Meri (20 page)

He’d caught her by surprise and she let it show. “What do
you know of crystals and runeweave?” she asked.

“Ah! Ah! What do
you
,
cailin? What do
you
know?” He fairly pranced
in the aisle now, and dew stood out on his round forehead, glistening like the
mica in his altar stone. “A Healer, is it? You have those talents, do you? And
do you use the crystals then?”

“Well, yes, sir. I was
apprenticed to—”

“I find that most interesting. Yes,
most
interesting. Did you know, cailin, that
there is, among the myriad legends of this wretched place, one that speaks of
the resurrection of the Wicke? Oh, aye,” he went on. “And at the hands of one
of their own. It’s a most interesting legend. I don’t believe it, of course.”

His eyes glowed, belying that. “An inauspicious female shall
redeem the souls of the Wicke of Blaec-del Cirke and free them. Absurd, of
course, since how can anyone redeem what those fiends never had—souls, I mean.
Wicke don’t have souls...do they?”

He was in her face again, mesmerizing her with his dulcet,
singy voice. “Do they?” he repeated, and raised his hand suddenly to her cheek.

She yipped and jumped aside, seeing, as she did, that he
held a star-shaped amulet in his hand. Worked from a metal plate, it covered
his whole palm.

“Ah-ha! See there! You fear it! The sign of the Meri. You
shrink from it!”

Recovering herself, Meredydd tried to resume some semblance
of composure. She smoothed the front of her tunic, running her hand over the
amulet there. “Nonsense,” she said. “You startled me, that’s all. Jumping at me
like that.”

“No, you’re afraid.” He held the star before his face. “Yes,
you’re the one, aren’t you? The Dark Sister come to rescue her soulless
cronies. Well, it won’t happen.
I’ll
see to
it.”

He stepped toward her, the star clutched in his hand, and
Meredydd did the only thing she could think of. She grabbed the talisman right
out of his fingers.

“There,” she said to his shocked face. “You see? I’m not at
all afraid of it. The Meri is the last thing in the world I’d be afraid of. I—”
Her eyes fell on the thing in her hand then, and she saw it clearly for the
first time. In the center of the silver, stellate plate was a crystal the size
of a large egg, which was almost certainly the one missing from the sanctuary
window.

Before she could decide what to make of that, the little
cleirach had wrested the talisman back again and concealed it beneath his
robes. “Get out of my sanctuary,” he hissed, “or your situation shall be the
same as your Dark Sisters—buried alive beneath this Cirke. I give you fair
warning, Wicke. This talisman possesses powers far greater than the one you
wear. And I will bring them to bear if you do not get out of Blaec-del. You
shall not free your sisters, nemesis. You shall not!”

He raised his hand again, this time apparently meaning to
strike her where she stood. The light of fanaticism inflamed his eyes and
Meredydd, knowing there was no balm made that would soothe that, turned and
fled the Cirke.

Intellectually, she knew the Sun was higher in the sky and
she had to allow that the mist seemed to have lightened visibly, but for all
that the little village of Blaec-del Cirke looked more dark and dismal than it
had when she’d first stumbled upon it. Her eyes swept the swaddled street for
any sign of Old Mors, but she didn’t see him. She needed a place to sit and
think. A place to decide how she was going to go about retrieving the crystal
talisman from that horrid Cirke-master.

A man of God, indeed. How dare
he even mention himself and God in the same breath? And to speak so
cold-bloodedly about burying people alive
....

Meredydd twitched and rubbed her arms, darting away from the
Cirke toward a shambling line of buildings along the street, afraid if she
tarried much longer before the sanctuary, she’d be able to hear the two hundred
year old screams of Blaec-del’s victims.

At the corner of the first building she met, she beheld
steps leading up to a wooden walkway. It seemed to stretch the length of the
building and even to continue on to the next, showing that at least some of the
denizens of Blaec-del preferred not to wallow in the mud. She mounted the steps
and moved along the facade.

It was a shop of some sort, she realized, and as she neared
the doorway, she saw two men go inside. Screwing up her courage, she followed
them.

Inside, there was the smell of leather and sweat, of oil and
tallow and smokeweed. The source of the latter was easy enough to see. A
wizened person who could be either male or female sat before a little black
parlor stove puffing on a horn pipe, while along a nearby counter, several
customers jostled each other for the mercer’s slow attention.

