and I knew It’s will for me. I saw myself
giving the Pilgrim’s Tell before the Cyne in Creiddylad. I saw Halig-liath with
me in it. I saw bits and pieces of my future.”

He paused for a moment then said, “And there is something
else I saw which I have never mentioned before. I saw a little girl in a burned
out stead-yard, struggling in the mud to reach the dead body of her mother.”

Meredydd whirled about to face him, nearly thrusting her
feet into the fire in her haste. “You saw
me
?”

He nodded, stroking her hair as if to calm her, his own hair
and beard gold-slashed copper in the firelight, his face, ruddy.

“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“It did not seem...important.”

“Do you know how my Pilgrimage will end?”

“Does anyone’s Pilgrimage ever end?” he asked
philosophically.

“Do you?” she persisted.

“I hope it ends with you giving the Pilgrim’s Tell before
Cyne Colfre.” He read her expression, then said, “Anyone can see the beginning
of a thing. Only God sees the end clearly.”

“Do you?”

“No, Meredydd.”

She searched his face, then turned back to the flames,
content that he would never lie to her. They sat in silence for a moment, then
Bevol said, “You will not go back to Halig-liath until the Solstice Festival at
the end of the week. I will prepare you for Pilgrimage, myself.”

“But, your classes—”

“I will hand them over to my second. He can handle the academic
testing.”

Meredydd nodded, her chin rocking on drawn up knees. One
week. One week from now, she would be on her Path to the Western Sea.

Bend and you will not break, for the bent can
straighten.

The emptied can be filled, the torn mended.

Want can reward you, even as wealth can bewilder.

The wise man finds the Balance:

Without becoming inflamed, he is kindled;

without defending himself, he is defended;

without laying claim, he is acclaimed;

without competing, he finds competence.

How true is this: Bend and you will not break.

— The Corah
Book II, Verse 90

Cirke-dag dawned cool, breezy and with the threat of rain.
Cloaked against that threat, the inhabitants of Gled Manor made the twenty
minute walk to Nairne, arriving at the Sanctuary to mill in the Cirke-yard with
their fellow worshippers. Meredydd kept her head high in spite of the glances
she reaped from the parents of her classmates—most especially from those who
were close to Moireach Arundel and her son.

There was nothing of the siren about her today, drabbed in a
stole and a woven dress that, knee slit, fell nearly to the ankles of her
leggings. Every scrap of skin was covered but for hands and face, her hair
formed a chaste, shining coil about her head. She ignored the prying eyes,
fixing her own on Halig-liath. Crowning the escarpment at the eastern end of
town, it dominated Nairne like a dowager Cwen supreme astride her stony mount.
Mist rose off the Halig-tyne, curling serenely at the foot of the cliffs,
rising to wrap itself about the angles of wall and spire, softening the
arrogant profile.

I might never set foot there
again
, she thought and felt a keen sense of loss. Ah, but at least there
would be the Farewelling—the climax of the Solstice Festival when the Pilgrims
were feted.

Skeet tugged at her tunic, now, telling her it was time to
go in. She took her eyes from the Holy Fortress and turned to climb the wide
Sanctuary stair. Aelder Prentice Wyth stood just above her on the steps, his
hair flying in the spring breeze, his long, angular face stark and troubled.
She blinked and turned aside before he could speak to her.

Though she fled into the Sanctuary, she found no solace
within. Eyes still prodded her, accused her wrongly. Across the aisle from
where she sat with Osraed Bevol and Skeet, Prentice Brys and his family glared
at her. Brys’s neck was buried in scarves that were pungent with medicaments
and herbs. She could smell the camphor strongly even from here. The corners of
her mouth twitched impulsively and she raised her hand to cover it, bowing her
head and praying earnestly for his speedy recovery.

The Cirke-Master, Osraed Saxan, gave a teaching on tolerance
and understanding, but it fell into hard soil. Those who regarded
Meredydd-a-Lagan, accused seductress and Wicke, with icy disdain continued to
regard her that way. She could feel the eyes on her curious, judging,
condemning. At the end of the Teaching, as the last note of the last lay rang
off, Meredydd excused herself and left the Cirke.

