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“Oh, do come join us, dear Wyth!” she gushed, tugging at his arm. “Do tell us all about it.”

  “Yes, indeed,” agreed one of the male guests—the Eiric of Cinfhaolaidh. “It’d be a rare experience to hear of a Pilgrimage from the lips of the newly chosen! Was it near as magical as they say, or is that all myth?”

  Wyth’s sister, Brann, laughed brittlely. “Myth, I’d wager. What of it, Wyth? What’s the Meri like?”

  Gazing around at the circle of expectant faces, Wyth was torn. For several of his mother’s guests this was a matter of faith, for others it was merely a matter of entertainment.

  “Come Wyth,” said his sister, her eyes over-bright. “Come, boast to us of your exploits along the Pilgrim’s path.”

  Rousing from what must seem to all like a stupor, Wyth smiled at her, ignoring the acid in her voice. “I’ve nothing to boast of, Brann,” he said. “But I would gladly answer your questions were I not so weary. I give the Pilgrim’s Tell with Lealbhallain-mac-Mercer next Cirke-dag at Halig-liath.”

  “What? You’d make us wait? How terribly rude.”

  “I’m merely tired, Brann. Please, return to your supper. I crave rest more than food right now.”

  Brann, on her betrothed’s arm, laughed and tossed black curls. “Yes, do sleep, Wyth. You look that ragged. Perhaps you’ll be up for it tomorrow and can tell us all at breakfast. I suppose the rest of you will have to be content with seeing the Kiss.” She bobbed her head toward the others, then drew her pledge-bond away, jealousy passing as she began to consider what advantage might come to the sister of an Osraed.

  The other guests followed.

  Wyth felt his spirit sag, pulling his shoulders and the corners of his wide mouth down with it.

  “Well.” The Moireach, his mother, still stood beside him. “I am disappointed that you couldn’t be persuaded to give a special Tell to our dear friends. But I suppose if you’re that tired ...” She shrugged, her eyes searching his face with an odd mixture of hope and reproach.

  “Thank you, for being so understanding, mother. I’ll no doubt see you in the morning.” And by then I’ll have decided how much not to tell you.

  Hefting his pack, he started for the stairs, wondering at how heavy it suddenly seemed.

  Adken was at his side in an instant. “Do let me carry that for you, Master. Are you hungry? Shall I bring you up a tray? I’d be most happy if you’d allow me that. Oh, and some hot tea. That’ll be wanted, I’m sure. Nothing like hot tea to soothe the wearies. Oh, it’s good to see you, Master, and none too soon. We knew you’d make it this time, the wife and I. Surely we did. Said some special prayers at Cirke, too. Oh, it’s a great day, it is. A great day! Those who didn’t believe, sir, they’ll swallow a bitter pill, indeed.”

  A great day, thought Wyth, as Adken prattled on about their faith in him. It was a real faith, the new Osraed marveled. He could put out mental fingers and touch it, hold it, feel the strength and weight of it. A great day, yes. But still, a day he wished, desperately, would end.

  Alone in his room, he lit a candle and sat on the bed to meditate. He did not think about how different he felt from the last time he’d sat in this room. He did not think about how different his homecoming had been from the way he’d imagined it.

  He did not ponder his time with Osraed Bevol in the dark aislinn chamber. Instead, he stared at the dancing flame and tried to meditate upon the Meri. In a moment he was all chagrin. How could he meditate upon Her without thinking about Her, without feeling about Her what he now felt. Love. Love entangled with love. He loved the Meri and he loved Meredydd, who had become the Meri. And now they refused to be separated. They could not be separated. Or, if they could, he did not know how. He thought of Her and felt the rise of more than spiritual devotion.

  No wonder the gleaming face had seemed familiar. My God, how could he have not known who faced him in that trembling water?

  How could he have kissed her lips—Her lips!—and not known at once, that She was Meredydd? The lover and the Beloved have become one in Thee. What a unique truth that verse now held for one Wyth Arundel. It was his last conscious thought before he slept, falling over into the down mattress and giving up his exhaustion in prayer as he gave up prayer in exhaustion.

