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  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.”

  “And ... did you-?” Ealad-hach’s voice was white as his crown of hair.

  “I could scarcely believe I’d heard Her right. I’ve studied the Pilgrimages all my life. No one has ever been summoned into the waters. I thought She must be tormenting me on account of that dream. So, I asked if She meant I was to come into the Sea. ‘The Water of Life, Wyth,’ She said and laughed again and said, ‘Come into the Water of Life and see if you do not get wet.’ I was horrified—certain I must be punished for my arrogance. But She told me that I wasn’t arrogant, only ignorant.”

  He chuckled. “I hadn’t thought arrogance to be a worse offense, but of course it is. For in ignorance, one simply doesn’t know; in arrogance one knows, yet refuses to understand. I understood the Goal, then—the End of Longing: To get wet. To drown in that Water; to absorb that knowledge; to let it permeate every atom. And as I understood that Goal, She held out Her radiant arms to me and I stepped into the Sea.”

  Ealad-hach gasped, seeming to strangle, momentarily, on the air he breathed. Wyth glanced at him, then went on.

  “It was warm. She was warm. Her radiance embraced me, surrounded and engulfed me. Warm as sunlight, comforting, loving. She is love!” he added suddenly, going from dreamy to zealous. “We teach laws here and histories and dreams and inyx. I tell you, what we must teach, above all else, that She is love.”

  He paused and looked about at the circle of faces old and older. It had been years since a new Osraed had been willed to Halig-liath. Years since any doctrinal changes had been made.

  “We must teach that,” he repeated and knew Calach would record it faithfully as the first doctrinal utterance of his Mission. “We must make it part of the morning invocation.”

  “Now,” Wyth squared his shoulders and sat as tall as his body would allow. “I am coming to a part of my Tell which ...” Something like fear fluttered beneath his breast bone. He must have no fear. He must continue. He must give the whole Tell.

  He glanced at Ealad-hach, trying to gauge, from the old hawk face, what effect his story was having. But Ealad-hach was little more than a shadow, sitting far back in his tall chair.

  Wyth looked to Bevol and found an eager gaze. He delivered the rest of his tale directly to Meredydd’s Master.

  “The Meri held me in Her arms and drew me beneath the waves with Her. And, as they closed over my head, I had no fear. She smiled at me. I couldn’t see Her smile, but only feel it. And then, She kissed me ... first on the lips, then on the brow.”

  A whisper wafted in a circle about him like an eddy of wind, invisible and cool.

  “And She called me Her son.”

  The wind was sucked from the room leaving it soundless and motionless.

  “You-you jest.” Ealad-hach half-rose from his place, his hands, on the table, supporting him. “You’re playing a game with us. No, testing us. The Meri has commissioned you to test the Osraed.”

  Wyth shook his head. “No, Osraed Ealad-hach. I do neither.”

  “This-this is unprecedented!” exclaimed Eadmund. “For centuries the selection of Osraed has followed a prescribed pattern. For centuries! Never in the history of the Divine Arts has the Meri drawn an elect into the Sea, never has She kissed him upon the mouth and never has She referred to him as Her son! What can you possibly mean by all these things?”

  Osraed Bevol rapped quietly on the tabletop, stopping the flow of questions. “We are out of order. Our new brother, Wyth, brings us a Tell that is stunning, to be sure, but we have no reason to doubt his words. Indeed, to do so would be tantamount to sacrilege. It is certain from the reports of both our new Osraed, that the Meri has changed Aspect. I seem to recall that the last such Cusp brought some significant changes in the Laws and Observances.”

  “But not like this!” objected Eadmund. “This is outrageous!”

  “Who are we to judge the Meri’s decree outrageous? Look at our young brother, Wyth. Can you doubt that he has been touched by the Meri? Can you doubt that he speaks only what the Meri commissions him to speak?”

  The entire assemblage turned, as a man, to peer at the Kiss, brilliant, on Wyth’s brow. They could not doubt, and Bevol knew it.

  The Apex nodded at Wyth. “Tell us, Osraed Wyth, what were the words of the Meri to you after She bestowed Her Kiss?”

  “She said, ‘Am I not the Mother of Osraed? From this night you are no longer the son of the woman who bore you. This night, you have become my son, for I have given life to your soul.’ She did that.”

  “And did She extract from you any promises?”

  “That I would use the knowledge She gave me well, and ...” He grinned at the memory, causing several of the Osraed to wriggle uncomfortably. “And that I would learn to laugh.”

  “And what is your Mission, Wyth Arundel?”

