Meri (14 page)

Meredydd sat, cross-legged, on a grassy tussock, meditating
on the alchemy inherent in light. Even scents grew more vivid, as if they
escaped from dark recesses unlocked at sunrise. She breathed deeply, sorting
out perfumes and mere smells—morn-blooming flowers, dewy vegetation, wet wood.
Sweet, tangy, musky. This moment she would have gladly held forever—a moment
with neither purpose nor passion, success nor failure; a moment with no inherent
struggle, only peace.

“There is a village not far from here,” said the Osraed
Bevol.

Meredydd stirred, exhaling the fragrances of the wood. The
first bird of morning sang somewhere high overhead.

“And in that village is a woman.” The Osraed moved to sit nearby,
choosing a fallen log over the dewy ground. “Some people, call her Wicke, but
they’ve done nothing to offend her in spite of it—or perhaps, because of it.
She has, in her possession, several amulets.”

Meredydd pricked up her ears, attention focused completely
on Bevol’s words. “Did you make me dream of the amulets, Master?”

“No. The dream was yours, I merely follow its prompting.”

She didn’t question that he knew the substance of the dream.
“Tell me about these amulets, Master.”

“There are three. Each of them has a focus, a particular
power, which it may manifest when worn by a Pilgrim.” He paused.

“Pardon, Osraed Bevol, but that is not how I understood the
workings of an amulet.”

“No? And how did you understand them, then?”

“An amulet is merely a magnifier, not a manifestor. It
enhances powers or...qualities already possessed by the wearer. If the wearer
does not know how to focus those qualities, the amulet is useless.”

“Ah. Very good. Now, let me tell you about these magnifiers.
One enables the wearer to restore faded health, return vigor, energy and
youthfulness. It can aid in the healing of wounds, even soothe diseased minds.
The second magnifies wisdom and knowledge, makes the crooked straight and the
clouded clear. The third enables the wearer to use the Sight—a Sight far keener
than any Past Tell. With this amulet, one could see the truth of any matter on
which he or she meditated. For the spirit can know things it will not reveal to
the conscious mind until focused properly. This amulet contributes to that
focus.”

Meredydd shifted uneasily. “And my task?”

“Bring me the most important amulet.”

Meredydd turned her face to him and frowned. “The most
important
amulet? But important in what way?”

“This is all I am bidden to tell you. Bring me the amulet
you think is most important.”

“How will I know?”

Bevol smiled. “Anwyl, that is the test.”

o0o

They walked slowly to the village, Bevol setting the pace.

That was all right by Meredydd. It gave her time to ponder
the significance of the amulets she was going to be offered. Healing, Wisdom,
the Sight; which of these was the most important?

Healing brought obvious benefits both to the wearer and to
his beneficiaries. To return to Bevol his vigor, to place in his hands the tool
to magnify his already substantial powers...well, where he had healed tens, he
could then heal hundreds. And if, indeed, it could also return his youth,
perhaps it would lengthen his life—thereby lengthening her life at his side.

And wisdom—had there ever been a time when wisdom was not
necessary, but in short supply? Yet, Bevol certainly did not need something he
already possessed in abundance. Perhaps she could eliminate that one.

And the Sight—

Meredydd wriggled inside as part of her lunged at it—to know
for certain, once and for all time, if Rowan Arundel had been instrumental in
the deaths of her mother and father. To know...

She tore herself from the thought. No! To know the truth of
any situation,
that
was the purpose of the
amulet. To be able to tell friend from enemy, good from evil, real from unreal.
That
was the focus. A tool for justice that
was, and someone of the Osraed Bevol’s influence could take such an amulet and
make Nairne a shrine of justice. People would come from within and without
Caraid-land for the dispensing of real justice.

They stood on the outskirts of a village so tiny it barely
merited the title. It was little more than a market square outlined in white
stones, a tiny Cirke and a wayhouse.

The Osraed Bevol sighed deeply. “Ah! Here at last. How
loathe are these old bones to move. Especially after they’ve been forced to
sleep on the cold ground all night. Now, anwyl, Skeet and I will visit the
wayhouse while you seek out your first task.”

Meredydd jerked her head about to look at him. “But how will
I find the woman who has the amulets, Master? I don’t know her name.”

“Didn’t you see her in your dream?

