Meri Read online

  Meredydd sat in her place at the table and stared at her green-stained hands. “I let my horse rear up and carry me off, Master. I spoke out of turn. I should have let Brys-a-Lach have the last say about Aelder Wyth’s aislinn.”

  The Osraed’s dappled brows fluttered up his forehead. “Oh? Then did you think it the correct Tell?”

  “Well, of course I didn’t or I wouldn’t have got so.... I spoke out of turn,” she repeated and fell silent.

  “You spoke up,” corrected Osraed Bevol. “You stood by your interpretation, which, while not the only one, was at least spiritually appropriate. Prentice Brys was currying favor, not searching for the truth.” He looked at her, eyes sharp, azure.

  “Pardon, Master, but is it appropriate to judge Prentice Brys’s motive?”

  Bevol pointed at her. “No, it is not. But it is entirely appropriate for you to question my judgment of him. And if it is appropriate to question my interpretation of young Brys’s motives, then it is appropriate to question his interpretation of a vision.”

  “I wasn’t impertinent?”

  “It was a classroom exercise, anwyl,” he told her, softening his criticism with the endearment. “You were impertinent to cast your Tell as the only one, but if Prentice Wyth had wanted to avoid embarrassment, he should never have used his own aislinn as the subject for a reading.”

  Meredydd glanced up from her soup. Skeet was already half-way through his. “Perhaps he didn’t expect a negative Tell.”

  “Eh? Well, perhaps he’s possessed of a superior detachment, hm? A man of rare humility.” His eyes crinkled at the corners.

  Skeet laughed, his own dark eyes glinting. “Aye, rare,” he said.

  After dinner, Meredydd helped Skeet clear the table. Sun still slanted through the kitchen window, burnishing the pale cobbles, and she felt the pull of a place to the east, almost in the fork of the Halig-tyne where it gave birth to the dancing Bebhinn. She glanced about as she entered the great hall, straining to keep her footsteps light on the flagstones. The hall was empty and she thought she could hear the Osraed rustling in his parlor. She drew a soft cloak from the pegs by the front door and reached for the latch.

  “Be back in time for your studies,” said Bevol’s voice behind her.

  “Yes, Master.” She opened the door and slipped out quickly, knowing his eyes followed her down the path and up the lea. The solid oaken door was no impediment to those eyes.

  He never told her not to go, however much he wished to, and it was beyond her to grant him that unspoken wish. So she fled eastward to the Fork, to the place where one river became twain.

  It was called Lagan— “the Little Hollow” —and there had been a homestead there once. A fine homestead with an ample cottage and a big barn and a great forge. There was only burnt rubble now, and tall grass and wildflowers that waved sorrowfully in the wind.

  Every spring the mounds of shattered brick and stone and crumbled masonry were less apparent beneath the green carpet that encroached and obscured. Every spring the charred beams were more overgrown with vine and bramble. But the pain in Meredydd’s heart was never overgrown and her rage was never obscured.

  She picked wild roses from the tangle that embraced the fallen chimney. She pricked her fingers on the thorns and bled in penance for making Osraed Bevol so unhappy. What she could not do penance for, even by coming here and bleeding upon the thorns every day of her life, was her absence on a particular afternoon seven years past.

  On that afternoon, a day of worship, Meredydd-a-Lagan had left her parents at the Cirke in Nairne and gone home through the Bebhinn wood. She had been told to go straight home and had promised to do just that, but the wood had wooed and won her before she’d even left the Cirke-yard.

  Along the Bebhinn—so named for the musicality of its swift-moving waters—she had come across an amazing pool of the most beautiful, clear, sparkling water and had stopped there, as she was told never to do. After all, who knew what wolves or boar or wild dogs or other were folk inhabited the woods late on Cirke-dag? So warned her elders, who little understood that to a precocious little girl, such threats are promises.

  She had taken off her shoes by the little pool and thrust her feet into the icy water and let the most wonderful aislinn images flow through her waking brain. She’d sat long, day-dreaming. How long, she never knew. But in time and delight a tendril of mist had risen from the pool, captivating her with its graceful, spiraling pirouettes. As she watched it, imagining it to be all manner of wonderful things, it assumed, finally, the form of a white-robed maiden.

