Meri (19 page)

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 light 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
crafts
woman
. 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?”