Meri (3 page)

It was such a startling, engaging idea—that a girl, a
blaec-smythe’s daughter, would study the Divine Art—that little Meredydd jumped
to her feet in amazement, dropping her shoes into the pool. The white cailin
dissolved back into a wisp of mist and the afternoon into sudden, cool
twilight.

Looking frantically about, Meredydd suddenly realized that
the sky was darkening rapidly toward evening. High above the trees, a burnished
light flickered uncertainly in the mists of twilight.

Affording the lost shoes only a moment’s mourning, she
climbed carefully out of the pool hollow, climbed until she stood atop a slight
rise among the ash and fir. Looking southeast, toward home, she could see what
caused the pulsing, rippling light. Wild breakers of flame leapt above the
crest of the lea, as if shattering upon an inland reef.

Her heart suddenly in her throat, Meredydd tore through the
wood, heedless of her cold, bare feet, her eyes clinging to those leaping waves
of incandescence. She found the main path, broke from the verge of the wood and
streaked up the intervening hill.

At the crest she was stopped as if by invisible hands and
stared, terrified, into the vale. Lagan was ablaze. The forge, the barn, the
cottage, all burned with the brilliance of the morning Sun. She could feel the
heat even atop the hill.

Figures moved about the buildings, but they carried no
buckets, went nowhere near the well. She made no sense of that, at first. It
was only when she turned her eyes to the well itself that the full horror
became clear. Lying beside it upon the ground were her mother and father, unmoving,
unattended by the three dark-clad men who watched Lagan die.

Meredydd reached out her arms, straining forward, willing
her feet to move. But they would not move and she hung there as if held fast,
her hands stretched toward her home and family. Then, the men stirred. They
lifted the limp bodies that lay by the well and dragged them toward the
disintegrating forge.

Meredydd thought she had plumbed the depth of horror, but
knew, with sudden conviction, that it had no depth. It was bottomless. She screamed,
her voice sounding like the shrill of the hunting hawk. She screamed again and
heard the tortured cry of the mountain cat in her ears.

The activity below ceased and the dusky people peered
around, their muffled faces all eyes. One looked up the hill, paused and
pointed.

Meredydd screamed a third time, her cry piercing her own
heart like a lance and spreading on the hot wind of Lagan’s destruction. The
men stared as one man. Two of them retreated back a step, then two. The third
turned away, then back, away, then back. Suddenly they were all three running
away into the dark toward the river fork. They disappeared like a flock of
daemons, trailing thunder from their horses’ hooves.

As if released by the pressing hands, Meredydd fell forward
onto her face, tumbling several yards before she could stop herself and clamber
to her bleeding feet. She moved down the gentle slope through wild wheat that
caught at feet and ankles. She fell and rose and fell again, finishing her
journey in the mud of the barnyard crawling on hands and knees to where her
parents lay.

There was blood on them. Blood on her mother’s sky blue
dress. It spread in a horrid dark stain across the bodice. Blood on her father’s
best white shirt—so much that little white could be seen. She knew they were
dead without knowing how she knew and she could contemplate no existence
without them. They were her entire world. Her goal was only to reach them;
merely to lay herself between them in the cool mud and die.

The ooze sucking at her legs, Meredydd put out a hand to
touch her mother’s face. Something blocked the touch. Something in a long, soft
cloak, now filthy and soaked at the hem. Little Meredydd stopped, teetering,
her hand clutching, her eyes blurred with stinging tears, her mind unable to accept
this intrusion.

Mewing like a kitten, she struck at the obstruction again
and again. A hand grasped her shoulder, gently. She looked up, then, into the
face of the Osraed Bevol.

He touched a forefinger to her forehead and she collapsed,
face first, into the mud.

It was two weeks before she spoke. She cried nightly,
nursing her grief, fighting nightmares and day-horrors. But the Osraed had
loved her and cherished her and instructed her. The deep pain passed and found
consolation in loving the Osraed in return. It also spawned an abiding rage—the
first words the eight year old spoke after her long silence were, “I want them
to die. I want to kill them.”

