She came to this tower because it was safer, partly because she had to go apart to deal with things she didn't understand. Padrec gave her magic, and through what she deemed a love of her people, she brought them to ruin. She trusted, was a fool, denounced and deserted. She felt betrayed as the rest of Prydn, apart from Jesu and Mother as well.

To Padrec, it was the bleak but logical consequence of his own truth as confessed once to Meganius. By raising man's soul from the dust, we must inevitably part it from the dust, the nature he has known.

He brought her his faith and told her to believe. That was his mission. But although he called himself Christian, his own acceptance of faith was innately more self-centered than Dorelei's. The Greeks had done their subtle work. Man stood apart from himself and thought on belief in abstractions with names, making it all the easier to part one dust from another. Dorelei made no such division. Earth, sky, body, faith were all one. She existed in a wholeness from which, intended or not, he had riven her. Dorelei would never distance herself from faith by meditating on its nature; it would be part of life or not exist. Any move she made now would be toward that wholeness again, by whatever name she put to it or road she followed.

Not a subtle woman, still Dorelei knew the difference

i

now between real and false pride, and the figure she must have cut before the older gerns. That hurt less than the thought of those who followed without question. Until the Taixali fell on them through her own blind folly and arrogance.

Until I punished Cru, I never put a knife to human flesh before, but the day of the Taixali, I did it with blood cold as brook water. When the boy ran at Neniane with his spear, I knew I would do it. He turned on me, roaring to frighten me, hoping to kill me. He hoped but I knew. That was the difference. His spear slid across my shoulder and my iron went into him as if it always belonged there. And then trying to pull Guenloie and Neniane and the wealth away from danger, Crulegh screaming with fear, blood on Guenloie's hands . . . I needed to be sick and yet had to deny it and stand straight before Bruidda and the rest, turning sickness to rage, crying for vengeance mad as the rest of it. And they turned away. The youngest and lowest of them turned their backs on me.

Sweet Mother, we grow as used to darkness as worms and to death as the smell of sheep. I do not need presence as Bruidda does, not any longer, but somewhere it must be found and life itself must be found again, if only for the wealth.

The weight on her heart overbalanced the squabbles of Malgon and Guenloie. "True. Will let a heart alone."

Padrec drew her down beside him, wrapping the covers about her new-scarred shoulder. Dorelei squeezed tight against him.

"What be happened to us, Padrec? Do nae believe anymore."

"Why should you?" He stroked her cheek. "All a-sudden we live in the world like everyone else. Not special, not chosen. I imagine every disillusioned Jew who ever cut off his ringlets felt much as we do."

"But can nae live in a tallfolk world."

Padrec raised up on one elbow over the dark head of her, the glossy tumble of hair, the features delicate-

carved as any Egyptian's. "So quick to say what thee cannot? You're no different from anyone else."

"Speak so?"

"Just smaller. And more truly religious."

Dorelei squirmed up to huddle her knees against her chest. "Be small to purpose. Have always been first children. Who else be given Rainbow-gift?"

"Who can say? But even Brigantes have a song about it."

She flatly disbelieved that. Brigantes?

"My father's folk."

Dubious but intrigued: "Say."

Why not? He was bored with matters cosmic, feeling drowsy and loved and sufficient. "Thy Rainbow song: thee hast the words wrong. Mark."

Padrec sang it softly to her. The phrase "Faerie gold" Dorelei knew as "Prydn hoard" and sometimes just "Rainbow-gift," but undoubtedly the same song. She was astonished that something so much a part of Prydn should be familiarly used by tallfolk. "A did borrow't from us."

"Why not of both peoples? Did not say we all live in the same world? If you can't see the mole on your lovely back, there's always someone who can. Come here to me."

When Dorelei was lying against him, one slender leg warm between his, Padrec began to caress her back and hips. It was a sensual pleasure to her as well as relaxing.

"Dost want me again?" she murmured.

For answer, he extended the stroking to her shoulders and between her thighs, moving his hand in long, soothing movements. "I want to be simple. Yes, I want you." Padrec smiled to himself, thinking of Meganius. "Let's give the poor gods a rest."

Their loving was simplicity, more deep than passionate, a pleasure and a bonding between bodies that knew each other well enough to trust. Not joyful children now—older and full of shadows that neither expected the other to banish, and thoughts they could not share.

