There was a point, two thousand years ago or a little less, when I stood, barefoot, shivering and hugging myself in my shift, to face a raw winter morning. I was out on the balcony of my new room in the Cathedral-- a room that Jenner objected to in every way-- "A balcony is an incredible security risk, Your Grace," he admonished. He still calls me "Your Grace" when he feels I am being a snot and am not listening to him properly. Some things cannot be changed.
      On this balcony, a few short years-- decades maybe-- after the Mergeance, I was looking at this world, and trying to remember that other world I had once loved so well-- my mountain in Wales, my abbey, the simple, quiet life I'd lived there.
      I felt like it had been a very long time since I had been quiet.
      There was a step and a slight cough behind me. I turned. Jenner leaned lazily against the door frame, his thick woolen cloak wrapped casually around his shoulders. His expression was unreadable, as so often was the case. I had wondered if he was speaking to me yet. I had turned down his second proposal of marriage two days before.
      "Practicing asceticism again, Gwyn?" he asked, his tone neither nasty nor kind.
      "How do you mean?" I asked guardedly, clenching my teeth to keep them from chattering.
      "Keif says you haven't eaten for two days, and I find you out here wearing--" at this his gaze was altogether too boldly roaming over my body for a man of the cloth "-- next to nothing. Tell me you didn't sleep out here."
      "I didn't sleep out here," I said truthfully.
      He almost twitched. I had steadily been getting better at reading him over the years. "Yes, but I bet your knees are bloody from kneeling on the stones. What guilt are you expiating now?"
      I turned away from him then and didn't answer. There was silence for a while, the silence of early morning. I hugged myself tighter, tried to stop shivering altogether. It had been a long night, and Jenner was not wrong.
      There was a deep sigh from behind me, and then a small mew. Bright and Dark came out of the room, to slink their ways around my ankles. I stared off in the distance, out towards the sea-- the Sea of Sorrows. I still mourned all of those who had been lost in the Rebman Queen's madness.
      "Gwyn," Jenner said after a while, coming up behind me and putting an arm around my shoulders. He drew me under the cloak with him. "Gwyn, you know I love you-- and I know you love me. Why this-- extravagant stubbornness?"
      "How would it look, ruling a church like an empire?" I asked him, not for the first time. "A church is not a country, you cannot put it under the power of one family. It must needs be a place where family does not matter as much of the merits of one's soul."
      "You have the right of it," he replied, "but that is not how it would turn out. You would not let it."
      "Aye, I won't let it," I agreed, angrily. I pulled away from his embrace and went inside. I pulled a thick woolen gown over my shift and found a pair of warm boots. I took my water-proofed cloak from my closet and wrapped it about my shoulders. I turned to Jenner and addressed him imperially, "You have charge of the Church, Lord Marshall. I will be gone for some days."
      He was getting angry, I could see that, but I did not let it affect me. I was ice, created by two long winter nights on the balcony. I walked away, into town, knocking on Quentin's door. Young Mariah answered, her eyes sparkling in that way that makes me more nervous than it should. "Is your father at home?"
      She agreed that he was, and conducted me into the kitchen, where a large crowd was gathered for a large pancake breakfast. I felt sorry for intruding, but Bailey was gracious, as usual, and soon, it was just like old times.
      "So, what's up?" Quentin asked in his particular way.
      I sighed. "The Jenner sigh," Sarah said knowingly.
      I glared at her, just slightly. "I haven't seen you at mass the last few weeks, young lady."
      She grinned impishly back at me. "Yes, Aunt Gwyn. I'm sorry, Aunt Gwyn."
      I broached the issue I had come all this way for. "I'm going into shadow," I announced. "I would like an escort."
      "Which does indeed make it a Jenner problem, since you can't ask him," Sarah murmured into her hot chocolate.
      I didn't say anything. Quentin stuffed a last bite of pancake into his mouth, stood up and stretched. "I'll get my sword," he said with an attitude of long-suffering patience. "You up to it?" he asked his wife. She shook her head and smiled.
      "I trust you to keep Gwyn out of too much trouble," she assured him.

      We trailed the Ebon Way out of Amber, since I thought that might be the easiest way to find my old shadow. Quentin and I rode out in companionable silence. We hadn't truly fought in years, and I was glad for the easy peace in our relationship.
