"How can you countenance such a change, Saxan? How can the Osraed? In six hundred years-"

"Yes, yes, I know. In six hundred years-and five-there have been no sanctioned female Prentices at Halig-liath. Well, none except Meredydd-a-Lagan, and she was barely tolerated." He shook his head. "Understand, Ardis-we have no choice. Wyth is the Meri's elect. We cannot argue with either Her selection or Her directives." He turned his gaze to the three girls sitting along the sides of the long table. "What do you think?" he asked them. "You, Aine-would you go to Halig-liath?"

Aine's face blazed in sudden color. "Me, sir? Never!"

"And why not?"

"Well, it's not proper, sir. I'm a Lorimer's daughter; I'm expected to pick up a piece of the trade. My father's not taught me the making of bits and harnesses to have me scrap all and become a Prentice."

"But you've brothers to take the trade, Aine. And neither of them has ever shown a bit of interest in a divine education. What about you?"

"No, sir. I am too old and I've no Gift, thank God. If I did, I'd hide it as deep as I could."

"But I've just told you, Osraed Wyth has brought us the Meri's own word. She has enabled you."

Aine was adamant. "I have a gift for only the Lorimer's art, Master Saxan. I fancy I throw a buck stitch better than either of my brothers."

Saxan pursed his lips, his eyes shifting to the opposite side of the table. "Taminy? What do you say? Would you go to Halig-liath?"

"Well, sir, to be honest, my education has been so complete, I feel as if I have already been. Halig-liath is not for me, now. But I believe it is the highest calling for others. Our Gwynet has a real Gift. It only makes sense that she should learn the handling of it."

Iseabal flinched as her father, nodding, moved his eyes to her. "Isha, would you wish to go to Halig-liath?"

She stared at her lap. "I ... surely I've no Gift."

Nonsense, someone murmured. Iseabal thought it was Taminy, but no one else seemed to have heard her. It came to her then, as clearly as if she relived it-her hands cupped around the crystal, Ileane, the warmth permeating her palms, the light inspiring her eyes. She blushed a deep rose.

"What if it was shown that you did have a Gift?" Saxan leaned forward in his chair.

"Saxan, stop this," pleaded his Mistress. "You're asking your daughter to entertain heretical thoughts. Imagine our Iseabal weaving Runes and-"

"Osraed Wyth has said those thoughts are not heretical." The Osraed's eyes never left his daughter's face. "Come, Isha, tell me. If you could go to Halig-liath ...?"

Iseabal raised her eyes and looked down the table at her father. "I would, papa."

"Iseabal!" Her mother was gaping at her, clearly horrified. "How can you say that so calmly? How can you have had such desires and I not know it?"

"I didn't know, either," murmured Iseabal.

"Dear God, child, what inspires you to such a thought-that you have a Gift?"

Face blazing, fingers twisting tortuously in her lap, Iseabal shook her head mutely. She saw Aine glance across the table at Taminy. I know, her eyes said, and she opened her mouth to say it aloud.

"It's my doing," Iseabal said quickly. "It's my thought-no one put it into my head."

Her father raised his hand to forestall his wife's retort. "What makes you think you may have a Gift, Isha?"

Taminy spoke, then. "She has a Gift, Osraed Saxan. I've seen the evidence of it. Seen it and felt it."

Iseabal's mother uttered a cry of complete disbelief. "What evidence? What evidence could you have seen-or understood? These things are for the Osraed, not for children."

Osraed Saxan rose from the table, then, and left the room, leaving his wife and young guests in unanswered turmoil.

"What is it, Saxan?" his wife cried. "Where are you going? What is the girl talking about?"

She had risen and trailed her husband as far as the gracefully arched doorway to the central hall when he reappeared from the room opposite, carrying something in his hands. Ardis-a-Nairnecirke glanced at his face as he passed her, then, hand over her mouth, followed him silently back to the table.

Iseabal's eyes were on the thing in his hands-a wooden box carved with Runes. She knew it had a green velvet lining, and she knew what nested in that green velvet lining. She had spent hours in childhood staring at it. Now, her father opened the box and held it out to her. The egg-sized crystal in its verdant glen winked and sparkled and played with the light of candle and globe.

"Take it," he said. "Hold it in your hands."

The crystal swam out of focus. Iseabal blinked and raised her eyes to her father's, trying to read them-to read him. She could not. With trembling hands, she lifted the crystal from its bed and cupped it. She held it before her face, barely aware that the lights in the room were dimming; that her father called them down, hand raised, fingers flexed as if pulling light from the room. She kept her eyes on the crystal, quivering, aware only of it and of a warm presence at her shoulder.

Taminy. Taminy watched her. Smiled on her.

