Then, in the gathering darkness, the celebration moved down along the palisades to the Nairne Road in a long, snaking, noisy parade. Pipers and drummers played before the honored Pilgrims and a crowd of well-wishers trailed behind—every ambulatory man, woman and child in Nairne beating, shaking or tootling something to frighten away the evil spirits that few, if any, believed in. They paraded through the Cirke-yard, crossed the Halig-tyne at Cirke Bridge and proceeded up the main avenue of town toward the river bend.
Along the quay, the parade disintegrated into a merry rabble. The pipers and drummers continued to play while the Pilgrims were led out to dance. Cailin came to the quay-side green, bedecked with ribbons and flowers, they each chose a Prentice from the group of Pilgrims to dance with them. But there was no one for Meredydd. The first girl onto the grass went straight to Brys-a-Lach and shot Meredydd a sidelong glance eloquent with ridicule.
“None’ll dance with a Dark Sister,” she said and led her partner away.
“I will,” said a voice from the milling throng.
Meredydd turned. It was Lealbhallain, of course. She shook her head. “What will people say?”
“What they are already saying—that you’ve failed with Aelder Wyth and so you’re seducing me.”
She gasped. “Are they really saying that?”
“Aye. And that you did it with creamcakes and a love duan.”
He smiled and held out his hand. “Come out with me.”
“But there’ll be a cailin waiting to dance with you.”
“You’re the cailin I wish to dance my Farewelling. Come out with me,” he repeated.
She curtseyed and accepted the hand, then, walking proudly beside him onto the dancing green. They drew many eyes as they turned upon the close-cropped sward. Curious eyes and unfriendly ones. Meredydd kept her own on Leal’s face, fearing to see any hint of distress at the attention they garnered. But there was none. He smiled and laughed and, in all ways, put her at ease.
And she was at ease, she realized. She was enjoying her Farewelling. Loving the mirth and the music and the dance. Glad of her loyal partner. They had done four quick outings together, and were dancing to a slow tune about a love-lorn shepherd, when she saw Wyth Arundel standing at the edge of the watching crowd, his eyes burning through the air between them. Involuntarily, she stiffened, causing Lealbhallain, who had been dancing quite close to hold her at arm’s length and search her face.
“What is it, Meredydd? What’s wrong?”
“I don’t want to be watched anymore, Leal. I’m sick of everyone staring at me.”
He stopped dancing and looked at her, then turned his head. When he turned back again, she knew he had seen Wyth.
“The fire pageant is about to start,” he said. “Let’s go find a place to watch.”
They left the green, Lealbhallain still holding her hand, but she could feel Wyth watching and she knew he was following. They found a good place along the balustrade from which to watch the pageant, and when the first bright streamer of light shot up above the ramparts of the holy stronghold, its mirror image cleaving the dark waters of the Halig-tyne. Meredydd gasped with delight just as she did every year. The fireworks went on for some time and, in the play of light on water and cloud, she forgot everything but the wonder and delight of the Solstice.
Forgot it, that was, until after the fire-show when she and Leal wandered the quay. A hand on her arm pulled her from a pleasant absorption in the contrasts of dark and light—of night and torch-flame—that dappled water, land and air. She turned and found Wyth Arundel gazing solemnly at her, his mouth a grim rebuke.
“I must speak with you, Meredydd,” he said, and afforded Lealbhallain a dark and meaningful look. “Alone.”
Leal started to speak up, then thought better of it and looked to her for comment. Confused by the sudden intensity of the two faces now turned upon her, by the milling crowd and the flickering light, Meredydd could only glance from one boy to the other, her brow knit. Finally, she shook her head.
“What have you to say that can’t be said before Leal?”
Wyth’s eyes shot to the other boy’s face. “Anything I would say to you is for your ears only. Please,” he added, “I really must speak to you.”
Meredydd sighed and nodded. “All right, then. I’m sorry Leal. I’ll bide a moment with Wyth. Don’t leave me, though. Wait a bit?”
