Meri (9 page)

Bevol’s brows climbed. “They? ‘They’ are Ealad-hach, Calach
and myself at this juncture. This is not yet a matter for the Cyne’s Council.”

He was teasing her, making the situation seem less
threatening than she felt it. She tried to smile by way of thanks, but it was a
weak effort.

“Meredydd, I will not lie to you and tell you that
Ealad-hach is your ally. He is openly opposed to your presence at Halig-liath.
I’m sorry about that. I honestly thought he had gotten used to you, but this
last year or so things have... changed a bit.” He made a wry face and
punctuated it with a glance that indicated where the changes lay. “Calach, on
the other hand is quite sympathetic to you and I...well, my position is rather
obvious. Ealad-hach has suggested that I am prejudiced in the matter and that it
should therefore be brought up before the Osraed Body.”

“He hates me,” murmured Meredydd.

“He is a conservative, anwyl, opposed to the idea of females
at Halig-liath on the basis of tradition. He always has been. I thought you
might have swayed him a bit; you were such a winning child and sympathy for
your...predicament was high.” He shrugged. “Evidently, he has swayed back
again.”

“He thinks we’re evil,” observed Meredydd. “How can he
believe that? He’s married. He has daughters of his own.”

Bevol smiled wryly. “Daughters who will never see the inside
of Halig-liath. They will learn the domestic arts and marry and perhaps raise
sons who will obtain that privilege. No, to Ealad-hach it is a matter of
context. In the proper context, women are good and fine and noble. Outside of
that context, they contribute to evil results.”

“It’s not my fault—”

“It is no one’s fault, anwyl. It is not even poor Wyth’s
fault. He is attracted to you. There’s nothing wrong in that. He fought it
valiantly. In fact, he fought it unreasonably. And he used the wrong weapons.
Now,
that
was his fault. He should never
have brought his own dreams to you. He should never have let his temper speak
louder than his intelligence. But even at that, those are things he may be
forgiven by those who must offer forgiveness.”

He gave her a significant look which, for the moment, she
ignored. “Will the Meri reject him again because of this?”

“For possessing a young man’s heart? I think not. But I’m
not the Meri. She will either accept or reject Wyth’s spiritual suit on the
basis of his merits. It’s not for me to approve him.”

Meredydd found the patch of emerald velvet on her tunic
suddenly very interesting. She rubbed it with the tip of one finger, barely
aware of its texture. “So I am not to be dismissed?”

“Not at this juncture, although....”

Her eyes seized his face. “What, Master?”

Bevol cocked his head to one side. “Ealad-hach wishes to
bring the matter of female Prentices in general and you, in particular, up
before the Body so that all the Osraed in Caraid-land may have a voice.”

Meredydd swallowed convulsively at the thought of facing all
of those men—young and old, austere and jovial—of standing under their
scrutiny.

Bevol read her expression. “Does that frighten you?”

“Yes.”

“You could always withdraw. Ealad-hach is rather hoping that’s
what you’ll do—leave Halig-liath of your own will.”

“Leave?” Meredydd rejected the idea with surge of anger. “I
have been a good student at Halig-liath. I’ve spent six years of my life there,
learning, growing. Halig-liath has been part of my home. It’s given me a
purpose and a goal which I will not lay down simply because some people object
to the form my body has taken. I love the Art, Master. You say I have a talent
for it. I love the Meri and I want the right to seek Her approval, regardless
of whether I have the approval of others. I have made a commitment, haven’t I?
I’m covenanted, aren’t I? How can I not live up to that covenant?”

Bevol averted his eyes, studying the fire, now, instead of
his Prentice’s flushed face. “You are a cailin. No one will think less of you
if you withdraw.”

“
I
would think less of
me! You would, too, Master. And the Meri—it’s Her grace I crave, not Ealad-hach’s,
not Aelder Wyth’s, and certainly not his mother’s. If I withdraw, aren’t I
admitting that what Ealad-hach believes is true—that cailin are
somehow...inferior?” She shook her head emphatically, chestnut hair rippling
with the motion. “I will not withdraw, Master. They will have to throw me out.”

Bevol pursed his lips, but not before she had seen the
smile. “I suspected you might say something like that. So, I made a counter
suggestion that, since the Meri is the ultimate authority on who should or
should not be Osraed, She be consulted.”