She heard her mother gasp, saw Aine rise slowly from her chair. In her hands the crystal, Perahta, threw forth a sudden pulse of warm light-light that kissed her face and heated her palms. Forgetful of everything but the crystal, blind to everything but its light, deaf to her mother's sobs and her father's murmured prayer, Iseabal smiled.

She stood with her back to the room and wondered at how autumn seemed to be creeping up on them early this year. Already there was a sharpness to evenings, and mornings were reluctant to shed their chill. Saxan had set a fire which now rustled in the grate across the room, but she did not feel warm. Outside their bedroom window, the Cirkeyard was all black and silver-white, there was no warmth in the moonlight that lay, gauzy and snow-like, over gravestone and runepost.

The dead slept or lived elsewhere, unbothered by today's revelations. They had no reason to care that Ardis-a-Nairnecirke's conceptions of right and wrong had been challenged and toppled by the words of an eighteen-year-old youth.

And her daughter-she'd raised her well, she'd thought, with a sense of propriety. No, it was more than a matter of propriety, this. There were deeper issues. Iseabal, hankering to Weave! When had it begun? Mustn't it have to do with Bevol and his freakish wards?

"I've seen the evidence," that strange girl had said.

Iseabal had the Gift. Such evidence she could have seen only if she possessed that Gift herself. Only if she new exactly what to look for. Only if she was- Ardis couldn't allow herself to even think the word. Iseabal would have to be kept from her, of course. Then the odd attraction would fade.

"Well, Ardis?"

Her back went up straight at the sound of his voice. She strove to make it relax. "Well, what, Saxan?"

"What do you think of our Iseabal going up to Halig-liath in the fall?"

As if he was discussing her taking a jaunt to Tuine! "I think it shall not happen."

She heard the whisper of cloth as he shrugged or gestured. "And why not? She wants to go."

"There is no reason. It's unwarranted."

"Unwarranted? Ardis, she has the Gift."

"I won't believe it. That girl of Bevol's only makes her think she has a Gift."

His breath rode out on a sigh. "Ardis, Ardis, dear, you saw with your own eyes how the crystal behaved in her hands."

"It was Bevol's girl. I should have known better than to let her befriend someone from that household. I should have known that any child Osraed Bevol brought to Nairne must be dyed to the same hue as Meredydd-a-Lagan. We were foolish enough to think a friendship with Iseabal would bleach that stain. I made the same mistake with this one. It's the dark of the dye that spreads, not the whiteness of the pure cloth."

Behind her, Saxan moved further into the room. "Ardis, you haven't listened. There is no stain. It's all right for Taminy to be gifted. It's acceptable for Iseabal, as well."

"How easily you spout the words."

"Well, they are easier spouted than taken to heart. This is not an easy change of season for me, Ardis. But the Meri bids me believe my daughter's Gift is acceptable-"

Ardis wheeled on him, her face chill-hot, her eyes shedding tears. "She has no Gift! Stop saying that she has! Our girl is innocent! Innocent!"

White-faced, he nodded. "Of course, she is innocent. But she also has a Gift. Perahta lit for her. That proves-"

"Nothing! You were there. It might've lit for you. Or Taminy or-"

"If Perahta had lit for me, I would have known it." He came to her then, and took her hands in his. She twisted her neck, looked away, but did not move.

"Listen, Ardis. When Iseabal traveled with me to Ochanshrine, I took her to see the Osmaer. The Sanctum was dimly lit and empty of any but her and I and a few Prentices engaged in prayer. I took Isha's hand and led her up to the altar and, as we drew near, the Stone took fire. She cooed and ah-ed at it, and turned to me and cried, 'Oh, Papa, see how it glows for you!' But it wasn't me, Ardis. It wasn't me the Osmaer reached out to with Her fire. It was Iseabal."

"No," she said.

"I didn't want to believe it, either. But I had the evidence of my own senses. Somehow, I hoped it would go away. That she would never understand what she had. That she would grow up without having to know. I've always been very careful about keeping Perahta out of her hands, but-" He paused, searching her face. "Do you think it's easy for me to change the beliefs of a lifetime? I have struggled to pretend that Isha is an ordinary girl. I have done so because I believed that if she was not ordinary, she would be condemned. And since I'm her father, the fault could only be mine."

She looked at him then, met his eyes. "And mine," she whispered. "Oh, Saxan, what have we done?"

He put his arms about her and kissed her hair. "We have raised a beautiful daughter who has a Gift granted only to the pure. That is what we have done."

She wept, willing herself to believe. But her will failed her and she wept harder for that.

CHAPTER 9.

Everything I unveil to you,

every duan I sing to you,

is in conformity with your capacity to comprehend,

not with My condition or the melody of my Voice.

- The Book of the Meri

Chapter I, Verse 1.

