Meri (17 page)

She drew the amulet out of her shirt neck and held it in the
palm of her hand. Wisdom. Wisdom for the riddle. She looked high and low.
Followed every flash of movement with her eyes, seeking something that ran, but
neither rested nor slept. She saw nothing that merited that description, no
bird, no animal.

A sound tugged at the fringes of sensation, tumbling,
gurgling, trilling atonally. It was the Bebhinn, of course, the Melodious Lady,
singing her way wildly toward the Western Sea.

Meredydd stopped stone still in the middle of the path. That
was it! That which ran and neither rested nor slept.

She ran, herself, following the liquid duan, vaguely aware
of Skeet behind her, his feet near silent on the pine needle carpet of the
trail. She rounded a huge rock, ducked beneath a pine bough and stopped.

Skeet nearly collided with her from behind.

“The Bebhinn-tyne!” she said and laughed, glancing at her younger
companion. “That which runs—”

“But ne’er rests nor sleeps,” he finished, and nodded. “Aye,
and babbles ceaselessly, as well.” His eyes sought her face.

“And now?”

“Now we follow it downstream, toward the Sea.”
And look for a village with many houses on white pillars
in which a mother, who does not dance, watches her children, who dance
.
It would have to be a village, she supposed. But no, that was too obvious, wasn’t
it? The houses wouldn’t really be houses, they’d be something else. Something
that you might find along a river.

She took a deep breath of the river air and started along
the bank, feeling much better with one piece of the puzzle safely tucked away.
She began thinking of the maidens rising from the water and chuckled at
herself. Here, she’d been half-visualizing a little village full of white
houses and empty bath tubs full of maidens in white dresses. If the place was
along a river, the maidens’ water would most likely be a pool.

The Sun was high in the sky when the Bebhinn’s narrow stream
dropped suddenly downward several feet, disappearing over a crown of mossy
rocks. Meredydd hurried forward along the gently sloping bank, feet slipping in
the grass and detritus from over-hanging trees.

She reached the descent and uttered an exclamation of
triumph. Below was a small pool not much bigger than the main room of Mam Lufu’s
hovel. At its nether end, the water continued on its way, laughingly escaping
the blunt teeth of scattered rocks. She and Skeet slid down the shallow
embankment onto the moist sandy shore of the pool. Then she paused to look
around her, frowning, her exhilaration cooling to anxious uncertainty.

“I see no houses,” said Skeet, echoing the movement of her
head.

Meredydd lifted a hand to shield her eyes from the mid-day
Sun and scanned the trees. “They won’t be houses, really, Skeet. Not
people’s
houses, anyway. They might be bird’s
houses or-or bees, or...anything.”

Her eyes sought weaver nests. Those could be described as
houses with a single pillar—if you granted the pillar could be upside-down. But
wait, weren’t
trees
houses? Wasn’t the
trunk a pillar? But these trees weren’t white. They were dark-skinned oak and
pine. Meredydd chewed her lip. And where was the still mother with her dancing
children? Nothing in this place was moving at all.

“This be the place, Meredydd?” asked Skeet from behind her.

“No, Skeet. I don’t think it is.”

He nodded. “But it looks a fine place for dinner. Shall we
stop and eat?”

She wanted desperately to go on—to walk until she either
found the Place of the Gwenwyvar, or dropped from exhaustion.

But there was Skeet to consider. She agreed, reluctantly,
and they dropped, cross-legged, where they stood and dug into their packs.

Half an hour later, they refilled their water bags and went
on, ever following that which ran and sang and neither slept nor ceased
babbling.

Meredydd’s mind traveled also, back the way they had come to
the village where they had left Osraed Bevol. She wondered, now, if the village
had ever existed at all, or if it had been some masterful Runeweave on her
Master’s part—a place which appeared only when Pilgrims passed through, which
existed only for their edification. And Mam Lufu—had she been real? Had she
really known Taminy-a-Cuinn—a character Meredydd knew not whether to accept as
heroine or heretic, martyr or monster, victim or justly punished errant?

It was suddenly critically important that she resolve this
dilemma, for it created another, larger one. If Taminy-a-Cuinn had been a
heretic or worse for daring to seek a station traditionally accorded only to
men, if she had died horribly as a result of that heresy and brought
retribution on all of Caraid-land, why then—
why
—was
Osraed Bevol leading Meredydd-a-Lagan into the same sacrilege?