The shop seemed to sell a little of everything: Foodstuffs,
leather, small gardening implements, animal traps, lamp oil. Lumpy candles hung
from their wicks all along the fat, low beams that supported the dingy ceiling;
long strips of jerky were draped over a piece of twine stretched over the
counter; wooden dippers hung everywhere. It made Meredydd realize that she was
tremendously thirsty. She could tell by looking, that the only drink in this
place was the homemade brew being foisted upon the mercer by one of his
patrons.

“S’good stuff,” complained the brewer, shaking a
small-mouthed jug at the shopkeep. “Fresh as the mornin’ dew and ten times as
frisky.”

“Good stuff, is it? Care to explain then, how such good
stuff gutted old Tuathal? Man’s sick to death. To
death
,
I tell you. Spittin’ up blood this mornin’, his wife says.”

“No fault of mine if he’ll drink this stuff on empty
stomach. I tell him t’were not for breakin’ fast. Come, Ruhf, don’t be shunnin’
me, now. Ye’re my salvashin’.”

The mercer laughed. “Hadder ain’t buyin’?”

The brewer scowled and pecked at the filth that lay across his
knuckles. “Didn’t ’spect her to what with her thinkin’ my stuff done foul to
one of ’er payin’ customers.”

“Well, if she ain’t buyin’....”

“Damn you to hell, Ruhf! Ye’re a fine one t’talk! Every man
here knows ye’re the horse what had her filly. Why, if enough of us were to
give Hadder
that
Tell—”

The mercer, Ruhf, had the surly brewer by the scarf around
his throat before Meredydd could even squeak in surprise. He hauled the other
man half over the counter while the other customers looked on with a singular
lack of distress. “If ye breathe a whisper of tha’ to the old hag, I’ll treat
you the same as I treated the girl. Why d’you think she’s said naught of who
done her? She knows me fair well, now. Knows what I’m likely to do, angry.”

“Hadder’d ne’er believe her if she spilt it now, anyway,”
said one of the other men casually. “Not after she made up that grand Tell
about the magic buck leavin’ its spore on her belly.”

He wheezed and slapped at his leg. “Gawd-the-Spirit!” he
guffawed. “Magic buck!”

“Only Hadder’d believe something that wild,” chuckled Ruhf,
loosing his hold on the brewer’s kerchief, “Half Wicke, herself, I think.”

The brewer coughed and pointed across the counter. “It were
your belt buckle.”

Ruhf’s grip tightened again. “Which she’ll never take note
of. Will she?”

The brewer coughed again. “Maybe if you were to buy some
still—”

“Buy it?” roared the mercer. “I’ll make you
drink
it!” And, with his free hand he snagged a
jug of the brew from the counter and popped the cork out with his teeth.

The brewer squealed, the other men roared with laughter and
Ruhf hollered obscenities at the top of his lungs, all the while trying to
force the suspect liquid down his adversary’s throat.

Meredydd stood transfixed, completely unwilling to believe
that any of these people were any more than a figment of her Pilgrim’s
imagination.

I’m in an aislinn world
,
she thought.
I’ve fallen asleep somewhere in the
wood and I dream
.

She started to back toward the door, praying no one would
notice her amid the howling chaos in the room. But she would trip over an
uneven floorboard and the old person smoking by the cold stove would glance up
with rheumy eyes. The eyes pierced her and the gums clamped hard over their
pipestem.

“Who’re you? Who’re you?” The voice was as shrill as
breaking glass, as strident as a hawk’s hunting keen. The entire universe could
hear it. Every star, every sun, every being that ever lived on every planet.

Five pairs of eyes speared her where she stood, back to a
rough support beam. One man wondered if she’d heard everything said and if so,
she knew who to tell about it.

“Who’re you, cailin?” asked the mercer. “What ye want here?”

“Please, sir. A drink. I was just looking for someplace to
get a drink. A wayhouse?” She gestured at the street with one hand, saw it was
shaking and pulled it down to her side.

“Ye were listening,” accused the old one by the stove. “Ye
were pryin’.”

“That true, girl?” asked the mercer. “You hear aught?”

Lie, Meredydd. Lie
!
whispered a fierce voice in her rabbiting heart.

But her hesitation was enough to damn her. Ruhf let go the
brewer and came around the counter. “What’d ye hear, girl? What’d ye hear?”