      It didn't take all that long to arrive in my old shadow, and it didn't look as though much had changed. It was spring. I went to my old mountain, my small shepherd's hut, which was much weathered and had holes in the thatch. A family of starlings had taken up residence inside, and not a few bats. It looked like my hives were still productive, and still maintained, though.
      "Nice place," Quentin said dismissively. I just smiled.
      I dared him to race me up the mountain, and so we did. We reached the top, he much less out of breath than me, and stared at the world around us. The abbey lay still below us, a few small figures scurrying back and forth.
      It all seemed smaller than I remembered.
      Quentin said, "So, why are we here?"
      I shrugged. "I just wanted to see it all again. It's been more than thirty years for me-- more than a hundred for them."
      We walked back down the mountain, slowly, towards the hut. There was the figure of a youngish man standing by the beehives, watching our progress down the hill.
      "Hail, strangers," said the man in Cymri when we got close enough. I looked at him curiously.
      I took in his garb, a brown woolen robe-- his bare feet-- his tonsure. "Hail, Brother," I returned.
      He was a big man, powerfully built; he walked a little closer to us, but there was a hitch to his step. Something was very wrong with his leg.
      "Are you the beekeeper?" I asked.
      He nodded. "Aye."
      "We've not disturbed them," I assured him.
      He looked at the bees for a long minute. "They welcome you."
      That seemed as was proper to me, since they were the descendents of my old friends.
      The man was looking curiously at us, taking in my dress of Madonna blue, Quentin's jeans and leather jacket. "My apologies, my lord and lady," he said, after a moment. "I had not recognized you."
      Quentin was tapping his fingers against his thigh through all of this; the language was not known to him. I asked, "How do you mean, Brother?"
      "You are nobles-- perhaps relatives of Lord Maelgwyn?"
      "No, not Lord Maelgwyn," I said. "I am Gwynwyfhar, and this is my cousin, Quentin."
      He seemed more interested than afraid of our strangeness, and offered us a bit of honey. I accepted, and offered some of our bread and cheese, and soon we had a small picnic on the spring grass.
      Conversation did not exactly flow, but soon I had from him some of his story-- his name was Rhys, he had retired to the abbey after his time as a knight batchelor, and he had been lamed in the Crusades. "It is a wonder I managed to return to my home at all," he said. I agreed.
      "I am a healer," I began, and then stopped. It wasn't a sort of healing the folk here were used to.
      But he said eagerly, "Aye, my lady, and it pains me fiercely from time to time. I am a young man; I do not wish to live a long time with this pain." And with that, he rolled up his breeches, and allowed me to look at his twisted calf.
      It didn't take all that long, but the green light of magic was unmistakable. I figured we would be gone before my actions would bring us trouble, though, and I cared what happened to this man who cared for my bees.
      At the end of the healing, the man's face twisted with the small pain of healing, he gasped, "Mother of God." He opened his eyes to stare at me. "Who are you?" he whispered, with reverence.
      "I am just Gwynwyfhar," I answered. Then, concerned, I said, "You will not return to the Crusades because you are healed, will you?"
      He appeared to think about it. "I am a fighting man, my lady," he said reluctantly. "I would serve God better on the field of battle than in the monastery."
      "But your vows?"
      "My vows I will keep; I have taken them, and there is no turning back on it."
      I approved. "I wish you could come with us, Rhys. I could use a man like you in my army."
      He was quiet, thinking, before he said, "I would come with you, my lady."
      I smiled at that, and shook my head, a little sadly. "That would be asking too much of you, I'm afraid. Though we worship the same God, the differences in how that God is seen in my homeland would horrify you-- as they horrified me when I first arrived there."
      He frowned. "I do not understand."
      More bluntly, I said, "Could you withstand the blasphemy of a female pope?"
      He stared at me for a long minute. "I have often thought that some of the women of the abbey would make better priests than the ones we have," he said. "It would not be so much harder to imagine a female pope."
      An enlightened thinker! I just shook my head further. "I don't think that it would be a happy life for you, that's all."
      He began to look fierce, and got to his knees. "Aye, my lady, I would come with you. My life is none so happy betimes, anyway."
      I sighed. Quentin said, "I think you have an admirer. He looks quite smitten with you. What's he saying?"
      "He wants to come with us."
      Quentin snorted. "You've already interfered with his life. A little more won't hurt."

      A brief two years later, I was again on my balcony, this time looking towards the Tir where it hung in the sky. Again, winter, again, my feet were bare, and again, I shivered.
