"Not who, I think, but what. Woman, she was, and Wicke. The Cwen of Wicke, my aislinn self knew her to be."

"Knew her to be," echoed Bevol, sounding faintly amused.

"Without doubt."

"I had thought," said Bevol quietly, "that you were at a loss to interpret this vision. That you were waiting for Wyth to come home so that he could give the Tell."

"I still intend that he should do so. But I was moved to speak here and now." He glared at his peer. "I do not question the promptings of the Meri." Within the half-light circle, the aislinn folded in on itself and disappeared.

"No, no, of course not."

"If," said Calach, "the figure in the vision is symbolic of all women, do you take this to mean that we must expel Gwynet-a-Blaecdel from Halig-liath?"

Ealad-hach shrugged. "I would have it so, but that is at the discretion of the entire Council. However, an issue such as the presence of cailin at Halig-liath could be the source of the rift you envisioned in your aislinn."

Calach pondered, frowning, then shook his head. "The logic is sound, but the tell refuses to fit."

"I dreamed," murmured Kynan, almost defensively, "that one of the Cyne's murals came to life."

"You've never seen one!" Faer-wald exclaimed.

"In the dream it was most vivid," continued the young man, "although ... when I awoke ... I couldn't remember much about it. Which is, more or less, why I neglected to mention the dream in the first place. And also ... well ... I was ashamed. It was such a-a sensual image, I thought ... I thought it must be a personal test. But now, when I hear the Osraed Calach speak of chasms-"

"It is Wicke we must fear, not our own Cyne! Not even his outrageous murals!" Ealad-hach's voice was belligerent. "Let us deal with the issue of Wicke."

"In Nairne?" asked Kynan. "Where in Nairne will we find a Wicke? Meredydd-a-Lagan is gone."

Bevol ignored the barb, focusing his eyes entirely on Ealad-hach. "Oh, yes. But there is Gwynet. Perhaps she must be a Wicke to have survived her master's ill treatment. Perhaps our brother has seen Gwynet in the future.... Well, surely we must banish the child then, or perhaps imprison her in the Cirke cellar."

Tynedale snorted loudly. The sound reverberated gratingly from every hard, polished surface in the vaulted room. "The wee cailin, a Wicke? Ludicrous. She's as sweet and gentle as a morning breeze. Besides that, she hasn't the Gift. I'm sorry, Bevol, but it's true. She's got not a midge of talent, not a morsel."

"You're wrong, as it happens," said Bevol, "but don't apologize, you may have just saved her life."

Ealad-hach exploded in a controlled rage. "I am not suggesting we do anything heinous to Gwynet! Not even that we eject her from Halig-liath. Gwynet is a child. She's not at issue, here."

"Then who is? What is?" Bevol stood, facing his sudden adversary across the gleaming expanse of the Triumvirate bench, his arms outstretched in entreaty. "You say we are in danger from Wicke-the very Cwen of Wicke, according to your aislinn self. You equate my Prentice, Meredydd, with this Wicke Cwen, and accuse her of heresy-monstrous heresy. You identify this monstrous heresy with allowing cailin at Halig-liath, yet you balk at equating Gwynet, a cailin at Halig-liath, with this monstrous heresy. Are you suggesting, Ealad, that you will only fight evil as long as it is faceless? Why will you not put a face to this heresy? Why will you not put a name to it?"

"Because I have none!" Ealad-hach trembled like a tree in a stiff breeze, every leaf shifting. "The only name I know is Meredydd-a-Lagan. The only face I see is one I have never met. My soul tells me this is the foulest evil. But it is nameless, faceless, without identity!" He dropped his eyes to perform a feverish search of the darkness near the floor, as if that might yield some answer. "It cannot be a person, surely," he murmured. "No, no, it must be a construct. A metaphysical construct."

"A construct?" repeated Faer-wald. He shook his head. "We must have more than that."

"I have no more." The whimper of defeat was followed by silence.

A chime sounded, brassily, and a light glowed above the door.

Saving us, thought Bevol, from having to know what to do next. "Come!" he said, aloud.

An awed-looking Aelder Prentice thrust his head into the room, his adam's apple bobbing like a fishing buoy. "Pardon, Osraed, but I have just come from the front gate. Prentice Wyth -that is, Osraed Wyth-has come home." His face split in a sudden, unabashed grin and he ducked out of sight.

"Osraed Wyth," repeated Bevol. "Well, Ealad. Perhaps now we'll get a sensible tell for your aislinn."

"Now then, Gwynet ..." Aelder Prentice Aelbort smiled sweetly and tapped his pointer gently into one lanky hand. "What is the most important quality of a good Weaving stone, eh?"

Gwynet blinked. Aelbort's habit of ending nearly every question that way made him sound like Ruhf Airdsgainne's aged mam-an association neither pleasant nor funny. Yet, she nearly giggled when the student behind her mimicked a squeaky hinge.

She poked herself mentally. That would never do-to be thought disrespectful of her betters. Her mouth a straight, solemn line, Gwynet said, "Why, purity, maister."

"Once again," said Aelbort gently, "I am not your 'maister.' 'Aelder' or 'Prentice' is quite sufficient."

