Miracles and magic: that was religion to Faerie, that and the quaintly unstable marriage of sun and earth. Of them all, Drust might in time go beyond that to true faith; the rest understood nothing but the intercession of magic for good or ill, the folderol practiced with much display by Irish shamans. Tricks, but they believed.

"Tricks..."

Failure was the lash he couldn't suffer again; yet to stay he must find a powerful reason now. Hunched against a stone, muffled in the blanket, Padrec tried to order his mind to purpose, glaring up at the moon like a rival: Dorelei's mother of magic.

"Don't look at me. You're the magician."

A piece of an idea snagged on the hem of his thoughts. His frame of mind turned from despair; he began to think slowly, polishing each element before fitting it to the next, doing what would have been obvious at the start to one of the Irish shamans. He tried to think not about Dorelei but like her.

If I were Dorelei, what would I most need now? What would I want? If I were she ...

To have one side of her at war with the other was new and painful to Dorelei. She knew her needs, but for

the first time in her life she could not name her feelings. They were not as simple as before. She'd showed her anger like a child without knowing clearly what drove it, and vented it on Cru in loving that night, biting his neck, tearing his strong back with her nails. He wouldn't know that it was passion of a different color, that she battered herself against a force that threatened her.

"Thee has a hunger tonight," he whispered against her cheek.

"Do need you much." Dorelei writhed against him. "Come to me."

"Again?"

Her arms went around him, tight.

Long after Cru breathed deep in slumber, Dorelei stared up into darkness, reliving the horrible day in the village, the miserable silence around the fire, the wound in her fhain as visible as that on her arm. Her thoughts sifted finer through the sleepless hours, showing her the problem but no way to the heart of it. He was the rock that broke her. Lugh had sent her no help at all. Padrec was a stone around her neck and one with a cutting edge. He defied her when she spoke as gern. He put his arm around sheep-witted Guenloie, who might have killed them all with her weak ways. In the village he thought first to shield Guenloie rather than herself from the hurled stones. For all the magic of Lugh, Mother, and even Padrec's Father-God, all saw how Blackbar frightened her, saw what it did to her arm, and knew her magic was weak. She was shamed and beaten, and future life with Taixali would be all the harder for them.

The men must trade alone from now on, if they went at all. Three of them, all that were left. Padrec couldn't know how much more at stake there was than pulling Guenloie, and yet he defied her—this man not sensible enough to reach for a woman. He incited Drust and Mal-gon to defy her. She'd shown enough of her humiliation this day, when she'd always shielded all but wise Cru from the hard truth of their weakness. They knew now, and when she looked at sullen Padrec across the firepit

at supper, Dorelei realized she must rule fhain or he would.

She was glad he was going.

Not true; she ought to be glad. That hid itself in passion and made her love Cru until they were both exhausted. That robbed her sleep now, the feeling she struggled to catch and drag into the light. A gern must be able to read her own heart before she could read others. What was it that loosed the fury at Guenloie?

Not so much a finding but admitting. Whatever his mad notions of women, Padrec was a man for a woman to treasure and learn from. If her whole life proceeded from belief, so did his, and this made him strong in his peculiar way, strong and stubborn as herself. Aye, and what did he spend this strength on? Guenloie! Always the favored, spoiled child in Gawse's fhain. How her changeling mother cooed over Guenloie and made much of her. And oh, how Guenloie clung to the petting and to her Padrec-protector, wetting his shirt with her innocent tears, all atremble in his arms. . . .

No more, woman. Is that the heart of it? Help me, Mother. I must be wise when Tm a fool, strong where all know me weak, a gern where I am not fit to tend fhain flocks. Help me. Is it all because of him? That I am jealous?

Send him away. And keep the Blackbar evil from us.

Dorelei burrowed closer to Cru's male warmth under the covers. As she moved, her fingers brushed the swollen evil on her arm, and she shivered with the oldest fear of her life and her kind.

Padrec came home late to crannog, and Dorelei heard him rise early, while Neniane was kindling the morning fire. She was not surprised he was gone and his horse with him. Whatever her feelings, that much was done and finished. If a gern could be wrong, she could right it, but she could not give up. Wisdom was never the worse for a sleep. Yesterday's troubles, sifted through a rested mind, were clearer now, the right and wrong of

it. Dorelei took small sips from her cup of chamomile and prepared to break the smothered silence.

Guenloie and her husbands were glum and silent in their places around the firepit. They'd already begun to bundle their own things together. Dorelei set down her cup and assumed the formal position on her stone.

