Taminy (8 page)

Faer-wald
waved his hands as if to ward off the thoughts his crony was voicing. “No,
Ealad, I reject that. I reject it. Bevol may be aging, but I will not swear
that he is tetched. And Wyth is fresh from the Meri’s touch. Her Kiss is almost
unbearably luminous on him. How can you accuse him-”

“I
do not accuse him,” said Ealad-hach testily. “And you’re right, of course. It
is inconceivable that one of us should lie. No, we must assume that Wyth is
giving the Meri’s Tell. What we must use all our resources to determine is what
that Tell means. We must pray, brothers. We must pray for guidance. Our brother
Bevol is right in one thing: We cannot suffer this evil to remain faceless. We
must name it before we can fight it.”

oOo

Eyes
closed, the Osraed Wyth savored the caress of wind on his face. Laden with the
spices of the river and the silken cool of approaching autumn, it teased and
tempted him. He could smell the Backstere’s; he could taste the river. He
opened his eyes and let them wander the long, high, verdant valley—a bed of
green velvet upon which the Halig-tyne and her sentinel woods lay like a
necklace of emeralds and silver.

“I
feel as if I’ve been gone a lifetime,” he said. “I think I half expected to
come home to find my house empty and Halig-liath covered with vines. I thought
everything would be changed.”

Beside
him Bevol smiled and leaned elbows on the sun-warmed parapet. “Everything is
changed, Wyth, because you are changed.”

Wyth
followed his elder’s gaze to the bottom of Halig-liath’s great mount where the
Holy River wound about its base, and where, bright-hued and clean, the
doll-sized houses of Nairne cheerfully cluttered her banks. He felt as if he
could reach down and snatch that villager just leaving the tavern. Snatch him
up and plop him down onto the deck of one of those little, toy fishing boats
bobbing along the quay.

“That
isn’t enough. Not for Her. Not for the Meri. She wants Halig-liath to
change—and soon. She wants the order of things to change.”

“You
will give a full account tomorrow, if you are able.”

“Will
I also give the Pilgrim’s Tell before Cyne Colfre at Mertuile? Or will he send
his ambassador up again this year?”

“Ah.”
Bevol’s gaze went down the river and out to Sea, making Wyth suspect he could
see all the way to Creiddylad. “Well, as a matter of fact, we have heard
nothing from our Cyne about this year’s Grand Tell. A message from the Privy
Council told us only that our monarch is involved in delicate negotiations with
a delegation from the South. That the royal Court may not receive us again this
year. There was no mention of any ambassador. I believe you will have to give
the Tell to only these hallowed walls and the good citizens of Nairne village.”
His hands gestured up and back toward the Fortress above them, then swept the
panorama below. “If you’ve no objection, the Osraed Council favors this coming
Cirke-dag. Lealbhallain is eager to be off on his mission.”

“I’m
agreeable,” Wyth said. “Will you now tell me about Meredydd?”

Bevol
did not take his eyes from the valley. “When you are more rested.”

“Please,
sir. Don’t put me off. I want to know.”

Bevol
glanced at him askew, then nodded. “Very well. I will tell you of her last
moments, as I promised.” He took a deep breath. “Come into my sanctum and I
will Weave it for you.”

Wyth
followed the older Osraed back along the parapet and into the cliff face
through a doorway laboriously hewn there centuries before. There had been
colorful little tiles around it once, but they had discolored in high wind and
hard winter or fallen away. Through dim, cool passages smelling of earth musk
and time, Bevol led the way to his private chambers, the place he studied and
wove inyx, prayed and meditated. With a tingle of delicious longing, Wyth knew
he would soon have such a place of his own. He ran a hand along the cool
walls—walls that had seen the passage of hundreds of Osraed and felt the caress
of their fingers as they went to and fro in the Holy Fortress’s secret heart of
hearts.

It
was to a circular inner chamber within his offices that Bevol led his guest—a
room that took light from a series of arcing shafts cut through the native
stone above, and ending high on the roof top of the Academy’s South Wing. Light
cascaded down the paneled walls, leaving the core of the little cell in partial
darkness. A palpable darkness, Wyth thought, that seemed to pace the heart of
the chamber like a restive cat.

“Please
sit,” invited Bevol, and Wyth did, finding the padded bench about the perimeter
of the circle a more than adequate perch.