  He woke some hours later, feeling as if someone had summoned him to consciousness. The candle had burned nearly in half. He extinguished it entirely. He felt it then, as he settled himself into the warm, close darkness. He felt the tears of the woman in the suite of rooms above. Tears, not of thanks-giving, nor of motherly loss, nor of swelling pride. There were selfish tears, tinted red by a sense of martyrdom. How great was her sacrifice, how ungrateful his pursuit of the spiritual, when she had struggled to give him everything material.

  Sadness brushed over him like a veil of spider-silk—clinging, but lightly—and he marveled with a strange, detached awe. How had he lived in this house for eighteen years and never known how much bitterness it contained?

  CHAPTER 4

  Fire is not seen in wood,

  yet by some power it comes to light as fire.

  In such a way the Spirit of the Universe and in man

  is revealed by the power of Its Word.

  — Prayers and Meditations of Osraed Ochan

  The breeze was from the high passes of the Gyldan-baenn this evening, and carried in its perfect cool a tang of pine and heath. Summer waned quickly, evening by evening, welcoming the long autumn. Wyth welcomed it too, as part of the experience he was about to embrace. Standing upon the ageless battlements of Halig-liath, he inhaled the fragrances that eddied up from the great courtyard below—smells of baps baked only minutes ago and trundled up the road from Nairne, and sweet porridges and stews, and meats turning slowly over pits of blazing rock. There were sounds to be drunk, as well, of laughter, song, the tuning of pipes, the shouts of neighbor to neighbor from stall to stall.

  Halig-liath had sprouted this day a great village bazaar; ringed round in the shadow of the massive walls were the booths and wagons of Nairne’s merchants, craftsmen and artisans, all preparing to take part in the celebration of the Pilgrim’s Tell. For when the ceremonials were over and the rituals fulfilled, the celebrants would flood the courtyard to eat and drink, dance and sing and tell stories through the night.

  Did I ever believe this day would be mine? Wyth caressed the horizon with his eyes, drinking in the deep greens, the winy reds and violets, growing intoxicated and flushed.

  He jumped when someone tapped his arm. A small third year Prentice he recognized from his Dream Tell class bobbed awfully at his elbow, eyes drawn to his forehead. The boy blinked repeatedly, ducking his head in reverence.

  “Osraed Wyth, it’s time,” he said. “The pipers are ready and your robes are laid out.”

  Wyth smiled and nodded, giving the worn parapet a loving pat. Ruanaidhe’s Leap they called this spot. It was a point of tragic history, but Wyth could not find it in himself to feel tragic. Tonight, his own history would be forever woven into the stones of Halig-liath.

  He followed the Prentice down from the wall and back across the cobbled yard, wending behind kiosks and wagons to the Academy’s rounded central structure. Glowing orbs lit the hallways with warm gilded light; musicians gathered in noisy knots here and there and gave him glances eloquent with amazement.

  They’re more excited than I am, he thought, and wondered at that. He had in the last hours welcomed into himself a great and alien contentment. He savored it, yet knew it to be momentary. He wondered if it would last the night.

  Osraed Calach and Lealbhallain (Osraed Lealbhallain, by the Kiss!) awaited him in a small annex to Halig-liath’s sanctum. One paced, the other smiled contentedly.

  “Ah, there you are, Wyth!” Calach’s smile expanded to embrace him in warm welcome, while his Prentice-companion scurried to fetch his robe. Like Leal’s, it was a deep, ruddy gold.

  Beautiful, he thought. Beautiful, but faded-looking compared to-

  “Will this night
never end?” Lealbhallain ceased his pacing and stood, worrying his prayer chain, eyes on a window of frosted and colored glass through which he could see nothing but patterns of fitful light.

  Calach laughed. “Dear boy, it’s barely begun.”

  “Why beg it end?” asked Wyth, shrugging into his robe. “Isn’t this the night of nights? Isn’t this to be savored? Remembered?”

  Leal’s hands flung upward, flying from his voluminous sleeves like flushed birds. “It’s only a doorway, Osraed Wyth. A passing point.” He speared his fellow Chosen with zealous eyes. “I long to be through the door, past the point, on my way to Creiddylad.”

  “Ah, yes.” Calach nodded approvingly, bustling to straighten Wyth’s white stole and arrange the links of his prayer chain upon it. “An arduous mission you have drawn, Leal, if I read news from Creiddylad right. I admire your zeal for it.”