“How can that be done? She has never treated the issue
before now.”

“Solstice approaches quickly. It is possible that if the
Prentices who go on Pilgrimage this Season are instructed to contemplate the
admission of females to Halig-liath, the Meri may illumine them on the point.
Of course, there is a very easy way to settle the question of your own
continuance.”

Meredydd licked suddenly dry lips. “And that is?”

“We could let the Meri decide your fate. You could take
Pilgrimage this Season. In fact, I believe you could be the very first to leave
at the Solstice.”

“But I’m not ready!” She felt her cheeks light up with
sudden blood. “I’m not fit to be Osraed, Master Bevol. I’m failing in school; I’m
the cause of discord; I manipulated an instructor’s dreams and benumbed a
fellow Prentice’s tongue. I’m wicked. Impossibly wicked.”

There was such fevered passion in the claim that Osraed
Bevol, overcome with the humor of the situation, laughed at her. “Oh, so wicked
are you, anwyl! You’re so wicked and this blind old Osraed so dim-witty, that
he can’t perceive the stain.”

She started and stared at him. “Oh no, Osraed Bevol! I didn’t
mean to imply — I — There, you see? I’ve done it again. Blundered. Blathered.”
She made futile little gestures with her hands.

“Nonetheless, wicked cailin. I think perhaps it is time for
your testing and proving. I think we’ll walk Pilgrimage at Solstice.”

Meredydd quelled her initial panic and tried to consider the
situation rationally. After all, what had she been training for these past six
years? She smoothed the front of her tunic and cleared her throat. “And the
other Osraed will agree with this?”

“Agree? Ealad-hach is most eager to see you go—and fail.”

A pang of fear, a bolt of ire, a twinge of unease. Fail!
Fail, would she? And who was Ealad-hach to predict her failure?

He was one of the Meri’s chosen, that’s who he was. Someone
who had passed Her test. Someone to whom She had imparted particular knowledge.

“Of course,” observed Bevol, watching her face, “Ealad-hach
is a scientist. The ways of minerals are more clear to him than the ways of the
human spirit.”

Meredydd didn’t even smile. “Solstice is only a week away.”

Osraed Bevol rose and stretched. “Aye, but dinner is right
now, or my nose deceives me.” He ushered her out, glancing only idly at the
empty spot on the stair that had held Skeet’s warm hams a moment earlier.

That urchin met them in the big dining nook, grinning and
sassing and a little peeved that Meredydd didn’t notice his wit through her
thoughtful, fretful haze. He served up and fell silent.

“Master,” said Meredydd at length, “Osraed Ealad-hach spoke
of history repeating itself in me. What did he mean by that?”

“Ah,” said Bevol. He put on his pensive face and gazed at
Skeet’s dark head. “The record of Halig-liath has it that many years ago—close
to a century now—another girl studied at Halig-liath. She was Taminy.
Taminy-a-Cuinn, daughter of the Cirke-Master—what was his name? Ah—Osraed
Coluim—Coluim-a-Cuinn. According to the records, Taminy was a good student. As
good a student as you are; as good as her male classmates and possessed of a
natural talent in healing, especially. Legend has it that she sang a duan so
perfectly, she rarely had recourse to herbs or waters or even crystals. And it
was said that when she did use the crystals, she made them burn so fiercely
that those looking on couldn’t watch for fear of being blinded. Legend also has
it that she was pretty enough to turn the heads of Prentices and Aelders alike.
Turn them so far that there was a great falling away among the boys. Some never
went on Pilgrimage; some were withdrawn from Academy by their parents until
Taminy should be removed; some decided they really weren’t suited to the
contemplative life of scholarship or the rigors of service. A few committed
acts that were...completely against every principle written down for us in the
Corah.”

Meredydd’s brow crinkled in alarm. “And Taminy caused all of
this?”

“That was what many people thought. And, in the end, the
Osraed Body agreed with them and sent Taminy home in disgrace.”

“What happened to her?”

“Her father, the Osraed Coluim appealed the matter all the
way to the Cyne’s Council, but the Chancellor, an Osraed of Tradist bent,
persuaded the Cyne—Aelfrith, it was at that time—that it was a matter of
religion, not a matter of state. Osraed Coluim did the only thing he could do,
for his daughter’s sake; he took her on Pilgrimage against the strict wishes of
the Osraed Body. He came back without her. He claimed she walked into the
Western Sea and drowned herself. The Body said it was her punishment.”

