“Yeah, well, I don’t know how to do that. But I don’t plan to stick around in your space very long.”

The man smiled again. “It isn’t mine, it is your own now, too. Are you going to pretend this never happened, after it is over?”

“Once we get Melanie back, yeah, I am. Maybe not pretend, but I have no interest in staying in this.”

Cadell gazed over and up at him, the blue eyes bright. He was dressed today in black boots and torn, faded jeans with a bright red polo shirt. Half biker, half tourist. He still had the heavy golden torc around his neck, though the other jewellery was gone. His long hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Ned registered again how big he was.

“It isn’t really a choice,” the Celt said, gently enough. “Some things aren’t. How did you come to be here?”

“In a van,” Ned said. A smart-ass line, but he didn’t feel like being polite. “Greg drove. Remember Greg? Your friend almost killed him last night.”

“I don’t name Brys a friend. I need him for some things.”

“Sure. Whatever. Are they gone? The spirits?”

Cadell shrugged again. “Probably. He might not be. I did tell him to leave. Really…why did you come here?”

“Well, why are you here?”

“Looking for her. Why else am I in the world?”

The simplicity of that. Ned glanced away for a moment.

“Well, so are we. Looking.”

Cadell turned back to the black water below. He’d been gazing at it when Ned came up.

In the distance beyond the ancient wall, Ned could see his father and Greg with the guard towards the other end of the site. It was a clear day; they seemed small but distinct. His dad was taking pictures, shooting this way. They wouldn’t even hear him if he called. The sunlight was bright on them, but it didn’t fall where Cadell sat, by the wall, looking at the shallow water of the pool.

The big man gestured. “This part was ours first, up to where we are. That’s the goddess’s spring below us. Glanis, her name was. Glanum’s a twisting of it. Names change, given time. Over that way,” he motioned to his right, “the Romans built after they drove us out.”

“You lived here? Yourself?”

Cadell shook his head. “No. The Segobrigae were south, nearer the sea. Another tribe was here, a village. They allowed the Greeks a trading place just behind you, past the Temple of Heracles. That was a mistake.”

He seemed very calm this morning, disposed to talk, even. Ned tried to picture a Celtic village here, but he couldn’t do it. It was too remote, too erased. He kept seeing Romans instead, tall temples like the one across the way, in the picture, serene figures in togas.

The Greeks here, too, their trading place. Ned said, “Is that why you started looking here? Because you were all in this place?”

Cadell looked up again. “Started? I have been moving since daybreak. I am leaving in a moment. She isn’t here, by the way.”

“You thought she might be?”

“It was a possibility.”

Ned cleared his throat. “We thought so too.”

“So it seems.”

Ned took a chance, pushed a little.

“There is…no way for you to do this thing, this battle, and then release Melanie?”

Cadell looked at him a long moment. “Is this the woman you love?”

Ned twitched. “Me? Not at all! She’s too old for me. Why the hell does that matter?”

Cadell shrugged his broad shoulders. “It matters when we love.” Something in the way it was said. Ned thought about Ysabel, how she’d looked under that moon last night. He tried not to dwell on the image. And if he was shaken by the thought, what must it be like for this man? And for the other?

He cleared his throat. “Trust me, we care. It matters.”

Cadell’s gaze was still mild. “I suppose. You were angry in the road. Did you aim for my horns?”

Ned swallowed. He remembered rage, a white surge. “I didn’t know I could do that. I’m not sure I was aiming at anything.”

“I think you were. I think you already knew something important.”

“What?”

“If you’d killed me there—and you could have—both the others would have been gone.” His expression was calm. “If one of us dies before she makes her choice, or we fight, we all go. Until the next time we are returned.”

Ned felt cold suddenly. He would have killed Melanie last night, if his hand had sliced lower.

“I didn’t know that,” he said.

“I think you may have.”

There was really no way to reply to that.

Ned said, remembering something else, “I think Phelan was trying to find you, to fight you, before she was even summoned.”

“Why would he do that?” Eyebrows raised. The question seemed a real one. “She would never have come then.”

“Maybe…maybe he’s tired. Of the over-and-over?”

Cadell smiled then. Not a smile that had any warmth in it.

“Good, if so. I can grant him rest here, easily.”

“You aren’t tired of it?”

The other man looked away again. “This is what I am,” he said quietly. And then, “You have seen her.”

How did a sentence carry so much weight?

Ned cleared his throat again. He said, “You didn’t answer my question, before. You can’t release Melanie and still have your fight?”

“I answered last night. Your woman passed between needfires at Beltaine, summoned by the bull, his death. She is Ysabel now. She is inside this.”

“And so what happens?”

“I will find her. And kill him.”

“And then?”

“Then she and I will be together, and will die in time. And it will happen again, some day to come.”

“Over and over?”

The other man nodded. He was still looking down at the pool.

“She broke the world, that first time, giving him the cup.”

Whatever that meant. “Why…why just the three of you? Living again and again.”

Cadell hesitated. “I have never given it thought, I don’t think that way. Go find the Roman, if you want to play philosopher.” But he didn’t sound angry. And after a moment added, “I wouldn’t have said it was just the three of us. We are the tale for here. I wouldn’t imagine there are no others elsewhere, however their tale runs. The past doesn’t lie quietly. Don’t you know that yet?”

The sun was bright on the ruins, the day mild and beautiful, carrying all the unfurling promise of spring. Ned shook his head. He couldn’t even grasp it. We are the tale for here.

In the distance, he saw his father talking to the guard. Greg had moved away from them a little, was looking this way. He could see Ned, but not Cadell down on the ancient, crumbled stairway, against the stone wall. Ned made himself wave casually. He didn’t want Greg here.

Cadell was looking at the pool again. Glanis, water-goddess. The water looked dark, unhealthy. The Celt’s large hands were loosely clasped. In profile, composed and seemingly at ease, he no longer seemed the flamboyant, violent figure of before.

As if to mock that thought, he looked up at Ned again. “I killed him here once, twenty steps behind you. I cut off his head after, with an axe, spitted it on a spike. Left it in front of one of their temples.”

What did you say to that? Tell about beating Barry Staley in ping pong four games in a row during March Break?

Ned felt sick again. “You’re talking about Phelan?”

“He wasn’t named so then. But yes, the Roman. The stranger.”

A flicker of anger. “He’s still a stranger, after two thousand, five hundred years, or whatever? When does someone belong here, by you?”

The blue gaze was cold now.

“That one? Never. We are the tale revisited, the number of times alters nothing. She chose him when he came from the sea, and everything changed.”

Ned stared at him. “You actually think the Greeks, the Romans, would never have settled if, if she…?”

Cadell was looking at him. “I’m not the philosopher,” he repeated. “Talk to him, or the druid. I only know I need her as I need air, and that I must kill him to have her.”

Ned was silent. Then he drew a breath. “I saw some of that change,” he said. “Across the way. The carvings on that arch.”