"And to a's end," Dorelei supposed.

Whose end it would be was still an open question. Stag charged right at Cru, saw him, dropped his head to hit Cru with all nine cruel points of his rack. Cru had time for one shot.

"Or move very fast," Bredei amended.

Suddenly Cru's taut body uncoiled in a swift motion of draw and loose. Bredei clapped his hands sharply.

"Boh! One arrow."

One shot in over the lowered, plunging antlers, driving deep between the shoulder blades to pierce Stag to his heart. "And then did move!" Cru roared with the rest of fhain in appreciation, because Stag could run quite a distance before Mother sent him the news of his death. Dead as he was, Stag plunged on and might be running still if he hadn't collided with a tree.

"Ow-w-w." Artcois sank to the crannog floor with a vanquished gargle, finished. Cru forestalled applause with a warning hand.

"Hunt done. Trouble just begun."

Out of their own stand, and that with great caution, came the three Taixali boys to claim the kill. Bredei puffed himself up on tiptoe to enact the tallfolk role. " 'Stag be ours,' a says. 'Did make first strike.' "

Ah—but was it so, wondered courteous Cru, nocking another arrow smooth as flowing water. And where was this unerring missile that snuffed the life of Stag? There? Truly a child could take such a wound and need no more than a poultice and patch. Cru's arrow, on the other hand .. .

The Taixali boys were adamant. They'd been drinking from a large skin of uisge during the hunt and would not relinquish the kill. Away, all of them, back to Faerie land before they had more trouble than they could digest.

"Was a better way to decide," Artcois held out open hands to grinning fhain. Neniane nipped his fingers in pure affection. Her husband described a lavish arc with his hand and presented Bredei. "And seen by brother husband whose wit outspeeds Hare when a must."

"Oh.. . was small wit." Bredei shuffled modestly. "But must make large pictures for the near-blind." His solution, to the relishing giggles of fhain, was reason itself. Cru would allow the Taixali to shoot him in the rump as he did Stag. In turn, Cru would put his missile between the boy's shoulder blades. The least impaired

could claim Stag. Oh, to borrow or bargain, none like Bredei.

Well, the Taixali blustered and clouded the fine day with talk of the terrible vengeance visited upon troublesome Faerie by their valiant kind. Boys threatening like boys and stoking their courage from the skin of uisge. They boasted of the Faerie skins still hanging on their walls.

"And did know the truth of that," said Cru. "Gem's son from Reindeer fhain."

"Rest his soul," Padrec whispered.

Cru clasped Dorelei's hand. They did not look so young to Padrec then. Perhaps as animals were born with knowledge humans must learn, Prydn were born with the wisdom of survival.

"Be husband to gern. That comes first."

The Taixali blustered on while Cru calmly retrieved his arrow from the carcass and gave himself time to think. The boys really didn't want trouble; they only painted fierce masks on their first-bearded faces. Fhain already had the yearling to take home. Today's meekness might be tomorrow's profit when they traded in the village. Cru yielded the kill with reluctance and concern for the boys' well-being, for he was, he told them, husband to a gern feared through all Prydn for her malevolence.

"Who?" Padrec sputtered. "D-Dorelei?"

No other, the very mother of dragons who would ride such a stag to death up the rainbow and down the storm clouds for sheer spite, or blight a whole crop for a mere headache. But she had her human side and delighted in a bargain. Would the stalwart Taixali give their uisge in return for the buck? As a harbinger of good trading to come?

Quite relieved, they would. Cru received the uisge with profuse thanks, bowed his head over the boy's imperious hand, and, with Artcois and Bredei clowning for distraction, borrowed the purse loosely tied to his belt.

"Ave!" Padrec roared, pounding on a stone. "Ave, prince of borrowers!"

Cm beamed at his people and tossed the purse to Do-relei, his story done. Dorelei was laughing too hard to catch it. The purse plopped into the fire. There was a chattering scurry to snatch it out. The retrieved purse was opened, the coins spilled out: all Roman silver and bronze, which showed the magnitude of tallfolk thievery.

Padrec wiped his eyes, teary with laughter and smoke, mellow as the rest, and a good deal beyond, having drunk much more. "All praise to Cruaddan, Tod-Lowery among hunters, and for diplomacy a very Greek."

Cru needed a definition for both terms but allowed on reflection that the praise was fitting. He filled his cup and nestled Dorelei into his arms. She pushed the hair back from her face with the back of one hand, a feminine gesture poignant to Padrec. He looked away.