Her feet stumbled on the path, making Skeet glance over at
her in momentary concern. She didn’t look at him, but only shook her head,
trying to distract her thoughts from the direction they were taking. Shame
tumbled through her that she could even have wondered, however briefly, about
the purpose of her goal. Bevol loved her, that was the only assurance she need
have. And these thoughts—she wanted them gone, purged, cleansed from her heart,
her mind.

She felt desperate and dirty, and she felt Skeet’s eyes on
her, still. Foolishly, she glanced over to meet them. There was a joyless
collision and Meredydd’s gaze careened away. She was a betrayer—faithless,
ungrateful.

She concentrated on directing her feet onward steadily,
murmuring prayers, searching for signs she surely must be unworthy to see and
incapable of comprehending.

It grew both later and cooler as they traveled along the
Bebhinn and, as evening approached, a sly wind snuck about them, blowing damp,
chill breath up sleeves and down collars. Meredydd struggled her cloak out of
her pack and wrapped it about her shoulders. Her eyes narrowed against the
gusts, watching the boughs and branches of trees sway this way and that, she
did not see the ground drop away before her. With a loud shriek, she tumbled
over the root-studded embankment and into a grassy glen.

Skeet was after her immediately, helping her to her feet and
checking her, solicitously for injuries. Glancing over his shoulder, Meredydd
exclaimed and pointed.

“Look, Skeet! Another pool!”

He turned, following her gaze, and nodded. “Aye, mistress.
Another pool. But I yet see no houses.”

Meredydd clamped her jaw in frustration. “It’s getting too
dark to see.”

She squinted at the water. No maidens appeared. And the
trees here were all time-gnarled oaks, nodding like ancient sages in the wind. She
shivered, as much from disappointment as from cold.

“Let’s make camp,” she said, and began to seek a protected
hollow for them to curl up in.

There were no dreams that night. No comforting visions of
Osraed Bevol, no affirmations of direction, no assurances of purpose. Meredydd
woke just after dawn, stiff, cold and with her hand clamped so tightly around
her amulet, her fingers hurt when she opened them.

She lay for a moment, taking in the half-lit glen, its
features tipped and tinted in the barest flush of roseate amber. The grass was
darkly green and damp with diamond dew, and mushrooms lay scattered like
chicken eggs among the tender spikes. There were sounds too, of the waking
forest: The pips and trills of morning birds, the chitter of squirrels and ’munks
and, over all, the song of wind-sough and twig-talk as branches and boughs
brushed.

It was peaceful here, beautiful, magical. Meredydd longed to
stay—to not have to travel onward and onward toward a goal that must surely be
lost to her already after yesterday’s treacherous doubts. Leaning on one elbow,
she watched as the Sun breached the trees and poured warm light onto the pond.
Watched as mist rose sinuously from the wind-rippled surface, sailing up on
invisible wings toward a tryst with its glorious Beloved.

She sat up. Maidens rising from the water! Her eyes raked
through the trees. Live oak, some pine—no white-barked birch or alder. Then
where—

She scrambled to her feet and moved to the moist ground
beneath one particularly grand oak. It was littered with the white caps of
myriad mushrooms. She plucked one from the ground and turned it over. A fat,
white stem rose from the delicately ribbed underside. A white house on a single
pillar. She glanced at the ground about her feet. An entire
village
of them. But where was the mother whose
children danced? The thought that this might not be the place crossed Meredydd’s
celebrating mind.

Her regard of the glen grew fiercer. It
must
be here.
Somewhere
in this glen, by this pool
.

She turned around once; then again. Movement—the entire
glade was in movement. Dear God,
everything
danced for the piper wind. Everything but rocks. But rocks had no children.

She put her hands to her head. Too hard. She was trying too
hard. She calmed herself with an effort.

All
right
, she thought.
The bushes dance, the
trees dance, the—

“But not the tree
trunk
!”
she said aloud and stared hard at the old oak, daring its golden pillar to
contradict her. It did not, but its branches nodded sagely in affirmation. The
branches of the tree danced, the tree itself did not.

