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Irritated from within and without, the small penis stuck straight up in a comic erection. Although the packet contained nothing more than a powder to make the child sleep, the woman expected magic. Neniane passed the medicine three times over the swollen penis, whispering then three times the other way. She handed

the rabbitskin bag to the woman. With her other hand, quick and deft, she pressed three fingers against the small bladder.

The bairn passed with a vengeance, a fountain effect that spurted straight up for two feet or more before Nen-iane held the child up by its little shoulders and let him urinate normally, which he did for a remarkable length of time. Padrec began to suspect he was connected to a conduit. When the child was finally wrung out, the mother wrapped him again in the carrying sling.

"Spirit be gone," Neniane assured her. "Let a drink the magic in hot water tonight." She wrinkled her nose at the filthy swaddling. "An't would nae anger thy tall-folk gods, thee might wash a's bottom once a full moon."

The woman was more assertive with her child out of danger. "There's four others at home," she huffed. "I cannot do everything. Here."

Padrec saw the motion. There was no need for the insult except fear and habit. Drawing back from Neniane, she deliberately dropped the silver denarii on the ground. One of them rolled in the puddle of urine. As she turned to mount her horse, a comprehension passed between Neniane and her older sister. Dorelei stiffened in the saddle, her face a mask of contempt.

"Woman."

Even Padrec felt the restraint in the sound, like a hand laid on the Taixali woman. Dorelei's scorn was brittle as frost. Neniane passed her the coins. She held them up. "Did not steal these from Roman-men? Then Gern-y-fhain will send them home."

Slender fingers closed over the coins. Dorelei's other hand passed over it, not touching. Both hands danced a moment, then Dorelei opened them, empty. "Gone like evil spirit. Go thee in peace while Lugh still shines for thee."

Her voice was subtle menace. The Taixali woman needed no urging. She hastened the horse away down the slope. Cru hissed the word with an ocean of disgust.

"Tallfolk."

Dorelei's supple left hand closed and opened again. She passed the coins to Neniane, who flung them away, all her fury in the swing.

"Mother puts wealth in the wrong raths."

"But in yours soon again, sister," Dorelei soothed. "Come."

She moved ahead. Fhain followed.

They traveled for two days, with one night camped in a rocky overhang. Early on the second day a thick, chill fog blanketed the ridges, and much care had to be taken to keep the flocks together. In the animal memories of their half-wild sheep, these high rocks were their earliest home; they saw no reason not to go off on their own.

The ponies had been climbing steadily since leaving the old crannog, following trails worn into the high ridges for thousands of years. No one could tell Padrec where they were going, but all seemed to know. Dorelei led them on with no hesitation. Each fhain knew without need of a map where the available crannogs would be in any season.

"How dost know won't be taken when we get there?" Padrec wondered.

"Will not." Dorelei kept her eyes on the trail, dim in the fog.

"Just waiting empty?"

"Fhain passed in the night."

"What fhain?"

"From crannog."

"I heard nothing." A small lie, but it troubled Padrec like so much about these people. Dorelei gave him the tolerant smile of a mother teaching a backward child. "Did nae come like thunder but wind-whisper."

"The wind, .. oh." Not the Christian but the Bri-gante of Padrec heard the sounds in the night: faint hoofbeats, fainter voices all spread on the haunted wind. He'd said the most potent prayers he knew and pulled the sleeping robe over his head.

Toward midday the fog thickened. Padrec and Cm fell behind to help herd strays. When they rode ahead again, the three fhain women were pacing their ponies slowly, in single file, along the fog-shrouded ridge. The silence was eerie. Dorelei paused by a granite outcrop, alert and cautious, then moved ahead. When she halted, the others reined in and waited in the still whiteness. Padrec felt the silence seep into him, smothering his question to a whisper.

"Cru, what is it?"

Dorelei's husband pointed to the stone and the fresh figure etched into its face. "Reindeer fhain. Most old, from Mabh's own blood."

Padrec twisted about, straining to see through the mist. "Where are they?"

"Here."

Cru was motionless in the saddle. Dorelei slid off the pony to stand by its head. Fhain froze behind her. Padrec sensed a single tension that gripped all of them and found himself holding his breath. He strove later to recall the moment, second by second, what he saw, what seemed reality. Dorelei alone by her pony, wisps of fog swirling about her. She was alone, Padrec was sure of that.

She raised both hands in a queer sign.

