Meri (27 page)

No, stop this.
Breathe in healing;
breathe out song
.

Blue. She’d always stood longest under the blue panel
because it was the most unnatural. It was harder to imagine herself (or anyone
else) with shiny blue hair. Hair the color of Healing. She could certainly use
that amulet now. Why hadn’t she chosen it? Should she have chosen it? Would
Osraed Bevol be with her now if she had chosen it?

She was suddenly and intensely aware of the total silence
and stillness of the room. She pulled her eyes into focus. Beside her, Skeet
smiled his knowing smile, while Owein and his wife stared at her mutely,
exchanging significant glances. The little boy, Taidgh, continued to hover
timidly in the background, scuffing his foot against the stone floor.

Meredydd dared to glance down at her arm. It was clean,
bloodless and empty of slivers and debris. The wounds, bleeding and raw only
moments ago, were now pinkly white as if the blood had been damned internally,
as if they had already begun to heal. Indeed, they had. She smiled. It was the
best she’d ever done. She wished Osraed Bevol could have seen—could have
known—how well she’d learned that lesson.

“Is the lady all right?”

Meredydd raised her eyes to the child’s anxious face. “I’m
very all right. Thank you, Taidgh.”

“Oh no, thank
you
,
mistress, for periling yourself to save our boy.” Meghan gripped Meredydd’s
hand tightly. Her own was shaking. “You must be the Meri’s own angel, sure. If
there’s any way we could repay you—”

“Please, call me Meredydd. And you
have
repaid me. You took care of my arm.”

“Beg pardon, mistress—Meredydd,” said Owein, rising at last
from the floor, “but your arm very near took care of itself. And if you hadn’t
been about rescuing our son’t would’ve needed no caring for at all. Now, what
can we do for you?”

“Well,” said Skeet tentatively, “we are in need of a place
to bide the night.”

A frown slipped over Owein’s handsome face, then he smiled
and nodded. “Done. And, of course, you’ll join us for our meals.”

“Only,” said Meredydd, “if we can help prepare them.”

“But your arm—” began Meghan.

“Will be fine as soon as I can bind a poultice on it.”

Meghan nearly jumped to her feet, her hands fluttering
before her. “What do you want for that? I’ll fetch it.”

“Some valerian, I think, and some yarrow and wintergreen.”

“Yarrow and wintergreen I know. There’s some about the
henhouse. But valerian....”

“Allheal,” offered Skeet.

“Ah! That I keep on hand. What need I do?”

“I’ll do it,” said Skeet. “Just show me to your henhouse.”

Under Meredydd’s careful scrutiny, Skeet fire-dried the
yarrow and wintergreen and soaked both with the valerian. She had him make a
tea from the latter to make certain her sleep that night was deep and restful.
She enfolded the poultice ingredients in a rag, then, and had Skeet bind it
around her arm.

“Such knowledge!” said Meghan over a supper of fish stew and
baps. “Is that the sort of learning you get at the Holy Fortress?”

Meredydd nodded, noting how nervous the other girl
seemed—how nervous they both seemed. She prayed they would not suddenly rise up
and begin calling her a Wicke.

“But I thought,” said Owein, his eyes meeting his wife’s, “that
Halig-liath was for the teaching of religious matters.”

“Well, it is that. But, as the Osraed Bevol constantly
reminds me, we are creatures of matter and form here, as well as spirit, and we
must tread our spiritual path with practical feet. He says nothing falls
outside the Divine Art, not really. We make the distinction—it’s not a natural
one.”

“Then did you learn there...not to feel pain and how to heal
yourself of wounds like that?” Owein’s eyes grasped her face so hard, it felt
as if fingers dug into her chin. “Those slivers were all but buried in your
arm, yet you didn’t even whimper when I cut them out. More than that, you didn’t
bleed. What are you, that you don’t bleed?”

There, it was out. The quivering uncertainty she had felt
since he tended her arm was finally in plain sight. Things that didn’t bleed,
that didn’t cry when in pain, that healed themselves while you looked on—those
things were either very good or very evil. Their smiles had said all afternoon
they thought her a saint, but beneath the gratitude lurked the fear that she
was something else. And poor Owein—this moment he was ready to run from her
screaming or fall to his knees and worship her. She felt the loss of the amulet
keenly at that moment.