  “It’s not zeal,” said Leal oddly, turning the pendant crystal of his chain in one hand. He glanced back at the window. “It’s fear.”

  Calach made a quick and nearly indiscernible gesture to the attending Prentice to take up his slate and bluestick. “Fear of what?” he asked, while Wyth could only stand idly by, his mouth open. A sudden, prickling awareness told him another Presence had slipped into the room; Lealbhallain was touching the Meri.

  “Disintegration,” Leal answered then added, “The hand that caresses keeps what it holds; the hand that seizes, crushes what it hopes to mold.”

  They waited silently, all of them, while the Prentice’s bluestick skittered over its slate, recording Leal’s words.

  Leal shook himself and stared full into Wyth’s face. Amazement. The smile started tentatively and spread to his entire body, freckle by freckle.

  Only puppies smile so, thought Wyth, then chided himself for the inane thought.

  Before he knew what was happening, they were in the hall again and stepping in measured time to the courtyard.

  oOo

  Awash in a swirl of sights and sounds and smells she’d never before experienced, Gwynet clung to Taminy’s hand and tried to drink everything in. When she thought her eyes could get no wider and her senses could not absorb one more fragrance or sound, the bells of Halig-liath began to peal and sing in a great, iron-throated chorus.

  She cried out, but the sound of her small voice was lost as it left her lips, swallowed in the deep, bright music. The air shivered with it, and all around her, people began to hurry to places about the courtyard’s vast, open center.

  Taminy tugged at her hand and bent to peer down into her flushed face, her own all but concealed by the cowl of her shawl and the bright scarf tied over her forehead. “Shall we find a place to watch, Gwyn?” she asked and Gwynet could only nod.

  The place Taminy chose was away from the pressing throng of villagers, halfway up a worn flight of stone steps that mounted to the walk along the inside of the high outer wall. From this vantage point, Gwynet’s eyes could scoop up their share of wonders.

  The bells ceased their lusty duan now, and a new, alien sound rose in its wake. From a stone arch across the yard and halfway down Halig-liath’s massive flank, pipers appeared, two abreast, stepping in time to the deep, hollow rhythm of unseen drums.

  Gwynet all but held her breath as piper after piper emerged from the archway to parade down the center of the court. They were escorted, in their turn, by other musicians, playing fiddle, drum and pat-a-pat, rib-stick and tambourine.

  Gwynet had never in her life heard such a sound. It was like the keening of wind in the tall pines. It was like the march of thunder across the hills and the music of rain on leaf and stone. And the melody was at once joyful and sad and spritely and grand.

  It took her a moment to realize the tune was playing closer at hand, as well. She glanced up at Taminy, who sang along in a clear voice, adding words to the music, her eyes glinting from the shadow of her cowl.

  Caught in this, the older girl lowered her eyes and laughed. “I once was certain as certain could be that they’d play this song for me when I came home from the Sea. That I’d step to the piper’s duan with the Meri’s Kiss on my brow. How strange life is.” She laughed again and stroked Gwynet’s hair. “Listen well, Gwynet-a-Gled. That may be your tune someday, and your dance.”

  Her hand measured the two long rows of musicians that now formed a euphonious avenue down the center of the Great Court, ending before the broad steps that mounted to the Osraed Gallery.

  Gwynet turned her eyes to that path and imagined that what Taminy said might be true—that she might someday be accepted by the Meri. She took the idea into her heart. Taminy had come from the Meri’s Sea, she reasoned. Taminy must possess the Meri’s wisdom. She didn’t understand all she’d heard of Eibhilin Beings and transformations or all she’d seen on a beach not that long ago, but she did understand that Taminy-a-Cuinn was like no one else in the worlds of Blaec-del or Nairne.

  She watched and listened with fascination as the pipers and drummers and fiddlers faced each other down the court and began a new melody. From the stone arch came Prentices carrying glowing orbs of liquid flame mounted on tall, finely carved poles. There were six of them, and in their midst were the new Osraed—Wyth, the Tall and Spare; Lealbhallain, the Small and Freckled. The two walked together, down the avenue of song, in step with their escort. At the end of their walk, they mounted to the Osraed Gallery and were greeted by the men who had been their masters and were now their peers.