Leal tossed the Aelder Prentice a challenging glance. “All night, if I must,” he said and jerked his head up-quay. “I’ll be at the backstere’s stall.” And he moved off, his back staff-straight.
Wyth took Meredydd’s arm, then, and led her to the very edge of the cobbled street, to where the stone balustrade overhung the sparkling water and boats bobbed below in the shifting darkness.
She could hear them there—creaking, whispering, the river slap-slapping against their brightly painted hulls.
Wyth spoke. “You mustn’t go, Meredydd. You mustn’t go on Pilgrimage.”
She goggled at him. “What can you be talking about? Of course I must go.”
He captured both her hands. “Meredydd please, it’s too dangerous.”
“No more so than for you or Leal.”
“Yes! Much more!... Have you not heard of Taminy-a-Cuinn?”
She eyed him warily. That name again. “Aye,” she said. “I’ve heard of her.”
“Then you know how dangerous this is. You may never return.”
“Nonsense.”
Her calm rebuttal seemed to throw him into a conniption of alarm. “No, Meredydd, not nonsense, fact. I tell you, if you go on this Pilgrimage you will never return. You’ll be destroyed, just as Taminy was destroyed. The Meri will not be sent a cailin Prentice. She will not tolerate it. And if you go, and if you don’t come back, then I.... Oh, I think it would kill me, Meredydd!”
“Nonsense,” she repeated, annoyance growling in her stomach. “How can you spout such rubbish, Wyth Arundel? You’re losing hold of yourself altogether. You’re a Prentice and the object of your life is to attach yourself to the Meri, not to me. Kill you, indeed! What rubbish! Let me ask you this: What would you say if I was to tell you I’d marry you...only if you did not go on Pilgrimage this Season?”
His mouth was open, ready with his answer, when the tail of her question lashed him. He faltered; his mouth closed; his eyes widened. “You wouldn’t ask it.”
“Wouldn’t I? Well, if I’m the wicked spoiler your mother and half Nairne thinks I am, that’s just what I’d do. So give me your answer, Wyth Arundel. Will you give up the Meri and take me instead?”
He stared at her as if she had just turned into something completely incomprehensible. Then he shook his head. “I couldn’t do that, Meredydd. I could not.”
“Well, if you won’t give up your life to me as I live, why should you do so if I die?”
Wyth turned his head to gaze across the river at the great, white cliffs that rose, starkly, on the nether side. His face was in shadow and Meredydd could see only the glitter of mirrored light on his eye. His shoulders shook lightly and she was afraid, for a moment, that he was crying. But the sound that escaped his lips was not a sob, it was a chuckle. Meredydd’s mouth fair fell open in astonishment.
“You’d try a saint,” he said. “You’re a wicked girl, Meredydd, not to let me romance you.” He turned his face back to her again, his eyes wistful, but not solemn. “So very, very wicked.” He ducked his head quickly then, and kissed her lightly on the mouth.
She went to find Leal with her fingertips still pressed against her lips, her eyes moist with inexplicable tears.
It was late when she and Skeet and Osraed Bevol wandered home. Meredydd was exhausted, Bevol was mellow and quiet and Skeet was Skeet. Bubbling over with all that he had seen and heard and done, he regaled them with tales of this or that prank and the music and the jugglers and the magicians and...
Meredydd smiled and started wearily up the stairs, when she had a sudden thought. She swung back to face
Bevol who was watching from the bottom of the steps. “This is the night. The first night of the Season.”
“Indeed.”
“Well, what do I do?”
“You sleep. And you dream.”
“And then?”
“That would be getting ahead of yourself. First, you dream.”
She did dream. She dreamed of starting on her Pilgrimage with both Skeet and Osraed Bevol. She dreamed of woodland paths and grassy meadows that she knew, somehow, lay to the north. But as the dream progressed, Meredydd was overcome by the fear that she would forget it and not be able to tell Osraed Bevol what had happened when she awoke.
