Meri (13 page)

Thus prepared, she tucked a favorite book of meditations
into a pocket of her pack and met Bevol and Skeet in the kitchen. Skeet wore a
backpack obviously teeming with provisions and Bevol, in leggings, sous-shirt,
jerkin and jacket, looked more like a local jagger than an Osraed.

“How long will we be gone?” Meredydd asked as they left Gled
Manor and took to the road, headed west toward Gled-Nairne Crossing.

“As long as it takes,” said Bevol, “which depends entirely
on you.”

Meredydd did not find that thought a particularly comforting
one. She imagined them trekking endlessly, while she tried to remember and
decipher her dream—a dream that would only recede further with time. The only
thing even vaguely comforting about the situation was that Bevol, himself, was
acting as her Weard; he would observe her, care for her, but would offer no
more guidance than he was instructed to in his own dreams.

The Nairne road was a broad pebbled way that cut north to
south across Caraid-land through field and farm and wood. As they reached the
Gled-Nairne Crossing, Meredydd gazed south toward the place where the roofs and
spires of Nairne itself peeked out of its stole of trees. She missed it
already, and the sight of Halig-liath guarding the waking town loosed a cascade
of thoughts and a clutter of emotions having mostly to do with embarrassment
and loneliness and separation.

And Leal. Dear, loyal Leal. And Wyth. Sober, serious,
earnest Wyth.

“Master,” she said as they put their backs to Nairne and
home. “I told you that Aelder Wyth spoke to me last Cirke-dag.”

“Ah, yes. You said he apologized...and offered you marriage.
You accepted the first and refused the second, if I recall correctly.”

Guilt flashed through Meredydd’s heart. “There was more. I
didn’t tell you everything.”

“Oh?”

“He told me his family holds Lagan.”

“Yes. Indeed they do.”

She stared at him. “You knew?”

“Of course I knew. I was your only guardian. They had to
inform me of the claim.”

“And you didn’t contest it?”

“You said you never wanted to see the place again.”

“I was a child!”

“Yes. A very stubborn, adamant child. And I was not your
blood kin; I was only the Osraed who had performed your Name Tell. I could not
speak for you. You spoke quite loudly for yourself. The very thought of Lagan
caused you great pain and you let it be known.”

“You didn’t tell me Arundel claimed it.”

“You never asked.”

“Five years, he said. They’ve held it for five years. They
must have claimed it right after...right after his father killed himself.”

Osraed Bevol said nothing.

“Which happened only a fortnight after my parents were
murdered.”

Still Bevol was silent.

“Wyth said his father had started the papers for the
claim.... I only just thought.... Master, did Rowan Arundel kill my mother and
father?”

How could she, she wondered, as the words twisted themselves
between her lips, say it so coldly? Why was she not screaming, crying? Why was
she still walking along this road as if it was all in the world she could do?

Skeet’s eyes, dart sharp, skittered back and forth between
his Master and Meredydd, resting finally on the old man’s face.

“I don’t know,” said Bevol finally.

“But you’re Sighted,” she protested. “You could weave a Past
Tell and
see
if he did...couldn’t you?”

“But I did not.”

“Why?” She stopped, now, and faced him.

“What would it have served? What would have been
accomplished? That a little girl be poisoned with fear and hatred?”

“He could have been brought to justice!”

“If he killed your parents, then he was brought to justice,
Meredydd. By his own hand. He laid his punishment at God’s feet. What would you
do—have his sin visited on his son? His daughters?”

Meredydd gazed, unfocused, at the pebbles in the road. Fine,
they were, round and smooth. “It has been,” she said and began walking again.

She believed the Osraed when he said he didn’t know if Rowan
Arundel had murdered her parents (to gain prime pasturage and a right of way?).
Even if he had woven a Past Tell, he very likely would have seen no more than
she had seen. Cloaked and masked men silently carrying out their appalling task
in a firelit yard. But there was one thing he definitely could assess—would
have to have done so as a member of Halig-liath’s Osraed triumvirate.

“Why did Wyth’s father kill himself, Master?”

“What would you make of it if I told you it was guilt?
Consuming and terrible guilt.”

