Meri (12 page)

“By knowing a piece of crystal, anwyl,” he told her, “all
that is crystal is known, since any differences are only words and the reality
is crystal. Just so, by knowing a piece of iron, all that is iron is known,
since any differences are only words and the reality is only iron. And just so,
by knowing love, all that is love is known, since any differences are only
words and the reality is only love.”

He sat down across from her on a short three-legged stool. “Now,
tell me how this applies to your Pilgrimage.”

Meredydd gave the matter a moment of thought, then replied, “The
Pilgrim must be observant and learn from the things she observes about other
things not observable.”

“All right. Now, I have asked you a question; you may ask me
one.”

She had a question, the one sitting topmost in her mind. “What
do I do first? Tonight, I mean.”

“You go to your Farewelling.”

“I mean, after that.”

“That would be getting ahead of yourself. First, you go to
your Farewelling.”

o0o

This Solstice Festival was different than all other Festivals.
That it was the eve of her own Pilgrimage (an eve she had never really expected
to see, she now realized) charged it with an excitement she had never known
before. The aloof behavior of her fellow Pilgrims and the avoidance of people
she had once thought of as friends injected an element of pain.

The festivities began in the great courtyard at Halig-liath
where a formal ceremony took place in honor of the Pilgrims. There were eight
this Season. Her classmates Brys, Scandy and Lealbhallain were among them. She
was not cheated of her moment on the dais beneath the Osraed’s high gallery.
Osraed Bevol bestowed upon her a pale crystal; Ealad-hach, his mouth twist as
if he had sucked an unripe crab-apple, handed her the Scroll of Honor; Osraed
Calach set the traditional wreath of flowers upon her hair.

Then, in the gathering darkness, the celebration moved down
along the palisades to the Nairne Road in a long, snaking, noisy parade. Pipers
and drummers played before the honored Pilgrims and a crowd of well-wishers
trailed behind—every ambulatory man, woman and child in Nairne beating, shaking
or tootling something to frighten away the evil spirits that few, if any,
believed in. They paraded through the Cirke-yard, crossed the Halig-tyne at
Cirke Bridge and proceeded up the main avenue of town toward the river bend.

Along the quay, the parade disintegrated into a merry
rabble. The pipers and drummers continued to play while the Pilgrims were led
out to dance. Cailin came to the quay-side green, bedecked with ribbons and
flowers, they each chose a Prentice from the group of Pilgrims to dance with
them. But there was no one for Meredydd. The first girl onto the grass went
straight to Brys-a-Lach and shot Meredydd a sidelong glance eloquent with
ridicule.

“None’ll dance with a Dark Sister,” she said and led her
partner away.

“I will,” said a voice from the milling throng.

Meredydd turned. It was Lealbhallain, of course. She shook
her head. “What will people say?”

“What they are already saying—that you’ve failed with Aelder
Wyth and so you’re seducing me.”

She gasped. “Are they really saying that?”

“Aye. And that you did it with creamcakes and a love duan.”

He smiled and held out his hand. “Come out with me.”

“But there’ll be a cailin waiting to dance with you.”

“You’re the cailin I wish to dance my Farewelling. Come out
with me,” he repeated.

She curtseyed and accepted the hand, then, walking proudly
beside him onto the dancing green. They drew many eyes as they turned upon the
close-cropped sward. Curious eyes and unfriendly ones. Meredydd kept her own on
Leal’s face, fearing to see any hint of distress at the attention they
garnered. But there was none. He smiled and laughed and, in all ways, put her
at ease.

And she was at ease, she realized. She was enjoying her
Farewelling. Loving the mirth and the music and the dance. Glad of her loyal
partner. They had done four quick outings together, and were dancing to a slow
tune about a love-lorn shepherd, when she saw Wyth Arundel standing at the edge
of the watching crowd, his eyes burning through the air between them.
Involuntarily, she stiffened, causing Lealbhallain, who had been dancing quite
close to hold her at arm’s length and search her face.

“What is it, Meredydd? What’s wrong?”

“I don’t want to be watched anymore, Leal. I’m sick of
everyone staring at me.”

He stopped dancing and looked at her, then turned his head.
When he turned back again, she knew he had seen Wyth.

