Meri

by Bohnhoff, Maya Kaathryn

  Meredydd shook her head, torn between wonder and terror at Lufu’s assessment of Taminy-a-Cuinn.

  “Make him tell you. Say, Lufu bids it. Now—” She popped to her feet, interview at an end, and strode toward a dark passage along the rear flank of the roof. “Follow,” she said, and Meredydd jumped to obey.

  The corridor into which they passed was almost completely darkened and smelled pleasantly of earth-musk. It curved this way and that and Meredydd could feel rather than see the irregular doorways alongside. They had gone perhaps five or six yards when Mam Lufu disappeared into one of the black-on-black holes in the uneven earthen walls.

  Heart rabbit-beating in her chest, Meredydd hurried to catch up. By the time she reached the aperture, it was emitting a ruddy glow that warmed to gold as she entered.

  The room was small and completely circular. It fit the environs of Mam Lufu’s strange hovel perfectly and not at all. The floors were of polished oak and the walls of vertical slats of white fir alternating with a darker wood. Meredydd glanced back over her shoulder at the doorway. Somehow she had known it would no longer look like a hole carved out of a tunnel wall. It was a round-topped arch with a capstone and edging of jasper.

  Mam Lufu moved across the diameter of the chamber to an altar of sorts. It hugged a curving section of wall and had a polished cedar top—a lid, Meredydd realized as Mam Lufu opened it. The two semi-crescent halves swung up and away, revealing that the inside was hollow. From the dark interior, the woman removed a large, flat box. She closed the twained lid and set the box down atop it.

  “Come, child,” she beckoned Meredydd. “Look.”

  Meredydd came. And looked. The top of the box was beautifully wrought with what she recognized as a Pilgrim’s Rune in the form of a ship. Meredydd stretched forth a hand to caress the satiny wood, running astonished fingers from prow to sternpost. A curl of cloud crested beneath the keel where waves might have been; it seemed to undulate under her fingertips.

  “Open it, child.”

  Meredydd glanced at Mam Lufu’s intent face, then reluctantly, loathe to lose sight of that wonderful flying carrack, lifted the lid of the box.

  The amulets were just as she had seen them in the dream Solstice Eve. But despite her ardent wish, none of the three glowed or shimmered or made her thrill when her eyes touched it. In fact, they looked very much the same—homely little lumps of some silver metal, each on a piece of colorful cord. Meredydd recognized the colors; there was the red of Power—that must be the Sight; the blue of Healing; the gold of Intelligence—that would be wisdom.

  She studied them almost mindlessly in the mellow amber light that fell from somewhere overhead. Eyes half-focused, she was aware of Mam Lufu only dimly—as a presence rather than a person.

  The pull of the Sight amulet was strong, calling her to a knowledge she was no longer certain she wanted. She rejected that immediately, distrusting the attraction. Healing, then, or Wisdom. One practical, the other esoteric, both broad in their application.

  Osraed Bevol had always taught her to tread the spiritual path with practical feet. Healing. Her hand reached, hovered over the amulet on the blue thong. Her eyes flicked sideways, trying to catch a glimpse of Mam Lufu’s face, but the woman had disappeared and Meredydd couldn’t be sure whether she had faded into the ether or backed away. There was no help there.

  Wrong, Meredydd! she chastised herself. This is your decision, not Mam Lufu’s. The task is for you to decide which is the most important amulet, not guess which Mam Lufu or the Osraed Bevol thinks is most important.

  She stared at them hard, then—three nearly identical lumps of metal on three colorful cords. The Sight amulet tugged at her again, whispering of certain knowledge of secret acts, counseling revenge. She was dismayed to realize how important that still was to her.

  She forced her attention to the Healing talisman. There lay true importance, and with no taint of personal gain to cloud the issue. Ah, but perhaps that was the test. Perhaps to own the Sight amulet while not using it for her own gratification was the point of the exercise.

  Then, again, perhaps it was not.

  In the split second that she caught herself wishing for it, realizing she needed it to make this decision, her hand closed over the amulet on the golden thong. There was no brilliant flash of light, no thunder, nothing to indicate that she had made the right choice. Only a flash of certitude—which swiftly faded.