/ must love these folk as a people, but no one of them, no woman,

"Now, Padrec," she smiled at him from Cru's arms, "will thee speak of Father-God?"

Indeed, dappled in firelight and shadow, the cozy group of them made Padrec feel even mellower. He felt a surge of all-embracing love for his new brothers, wanted to open his arms to them all, beckon them through his expanding wisdom to God. Padrec felt exalted. He was Christ on the Mount surrounded by adoring upturned faces, the nimbus of Grace about his head. The drink flared like tinder in his imagination, opening all history before him and his destined place in it: Venerable, Blessed, Canonized, immortalized in mosaic and mural, with his flock (in smaller configuration) about his feet. Not for him the tame congregations of the south or the conversion of fashionable dowagers. He, Patricius, ventured to the wild edge of the world where even the legions did not tread and lighted it with the truth of God.

At the moment Padrec was more drunk than inspired,

and he drank no better than any other Briton—furious energy with a sense of music for all too brief a comet's fall before the violence leaped forth to batter at a dark existence, going maudlin and then unconscious. But now Padrec rode the high arc of his comet. Glistening with sweat and sanctity, he faced his congregation, weaving a little.

"Brothers and sisters, I love you all and I bring you God's blessing. Bui I have said that blessing is not cheaply won, nor by moral sloth. Fhain lives by a certain way, so must the children of God. As the crannog is built one stone on another, so is the Christian family. The man and wife are one flesh."

"Aye, Padrec." And Dorelei put her flesh closer to Cru's as he stroked her.

"As a father gives order to his children, so God to His, and angry when they disobey. Who would go against the rule of his parent?"

None of fhain at the moment. They felt the uisge as potently as Padrec but were urged to a more natural expression of it. His cosmos was founded on the denial of flesh, theirs on its acceptance. As they cuddled dreamily together, listening more to Padrec's music than his sense, their youth and health asserted itself. Neniane lay back between her ardent husbands, Guenloie stroked Drust's loins and whispered to him. They moved back farther into the deeper shadows away from the fire.

Padrec wiped his sweating face, trying to focus his eyes on them in the gloom, then forgot it, wandering in his rhapsody. "The way of God is of cleanliness. His apostle Paul has said the virgin is the most blessed, and was not Mary chosen to bear Jesu because she was so? Oh, my friends, how can I tell you of that squandered innocence, that priceless treasure lost, when the first man and woman looked at each other and knew they were naked; knew they were shackled from then on with that knowledge which is carnal."

Dorelei listened closely, vaguely disturbed as Padrec swelled to his theme.

"It is better to be clean and deny the sin, but if one cannot, it is better to marry than to burn. It is better to deny the fleeting illusion of flesh, but if one cannot, then cleave to one flesh. For the rule of my faith is, there shall be one husband with one wife."

He heard the breathy assent from the shadows. It sounded like Neniane. Padrec was gratified that they were so rapt; in fact, throughout his exhortation, he'd heard the agreeable sound of their joy as the Word pierced the crust of their errors.

"Aye," Neniane whispered from the darkness. "Nae, do nae stop.

Padrec paused to breathe deeply in the smoky gloom. He couldn't really see any of them now, but into his outstretched hand Cru pressed a fresh cup of uisge. Well enough; his mouth was dry and his tongue thickening inconveniently. Just a drop to wet it, then.

"And you, my brothers, though you know not the letter of sin, yet do ye sin. You live in sin!"

A smothered sound from one of the men, a coy response from Guenloie. Lying in Cru's arms, Dorelei wondered against his cheek, "What be sin?"

"Do nae know." Her husband's fingers smoothed lightly over her bare belly. "But dost have sweet sound. Sin . . . si-i-n. Like small bells in wind."

No, Dorelei heard more than the pleasing sound of the word, and something in her bridled at the alien sense of it. If unlettered, her intelligence was equal to Padrec's and constantly honed on the need to survive. What he said disturbed her.

"Let you therefore take one wife and one husband."

For Padrec, the crannog had grown somehow darker and closer. The world softened to shadows attentive to his mission. He spoke with crystal reason and the deep music of his faith, and they responded from their symbolic darkness beyond his pulpit by the fire; a murmur, a smothered cry. Oh, yes, they heard. They understood. They thirsted for the truth he poured out to them. In a

moment they would come closer again, eager to see as well as hear him—