part0004

"Artist, Malgon."

"Ar-rtiss?"

"Be thy gift."

Malgon tried on the strange sound like a new garment. "Ar-tist. Dorelei has gern's gift of sight. It is to women that such pictures come, not men." Malgon faltered into silence for the space of a few breaths, haunted by thoughts beyond language. "Thee saw the men dead and the ravens. And those who watched from the hill."

"So much I saw, like thee."

"But a Reindeer man where I saw Bruidda. A spoke name as thy vision did."

"Belrix," Padrec confirmed. "As one would name Lugh or summer. Lord of fire."

"Nae, Padrec."

"Brother, did hear it."

Malgon only shook his head. "Artos. Name was Ar-tos. Briton-name."

"Artos?" Padrec squinted at him across the fire. Nc a British name; more like Britonized Latin, their attempt at ursus\ that seemed more reasonable. "It might mean 'bear,' Malgon. '

Malgon drank his tea, pensive. "Such sights be given to gerns alone. When men see them, sign be sure as tracks in snow."

He put down his bread. Food was far from his mind now. In the rath entrance, the slit of daylight faded, and shadow deepened around them. Padrec accepted his brother's silence and didn't press to share his thoughts. When the words came, they were in Prydn and Brit together for the alien mixture of truths Malgon had thought out.

"Did see Reindeer alike. Thee a man, me Bruidda. Was Bruidda found the black fawn."

Padrec listened without comment, open now to many more beliefs than were schooled into him. If Paul could have a vision to the profit of the gentile Church, or Con-stantine to that of an empire, why should he disbelieve his own senses or those of Malgon? What was holy, who blessed or elect?

Malgon spoke carefully, choosing his words. "A thing was to come among Reindeer fhain. The Bright One from the Sea. And the Bear. Alike thy man and Bruidda looked to the hill, alike did speak a name. Fire-lord and Bear.

"A thing has ended," Malgon whispered. "Or will end. May not yet be begun. But did see the ending this day. Lugh dimmed a's eye and turned from the sight of it. World be a circle like the stones. Like life, Padrec. Reindeer came first, Reindeer will end. Tens of seasons will come for Taixali and Venicone, but Prydn will be

gone." He smiled thinly at Padrec. "Perhaps Lugh will keep a's promise and show us Tir-Nan-Og."

"When, brother?"

Malgon shrugged. For all his bond to fhain, Padrec Raven yet thought in the illusion of tallfolk time, so he must use their queer word for it, a word that stopped the wheel of life and plucked from it one hurrying moment as more important than another.

"Soon."

Death for Prydn was only a turning of the wheel to youth again, but no longer. Dim but near, Malgon had seen an edge, an ending.

The rain washed the world clean and deemed it worthy of sunlight. The morning shone, the last sprinkles of rain sparkling on the heath. Over it all, as if to say, "Now, there's beauty," Lugh had drawn a rainbow flowing out of cloud down to the undulating hills.

Padrec drew water for the horses and then washed himself in the tempering trough. Malgon came out of the rath, dazzled as himself by the colors of the world. Last night's shadows seemed unreal in such radiance. Malgon lifted his head and sang to the rainbow.

Be not where but only when The Prydn hoard be seen again.

"Rainbow song, Mai? Sing more."

"Do forget the rest." Malgon came down to the trough to splash himself. "Be most old."

They breakfasted on bread and tea sitting outside the rath in the gift of sunlight. Something niggled at Padrec' s memory.

"That's a Brigante song. My nurse sang it to me."

"Prydn," Malgon corrected with a trace of condescension.

"Do remember dreaming it when the uisge made us sick in Eburacum. Be called 'The Road of the Gods.'

Have not remembered it for tens of seasons."

Malgon chewed stolidly. "Rainbow song."

"There's strange for thee."

Most strange: his old nurse came out of the hil where they spoke a more antiquated dialect than in Re man Clannaventa. Their word for rainbow translated literally as "road of the gods."

Malgon sang the couplet again at Padrec's urging, he or fhain remembered of it. But the words were wrong, the lines didn't go that way. Padrec's hand remembere the rhythm on his knee, the way his nurse crooned it to him, and as they later sang it together. The fragments rearranged themselves in memory as he tapped them out.

Beneath the greening, hollow sods, The Faerie gold be seen again. The road is pointed by the gods, So be not where, but only when.

"Do remember, Mai. Mark how't goes—"

"Thee mark." Malgon stopped him, ear cocked.

"Dost hear?" The distant but unmistakable song of Finch, which

told them the days of good weather were numbered.

