The day was pied now, blue-gold and silver, as clouds scudded landward like legless sheep in an infinite pasturage. Meredydd glanced up at them through jostling limbs and wondered at worlds she knew, from Bevol’s teaching, existed beyond them, flung like jeweled chick-seed across the void. She knew, too, that the void was not a void, but teemed with stars and galaxies and gases and nascent worlds and ancient ones thronging with life—all seeking the same Goal. Her thoughts swung to the Meri and to the Meri’s Kiss and she wondered what form the Meri took on those other worlds.
A limb brushed wet fingertips against her neck, making her pull her thoughts back down to earth. She had reached the pool and stood at the top of a berm in the path, looking past a drape of moss into the hollow. She stepped forward and down, brushing the moss aside, and was astonished.
Every blade of grass was verdant velvet and mounted by a tiny bead of water. Up from and over the emerald-strewn ground, evergreen shrubs waved jeweled fans, while their taller sisters and cousins danced in clinging, silvery finery of the sheerest moss. The pool, itself, lay in the setting like a giantess’s pendant—glittering peridot, sapphire, topaz, diamond deep and clear. Meredydd could see all the way to the bottom.
The sight amazed her for only a moment before she felt a soul-plumbing thrum of fear. She skirted the pool quickly, saw a tendril of mist rise and thicken, and ran, unreasoning, up the path toward Lagan.
Meredydd....
Did the wraith whisper it? Did her ears even hear it?
The part of her that cared to know was submerged in sudden terror. What would she see when she reached the top of the hill? Was that smoke or only a stormcloud lying dog-low on the horizon?
She broke from the woods and leapt into the waves of winter wheat that bowed across her path, wind-worshipping and golden.
It slowed her and she dropped her stole, then picked up her skirts and bounded on, eyes locked to the crest of the hill. She was winded by the time she reached it and her hair had escaped from its careful coil and fallen, unplaited and reckless, to her shoulders. She crested the waves of grain and filled her eyes with the scene below. For a second it was flame and shadow; for a heartbeat it was smoke and fear. Then a cloud cleared the Sun and it was a sleeping ruin, swathed in new green, looking less than melancholy in its spring colors. Lagan was not in mourning.
Heart in her throat, skirts gripped in white-knuckled hands, Meredydd tottered down from the hill, eyes tight on the spot where their bodies had lain, where there was now only fresh grass and tiny blue flowers. She crossed the yard, wind cooling her flaming cheeks, and went through the broken doorway into the house. It was only a foundation now, cracking and disintegrating, inhabited only by wild things and wild grasses. Vines overgrew the chimney, moss over-laid the crumbling walls.
She looked. She searched. She lost herself in the tiniest details. Perhaps this year her maturing eyes would find what they had never found before—a clue to the why and the who of the death of Lagan.
Her ears snatched a sound out of the unquiet air and she raised her head, gazing around to the four corners. To the west, the hillside swam in wheat; northward, the Bebhinn rushed over its bed of shattered rock, fresh from its rift with the Halig-tyne; to the east and south, the Tyne Road was empty of anything but several sheep that had crossed the long bridge from Arundel.
She watched them for a moment as they dipped their heads to drink of the Holy River’s slow stream, going back at last to cropping Lagan’s grass.
The river captured her for a moment. It was a stately river, circumspect, mannerly and genteel. It whispered, giggled, perhaps, but never kicked up its heels in laughter and song like its daughter, the melodious, spirited Bebhinn.
Meredydd shook her head, ending the reverie. That must have been what she heard—just the sheep crossing the bridge—tiny, sharp hooves on wood and stone. She sighed and left the house to pick some wild flowers at the forge. They grew well there in the ashy soil. She was on her way to the graves with some wild roses when she saw in the wet earth near the well, something that had not been there when she arrived—hoof prints.
She puzzled. They were well-shod hooves, but not large. The prints deep. An average horse—a larger than average man. The puzzlement slipped through unease toward fear and she froze, flowers in hand, staring at the prints. When the horse snorted directly behind her, she leapt up and away, landing with her face toward the intruder. She squinted up into the gleaming sky. It was Aelder Prentice Wyth who slid from the fine leather saddle. He looped reins around the carved wooden pommel with its gilt edging and faced her across her parents’ grave.
She stared. He stared. Then he mumbled.
“What?” she asked. “What did you say?”
He took a deep breath and watched his family’s sheep approach the ruined walls of Lagan and said, “I said, I’m most truly sorry, Meredydd, for all that’s happened. I heard Osraed Bevol say you’d be no more at Halig-liath and I can only believe that it’s my fault. Mine and my mother’s.”
“I’m leaving Halig-liath to go on Pilgrimage,” she said, clutching her flowers to her breast. “Next week, at Solstice. Osraed Bevol thinks that’s best. He believes only my acceptance by the Meri will win me acceptance in Nairne.”