  She turned, finding Mam Lufu behind her, and held out the amulet, golden cord dangling between her fingers. “I choose Wisdom,” she said.

  Mam Lufu nodded and smiled and Meredydd suspected she would have nodded and smiled regardless of which shiny lump had been proffered to her.

  “Take it to your master,” she said. “And may God bless you.”

  Numbly, Meredydd followed the woman out to the dark corridor and back toward the main part of the hovel, clutching the amulet against her breast.

  Is it the right one? she longed to ask. Did I make the wisest choice in choosing Wisdom?

  Instead, when they reached the crowded, thatched entry, Meredydd turned to Mam Lufu and asked, “Were you really alive when Taminy was a Pilgrim?”

  Mam Lufu smiled, showing even, white teeth. “Aye.”

  “Are you Wicke?”

  The woman laughed. “And what is that, Meredydd-a-Lagan? Is a woman Wicke ’cause she doesn’t think as others do? Is she Wicke ’cause she tends other fires than her own, blesses other crops or births other babies? Does healing make one Wicke, or arriving from nowhere, or too long a life? Is a woman Wicke when she’s known to all and understood by none? Are you Wicke, Meredydd-a-Lagan? Or are you Osraed-to-be? Or are you more or less or none or all?”

  Meredydd could only stare and wish she had more time to spend with Mam Lufu, Wicke or not. But, Mam Lufu, still chuckling, patted her cheek with a calloused hand and turned to go.

  “Thank you,” said Meredydd, at last, and watched the woman disappear into her house of reeds and earth.

  It was only as she mounted the slope of the meadow that Meredydd noticed the position of the Sun in the sky. Where it had been on this side, now it was on that. An entire morning had passed into late afternoon while she was with Mam Lufu, and now hurried toward evening. Meredydd hurried with it, down the grassy track toward the village.

  Osraed Bevol was in the dining room of the wayhouse, sitting at a rough-hewn table beneath a fire-globe that cast its warm light in a circular pool about him. He smiled at her when she entered, caught and held her with his eyes even before she swam into his pool of light.

  “I’ve had a busy day, Meredydd,” he told her. “These folk see the Osraed so seldom, they take full advantage of one when he appears. We have a place for the night here. The house-keep was grateful for a small favor we did his family. Skeet is just seeing to our evening meal.”

  Meredydd nodded, barely hearing him. She held out her hand and let the amulet swing from her fingers before dropping it gently into her master’s outstretched palm. His eyes followed it, the expression in them changing not at all.

  “Wisdom,” he said. “And what made you choose Wisdom?”

  “The need for it, Master.”

  “Ah.”

  That was it, then—just, “Ah?” She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She didn’t know whether she had succeeded or failed. She sat heavily in the chair opposite the Osraed, exhaustion of several kinds finally catching her up. Her eyes fell, unfocused, on the little amulet.

  Osraed Bevol turned it in his gnarled fingers (When had they become so bent or his hands so pale and veined? Had it been Healing she was to have brought to him? Had she, in a moment, of personal uncertainty, cheated him of renewed life?), then held it out to her.

  “Here, put it on.”

  “What?” Meredydd stared stupidly at the golden thong with its shiny, misshapen pendant. “What?”

  “Put it on. It’s for you.”

  “But I thought it was for you.”

  He sh
rugged. “I have chests full of amulets. This is your first. Wear it. Let it remind you of this day, this place.”

  “And Mam Lufu.”

  “And Mam Lufu.”

  “Who is she, Master? Is she Wicke?”

  “Some people call her that.” He smiled. “I’m sure that’s what Ealad-hach would call her.”

  “But is that what she is?”

  “Well, anwyl, what if we were to agree that a Wicke is any female who is talented and empowered in the manner of the Osraed, but who is not Osraed? And that having agreed upon that, we then agree that Mam Lufu is such a female.”

  “Then she is Wicke.”

  “So it would seem.”

  “And isn’t that evil?”

  “Is it? How so? She is a part of your Pilgrimage and that makes her an instrument of the Meri. How can an instrument of the Meri be evil?”

