“He’ll wonder naught, sassy cailin. Ye didn’t e’en know there were a Cirke in this ’ole. So, now, come get evil with Old Mors an’ give the Cirke-master somethin’ to repent ye of.”
Terrified, Meredydd lost her temper. “I don’t want to get evil with you!” she shouted. “Get your hands off! Now!”
“Woo-hoo-hoo!” Old Mors cackled at her. “Fearsome! I’ll like this, I’m thinkin’. Hands off! Hands off!” he mimicked.
“You’ll like naught, sir,” said Meredydd angrily, trying to strike a defiant pose. “I lied. I’m no Cirke-bound White Sister. I’m another order of Sister altogether. And if you treasure your soul you’ll unpaw me.”
“Or what? Or what?” he cackled. They had reached the stable door and Meredydd could see the animals within. The lecher glanced back over his shoulder, following her gaze. “Turn me into a horse? Eh? Aye, go ahead, Dark Sister. Make me a stallion. I’ll still take me a young mare.” He got both hands up now—one on her throat, one at her waist—and dragged her forward into the dust-shrouded stable.
“I’ll give you a mare,” she hissed and stamped, with every ounce of her strength, onto his foot. On the solid ground within the stable the heel of her boot was especially effective. He yawped and wheezed, letting go with one hand and hopping painfully about while Meredydd struggled to get away from him.
She had almost managed it when he recovered and lunged at her again.
A loud chuff! at her shoulder made her jump to one side as a huge, black shape, radiating heat and smelling of sweat-matted horse hair and leather, forced its way right into Old Mors’s face, bowling him completely over. Meredydd turned and fled.
“Hey, y’ old sot!” cried the horse’s rider. “Quit yer tommin’ and take care of my mare. Gawd, but ye’re a disgrace. Glommin’ onto children, now, is it? Leave somethin’ about for the boys to wed, will ye?”
Whatever else the rider might have said was lost in the pounding of Meredydd’s heart and the wild confusion of a street that seemed suddenly to have come to life. She heard voices raised in raucous laughter; discordant music played on an out of tune stringed instrument; the slurping, sucking sound of people moving through the all-encompassing muck; the creak and pop of wagon wheels and springs.
In the misty pandemonium, Meredydd remembered only that the Cirke was at the north end of town. She turned that way and ran, hugging the right-hand side of the rutted street.
The Cirke dominated the center of the village. It was not half so big as the sanctuary at Nairne but, compared to the rest of the buildings of Blaec-del, it was quite grand. Even the fog stood off it, as if in awe or respect, and Meredydd could see right up the bell tower to the bottom ledge of its peaked roof.
Without hesitating, she skinned up the flight of stone steps and through the heavy plank doors. They creaked closed behind her, lending a welcome support for her quivering backbone. The sanctuary breathed tranquility over her; the guttering candles, torches and altar braziers whispering holiness and safety.
Shadow Eibhilin danced for her along the walls, their songs silent. She reached again for her amulet. Trapping it securely between her fingers, she stood away from the door and moved down the narrow center aisle, glancing from side to side.
The floors were foot-worn, aged stone; the wooden benches were faded and glossy with much restive sitting. The altar was plain, unadorned but for simple brass braziers and a hip-high chunk of granite whose thick scattering of mica glittered like jewels in the half-light.
Jewels! Meredydd glided up to the altar stone and laid her hands upon it gingerly. Was it a chunk of the Cirke’s altar stone that she was to appropriate? That could be construed as a jewel of great value...or was that virtue? Well, perhaps here the two were synonymous.
She glanced around, wondering what she might use to chip off a bit of the stone, then caught herself and grimaced. No mission of Pilgrimage gave her the right to desecrate a sanctuary. She would ask for a piece of the altar stone if it came to it, but first, she’d like to hear a bit of its history. That might help her determine if it was the jewel she sought.
With that in mind, she turned and glanced about the sanctuary again. “Hello?” she called, and waited, listening. “Hello, Cirke-master?”