It was Bevol who convinced her she must learn powerful
secrets to be able to even discover her parents’ murderers, for no one knew who
they were or why they had attacked a peaceful homestead. And she, remembering
the aislinn she had experienced at the forest pool, followed his urging and
began the study of the Divine Art.

She’d learned many things in her tenure with Osraed Bevol,
more, even, than the average student of Divine Art at Halig-liath. She had him
to instruct her in the Telling of dreams and visions, the Healing, the
Runeweaving, the secret duans, the speaking to the unspeaking. She could divine
ailments and prescribe the cure; she could forecast the weather; she could
follow the bees to their honey, then enlist their cooperation in retrieving it.
She knew the courses of the stars and planets and the ways of animals, large
and small. All these things she had learned and more, but she could not see the
faces or know the names of the men who had killed her parents and changed her
life.

She watched the blood bead, dark, on one pierced finger and
brought herself back from the past. It was darkening now, and the breeze came
cool and spicy from the Western Sea. Meredydd raised herself from the grave her
parents shared, her hands absently arranging the flowers upon it. She stared a
moment at the well that served as their headstone—pondered the weather-worn beam
and rope. There was no time for the rest of the ritual today. It would wait
until Cirke-dag—the anniversary of the death of Lagan.

She got home just at dark, the lamps along the walkway
coming on at her approach, the hall lighting as she opened the door. That had
seemed an absolute miracle to her once, now it was only a welcome convenience—a
fine bit of the Art, if she thought about it any deeper than that. But tonight
she noticed the little lamps—noticed that their flames, though warm and bright,
failed to make her feel that way. She stared at one fiery sprite in its glass
enclosure and thought of the Meri.

“There is a bridge between the finite and the Infinite,”
said the Book of the Meri, “This Bridge is the Meri, the Spirit of the Spirit
of the Universe, which men call God. Nothing may cross that Bridge: neither day
nor night, nor old age, nor death nor sorrow nor evil nor sin.”

She would like to find a place where there was no night, no
death nor sorrow nor evil nor sin. She would like to cross that Bridge—to see
the Meri.

Osraed Bevol had seen Her, of course, many years ago on his
own Pilgrimage. And now Meredydd longed for that privilege—Pilgrimage. It was
something she’d almost taken for granted once, but now, as she crossed the
threshold of adulthood, she realized it was not nearly so certain a destiny as
she had imagined. She was old enough this year, it only depended now on her
worthiness.

She had to pass on her marks at Academy, first of all, then
the Osraed of Halig-liath must approve her. Once that was done, it devolved
upon Osraed Bevol to determine if and when she was ready. She wondered if that
would be soon. She wondered if she would be one of the fortunate few to see the
Star of the Sea rise. And if she did set eyes upon the Meri, what gifts would
she receive? What knowledge?

One thing she knew she wanted—the gift of Clear Sight. With
that talent, with the knowledge and power of an Osraed, she would be able to
look back and see the faces of those three masked riders.

“What does the flame tell you, Meredydd?” asked the Osraed
Bevol from the parlor doorway. “What answers lie in the fire?”

She blinked and turned to face him, a royal purple
salamander wriggling before her flame enchanted eyes. “No answers, Master. Only
daydreams.”

He looked at her for a moment, then nodded toward the
parlor. “I have tea on the fender. Come, it’s past time for your lesson.”

The room was fire-warmed and comfortably cluttered—books
tumbled in symmetrical abandon like awkward crystals from every shelf and
ledge, and everywhere lay evidences that this room belonged to a practitioner
of the Art. A bird skull, here, beside it a magnifying lens; a handful of
colored crystals—poorly formed rejects; a bundle of old star charts. It was the
books that reminded Meredydd of Aelder Prentice Wyth’s assignment.

“What is it, anwyl?” asked Bevol, seeing that she had paused
in the doorway.

“I was to read,” she said, “the Aelf-raed essays on the
Water Symbols. For Aelder Wyth. And write a paper on it...by tomorrow.”

“You’ve read them.”

“Two years ago.”

“Have you forgotten the material?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then—? All you need do is write a paper. What length?”

“He didn’t say.”

