in all their seasons when she lay in Cru's arms and thought of someone else.

Good that he is gone. If he stayed, the fight would come sooner or later, whether he came to my bed or not.

How could she love what she didn't understand? Some things took more living than thinking about, and Padrec had changed for the better since they found him in the ring of stones. But it was good she sent him away. Difference was one thing, defiance another, and if she felt a loss—well, Gawse must have sacrificed much for like reasons.

She hoped her husband brought no new problems; she couldn't cope with them now. "Aye, Cru?"

"Did think not to leave thee alone."

When she felt his arms around her, Dorelei shut her eyes tight against the loneliness even Cru could not drive away, and was a traitor.

They were not long together by the tree when Guen-loie hailed them from a thicket, broke into sight, and sprinted up the wooded slope, Neniane hurrying behind.

44 Aye, aye. Thy baskets will spill out. What is't?"

Neniane pointed back down the slope to the moving figure blurred by thicket but climbing toward them. "Padrec comes back"

Then the horse broke out into the open and Padrec called to her. "Gern-y-fhain, would speak with thee."

"Were sent away!" She hurled it back with more force than needed. "May not come back. Will not."

Still he came on, holding a brightly colored stick in his hand. When Cru saw what it was, he nocked an arrow to his bow and drew on the priest. "Stop, tallfolk man."

Padrec halted the horse. "Do not call me that, Cru. It's not a name I'd wear."

"Say that and yet bring Blackbar to curse us again?" Cru's bow was steady on Padrec's chest. "Will kill thee, Padrec." Padrec held up the arrowhead on its fragment of painted shaft, retrieved from near the rock he'd flung

it against the day before. 'Tm glad you didn't send Guenloie away/'

4 'Yah, Padrec." Guenloie ventured a tentative smile, wary of the evil in his hand.

'Thee cannae come back." Dorelei took a few paces toward him, placing herself between the evil and her folk. "Will nae mock us so. What dost want?"

"My place, Gern-y-fhain. My people."

"Be nae thy folk."

"You are. If not you, then none."

"Nae, go. Or Cru will shoot."

Padrec dismounted and stood by the horse's head. "But hear me. You believe in the magic of Mother and Lugh. The magic of my God is shown only to strengthen the faith of the believer. I have told fhain of this magic, which is greater than the parting of the seas or riving of rock. Now I must show it. It is all I can give you."

"What rnagu

"When I have shown it to Gern-y-fhain, let her send me away if she will. I wished only to bring fhain to the true God, the Father of Lugh himself." Padrec's voice softened with the admission. "That's all I am, Dorelei, all any priest is. A messenger. My message delivered, Tm not important, but Gern-y-fhain is."

In a different tone, Dorelei said, "Thee knows that now?"

Padrec nodded. "God offers his magic to Salmon gern if she will take it."

Dorelei cursed him silently, disturbed by the challenge of him she felt from the first day.

"If she has the strength to dare as Mabh dared. To change, to hazard what she has for what can be."

"None be braver than my sister," Neniane piped loyally. "Like to our mother."

"And do know it, Neniane. So it is to thy gern I bring this magic." Padrec held up the broken arrow. "The power over Blackbar. Now and forever."

Dorelei made the ward-sign, keeping her face stiff to hide the fear. With a staying gesture to Cru, she stalked

forward to within a pace of Padrec, averting her eyes from the Blackbar.

"Will nae leave here if thee harms Dorelei," Cm promised.

"Would harm my friend?"

"What dost speak?" Dorelei demanded in a low, tense voice that only Padrec could hear. "Thee troubles me, Padrec. Have always troubled me."

"And you me, fool that I am. But have seen what evil magic did to you and will always do until you know the stronger magic of Jesu Christ."

"Why did nae show't before among Taixali? Why did thee let this happen"—she held up her marked arm— "when could fend it off?"

"There were many things I did not know, Dorelei. I thought of my needs, not yours."

"Speak of it."

"It will take courage, Dorelei."

She turned her arm toward him with the obscene mark like a gob of filth. "Dost think would suffer this again?" Not the sick fear that coursed through her when the curse touched her skin, not the nauseous feeling when the mark of it began to swell on her flesh, but the rest of it: her lessening in the eyes of fhain. She was their center, like a queen bee in a hive. She had to dare. "Will see this Jesu magic."

"Then look at Blackbar."

"Nae..."

"Look, Dorelei," Padrec coaxed. "Was any danger averted by refusing to see it? Look."

Dorelei did. Behind her, Neniane squeezed her cousin's hand and held on tight. Purposefully, Padrec held the arrowhead pointed away from her, his voice low and sure, and in it Dorelei heard what she'd always loved, the music, often blurred with anger or vehemence, but music when he allowed it.