Gwynet's brow wrinkled. Sufficient. Yes, well, whatever that was.

"But you're right, of course," the Aelder Prentice continued.

"And how is purity determined? Anyone? Anyone?"

No one.

He turned his benign, canine gaze back to Gwynet. "If you please, child."

Did the Prentice want to be old, she wondered. Would he be pleased to waken one morning to discover his hair gone white and his firm young cheeks, just now showing more than adolescent down, sunken?

"I asked," he reiterated when she continued to gawp at him, "if you would tell us how we determine the purity of a crystal."

"Pictures," said Gwynet immediately. "Em, 'imagey,' I think Osraed Bevol called it."

"Huh?" grunted the boy to her right and, "No, it isn't," insisted another. "It's refractive precision."

Aelder Prentice Aelbort smiled with sweet irritation and bent his golden head toward the speaker. "I didn't ask you, Tam-tun. I asked Gwynet. I'm sure you'll answer me many questions before the year is out. Now, Gwynet, what do you mean by 'imagey,' eh?"

"Well, Aelder Prentice, just tha', don't you see? 'If in the stone, you see the mirrored mind, then it be the truest of its kind.'" There! She had remembered! She smiled, momentarily pleased with herself.

The Prentice was also smiling. "Very good, child. A delightful saying. Where did you get it?"

"Oh, Tam-" Gwynet's blue eyes blanked. She wasn't supposed to mention Taminy. Taminy wasn't ready, yet, to come out. "A friend ... em ... once taught me tha'. To help me word out what I was thinking. And I was thinking that in the crystals, there are these little bits of the world and when a crystal's pure, the little bits become mirror glasses for your imagey."

Tam-tun tittered. "She means imagination!"

"Yes, sir. Tha's the word." Gwynet blinked up at the Aelder, ingenuous and wide-eyed. "Imagey-whatsit."

Aelbort's smile edged toward the beatific. "A mirror for the imagination," he paraphrased. He put a hand on Gwynet's shoulder and gazed about, spraying the other students with his delight. "A perceptive comment. Which proves something I have always believed-that education can release perception, but it cannot produce it." His eyes fell at last to Gwynet's upturned face.

She smiled, trying not to show how little she understood what he had just said.

"Gwynet, do you think you could show the class how to select a pure crystal?"

"Oh, no, maister!" she said, aghast.

"No?" He moved briskly to his workbench and removed two stones from its polished surface. Holding them out on the flat of his hand, he advanced toward Gwynet, tiny spots of red and purple light dancing about his palm.

She ought really look away, she thought. Ought to screw up her eyes or close them altogether, but there was some horrible fascination in those two colorful shards and a perverse little demon wondered if she could really tell which of them would make the finest focus. Compromising, she drew back, her eyes fastened, out of focus, on the Aelder's hand.

"Come, Gwynet. See if you can't decide between these two specimens. There, there! You can't be afraid of them."

"Well, I'm not afraid, quite, Aelder, sir. It's just ..." She paused to lick her lips. "Well, my maister Bevol said I oughtn't be too free with imagey around crystals as I might burn down a house or some'at."

Tam-tun let out a crack of laughter. "She must think she's Wicke! 'Burn down a house or some'at!'"

Aelbort did not censure his student. He merely stared at Gwynet owlishly and continued to hold the crystals out in her general direction.

She thought, Now I've done some bad business. If only I knew what it was.

Aelder Prentice Aelbort had no opportunity to tell her what she had done, for while he froze in mid-aisle, a younger Prentice popped into the room as if on a spring and said, "Have you not heard! Wyth Arundel is come home an Osraed! He's in the courtyard this moment. Won't you come see, Aelbort?" And he was gone.

Half the class jumped to their feet, the other half wavered between sitting and leaping.

"Might we go, Prentice Aelbort?" begged one boy. "Might we go and see?"

Aelbort, his beatific smile vanished, nodded a stiff assent.

The boys disappeared as swiftly as the Aelder's smile, leaving Gwyent to wonder if she should have joined them.

"Aren't you going too?" The question came out in a petulant rush, destroying the Aelder Prentice's pretense of maturity.

Gwynet put out a hand and grasped his empty one. "If you will come, too, Aelder."

The benign smile returned. The crystals stuffed into a pocket and forgotten, they went down to the courtyard hand in hand.

Gwynet did not quite know what to make of the scene on the sunny cobbles. A tall young man was making his way slowly through a small throng of students and Prentices, answering questions in monosyllables and working toward the staircase where she and Aelder Prentice Aelbort stood. It certainly looked like the Wyth Arundel she had met, but she was amazed at the change in him.

She'd thought him a somber old thing and had wondered through the wee hours of several mornings what had made him that way and if anything could be done about it. Osraed Bevol had spoken of his family-his dead father, his regal mother, the estate he would inherit, but didn't want. He had told her, too, that Wyth Arundel had loved Meredydd-a-Lagan, and Gwynet thought it sad that he would never see her again in this life.

