Meri (15 page)

Wrong, Meredydd
! she
chastised herself.
This is your decision, not Mam
Lufu’s. The task is for you to decide which is the most important amulet, not
guess which Mam Lufu or the Osraed Bevol thinks is most important
.

She stared at them hard, then—three nearly identical lumps
of metal on three colorful cords. The Sight amulet tugged at her again,
whispering of certain knowledge of secret acts, counseling revenge. She was
dismayed to realize how important that still was to her.

She forced her attention to the Healing talisman. There lay
true importance, and with no taint of personal gain to cloud the issue. Ah, but
perhaps
that
was the test. Perhaps to own
the Sight amulet while not using it for her own gratification was the point of
the exercise.

Then, again, perhaps it was not.

In the split second that she caught herself wishing for it,
realizing she needed it to make this decision, her hand closed over the amulet
on the golden thong. There was no brilliant flash of light, no thunder, nothing
to indicate that she had made the right choice. Only a flash of certitude—which
swiftly faded.

She turned, finding Mam Lufu behind her, and held out the
amulet, golden cord dangling between her fingers. “I choose Wisdom,” she said.

Mam Lufu nodded and smiled and Meredydd suspected she would
have nodded and smiled regardless of which shiny lump had been proffered to
her.

“Take it to your master,” she said. “And may God bless you.”

Numbly, Meredydd followed the woman out to the dark corridor
and back toward the main part of the hovel, clutching the amulet against her
breast.

Is it the right one
? she
longed to ask.
Did I make the wisest choice in
choosing Wisdom
?

Instead, when they reached the crowded, thatched entry,
Meredydd turned to Mam Lufu and asked, “Were you really alive when Taminy was a
Pilgrim?”

Mam Lufu smiled, showing even, white teeth. “Aye.”

“Are you Wicke?”

The woman laughed. “And what is that, Meredydd-a-Lagan? Is a
woman Wicke ’cause she doesn’t think as others do? Is she Wicke ’cause she
tends other fires than her own, blesses other crops or births other babies?
Does healing make one Wicke, or arriving from nowhere, or too long a life? Is a
woman Wicke when she’s known to all and understood by none? Are you Wicke,
Meredydd-a-Lagan? Or are you Osraed-to-be? Or are you more or less or none or
all?”

Meredydd could only stare and wish she had more time to
spend with Mam Lufu, Wicke or not. But, Mam Lufu, still chuckling, patted her
cheek with a calloused hand and turned to go.

“Thank you,” said Meredydd, at last, and watched the woman
disappear into her house of reeds and earth.

It was only as she mounted the slope of the meadow that
Meredydd noticed the position of the Sun in the sky. Where it had been on this
side, now it was on that. An entire morning had passed into late afternoon
while she was with Mam Lufu, and now hurried toward evening. Meredydd hurried
with it, down the grassy track toward the village.

Osraed Bevol was in the dining room of the wayhouse, sitting
at a rough-hewn table beneath a fire-globe that cast its warm light in a
circular pool about him. He smiled at her when she entered, caught and held her
with his eyes even before she swam into his pool of light.

“I’ve had a busy day, Meredydd,” he told her. “These folk
see the Osraed so seldom, they take full advantage of one when he appears. We
have a place for the night here. The house-keep was grateful for a small favor
we did his family. Skeet is just seeing to our evening meal.”

Meredydd nodded, barely hearing him. She held out her hand
and let the amulet swing from her fingers before dropping it gently into her
master’s outstretched palm. His eyes followed it, the expression in them
changing not at all.

“Wisdom,” he said. “And what made you choose Wisdom?”

“The need for it, Master.”

“Ah.”

That was it, then—just, “Ah?” She didn’t know whether to
laugh or cry. She didn’t know whether she had succeeded or failed. She sat
heavily in the chair opposite the Osraed, exhaustion of several kinds finally
catching her up. Her eyes fell, unfocused, on the little amulet.

Osraed Bevol turned it in his gnarled fingers (When had they
become so bent or his hands so pale and veined? Had it been Healing she was to
have brought to him? Had she, in a moment, of personal uncertainty, cheated him
of renewed life?), then held it out to her.

“Here, put it on.”