She began to run each sequence of events over and over in her dreaming mind, striving to memorize each footfall, each fork, each stand of trees or slant of trail. But the effort drained her and she soon suspected that the Path was endless and that she would tread it forever, never coming any closer to her goal.
She could conceive of only one solution: She must wake up and write down what she had seen. Yes, that was it, she must wake up. But her body refused to obey the dictates of her will and she found herself stranded between dreaming and waking.
If I can’t wake and write, she thought, then I must sleep and write.
And so she dreamed of her journal and a writing stick and began to scribe the substance of her journey painstakingly upon ephemeral pages, watching her own progress on the Path through and between the words she wrote.
Now, the dream advanced and the dream Bevol gave her a task to perform. She was to go to a certain woman in a certain village and return to him with an amulet. There would be several amulets to choose from, but the dream did not tell her which to take or how to choose. It showed her only going to the woman’s house, seeing the talismans lying on a bed of velvet, and leaving with one of them clutched in her hand. All her attempts to see the amulet failed and she returned to Bevol with no sense of accomplishment, but only uncertainty.
She kept writing, watching the characters of her dream between the curls and angles that appeared beneath the tip of her scribe.
Osraed Bevol gave her a riddle for her next task. She wrote it down carefully The riddle, she knew, would take her to a place. But she didn’t know the place or why she went there. She knew only that there was in the place something of that magical glade along the Bebhinn, and the very thought of it disturbed her so much that she woke, weary and confused and realized her dream note-taking had been for naught. She had forgotten Bevol’s riddle and everything that followed.
“I feel as if I’ve failed already,” she confided over breakfast. “I tried so hard to remember the dream, but the book I was writing it in wasn’t real. It’s all gone.”
Osraed Bevol studied her for a moment, then asked, “What was the first thing you recall?”
“We began the journey together. You and Skeet and I.”
“Ah. And where did we go?”
“North, into the country-side.... Northwest.”
“Then that is where we shall go.”
Meredydd was dubious. “Are you sure?”
“Is that what you dreamed—northwest?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then.” He turned to Skeet, who had watched their exchange with much interest. “Provision us for Pilgrimage, Pov.
You know what to bring and what to leave. And you, Meredydd, bring two changes of clothing and anything else you think a Prentice might need along the road. Don’t forget a cloak. Evenings are cool.”
Meredydd did as directed, wondering when the sense of magic would come, the intimation of destiny, import, purpose. Feeling only tired and muzzy, she dressed in a long-sleeved sous-shirt and light tunic with leggings of silk and soft ankle boots. She packed a cap as well as a cloak and brought several extra pairs of stockings. Taking seriously what Osraed Bevol had said, she packed the crystal conferred during the Farewelling, along with some small sachets of medicinal herbs.
Thus prepared, she tucked a favorite book of meditations into a pocket of her pack and met Bevol and Skeet in the kitchen. Skeet wore a backpack obviously teeming with provisions and Bevol, in leggings, sous-shirt, jerkin and jacket, looked more like a local jagger than an Osraed.
“How long will we be gone?” Meredydd asked as they left Gled Manor and took to the road, headed west toward Gled-Nairne Crossing.
“As long as it takes,” said Bevol, “which depends entirely on you.”
Meredydd did not find that thought a particularly comforting one. She imagined them trekking endlessly, while she tried to remember and decipher her dream—a dream that would only recede further with time. The only thing even vaguely comforting about the situation was that Bevol, himself, was acting as her Weard; he would observe her, care for her, but would offer no more guidance than he was instructed to in his own dreams.
The Nairne road was a broad pebbled way that cut north to south across Caraid-land through field and farm and wood. As they reached the Gled-Nairne Crossing, Meredydd gazed south toward the place where the roofs and spires of Nairne itself peeked out of its stole of trees. She missed it already, and the sight of Halig-liath guarding the waking town loosed a cascade of thoughts and a clutter of emotions having mostly to do with embarrassment and loneliness and separation.