Seating
himself, Bevol placed something on the floor at the heart of the living darkness
and sat back, his eyes on the spot. It was a crystal. One of the largest,
clearest crystals Wyth had ever seen—a crystal that seemed to suck the timid
light away from the safety of the walls to trap it within.

“I
have already described Meredydd’s Pilgrimage to you. She did well, though she
didn’t know it. She chose wisdom as her guide, found the Gwenwyvar, saved
Gwynet-a-Blaecdel from certain destruction and found, in herself, the ability
to channel healing. Yet, her greatest test came during her vigil.”

Bevol’s
hands moved, drawing Wyth’s attention down to the great, clear stone. The
thick, light-spangled darkness around it began to eddy. “It was a long,
difficult vigil, tested by wind and rain. She confronted loss, guilt,
vengeance, self-loathing and love. Do you see her waiting, Wyth?”

“Yes!”
he whispered and didn’t lie. In the darkness before him, she sat, woven from
the warp of the crystal and the woof of Bevol’s mind. She sat conversing with
ghosts, consorting with her own spirit, expelling her own demons. He saw her
mother and father in the parade of wraiths. He saw himself.

“She
fought her own exhaustion and lost; she fought a storm to a draw. And when it
was over, when she thought herself lost, the Light came into the water. She had
been preparing to leave, but there the Meri was.”

“Green!”
exclaimed Wyth softly. “The Light is emerald green. Leal went the next week and
said it was amber. It was amber when I went.”

“So
it was ...Watch.” Bevol directed his gaze back to the pool of vision. “The Light
excited Meredydd beyond joy and she leapt up to see if Skeet was watching her
Great Moment. But Skeet was watching naught but his own soul slip away.”

Wyth
could see the boy as Meredydd had seen him, face down in the shallows like a
sodden doll. He felt the tearing of her spirit between the advancing Light and
the boy’s advancing darkness. He watched her make a choice of which he could
only say that it was just like her—just like her to use every ounce of herself
in one inyx. To sing all of her soul into one duan.

Huddled
over Skeet’s limp form, she drew Light from the ether and poured it into his
failing heart. Then she breathed life into his lungs.

Wyth
was amazed to the core. If he had always known Meredydd-a-Lagan was
exceptional, he had never suspected she was invested with that powerful a Gift.
“But ...” he whispered, “only an Osraed can restore life, and even then ...Has
she been accepted without ever having seen the Meri?” He shook his head and
spread his fingers toward the aislinn pool in a gesture of bemusement. “What am
I seeing?”

“A
birth,” said Bevol. “Watch. What do you see?”

He
saw a darkened empty strand and felt his spirit fall heavily. “The Light is
gone. The Meri has abandoned her.”

“Ah,”
breathed Bevol. “Ah, but see—she returns to her post. Steadfast, disciplined,
she waits once more until ...”

Until
she began to shift uneasily in the sand and rub at her arms as if chilled or in
some other discomfort. Until the chafing became fevered and turned to anguished
clawing. Until scrapes and scraps and ribbons of cloth began to come away in
her hands and fall to the sand. Until there was no cloth left to rend.

Horrified,
heart plummeting from throat to stomach, Wyth watched the aislinn Meredydd
shred first her clothes, then her flesh until ... until ...

He
was astonished and ashamed, rocked by waves of wonder and fear. Her naked,
golden radiance was beyond beauty, as if, with clouds torn back, he glimpsed a
corner of heaven. He felt as if he had stolen a look at God’s face. No, not God’s
face, but ...

Wyth’s
breath caught in his lungs as the golden, gleaming Being that had been
Meredydd-a-Lagan stepped into a Sea that throbbed with emerald glory to meet a
second Eibhilin creature face to face. Together, arm in radiant arm, they slid
beneath the waves.

Wyth
dared breathe, the air leaving his body reluctantly as if it might never
return. “Then it’s true. Meredydd is a Being of Light—one with-”

Bevol
raised a hand. “But it’s not over. Watch.”

The
waters within Bevol’s aislinn pool of tame darkness pulsed and flickered with
ghostly lightnings of gold and green. Then, from the roiled brilliance stepped
a Being of verdant luminosity. She came to shore, losing her radiance drop by
drop until she stood in naked humanity, peering out of the vision pool with
laughing green eyes.