There was no answer. There was, however, a simple door at the far left-hand side of the altar. She made her way to it and knocked. There was still no answer. She laid her hand upon the iron latch and pressed downward. It gave with a protesting shriek and the door ghosted open. It was darker beyond and Meredydd was reluctant to put her head through the crack, but she did. There was a short, narrow flight of stairs slanting away toward the back of the sanctuary. Below she could see the floor of what was probably an access to the Cirke-master’s private quarters.
After a moment of indecision, she called again, more loudly this time. “Hall-ooo!”
Nothing. She was about to step out onto the landing when she heard a scuffing sound behind her in the sanctuary. She turned quickly, praying she would not see that horrible Old Mors coming to teach her things she had no desire to learn from him.
It was not. The person who had come up the narrow aisle was a child. Her long hair was in ropy coils and her clothes were stained and tattered. Silently she moved down the aisle, direct into the patch of faded sunlight that fell from a tall window above the entry. The patch turned her sad tunic into a coat of many colors and her pale hair into a glorious rainbow mane.
Smiling, Meredydd glanced up over the doorway. The stained glass window depicted the customary rendering of the Star of the Sea floating serenely above waves of white and azure and green.
She glanced back at the little girl, amused and gratified to see that she was not the only cailin who found she could be a myriad other things while standing in a pool of colorful light. She moved, her boots scuffing the floor, and the child froze and whirled, obviously ready to bolt.
“Oh, please!” she said, putting out a hand. “Please don’t run off. You look so lovely there in the rainbow.” She took a few steps nearer. “I like to play that game too—pretending I’m some wonderful Eibhilin creature.”
The girl smiled, tentatively. “You do? Really?”
Meredydd nodded, moving to stand before the child. “In my home-Cirke at Nairne. Your window is quite pretty too.”
“Aye, it is lovely, in’t it?” She beamed up at it and it beamed back in a spray of color.
Meredydd followed her gaze, then frowned. “Oh, there’s a hole in it. Right in the center of the star. How did that happen? Surely someone didn’t throw a rock at it.”
“Oh, aye. I suppose that must be it, although....” She glanced furtively about and lowered her voice. “I’ve heerd Tell the Cirke-master may’ve nipped it for his own reasons.”
“Nipped it?”
“Aye. It were a crystal, see. A big, old egg-size crystal. Just like that one.” She turned, putting her smudged little face into shadow, and pointed at the wall above the altar.
By the Kiss, thought Meredydd, how could one Prentice be so completely oblivious?
There was, indeed, a second stained glass window high above the altar. It was nearly identical to the first, right down to the crude stellar depiction of the Meri. But at the center of the star—analogous to the heart of that Divine Creature—was set a large, dust-dulled chunk of lead crystal the size of a child’s fist. Some egg.
There was a nervous fluttering in her Prentice heart of hearts. This could be it! The Gwenwyvar’s jewel. But, dear God, if this was it, how could she ever be expected to remove it and bring it back? Or was that a metaphor, just as the star, hovering over its glazen sea, was a metaphor for the Meri?
Perhaps there was some spiritual way in which she was expected to bring the jewel back to the Gwenwyvar’s pool.
Well, all right. If it was the Meri’s heart or spirit or essence that was meant.... Meredydd grimaced. But what if it was not the window crystal? What if it was the altar stone that now, with the cloud of vari-colored l
ight creeping down its granite flank, sparkled like the Cyne’s treasury? And in either case, was she to take a bit of one or the other to the Gwenwyvar physically or metaphysically? Automatically, her hand reached for her amulet.
“What’s the matter, mistress?” asked the little girl.
Meredydd brought her mind back to the present and her eyes back to the child’s face. It might have been a pretty face, she thought, if it were not for what were obviously bruises and abrasions on the pale, smudged cheeks.
“Is the Cirke-master about?”
At the mention of that person, the little urchin cringed, her mouth twisting. She uttered a nervous giggle. “Oh, I hopes not, mistress, or I’ll be out of here. I upsets him.”
“Upset him? How?”
The child’s head moved in an oddly adult gesture. “I’m sure only the First One knows tha’, mistress.”
“You see,” Meredydd said, deciding to confide a bit in the child. “I’m searching for something and it’s supposed to be in this village. Have you ever heard of the Gwenwyvar?”