Meredydd’s brow puckered. “Yes. I think so.”

“Well, then, you’ve already met, haven’t you?” He patted her
shoulder and moved off with Skeet under his right elbow.

Meredydd followed them with her eyes, wondering how it had
escaped her notice that Osraed Bevol was growing old. She had thought of him as
young when he took her in seven years past. His hair had been the color of a
copper kettle then, and the snow that now streaked it, a mere flurry.

She struggled to recall her dream. In a moment it came to
her, sharp, clear, in focus. A little cottage on the southwest outskirts of
town, off the path the villagers trod, avoided by all except when an emergency
arose. Then there would be clandestine visits and whispered pleas and secret
compensation for secret work. Meredydd moved forward on tentative feet, amazed
that her recollection held a depth of detail and certainty she was sure had
been lacking in the original dream. And she
was
certain.

Once she cleared the village on its far side, she saw, on
her left, a fern-draped slope—short, sunny and completely familiar.

She had never seen it before.

She hesitated a moment under the still chill shade of the
broad-armed fir, then left the path and crossed the green slope to the sparser
cover of grove of alder. The cottage was at the center of the grove. It was
little more than a bundle of white-washed twigs, really, with a thatched roof
and wood-slat trim. A curl of aromatic smoke rose from the stone chimney,
spreading itself into a blanket that covered roof and yard.

“Not grand,” said a reedy voice from nowhere, “but it do me.”

Meredydd didn’t jump out of her skin, but might have. An
iron-haired, silver-eyed woman stepped out from behind a crape myrtle, a bundle
of straw perched on one muscular shoulder.

“I be Mam Lufu. Who be you, Pilgrim?”

Meredydd bowed her head, respectfully. “Daeges-eage, Mam
Lufu. I’m Meredydd-a-Lagan, a Pilgrim from Halig-liath.”

The woman laughed. “So circum-respect! You’d be an
Osraed-baby, sure enuft. Well, daeges-eage to you, Pilgrim Meredydd. Come in
and tell me about your journey.”

Entering Mam Lufu’s cottage was like entering another world.
The atmosphere was close and warm and copper-dim with firelight. The air within
was as aromatic as the air without and redolent with the tangy perfume of
incense and spices.

Rising from the crouch she’d been forced to adopt to enter
the door, Meredydd stopped statue still. Through the bundles and nets of herbs
and vegetables and grasses that hung from and over the beams of the low conical
ceiling, she could see an open area that the cottage exterior failed to even
hint at.

“Bigger on the in than on the out, eh?” chuckled Mam Lufu. “That’s
what ye was thinkin’, ain’t?”

Meredydd nodded and followed her hostess into the nether
room, ducking baskets and drying grasses and reeds that gave off the scent of
faded spring marshes and rosemary. This part of the house was roughly round and
possessed one deep window on its eastern wall, cut, misshapen, at an odd angle.

Of course, Meredydd realized, the room was hollowed out of
the hillside, though that was almost impossible to tell from without.

“Things are sometimes not as they seem,” said Mam Lufu and
sat herself down in a rough rocking chair facing the window. “Now then, what’cher
Pilgrim’s purpose, today, cailin?”

Meredydd looked at the woman curiously and spoke her
thoughts before she could stop them from escaping. “You don’t seem surprised to
see a female Pilgrim.”

“Nawp. Not surprised.”

“Everyone else thinks it’s a scandal or sacrilegious or just
plain wrong.”

“Everyone’s entitled to some thinkin’, I guess.”

“Why aren’t you surprised?”

“’Spected it. S’time again.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Nearly hunnerd year ago, there’s another one just like.
Time again.”

Meredydd perched in the window embrasure, the scent of moist
earth rich in her nostrils. “Did you know her?” She asked the question without
really thinking of what it implied. Mam Lufu looked to be about in her middle
age, iron grey hair, aside. She was amazed when the woman nodded.

“She come to me. We passed by each other, you might say.”

“On her Pilgrimage?”

“Aye. Long ago, that was.”

“Did she come here for an amulet?”

“Amulet?”

“That’s what I’ve been sent here for—an amulet. Was that
what she came for—Taminy?”

“Everyone comes here for differ’nt things, child.” She
rapped her chest with a loose fist. “Inner things. Spirit things.”

“My Master, Osraed Bevol, told me she walked into the sea
and drowned.”

