All beings will love the lover of such a Lord.

- The Corah

Book II, Verses 51,52

"I'm not made happy by this, Lealbhallain. If I'd my will in this, no son of mine would go into such a den of ambiguity."

"But it isn't your will I serve, father. I serve the Meri's will."

Giolla Mercer could not help but find his boy a constant source of amazement. If anyone had told him his timid, chuckle-headed child would return from his Pilgrimage a diminutive but solemn adult-an Osraed, by the grace of God-he would have pronounced that person daft. Leal's new aura of quiet confidence seemed to extend even to the tips of his unruly hair.

Now, under the intense paternal gaze, the boy blushed right to the roots of that hair, red on red, but continued to fold clothing into the hidebound case that was his family's farewell gift.

Giolla Mercer sighed volubly and glanced about his son's attic room. It would be empty soon. "I know you're right, boy. And I couldn't be prouder of you, or more sure of your path, but I can't help but worry when I hear such things from Creiddylad as are being whispered through Nairne these days."

Leal's green eyes glinted. "Oh, I wouldn't say they were whispered, da."

"Should have been. The tale of the Cyne's artistic pursuits doesn't bear repeating." He hesitated a moment then added, "Nor, I'd say, does Marnie-o-Loom's tell of seeing Meredydd-a-Lagan home from Pilgrimage." He watched his son's usually expressive face and felt a sense of loss in its new opacity. Not even out the door, his boy, but no longer at home. "You don't believe it, Leal?"

"That Meredydd's here and hides? No, da. She wouldn't hide from me. The Osraed Bevol wouldn't let her hide. I believe the Osraed's tell. But I don't pretend to understand what it means."

Giolla Mercer nodded and did not betray his own beliefs. If Osraed Bevol was mad, it would come to light in God's own time. "So," he asked, managing a conversational tone, "have you heard when you are to give the Pilgrim's Tell? Will you go before the Cyne?"

Leal shook his head. "I've heard we may give the Tell at Halig-liath this year. The Cyne's a busy man, according to the Osraed at Court. He wasn't at Farewelling." He didn't say "again," thinking it too critical. "Though there was a letter from his Durweard, bidding us good journey."

Giolla frowned. "Last Season he sent up a man, at least, to say that he was ill. There was no excuse given for that letter. Merely 'urgent business at court.' What can things be coming to in Creiddylad that our Cyne can't even be bothered to meet his new Osraed face to face? Over six hundred years the Cyne's been hearing the Tell at Castle Mertuile. An age of tradition and Colfre sneezes it away in two years time."

Leal grinned. "Well, there, you see? That must be why the Meri assigns me to the capitol. I'm to keep an eye upon the Cyne for Her. Yes, I can see clearly that Creiddylad needs Osraed Lealbhallain-mac-Mercer desperately."

Absurdly pleased to see the impish glint in his son's eye, Giolla Mercer laughed aloud and tried not to think how much he would miss the boy when he was gone.

Taminy saw the Osraed Bevol and his small would-be Prentice off to Halig-liath after breakfast, then retired to the garden behind Gled Manor. The sun shone on the heights above Nairne, warming the centuries-old stones of the Academy and dusting the eons-old rock beneath it with a blush of rose. She could just make it out through the garden's clustered trees-the rounded walls of the central rotunda, a bit of slate gray roof, a glisten of aged pines.

Memory. Odd, how it could evade you when you reached for it and overtake you when you glanced aside. She could hear Halig-liath in mind's ear; the scuff and clatter of dutiful feet-fewer now in the summer months when only the first year students attended; the chatter and laughter of young voices; the atonal song of the morning bells calling assembly. She could see, too, the upturned faces, a myriad eyes raised to the Osraed Gallery, waiting to hear invocation from the lips of the Apex of the Triumvirate, Convener of the Divine Council.

Osraed Kinsel had been at Apex in her time at Halig-liath, a position Osraed Bevol now held. She had never been able to please Osraed Kinsel-or so she'd thought. Yet, when others had decried her as Wicke, he had been the only one to reserve judgment. The only one to suggest that the Meri should condemn or absolve her of the charge.