"Guenloie?" Her cousin looked directly at her for the first time that morning. The bruises on her face were bluish-black now. The girl had suffered much. "Have spoken with Mother. A would nae have thee parted from fhain."

Guenloie bowed her head in acceptance. "Be innocent, Gern-y-fhain." Dorelei saw the gratitude in her eyes and the vindication in Drust's.

"Mother did say so. Be past and done, then. Fhain will be whole again."

It was the right decision. Dorelei felt the tension about the fire loosen and dissolve in tremulous laughter and snatches of idle talk. She caught Cru's tiny nod of approval. He'd upheld her law but approved the cooler common sense that shaded it to mercy.

"Do speak to all," Guenloie said into the clay cup between her small palms. "Have had foolish thoughts, said foolish things. Nae more. Would open my flesh and spill the Taixali blood from it. Would nae go again to a's stinking village."

"Yah," Malgon agreed. "Wife will stay apart from them."

Now that they were knit again, Dorelei pressed the advantage with further good sense. "Fhain women will not go among them, but men alone and only if a must. And if a's women come to fhain for magic, will set a dear price on it."

Cru touched Dorelei's arm where the inflammation was darkening like an old burn. She shook him away in tacit disapproval: it should not be mentioned, but Bredei did and spoke.

"Was foul of Naiton. A has nae magic but that."

"But that enough," Neniane murmured. "Be Lugh

Sun still angry with Mother that a does keep fhain under such a curse?''

"Gods can be wrong," Artcois ventured. "Even jealous."

"Nae, not Padrec's Father-God," Drust protested. "What god stronger? Did part the sea and slay firstborn in every rath of Egypt-land."

"Was thee in Egypt to see?" Cru challenged. "Nae, only that Padrec did say, and a's well gone."

"Gone," Dorelei sealed it. Drust prudently let it drop but couldn't resist a parting shot. "Padrec be a good heart. Will miss him."

They all would. Padrec's absence was more palpable than his presence. Dorelei realized they'd all grown used to the gentle, fussy, incomprehensible self of Padrec as part of their lives, but she couldn't bend in this. She couldn't clearly see where his teaching would lead them, nor would Padrec see how she must be sure in that. He would move on, go home. She could not.

When they drove the flocks out to the high pasture, the sky looked ominous, clear blue in the west but an edge of mackerel clouds sliding toward them from the east with a dirty gray smudge behind them. Glad to be exonerated, Guenloie and her husbands jumped to the tasks that Dorelei set out for them. The men went to pasture the sheep, Guenloie descended the west slope to the woods for hyssop to make poultice for Drust's arm and to gather late mushrooms for the supper pot. Dorelei sent Neniane after her, more for mending than needed help.

"Go with thy cousin, sister. A's had a hard lesson."

Artcois and Bredei passed Cru on their way to hunt, grinning.

"Dorelei be wise," Artcois said.

"Aye, did think much on it last night."

The brothers smiled slyly, brimming with fun. "True," said Bredei. "Did hear thee both thinking last night."

4 'Aye, brother; and see where a did use Cru's back to ponder."

They circled Cm, gravely inspecting every small mark until he shoved them away and slipped into his vest. Bredei assisted him as if he were aged and infirm. Art-cois shook his head.

"Be content as husband to second daughter. Do not have the strength for a gern."

"Die in a year," his brother agreed. "Less."

The time for joking was over; Cru tired of them. "Thee were not marked with Blackbar. Go hunt and be done."

That was the thing they could not fight, no matter how high their courage. Dorelei could forgive Guenloie and send Padrec away, but the mark on her arm was burned deep in all of them. Stronger than his bronze knife and his arrows. Blackbar had defeated them since the time Lugh gave it to tallfolk. He could not give in to his fear, being a man, but Dorelei must show more strength than all of them. If his love restored that strength, Dorelei could claw Cru's flesh to the white bone.

The second thought was natural to him. Where is she?

As his mind framed the question, he tried to remember. He knew when Dorelei wanted to be alone, but there might be Taixali about, all the more confident since filthy Naiton laid the Blackbar on Dorelei. Cru took the slope in strides and hops on the steeper grade, loping toward the trees.

The darkening sky matched her mood. Dorelei stood by a stunted oak overshadowed by taller firs and brooded out over the glen to the west. Somewhere below her, Neniane and Guenloie moved silently about their gathering. Dorelei shivered and pulled the cloak about her, feeling guilty when she saw Cru coming through the trees. She loved him without question, almost without beginning, since she couldn't remember a time when they weren't together. Yet last night was the first time