Meri (34 page)

The warm, damp wind infiltrated his clothing and made him
wriggle uncomfortably. Discomfiting too, was the thought that he might stand
upon the very stretch of beach where Meredydd had met whatever fate had really
claimed her. He didn’t believe she had killed herself, although that theory had
been put forth, but it was difficult to believe Skeet’s tale of her
transformation into a radiant Eibhilin Being. The Osraed, save Bevol and one or
two others, scoffed at the idea. Could anyone believe, they said, that the Meri
would surround Herself with an entourage of water sprites?

Yet again, said his lover’s heart, if anyone could be
suspected to hide Eibhilin glory beneath human flesh, it was certainly
Meredydd-a-Lagan.

He dwelt for a while on how he missed her—on how he wished
he could take back all the nasty, superior, stupid things he had said to her in
class. He wished she could know the depth of his contrition and sorrow and
love. He wished she could see how he defended her whenever it was suggested
that she had drowned herself in shame at the Meri’s rage over being approached
by a female Pilgrim or that she had been turned into a sea snake by that
wrathful Being.

The Meri had changed her aspect again, too, after the great
storm that had greeted Meredydd’s suit for Osraed-hood. The one Pilgrim to be
granted his heart’s desire, mouse-meek Lealbhallain, said that the waters were
suffused with amber light and the Meri’s eyes were garnets, not emeralds as the
living Osraed described.

Wyth knew a pang of disappointment that the one Prentice to
pass the Meri wasn’t even one of his more promising students. He would be more
than disappointed if he was not selected also; he would be completely humiliated.
How could he ever look the boy in the face again?

He chastised himself mentally, then, uncomfortable with the
tenor of his thoughts. Leal was a nice boy, if not spectacular of intellect or
eloquent of speech. He had a good heart and was very proficient at the Healing
Arts. He would be a good Osraed or the Meri would not have chosen him.

The praise was sincere, yet so was Wyth’s covetousness of
the younger boy’s worthiness. If Aelder Prentice Wyth was not entirely
successful of ridding himself of that fault, he at least tempered it by envying
Lealbhallain his qualities and not merely his new station. That, however, did
not impress Wyth or ameliorate his sense of shame. Swallowing his envy, he
stuck out his long chin and followed it to the Sea.

They reached the shore just at sunset and Prentice Killian
dragged himself through setting up a camp and observation station while Wyth
wandered the beach in search of his Pilgrim’s Post.

No one had bothered to mention to poor Killian that
journeying with a self-absorbed Pilgrim meant doing almost
all
of the manual labor. The boy grumbled a
little as he gathered wood and wondered what they would eat for their evening
meal—sand, for all Prentice Wyth cared.

It was true that Wyth Arundel was concerned with nothing at this
moment but locating the one parcel in a vast wilderness of rock-strewn sand
that would be the scene of his final test.

Still, the Sea itself managed to distract him. It was an
endless pool of liquid fire. Set ablaze by the great, eye-scorching orb of gold
that dipped into its nether depths, it wore a broad swath of crimson across its
breast like a fiery sash. Scattered offshore, shadowed rocks were black coals
that had yet to melt or burst into flame.

He wondered how it could look more glorious than this, even
when inhabited by the Meri, but knew it must. It would be nothing like this, he
told himself. The Meri’s glory would make of this Sun a mere candle.

Unable to take his eyes from the fiery water, he sank to his
haunches where he stood, finding an odd double hillock of sand behind him. He
rested his back against it, so close to the water that his feet could nearly
reach the foam if he but stretched out his legs. Instead, he drew them up and
rested his chin on his knees.

Watching the Sea turn from blaze to blood, he recalled a
dream. So long ago, it seemed. A dream Meredydd had interpreted to his
humiliation. To enter the Sea and not get wet.

He felt a sudden urge to laugh and indulged it, letting the
unexpected thing float from his chest into the sea air. The sheer arrogance of
him! To think there was greatness in that conceit, when the Sea was symbolic of
every bounty God had stored up for man. To enter it without getting wet! He
shook his head and lowered his brow to his knees for a moment of prayer.