“Was it guilt?”

“It was. The man’s soul was in tatters. He could not face
himself. He chose to face God instead.”

“What should I make of it, Master? That he was party to
killing my parents?”

“That is a possibility, since only his family gained by
their deaths.”

The thoughts. The thoughts that crawled and scuttled and
flew through Meredydd’s head. They were night thoughts, dark-winged and
sharp-clawed, and they battered for release like bats seeking escape from a
cage. When the trio stopped for the night in the woods hard by the banks of the
Bebhinn, she was in torment, for she had held those thoughts captive all day.
Now, in the comfort of camp, they tumbled out before her eyes where she was
forced to hold them up against firelight and appreciate their loathsomeness.

Revenge. That was the word. The third Cirke-dag of every
month she had gone to Lagan’s ruin seeking a clue, a sign, some way of knowing
who stood to receive her revenge. She’d studied the Divine Art half in the hope
that it would aid her in that pursuit. That through her talents and acquired
skills, she would be able to weave a Past Tell and find the destroyers of her
innocence and the stealers of her life.

It was an unworthy goal; she knew it. She knew it most
cuttingly when Osraed Bevol’s eyes were on her, as they were now.

But wasn’t it justice she wanted to serve? Wasn’t it nobler
than vengeance? Wasn’t it a just retribution?

“Meredydd,” said Bevol softly, so that only she could hear. “There
is no duan for vengeance, did you know that? There is no Runeweave in the
Divine Art for retribution. Only wicke-craft offers that consolation. Only a
Dark Sister can accept such a mission.”

I can’t hear you
, she
thought.

Thwarted, now. Her requital was thwarted. These years she
had poked about the corpse of Lagan, seeking her sign, her clue and the
murderer had been dead, himself. Out of her reach, damn him! Out of the reach
of her passion to be the cause of his destruction.

Ah, the frustration. She had had her revenge in her hand
just a week past, when the son of her parents’ murderer had stood right in
front of her and offered up his heart and soul. Had she but known, she could
have spurned him viciously, made his life hell, tortured him with what she
suspected. Or better, she could have accepted his offer of marriage and
destroyed him slowly from the inside out, day by day.

She wondered if his mother knew the truth. Wondered if the
hatred she’d felt from the woman had its source in the results of her husband’s
greed—or in her own. If she had only known, she might have woven a Truth Rune
for Moireach Arundel...if only she had known. She recalled the scene in the
Osraed’s Chamber, but recalled it differently. Instead of Meredydd the Meek,
standing naively before her accusers. She was the Avenger of Lagan, hurling a
counter-accusation, pressing for a Runeweave that would force the truth into
the open. A far different Moireach Arundel would that be, cowering on the
polished floor. What would Wyth think of his mother, then, when it was shown
without doubt that Meredydd was innocent?

Innocent?

She cowered herself, then, cringing away from the stuff of
her own thoughts. Not innocent. Vicious. Cruel. The same Meredydd Wyth thought
gave such good counsel: The sins of the father are visited upon the son only if
the son allows them to be. And Wyth
had
allowed them to be—without her help. He stewed each day in shame that did not
even belong to him; stirred the fire beneath his personal cauldron with
feelings of inadequacy and failure and became enamored of Lagan’s sole
survivor—his father’s legacy.

It was very quiet in Meredydd’s mind suddenly, and her heart
lay hushed in her breast. She did not want Wyth to suffer. She took no joy, at
this moment, in knowing that he did suffer, and on her behest. Her desire for
revenge tasted bitter on the back of her tongue and she was glad that the
Osraed Bevol had not marred her years with him by telling her all he knew of
the death of Lagan.

Meredydd closed her eyes. They burned from the dry heat of
the fire and the wet heat of her tears.

“Master,” she said, “I’m glad there is no such duan. No such
rune.”