  “I am to be attached to Halig-liath. I am to protect the Covenant between man and Meri. I am to bring about certain ... reforms in Divine Doctrine. I would prefer not to speak of these things until I’ve rested. I haven’t slept for several days.”

  “What sort of reforms?” asked Ealad-hach sharply, ignoring Bevol’s chairmanship. “Have they do to with admitting cailin to Halig-liath?”

  “Ealad, please!” Calach stared at his compatriot in bemusement. “The poor boy is exhausted. Look at him. What an experience he has had! He has obviously been singled out for great honor.”

  But Ealad-hach would not desist. “Does it mean nothing to you that, according to the testimony of Osraed Bevol, Meredydd-a-Lagan entered the Sea as this boy claims to have done? Does it mean nothing to you that I have dreamed of that event?”

  “Meredydd?” echoed Wyth as Osraed Tynedale repeated, “Claims?” Wyth scarcely heard what was said for the next few seconds. He cared only that Osraed Bevol would know what had really happened to Meredydd.

  “Meredydd was transformed,” he murmured, unthinking. “The Meri told me.”

  They heard him and poured out as astonished a silence as when he had spoken of the Meri kissing his mouth.

  “Transformed?” Even in the semi-dark that hovered protectively about his head, Ealad-hach’s face was pale. “In what way, transformed?”

  Wyth looked to Bevol. “She said you knew, Master. She said if I asked, you would tell me.”

  Bevol sat placidly at the center of attention, glancing from face to face, his lips not quite smiling, his eyes revealing nothing. “Yes,” he said, “I do know. Meredydd-a-Lagan was transmuted into an Eibhilin form. I saw it happen. Skeet saw it happen. Even Gwynet saw it, though I doubt she understood what she saw, any more than our brother Ealad understands the implications of what he dreamed. I don’t doubt the two things are related.”

  Bevol turned his eyes to Wyth then. “I will tell you of Meredydd’s last moments on the Meri’s Shore, but later, when you are rested. Then we must discuss the changes the Meri wishes to be made here and your inclusion on the Council.”

  Wyth felt an odd prickle in the core of his mind. “No, Osraed Bevol. I ... I am not to serve on the Council. I am ... to be Weard to the Covenant.”

  “Weard to the Covenant?” repeated Faer-wa
ld. “Why? Why does the Covenant need such protection?”

  “It simply does or ... it will.” The prickle was waning. “I’m not sure yet, exactly,” Wyth said apologetically. His head dipped in a moment of habitual self-deprecation. “I can only say it will soon become clear.”

  oOo

  “What is clear,” said Osraed Faer-wald later, “is that we are once more at a Cusp. A dangerous Cusp.” He shook his shaggy, greying head and watched the first-year students scurry cross-court toward the Refectory for the afternoon meal. “The Meri has changed again—in both Aspect and behavior. Such a change is always accompanied by calamity.”

  “Surely knowing that, we can do something to ameliorate it,” suggested Eadmund. “Isn’t that most likely to be our role in this—to discern where the tests lie and to rise to them? Imagine, brothers, what blessings would be forthcoming if we can but successfully navigate this treacherous period.”

  “What?” asked Ealad-hach peevishly. He rubbed his temples and cringed from the glare of sun in the cobbled yard below. “Blessings? How can you see blessings in this situation?”

  “I’ve studied the past Cusps,” Eadmund began.

  “As we all have,” interjected Faer-wald.

  “Of course, but I think we must dimly understand their significance. You say that changes in the Meri’s Aspect have always been accompanied by dire calamities. Why so? In Cyne Earwyn’s time the reason was obvious. He had engaged in war against the Deasach. Cyne Liusadhe wrought unjust vengeance on the innocent kinsman of a traitor.”

  “And,” said Faer-wald, “lest we forget, the Osraed had so completely lost the spark of their purpose that the Meri caused nearly everyone of them to be replaced.”

  “Are you suggesting that’s happened again?” asked the Osraed Kynan.

  Eadmund shook his head. “No, but we must consider our own responsibility for this event, if we have one. Have the Osraed displeased the Meri in some way—angered the God that sent Her? Or is the problem somewhere else—among the people, within the other arms of government, perhaps? Consider the reports we’ve heard from Creiddylad. Consider how the Cyne has repeatedly postponed the General Assembly. Isn’t it possible we are being warned of some calamity arising from evil elsewhere so that we might take some action? Or that the whole thing is a test of our spiritual awareness? These things are not mutually exclusive. And consider this: If the Meri was displeased with us, surely She would simply tell us through Her new elect. Yet, She has chosen two Osraed this season and has warned neither of any such displeasure-”