  The crowd below Gwynet’s perch burst into noisy celebration. Grown men capered like boys; old women twirled like maidens on a dancing green, their bright skirts and panel coats sailing about them on the air. Osraed Bevol took some time to quiet them; Gwynet thought he must be enjoying the sight of all those souls acting out childways, swarmed by bright light. But at last they did hush, their attention soaring to the glowing Gallery where Osraed, new and old, collected.

  Now Gwynet’s ears were stormed by silence, for every man, woman, child and babe within the hallowed walls hushed to stone stillness. It seemed they must even have ceased to breathe and so did Gwynet.

  “At dawn,” the Osraed Bevol said, and his voice rang clear as the bells, “we walked with the Spirit of the Universe.”

  All heard the words, even Gwynet high on her stair. The drummers punctuated them with a beat that rolled off the stone walls like a single clap of thunder. The silence after shivered in the air.

  Again, Bevol spoke. “We heard the Words of Creation from the Spirit’s own Mouth and we listened and understood.”

  Again, the drums sounded.

  “The Spirit also listened. It heard the desire of its creation and the wants of man and woman, and It gave them their desire.”

  The drums spat thunder.

  “What was their desire?” Bevol asked.

  Below him, the crowd answered in one voice. “Knowledge!”

  The drums rolled.

  “And pleased, the Spirit gave them knowledge, which they used to bring them other things. And knowledge became a spirit to them, and the people asked that spirit for providence.”

  The drums uttered a single word.

  “What did they ask of Knowledge?”

  The crowed cried: “Give-us-land. Give-us-commerce. Give-us-power!”

  The drums issued a long roll.

  “And the people gathered those things and set them up as spirits and asked happiness of them and joy of them and wealth of them. And surrounded by these, their made spirits, they could no longer hear the Voice of the Spirit of All.”

  The drums beat a swift measure of staccato notes, while the crowd wailed a high, ululating cry as if singing for the war-dead. Gwynet had not heard that sound before, though she had heard of it from those who had lost loved ones to the sea missions of the Cynes Ciarda and Colfre. It made her shiver all the way to the marrow of her bones and pray for it to stop.

  When it did stop, Bevol spoke again. “The Spirit of the Universe looked upon Its silent creation and said, ‘My lover
s no longer hear My Voice and they no longer call Me Beloved. But I shall be patient. For someday they will call upon Me.’”

  The drums spoke their turn.

  “And when the people at last tired of praying to their made spirits for things they had no power to give, when they longed, at last, for their God, they cried out to It and listened for reply, but no longer did their hearts speak the same pure tongue they had spoken at Dawn. They could not hear their God, and the Universe was silent to them.”

  As silent as it was now, Gwynet thought, for not a person in all that vast assemblage stirred, not a mallet fell, not a pipe sang.

  “And out of the silence,” said Bevol, “was born the Meri—the Spirit of the Spirit of the Universe, Gate between God and Man, Bridge between Heaven and Earth. And God brought Her forth from the Sea to touch man and teach him again to hear the Voice that speaks in the heart of all things.”

  There was a great celebratory roar then, from throats and drums and pipes alike, and the little old Osraed, Calach (the Sweet, Gwynet called him), came forward to give the Tell of the First Pilgrimage.

  Gwynet knew this part—by heart, she was pleased to discover—and followed along, mouthing the words as Calach told the tale of Ochan-a-Coille and the First Weaving. In the swell of light and soft pipe-song, she could see the young boy wandering storm-lost along the rocky cliffs below the mouth of the Halig-tyne, longing for sight of the Castle Mertuile. She felt his terror as he fell into the sea cave, shared his awe when a strange light revealed that the walls of the cave were studded with crystals and that glittering shards lay scattered like frost upon the rocky floor. Her heart hammered fiercely when the boy took, in his own hands, a blue-white crystal of such clarity and beauty that he was all but blinded by the light that pulsed through it. She cried out aloud with mixed terror and wonder when an Eibhilin Being lifted Itself from the sea pool in the cavern’s deep heart and glided to meet Ochan where he stood, crystal in hand, in the star-littered shallows.

  Ochan, just fifteen, left the Sea Cave with the Meri’s duan singing in his heart and the knowledge of the Runeweave filling his mind to overflowing. Her Kiss glowed upon his brow, Her mission in his soul. He carried his crystal, Osmaer, to the stronghold of Cyne Malcuim and there gave the first Pilgrim’s Tell.