/ am not in their world and never will be, Dorelei knew silently, her mouth against Padrec's shoulder. What will I do now!

She wanted to be simple, too. She found it a relief sometimes to be alone with nothing to do but feed Cru-legh. To him she could pour out the worry in baby-prattle as he nestled against her.

"What shall thy mother do, Crulegh? Ask Mother for a new world like Mabh? Ai, bairn, kiss me and tell. Kiss me. Cm "

Cru, where are you gone? Tell me what to do.

To speed him toward sleep, Dorelei crooned the Rainbow song to her son, the new words Padrec taught her. Brigante or not, something in them felt right.

Padrec woke when the early winter light was filtering through the skin roof, and smelled porridge cooking. He paused to wash in the open space now rank with the smell of their animals, and then climbed into the common chamber, where Neniane had a bowl waiting for him. She worked over the food with her daughter dangling in the sling on her hip. Malgon and Guenloie were there, and a glance at the two of them, close and content, Bruidda tucked between them, told Padrec their differences were mended.

"Where be Dorelei and Crulegh?"

"Riding," Neniane said.

"Where?"

Neniane only shrugged. "Dost so often now." She settled in her place, lifted Morgana Mary to the front, and spooned porridge to the dark child. Her small cat-face was serene at such times. Neniane completely lacked the restlessness of her sister. She had none of Dorelei's complexity and was, very like, the happier for it.

Padrec missed the boy this morning. He would have enjoyed playing with Crulegh, who'd taken his first wobbly steps this last week before collapsing on his swaddled rump. Prydn young were tougher than tallfolk

and walked earlier. Unlike other infants on the threshold of speech, they rarely prattled. They traveled a-sling with mothers who themselves were not garrulous, and many of their lessons were wordless. They cried or burbled like any infant but very quickly learned the stillness of their kind and touched more than they spoke.

Crulegh's first recognizable word was "nenna" for Neniane, then "puhrk" for Padrec. "Durry" for his mother. Malgon he left for later and a nimbler tongue, and Guenloie he couldn't manage at all beyond "gwish," usually mangled through a mouthful of porridge.

Holding him sometimes, Padrec was filled with a peace that went far to compensate for things lost or mislaid. This small, palpable wonder was enough for the time, although Padrec worried, like any father, What sort of world will I leave you, and what place in iff

The question niggled at Malgon, too. "Do much wonder on't, Padrec," he confessed in private. Whatever they'd left behind in spring, they'd not found the way back. Perhaps they never would, Malgon feared, caught forever in tallfolk time.

And Dorelei rode apart herself.

She dreamed the night before of the sea again, a round world-dish of sea, no land in sight. All her life she was used to dreams as the voice of Mother speaking to a gern. But gerns must be able to understand the signs, and Dorelei was confused, her confidence gone. The sea-dream came back and back, while Prydn melted away from her, deserted her. Now visions came to men alike, as if sight were taken from Dorelei for being unworthy. The vision at Camlann... Bruidda said a thing was ended. Perhaps every ending was a beginning. But where?

She rode the narrow strip of beach below the cliffs, Crulegh straddled in front of her. From the day just past when her son bunched his untried legs under him like a new foal and stood for a wavering moment, Dorelei discarded the sling and held the boy before her on the pony

to curve his soft bones to the animal's back from the start. For his first years, he would walk, then run behind the pony. By his fifth year, Crulegh would be legged up to his own pony; by the sixth, his springy limbs would launch him unhelped, but it started here in the cold rain. If nothing else, she could give him this much of the heritage her folly disordered.

/ am not a girl anymore, Mother, but a woman with the marks of bearing on my belly, and a fool who can no longer hear your voice. Padrec and I are a braw pair, lost to his god and you alike. We have a word for faith and magic, no more. When the magic was with us, the word was not needed. I will go in the circle this Bel-tein, scatter the moonstones, and pray to you, but I will understand if you choose not to answer. Mabh tried your patience as well. Must I live to her years to hear you again!

When the rain slackened, Crulegh peeped from the folds of his mother's cloak. Dorelei bent her head to kiss the fuzzy crown of his head. The fuzz was lengthening and darkening into the gloss that would be his pride through life. She pointed to the clearing sky.

4 'See? Will be a good day. Lugh begins to smile."