"How long dost forget me, Oh Lord! Nae, how long? How long wilt hide Thy face from fhain?"

"Uh . .. those are not the words, Drust."

"Be right words. See: How long must hide sorrow in my heart? How long will hide Thy face, how long shall tallfolk be . . ."

"Exalted."

"Aye, be exalted over me? But why sing of sorrow, Padrec? Be none in me."

"Well, what the Psalm is saying—"

"Nae, hear. Have no sorrow. Flocks healthy and wolves few, Guenloie a good wife. What sorrow?"

"Am I not trying to tell thee, an will be patient?"

"Dost sorrow in thy heart, Padrec?" Drust twisted around to Padrec. They sat very close together, sharing the large cloak. "Do nae smile anymore."

"Nae, do not sorrow," Padrec evaded. "My heart rejoices."

Like a leaden weight.

"Could wish better pasture," Drust allowed, "but that's nae much. Will trade with Taixali."

If I stay, I go on feeding my heart to the crows. Was any man ever so miserable?

A good many of them at one time or another, Me-ganius might have told him. Those with some experience in love learned to abridge the drama of suffering, but Padrec was a neophyte and would not delete a pang or a sigh. The colors and the music of creation he muffled under the pall of his anguish.

They won 7 let me go, and yet I must. If I don y t, I simply go on dying with no death in sight. If I go, I've failed, but Vm a weak and sorry priest, no matter.

His impregnable cosmos was crumbling like a sand castle in the rain.

Someone should go to the Taixali with a request to trade for grain and vetch. Dorelei had already asked him to do it. It would get him away for a day at least.

Dorelei's thoughts were as full of him, but her worries were more practical. As they suspected, the graze was not enough even for their hardy sheep. They must trade for additional feed. The best time for trading was high or late summer, when crops were good and the tallfolk mood more generous. With summer festivals, children being born or running about, and young people's thoughts turning to coupling, Prydn magic was welcome and sometimes handsomely rewarded. The stockade gates would be opened, the Blackbar was hidden away, all doors stood wide in a good year. They could use the looms. If there was a scarcity of wool, they might trade some of theirs to tallfolk, and always there was mending work for small Prydn hands—clothing for the women, bronze working for Malgon, who could make and decorate a shield or sword fit for a chief who might fight with a blade of Blackbar but still preferred the artistry of bronze for display. Sometimes at Bel-tein or Samhain, tallfolk and Prydn celebrated at one fire, jumped together

over the flames, and drove their flocks between the two sacred fires for good fortune. In good years it could be so.

But now it was late in a bad year for Taixali. They would want no part of Prydn, who had nothing to trade in any case but wool not ready for shearing. Fhain needed much: feed for the flocks, woven wool, oil, vegetables—everything, while they had not even sunshine or goodwill to help them through tallfolk gates.

"Must be a way."

Dorelei told herself that with the sureness of her kind, who did not live long without wile. She rode or walked alone over the high ridges, worrying at her problem like a hound at a bone. She thought sometimes of Padrec, and out of the blend of thoughts came her first answer.

Padrec spoke well. If he was impossible in some ways, there was still music to his tongue. He would go ahead of them to tell the village they came in peace to trade.

The second and knottier question: trade what?

"Padrec, would speak with thee."

She chose her time when all fhain were out of the crannog but the two of them, Padrec summoned from feeding and currying the horses. Dorelei sat formally on the gern-stone, Padrec across the fire.

"Do always look sad now, Padrec."

"It is nothing. What would Gern-y-fhain say?"

She'd already announced him as their messenger; she needed other counsel now. "Thee knows the trade south of Wall. And this season so little to trade with."

"True." Padrec kept his head slightly lowered, eyes on his feet.

"Taixali will ask what thee has to trade. What be most wanted by tallfolk?"

Padrec thought on it, pulling his lower lip under front teeth. Gold and jewels were current anywhere but out of the question now. Fhain wealth was rarely mentioned, and then only as Rainbow-gift. Wool, yes, but theirs was not ready. Nothing else worth mentioning. Were they in reach of Corstopitum, they could get good value out of

a pound of pepper or a few jars of liquamen, but Prydn knew nothing of commercial spices.

"No wool. No furs beyond what fhain wears."

"Then what, Padrec? Do need to know."

"Can think of nothing else but Blackbar." Informed courtesy made him use the taboo word for iron to neutralize its power in the crannog; still Dorelei made a perfunctory warding sign before she spoke. Padrec shifted on the store with a trace of irritation. For anyone else the iron would be money, food, supplies, anything needed. Here it was unmentionable. And yet she sat there with her gray eyes solemn with concern and responsibility and worried at him for answers.

"Ponies then?"

"Nae."

"My horse could fetch a fair trade."

"Will need it to move in spring."

"I may not be here in spring."

Her head moved slightly. "Will be here."