She was halfway across the Cirke-yard when she heard someone
calling to her. For all she wanted to bolt and run, she stopped and turned. A
sigh of relief escaped her; it was Lealbhallain.

She waited for him to catch her up and smiled at him. “A
friend! You are still my friend, aren’t you, Leal?”

He frowned, the freckles across the bridge of his nose
mingling into a ruddy-gold blotch. “How can you ask that, Meredydd? I am always
your friend. You were running away,” he accused her. “Aren’t we going for our
Cirke-dag stop by the backstere’s?”

Meredydd looked down at the toes of her shoes. “Are you sure
you wish to be seen with me?”

“Always.”

His loyalty made her feel willful and free. She nodded,
raising her head. “Aye, then. Let’s have our pastries, by all means.”

They performed the ritual just as always, crossing the Cirke
Bridge to the south side of Nairne and strolling all the ay to the quay to give
the backstere a chance to get back from Cirke. Then they strolled back into
town again past closed shops and opened tearooms and public houses. Business
halted on Cirke-dag, but eating and socializing did not, hence shops that
provided fuel for either of those pastimes shut down only during worship and
opened immediately after to receive their throngs of customers, some of which
were not seen in Nairne from one Cirke-dag to the next.

At the backstere’s they got creamcakes and resumed their
walk, heading back again along the river, which dissected the little town into
uneven halves. Meredydd’s eyes found new beauties in the streets of Nairne today—in
the fresh-washed cobbles and white-washed storefronts with their gleaming
windows and hand-painted signs. And the smells of Nairne were also
beautiful—baked goods and Cirke-dag dinners from a myriad houses, spices and
flowers and, from the river, the perfumes of tarred planking and wet earth and
stone.

“What are you thinking, Meredydd?” asked Lealbhallain when
she had been silent for a very long time.

She pecked at the half-finished creamcake. “I’m wondering
what I’ll do after.”

“After?”

“I’m going on Pilgrimage at Solstice, Leal.”

“What? Why?”

“Osraed Ealad-hach...” She paused. No, she really shouldn’t
lay this at his door—that would be backbiting. “Osraed Bevol thinks it would be
a good way for me to prove myself at Halig-liath. To prove I’m not what people
are saying I am.” She glanced at him sidelong. “You’ve heard the rumors.”

He nodded, watching the flagged walkway in front of them. “Aye.
You must know I don’t believe it. By the Kiss, Meredydd, I
know
none of it’s true. You’re no Wicke. You’ve done
naught to Wyth or Brys or anyone.”

She laughed. “Bristles!”

He glanced at her reproachfully. “I’m your friend, Meredydd.
I’ll always defend you.”

Impulsively, she put her arm through his. “I’m fortunate in
my friends,” she told him and he smiled brilliantly for her.

“Tell me, Leal. Have you ever been to Creiddylad?”

He blinked at the sudden change of subject. “Aye.”

“Is it really a jewel?”

He shrugged. “I suppose you could say it was. It’s a big
town and fine and rich. Except the poor parts. It’s not like here, where there’s
some a little rich and some a little poor, but most living goodly lives and
making sure the poor stay only a little that way. In Creiddylad, there’s deep
poor. Folks that can barely scrape by. They’ve no land, you see. They’re all crowded
into little—” He waved his free hand with its bit of creamcake as if trying to
prod a word loose from the air.

“Warrens,” he said finally. “Aye, they’re almost like
that—like rabbit hutches. And all these folks crammed in there with no land of
their own so they can’t farm up victuals for the family table.”

Meredydd was stunned. If the report had come from anyone
else, she wouldn’t have believed it, but Leal would lie to her no more than he
would abandon her. “But that’s awful. And how can it be, with Cyne Colfre
living right there?”

“Well, father says there are reserves set aside from tariffs
and the like that are supposed to help care for these folk and set up workshare
for them, but he says that hasn’t been working so well of late. Father says it’s
greed—unscrupulous administrators turning the monies to their own use. Used to
be that Creiddylad was like Nairne and the other villages, where the landed
folk took care of the unlanded folk, at least that’s what Father says. He says
it
must
change, of course, but who could
change it?”