She listened to the drowsing silence. Yes, she could hear them now, the bells; like the shimmer of sun on water, translated to sound. In a moment, the small aspirants to Prenticeship would gather for prayer and morning song.

Lift up, lift up heads, hands and hearts.

The Meri wills the day to start.

Raise up, raise up heads, hearts and hands.

The Meri wills us understand- Toward the Light we ever turn.

Her Knowledge is the lamp we burn.

She found herself humming the pretty little melody and broke off, smiling, but rueful. Oh, the things one remembered ...and oh, the things one forgot.

She rose and crossed to where a climbing white rose twist itself about a thick oak. Dew sparkled in its petals-gems for the dawn, her mother had always called them. A heart-thorn of pain pricked her. Mother and father were gone now-their bodies returning to the earth, their spirits loosed in Realms she could no longer reach. They had been so near not that long ago, but in shaking the Sea from her flesh, it seemed she had shaken their souls from her embrace.

Blinking back tears, she turned her eyes from the roses and sought the Sun in the green of Bevol's garden. It was there, lying amid a veritable platter of jewels-emeralds most of them-scattered in the grass. The lawns blurred to velvety splendor for a second, but a blink made it be grass again. No, self pity was unforgivable in a place of such beauty and peace. Doubly or triply so for one who knew what Taminy knew, had been where she had been.

She returned her gaze to the rose bush, reached out a hand and broke off a new bud. Carrying it to a gilded patch of green, she sat there, heedless of the effect of dew on skirts, and focused her all on the flower. The bloom became her world. She narrowed her gaze to one folded petal. The petal became her universe. She narrowed her gaze to a dewdrop on that petal. The dewdrop became a Cosmos. She let it fill her completely.

Think you are but a pitiful form when entire universes are wrapped within you? That passage from the Corah had once comforted her. Now it seemed only to mock.

Yes, I am pitiful! A lake severed from its river; an errant ray of light shuttered from its Sun.

Entire universes ... and she had seen them, each and every one, ablaze with Light.

Perhaps I am not shuttered, but only temporarily blinded. Anyone who looks into the Sun spends a moment in darkness.

Here was a cosmos in a dewdrop ... on the petal of a rosebud ... in a hand that quivered with half-forgotten power. Taminy felt the swelling of her heart and soul, the quickening of her blood, the sudden acuity of her senses. She heard the distant Halig-tyne passing regally between her banks with lady-skirt rustle as the children atop the cliffs sang their morning songs and a falcon cried somewhere far above and the Sun chimed softly in the dewy grass, riffling among its jewels for the fairest and finding it on Taminy's rose.

Here was a cosmos in a dewdrop ... on the petal of a rosebud ... which opened slowly to full flower in a hand that quivered with half-remembered power. A myriad tiny worlds sparkled on each pale, spreading petal. In each world a rose had reached sudden maturity at Taminy-a-Cuinn's gentle urging.

It was the long outflow of another's breath that pulled Taminy away from the place she had been. She turned her head and, just for an instant, saw herself through the eyes of her watcher; a pool of vivid blue in the velvet sward, a banner of pale golden hair, paler skin and paler rose, petals spread wide.

"Mistress," sighed Skeet, "that was wonderful."

She glanced back at the rose. "It was a start. Only a start."

"You feel better now, though."

Taminy nodded and rose, brushing at her dewy skirts. Something tugged at her mind, then-an odd little tickle. She turned and glanced up over the wall and through the trees toward Halig-liath.

"What is it, mistress?" asked Skeet, eyes following.

"Curiosity," she said and, cupping her rose, hurried inside.

"I am ready," said Osraed Bevol, "to resume my duties at Apex."

The members of the Council glanced at each other, eyes showing relief, caution, uncertainty, disbelief.

"Pardon, brother," said Osraed Faer-wald, "if I do not seem in whole-hearted agreement, but you have recently sustained a terrible loss."