  This was a very wonderful and magical thing to a little girl, and it became more wonderful, still, when the beautiful mist-cailin spoke to her. Her voice was a musical whisper and it told Meredydd she would seek the Meri. She would become a Prentice.

  It was such a startling, engaging idea—that a girl, a blaec-smythe’s daughter, would study the Divine Art—that little Meredydd jumped to her feet in amazement, dropping her shoes into the pool. The white cailin dissolved back into a wisp of mist and the afternoon into sudden, cool twilight.

  Looking frantically about, Meredydd suddenly realized that the sky was darkening rapidly toward evening. High above the trees, a burnished light flickered uncertainly in the mists of twilight.

  Affording the lost shoes only a moment’s mourning, she climbed carefully out of the pool hollow, climbed until she stood atop a slight rise among the ash and fir. Looking southeast, toward home, she could see what caused the pulsing, rippling light. Wild breakers of flame leapt above the crest of the lea, as if shattering upon an inland reef.

  Her heart suddenly in her throat, Meredydd tore through the wood, heedless of her cold, bare feet, her eyes clinging to those leaping waves of incandescence. She found the main path, broke from the verge of the wood and streaked up the intervening hill.

  At the crest she was stopped as if by invisible hands and stared, terrified, into the vale. Lagan was ablaze. The forge, the barn, the cottage, all burned with the brilliance of the morning Sun. She could feel the heat even atop the hill.

  Figures moved about the buildings, but they carried no buckets, went nowhere near the well. She made no sense of that, at first. It was only when she turned her eyes to the well itself that the full horror became clear. Lying beside it upon the ground were her mother and father, unmoving, unattended by the three dark-clad men who watched Lagan die.

  Meredydd reached out her arms, straining forward, willing her feet to move. But they would not move and she hung there as if held fast, her hands stretched toward her home and family. Then, the men stirred. They lifted the limp bodies that lay by the well and dragged them toward the disintegrating forge.

  Meredydd thought she had plumbed the depth of horror, but knew, with sudden conviction, that it had no depth. It was bottomless. She screamed, her voice sounding like the shrill of the hunting hawk. She screamed again and heard the tortured cry of the mountain cat in her ears.

  The activity below ceased and the dusky people peered around, their muffled faces all eyes. One looked up the hill, paused and pointed.

  Meredydd screamed a third time, her cry piercing her own heart like a lance and spreading on the hot wind of Lagan’s destruction. The men stared as one man. Two of them retreated back a step, then two. The third turned away, then back, away, then back. Suddenly they were all three running away into the dark toward the river fork. They disappeared like a flock of daemons, trailing thunder from their horses’ hooves.

  As if released by the pressing hands, Meredydd fell forward onto her face, tumbling several yards before she could stop herself and clamber to her bleeding feet. She moved down the gentle slope through wild wheat that caught at feet and ankles. She fell and rose and fell again, finishing her journey in the mud of the barnyard crawling on hands and knees to where her parents lay.

  There was blood on them. Blood on her mother’s sky blue dress. It spread in a horrid dark stain across the bodice. Blood on her father’s best whi
te shirt—so much that little white could be seen. She knew they were dead without knowing how she knew and she could contemplate no existence without them. They were her entire world. Her goal was only to reach them; merely to lay herself between them in the cool mud and die.

  The ooze sucking at her legs, Meredydd put out a hand to touch her mother’s face. Something blocked the touch. Something in a long, soft cloak, now filthy and soaked at the hem. Little Meredydd stopped, teetering, her hand clutching, her eyes blurred with stinging tears, her mind unable to accept this intrusion.

  Mewing like a kitten, she struck at the obstruction again and again. A hand grasped her shoulder, gently. She looked up, then, into the face of the Osraed Bevol.

  He touched a forefinger to her forehead and she collapsed, face first, into the mud.