She was not alone.

The other woman was simply there beside Dorelei in the fog. Padrec shivered; the skin crawled on his spine. Four, five, half a dozen others ringed them, solid flesh out of the fog. Small men and women like Dorelei's fhain except for the markings on their dark cheeks. He felt they'd been there all the time, stone, stump, hummock, and mist itself transmuted to wary eyes and nocked bows. Their gern was much older than Dorelei, the gloss of her hair clouded with gray and rounded with a gold circlet. She leaned on a stick, obviously injured. Like Dorelei she wore nothing over her upper body but a hide vest. Between her flattened breasts a heavy silver chain dangled a huge blood-red stone in an enameled

setting. Padrec supposed it a garnet at first. Not a ruby, not that big.

But it was a ruby.

Padrec swallowed. All his life he'd heard of Faerie wealth, a fabled hoard beyond the imagination of bards or the greed of kings. All true. Fable became truth in a world larger than he suspected and nowhere as tidy.

The stone glinted faintly as the woman moved past Dorelei. Her bare thigh was wrapped in a leaf and poultice dressing for the wound that crippled her, and there were older scars, pale seams through the darker hue of her skin. A hard body and harder face, wintry with the truth of her life and its final defeat. She spoke with still dignity and authority.

"Taixali have a bad year. Have barrowed three of Reindeer fhain, including first son. Salmon must be strong and quick. Mother's eye be on thee."

Salmon fhain bowed their heads in acknowledgment and respect. The gern whispered something to Dorelei, touched the girl's hair, and smiled faintly.

"What's it mean?" Padrec murmured.

Cru's mouth set in a line of stoic acceptance. "Bad year for tallfolk be worse for Prydn. Dead children, poor harvest, nae matter. Will blame Prydn for it. Must go softly among them."

Listening to Cru, Padrec's eyes had not left Dorelei, but even as the words ended, Dorelei stood alone. The other queen and her people had come out of the mist and simply melted back into it without a detectable movement or sound. Cru didn't seem to find it unusual at all.

"Cru . .. where did they go?"

Cru came out of his own thoughts. "Away."

Gawse wintered twice in this place within Dorelei's memory. A good crannog near a small stone circle, usually selected for wintering, with an entrance well out of the wind, a terrace for the ponies, space within the large crannog itself to byre the flock, and none of it apparent

to the unseeing eye of tallfolk. The whole looked no more than a rugged outcrop along the high ridge. The stone circle stood on the highest promontory, and beyond it the even slopes of the high meadows where the sheep would have to live on grass already nibbled to the root or forage among the scrubby trees farther down. Not the best prospects, but only part of what weighed on Dorelei's spirit.

Meetings between fhains should be joyous occasions. Theirs with Reindeer was strange. What would Padrec think of them? She knew already he had a kind of pitying contempt for their life, not knowing the music of it. The Reindeer gern and her people met them in caution and sorrow; they had no joy to share. How could they? The gern, Bruidda, saw three of her fhain killed by Taix-ali, including her own son. They hanged him, said he poisoned their well. Taixali needed no help there. Gawse always said they were dirty as well as cruel. Guenloie would boast less of her tallfolk blood now.

Reindeer fhain was hungry, Bruidda said, and she herself was badly wounded by Taixali. Dorelei shivered. Would she have to shed her own blood like that for her people? Surely if Mother and Lugh heard any of their children, it would be a great gern such as Bruidda. Yet, as the queen melted away into the fog, Dorelei felt a premonition like ice around her heart.

We will all fade away like that. Mother and Lugh are forgetting us. We must find stronger magic.

She mulled these questions sitting on the highest outjutting of rock above the crannog, letting the fresh wind that drove the fog away at evening play its soft fingers through her hair. Cru cantered his pony toward her from the higher ridge, past the stone circle, waving to Dorelei. He jumped from the saddle and climbed up to sit behind his wife. Dorelei was grateful for his arms around her.

"Did see pasture, Cru?"

"Thin."

"Oh—Cru." Dorelei wanted to cry but dammed the

impulse to spare Cm the worry. He was tired enough. "No better here than before."

"No worse." Cru shifted about behind her so she was between his splayed legs, her back against his chest. He slid his hands under her vest to cup her breasts. Dorelei shivered with the pleasure and reassurance of his touch, leaning her cheek against his.

"Must love thee tonight," Cru whispered.