"Thee asks that, who will always have first place at my fire?"

"But only one place in thy bed." He twisted away from her. "Nae, thee turns from me to him. Do love him."

"Like thee."

"More than me."

"As much, Cru. As I love thee."

"As thee loves me." Cru winced as if she'd struck him. "Do lose my wife."

"Never."

"Leave be, woman. Go, then."

"Husband—"

"Go."

For all she loved Cru, Dorelei felt a twinge of resentment. He clouded over her happiness. If a dear child, there was also a child's cruelty. She would not have charged him with it. "Learn from thy fhain brothers. Who so close to Bredei as Artcois? As Malgon to Drust? And what gern with one husband alone?"

"Mine."

And that only because we were young and new and starting a fhain. I've spoiled him as Guenloie's mother spoiled her.

But for that, the hard year, hard work and dangers, the worry and lack of Prydn men, there would have been another husband. Lugh sent his Raven. It was meant to be. "Give me blessing, Cru?"

Cru managed that much, although he couldn't look at her. "Mother bring Gern-y-fhain wealth."

She bent to kiss him, then moved to the rath opening. "Mirror-gift has great beauty, Cru."

"When thee fills it."

If it is a world of magic, it is also one of pain one cannot go round. Pain when I changed from girl to woman, pain in Cru's bones when he went from boy to

man, and our first loving was not without it. The magic brought my blood and stretched his bones, changed us and left its mark like char on wood. Nothing stays, then, nothing goes back. Why should that be a sadness? Yet it is. With all Mother's world to ride, Padrec's Adam and Eve cried for their Garden—but moved on as they cried, and was the old worth more than the new? Moving on is the way of things. Twice each year since I could run behind Gawse's pony, I have left one pasture for another. Fair remembered or fair to come, life went on. They were children in the Garden, Cru. We were children; now we're grown. You and Padrec can both be stubborn children when a woman least expects or needs it. Neither of you knows all my songs, but I need both of you to sing. There is more to being a queen than I knew. Except that nothing stays.

The fresh wounds on his cheeks were agony. The pain made him grit his teeth to concentrate on prayer.

"I have no confessor, no man to turn to, so I pray aloud even where she has shown me how to feel without words. My God, if you will charge me for flesh alone, then I am guilty, but my heart is no heretic."

Around Padrec the ringed stones waited for his words like a council of clerics. Far away across the moor, no part of spiritual drama, Wolf and Tod-Lowery padded on the hunt.

"But they have seen, Lord, and they believe like children who reach for a parent's hand without question; whose faith is like their thumbs in their mouths asleep, a need. For eight brave ones like these and so many more to come, will you lament one vow from one frail man who's no longer sure he was born to be a priest?"

His face hurt too much; he had to pause. Malgon was deft but couldn't spare him this. In turn he tried to be stoic under the blade. If they could conquer a lifelong fear, he could endure a moment of it to bind himself closer to them. He was one of them now, a fhain brother.

"However the world shapes me, I will always be

Your priest. Only that the world is so much more than I thought. I've brought them by their own path out of a fear older than Abraham to trust in You. There are new children coming. I've told them it's Your reward for their faith, and so it is. If I have anything to confess now, it is happiness."

He heard the pony snuffle beyond the stones and turned to see the white-gowned figure slip down from the saddle and move toward him through the moonlight. The light was magic itself, shimmering in the stones about her throat, turning her flower wreath to a crown.

"Do come for thee, husband."

He wet his lips and found himself shaking, not in fear but awakening. "I was praying."

"And I." Dorelei reached up to touch his cheek. The woad-stained scars stood out black against his skin. Mal-gon had been careful, but a few drops of blood had dried in Padrec's beard. Her mark was on him now. "Be pain, Padrec?"

"It will pass."

As mine, and Cru weeping by the fire. Truly this was a night for discovering. She noticed the strip of hide looped in Padrec's hand. This went with the words they would say to Father-God. At a certain point he would bind their hands together.

"As God binds our flesh into one."

"Mother will make us so."

"Then will be the more married, Dorelei."

As always, she had to stretch to put her arms around his neck. "Thee's so far."

"Not so far." Padrec lifted Dorelei and held her close. "See?"

She loved to bury her face in the bristly forest of his beard. It smelled of him and crannog and the heather that sweetened the air of her life. "Untie me."

He murmured into her hair; they were both trembling now.