He had huge hands; fists like flesh and bone mallets. He was
as broad as a century oak and around his thick waist was a studded belt with a
clasp shaped like a cloven, upside-down heart...or a buck’s hoof.

“I said, what’d ye hear?” Her hair in his fists, he yanked
her nearly off her feet.

Blood pounded in her ears, forcing fear down into her heart.
“Magic buck!” she cried. “I heard magic buck! That’s all, sir! Please!”

The mercer brought his face on a level with her own.
Bloodshot blue eyes ferreted for the truth. His fingers twisted her hair,
making her tremble with pain. “And do ye believe in this magic buck, cailin?”

“I do. Yes. There’s powerful magic in these forests, sir. I
do believe.”

“Ah, ye say that now, but what’ll ye tell Hadder, if she
asks?”

“I don’t know any Hadder!” Meredydd gasped as he yanked
again at her hair. “I’m not from Blaec-del!”

“She’s right there,” said one of the other men. “I’ve ne’er
seen her. And I’d be sure to recall such a fine pretty. You married, girl?”

“No, sir.”

He grinned. “My son’ll be interested to hear tha’. Come to
think,
I’m
interested to hear tha’.”

Ruhf guffawed. “And what difference to ye? You’ll poke
anything movin’ on two legs, if it swishes its skirts at ye.”

“Aye,” muttered the brewer, seemingly relieved the attention
was no longer on him. “I ne’er heerd ye ask the girls at Hadder’s if they’re
married or not.”

Meredydd cleared her throat, managing to coax it into
producing a semblance of speech. “I’m just passing through, sirs. Please, sirs,
a drink is all I want.”

Ruhf leered and all Meredydd’s hope of slipping quietly away
dissolved out from beneath her feet. “Drink is it?” He glanced back over his
hammy shoulder. “Okes, bring me a jug of that swill.”

Terrified and chafing at her own cowardice, Meredydd’s eyes
scoured the room for some source of help. It would certainly not come from any
of the other men. They watched her the way a pack of dogs watches a limping
grouse, intent on her pain, relishing it.

“Don’t do this, sir,” she said, keeping her voice even.

“And why not?”

“You will surely regret it.”
Oh,
won’t something fall on him? Won’t someone distract him
?

He laughed and glanced back at his cronies. “A threat! The
little cailin utters a threat!” He straightened completely then, his crown
catching the handle of a wooden dipper that hung from the beam over head. It
dropped, bringing with it two more dippers and a metal lantern. They pounced,
as if alive, upon his head and shoulders. He let go of Meredydd’s hair.

She leapt back a good three feet and started to turn, but
his hands were fast as well as large. He reached out and grasped her shoulder,
yanking her off balance. She found herself suddenly facing the door of the shop
and wishing, praying, that she was just now sailing through it to safety. She
even gave a half-hearted leap in that direction but just as suddenly, found
herself staring at Ruhf’s immense chest.

“Ruhf Airdsgainne, what are ye doin’? Where’s my Okes? Ah!
There!”

Rudely deposited on the rough floorboards, Meredydd could
only skitter aside and stare at the personage in the doorway. She nearly filled
it with her bulk and her skirts and her awesome height. If this was Okes’s
wife, she was more than his match in stature. She was almost, in fact, as big
as Ruhf. Entering it, she impressed herself upon the room, making it seem
suddenly much smaller and more cramped.

“Who’s this then?” she asked, glancing down at Meredydd.

“Just a girl seekin’ the wayhouse,” said Ruhf. He looked at
Meredydd. “It’s up the street. This side.” He bent to pick up the stuff that
had fallen from the beams, muttering about “useless girls.”

Okes’s lady collared her husband and ushered him out.

Meredydd made to slip away on their heels.

“Damn,” she heard the mercer snarl. “Where’s that good for
naught child when she’s wanted. Gwynet! Gwynet, come clean up!”

Meredydd paused in the doorway, frozen by the horrific idea
that this man was in some way related to the gentle, skittish little girl. As
if he sensed her gaze on him, Ruhf rose and faced her, eyes spewing hatred
across the dusty, rough-hewn floor. “Get out of here, you little bitch, or you’ll
know more of magic bucks than Hadder’s lame-brained get.”

She got out—fear pouring cold and electric through body and
soul. She ran up the rattly walkway, her eyes scraping along the buildings
searching for any sign that one of these horrid, grey shacks was the wayhouse.