He felt the Sun set without seeing it, felt its warmth
withdraw from flesh and sand and air to be replaced by the cool of evening. It
would be a dark night, too, Wyth knew, for there would be only a sliver of moon
and it would be long in rising.

He raised his head, sighed and gazed out at the Sea, dark
now except for the light of—

His body stiffened, his backbone coming staff straight. The
light of what? The Sun was gone; there was no moon, and yet, far out in the
water there was light, gliding beneath the waves like a wave-bound moon—no, a
Sun.

He thought of calling to Killian, but no sound would come
from his constricted throat but an inhuman croak. He scrambled to his knees and
stared at the water.

o0o

She had known it was Wyth before he had even set foot upon
Her shore. She had watched every step of his Pilgrimage and saw much of Her own
uncertainty in him as She carefully set tests in his path. She also saw honor
and integrity, compassion and kindness, strength of will. And if there was,
about Wyth Arundel, a certain self-centeredness, it was not selfishness, and
disappeared to a vapor when anyone held out a hand to him for help. All
arrogance was gone now, leaving behind a purer urge toward self-effacement.
Wyth could now show humility in the face of his faults rather than an arrogance
born of his sense of inferiority.

Something else She also knew—Wyth was the son of both a
murderer and a murderess. It was his mother’s greed which had pushed his father
toward the destruction of Lagan. She had seen the precipitating scene as
clearly as if She had been standing in the room with the players: Rowan
Arundel, white-faced and wild-eyed, his wife flushed and furious—her eyes, mere
slits shielding glittering jet glass. It was a rich room in a grand house;
high-beamed ceilings overhung tapestried walls paneled in the sleekest wood. A
fire burned in a hearth like a giant’s maw, the beautifully wrought andirons
and fender muzzling its roar—handiwork of the Smythe at Lagan.

“Damn your cowardice, Rowan! An easement will not do! An
easement will not allow us use of that land in perpetuity. It will not ensure
it for your son or for his sons.
Nor
will
it allow us to expand our pasturage. We can run no more sheep on this land,
Arundel. There’s barely enough for this year’s flock. And with our southern
border to the bluffs and our eastern to the muir, we’ve no choice but to get
Lagan.”

“He will not sell,” whispered the Eiric, the white ring
around his mouth marking his fear.

“Then you must remove him.”

Eiric Rowan Arundel rallied himself for one last, bold
exclamation. “Wife! Do you realize what you are saying?”

Imperious, her sleek brows rose. “Do you want the land?”

“Not that much.”

“—or would you just as soon begin selling off stock because
our stead will no longer support it? It has come to that, Rowan. We might as
well sell them or slaughter them before-time. We’ve no longer got the pasturage
to feed them. What sort of poor inheritance is that to leave Wyth? Shall you
die and pass of to him a withered, barren stead? Is that what you would
bequeath to your boy?”

She had won him with that and conjured up a plan. She had
even hired the men who accompanied the Eiric of Arundel to Lagan, who,
themselves, never saw the face of the man that met them in the woods by the
Gled-Tyne Road and led them to their killing.

The Meri had stayed with the past stream through all, and
saw and heard and felt how the parents of Meredydd-a-Lagan had died.

Her mother had thrust herself upon a knife when Arundel’s
hired killers expressed a desire to take more than her life; her father had
died trying to fight his way to her side. His last mortal thought was of his
wife; hers was a prayer of thanks that Meredydd had not done as she was told
and come straight home after worship.

And there he knelt upon the shore—the subject of all that
greed. The son on whose behest the murders were plotted. The son who had in him
no desire to be Eiric of his own estate, who cared not a bit for land or
pasturage or the sheep that grazed it. She knew the bitter irony of that was
not lost on Moireach Arundel. She had lost her husband to her greed and his
weakness, and lost her son to the Meri.

Ah, and there lurked in his righteous breast the merest
spark of suspicion that Lagan had not come to him bloodless. A spark that could
easily be fanned to the blaze of complete certainty.