“Pilgrimage? Already? But you’re only fifteen!”
“Nearly sixteen. I’m eligible to go and Osraed Bevol must think I’m ready or he wouldn’t suggest it.”
“But...do you want to go?”
She thought about that momentarily. Thought about it for the first time, really. Did she want to go? Wasn’t she afraid of going—afraid of finding out what qualities she possessed or failed to possess? Was she so confident of her success? Did she need to be?
“Yes,” she said. “I do want to go. I’ve studied most of my life to go. I’ve dreamed about it, longed for it.”
That much was true. She had dreamed—daydreamed mostly—before she understood the full meaning of Pilgrimage, before she understood it had nothing to do with glory and celebrity and adventure. Now she merely dreamed.
“Dreamed,” repeated Wyth, nodding. A grimace tugged his wide mouth awry. “We both dreamed. Although my dreams are more nightmares. Pilgrimages that fail, mostly. Pilgrimages that end in my rejection, in my death. Sometimes I die of old age, waiting and waiting for Something that will never come. Sometimes I never even make it to the Sea. I wonder why—why did the Meri reject me? What do I lack when I love Her so? Is it...because of my father?”
Meredydd shook her head with sudden impatience and stooped to lay her flowers on the grave. “A father’s sins are visited on his son only if the son allows them to be. If you are lacking something, the lack is yours, you didn’t inherit it. And if it’s yours, you can remedy it.”
“He took his own life, Meredydd.”
“Aye. So don’t allow him to take yours, as well.”
He almost smiled. “Such good counsel.”
She glanced at him sharply and was surprised to find him sincere. She made a gesture of denial.
Aelder Wyth glanced at the ground between his booted feet. “I lied to you about my dream. The horse never took me to Lin-liath. It took me to Gled Manor. To your house.”
Meredydd flushed with embarrassment and glanced about, seeking an avenue of escape.
“You have seduced me, Meredydd, although unwittingly. No matter where I send my thoughts, they return always to you. In class, I know, I act as if I had the wisdom and authority of an Osraed. I don’t have anything like that wisdom. And I shouldn’t have the authority I’ve been given—not over you. Not when I only abuse it.”
He took a sudden step over the graves, meeting her face to face and startling her into a tiny retreat. He caught her hands to keep her from fleeing further.
“You should teach me, Meredydd. I should be your Prentice.”
She disentangled her hands and took another step away. “Don’t say this! You’re misguided, Aelder Wyth. You squander your attentions on me—”
&
nbsp; “No, not squander. Listen to me, Meredydd. I have a fine estate. I’m an Eiric already, at eighteen. But Arundel is too big, by far, for my mother and sisters and myself. It will be mine alone when the sisters marry. When I come back from Pilgrimage, Meredydd, if the Meri has me, if you will—”
Meredydd’s heart clenched into a tiny, terrified knot. “No, Wyth!”
“Why not?”
“I’m only fifteen.”
He laughed. “Nearly sixteen, you told me.”
“And what of my own Pilgrimage? If the Meri has me, I’ll have so much to do. So much work. And She might bid me go out of Caraid-land to do that work.”
“You don’t have to go.”
“Disobey the Meri?”
“I mean, you don’t have to go on Pilgrimage. You could marry me at Solstice, instead.”
“I will go on Pilgrimage, Wyth Arundel.”
“Yes, yes. Aye. All right.” He waved her anger back with placating hands. “If you wish so much to go, then go, of course. And when you return, I will let you continue your studies.”
“Let me! You could have no choice!”
“Of course, I could have a choice. A husband—”
“I have no husband. I’ll not have you as one.”
His distress was evident. “Why not?”
“Good God, Wyth! How could I marry someone who would stand there and speak of permitting me to do the Meri’s will?”
“I take it back. All that I said. I’m wrong. Of course, the will of the Meri is paramount.”
“Wyth, I don’t love you! I don’t know what love is, yet. My parents had it. Osraed Bevol and Aelwyn Meara had it, may God bless her soul. But I’ve too small a vessel for so deep a thing as that. And what I do have is full of the Meri. She fills my cup, Wyth. There’s no room in it for you.”
“But She’s a spirit. I’m a man. The filling is different.”
A man at eighteen. So serious—gangly, over-tall body drawn severely upright, deep set eyes so somber, lips so tight. A man.
Meredydd laughed. “Oh, Aelder Wyth, I hope when we’ve both visited the Sea we’ll understand what a man is—or a woman, for that matter. Now, take your sheep along home, please. They’re eating my roses.” She started to turn away.
“My roses, you mean.”
She swung back. “What?”
“My roses. Lagan is mine now. Has been this last five years—part of Arundel.”
She gaped at him. “By what right—?”