"Water has always been stronger than Blackbar. See where just the night's dew has rusted it. Water tempers it when a's first taken from the fire for shaping. Water

blessed with the magic of God will make it thy friend and servant. If you believe."

"Thee . . . troubles me."

"If you believe. Gern-y-fhain knows the part of belief in weaving magic."

Send him away. Let Cru kill him. Mother and Lugh, what does he drive me to, what does he ask? Am I Mabh that I can cut past from present? Blackbar will kill me. Can I not feel it alive there in his hand, waiting to poison me with a touch?

Dorelei felt the hollowness in her stomach again, but she dare not show the merest sign of it now. She flinched in the village for all to see, that was damage enough. She was grateful there was enough will in her to ward off the piddling boy with his painted arrow. She glanced back to reassure her folk with a smile more forced than felt.

"Did once think to make thee second husband, Pad-rec. Be past. Now do wonder only if Cru should kill thee."

"That is why my heart was divided with you, Dorelei. I wanted very much to be your husband, and I cannot. As thee said, be past."

/ knew it, felt it. I lied, Padrec, and thee as well. Nothing is past. I feel you now.

"Dorelei, God knows I'm the weakest, most stupid of His messengers. But let me give you this. One moment's courage or a lifetime of fear and running. When it is no longer an evil, can be a friend, Dorelei. Believe that Jesu can save thee. Call on Him as Mabh called on Mother. Trust me. Blackbar will be as much friend to fhain as I am.

Great shaggy lump with his soft-singing Briton-man's voice, cajoling her. She wouldn't tell him what the sound of it did to her. And yet—if she could master this magic for all of them. Almost too big, too impossible to think. But if she could, as Mabh parted land from sea, as Jesu ...

"Did say that Jesu died for all men?"

4 'Aye."

"Saved them for all time?"

"If they believed."

"So Prydn?" She was bargaining like a gern now. "For all time free of Blackbar?"

"And masters of it. Even Mabh was not so."

But I could die as Jesu did.

"For all time, Dorelei. And tallfolk will deal with thee as queen, as gern, eye to eye."

Mother, I am afraid. None has ever dared so. Can he see my fear? He sees so much.

"If thee has Mabh's courage for one moment."

"Padrec ... do not." A feeble shaking of her head. She wanted to retreat. "Do not."

"Dorelei, you taught me so much. I don't know if I love you more as God's joke of a priest or just a man, but the love is there. I will stop being a child afraid to name it even as you must call this Blackbar by its true name."

Dorelei searched his eyes for truth, found it there. "Could be my life, Padrec."

"Trust me."

Dorelei held up her marked arm. "Thee doubts a could kill?"

"Thee doubts my magic be as strong? Then my life with yours, Gern-y-fhain."

That much was foregone, whether he knew it or not. "Have said. Guenloie! Call thy husbands, tell them to drive the flocks home to byre. Cruaddan, bring Artcois and Bredei from the hunt. Gern-y-fhain will make magic."

The sky was even darker. Dorelei glanced up at the clouds. Lugh sent his own angry warning for trying to change his way of things. But his clouds shadowed Taix-ali as well. So be it. Darken, then. Did not Mabh dare thee? So must I. Cursed or killed, I will be gern. I will not be shamed again.

THE LAST RAINBOW 157

They gathered by the brook that edged the foot of their hill, wrapped in their warmest against the rising wind. Cru' s great cloak was shared between Guenloie and Neniane, trailing behind them on the ground. They stood in little clumps, Neniane's husbands to one side, Guenloie's to the other, Cru alone as if on guard over Padrec waiting at the water's edge. All waited for Do-relei to descend from the ring of stones where she prayed before the awesome thing she would do.

Rof loped nervously back and forth along the stream, sniffing the change in the air.

4 'Will be snow," Artcois guessed.

His brother sniffed like Rof at the charged air. "Nae, rain."

"One or other. Could nae guess," Malgon confessed. "Strange sky."

Very strange. They didn't want to think on it too much, frightened at what Dorelei would do. Not the strongest gerns, not Bruidda, not even Mabh ever prevailed against Blackbar. In their young lives, they'd seen the marks it left by its mere touch, and a wound from its edge, like Drust's, took twice as long to heal. Black-bar would not break like bronze and stayed sharper through the spell Lugh wove in its creation. An alien thing with so much power must not be mentioned or viewed directly, never brought into fhain. No one ever did until now. The mark on Dorelei's arm was a defeat any gern would answer, but there were limits to what she might dare. Dorelei went beyond courage to recklessness.