  Meredydd considered that. “Well, I don’t see how, but I know Ealad-hach would consider her to be evil.”

  “And?”

  “And he’s Osraed.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning he should know.”

  Osraed Bevol’s mouth curled at the corners. “Or should know better. Think, anwyl. I am also Osraed—more recently than Ealad-hach, as it happens. Yet I tell you Mam Lufu is not evil.”

  “Then one of you is wrong.”

  “Obviously.”

  “Then...doesn’t the Meri communicate Her Truth to you after you have become Osraed? I thought—”

  “She communicates to some and not to others. It depends.”

  “On what, Master?”

  He raised the hand holding the amulet and swung it before her. “On this, anwyl. On wisdom. On purity of heart. On clarity. Wear this and remember that it is possible for a man or a woman to be once enlightened and yet wander back into darkness.”

  Meredydd took the amulet in numb fingers and put it around her neck, slipping the pendant down inside the loose collar of her sous-shirt. She held her breath for a moment, then exhaled and blinked. “I don’t feel any different.”

  “No?”

  “No. I don’t feel any wiser.”

  “How would you know?”

  She considered that. “I’d know more, wouldn’t I?”

  “Wisdom and knowledge are two different things, anwyl. Like the two wings of the bird of the human intellect. Knowledge is a thing—inert, inactive. Wisdom is knowing what to do with that thing. Knowledge is acquired; Wisdom is grown.”

  “Then I haven’t grown any wisdom, have I?”

  “You have enough to know you need more.” He smiled.

  She looked at him—dark eyes to light—and smiled in return. That was as close to success as she needed to come. Perhaps there had been no right choice, perhaps there had been only a right attitude. Perhaps she had at least that much.

  “Master, Mam Lufu said I was to have you tell me the story of the Lover and the Wakemen.”

  “Did she? And what made her suggest this, do you think?”

  “We were talking about Taminy-a-Cuinn. About her fate...and mine. Mam Lufu said Taminy deserved her fate and that I would deserve mine. Then, she said you must tell me the tale of the Lover and the Wakemen.”

  “Then I’ll tell it.” He gazed for a moment at the time-polished wood of the table top between them as if the tale was being enacted there. Meredydd found her eyes following his, trying to see scenes in the grain of the worn wood.

  “There was,” he began, “a young man of Creiddylad whose name has long been forgotten. He was in love with the daughter of a wealthy mercer. He had first caught a glimpse of her in the crowd at market, and had spoken to her later at Solstice Festival and had fallen quite in love. Well, he discovered she had moved from Creiddylad and had returned to her ancestral home in a city far up the coast. So he followed her. But all he knew was her given name—he’d never asked after her family—and when he reached the city where she lived, he found he had no idea at all where to begin his search.

  “The young man got a room at an inn near where there were the grand homes of many mercers and cleirachs and scholars. He searched for his Beloved by day, every day, but he never saw her. He searched for her by night, but never glimpsed her face. At last, in despair, after endless nights of sleeplessness, the young man gave up and began wandering aimlessly about the darkened city. Well, at last the wakemen, patrolling the night streets, saw him, and thinking by his disheveled appearance that he must be a thief, they began to pursue him.”

  “What did he do?” asked Meredydd, completely engrossed in the tale.

  “Well, he ran. What would you do if you were being chased through the cold, dark streets of a strange city by big, armed men?”

  Meredydd smiled. “Run.”

  “No doubt. And that is what the young man did. He ran and they followed, shouting at him to stop, calling him a thief and, at last, firing on him with bow and shot. He ran until he was exhausted. No, he ran until he was past exhaustion. And as he ran he thought, ‘Surely these wakemen are daemons from some abyss pursuing me for my immortal soul. They will catch me and I shall die without ever seeing my Beloved again.’ And he bemoaned his fate most pitifully.

  “Well at last, he entered a blind alley, bordered by tall walls. And when he reached its end, he realized that he was trapped and that the only way he could escape the wakemen was to climb the huge, high wall before him. Crying and terrified, the young man climbed the wall, painfully, arduously—for his very life now depended upon it. He climbed all the way to the top of that wall, but when he got to the top, he slipped and fell to the ground on the opposite side.”