  It was two weeks before she spoke. She cried nightly, nursing her grief, fighting nightmares and day-horrors. But the Osraed had loved her and cherished her and instructed her. The deep pain passed and found consolation in loving the Osraed in return. It also spawned an abiding rage—the first words the eight year old spoke after her long silence were, “I want them to die. I want to kill them.”

  It was Bevol who convinced her she must learn powerful secrets to be able to even discover her parents’ murderers, for no one knew who they were or why they had attacked a peaceful homestead. And she, remembering the aislinn she had experienced at the forest pool, followed his urging and began the study of the Divine Art.

  She’d learned many things in her tenure with Osraed Bevol, more, even, than the average student of Divine Art at Halig-liath. She had him to instruct her in the Telling of dreams and visions, the Healing, the Runeweaving, the secret duans, the speaking to the unspeaking. She could divine ailments and prescribe the cure; she could forecast the weather; she could follow the bees to their honey, then enlist their cooperation in retrieving it. She knew the courses of the stars and planets and the ways of animals, large and small. All these things she had learned and more, but she could not see the faces or know the names of the men who had killed her parents and changed her life.

  She watched the blood bead, dark, on one pierced finger and brought herself back from the past. It was darkening now, and the breeze came cool and spicy from the Western Sea. Meredydd raised herself from the grave her parents shared, her hands absently arranging the flowers upon it. She stared a moment at the well that served as their headstone—pondered the weather-worn beam and rope. There was no time for the rest of the ritual today. It would wait until Cirke-dag—the anniversary of the death of Lagan.

  She got home just at dark, the lamps along the walkway coming on at her approach, the hall lighting as she opened the door. That had seemed an absolute miracle to her once, now it was only a welcome convenience—a fine bit of the Art, if she thought about it any deeper than that. But tonight she noticed the little lamps—noticed that their flames, though warm and bright, failed to make her feel that way. She stared at one fiery sprite in its glass enclosure and thought of the Meri.

  “There is a bridge between the finite and the Infinite,” said the Book of the Meri, “This Bridge is the Meri, the Spirit of the Spirit of the Universe, which men call God. Nothing may cross that Bridge: neither day nor night, nor old age, nor death nor sorrow nor evil nor sin.”

  She would like to find a place where there was no night, no death nor sorrow nor evil nor sin. She would like to cross that Bridge—to see the Meri.

  Osraed Bevol had seen Her, of course, many years ago on his own Pilgrimage. And now Meredydd longed for that privilege—Pilgrimage. It was something she’d almost taken for granted once, but now, as she crossed the threshold of adulthood, she realized it was not nearly so certain a destiny as she had imagined. She was old enough this year, it only depended now on her worthiness.

  She had to pass on her marks at Academy, first of all, then the Osraed of Halig-liath must approve her. Once that was done, it devolved upon Osraed Bevol to determine if and when she was ready. She wondered if that would be soon. She wondered if she would be one of the fortunate few to see the Star of the Sea rise. And if she did set eyes upon the Meri, what gifts would she receive? What knowledge?

  One thing she knew she wanted—the gift of Clear Sight. With that talent, with the knowledge and power of an Osraed, she would be able to look back and see the faces of those three masked riders.

  “What does the flame tell you, Meredydd?” asked the Osraed Bevol from the parlor doorway. “What answers lie in the fire?”

  She blinked and turned to face him, a royal purple salamander wriggling before her flame enchanted eyes. “No answers, Master. Only daydreams.”

  He looked at her for a moment, then nodded toward the parlor. “I have tea on the fender. Come, it’s past time for your lesson.”

  The room was fire-warmed and comfortably cluttered—books tumbled in symmetrical abandon like awkward crystals from every shelf and ledge, and everywhere lay evidences that this room belonged to a practitioner of the Art. A bird skull, here, beside it a magnifying lens; a handful of colored crystals—poorly formed rejects; a bundle of old star charts. It was the books that reminded Meredydd of Aelder Prentice Wyth’s assignment.

  “What is it, anwyl?” asked Bevol, seeing that she had paused in the doorway.

  “I was to read,” she said, “the Aelf-raed essays on the Water Symbols. For Aelder Wyth. And write a paper on it...by tomorrow.”