Meredydd turned to wake Skeet and tell him, but he was
already sitting upright watching her with his dark, miss-nothing eyes.

“Is this the place, Meredydd?” he asked her.

“Yes, Skeet,” she said, smiling beatifically. “I think this
is the place.”

“Ah,” he said. “Then we’ll bide awhile. Breakfast, mistress?”

“Breakfast? Skeet we have to wait for the Gwenwyvar.”

“Aye, but why go hungry a-meantime?” He grinned at her
saucily and began to dig about in the packs.

Meredydd turned back to the pool. Well, this was her
Pilgrimage, after all. Skeet certainly had no need to wait with her for the
Gwenwyvar to appear. She cast about for the best vantage point and settled
quickly on a great rock that sat half in the water. She climbed across two
smaller boulders to reach it and settled on top to await the Gwenwyvar.

The mist thickened around her and she shivered in
anticipation, though it was already warming. But her anticipation was not
rewarded. The Sun rose, the misty veil burned away, and no Gwenwyvar, no thing,
no one, appeared.

Skeet brought her breakfast out to the rock. She ate it and
waited. As the Sun rose to noon, he brought her some berries for dinner. Still
she waited. She drank water from the pool with cupped hands, she stared into
the cold, clear emerald depths, counted the stones lying about the foot of her
perch, counted the fish swimming just below the surface. No one came.

She left the rock only once to relieve herself of the water
she had drunk. She didn’t speak, but returned to her post and sat, face pink
from the Sun. Skeet, meanwhile, watched, foraged and watched some more. Then,
as the Sun slipped away again, he gathered wood for their evening fire. He had
whittled himself a little spear and skillfully used it to provide them with a
supper of roasted fish.

He hunkered down on the shore then, close to the water, and
watched her pick at the spitted fish while he quickly dispatched his own. The
Sun glided behind the trees and both sat as frozen, the firelight scampering across
the ground between them and out onto the water, where it sparkled in tiny
points of radiance.

“What are you thinking, Meredydd?” asked Skeet quietly.

“I am thinking nothing. I am only waiting.”

“Will you stay on that rock the night?”

“If need be.” She picked at the fish, putting a tiny morsel
of it into her mouth. She barely tasted it.

“How long will ye wait?”

“Until the Gwenwyvar comes.”

“And what if the Gwenwyvar ne’er comes?”

“She will come. Osraed Bevol said she will come.”

“What if this isn’t the right place?”

Meredydd turned her head, her gaze sweeping the glen with
its guardian trees, turning just now to watchful, waving giants in the dark.
Firelight danced up their flanks and over the water and the wind blew the
flame-jewels across the pool, scattering them into a thousand directions.

“This is the right place.”

Skeet nodded and settled himself back against his pack. “So
certain are you,” he said.

“So certain am I,” she agreed and realized, almost with
surprise, that she
was
certain. This was
the place. The Pool of the Gwenwyvar. The Gwenwyvar would come.

She finished the piece of fish and laid the bones on the
piece of bark Skeet had given her for a plate. She washed her hands in the
pool, dried them on the fore-skirt of her tunic, and rose to take the remains
to shore where Skeet would bury them.

She had just started to slide down from her rock when Skeet
rose and pointed at the center of the pool.

“Look, Meredydd,” he said.

She turned, following the thrust of his arm, and saw what
looked like an accumulation of mist just over the heart of the pool. She slid
back to the crown of rock without realizing she had moved, the bark with its
fishbones forgotten in her hand, her eyes fixed on the spot.

The tendril of mist curled and coiled, looking first like a
snake, then like a white bird, then like someone in flowing white robes. The
mass grew, turning, spiraling, sculpting itself, above the black, jeweled
surface of the water, into a thing with features and form—the features and form
of a woman with long white hair that billowed in the night wind and spilled
into the water.

Meredydd’s eyes burned from watching and she blinked them,
straining to see the thing hovering before her. A moon was rising now, washing
its pale, lustrous light over the glade, turning the figure’s hair and robes to
silver, touching every blade of grass, every twist of twig, every crown of
rock. The light of Skeet’s fire rose to meet it, melted into it, turning the
pool into a glittering glory of gold and silver, topaz and diamond. And in the
center of the pool, the misty being seemed to take on more solid form.