She moved to lie down, then, exhausted, and felt Bevol take
her shoulders and guide her drooping head to his breast. Across the firepit, Skeet
blinked and nodded and mumbled the melody of an old prayer duan. But Meredydd
neither saw nor heard him. She had fallen down a well of sleep so deep even
dreams could not escape.

o0o

He stood at the top of the stairs, his back to the long
stone flight, his face pressed against the mullioned window. His eyes were
focused through one of the flat panes that alternated with the faceted
lead-crystal ones. The window looked north, over the kitchen roof, across the
garden, above the sash of trees along Halig-tyne. He could see the river
pasture from here, see the sheep dotted like fleecy mushrooms over the
shadow-strewn meadow.

He moved a step to the right and the green world outside
fractured into a dizzying collection of tiny pictures—each, a realm complete.
He tilted his head and the little images reeled and danced, bright, in shades
of green and azure and cloud white.

He was wishing for other colors when the dark banner
intruded into his lead-crystal world, appearing out of the darker green of the
treetops. He squinted and caught a splash of orange, searing against the new
backdrop of sooty grey. He stepped back to the left and the myriad worlds
coalesced into one. A world of green and blue and white riven by a pennant of
near-black that soared above the tyne-wood.

The tongue of orange licked again at the dark stain and the
boy gasped. How pretty it was, that glowing tongue, how eloquently it dispelled
his boredom, how delightfully it changed the unchanging world outside the
windows of Arundel. He moved back to the faceted pane and watched the play of
flame and smoke, his eyes finding more delight in the way the encroaching
twilight spread the radiance of the fire out upon the treetops in a soft,
diffuse blanket.

Such a blanket! Such a warm, lovely blanket. He tried to
imagine curling up within it, warm to the soul, while his mother sang him to
sleep the way she had done once, before the responsibilities of being Moireach
of Arundel had increased.

Their grand house was full almost every evening with equally
grand visitors from as far away as Creiddylad and Eada. There were no visitors
this evening, but Mother had been distant and distracted and even
angry-seeming, so Wyth had come here to his window world.

He was glad he had been here to see such a grand show. It
was almost like the fireworks of Solstice and it went on for a very long time.

He was still watching it as twilight darkened and lost its
color, was pulled from the entrancing display when the tiny white dots that
were sheep scattered in sudden chaos and something dark darted into the crystal
pictures. He moved back to the flat pane and saw a horse dash along the wooded
road to disappear out of sight around the flank of the great house.

He smiled. Father was home. He turned his back to the window
and came to the top of the stairs as the front door opened and his father,
cloaked and bundled despite the warm weather, stepped into the hall.

“Papa!” he cried. “Did you see the fire?”

His father looked up at him, white-faced, and said nothing.
He was still staring voicelessly when his wife swooped into the hall like a
great, colorful bird, and drew him away into the parlor. The doors closed
behind them, but they did not seal away the sound of raised, yet muffled
voices—the sound of anger, the sound of fear, the sound of weeping...of his
father weeping.

He had never heard his father weep. Never.

He sat down upon the stairs and listened to the frightening
new sound while, behind him, the tiny window panes glittered with points of
orange light.

Wyth Arundel awoke with a shudder and forced his eyes open.
He hadn’t had that dream for years. He hadn’t wanted to have it because he
feared it. Not for itself, but for its companion. If and when he slept again
tonight, he would dream another dream that seemed always to pair itself with
this one. A dream of a horrifying, stretched shadow swinging, pendulum-like,
upon a slanted wall.

Wyth shuddered again and blinked rapidly, not daring to
close his eyes for any length of time. He knew that if he did he would see his
father hanging there, beneath the third floor stair, his face white, his
bulging, startled-looking eyes still full of an emotion his son hoped never to
know.

Beholding the worlds of creation, let the true
Pilgrim attain renunciation and know this: The Spirit which is above creation
cannot be attained by action.

In his hunger for divine wisdom, let the Pilgrim go

reverently to a Teacher who lives the sacred words and
those soul has the peace of the Spirit.

To a Pilgrim who comes with mind and senses in peace, the
Teacher gives the vision of the Spirit of truth and eternity.

— The Book of Pilgrimages
(On Pilgrims)

The morning was hushed and wool-hood close. Mist drifted
in puffs and tendrils, rising from the earth like waking angels and lifting
ephemeral wings toward the Sun—a Sun whose own waking turned lead to gold.