“The fire pageant is about to start,” he said. “Let’s go
find a place to watch.”

They left the green, Lealbhallain still holding her hand,
but she could feel Wyth watching and she knew he was following. They found a
good place along the balustrade from which to watch the pageant, and when the
first bright streamer of light shot up above the ramparts of the holy
stronghold, its mirror image cleaving the dark waters of the Halig-tyne.
Meredydd gasped with delight just as she did every year. The fireworks went on
for some time and, in the play of light on water and cloud, she forgot
everything but the wonder and delight of the Solstice.

Forgot it, that was, until after the fire-show when she and
Leal wandered the quay. A hand on her arm pulled her from a pleasant absorption
in the contrasts of dark and light—of night and torch-flame—that dappled water,
land and air. She turned and found Wyth Arundel gazing solemnly at her, his
mouth a grim rebuke.

“I must speak with you, Meredydd,” he said, and afforded
Lealbhallain a dark and meaningful look. “Alone.”

Leal started to speak up, then thought better of it and
looked to her for comment. Confused by the sudden intensity of the two faces
now turned upon her, by the milling crowd and the flickering light, Meredydd
could only glance from one boy to the other, her brow knit. Finally, she shook
her head.

“What have you to say that can’t be said before Leal?”

Wyth’s eyes shot to the other boy’s face. “Anything I would
say to you is for your ears only. Please,” he added, “I really must speak to
you.”

Meredydd sighed and nodded. “All right, then. I’m sorry
Leal. I’ll bide a moment with Wyth. Don’t leave me, though. Wait a bit?”

Leal tossed the Aelder Prentice a challenging glance. “All
night, if I must,” he said and jerked his head up-quay. “I’ll be at the
backstere’s stall.” And he moved off, his back staff-straight.

Wyth took Meredydd’s arm, then, and led her to the very edge
of the cobbled street, to where the stone balustrade overhung the sparkling
water and boats bobbed below in the shifting darkness.

She could hear them there—creaking, whispering, the river
slap-slapping against their brightly painted hulls.

Wyth spoke. “You mustn’t go, Meredydd. You mustn’t go on
Pilgrimage.”

She goggled at him. “What can you be talking about? Of
course I must go.”

He captured both her hands. “Meredydd please, it’s too
dangerous.”

“No more so than for you or Leal.”

“Yes! Much more!... Have you not heard of Taminy-a-Cuinn?”

She eyed him warily. That name again. “Aye,” she said. “I’ve
heard of her.”

“Then you know how dangerous this is. You may never return.”

“Nonsense.”

Her calm rebuttal seemed to throw him into a conniption of
alarm. “No, Meredydd,
not
nonsense,
fact
. I tell you, if you go on this Pilgrimage
you will
never
return. You’ll be destroyed,
just as Taminy was destroyed. The Meri will not be sent a cailin Prentice. She
will not tolerate it. And if you go, and if you don’t come back, then I.... Oh,
I think it would kill me, Meredydd!”

“Nonsense,” she repeated, annoyance growling in her stomach.
“How can you spout such rubbish, Wyth Arundel? You’re losing hold of yourself
altogether. You’re a Prentice and the object of your life is to attach yourself
to the Meri, not to me. Kill you, indeed! What rubbish! Let me ask you this:
What would you say if I was to tell you I’d marry you...
only
if you did not go on Pilgrimage this Season?”

His mouth was open, ready with his answer, when the tail of
her question lashed him. He faltered; his mouth closed; his eyes widened. “You
wouldn’t ask it.”

“Wouldn’t I? Well, if I’m the wicked spoiler your mother and
half Nairne thinks I am, that’s just what I’d do. So give me your answer, Wyth
Arundel. Will you give up the Meri and take me instead?”

He stared at her as if she had just turned into something
completely incomprehensible. Then he shook his head. “I couldn’t do that,
Meredydd. I could not.”

“Well, if you won’t give up your life to me as I live, why
should you do so if I die?”

Wyth turned his head to gaze across the river at the great,
white cliffs that rose, starkly, on the nether side. His face was in shadow and
Meredydd could see only the glitter of mirrored light on his eye. His shoulders
shook lightly and she was afraid, for a moment, that he was crying. But the
sound that escaped his lips was not a sob, it was a chuckle. Meredydd’s mouth
fair fell open in astonishment.

