After I gave the Jewel to Eric, we went to tell the Queen.  I was
point on a small arrow of people -- Vialle, Flora, Random.  We walked
together silently, and the sound of our feet tapping on the stone floor
was our only company.  I didn't know how Flora could bear it, just having
lost her husband, and a king as well, but she was there.  Flora is a force
of nature.  I strode ahead.  I did not falter.  I would do this thing
correctly, as it must be done.  As it turned out, it was the only thing
that was done correctly that day.

	*You stay silent -- knowing -- always in time...
	*See how this love stays divine...

	It's almost easier when someone is dead.  They take up residence
in your memory, frozen, an ever-fixed mark, a memory of love and courage
and bravery, and they never disappoint you again, and you never have to
disappoint them.  As I have disappointed my loves.

***

	I went to find Driscoll, to apologize to him for not saying a
proper goodbye, or such was the rationale spawned by my spell-sieged
brain.  I still burn to think of it, but...I do not think of it.  It's not
fair to any of us to think of it.

	It was afterwards that I began to find the little things...a
missing toe started to shatter the glamour of memory.

	I have now lived all the horrors of my life thrice:  the first
time these incidents happened; by reading my journals during the time my
memory was revised; and by recovering the true memories and walking the
Pattern.

	I am relieved that I only had to see Foster hear the news that I
had betrayed him once.

	It was not my fault -- that is what they all tell me.  I do not
believe them.  Ignorance of the law is no excuse for breaking it.  And I
have gotten over my admiration of the principle of the hedonic good --
just because it feels good doesn't mean you should do it.

	No.  It *is* my fault.  When the spell wiped out my memories and
rewrote them to what I considered an ideal past -- that part was not my
fault, I agree.  But that I had these wishes -- not the simplistic ones of
wishing my siblings were alive, but these other wishes, that I had both
Driscoll and Foster...these are darker in nature, and wrong.  I should
have dealt with my passion for Driscoll better; I should have striven
harder to remove him from my soul, or I should have worked it out of my
system before taking Foster's heart -- I should have done something, and I
should have done it better.  "It is not in our stars but in ourselves that
we are underlings," or so said Elizabeth's Cassius.  This was not destiny
that ruined the goodness I had with Foster, but my internal struggles.

	Foster appears to have forgiven me, and has turned his blame
towards Driscoll.  Poor Driscoll.  He is not at fault -- you cannot tempt
a person as I tempted him and expect him to remain unmoved.

	It was me, all me...

	If we cannot work this out to some satisfactory level -- if Foster
cannot allow Driscoll to share fatherhood of this child with him...I do
not know what I shall do.  I have great admiration for Foster's goodness,
and ability to choose the right thing to do.  He is Tamaryn and Felix's
get; though he was raised by a man whose conscience was asleep, there is
little doubt of the placement of his own conscience in his internal
hierarchy.

	I don't expect to name this child, but because I have such a
desperate hope for all of this working out well, I have been secretly
calling him Pax -- short for Paxon -- Peace.  Not to represent peace in
the universe (that would be a disappointment for me as well as my sword),
nor peace between Foster and Driscoll, or even, finally, peace between
Driscoll and I and our Shadows.  Pax -- for peace within.  I need not be
an underling in myself forever.