Mam Lufu gave her a sharp glance. “He said that, did he?
That she walked into the sea? Well, s’true.”

“I’ve heard that was her punishment for trying to be an
Osraed when it was an unnatural desire for a woman.”

“Ah? Who said that?”

“Osraed Ealad-hach...others.”

“Well, a lot o’ bodies say that.”

“What do you say?”

Mam Lufu cocked a bright, silvery eye in her direction. “S’that
importful, d’ye think?”

It was important to Meredydd, suddenly, and she said as
much.

Mam Lufu leaned forward, her chair creaking in mild protest.
“Ye’re shiv’rin’ in fear of the same fate, ain’t ye? Well, don’t. Every soul’s
fate’s differ’nt. May be by only a hair’s breadth, but so. I’ll tell you the
God’s own truth: Taminy-a-Cuinn deserved her fate. And you’ll deserve yours.”
She nodded her head emphatically. “Read the tales, child. Listen to the tales.
Has Bevol ever told you the story of the Lover and the Wakemen?”

Meredydd shook her head, torn between wonder and terror at
Lufu’s assessment of Taminy-a-Cuinn.

“Make him tell you. Say, Lufu bids it. Now—” She popped to
her feet, interview at an end, and strode toward a dark passage along the rear
flank of the roof. “Follow,” she said, and Meredydd jumped to obey.

The corridor into which they passed was almost completely
darkened and smelled pleasantly of earth-musk. It curved this way and that and
Meredydd could feel rather than see the irregular doorways alongside. They had
gone perhaps five or six yards when Mam Lufu disappeared into one of the
black-on-black holes in the uneven earthen walls.

Heart rabbit-beating in her chest, Meredydd hurried to catch
up. By the time she reached the aperture, it was emitting a ruddy glow that
warmed to gold as she entered.

The room was small and completely circular. It fit the
environs of Mam Lufu’s strange hovel perfectly and not at all. The floors were
of polished oak and the walls of vertical slats of white fir alternating with a
darker wood. Meredydd glanced back over her shoulder at the doorway. Somehow
she had known it would no longer look like a hole carved out of a tunnel wall.
It was a round-topped arch with a capstone and edging of jasper.

Mam Lufu moved across the diameter of the chamber to an
altar of sorts. It hugged a curving section of wall and had a polished cedar
top—a lid, Meredydd realized as Mam Lufu opened it. The two semi-crescent
halves swung up and away, revealing that the inside was hollow. From the dark
interior, the woman removed a large, flat box. She closed the twained lid and
set the box down atop it.

“Come, child,” she beckoned Meredydd. “Look.”

Meredydd came. And looked. The top of the box was
beautifully wrought with what she recognized as a Pilgrim’s Rune in the form of
a ship. Meredydd stretched forth a hand to caress the satiny wood, running
astonished fingers from prow to sternpost. A curl of cloud crested beneath the
keel where waves might have been; it seemed to undulate under her fingertips.

“Open it, child.”

Meredydd glanced at Mam Lufu’s intent face, then
reluctantly, loathe to lose sight of that wonderful flying carrack, lifted the
lid of the box.

The amulets were just as she had seen them in the dream
Solstice Eve. But despite her ardent wish, none of the three glowed or
shimmered or made her thrill when her eyes touched it. In fact, they looked
very much the same—homely little lumps of some silver metal, each on a piece of
colorful cord. Meredydd recognized the colors; there was the red of Power—that
must be the Sight; the blue of Healing; the gold of Intelligence—that would be
wisdom.

She studied them almost mindlessly in the mellow amber light
that fell from somewhere overhead. Eyes half-focused, she was aware of Mam Lufu
only dimly—as a presence rather than a person.

The pull of the Sight amulet was strong, calling her to a
knowledge she was no longer certain she wanted. She rejected that immediately,
distrusting the attraction. Healing, then, or Wisdom. One practical, the other
esoteric, both broad in their application.

Osraed Bevol had always taught her to tread the spiritual
path with practical feet. Healing. Her hand reached, hovered over the amulet on
the blue thong. Her eyes flicked sideways, trying to catch a glimpse of Mam
Lufu’s face, but the woman had disappeared and Meredydd couldn’t be sure
whether she had faded into the ether or backed away. There was no help there.