  “You’ve read them.”

  “Two years ago.”

  “Have you forgotten the material?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Then—? All you need do is write a paper. What length?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  The Osraed shrugged. “Well, then?”

  “He’ll ask, first, if I actually did the reading assignment. I can’t lie.”

  Bevol chuckled. “But you did do it. You merely did it two years before he asked you to. A most precocious student.”

  Meredydd laughed. “Ah, but he also wants me to Tell another dream.... Perhaps I’ll be very ill tomorrow and the next day and by the time we are past Cirke-dag, Aelder Wyth will have forgotten all about my punishment.”

  “Doubtful.”

  “Then perhaps I can manipulate his dreams so the next one he makes me interpret is less controversial.”

  Bevol looked at her awry. “That is more feasible,” he said and then waved a long-fingered hand at her. “Go. Go on and do your assignment. I must not interfere with Aelder Wyth. We will pursue our studies tomorrow.”

  Chapter 2

  The mind is beyond the senses and reason is beyond the mind. Reason is the essence of the mind. But beyond reason is the spirit of man, and beyond this is the Spirit of the Universe, the Evolver of all.

  Its form is not in the field of vision: no one sees That with mortal eyes. That is seen by a pure heart and mind and thoughts. Those who know That attain life everlasting.

  — The Corah

  Book I, Verses 30,31

  Meredydd dreamed. She was walking to Nairne on a mild spring day when she heard thunder on every side. The ground trembled beneath her feet and from behind, a wind blew. She whirled to see a huge, black horse bearing down on her, stones and divots raining upward from its hooves. It was upon her before she could even feel fear and swept her up onto its hot, broad back. It carried her away to Lagan, where it disappeared, leaving her alone at the ruined homestead.

  In a heartbeat, she was walking to Halig-liath, taking the high road along the palisades just east of Nairne when, once again, the beast appeared, thunder rolling from beneath its hooves and hot wind belching from its distended nostrils. Again, it swept her up and rode her to Lagan and left her there, alone.

  In a breath, she was on Pilgrimage, taking a road to the Sea. She had reason to fear the mad mount now, but Osraed Bevol was at her side and she thought, He will protect me from the beast.

  But when the horse thundered down upon them, even Osraed Bevol was powerless to sto
p it. It swept Meredydd up onto its steaming back and delivered her to Lagan. There, she sat before the ruined forge and sifted the dust of the yard through her fingers, searching for something. It was important, that something, but she could not remember what it was.

  Waking, she wondered at the dream, trying to interpret it. It seemed to her, when she held it against her waking life, that it was meant to reinforce her resolve—to remind her that she could not really leave Lagan until she had divined the identities of those responsible for her parents’ deaths and exacted revenge.

  If no means of revenge presented itself now, no matter; she was certain the appropriate method would be revealed when the time was right. She never asked herself if she would be able to follow through with her vengeance. Her rage was silent, but fierce; she would do what had to be done.

  She kept all this from the Osraed Bevol, of course, for she knew, as any student of the spiritual knew, that forgiveness, rather than revenge, was the Balance. Forgiveness was beloved of God. Meredydd wanted, more than anything, to be beloved of God, but she could find in her no forgiveness for her parents’ unknown murderers.

  She did not discuss her dream with Osraed Bevol, but during breakfast his eyes kept coming to rest contemplatively on her face and she soon convinced herself that he knew of it. Silence made her nervous, half afraid she’d blurt out what she was thinking, feeling. Rather than do that she began to prattle about the paper she had stayed up late to write. Osraed Bevol merely ate his biscuits and fruit and continued to regard her studiously; Skeet became quickly bored and left the table.

  When she had run out of things to say about the paper, the Osraed patted his mouth with a napkin and said, “Meredydd, get a bowl down from the cupboard, won’t you, please?”

  She afforded him a wide-eyed glance, then hurried to do as he asked.

  When she stood beside him with the bowl, he said, “Now, fill it with water.”

  Hesitating only an instant, she fulfilled that request, pouring from the tap of the little reservoir in the corner of the kitchen.