That was the miracle, so far as Gwynet was concerned; this Wyth Arundel smiled and laughed and accepted his congratulations with back-slapping joy. Her eyes went to his face and clung. Radiant as that was, more blazing, still, was the stellate mark between his brows. A star of rose-gold, it was -of blushing amber-not unlike the one of emerald tint on the foreheads of the Osraed here, but newer, sharper, brighter.

Oh, wonder, she thought. To have such a Being as the Meri press Her burning lips to your brow and breathe knowledge into your soul! To no longer be ignorant and slow-aye, that would be the greatest favor of all: Knowledge. She longed for it with every fiber of her young self.

Then and there, as she gazed up into the triumphant face of the new Osraed Wyth Arundel, she knew he possessed something she must have for herself.

CHAPTER 3.

There is a sign from God in every condition. The sign of intelligence is meditation and the sign of meditation is silence, since it is impossible for one to both speak and reflect.

This is truth: that when one reflects, he speaks with his own spirit. In that condition, one can question the spirit and receive its answers.

- Book of the Meri

Chapter One, Verses 24,25.

His insides were quivering, but not with fear or dread or even timorousness. Not this time. Reborn-that was how he felt. Recreated and given new eyes and ears and mind, and a new, brave heart to go with them. He stood in the vaulted chamber and watched the Council rise to greet him and thought, I am one of them now. I am a Divine Counselor.

The Osraed Bevol came forward to meet him and draw him into the half-circle and seat him in a tall carved chair at its center. He accepted the elder man's embrace with delight and shared a glance which spoke volumes about their common bond.

Seated, Wyth watched Bevol return to his own chair at the Apex of the Council and recalled an earlier time when he had stood, quaking here, while his mother's voice accused him of being bewitched by his fifteen year old student, Meredydd-a-Lagan, labeling Meredydd a Wicke. He had been bewitched, he realized, and it was as pure and clean and holy an inyx as had ever been woven. He was bewitched now, too. Possessed by the Possessor of all things. In thrall to That. Fear was a memory, only.

Did they, he wondered, gazing at the seven Osraed arrayed about him, feel as he now felt? Or had the years between now and their Moment of Great Light dimmed the flame of their faith? His eyes were drawn to the Kisses they wore, to a man, between their brows-emerald to his rose-amber and seemingly dimmer. They varied, he realized in bemusement. Some were a smudged-looking peridot, others-like Calach's and Tynedale's and especially Bevol's-were more vivid in both hue and clarity.

"Welcome, Osraed Wyth," said Bevol, beginning the formal Pilgrim's Greeting. "The Meri has crowned you with Her Kiss-the culmination of your Journey. Speak to us, Pilgrim, of that Journey."

He did speak-of spiritual trials and tests of wisdom and patience. Of being sent by the Eibhilin Gwenwyvar, the White Wave, to be the easing of a child's pain. And at last, he spoke of reaching the Meri's Shore.

"Indeed you have reached the Shore of faith, Pilgrim," said Bevol. "Indeed you have found the end of the Path of steadfastness. Speak to us, Pilgrim, of your Vigil. What dreams were you given? What visions, what gifts?"

Wyth blushed. "It wasn't much of a vigil," he admitted, and wondered momentarily if they would believe what he had to tell them. But, of course, they had to believe him; he wore the Kiss of the Meri on his brow. "We reached the sands, Prentice Killian and I, and he went to gather firewood. I sat and watched the sun set and recalled a dream I had had once-a horrible, arrogant dream of entering the Meri's Ocean without getting wet. Meredydd told me I had missed the point of my Pilgrimage. I thought of that as I sat there in the sand and laughed at myself."

He smiled at the looks of disbelief that admission garnered. Wyth Arundel had laughed little, once, least of all himself.

"I suppose that is one gift I took from the Shore-the gift of laughter. I had no visions."

He paused a moment, then continued. "The sun set and the moon rose over the water-or so I thought. But the moon, I recalled, was behind me in the East and this was the Light of the Eibhilin world-the Light of the Meri. Bright and golden, it came, flooding the water with glory. The Sea was like a golden broth or a cup of spring wine. I could see every pebble beneath the water-jewels, all of them-and garlands of seaweed. And then, the waters began to froth and foam. I thought I would faint, but I didn't. I thought the brilliance would blind me, but it didn't. Then She slipped from the waves and stood before me."

He realized his hands were stretched out toward the Triumvirate-toward its Apex. He lowered them and went on. "Her eyes were like jewels," he said. "Like garnets in the Sun."

"Aaah," said one of the other Osraed, "indeed She has changed Aspect," and others nodded.

"I felt," said Wyth, "as if I knew Her. And of course, I did. I have spent my life learning Her ways and singing her duans and longing for a day when She would give me one of my own. Overwhelmed, I threw myself to the wet sand and ... She laughed at me." He smiled again, eyes watering. "It was music. And out of the music came Her voice saying, 'Rise, Wyth Arundel. Rise and come to Me." He stopped, passing eyes over the faces of his listeners.

Here, now, they will cease to believe me.

"'Come to Me?'" repeated Faer-wald. "She bid you come ... into the water?"

"Those were Her words, Osraed. I spoke them just as I heard them. I swear I will never forget them."