“You’d try a saint,” he said. “You’re a wicked girl,
Meredydd, not to let me romance you.” He turned his face back to her again, his
eyes wistful, but not solemn. “So very, very wicked.” He ducked his head
quickly then, and kissed her lightly on the mouth.

She went to find Leal with her fingertips still pressed
against her lips, her eyes moist with inexplicable tears.

It was late when she and Skeet and Osraed Bevol wandered
home. Meredydd was exhausted, Bevol was mellow and quiet and Skeet was Skeet.
Bubbling over with all that he had seen and heard and done, he regaled them
with tales of this or that prank and the music and the jugglers and the
magicians and...

Meredydd smiled and started wearily up the stairs, when she
had a sudden thought. She swung back to face Bevol who was watching from the
bottom of the steps. “This is the night. The first night of the Season.”

“Indeed.”

“Well, what do I do?”

“You sleep. And you dream.”

“And then?”

“That would be getting ahead of yourself. First, you dream.”

She did dream. She dreamed of starting on her Pilgrimage
with both Skeet and Osraed Bevol. She dreamed of woodland paths and grassy
meadows that she knew, somehow, lay to the north. But as the dream progressed,
Meredydd was overcome by the fear that she would forget it and not be able to
tell Osraed Bevol what had happened when she awoke.

She began to run each sequence of events over and over in
her dreaming mind, striving to memorize each footfall, each fork, each stand of
trees or slant of trail. But the effort drained her and she soon suspected that
the Path was endless and that she would tread it forever, never coming any
closer to her goal.

She could conceive of only one solution: She must wake up
and write down what she had seen. Yes, that was it, she must wake up. But her
body refused to obey the dictates of her will and she found herself stranded
between dreaming and waking.

If I can’t wake and write, she
thought, then I must sleep and write
.

And so she dreamed of her journal and a writing stick and
began to scribe the substance of her journey painstakingly upon ephemeral
pages, watching her own progress on the Path through and between the words she
wrote.

Now, the dream advanced and the dream Bevol gave her a task
to perform. She was to go to a certain woman in a certain village and return to
him with an amulet. There would be several amulets to choose from, but the
dream did not tell her which to take or how to choose. It showed her only going
to the woman’s house, seeing the talismans lying on a bed of velvet, and
leaving with one of them clutched in her hand. All her attempts to see the
amulet failed and she returned to Bevol with no sense of accomplishment, but
only uncertainty.

She kept writing, watching the characters of her dream
between the curls and angles that appeared beneath the tip of her scribe.

Osraed Bevol gave her a riddle for her next task. She wrote
it down carefully The riddle, she knew, would take her to a place. But she didn’t
know the place or why she went there. She knew only that there was in the place
something of that magical glade along the Bebhinn, and the very thought of it
disturbed her so much that she woke, weary and confused and realized her dream
note-taking had been for naught. She had forgotten Bevol’s riddle and
everything that followed.

“I feel as if I’ve failed already,” she confided over
breakfast. “I tried so hard to remember the dream, but the book I was writing
it in wasn’t real. It’s all gone.”

Osraed Bevol studied her for a moment, then asked, “What was
the first thing you recall?”

“We began the journey together. You and Skeet and I.”

“Ah. And where did we go?”

“North, into the country-side.... Northwest.”

“Then that is where we shall go.”

Meredydd was dubious. “Are you sure?”

“Is that what you dreamed—northwest?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then.” He turned to Skeet, who had watched their
exchange with much interest. “Provision us for Pilgrimage, Pov.

You know what to bring and what to leave. And you, Meredydd,
bring two changes of clothing and anything else you think a Prentice might need
along the road. Don’t forget a cloak. Evenings are cool.”

Meredydd did as directed, wondering when the sense of magic
would come, the intimation of destiny, import, purpose. Feeling only tired and
muzzy, she dressed in a long-sleeved sous-shirt and light tunic with leggings
of silk and soft ankle boots. She packed a cap as well as a cloak and brought
several extra pairs of stockings. Taking seriously what Osraed Bevol had said,
she packed the crystal conferred during the Farewelling, along with some small
sachets of medicinal herbs.