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 w
ater, 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.
Me-re-dydd...
Her name. Had it spoken her name? Or had Skeet, fearful, whispered it?
Me-re-dydd.
“Here I am,” she said and waited.
Let nothing distract you from your goal.
“No. I won’t.”
The path. Keep to the path. The path of Meredydd. The path of Taminy.
Meredydd felt a chill that was not part of the watery glen. “What path, mistress?”
The path of Meredydd is the path to the Sea. This path, here.
This path? Meredydd glanced around. “But, which path, mistress?”
This path, here. The Gwenwyvar’s head bobbed.
Meredydd looked at the pool, ablaze now with the glory of the moon, followed its rippling trail her to where the stream poured out and continued on its way toward the Sea, a silver ribbon in the velvet dark. A ribbon of light—the Path of Taminy.
She nodded. “Yes. I understand. I must follow the Bebhinn to the Sea. And then what must I do?
Wait.
Meredydd licked parched lips. “Wait? For the Meri?”
Wait for your destiny.
“Will I see her? Will I see the Meri?”
Wait.... You are good at waiting.
There was a twinkle of wry humor in that, and Meredydd marveled at it. What sort of creature was this Gwenwyvar?
“That’s all, just wait?”
Ah, but first...a task.
“Yes, mistress? What task must I do?”
A jewel. A jewel of great value, of great virtue. You must find it.
“And where shall I look for this jewel, mistress?”
A village due north. A dark place. A place of veils. Go there and find the jewel and bring it to me.
“But where shall I find it? Where in the village shall I look?”
That is the test.
Meredydd licked her dry lips. “Yes, mistress.”
One thing more.... You must leave your companion to seek the jewel. This is your test, alone. He cannot attend.
Meredydd felt a thrill of fear. “Leave Skeet? Oh, mistress, must I?”
There was no answer, only the moon’s beams slanting obliquely through the trees while a cloud threatened to obscure it altogether. Already the white form was becoming more nebulous, more fickle. Locks of ghostly hair detached and floated away on the breeze along with frays of gossamer gown.
“Oh, wait!” Meredydd scrambled to her knees. “Please don’t go! Are you—are you really the Gwenwyvar—the White Wave?”
I...am...
“Please, what sort of spirit are you? Are you of the Eibhilin?”
Your goal. Let nothing distract you from your goal.
A gust of wind swooped down from the sky, tearing the Gwenwyvar’s fragile form to vapor, dismembering and dispersing it utterly. Far off thunder growled and the moon hid her face behind a cloud, leaking silver onto its uneven hem.
Chapter 8
The soul of the Osraed must be a steady lamp which burns in a shelter that denies even the strongest winds.
— Book of Pilgrimages (On the Osraed)
Due north. She faced that way now, the rising sun at her right hand, the forest spread before her in a pristine tangle of tree and shrub. She shivered, though it was not really very cold, and glanced back over her shoulder.
Across the pool, Skeet stood and regarded her unblinkingly, his hands thrust deep into the over-sized pockets of his jacket, his expression studious.
Yes, Skeet, she thought absently, this is what Prentice-ship is about. Obedience. Following the promptings of the Spirit.
She had not, she realized, as she took her first step under the verdant canopy, even bothered to ask how many miles north she was expected to travel. She was momentarily perturbed at herself for being so careless, then knew an absurd pleasure at her own ineptitude. Surely this meant that she was improving in that essential quality of obedience. The Gwenwyvar had told her to jump and she had not even asked, “How far?”
She turned as she ducked down behind a massive, gold-flanked oak and waved at Skeet, a gay smile on her lips, her hand caressing the amulet at her neck. Perhaps, at last, she was getting somewhere.
Keeping the Sun at her right, she walked—at first pondering her task, then, realizing the danger of preconceptions, clearing her mind of all but the sights and sounds of the forest around her. It did no good to ask herself where in a woodland village one might be expected to find a jewel of great value when she had no idea of what the village, itself, would be like. For all she knew, it could be patently obvious where the jewel was; the difficulty of her task might be in how she went about getting her hands upon it.
She had traveled for what seemed like hours when the ground, which had been gently rolling, suddenly sloped away downward into what appeared to be a deep wooded depression. Mist rose from it, gold-tinged by the Sun, and dissipated into the blue-grey stipple of the sky. She peeked through the trailing limbs of fir and thought she spied the unnatural angle of a roof-peak below.