What did he fear to hear, hope to hear, need to hear?

“I am a Prentice, Owein-a-Galchobar. A Prentice from
Halig-liath. I am privileged, in my fifteenth year, to be allowed to go on
Pilgrimage. And you’ve been kind enough to help me along with my journey. I’m
very grateful.” She smiled, hoping her sincerity would not be lost in his
trepidation.

After a moment of thought, he returned the smile, then
glanced at his wife. She answered with a quizzical glance of her own before
scrutinizing Meredydd.

“And is it magic that you do, Prentice Meredydd?” she asked.

“It is...a discipline,” Meredydd answered carefully, “of the
Divine Art. It is much like any other art—weaving or cooking or painting
pictures or milling flour.”

“But, more than that, surely!” exclaimed Owein. “It takes no
great years of study to be a miller. I left school after my first middle year
to work here. And I’ll never speak to the Meri. I’ll never even catch glimpse
of her. You must be a saint to see the Meri.”

“Well, I haven’t seen her yet,” said Meredydd. “I only hope
I will. I’ve only dreamed of it—prayed for it. It’s the Meri who chooses to be
seen, after all. It’s not due to any greatness of mine—or any other Pilgrim’s.
I simply study the Art and learn runeweave and pray I’m worthy.”

“The Meri couldn’t refuse anyone so kind and brave as you,”
said Meghan, and Meredydd colored and glanced aside. She struck Skeet’s gaze
and found that disconcerting as well.

Kind and brave—was she either of those things? Hadn’t her
response to Taidgh’s peril been instinctual rather than thought out?

She lay awake long hours before the Galchobar fire, turning
that in her mind. She’d been pleased with herself for mastering the Painhold
and the Healweave, but she hadn’t mastered them cleanly, she hadn’t struggled
them into perfection, she had merely diverted herself while the Healing duan
played on her outbound breath. She should have been thinking holy thoughts, not
frivolous ones. Blue hair! Dear God, how childish! She’d gone into the Sanctum
for holy meditation, only to be distracted by girlish fancy.

She squirmed unhappily on her thick, fleece mattress and
prayed she would do better in future. When at last she slept, her dream was no
more than a litany composed of seven words: Let nothing distract you from your
goal.

When a man speaks, he cannot breathe: he
sacrifices breath to speech.

And when a man breathes, he cannot speak: he sacrifices
speech to breath.

These two never-ending sacrifices a man makes whether he
wakes or sleeps.

— The Corah
Book I, Verses 20-22

By morning, Meredydd’s arm was well-healed. She was
pleased about that, but afraid it might further disturb her hosts. She removed
the poultice and dressed in a clean, long-sleeved sous-shirt, covering it from sight.

She and Skeet breakfasted early with the Galchobar family,
then said their good-byes. Little Taidgh was a-jitter with all the excitement
and offered Meredydd and Skeet both fond hugs and kisses and childish “thank
yous.” They were well-provisioned with food and drink, too, as they set off
downstream. Meredydd’s one regret was the loss of the Wisdom amulet.

“You did well without,” Skeet observed when she had felt at
her collar and sighed for perhaps the twentieth time. “You’d think it was a
lifelong companion, Meredydd, instead of something you’d had only a day or two.”

“It was special to me,” she argued. “It made me feel my head
was on true instead of skew. I needed it last night with them looking at me
that way—thinking I was some sort of Wicke.”

“They didn’t think you a Wicke. And you did fine without.”

“But what might I have done
with
,
Skeet? I can’t help but wonder that. They were afraid of me, Skeet. I don’t
want
anyone to be afraid of me. It goes against
every principle an Osraed stands for. ‘An Osraed’s aim must be to open the
hearts, fill the stomachs, calm the minds, brace the bones and so clarify the
thoughts and meet the needs that no sly meddler could touch those he has
touched.’”

“Oh, and you did none of that, eh?”

“I frightened them. Do you think they would have been
frightened of Master Bevol?” She shook her head. “Oh, Skeet, if only I could
have divined what he would have said and done. His words are like the waters of
a blessed spring—clear and clean and cleansing. I sweat on my words and tarnish
them before they even come out of my mouth.”

“Ah, is that what you’re after, then? To have Bevol’s words
pop out of your mouth? What about
your
words and
your
thoughts, Meredydd-a-Lagan?
You’re not Bevol, you’re yourself. The Osraed’s done his Pilgrim walk.”