Bevol looked at him straight. "Pardon me, brother, if I contradict you, but I must tell you, once again, that I have sustained no loss but that of Meredydd's physical presence. I do miss her, but I am not, as is popularly believed, suffering and grieved. I am ready to resume my duties at Apex. There is nothing to keep me from them."

"I'm not sure this is wise," persisted Faer-wald. "You began teaching classes again only yesterday. Surely, you wish to wait until you have readjusted yourself to that schedule-"

"I am not a frail old man!" Bevol's eyes sparkled with pale fire. "It would please me no end if you would cease treating me like one. There is no law or right by which you can deny me a return to my duties if I declare myself to be fit ... unless, of course, you are prepared to challenge either my integrity or my sanity."

The council chamber echoed with the tiny shufflings of discomfiture-a cough, a scrape, a rustling of meticulously rearranged robes.

"We are not prepared to do anything of the sort," said Calach firmly. "Are we?" His eyes circled the room, resting on each face in turn. All signaled the negative. "Then I believe we must take our brother at his word. We welcome your return, Bevol," he added and sent his sincerity through his warm gaze. "I gladly relinquish the Chair to you."

The move was a literal one. Calach rose from the central seat at the crescent table occupied by the Osraed Council and moved to the one he had traditionally held to its left, the third of the seats reserved for the Triumvirate composed of himself, Ealad-hach and Bevol. Bevol, for his part, stood down from the center of the room and resumed his place at Apex. He had no sooner settled himself into the high-backed chair than he turned the attention of the Council to business.

"You have all heard the rumors from Creiddylad," he said and waited for affirmation. It came, reluctantly, via mumbles and head-nods.

"Rumors," repeated Ealad-hach. "Do you honestly believe they are significant?"

"Yes, I believe they're significant. Especially significant because of their source."

"I heard about the murals months ago," said Ealad-hach dryly, "from Niall Backstere. What's significant about that? He's the biggest gossip in Nairne."

Several of the other Osraed chuckled.

"What is significant," said Bevol, "is that we have heard none of this from our brothers at Ochanshrine."

A murmur circled the crescent table.

"I wonder, myself," said Calach, with obvious trepidation, "if we need to be concerned about the lack of official news from the capitol. The communications from the Brothers of the Jewel have been both sporadic and uninformative."

"The time element involved ..." began one of the two junior Osraed, Kynan.

"This latest incident with the Holy Water purportedly took place at Waningfeast last moon," said Bevol. "A Speakweave could have been performed or a bird could have been dispatched or a messenger could have come up with the teamsters. The point is, we should have been informed by the Osraed at Creiddylad, not the village magpie."

Ealad-hach cut across the murmur of assent, his voice waspish. "What incident with the Holy Water?"

"According to Niall Backstere's uncle," said Osraed Kynan, "Cyne Colfre performed a ... new rite at Waningfeast that involved his, em, sipping Holy Water from the Star Chalice."

Ealad-hach's face paled. He opened his mouth and spluttered. "An outrageous report! By the Kiss, if it were true, the Abbod Ladhar would surely have let us know. Look, Osraed, if the Backstere's uncle is anything like his nephew, he's not likely to let the truth get in the way of a good story. He must be exaggerating the event."

"Can we be certain of that?" asked Osraed Tynedale.

"Perhaps the question should be," suggested Bevol, "how can we be certain of that?"

Osraed Faer-wald snorted. "I wager you have formed some opinion about that."

Bevol nodded. "We have a new Osraed, Lealbhallain, leaving for Creiddylad directly after Pilgrim's Tell. I suggest that we authorize him as our official agent to the capitol."

"Lealbhallain will have his own mission to tend to," said Ealad-hach. "We should not burden him with another. Besides, which, I know Osraed Ladhar. If there were anything worth mentioning going on in his bailiwick, he would mention it. He has not. I say we must disregard the rumors as the work of a bored imagination. We are Osraed; if our brothers were disturbed by any goings-on in Creiddylad, we would know of it."

