Meri (5 page)

It was all Meredydd could do not to roll her eyes. “The
riddle describes the life cycle of a bird. The bird gives birth to an egg—which
does not fly—and the egg, in turn, gives birth to another bird—which eventually
flies.”

Aelder Wyth walked about the room, then, calling out riddles
to other students. They were simple ones for the most part, and only Phelan
guessed wrongly what was always behind you, but which, turning, you never saw.
(The answer, of course, was the back of your head, and Phelan should have known
it, but he rarely paid any attention to anyone but his lord-god Brys, and very
likely had missed Wyth’s lecture on the Form and Logic of Riddles.)

It took the class a minute or two to twit Phelan adequately
and Meredydd thought Wyth was finished with his puzzling, when he came up
behind her and said, “I have a white house with no doors and windows.”

Startled, she squeaked and said, “You have an egg!”

Brys echoed the squeal, then guffawed. Phelan giggled
inanely and the other Prentices snickered. Aelder Wyth, for his part, speared
Brys-a-Lach with his sharp, over-large eyes and said, “What can you beat
without leaving a bruise?”

Brys grinned. “An egg.”

The class was suddenly so quiet Meredydd could hear the
spider web trying to trap the wind. Then she laughed, explosively and loudly,
unable to withstand the mental image of Brys beating a defenseless egg to prove
he could do so without bruising it.

“Silence!” demanded Wyth and the class complied, their eyes
dancing between Meredydd and the red-faced Brys. “Will you share the joke with
us, Prentice Meredydd?”

She choked back her laughter and tried to appear contrite. “It
was only that Prentice Brys’s poor egg would not only be bruised, it would be
an omelet.”

There was a prolonged wheezing sound like air escaping a
bellows, then the boys burst into raucous laughter again. High up on Aelder
Wyth’s cheeks, two spots of bright color glared.

Meredydd drew an essay assignment. Brys got no reprimand at
all. She felt scalded after that, and sat silently at her bench, huddled a
little as if that might make Wyth forget she was there.

She dreaded the Dream Tell session and prayed Wyth would run
out of time and have to relinquish them for dinner. But he didn’t. He got to
Aislinn Interpretation with fifteen minutes to spare and immediately brought
the entire class’ attention back to Meredydd.

“Prentice Meredydd, did you do your reading assignment?”

“Yes, Aelder Prentice Wyth. I did.” She did not mention that
she had done it two years ago.

“And do you feel ready to interpret another aislinn?”

“Yes, Aelder Prentice Wyth.”
Untrue
,
she thought,
I’ll never be ready
.

“Very well, here is the dream. Class, please take notes.”

Ten bark pads came out of ten satchels. Ten writing sticks
poised.

Meredydd swallowed.

“To the wall,” he ordered.

She went.

“I dreamed,” he said, making no game of it this time, “that
I had set off to Nairne on Cirke-dag. On my way to worship, a great, black
horse came and swept me away to...the House of Secret Pleasures in Lin-liath.”

There was a murmur of amazement from the class and Meredydd,
the figure of a horse half-drawn under her hand, froze.

Wyth’s eyes grazed the murmurers’ faces. There was immediate
silence. “His eyes,” he continued, “held fire and his hooves struck sparks from
the earth. No sooner had he left me outside this... place, than I was walking
to Halig-liath. The same animal appeared and carried me again to Lin-liath.
Then, I found myself on Pilgrimage, walking to the sea. I had just sighted the
waves, when the same black beast took me back to that infamous House. I awoke.
Tell me this aislinn.”

Meredydd blinked at him, squeezing the bluestick so hard it
snapped between her fingers. “I can’t Tell the dream, Aelder Wyth.”

“Oh? And why not?”

She was sweating now, cold, clammy sweat that clung to the
middle of her back and made her scalp want to wriggle. “Because it’s the same
dream I had last night. Except for where the horse carried me, it was the same
dream.”

Aelder Wyth gaped at her. The other Prentices followed suit,
looking like a nest of startled owls. Meredydd might have laughed under other
circumstances, but under Wyth’s incredulous, riveting stare, she could do
nothing but gape back.

Wyth’s mouth shriveled into a prunish-looking dent. “You’re
lying,” he accused her. “You’re only trying to shirk your assigned task. This
dream is
mine
and you will interpret it!”

“Please, Aelder—”

“Obedience, Prentice Meredydd, is an attribute of the godly.”
He fixed her with the gimlet eyes of a ferret—so sharp, they prickled her face.
She would interpret the dream, they said, or she would stand, forever, at the
whitewall.