“By mart forfeit. After...after the fire, you’d gone with Osraed Bevol. He never claimed the land as your guardian—”
“So your family did? But five years—”
“Mother said it was needed. Our pasturage had got so worn we needed extra for the increased herds. And if we held Lagan the hands could take them through direct on the Tyne Road to the market in Creiddylad—not have to take the long way around to catch the road above the palisades. Father had started the claim but... well, mother did it on his behest, or mine, I suppose. You weren’t of an age to lay claim yourself.”
“But so soon. They’d just been buried.”
“Aye. But Osraed Bevol could have contested our claim for you. It was a surprise he didn’t, really. After all, you’d need a dowry.” He glanced away from her, shrugging. “But then, he wasn’t your blood kin, not even your legal guardian then, I think. I really don’t know what happened, Meredydd. I was just a boy, after all.”
“You hold Lagan.” Meredydd shook her head.
“I’ll give it to you,” he said, slipping closer to her. “I’ll build you a house here. A house with a thousand rose bushes.”
She waved him to silence, her inner turmoil taking all her attention. All these years she’d assumed Lagan was just as it had been—home. But the family of Lagan no longer existed. Her home no longer existed.
“Then I’ve been trespassing.”
“No! You couldn’t be a trespasser here.”
“But your mother—”
“She doesn’t know. She doesn’t know a good many things. She thinks you’re some sort of...Dark Sister and she thinks you’ve runewoven to make me lust for you. She thought you knew Lagan was part of Arundel and were scheming to get it back. She doesn’t know what I know, Meredydd—that you’re an angel and innocent of deceit and that I love you.”
“Please, Aelder Wyth, stop saying those things. I’m no angel. I’m hopelessly flawed in ways you can’t begin to imagine. I have to go.” She turned.
He reached for her. “You hate me. Because of Lagan. Because of my mother’s foolish accusations. Because of my stupid bungling—”
“I don’t hate you, Wyth. I don’t,” she assured him and tried to put the whole force of herself behind her eyes. “But neither do I love you. And don’t tell me I could learn,” she added when he opened his mouth to protest. “I have far too much to learn already.”
She made good her escape this time, or nearly so, for he mounted his horse and followed her up the hill.
“Let me ride you home,” he said, his horse prancing beside her.
She kept on, not even looking at him. “No, Wyth. I have thoughts I need to order and exile. And your mother might see us and God knows what she might think.”
That brought him up short. He reined in his mount at the top of the hill and glanced furtively around. Then he watched her trudge away from him through the tall wheat, over and away toward Gled Manor.
“I will see you again, Meredydd,” he called. “I won’t give up.”
She stopped halfway down the hill, Nairne-side, and turned on him. “It’s the Meri you should be making that promise too, Wyth Arundel. And see that you keep it!”
Back she swung and marched away, skirts trailing, hair streaming, leaving him alone atop the hill.
Chapter 5
Transformation takes place in one’s mind.
Therefore the mind must be kept pure, for what one thinks, he becomes.
— The Corah
Book II, Verses 3,4
The Sun had shifted outside the window and fallen across the pages of her book, making reading difficult. She rubbed her suddenly burning eyes and started to move away from the gleaming wash of sunlight. She was startled when the Osraed Bevol dropped a large, blue crystal down upon the open pages. Caught in the shaft of white light, it sprayed vivid azure rain across the pristine paper, drenching it.
Meredydd gasped at the beauty of it.
“Now,” said Osraed Bevol, “tell me about the crystal in my hand.”
She turned and looked at him questioningly. He held his knotted fist before him, closed and impenetrable.
“But, Master, how can I tell you about what I cannot see?”
“I have told you, I have, in my hand, a crystal.”
“But I can’t see it,” she repeated.
He pointed with his other hand at the book on her desk. “What is that?”
She glanced at the blue glory. “A crystal.”
“Tell me about crystal.”
She did as she was told, studying the glittering gem as it sat upon the book. “It is gleaming, glittering. It takes the light of the Sun and refracts it and spits it in all directions. It is beautiful, colorful, vivid.”
“Is that all?”
“Well...”
“Pick it up.”
She did as commanded and discovered the crystal was cool to the touch even though it had been sitting in the direct Sun. She felt of it with her fingers, caressing the facets; she tapped it with her fingernails.
“It is cool,” she told him. “And hard and has sharp planes and angles.” She held it up to her eye and gazed through it at the sunny garden outside. She saw a myriad gardens. “It changes the world one looks at through it. It multiplies the world.”
“And does this describe what I hold in my hand, as well?”
Her eyes pried at his expression, trying to divine what point he was making with her. “Well,” she said, “if what you hold in your hand is a crystal, I supp
ose it might.... Well, yes, of course it does. Except that it might be a different color, or perhaps it has no color at all.”
The Osraed smiled and set the second crystal next to the first. It was a completely clear gem, but when the Sun struck it, the white light shattered into a myriad of colored shards, strewn with the azure ones across the pages of Meredydd’s book.
“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.
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