“Oh, aye. Least I’ve heerd the Tell of her. Are you her?”
Meredydd laughed, delighted. Only a child would expect the Eibhilin to visit them on their own turf, come to them in their own form. “No, silly! Of course not! The Gwenwyvar is an Eibhilin spirit. Do I look like a Being of Light?”
“Yes, mistress. Just now you do.”
Meredydd realized she was standing smack in the middle of the window splash and laughed again, stepping aside. “There, see? I’m just like you. A girl. Just a girl searching for a jewel.”
“Why?”
“Oh. I didn’t say, did I? Because the Gwenwyvar told me to fetch it for her.”
The little girl glanced back up at the window above the altar. “And you think tha’s it, mistress? Tha’ old hunk of rock?”
“Well, it may be an old hunk of rock, but it represents the
Meri’s heart. Wouldn’t that make it a jewel?” She pondered the empty spot in the entry window. “Do you suppose the Cirke-master really took it?”
The urchin blushed right up to the roots of her pale hair.
“Oh, do forgive me for even sayin’ tha’, mistress. It were a mere magpie-tation of what I heerd. I’ve no right to go on about the cleirach. It weren’t a proper Tell at all.”
Meredydd was immediately sympathetic to the child’s sense of shame. Getting caught back-biting was probably one of the least pleasant situations to find oneself in. “Please,” she said, “you really said nothing so terrible. Tell me—Well, first of all tell me your name.”
The pale head bobbed. “Oh, it’s Gwynet, mistress. ‘Blessed,’ tha’ means.”
“Yes, I know. It’s a lovely name. Mine’s Meredydd.”
Gwynet’s eyes grew quite round. They were as pale and colorless as her hair. “Ooh, now tha’s a name as fair radiances magic. You ought to be marked for the Meri with a name like tha’.”
Meredydd blushed. “I pray that’s true, anyway. I’m....” She studied Gwynet’s earnest face for a moment. “I’m a Prentice, Gwynet. A Prentice on her Pilgrimage from Halig-liath. Have you heard—”
The girl’s head bobbed up and down with great animation. “Oh, surely, mistress. So, tha’s the purpose of your seekin’, then. I’m all of honor, mistress. And if I can help—”
Before Meredydd could say that she’d be most glad of anyone’s help, the side door of the sanctuary opened and a portly little man in the robes of a Cirke-master entered the room. He’d barely stepped through the door when his eyes were riveted on Gwynet and his mouth drawn into what was almost a snarl.
“Vile animal!” he spat at her. “Get your heathen carcass out of my Cirke! This is a house of God, damn you. Be gone!” And arms flapping wildly, he drove the child from the nave. She went swiftly and silently, with only a backward glance at Meredydd before she slipped between the front doors.
The Cirke-master turned on Meredydd, then, and gave her an arrogant, suspicious sweep of the eyes. They were small eyes, narrow and sooty with the gleam of anthracite coal. They pinned her in the panel of light and held her there for inspection.
“And who are you?” he asked. “I’ve never seen you before...have I?”
“No, sir. You haven’t. I’m Meredydd-a-Lagan from down-country. I was passing through Blaec-del and thought to visit the Cirke for my meditations.” She returned his suspicion with a dose of her own, meaning to ask him about his treatment of Gwynet. She thought better of it. First she’d plumb him for some information. She tried to make her voice and expression as ingenuous as possible. “Your Cirke feels like a place with great history. I’d love to hear the Tell of it, if you’ve time.”
The man’s face relaxed a bit and he nodded. “Aye, it’s got a great history, all right. But none of it particularly pleasant.”
He gestured around the sanctuary with his head. “The Cirke here, was built on a burial mound. That’s the local story, anyway. Two hundred years ago, more or less, when Liusadhe chased the Wicke out of Creiddylad, the folks here figured what was good for the Cyne was good for the common. They rounded up their local girls and proved them. Finding three of them wanting, they buried them.” He stomped his foot. “Right here. Right beneath this floor.”
He smiled almost fondly at the worn stones. “Built the Cirke on top of them. Keeps them down, you know. Keeps them from coming back.”