      I didn't hear Jenner at all until he spoke. "Rhys will do fine."
      I jumped slightly. "I know. I still worry. What if the clouds come in, and he falls?"
      Jenner didn't answer that, but said, "Hopefully, he's not drinking from every single pool, twice."
      "Funny," I said, in a way which indicated that I did not think he was.
      Jenner stood closer to me, but did not reach out to drape his cloak around me. In two years, he had not made such a gesture again-- no small touches, no kisses, no carresses. I was sorry for it, but it was, technically, what I wanted. I was the Bride of Light, not destined for any man's bed, I would tell myself stoically every night. It would hurt the Church immeasurably to be ruled by two people who were married. Bad enough that we were related at all.
      We watched the moon cross the sky; after a time, a small dark figure toiled down the long stairs of the night city. I let out a small sigh of relief. In the moonlight, I saw Jenner smile, slightly.
      "So, will he be your first Paladin, then?"
      I nodded. "He is the best man I have found for the job so far. Excepting yourself, Lord Marshall. But you have other duties."
      He looked down at me, his smile fading. "I could blackmail you," he warned me. "I could threaten to leave the Guardians to their own devices lest you married me."
      I stared at him, shocked. "You wouldn't."
      "I wouldn't, only in part because I know you don't re-act well to threats."
      "That's right," I said fiercely.
      "And also because I am a Guardian. There is no going back. It has changed me, this leading of men. This following your vision."
      I was a bit proud of that. Foolish pride, of course, but I'm a fool for anyone who praises my vision.
      "But you do wrong me, Gwynwyfhar, with your obstinancy and pride."
      I knew that. I ducked my head, feeling the shame heat my cheeks.
      "Would you be as prideful or as shamed as those Avatars that went before us? You who lead the light, would you revisit their sins?"
      I knew what he was doing. My anger rose. "That's fine rhetoric, Jenner, but probably not the way to win my heart."
      He lost his temper then. "I have your heart, Gwyn, unless you have lied to me all these years. Take your head from the sand and realize exactly what you do in denying me."
      I hadn't cried in years, not since we lost Caine, but I cried then, great gulping sobs. I found myself in Jenner's arms, weeping like a lost soul. I gave up my foolish pride and resolved no more to feel shame-- that night that Rhys passed his Ordeal of Ordainment.

      I cried a little at my wedding, but that was for joy, and everyone seemed to recognize it as such. And I cried a lot not very long after-- with grief, for my father was lost in the war, with relief, for Jenner was not lost. From the distance of two thousand years, it seems like all I have done this lifetime is weep.
      I have had my heart's desire. Three children were born to me in the course of those long centuries. One was lost, I thought forever, but there was a knock on my door a mere month ago, whilst I was in conference with my aged Captain of Paladins. Rhys was buried long ago; he died alongside my father in the Unexpected War.
      When we were young, Jenner, Quentin, Ben, Geraint, Gen and I, we thought we were conducting Amber into a new golden age. But wars have come, and strife. The landscape has changed and been renamed. Where one there was Arden there is a Mire; where once the great sea was a comfort, there is only sorrow. I have watched the children of Amber born, I have even delivered a number of them. I watched as well when the children were attacked, and gave my daughter to those who wished to hide her and keep her safe. My heart broke when those children were lost. We became ghosts of our former selves, afterwards. Lively, happy Sarah became a bitter, hard woman. Genevieve and Luke never could see each other the same way, after, and Geraint--. Well. Even the children that were born to some of us after did little to heal the wounds.
      We were lost. The heart went out of us. I looked often with despair to the children that were left behind. Who will bring the heart back into Amber? Who will take up the cause and bring Amber out of the Dark Ages, since we have so obviously failed?
      That knock at my door was Seifer, my assistant-- Keif is also long gone. He showed in Sarah, Mariah and a pretty, quiet young woman that I did not recognize. It was a long, blinding moment, as though a great beam of light had shot down from the heavens and engulfed me, as I was made to understand that this was my lost daughter, Rhiannon.
      Later, a man came to see me who reminded me of my father in his size and quiet strength and of my husband in his slightly amused manner when dealing with me. Rhiannon had spoken often and glowingly of her son, Jared, and I found myself eager to meet this paragon of knightly virtues. I came away impressed... and for the first time in many years, hopeful for the future.

January 2000