"But how did you know?" she persisted. "Was it in the smoke?"

Banfaith Delyth smiled and shook her head. "When something happens, little one, it is like casting a rock into a pool-it sends ripples through the subtle currents of time and being." Her fingers lightly bounced as if tracing such ripples. "If you know how, you can follow all the rings back to where they began and see the rock that made them."

"Can you teach me?" she had said, blissfully ignorant of what she was asking.

Banfaith Delyth had cupped her small face in her wrinkled hand and gazed deep into her eyes for a long time. "Aye, yes, little Bee. I think I can." In that moment, Angharad's life and destiny had been decided.

The cave had been Delyth's ogof, and that of the hudolion before her, and so on. Now, a lifetime or two later, she was about to call on those same skills she had first learned from her wise teacher so many, many years ago.

It would take all her considerable skill and experience to succeed. Events which had happened so far away were much more difficult to discern; their ripples-she still thought of it that way-were faint and diffused by the time they reached Angharad's cave in the forest. She would have to be on her best mettle to learn anything useful at all. But if she was right in thinking that the appearance of the baron's curious gifts signalled an event of great significance, the ripples cast in the pool of time and being would be more violent, and she still might be able to learn something about what, and who, had caused them.

She slept and rose early, but rested. The herbal tincture had done its restorative work, and she felt clearheaded and ready to proceed. She built up the fire from coals smoored the night before, and set about making some porridge on which to break her fast. It was dark outside yet; the sun would be late rising. So she lit a few of the clay candle pots she had scattered around the cave, and soon the dark interior was glowing with soft, flickering light. She had brought a bit of cooked meat with her, and decided to warm it up, too. If all went well, she would need a little flesh to carry her through until she could eat again.

After she had eaten, Angharad went outside, knelt in the snow, and as a pale pink sun broke in the east, she lifted her hands in a morning prayer of thanksgiving, guidance, and protection. When she finished, she walked to an alcove deeper in the cave and took up the hide-wrapped bundle there-her harp. Returning to the hearth, she settled herself on her three-legged stool and began to play, stroking the strings, tuning them as needed, limbering up fingers that were no longer as supple as they had once been.

After a time, the music began to work its ancient magic. She could feel her body relax as her mind began to drift on the music, as a leaf drifts on the river's flow. She felt all around her the dip and swirl of time, like the tiny flutters of butterfly wings causing minute eddies in the air. She imagined herself standing to her thighs in a wide, slow-flowing stream and resting her fingertips lightly on the surface of the water so as to feel each tiny wave and ripple as it passed. Each of these, she knew, was some small happening in Elfael or beyond.

It was always the same picture in her mind: the broad easy-moving water, dense with the myriad particles of random happenstance, glowing like pale gold beneath a sky of sunset bronze in the time-between-times. She moved deeper into the warm wash and felt the water surge around her, gently tugging against legs and gown as she stood there-head held to one side as if listening, her face intent, but calm-touching the sliding skin of the river as it flowed.

After a time, her hands fell from the harp strings and found their way to a small jar she had placed beside her stool. She withdrew a pinch of a pungent herb and dropped it into the flames, just as Delyth had done so long ago. The smoke rose instantly-a clean, dry, aromatic scent that seemed to sharpen her inner sight and touch. She imagined she could feel the ripples more easily now as her fingers played among them.

There were so many, so very many. She shrank within herself to see how many there were and each one connected in some way to another and to many others. It was impossible to know which of all those flowing ripples bore significance for her. She lifted her fingers to the strings and began strumming the harp once more, holding in her mind an image of the ring and the gloves, demanding of the flowing stream to bring her only those waves and ripples where the ring and gloves could be felt.

It took monumental patience, and ferocious concentration, but at last the river seemed to change course slightly-as when the tide, which has been rising all the while, suddenly begins to ebb. This it does between one wave and the next and, while there is nothing to signal the change, it is definite, inexorable, and profound. The flow of time and being changed just as surely as the tide, and she felt the inescapable pull of events flowing around her-some definite and fixed, others half-formed and malleable, and still others whose potential was long since exhausted. For not everything that happened in the world was fixed and certain; some events lingered long as potentialities, influencing all around them, and others were more transient, mere flits of raw possibility.

As a child might dangle its fingers in the water to attract the tiny fish, Angharad trailed her fingers through the tideflow of all that was, and is, and is yet to be. She imagined herself strolling through the water, feeling the smooth rocks beneath her bare feet, the shore moving and changing as she walked until she came to a familiar bend. She had dabbled here before. Taking a deep breath, she stretched out her hands, tingling with the pulse of possibility.

There!

She felt a glancing touch like the nibble of a fish that struck and darted away. An image took shape in her mind: A host of knights past numbering, all on the march, swarming over the land, burning as they advanced, crushing and killing any who stood in their way. Black smoke billowed to the sky where they had passed. At the head of this army she saw a banner-bloodred, with two golden lions crouching, their claws extended-and carrying the banner, a man astride a great warhorse. The man was broad of shoulder and gripped the pole of the banner in one hand and a bloody sword with the other; he bestrode his battle horse like a champion among men. But he was not a mere man, for he had flames for hair and empty pits where his eyes should be. The vast army arrayed behind this dread, implacable lord carried lances upraised-a forest of slender shafts, the steel heads catching the livid glimmer of a dying sun's rays.

Inwardly, she shrank from this dread vision, and half turned away. Instantly, another image sprang into her mind: a broad-beamed ship tossed high on stormy waves, and a rain-battered coastline of a low, dark country away to the east. There were British horses aboard the ship, and they tossed their heads in terror at the wildly rocking deck. This image faded in its turn and was replaced by another: Bran, bow in hand, fleeing to the wood on the back of a stolen horse. She could feel his rage and fear; it seared across the distance like a flame. He had killed; there was blood behind him and a swiftly closing darkness she could not penetrate-but it had a vague, animal shape, and she sensed a towering, primitive, and savage exultation.

The image so shocked her that she opened her eyes.

The cave was dark. The fire had burned out. She turned towards the cave entrance to see that it was dark outside. The whole day had passed, maybe more than one day. She rose and began pulling on her dry clothes, dressing to go out. She wished she had thought to prepare something to eat; but she had rested somewhat, and that would have to keep her until she reached Cel Craidd.