“I would think God could; the Meri could. Perhaps we should
ask after it when we go on Pilgrimage, instead of worrying about our own
estate.”

Leal nodded. “I think you must be right. But why do you ask
about Creiddylad?”

“Like I said, I was thinking of what to do after. I don’t
know if I could stay here, because if I fail, Nairne wouldn’t have me. They’ll
believe the stories and I’ll have no life here.

I thought maybe I could go to Creiddylad. Maybe there’d be
something for me to do there. It sounds like there’s a lot to be done there,”
she added.

Lealbhallain scowled—actually scowled—at her. “Oh, you’ll go
to Creiddylad, all right, Meredydd-a-Lagan. You’ll go there to give the Pilgrim’s
Tell to Cyne Colfre. Mark it.”

They had reached the riverbend by now and wandered along the
quay, watching the little boats bobbing on the quiet waters and the fishermen
sitting so patiently on their piers. But when they sat on a stone balustrade in
the shadow of the palisades, it was Halig-liath that drew Meredydd’s eyes—drew
them up to the warm stone walls and the staunch parapets. She could see the
outer wall of the concourse from here and the high gallery above the hidden
courtyard. In one week, she would say good-bye, she prayed it was not forever.

She left Lealbhallain on the corner of his street, not
wanting to cause him any trouble with his family, and left the streets and
avenues of Nairne behind her. The rest of the day was hers and she knew exactly
what she would do with it.

Ritualistically, she took the anniversary path—the one that
left the Nairne Road and ran to the Bebhinn Wood. The one that led to a place
where a younger Meredydd had squandered irreplaceable time. Every year to the
day she had done this—retraced those childish steps—but never had that woodland
pool seemed the least bit magical. It was a joyless place of sodden grass and
sorrowing trees and never, since that day seven years before, had it held
anything that should have made an eight year old girl stop, enchanted, to while
away her mother and father’s last hours—hours that should have been her last,
as well.

The day was pied now, blue-gold and silver, as clouds
scudded landward like legless sheep in an infinite pasturage. Meredydd glanced
up at them through jostling limbs and wondered at worlds she knew, from Bevol’s
teaching, existed beyond them, flung like jeweled chick-seed across the void.
She knew, too, that the void was not a void, but teemed with stars and galaxies
and gases and nascent worlds and ancient ones thronging with life—all seeking
the same Goal. Her thoughts swung to the Meri and to the Meri’s Kiss and she
wondered what form the Meri took on those other worlds.

A limb brushed wet fingertips against her neck, making her
pull her thoughts back down to earth. She had reached the pool and stood at the
top of a berm in the path, looking past a drape of moss into the hollow. She
stepped forward and down, brushing the moss aside, and was astonished.

Every blade of grass was verdant velvet and mounted by a
tiny bead of water. Up from and over the emerald-strewn ground, evergreen
shrubs waved jeweled fans, while their taller sisters and cousins danced in
clinging, silvery finery of the sheerest moss. The pool, itself, lay in the
setting like a giantess’s pendant—glittering peridot, sapphire, topaz, diamond
deep and clear. Meredydd could see all the way to the bottom.

The sight amazed her for only a moment before she felt a
soul-plumbing thrum of fear. She skirted the pool quickly, saw a tendril of
mist rise and thicken, and ran, unreasoning, up the path toward Lagan.

Meredydd
....

Did the wraith whisper it? Did her ears even hear it?

The part of her that cared to know was submerged in sudden
terror. What would she see when she reached the top of the hill? Was that smoke
or only a stormcloud lying dog-low on the horizon?

She broke from the woods and leapt into the waves of winter
wheat that bowed across her path, wind-worshipping and golden.

It slowed her and she dropped her stole, then picked up her
skirts and bounded on, eyes locked to the crest of the hill. She was winded by
the time she reached it and her hair had escaped from its careful coil and
fallen, unplaited and reckless, to her shoulders. She crested the waves of
grain and filled her eyes with the scene below. For a second it was flame and
shadow; for a heartbeat it was smoke and fear. Then a cloud cleared the Sun and
it was a sleeping ruin, swathed in new green, looking less than melancholy in
its spring colors. Lagan was not in mourning.