There was an awkward moment of silence, during which throats were cleared, robes rearranged and glances exchanged. It was Osraed Calach who destroyed the silence.

"I don't know how disturbed our brethren in Creiddylad are, Ealad, but I will admit to some anxiety. The night before last, I dreamed a horrible chasm opened up in the heart of Caraid-land. I intended to bring it to this meeting-now seems the appropriate time. It wasn't clear whether the disaster was a physical or spiritual one. I begin to believe it is the latter."

"Aye," agreed Osraed Tynedale and was echoed by at least one other voice. "I too, must admit to some peculiar unease of late. I have no aislinn to report"-he dipped his head toward Calach, who was charged with recording such visions-"but I am not content with these rumors, no not at all. It distresses me to hear them. We have never had a Cyne like Colfre-"

"He is a little eccentric," objected Faer-wald. "Surely that is preferable to someone of Earwyn's ilk who would throw Caraid-land into senseless battles with her neighbors."

"Is it his eccentricity," asked Bevol, "that causes him to repeatedly postpone the General Assembly?"

"I have also been visited by visions," announced Ealad-hach and, with his somber, elegant bass, drew the attention of the entire seven man Council. "I would speak of them now, if you please. They are pertinent."

When all had consented, he rose and circled the Triumvirate's long table to stand at the center of the room-a place where light and shadow struggled and found, each, its own level. Sun from the high windows dappled his green robe, making him appear to be clothed in a sylvan sward.

A tree, thought Bevol. An oak-knotted of thought, rooted in habit, covered with lichen. They do not bend, these knotty old oaks.

"My aislinn was crystalline," said the deep, ringing voice-crystalline, itself. "The images, fearfully clear. They had nothing to do with Cyne Colfre. They were not of murals or of the drinking of Holy Water or even of chasms. They were of Meredydd-a-Lagan."

"Meredydd!" exclaimed Osraed Kynan and the slightly elder Eadmund echoed.

Bevol gazed at the table top, noticing how fine was the grain. Ealad-hach, in turn, gazed at him.

"They were visions of a monstrous heresy," he finished dramatically.

Bevol nearly applauded the performance, but restrained himself. "Describe them to us, Ealad. We cannot interpret what we haven't seen."

"You saw." It was an accusation delivered to Bevol on the tip of a finger that trembled with emotion.

Fear, Bevol thought, though Ealad-hach was holding it severely in check behind a shield of anger. He spread his hands, palms up. "Tell us what I saw."

"I'll do better. I will Weave it for you." He paced the invisible perimeter of a circle, etched in the pattern of dark and light by the tapping of his feet. He stopped where he had begun the circuit. "She awaited the Meri, as woman was never intended to do. She waited in the darkness for the Light. And the Light came ..." From the tips of his outstretched fingers, colors flew and danced into the circle, becoming a shore with a lone occupant, and waters suffused with emerald and spangled with bits of fire.

Calach gasped and Tynedale breathed out sibilantly.

Ealad-hach divined the reason for their excitement immediately. "Oh, yes, she came! She came and drew the heretic into the water ... to drown."

"You suppose," murmured Bevol and the woven image wavered like smoke.

Ealad-hach pitched it more fuel. "She walked beneath the waves and was sucked from sight. And then, the most puzzling, horrific image of all-a girl rose from the waves, shedding light as a bather sheds water. She came from the waves naked, and stood, laughing, on the shore, flaunting herself."

"Meredydd?" asked Calach in a whisper, squinting at the misty face. For the image of the girl was watery, vaporous, and dark.

"No. Not Meredydd. Another, older cailin. A girl with pale hair and eyes like the sea."

"Pale hair?" repeated Tynedale. "What are you saying? Gwynet-a-Blaecdel has pale hair, surely you don't think this is her." He waved a meaty hand at the ambivalent form.

"It was not her. She's a child. This was a young woman. A stranger to me." The figure lengthened, but showed no more solidity.

"Who then?"