The Library was empty at this hour, early sunlight illuminating untenanted tables and scattering a myriad shadows onto floor and wall and ceiling. On a table near the shelves, the Osraed Wyth's work lay in a curiously rhythmic clutter of sheafs and stacks. It looked as if he had left but a moment ago, but he was nowhere in sight of the door where Osraed Ealad-hach stood peering.

It was not curiosity that had brought him here, nor anticipation of Wyth's progress. It was fear. He was honest enough to admit that, even to himself, but there was enough anger in his fear to make him bold and toothy.

They should never have allowed Wyth to blurt his pronouncements at Council. Never. They should have tested them first-tested him. That had never been done before. There was no precedent for it in the annals of Halig-liath. The Kiss of the Meri was its own proof. It could not be falsified-and there had been those who had tried.

No precedent! The old man fumed. There was no precedent for the changes Wyth Arundel demanded in the Meri's name. None. And they were in a Cusp-an auspicious Cusp, if the appearance of a Golden Meri meant aught. Tests came at such times; heinous trials calculated to separate the true from the false, the blessed from the cursed.

He had been Osraed for six decades. Did his word mean nothing? But, no. He would not let himself be personally slighted. It was the time; it was the circumstance. He would never be so roundly ignored by his peers unless Something, Someone, some Power was at work. Sane men would have listened to him when he suggested that Wyth be proved. Faer-wald had listened, and Parthelan and the other Tradists. But even among that brotherhood within the Brotherhood, there were cowards, weaklings, men easily swayed by Wyth's ingenuous sincerity, men who wished to ignore the strangeness of this time, men only too willing to countenance sweeping change when it dressed itself in the trappings of authority. They resisted questioning the Meri's will-and rightly so. They would need proof that Wyth Arundel did not represent that. That he brought them, not new Doctrine, but an old challenge, a test, a touchstone.

"Wish for death if you are men of truth," Ealad-hach murmured, the words a soft susurration in the empty, cavernous room-a breeze through cobwebs. He shivered slightly and stepped down into the play of light and shadow. Soft soles whispering, eyes darting, he moved to Wyth's tidy work table and hung there, tingling, peering.

Delicately, he lifted a freshly copied page, taken by the cleanliness of it-absolute black on absolute white. His eyes seduced, he read: You, O God and Lord, have sent down the Book-the Corah-that My Cause may be manifest and My Words glorified. Through this Book, You did enter into a Covenant concerning Me and concerning those created in Your Kingdom. You see, O Divine Beloved, how Your people have made of that Covenant a stronghold for their own desires. Into this place, they have withdrawn from Your Glory; secure, they ignore Your signs. You are the One, O Spirit, who instructed them in Your Book, saying, "Hear the Voice of the Merciful One, O people of the Corah, and deny not She whom I have sent you."

A chill rippled down Ealad-hach's arm, shuddering the page from his fingers. He frowned, rubbing his hands together. No coincidence, his reading those words. They spoke to him-to his very soul-shaking him. A stronghold for their own desires ...He had seen that, had he not? The desire of Bevol, of Calach, of Tynedale and others, to admit cailin to the Brotherhood? Had that desire now taken such hold of Wyth Arundel that he became its unwitting instrument? Had it so blinded the young Osraed and his elders that they now failed to perceive the clear signs?

This new policy of Wyth's was an assault on the very Covenant he was ordained to protect. And none but this unworthy old man was able to see it. The Meri was allowing another Power to play the field-a Power whose goal was the corruption of the Osraed through the influence of Gifted women. A Power he had seen personified in his dreams.

Ealad-hach wrung his hands, whispering a prayer of thanks that his eyes, at least, were open. That he could see the calamity nearing. Aye, and he could feel it, hear its whispered approach.

A shiver scurried up his spine. He turned, quickly, expecting to see nothing but the vapors of his imagination. He found himself staring, open-mouthed at Osraed Wyth. While he struggled to collect himself, the young Osraed smiled at him, disarmingly. He blanched. In abstract terms he could cast Wyth as a traitor to the Covenant; in flesh and blood, he found that conviction difficult to uphold. He had liked the boy, had thought him a young man of staunch principle. And though he had been disappointed when the Meri had passed him over the first time, he had not, then, seen the flaw, the weakness that made Wyth Arundel easy prey for someone like Meredydd-a-Lagan. And after that unfortunate episode, after the young Wicke had tried (aye, and succeeded!) to seduce him, it seemed more than passing strange that he should suddenly find favor with the Meri.

"Hello, Osraed Ealad-hach," said Wyth and put a slight bow into his words.

"How goes the work?" Ealad-hach asked, and found his eyes drawn to Wyth's forehead. It could not be falsified, that Kiss. Not falsified, but false, nonetheless. It must be false. There was no other possibility.

The younger man stepped down into the room and crossed to the table where Ealad-hach stood and willed himself not to flinch.