Shame burned Caith's face, betraying shame; he looked at Raghallach, and for a moment then his heart stopped, for Raghallach smiled unexpectedly in a way only he could see, a cat's smile, that chilled him through.

Dubhain tugged at him. "Come, lord, come—do what he says."

Caith cast a wild glance at Dubhain and covered it. The phooka took his arm in a grip fit to break it as Sliabhin's men closed in about them.

"Trust," said Sliabhin, "or have no safety here." Caith looked back at him. Not yet had Sliabhin's men tried to disarm him—and this omission and their likeness, their crying likeness to each other, together with thatwhich hung in the hands of the guards— robbed him of volition, of any last hope of understanding what happened around him.

It was not Raghallach they had taken, but the Sidhe Nuallan— Nuallanthey dragged struggling away in the other direction, past the door with its wards, its diminishments of Sidhe power. They passed the door with Nuallan-Raghallach. Directly a shout rang out, a blow, a cry of pain that jarred his nerves as it echoed in the hall.

Then one man took Caith by the arm and drew him aside to another door. A guard opened it on more stairs, a dark and musty ascent higher into the hold.

" Sliabhin!" Caith jerked about to turn back again, halfway, but no one was prepared to listen. Dubhain came perforce, at sword-point. Caith tried to break from them; and there in the doorway they held a sword to his throat and disarmed him of sword and dagger both.

" Sliabhin! Damn you!" He fought once they took the sword away from his throat, and he hoped for the phooka's help, but three men got Caith's arms behind him and began to force him up the stairs. He braced his feet against the steps and struggled. " Sliabhin!" His voice echoed in the halls, in the heights and depths of the place. " Sliabhin!" And despairing: " Brian!" One struck him, bringing him stunned to his knees on the stone steps.

And no one listened.

8

There was a hall beyond the stairs, a room at the side of it; a dank darkness, masonry built into Dun Mhor's very hill, dirt floored in stone. Rough hands hurled them both in, and quickly slammed the door.

The phooka's eyes glowed, company in the dark, and a light grew about them both, until Caith could see Dubhain plainly. The phooka sat on the floor of this stonewalled chamber—he was the country lad again, all dusty. And Dubhain brushed himself off as if he had taken some easy spill, as merry as before, and got to his feet.

Caith sat, bruised and sullen, winded. He bowed his aching head against his hands.

"Welcome home," the phooka said.

Caith looked up and glowered. For a long time there was silence.

A scream shuddered through the thick door, a man's voice and not yet a man's—Caith flinched at hearing it and then he hardened his heart to it, thinking on the Sidhe Nuallan. "You knew," he said to Dubhain, shuddering when it came again, more horrid than before. "It's all a sham. Isn't it?"

"Of course it is." Yet another cry rang through the halls at some distance, a man in deepest agony. Dubhain looked that way, uncommon sobriety on his face.

"Dubhain. Dubhain—for the gods' sake, what's in Nuallan's mind, to come here like this?" Silence.

"He's in trouble, isn't he? Dubhain?"

"Oh, never." Dubhain dusted his hands and, blithe as he had begun, his voice quavered as the cry rang out again.

"Can you do something?" It was not love that made Caith ask. It was humanity, all unwise and simple-minded; he knew it, and yet the sound— It came again, and they both winced. " For the gods's ake, phooka, canyou do something?"

"The wards—" The phooka fretted and paced back and forth, dark within the light he himself cast. He was naked now, dusky-skinned, his hair falling black and thick about his shoulders, his eyes glowing murky red. "Oh, Nuallan loves a joke, he does, and this one is quite rich, is it not?

He's come to see the revenge. To keep his word to you."

"Get us out of this."

Dubhain stopped his pacing. Another scream shuddered through the air and Dubhain wrung his hands. "The wards—the wards—they—muddle things."

"You mean they work? Nuallan can't get out?"

The phooka said nothing.

"He's testing me, Sliabhin is." Caith got to his feet, staggering as he did. "Using Raghallach—

Nuallan. It's for my benefit, all this—O gods." There was another scream. Caith tried the door again and again, at last turned his shoulders against the rough wood and stared at the twin red gleams that glared at him. Still another cry echoed beyond their dark. "Maybe he's laughing at them all the while. But I don't care for your jokes, phooka. Do something. I've got a brother in this place, remember? Where is he? Listening to that?' He laughed, a brief, strained laughter. "O

gods, you do love a joke. But this is enough, phooka, enough!"

"Be still, man," Dubhain hissed, sinking down on his haunches and hugging his arms about himself. The red eyes gleamed, feral and terrible, glowing alternately brighter and dimmer as scream after scream echoed up the dark. "Be still. He'll give up soon, Nuallan will. Even his humor doesn't carry to this."

It went on, all the same, and on, and on.

"The wards—" Caith said.

"Fair Folk," said Dubhain.

"What does that mean?"

"Nuallan's of the Fair Folk. He says wards aren't that much against him." Caith crouched down in like position, facing the boy-shape in the dark. "He says." The phooka said nothing. Dubhain's face was not good to look on, nor his eyes good to look into.

"My brother, phooka. You bargained. Do something. Find him. Where is he?"

"Patience," the phooka whispered at last, a voice so still it seemed to chill the air. "Patience, mac Sliabhin."

It was long that Caith waited, crouched there with his arms clasped about his knees and shivering. The wailing died and began again. "Phooka," Caith said.

"Hssst." The look that fixed on him was dire and distraught. "What will you pay for it?"

" Payfor it? It's your friend down there!"

"There's the boy," the whisper came back; the red eyes looked into his with sudden keenness as if Dubhain had been somewhere and now came back to him. "I know where your brother is. What will you pay?"

"Curse you, you've already bargained for that answer, for all I've got!"

"Your scruples, man. I told you you had that left to trade."

"What do you want?"

"I'll tell you. If we survive this. When I go, hold to me." Dubhain shut his eyes till only the merest slits gleamed fire.

Suddenly it was the black horse rising to its feet, a scrape of hooves on the stone, the surge of a large equine body. Caith scrambled to his feet and in the scattering and gathering of his wits seized it by the mane and swung up to mount it in that low-ceilinged room. The door was like mist about them as they passed, like nothing at all; and abruptly it was not the horse-shape, but the boy, and himself tumbling to land on his feet with his hand on Dubhain's naked shoulder, fingers still tangled in Dubhain's hair. "Let go," the phooka said. "Follow me." They padded along the hall, down the dark stairs, quiet and quick. Quietly and quickly they pushed open the door on the hall and the guards there turned suddenly to see what had broken among them, a desperate man and an improbable black horse that swept to the far door scattering men like leaves before its rush of wind and storm-sound.