Just the sort of place a mystic village might be expected to inhabit, she thought wryly, and stepped carefully onto the woody hillside. She began to imagine what she would find when she got to the bottom of the deep vale: A scattering of poor houses, a wayside roadhouse. Perhaps the Osraed or the Gwenwyvar or whomever was actually in control of her Pilgrim Walk had just relocated Mam Lufu’s nameless village to this spot, where she was expected to find it again and execute, with whatever degree of success, her third task.
She moved cautiously down through a thick band of mist and felt, all at once, as if she was swimming in a lake of diffuse, particulate water. Indeed, when the ground beneath her feet leveled off once again and cleared to reveal a soggy carpet of oily-looking dead leaves, the layer of fog floated above her, so thick the Sun was at a loss to penetrate it. She reached up a hand. It disappeared into the chill cloud just above her head.
She snatched it back again, thrust it under her arm and glanced quickly about, still half-expecting to see the familiar wayhouse, the white stone circle, the falling-down corral of the jumbled market square.
For that reason, alone, the true state of the village stunned her. It was not the same as the place where Mam Lufu lived. Oh, it was poor and sodden, but it was also mean and dark and filthy, and there was about it a sense of decay. The absence of sunlight contributed to that effect, Meredydd realized, and she felt that absence keenly, shivering though her senses told her it was merely cool, not chill.
Damp clung to her face and hands as she moved forward. The carpet of leaves gave way to grass-choked mud, rutted by wagon wheels. There were buildings ahead; she could see their lower regions—flaking mudpack, falling stone, rotting wood. Except for the obvious passing of wagons and the depressions left by horse hooves and booted feet, she would have thought the place derelict. It was eerily quiet; there was no birdsong, no wind sough, only her own feet uttering squishy little whispers as she moved forward toward the nearest building, her head bent and tilted—listening, peering ahead, holding her breath.
He appeared with no warning, his face thrust close to hers, his near toothless mouth leering horribly, his eyes glistening and bloodshot. “Cailin!” he reeked at her and brought a claw-like hand to her shoulder.
The shriek that shot from her throat met the chill air as little more than a wild hiccup. The twisted face with its g
rease-buffed skin grinned, the mouth split. He laughed. Meredydd recoiled from the rank odor of his breath and wrenched her shoulder from his talon grasp. Her heel slipped into a rut and she all but toppled over—would have if the warped creature hadn’t caught her at the last minute.
“Ye’d best watch yer step out here, girlie. Ye might muddy up yer nice clothes.”
“I—I...” she stammered. “T-thank you.”
“Ah? Thank me, she say. Well, well, cailin, if ye really wish to thank me proper....” The leer wrested itself into something a babe in arms would have found disturbing.
“Pardon, kind sir,” Meredydd chattered, glancing anywhere but at his face, “but what place is this?”
He pursed his lips then grinned again. “I calls it Dark’ole. Somethin’ ye fall into and canna get out. Blaec-del, tha’s the proper name. Blaec-del Cirke.”
Meredydd blinked. “Cirke? Is there a-a Cirke, then?” Perhaps she could enlist the aid of the Cirke-master.
“Aye. There is tha’.” The misshapen head twitched in a northerly direction. “T’other end of town. An what might you be, then, girlie—a White Sister on yer way to take the vow?”
Her heart hammering against her ribs, Meredydd lied. Well, it was a very small lie, really, because she was more or less taking a vow. “Yes,” she said breathlessly. “I wish to see about...going into the Cirke.”
“Well, well. Then I’d say it were a rare fortune tha’ Old Mors come across ye first. I’d surely hate to see a young joy like yerself take up the piety not knowin’ what was bein’ missed.” His hand was back at her shoulder again, tugging at her. “I got me rooms over livery, sister. Come up hither while yer still a laywoman an’ I’ll give ye somethin’ to take to th’altar.” He wheezed gleefully at his pun, his talons tightening, pulling more strongly at Meredydd’s shoulder.
She resisted, but found “Old Mors” was much stronger than his spindly, twist frame implied. He was drawing her to the right-hand side of the road where she could make out the gaping, crooked maw of a stable. “Please, sir,” she begged, “let me go. The-the Cirke-master is expecting me. He’ll wonder where I’ve gone.”
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