"Untie me, Padrec," she asked with an embarrassment that had nothing to do with him.

"Why, what's the matter?"

"Oh . . . sister's hands be so wise at knots. Did make this kirtle and put me into it."

"Be the most beautiful gown in the world." "Aye, but do nae know how to get out." He would marry her by both ways, but hers first. Laughing, Padrec set her down and began to fumble at the shoulder knots, touched at the inconsistency of Do-relei in such a garment. He was used to her mostly bare. The fall and flimsy cloth of it didn't go with her, only showed how small and wild she was. His fingers hurried, impatient with the knots, but they came loose at last.

Lugh is stern but generous as well. If he gave iron to tallfolk, he sent Padrec Raven to me. Mother, see where the mark faded from my arm in but a day. I marry a king, and shall we not bear gerns and sons between us? Mother, thee should not fear nor Lugh thunder; it will be well with Jesu in my rath. Even Cru will see if you help him. Who would think men would have such trouble with love? Yet I am so happy. I am a feast laid for children, a new pasture; like Tir-Nan-Og and the children discovering me, my grass so high the foot falls whispering and world smells green, as Dronnarron, the Good Time That Was, and I wear Rainbow for a crown.

And I thought to confess this? Oh, sweet Lord, I would be liar, hypocrite, to put my face to a musty lattice and beg absolution for my sins. No. Bless me, Father, for I have sung, for I have seen, and no mystery of Yours that I do not see joined to another and revealed. What I struggled to understand with words, I know now without the need for them. Where my thoughts groped for You, my joy flies home sure as Cru's arrow, and just to wake and watch her sleeping by me, just to be alive and close to her is a prayer, and I am more Your priest than yesterday.

Generous themselves, they took naturally to the generosity inherent in Padrec's faith and brought to it an ebullient joy more often attested than felt by many professed Christians. They could forego borrowing, even call it stealing, if that was the word. They could give to tallfolk as extravagantly as to each other, if Padrec bade. The knotty problem was his alien concept of sin and confession. If it was a matter of telling him what they'd done, that was simple enough. They brought all their activities to Padrec, trusting him to separate kernel from chaff. The best he could do was give them the habit of it. The crux of the problem, their marriage customs, remained untouched. Since Padrec was now part of that problem, he could no more than satisfy his intellectual curiosity about it.

"Was from before the time of the ice," Dorelei said.

In this unimaginable antiquity, child-wealth just came as gifts from Mother to her daughters. Men were not considered part of this woman-mystery. Blood relationship was therefore reckoned from the woman. In any case, women kept the rath and lived longer, while male hunters died every day. Surely, second husband saw the sense.

"But how when men knew children were theirs too?"

When the news broke, Mother and Lugh had long since set Prydn apart as chosen people so long as they followed the old way. What matter the father, since the wealth descended through its mother and belonged to her? Even Taixali and Venicone kept this custom in part. Hebrew-fhain descended through fathers, but then their Father-God had no wife to contend with as Lugh did, and Jesu never had children, which was unfortunate, but there it was.

Still, Dorelei reflected, if they were to heed Jesu and not seem ungrateful for His help, some allowance should be made for His puzzling insistence on one wife to one husband. There might be a way.

"Will confess one husband and be ab . . . ab-what, Padrec?"

"Absolved, but—"

"Stay thee: next day will confess the other."

Of course, good manners and rank were involved. A second husband must be confessed first. Padrec would not mind being confessed before Cruaddan. It seemed reasonable.

Dorelei rolled over in the grass to glower down at Padrec when he laughed. "And what dost second husband find to smile at in a gern's wisdom?"

"Nothing . . . nothing." Padrec punctuated the words with kisses to her nose and chin. ' 'Will speak to Jesu in the circle."

Dorelei was seriously concerned and proud of her solution. "A be most strange in this. Will understand the right of it?"

"If do put it clear as thee speaks," Padrec temporized. Well, at least it's a start.

And Dorelei lay back pondering up at the slow-moving fleece clouds. Where is Cru? We used to lie together like this in summer. Now he goes alone, speaks little, and that so carefully. I feel the hurt in him. One weeping was enough. He will not show it again.

"Huff!" Bredei panted, mimicking the sound of the bellows he pumped. "Huff! Bring iron! Huff!"

"Faster, Bredei," Padrec called. "Must be hotter."