“What?” Meredydd stared stupidly at the golden thong with
its shiny, misshapen pendant. “What?”

“Put it on. It’s for you.”

“But I thought it was for you.”

He shrugged. “I have chests full of amulets. This is your
first. Wear it. Let it remind you of this day, this place.”

“And Mam Lufu.”

“And Mam Lufu.”

“Who is she, Master? Is she Wicke?”

“Some people call her that.” He smiled. “I’m sure that’s
what Ealad-hach would call her.”

“But is that what she is?”

“Well, anwyl, what if we were to agree that a Wicke is any
female who is talented and empowered in the manner of the Osraed, but who is
not Osraed? And that having agreed upon that, we then agree that Mam Lufu is
such a female.”

“Then she is Wicke.”

“So it would seem.”

“And isn’t that evil?”

“Is it? How so? She is a part of your Pilgrimage and that
makes her an instrument of the Meri. How can an instrument of the Meri be evil?”

Meredydd considered that. “Well, I don’t see how, but I know
Ealad-hach would consider her to be evil.”

“And?”

“And he’s Osraed.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning he should know.”

Osraed Bevol’s mouth curled at the corners. “Or should know
better. Think, anwyl. I am also Osraed—more recently than Ealad-hach, as it
happens. Yet I tell you Mam Lufu is not evil.”

“Then one of you is wrong.”

“Obviously.”

“Then...doesn’t the Meri communicate Her Truth to you after
you have become Osraed? I thought—”

“She communicates to some and not to others. It depends.”

“On what, Master?”

He raised the hand holding the amulet and swung it before
her. “On this, anwyl. On wisdom. On purity of heart. On clarity. Wear this and
remember that it is possible for a man or a woman to be once enlightened and
yet wander back into darkness.”

Meredydd took the amulet in numb fingers and put it around
her neck, slipping the pendant down inside the loose collar of her sous-shirt.
She held her breath for a moment, then exhaled and blinked. “I don’t feel any
different.”

“No?”

“No. I don’t feel any wiser.”

“How would you know?”

She considered that. “I’d know more, wouldn’t I?”

“Wisdom and knowledge are two different things, anwyl. Like
the two wings of the bird of the human intellect. Knowledge is a thing—inert,
inactive. Wisdom is knowing what to
do
with
that thing. Knowledge is acquired; Wisdom is grown.”

“Then I haven’t grown any wisdom, have I?”

“You have enough to know you need more.” He smiled.

She looked at him—dark eyes to light—and smiled in return.
That was as close to success as she needed to come. Perhaps there had been no
right choice, perhaps there had been only a right attitude. Perhaps she had at
least that much.

“Master, Mam Lufu said I was to have you tell me the story
of the Lover and the Wakemen.”

“Did she? And what made her suggest this, do you think?”

“We were talking about Taminy-a-Cuinn. About her fate...and
mine. Mam Lufu said Taminy deserved her fate and that I would deserve mine.
Then, she said you must tell me the tale of the Lover and the Wakemen.”

“Then I’ll tell it.” He gazed for a moment at the
time-polished wood of the table top between them as if the tale was being
enacted there. Meredydd found her eyes following his, trying to see scenes in
the grain of the worn wood.

“There was,” he began, “a young man of Creiddylad whose name
has long been forgotten. He was in love with the daughter of a wealthy mercer.
He had first caught a glimpse of her in the crowd at market, and had spoken to
her later at Solstice Festival and had fallen quite in love. Well, he
discovered she had moved from Creiddylad and had returned to her ancestral home
in a city far up the coast. So he followed her. But all he knew was her given
name—he’d never asked after her family—and when he reached the city where she
lived, he found he had no idea at all where to begin his search.

“The young man got a room at an inn near where there were
the grand homes of many mercers and cleirachs and scholars. He searched for his
Beloved by day, every day, but he never saw her. He searched for her by night,
but never glimpsed her face. At last, in despair, after endless nights of sleeplessness,
the young man gave up and began wandering aimlessly about the darkened city.
Well, at last the wakemen, patrolling the night streets, saw him, and thinking
by his disheveled appearance that he must be a thief, they began to pursue him.”

“What did he do?” asked Meredydd, completely engrossed in
the tale.