  “And?” asked Meredydd, when he paused to look at her.

  “The young man saw that he was in a garden and in that garden was a light moving across the grass. He went toward the light and when he reached the place where the light was born, he saw his own dear Beloved holding a lamp and searching for a ring that he had given her—a ring she had lost and thought never to see again.”

  Osraed Bevol sat back in the rough chair and cocked his head to one side. “What do you think our young friend thought of those wakemen then, anwyl? Do you think he would still call them abysmal daemons?”

  “If he could have seen the end of his quest, or she the result of her loss—” Meredydd began.

  “Ah,” said Bevol, “but we never can, can we?” He broke his eyes from hers, then, and waved at someone across the room. “Ah, good. Here’s Skeet with our dinner.” He glanced back at her and patted her hand where it lay on the table. “The end, anwyl. The goal. That is what any quest is about, is it not?”

  She could only nod and rub the little lump of metal she wore close to her heart.

  o0o

  He was in the throne room. The throne room of Cyne Liusadhe. Lofty, it was. Mighty. So high of ceiling that the nether corners were lost to sight and the tops of the great arches were draped in night even in broadest daylight.

  Before the throne of Cyne Liusadhe stood eleven women. The oldest was eighty; the youngest was fourteen. Different, they were, in form and face, but alike in defiance. Heads up, eyes focused on the Cyne as if they feared him not at all.

  Brazen, he thought, looking down on them from somewhere and nowhere. Horrid, brazen creatures, black as the darkness that spawned them. Wicked as the vanity which urged them to pretend to greatness, which led them to parade before all their evil talents.

  Their sentence was being pronounced now, by the Cyne himself.

  “Wicke,” he said. “Ye are all Wicke—Dark Sisters. We abhor you, yet we are merciful. Ye shall not die. Ye shall be banished only. Leave here, Dark Sisters, and never return.

  Creiddylad is death to you, for if ye return to it then ye shall suffer death. Indeed, to your families, ye are dead already.”

  Generous, was Liusadhe, and the unborn Osraed, from his ethereal vantage point, nearly wept at the knowledge of what that generosity would mean.

  The women were led away to a place outside the city w
here their guards turned them loose upon the road.

  Oh, that you would have killed them, he thought, and watched them as they linked hands and bowed their heads and formed a circle there. They began to pray.

  Blasphemers!

  Their bodies swayed in time to some unheard rhythm, their feet shuffled upon the sandy roadbed.

  Ah, if only he had hands and might close his ears! But he had no hands. He had no body. And so, he listened to their prayers and their duans and made no sense of their words. It was forgiveness they asked for, not for themselves—oh no, their wickedness was too complete for that. They begged forgiveness for the Cyne in his palace, for the Osraed in their Holy Fortress, for the people who had served them up for exile.

  Dear God! How did they dare?

  But they did dare and stood and swayed upon the road until it was near dark. Only then did they cease their profanity and begin to move away. They had gone only a few yards when one turned back, hearing the approach of horses, and pointed. Perhaps, he thought, the soldiers would return to render them forever silent, forever impotent. But no, they were smiling, laughing, pointing, as out of the darkness came wagons and horses and men and children.

  He could see it clearly now, what their evil ministrations had wrought. The ones they had left behind, the ones who had been ordered to think of them as dead, these creatures had, with their hideous powers, drawn from the safety of Creiddylad into the night.

  Now, he did weep. He could even hear his own voice, a thin wail in his ears, as he watched the women embrace their men and children, climb aboard their wagons and disappear into the sea mists. Soon those mists became too thick to penetrate and he drifted for a time, his sorrow a blunted ache in his nonexistent breast.

  Then, at the edge of his senses, he heard it, the lapping of water upon the sand. The whisper of waves. And he saw a lone figure detach itself from the mists and move out upon a shore he could but dimly perceive. It was a girl. One of the eleven, he realized. The youngest of them. She had hair as black as a raven’s wing and eyes the color of a cloud’s belly. And she stood upon the shore as boldly and as brazenly as she had stood before the Cyne, her queer silver eyes fixed upon the waves as they had been fixed upon the royal countenance.