Meredydd sat, stunned, horrified. “Will that be my fate, as
well?”

“What—merely because it was hers? Superstition ill-befits an
Osraed, Meredydd-a-Lagan. If you aspire to the station of Divine Counselor, you
must leave superstition behind.”

“But—”

“Your Pilgrimage, if you recall, is being openly encouraged.”

“Yes, by Osraed Ealad-hach. Isn’t it superstition that
causes him to despise me?”

Bevol pointed at her with a chunk of bread. “
Fear
you, Meredydd. He fears you. Because of
this...faery tale. On account of Taminy, he fears
you
.”

“Why? What do I represent? What did she represent that he
should fear it?”

“Change.” He waved the bread up and down. “Eh? You see?
Forward movement. Upward movement. Advancement. He is an old man. Old men have
trouble adapting to these things.”

“But he’s Osraed.”

“And are Osraed perfect, Meredydd?”

She swallowed a tiny sip of soup, her eyes on his face. “I...had
thought so.”

“Well, they are not. Osraed are human, anwyl. No human is
perfect. Of created beings, only the Meri is perfect, for She is a creature of
a different order. She is Eibhilin, a Being of Light.”

Meredydd found her eyes drawn to the mark upon Bevol’s broad
forehead. Between his brows it sat, an odd starburst pattern which proclaimed
to all who saw it that he was Osraed, chosen by the Scion of the First Being
and His Sign upon Earth. The Kiss of the Meri, it was called, and from
Halig-liath and from other Holy Places beyond even Caraid-land (or so Osraed
Bevol said, though it was not Doctrine) Pilgrims flowed to the Sea. They came
by the score, but only a handful received that Divine Kiss.

Meredydd was still thinking of that Kiss an hour later, as
she stared into the rippling rivulets that fled up the chimney of their
cluttered parlor.

“Master, tell me again how the Meri came to you.”

“How she came to me? Would it not be more instructive to
hear how I came to her?”

“I suppose that’s really what I meant.”

He chuckled and tugged lightly at her hair, plaited now, in
preparation for sleep. “That journey begins at birth, anwyl. Perhaps even
before.”

“Please?”

“Ah, well.”

She felt him settle back in his fleece-padded chair and
wriggled her fire-warmed toes against the fender in anticipation.

“My Pilgrimage was a rather long one and contained four
tasks. To find a rod of iron in a heap of grain, to find someone who needed
healing but would not tell me so, to follow a riddle path to a dell where my
Path to the Sea would be given me, and, once on that Path, to not deviate from
it by a hair’s breadth for any reason under the sun. I passed the tests—”

“But cannot tell me how,” finished Meredydd. “May I guess?”

It was a ritual by now, this guessing game. He nodded and
she went on as if she had heard that motion of old bone and muscle.

“You used a magnet, didn’t you—to find the rod? I said a
bellows the last time, but that was wrong, I’m sure. It must have been a
magnet. And the riddle—well, since you won’t tell me what it was, I can’t guess
at that. But the person you healed must have been a mute, because, of course,
they
couldn’t
tell you that they needed
healing. And I think that in order not to stray from the path, you blindfolded
yourself and had your Weard lead you.”

“Two of three,” he said. “Not bad.”

“What went missing?”

“The thread of my story. Now, I completed my tasks—although
I was not sure I had or that I done them correctly—and I came out to the Sea
where I had been led. I found my Pilgrim’s Post, my Weard took up his station
behind me, and I sat in the sand and waited. My mind was only as calm as it
could be, my heart was hungry with anticipation and quivering with dread. After
all, more Prentices are shunned than embraced. The pull of sleep was strong,
but I struggled to ignore it. I had intentionally seated myself in a tidal pool
and an icy wash of water reached me at the times my drowsiness was at its
worst.

“On the second night of sitting so, I saw a bright ripple
beneath the waves, parting them like a gleaming knife, like a flame in the
water. And out of this lambency, the Meri rose, radiant, beautiful, all of
grace and Light. She gazed at me with great green eyes like emerald coins and I
gazed back. Then, when I thought my breath had stopped in my lungs and I began
to sway with delirium, She swam toward me and came up out of the water and met
me eye to eye. Then She set her lips—if lips they were—to my forehead.