“Well, he ran. What would you do if you were being chased
through the cold, dark streets of a strange city by big, armed men?”

Meredydd smiled. “Run.”

“No doubt. And that is what the young man did. He ran and
they followed, shouting at him to stop, calling him a thief and, at last,
firing on him with bow and shot. He ran until he was exhausted. No, he ran
until he was past exhaustion. And as he ran he thought, ‘Surely these wakemen
are daemons from some abyss pursuing me for my immortal soul. They will catch
me and I shall die without ever seeing my Beloved again.’ And he bemoaned his
fate most pitifully.

“Well at last, he entered a blind alley, bordered by tall
walls. And when he reached its end, he realized that he was trapped and that
the only way he could escape the wakemen was to climb the huge, high wall
before him. Crying and terrified, the young man climbed the wall, painfully,
arduously—for his very life now depended upon it. He climbed all the way to the
top of that wall, but when he got to the top, he slipped and fell to the ground
on the opposite side.”

“And?” asked Meredydd, when he paused to look at her.

“The young man saw that he was in a garden and in that
garden was a light moving across the grass. He went toward the light and when
he reached the place where the light was born, he saw his own dear Beloved
holding a lamp and searching for a ring that he had given her—a ring she had
lost and thought never to see again.”

Osraed Bevol sat back in the rough chair and cocked his head
to one side. “What do you think our young friend thought of those wakemen then,
anwyl? Do you think he would still call them abysmal daemons?”

“If he could have seen the end of his quest, or she the
result of her loss—” Meredydd began.

“Ah,” said Bevol, “but we never can, can we?” He broke his
eyes from hers, then, and waved at someone across the room. “Ah, good. Here’s
Skeet with our dinner.” He glanced back at her and patted her hand where it lay
on the table. “The end, anwyl. The goal. That is what any quest is about, is it
not?”

She could only nod and rub the little lump of metal she wore
close to her heart.

o0o

He was in the throne room. The throne room of Cyne
Liusadhe. Lofty, it was. Mighty. So high of ceiling that the nether corners
were lost to sight and the tops of the great arches were draped in night even
in broadest daylight.

Before the throne of Cyne Liusadhe stood eleven women. The
oldest was eighty; the youngest was fourteen. Different, they were, in form and
face, but alike in defiance. Heads up, eyes focused on the Cyne as if they
feared him not at all.

Brazen
, he thought,
looking down on them from somewhere and nowhere. Horrid, brazen creatures,
black as the darkness that spawned them. Wicked as the vanity which urged them
to pretend to greatness, which led them to parade before all their evil
talents.

Their sentence was being pronounced now, by the Cyne
himself.

“Wicke,” he said. “Ye are all Wicke—Dark Sisters. We abhor
you, yet we are merciful. Ye shall not die. Ye shall be banished only. Leave
here, Dark Sisters, and never return.

Creiddylad is death to you, for if ye return to it then ye
shall
suffer death. Indeed, to your families, ye
are dead already.”

Generous, was Liusadhe, and the unborn Osraed, from his
ethereal vantage point, nearly wept at the knowledge of what that generosity
would mean.

The women were led away to a place outside the city where
their guards turned them loose upon the road.

Oh, that you would have killed
them
, he thought, and watched them as they linked hands and bowed their
heads and formed a circle there. They began to pray.

Blasphemers
!

Their bodies swayed in time to some unheard rhythm, their
feet shuffled upon the sandy roadbed.

Ah, if only he had hands and might close his ears! But he
had no hands. He had no body. And so, he listened to their prayers and their
duans and made no sense of their words. It was forgiveness they asked for, not
for themselves—oh no, their wickedness was too complete for that. They begged
forgiveness for the Cyne in his palace, for the Osraed in their Holy Fortress,
for the people who had served them up for exile.

Dear God! How did they dare
?

But they did dare and stood and swayed upon the road until
it was near dark. Only then did they cease their profanity and begin to move
away. They had gone only a few yards when one turned back, hearing the approach
of horses, and pointed. Perhaps, he thought, the soldiers would return to
render them forever silent, forever impotent. But no, they were smiling,
laughing, pointing, as out of the darkness came wagons and horses and men and
children.