“
My
words!
My
thoughts! By God, Skeet, don’t make me laugh.
I’ve told you, mine are unworthy. I’ll never have a tenth part of the knowledge
our Master has. I’ll never have a hundredth part of the love and patience, the
charity or the Art. And if I had them, I doubt I’d know how to use them,
because that would take wisdom.”

“Well, you did the Gwenwyvar’s task. You brought her what
she asked for.”

“Aye! Without knowing it. That wasn’t wisdom, Skeet. It
was...luck. Or maybe it was the amulet.”

“Now you know what the Maister says of that. An amulet is
only a magnifier. You did with what you had within you.”

“Without the knowledge of what I was doing.”

“And yet,” said Skeet. “And yet you keep on down this path,
putting one unworthy foot before the other. Struggling on as if you were so
sure, so sure. If snow came down thick as wool on a ewe’s back, still you’d
walk. And if Sun beat down hotter than heaven’s breath, still you’d walk. And
if rain fell ’til it covered this whole forest, you’d swim. Why would you do
that, I wonder, if you’re so sure of your failure?”

She glanced at him, startled, wondering if this was the same
Skeet she’d set out with, or if there was now some enigmatic stranger wearing
Skeet’s body. Startled, too, because she really couldn’t answer the question
and had to think, hard, about it.

Why, indeed? Why keep on, as he said, one unworthy foot
after another, if she was certain to fail—to fall short, to be less than she
must be?

“I suppose I keep on because the Osraed Bevol expects me to.
Because in giving up, I’d be failing him. I can control
that
, at least. But as to the Meri, there I can
only hope for mercy instead of justice. By justice, I’ve failed already. By
mercy, well...only the Meri knows.”

“Are ye so bad, Bad Meredydd?” asked Skeet, his voice soft,
soothing.

“No. No, I’m not bad. I’m just not perfect.”

“Well, neither was our Master Bevol, I wager, when his
unworthy feet went down his Path one after t’other.”

She was shocked at that observation and was getting ready to
tell him that when she heard, behind them, the unmistakable rhythm of a horse
in full flight. As it neared, the cadence resolved into a concert of
stone-clatter and water splash punctuated by the guttural blows of horse and
man.

Meredydd swung about, indecisive. Should she hide or simply
stand aside? For a moment she vividly recalled her dream—the black horse that
swept her back to Lagan and away from her goal.

She froze, suspended, lingering, eyes straining down the
riverside for the first glimpse of the horse. In a heartbeat, it thrust through
the veiling foliage.

It was not a black horse, it was a blood bay with
night-black points, and it carried a rider.

Meredydd squinted, then frowned. “That’s Owein-a-Galchobar!”

He had begun to shout at them now, whipping his horse with a
frenzied criss-cross motion over the shoulders. Meredydd thought of an Altar
Prentice with a censer—swinging it this way and that, spreading the scents of
devotion.

Owein reined the lathered, wild-eyed animal to a stop,
causing it to hop, skidding for several feet, digging great troughs in the soft
river bank trail with its hooves. He dismounted before it stopped moving and
came to take Meredydd by the shoulders.

“Please! Please! You must come!” he said and his voice was
broken and raspy. “It’s Taidgh! He’s hurt or sick—I don’t know which. Please,
you must come!”

Meredydd was stunned to silence. A snaking tendril of
thought sought to label this a test. But a test of what? If her task in
Blaec-del was a test of discernment—which she had passed in some way she didn’t
quite understand—then was this, finally, a test of obedience?

Let nothing distract you
....

“What happened?”

“He was playing with the ducks in the yard when he just fell
to the ground. He could barely breathe; he couldn’t move. He could only say ‘Hurts!
Hurts!’ He couldn’t even tell us where.”

Terror and anguish poured from Owein-a-Galchobar’s eyes in a
deep, true, urgent stream. Meredydd did not doubt for a moment that Owein
believed his son to be on the verge of death. She glanced at Skeet, but his
eyes were completely opaque.

Let nothing distract you
....

She shook her head savagely. “Of course. Of course I’ll
help—if I can.”

Owein smiled, relief flooding his features. He pulled the
horse over and mounted, then reached down for Meredydd. She glanced, again, at
Skeet.