And Leal. Dear, loyal Leal. And Wyth. Sober, serious, earnest Wyth.
“Master,” she said as they put their backs to Nairne and home. “I told you that Aelder Wyth spoke to me last Cirke-dag.”
“Ah, yes. You said he apologized...and offered you marriage. You accepted the first and refused the second, if I recall correctly.”
Guilt flashed through Meredydd’s heart. “There was more. I didn’t tell you everything.”
“Oh?”
“He told me his family holds Lagan.”
“Yes. Indeed they do.”
She stared at him. “You knew?”
“Of course I knew. I was your only guardian. They had to inform me of the claim.”
“And you didn’t contest it?”
“You said you never wanted to see the place again.”
“I was a child!”
“Yes. A very stubborn, adamant child. And I was not your blood kin; I was only the Osraed who had performed your Name Tell. I could not speak for you. You spoke quite loudly for yourself. The very thought of Lagan caused you great pain and you let it be known.”
“You didn’t tell me Arundel claimed it.”
“You never asked.”
“Five years, he said. They’ve held it for five years. They must have claimed it right after...right after his father killed himself.”
Osraed Bevol said nothing.
“Which happened only a fortnight after my parents were murdered.”
Still Bevol was silent.
“Wyth said his father had started the papers for the claim.... I only just thought.... Master, did Rowan Arundel kill my mother and father?”
How could she, she wondered, as the words twisted themselves between her lips, say it so coldly? Why was she not screaming, crying? Why was she still walking along this road as if it was all in the world she could do?
Skeet’s eyes, dart sharp, skittered back and forth between his Master and Meredydd, resting finally on the old man’s face.
“I don’t know,” said Bevol finally.
“But you’re Sighted,” she protested. “You could weave a Past Tell and see if he did...couldn’t you?”
“But I did not.”
“Why?” She stopped, now, and faced him.
“What would it have served? What would have been accomplished? That a little girl be poisoned with fear and hatred?”
“He could have been brought to justice!”
“If he killed your parents, then he was brought to justice, Meredydd. By his own hand. He laid his punishment at God’s feet. What would you do—have his sin visited on his son? His daughters?”
Meredydd gazed, unfocused, at the pebbles in the road. Fine, they were, round and smooth. “It
has been,” she said and began walking again.
She believed the Osraed when he said he didn’t know if Rowan Arundel had murdered her parents (to gain prime pasturage and a right of way?). Even if he had woven a Past Tell, he very likely would have seen no more than she had seen. Cloaked and masked men silently carrying out their appalling task in a firelit yard. But there was one thing he definitely could assess—would have to have done so as a member of Halig-liath’s Osraed triumvirate.
“Why did Wyth’s father kill himself, Master?”
“What would you make of it if I told you it was guilt? Consuming and terrible guilt.”
“Was it guilt?”
“It was. The man’s soul was in tatters. He could not face himself. He chose to face God instead.”
“What should I make of it, Master? That he was party to killing my parents?”
“That is a possibility, since only his family gained by their deaths.”
The thoughts. The thoughts that crawled and scuttled and flew through Meredydd’s head. They were night thoughts, dark-winged and sharp-clawed, and they battered for release like bats seeking escape from a cage. When the trio stopped for the night in the woods hard by the banks of the Bebhinn, she was in torment, for she had held those thoughts captive all day. Now, in the comfort of camp, they tumbled out before her eyes where she was forced to hold them up against firelight and appreciate their loathsomeness.
Revenge. That was the word. The third Cirke-dag of every month she had gone to Lagan’s ruin seeking a clue, a sign, some way of knowing who stood to receive her revenge. She’d studied the Divine Art half in the hope that it would aid her in that pursuit. That through her talents and acquired skills, she would be able to weave a Past Tell and find the destroyers of her innocence and the stealers of her life.
Meri Page 9