They traveled cautiously, keeping to the high country but below the skyline, hiding from tallfolk while searching in vain for any sign of Prydn. When they came down from the high Cheviots onto the plain before the ruined Antonine Wall, they were in Taixali country. The cran-nogs were empty. No sign of Salmon at all. When they neared the crannog where Padrec gave iron-magic to Do-relei, they moved even more carefully. These lowland glens were Naiton's, and they'd already glimpsed his hunters nearer the high fells than Taixali usually dared.

"As if do know Prydn be gone," Malgon worried.

Once they risked asking an old Taixali shepherd with

no one else about. Padrec offered him a few small coins, but the ancient kept his distance.

"Where are the Prydn, old man? Where gone?"

"North." A gesture of riddance. "North."

What's happened? Where are the women? Where's Dorelei?

Even the hardy pines thinned out as they left the Taix-ali behind and moved through the barer hills of the Dam-nonii. The wind grew colder and sharper each day. At night, Wolfs song was more purposeful as the adults spoke, den to den, of prey seen and the hunting lessons their cubs must learn. Sunlight waned to monotonous gray, and a day came when they could gaze full circle about the windswept bowl of earth and see nothing but brownish moss stretching to infinity. No tree or human, not even sheep.

"Atecotti land," Malgon said. "Most old, like Prydn. Friends, but will not see them till a come to speak."

The loneliness was oppressive. They'd found no cran-nog to stay the night, and they camped out of the wind under a rocky overhang, hobbling the horses to keep them close. Wrapped in cloaks and a blanket apiece, Padrec and Malgon lay close to the small fire. Even fuel was difficult to find, a few chips of dried sheep dung and moss, the flame guttering in the never still wind that carried many voices. There was a tacit knowledge that since the vision at Camlann, they'd gone past the edge of the known, but known or not, the women had gone or been driven even farther. All that day they'd seen pony tracks across the hills, most of them fresh. If Prydn were that near, they were aware of any newcomer within a day's ride.

"But do nae show themselves," Padrec mused across the small circle of light. * 'And no fhain signs, nothing to tell—"

Pure learned reflex jerked their bodies aside at the brief, whined warning of the arrow. It drove deep into the dirt beside the fire on Padrec's side.

"Do nae move, Padrec." Malgon's voice was tight.

"Did nae mean to kill, but could. Be still. A will come."

Deliberately, Padrec pulled the arrow loose. A bronze head, the straight lines painted on the shaft clear as a written word. "Reindeer."

Malgon wetted his lips, waiting.

"Reindeer? Be Salmon fhain. Brothers."

The second arrow lodged even closer, an inch from his knee.

"D'nae move, Padrec."

They waited. There was the dark and the wind—and then Bruidda stood in the fringe of their small firelight, flanked by two grizzled Prydn men with nocked bows.

"Gern-y-fhain," Padrec said. "Where be Salmon?"

Bruidda ignored the question. "Where be our sons, Raven?"

"Thee's nae heard?"

"In part."

"Gone. Dead. All dead," Padrec said heavily. "Romans were false to us."

The woman's mouth twisted in a hard grimace. "Could have told thee as much, fool. And thy proud wife."

"Do seek her, Gern-y-fhain. Where is she?"

"Was a fool always, like thee. A child who found evil and thought it a toy. And brought it with thee into fhain."

Padrec stood up carefully, hands spread to show them empty. The two bows lifted with him, deadly birds poised to fly.

"All dead." Whatever Bruidda felt did not show in her firelit face. "And what saved thee, Raven?"

"God knows. Or the gods. I don't. Tallfolk prince offered us land where Prydn could not live and then laughed at us. We wish only to find our wives. Where are they, Bruidda? And where are Prydn? Have seen none even where a should be."

"Nor will thee," Bruidda told him. "Fhains now do nae dwell anywhere close to tallfolk. Dorelei has done that."

"Gern-y-fhain." Malgon stretched his hands to her in respect. "Blood of Mabh, hear me. There are strange signs. Thy spirit was seen at Camlann, in a field of dead men and ravens."

Bruidda barely looked at him. "Speak."

"Did see spirit-battle, and thee did call to the Bear. Have seen that which we cannae know. Where be Guen-loie? What ill be on Prydn that hides my wife from me?"

The fire-flickering image of the woman did not move. His first nervous fear wearing off, Padrec felt his patience thinning. "Bruidda, answer him. We've already seen the terrors of the dark and worse in daylight. Thee cannot fright us more. I was betrayed by tallfolk as thee." He glanced with pity at Malgon groveling before the gnarled woman. Then the pity turned hard. "Put up thy weapons. Have seen more death in a day than thee in all thy life."

Malgon was horrified. "Do nae speak so to gern. Bruidda, do honor thee. Did see the dead and the ravens and thee calling to the Bear. Was thee who found the black fawn. Be a thing that has ended? Tell me."