She flowed like liquid through liquid, closer and closer to
the shore, spreading her radiance along it in great, golden waves.

o0o

Wyth thought he must swoon from the beauty of it. He had
been right in thinking the sunset would be no match for the Meri’s glory. The
Sea was like liquid gold, but the gold was translucent so that every pebble,
rock and drift of weed showed dreamily beneath it.

Oh, and he could feel the warmth of it! Why it must be like
a baby’s bath, mild and fragrant.

He stood now, his toes all but touching the water, shivering
with a cold that was so akin to heat as to be identical. Several yards out, the
Sea began to froth and boil. Wyth’s breath nearly stopped in his lungs.

She glided up out of the foam in a radiance so bright, he
was hard put not to shield his eyes. But he did not shield them; he stared full
at the Eibhilin glory, trying to comprehend it.

It had roughly a maiden’s form, he thought, though the
outlines were blurred by the blaze of light that poured forth from it—from Her.
And Her eyes—they were the color of dark garnets and stood out startlingly in
the brilliant face. He could make out no other features of that, only the eyes.
And yet, She seemed familiar. Of course, he supposed that She
should
seem so to one who had yearned for Her
since childhood.

She had paused now, the water swirling around Her torso.
Wyth realized he was staring at her fiery body and threw himself to the ground,
knees in the wet sand, forehead in the gently lapping waves.

She laughed. The sound seemed to come from nowhere and from
everywhere. It sounded like music—a duan of laughter.

“Rise, Wyth Arundel,” She said. “Rise and come to Me.”

His head jerked up so fast, he could barely focus his eyes.

“Come to you? In-in the water?”

“The Water of Life, Wyth,” She said, and laughter still
rippled through Her voice. “Come into the Water of Life and see if you do not
get wet.”

She knows
! he thought.
She knows of that horrid arrogant dream
!

“Of course I know. But I also know it was not arrogance that
caused you to dream it. You simply did not understand the Goal. The Aim.”

“To get wet,” he said impulsively, and blushed.

“To get wet,” She repeated, and extended radiant, gold-white
arms toward him. “Come.”

He stepped from the beach into the water and found it warm
against his skin. Heedless of his clothing, he moved to the beckoning Meri,
reaching out his arms. He thought he heard a bird squawk somewhere behind him
on the shore, but all senses were aimed forward now—all senses were for Her. He
had never read of anyone being called into the water by the Meri. She always
came to the shore—always.

It seemed to take forever to reach Her, but at last he was
there, standing nearly chest deep in the milky-smooth swell with her protective
arms about him, warm as sunlight on his shoulders.

“Come with me, Wyth Arundel. Come get wet.” She drew him
with her into deeper water while he could only stare at Her, could only lose
himself in Her. He followed fearlessly, gladly.

And when the water closed over his head, there was no panic
in him, only complete faith.

She was smiling. He knew that without knowing how he knew.
And smiling, she drew him to her and kissed him, not on the forehead, but on
the lips. Then, while he marveled at that and the flood of feeling it invoked,
she pressed her burning mouth to the place between his eyes and changed him
forever into something more than Wyth Arundel.

He rose from the water of the Western Sea an Osraed, the
Kiss of the Meri on his forehead, Her compassion swelling his heart, as much of
Her knowledge as he could hold teeming in his head, a new and secret Duan
surging in his soul. He stood, dripping, reflecting Her radiance and bursting
with wonder.

She laughed again at the rapt expression on his face. “You
are very wet, my son. Go dry yourself.” Her bright arms released him.

He started, reluctantly, to move away toward shore, then
paused. “Your son?”

“Am I not the Mother of Osraed? From this night you are no
longer the son of the woman who bore you. This night, you have become My son
for I have given life to your soul. Yours is My love, My wisdom, My knowledge.
Use it well to deliver My message which is the Duan of the First Being.”

He regarded her solemnly (and how un-solemn he looked with
his hair in dripping ringlets all over his shoulders and across his eyes) and
said, “I
will
use it well. I promise You, O
Meri.”

She laughed again, delight pulsing outward on bands of
Light. “How sober you are, Wyth Arundel. Promise Me, also, that you will learn
to laugh. You must have joy if you are to bless others with it.”

“Oh, but I
have
joy!” he
protested, splashing in his zeal.