Padrec threw up his hands. "Well, there's the rath poles and skins, but I wouldn't count on it."

"Oh, Padrec."

"Or the stones in the circle, but they'd probably want 'em delivered."

"Do speak like a fool. Do nae try me, Padrec."

"Why not?" He looked up at her for the first time, hoping Dorelei couldn't read the thing that ate at him. "You ask common sense and forbid me to speak it."

"Forbid thee nothing. This word, that, but say."

"Rainbow-gift."

Dorelei didn't move. Her eyes opened and closed again without expression. Padrec pointed to her gold tore. "I speak with your permission. Gold. Silver. Jewels."

"Nae."

The primitive obstinacy was too much for his civilized mind. "Why not, Dorelei? Do you know the value of what you wear, that tore, the stone that Reindeer gern wore?"

He heard the sense of blasphemy in her answer. "Nae."

"Oh, God preserve me, what can I say?"

"Cannot trade that. Will nae think it."

"Someone must think it, Dorelei. I put it to you as gern. What else?"

"Nae."

Padrec sighed. "Then let Gern-y-fhain, who has the lives of her people in hand, tell what a will trade."

Now it was Dorelei's turn to avoid his eyes. "Gawse would not."

"I venture she never needed it that much."

"Mabh would not."

He knew enough not to contradict her there. Mabh was her own Moses, not to be gainsaid, but she might be an example. "Was not Mabh a bringer of great change? Did not Jesu chide the Hebrew priests mired in worn-out ways? Who can say what Mabh would or would not? I have only ridden with Dorelei, who is wise and strong enough to let Christ into her rath. Will such a gern balk at a handful of cold metal to help fhain?"

"Be more than that, Padrec."

"What then?"

"Magic. From the first days. Real gifts here in hand from Mother and Lugh Sun."

"Then let me ask this: as I am called Father Patricius, will not all of Prydn someday call thee Dorelei Mabh in reverence? Mabh had the courage to change. Does Dorelei?"

A persuasive argument, it pressed on her sense of responsibility and pride. If Padrec could swell to the prospect of honor in the Church, Dorelei might be swayed in her own terms. He was glad she couldn't see him just then, with her head bowed. This feeling toward a woman was new to him and not easily hidden. His love welled up in a surge of pity and understanding that wanted to hold Dorelei, tell her it would all come right. He spoke carefully, then, the truth of both of them.

"Dorelei—my friend—listen. Take back from me

what I've learned from you. We must all bend a little from our beliefs sometimes. Bend a little, or..."

Her dark head came up, searching him for an answer. "Or what, Padrec?"

"Or go down. Go mad. I don't know." He poked at the small fire. "Have said, Gern-y-fhain."

Padrec lowered his head again, fiddling with his stick at the fire. There was a long silence between them; then he heard the slight rustle of movement. When he looked up, he saw that Dorelei had removed her gold tore, turning it thoughtfully in her hands.

It was a measure of their need that no one seriously opposed the decision beyond some grumbling from Mal-gon the pessimist, who clearly saw it as a desperation measure, and a few questions in private from Dorelei's husband. Whatever any of them felt, the need was a reality. With Padrec's estimation of Roman gold weights for a standard, a simple clay mold was shaped and baked, the gold broken or shaved from their treasure and melted down into trading sticks of considerable weight. Dorelei was surprised to find how little it depleted their treasure. Not even considering the precious stones, Padrec reckoned it at over a thousand gold aureii and still only a fraction of their hoard or that of other gerns like Reindeer. The wealth, the damned cold reality of it, there for years or ages and untouchable, as real a covenant as the Ark. Paradox or madness, Prydn were some of the richest folk in Briton, the most needy, and the least likely to survive.

The Taixali were suspicious of a Briton who came in the name of Faerie, but the gold spoke for itself, solid foot-long sticks of it, notched over the length for easy breaking; fine gold that made the eyes of the village elder, Naiton y shine brightly as the wealth. Well enough: let the Faerie come next day.

Trading was something of an occasion to fhain, the novelty always edged with the uncertainty of their reception. For this day, the flocks were watered and fed

and left in the byre. The women bathed and anointed themselves with herbs, chose their best kilt or fringed skirt, the men their least tattered vests and trousers. They shaved carefully, sharing the one ancient copper razor, to show their distinction from Picts. To a man, Picts shaved their whole bodies and beard except for fierce, flaring moustaches, which they dyed or curled or stiffened as their hair. Their women dressed their hair in various plaited styles. In contrast, Faerie men shaved their faces clean, proud as the women of their delicate-boned beauty. The razor was always offered to Padrec but had to be so tediously sharpened after each use that he gave it up and let his hair and beard grow out, much to Dorelei's fascination. His hair was red; how could his beard have red and brown and even a few white hairs, all undecided like the salt marsh?