“That’s...horrible,” Meredydd said, staring at his feet.
The cleirach fixed her with a speculative look. “Aye. But this place is still cursed, for all there’s a House of God holding those damned creatures below. Place is evil. People are evil. Cursed.”
Meredydd was all but hypnotized by the chanting, musical quality of the man’s voice, by the way the light played about his face, making shadows crawl and cavort across its lumpy contours.
She swallowed. “That-that altar stone—is it from around here, sir? It’s a fine piece of work.” She pattered quickly to the stone’s smooth flank and ran a hand over the Star of the Sea worked crudely into the face.
The Cirke-master shrugged. “Brought it up out of the Bebhinn. Nothing special about the rock except for the amount of blood on it.”
She must have goggled, for he smiled and moved over to lay a hand on the granite block. “Oh, yes. Nothing so mysterious or exciting as our pagan ladies. No. Merely some casualties along the road from the quarry. They say three men were crushed beneath it.”
Meredydd winced; the hand stroking the stone stilled and moved to grasp at Wisdom. She straightened, rubbing the silver lump as if to sponge away the ancient blood. “How sad. I’m sure God would rather have had the three men than the fine stone.”
The cleirach studied her. “I’d not be so certain of that. I doubt they belonged properly to God. But then, you’d have to live around here to understand that, and you don’t, do you?”
“No, sir. No, I don’t. I’m from Nairne.”
“Far from home for a young cailin, aren’t you?”
“I have family hereabouts,” she said, thinking of Skeet waiting for her at the Gwenwyvar’s pool. It wasn’t really a lie.
“The windows are beautiful, too. Did a local craftsmen do them?”
“Not exactly. If you can believe the local legends, it was a craftswoman. Sister of the blaec-smythe, they say. Mixed her own glass, her own colors—a true gem among women. Actually, I find it hard to credit. Seems to me if she was that rare a talent, she’d’ve been buried with the other Wicke.”
He was studying her again, his eyes narrowed to mere slits. Who are you? they asked. What are you doing in my Cirke, asking me these questions?
Discomfited, Meredydd made a half-turn and an uncertain gesture at the entry window. “I notice the crystal is missing from that one. What happened to it?” When she turned back again, she found the Cirke-master had stepped down from the altar’s raised slab and was so close, she could feel his suspicion, prickly, against her face.
“You ask very many
questions for a little girl. Who are you? What do you really want here?”
“I’m not a little girl, sir. I am fifteen.” And a Prentice,
she’d been going to say, but decided against it. Instead, she drew herself to her full height and felt her initial sense of threat subside. The Cirke-master was very little taller than she was and did not appear to be in great health. If worse came to worst, she could easily slip away and outrun him. “I was passing through your village and happened to see the Cirke. I thought it might be just the place to rest and renew myself. And it’s natural of me to ask questions. I’m a very curious person.”
She was strolling up the aisle away from him during this little discourse, keeping him intentionally at a distance. Anyone who spoke so blithely of women lying buried beneath his feet unnerved her a little, no matter how small in stature he was.
“More than curious, I’d say,” he told her. “Bold...brazen, more like it. Do your folks know you’re out wandering the countryside?”
“My folks are dead, sir. Which is one of the reasons I am out wandering. I’m seeking a new...situation.” There. She’d done it without lying. Just rearranged the facts a bit....
The man’s brows—neat little black crescents—rose over his eyes. “Indeed? Well, perhaps a situation could be found for you here in Blaec-del. Do you cook, sew?”
“Well, sir. I don’t cook well, sir. And my sewing is poor, at best. But I’ve a way with medicinals...herbs and such. If you’ve a Healer in town, I could be of assistance.”
His sharp little eyes flew at her, battering her face.
Fleeing them, she glanced, again, at the entry window with its neat little hole. Perhaps the crystal had been of runeweave quality. If that were the case—
But the Cirke-master had caught the movement of her eyes. Suddenly agitated, he sprang after her up the aisle. “You seem most interested in that missing crystal, cailin. Do you think it special? Do you think you could...weave a rune with it?”
He’d caught her by surprise and she let it show. “What do you know of crystals and runeweave?” she asked.
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