Obedience. Even to a bully like Wyth Arundel. Meredydd
wondered when he had become such a tyrant and why. She wiped the bluestick’s
oily hue from her fingers and picked up one of the broken halves. Then she
emptied her mind of all but the images in their dream.

“The horse,” she began, “strong emotions, the passionate
movement of life.” She finished the horse symbol.

“Going to Cirke symbolizes the worshipful attitude,
contemplation, devotion to God.” She drew that symbol next to the horse.

“The horse sweeps the dreamer away from devotion, worship
and contemplation to...to this House of Pleasure. This can only...I mean, this
would seem to symbolize physical gratification, material distractions and the
like. We see the horse—” She pointed to the first symbol. “—also in conjunction
with Halig-liath—the Holy Fortress—which symbolizes education, learning,
scholarship, spiritual advancement.” The symbol for Halig-liath appeared on the
whitewall.

“The final major symbol in the aislinn is Pilgrimage.” She
drew the symbol beneath the one for Halig-liath.

“Pilgrimage is the summit of our goals. It represents the
best in us. Our highest aspiration. The horse keeps the Pilgrim from reaching
this ultimate goal. I would interpret this dream as either a fear expressed by
the spirit or a warning issued by it, that the passions of life may intrude
between the dreamer and his devotion, his worship, his spiritual education and,
ultimately, the attainment of his highest goal. That they may carry him to
physical excess rather than spiritual fulfillment.”

Meredydd stopped speaking and waited, but Wyth, his eyes
intent on the blue-on-white images, was silent.

Brys-a-Lach was not. “I think Meredydd is entirely off the
path. Entirely. May I do a Tell, Aelder Prentice Wyth?”

Wyth glanced at him momentarily, then nodded.

Brys stood, thrusting himself upward into a shaft of
sunlight which caught and held him as it fell from one of the many mullioned
windows. In his fine, white tunic, he gleamed—a broad-shouldered, golden haired
angel, an Eibhilin. The Sun worshipped him more beatifically than even Phelan
could do.

“I believe,” he said, voice deep and challenging, “the
vision means practically the opposite of what Prentice Meredydd’s analysis
indicates. Note, carefully, that no matter how many times the horse carries the
dreamer away from devotion, education, aspiration—and I am willing to
acknowledge the correct interpretation of these images—he returns to his quest.

“If the horse takes him from Cirke, he returns to the higher
path to Halig-liath. If it steals him from there, he takes yet a higher
path—the one to the Meri, his ultimate goal.

“It is clear, therefore, that what the spirit is communicating
to the dreamer is a tale of his own spiritual indomitability and persistence.
He is so strong, he overcomes his passions and the swift course of physical
life and returns to his spiritual pursuits.”

Aelder Wyth pinned Meredydd to the whitewall with his
dirk-sharp eyes. “What do you think of this analysis, Prentice Meredydd?”

She quailed, wishing she could make herself say, “Oh, it’s
obviously correct, sir. How stupid of me, sir, to think otherwise. Forget
everything I said!” Unfortunately, she could not make herself say that, and so
what came out instead was, “I think there is a slight chance it could be
correct, but...”

“Yes?”

“It is the spiritual pursuits that are being interrupted by
the passions, not the other way around, as Prentice Brys suggests. The dreamer
ends his course at...at Lin-liath, not at Halig-liath.”

Aelder Wyth continued to study her, his eyes hooded. “You
said you also had this dream. Is this true?”

“I am not in the habit of lying, Aelder. I had this same
dream last night, with one major difference.”

“Yes. The place the horse delivered you. Where did the horse
take
you
, Prentice Meredydd?”

She had his full attention, Meredydd knew—eyes, ears,
senses—all were trained on her. The other Prentices might not have existed.
Something of importance was happening here, but she was at a loss to understand
what it was. A tension had seized her, tickling the back of her neck, making
the hair stand on her arms. She rubbed at them.

“It took me to the ruins at Lagan.”

Wyth nodded, pulling at his lower lip, staring at her,
still. She realized that tiny lines radiated out from his eyes and creased the
corners of his mouth and she wondered how they had come to be there when he was
only eighteen.

When she thought she would scream at him to say something,
he moved, turning away from her. She thought he seemed...sad. Then he spoke and
she decided she must have imagined it.

“Your behavior is presumptuous; your interpretation spurious
and...vicious. You may be seated.” He waved in the general direction of her
bench.

“Vicious!” she repeated, not moving from the whitewall. “How
can it be vicious? You gave me a dream to Tell. I interpreted it as best I
could. How is that vicious?”

“You knew the dream was mine.”

“The dream was
mine
.”

“You use it to make personal attacks—”