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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.
    oOo
    “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