The Osraed shrugged. “Well, then?”

“He’ll ask, first, if I actually did the reading assignment.
I can’t lie.”

Bevol chuckled. “But you
did
do it. You merely did it two years before he asked you to. A most precocious
student.”

Meredydd laughed. “Ah, but he also wants me to Tell another
dream.... Perhaps I’ll be very ill tomorrow and the next day and by the time we
are past Cirke-dag, Aelder Wyth will have forgotten all about my punishment.”

“Doubtful.”

“Then perhaps I can manipulate his dreams so the next one he
makes me interpret is less controversial.”

Bevol looked at her awry. “That is more feasible,” he said
and then waved a long-fingered hand at her. “Go. Go on and do your assignment.
I must not interfere with Aelder Wyth. We will pursue our studies tomorrow.”

The mind is beyond the senses and reason is
beyond the mind. Reason is the essence of the mind. But beyond reason is the
spirit of man, and beyond this is the Spirit of the Universe, the Evolver of
all.

Its form is not in the field of vision: no one sees That
with mortal eyes. That is seen by a pure heart and mind and thoughts. Those who
know That attain life everlasting.

— The Corah
Book I, Verses 30,31

Meredydd dreamed. She was walking to Nairne on a mild
spring day when she heard thunder on every side. The ground trembled beneath
her feet and from behind, a wind blew. She whirled to see a huge, black horse
bearing down on her, stones and divots raining upward from its hooves. It was
upon her before she could even feel fear and swept her up onto its hot, broad
back. It carried her away to Lagan, where it disappeared, leaving her alone at
the ruined homestead.

In a heartbeat, she was walking to Halig-liath, taking the
high road along the palisades just east of Nairne when, once again, the beast
appeared, thunder rolling from beneath its hooves and hot wind belching from
its distended nostrils. Again, it swept her up and rode her to Lagan and left
her there, alone.

In a breath, she was on Pilgrimage, taking a road to the
Sea. She had reason to fear the mad mount now, but Osraed Bevol was at her side
and she thought,
He will protect me from the beast
.

But when the horse thundered down upon them, even Osraed
Bevol was powerless to stop it. It swept Meredydd up onto its steaming back and
delivered her to Lagan. There, she sat before the ruined forge and sifted the
dust of the yard through her fingers, searching for something. It was
important, that something, but she could not remember what it was.

Waking, she wondered at the dream, trying to interpret it.
It seemed to her, when she held it against her waking life, that it was meant
to reinforce her resolve—to remind her that she could not really leave Lagan
until she had divined the identities of those responsible for her parents’
deaths and exacted revenge.

If no means of revenge presented itself now, no matter; she
was certain the appropriate method would be revealed when the time was right.
She never asked herself if she would be able to follow through with her
vengeance. Her rage was silent, but fierce; she would do what had to be done.

She kept all this from the Osraed Bevol, of course, for she
knew, as any student of the spiritual knew, that forgiveness, rather than
revenge, was the Balance. Forgiveness was beloved of God. Meredydd wanted, more
than anything, to be beloved of God, but she could find in her no forgiveness
for her parents’ unknown murderers.

She did not discuss her dream with Osraed Bevol, but during
breakfast his eyes kept coming to rest contemplatively on her face and she soon
convinced herself that he knew of it. Silence made her nervous, half afraid she’d
blurt out what she was thinking, feeling. Rather than do that she began to
prattle about the paper she had stayed up late to write. Osraed Bevol merely
ate his biscuits and fruit and continued to regard her studiously; Skeet became
quickly bored and left the table.

When she had run out of things to say about the paper, the
Osraed patted his mouth with a napkin and said, “Meredydd, get a bowl down from
the cupboard, won’t you, please?”

She afforded him a wide-eyed glance, then hurried to do as
he asked.

When she stood beside him with the bowl, he said, “Now, fill
it with water.”

Hesitating only an instant, she fulfilled that request,
pouring from the tap of the little reservoir in the corner of the kitchen.

Seeing that she had finished that task, he continued, “Now,
set the bowl here—” He tapped the table before him. “—and bring me some salt.”