“Oh,
Master Bevol,” she said, “I haven’t breathed in a hundred years!”

The
image floated, static, the words echoing softly from the girl’s parted lips
while over one white shoulder, Wyth glimpsed a Face in the gleaming waves—a Face
of holy flame with garnets for eyes. His senses blew past the already fading
image of the strange cailin and collected themselves before that Face, clinging
until nothing remained but translucent darkness, prowling in silent circles
like a black cat seeking a resting place. And Wyth sat watching it, waiting for
his soul to return from a journey it hadn’t, perhaps, been ready to take.

Bevol
leaned toward him across the circle. “What did you see?” the elder Osraed
asked, eyes tight and watchful.

“A
birth,” said Wyth. “I believe I have seen a birth.”

Bevol
nodded. “Of more than you know.”

Wyth
at last made his eyes focus on the other’s face.

“Then
...” Dare he put it into words? “Then Meredydd has become ... the Meri?”

Bevol
smiled. “Essentially correct. She hosts the Meri’s Spirit and gives substance
to Her Essence.”

“But
this is what Osraed Ealad-hach has dreamed, is it not?”

“Yes.”

“He
believes it is death.”

Again
Bevol nodded. “It is that, too,” he said.

oOo

He
was utterly exhausted by the time he reached Arundel. Exhausted and overwhelmed
by his new knowledge. There were still things he didn’t understand; who the
girl was that came out of the Sea as Meredydd entered it; how Ealad-hach could
find so much to fear in the idea that a female might be Osraed; and how he had
not recognized Meredydd in the Meri when he saw Her.

Dear
God, when She kissed him!

What
was he to do now, he puzzled. In light of all he knew, what must his next task
be? She would tell him, of course. He knew that as surely as he knew he
breathed. But his certitude was underpinned with white terror; given what he
now knew, what would the touch of the Meri’s spirit feel like when it next came
over him?

It
was darkening as Killian, in his last task as Wyth’s Weard, drove the new
Osraed out to his family estate. No longer bored, the younger boy was still
agog with the events he had witnessed. He would return to his own family and
regale his relations and friends with tales of how a great, gleaming creature
plucked Wyth from the beach and attempted to devour him.

But
he would have to give his tell soon, for every night of sleep would separate
him further from the already corrupted memory. In a week he would remember the
Pilgrimage as only marginally eventful and pray his would be more spectacular.

Deposited
before Arundel Manor, Wyth stood and listened to the creak and rattle of the
Nairne-bound carriage. He stood, staring at the house’s brick facade as a moon
peeked shyly over the eastern hills. Dim lights went on in several first floor
windows, dashing his hopes that his mother might not be at home.

He
inhaled deeply of the cool, fragrant air and followed Killian’s progress across
the Bridge to Lagan. His errant thought of Meredydd he withered where it
bloomed, ears groping for the rush of the Halig-tyne. She crooned in sweet
sibilance, pulling his thoughts away downstream to wash them.

Wyth
stirred and considered picking up his pack and opening the door. But the door
was already opening, he realized, and he stood, dumb, peering into the dark
entry way.

“Who
is it, please?” asked a familiar, scratchy voice, then, “Oh, but it’s Master
Wyth—oh!” And the manservant ran, leaving the door wide open.

Smiling,
Wyth shouldered his pack and stepped inside, closing the heavy carved door
behind him. The hall was dim, lit only by the wicks of two floor lamps on
either side of the stair. The servants hadn’t gotten to lighting the door lamps
yet, nor any of the upstairs lights, it seemed. But the dark was soothing to
Wyth. It was muted, peaceful. He desired peace and quiet above all things just
now.

He
was not to have it. He was at the center of the large entry when the servant
reappeared from the direction of the dining chamber, followed closely by the
Moireach Arundel.

“Wyth!
Wyth, you’re home! Dear God!” She slipped past the gawping servant and hurried
to her son’s side. Her eyes went at once to his forehead and read his success.
She stopped, hands hovering halfway to her mouth, eyes huge and flowing with a
slurry of swift-passing emotions. Wyth could not read any of them with external
senses, yet knew them to be ambiguous.

Pride
won out, and the Moireach waved at the staring manservant. “Lights, Adken!
Lights! All must see my son’s triumph!”