Tallfolk notion of quiet was laughable; he knew Ven-icone were near long before they showed themselves. They'd been spoiled by a whole autumn and winter of free ranging on the slopes with no Prydn to fear, and

here they came clumping through the thickets, secret as a thunderstorm. Malgon debated showing himself and decided it was the better course. They should not be allowed too close to the rath or know how few lived in it. He stepped out of the thicket directly in their path, one arrow nocked, another ready.

It was Elder Vaco himself, one of his brothers, and a much younger man, probably one of Vaco's nephews. To the Venicones, his appearance was startling as it was silent. They halted, unprepared, their bows not even strung yet. The unmoving little man could impale all three of them before they had a chance. Vaco tried to read that face. A year ago it was impassive; now there was something darker and tacitly dangerous.

"So the Faerie are back. We heard it was that you were all dead in the war of the Romans."

"Many are returned to Cnoch-nan-ainneal," Malgon assured him.

The other two men edged apart from Vaco as if to encircle Malgon. His bow lifted slightly. "Do but hunt this day."

"This hill is ours now," Vaco claimed. "We have grazed our flocks on it."

"Will be as't was before. Glens be Venicone, hills Prydn."

"Put down the bow," the young man said in what he hoped was a threatening voice. His hand itched toward the knife at his belt. "Elder Vaco will be merciful."

Malgon shook his head. "Do hunt. Thy noise frights game. Go."

The youth mistook Malgon's stillness for indecision. He took a step forward. His hand touched the knife. The stillness of Malgon flowed into motion. The bowstring thummed loud in the clearing. The youth jerked and howled as the arrow pinned the fleshy part of his right arm, protruding from it. In the next eye-blink, the other arrow was nocked and ready.

Vaco recovered himself. "You little—"

The sentiment choked off as the cold metal edge

touched his throat, the voice as cold. "That would be foolish and wasteful, Elder Vaco. You would die for nothing where no harm is intended you."

4 'Who," Vaco sputtered, off balance, ''who is it that is behind me?"

"The Jesu priest," his brother said sourly.

"So you see the truth my brother speaks. The Faerie once again claim their ancient hill. Don't move, Elder. Your youth is lucky. Malgon need not have taken just his arm, but the arrow is tipped with aconite, so the wound should be quickly tended."

Padrec removed the knife from Vaco's throat and stepped out to face them at Malgon's side. No, the cold of them was no mere impression. They were different men than those who feasted in his hall the summer past. It was as if some of the life had been leached from them and replaced with iron. It glinted in their eyes. Padrec drew his sword and leaned on it.

"We are not of your world, nor will we be long in it. Dorelei Mabh, who tamed the iron, now seeks for Tir-Nan-Og. Our flocks will not graze in Vaco's meadows. Our magic will not take from his presence. A little time only will we be among you, then no more. Will Vaco be wise enough to see there is no war between us? We have already seen war. There is no profit in it and no honor."

Vaco hovered between two fires—the need for presence, and the quiet force of this weird Jesu-man. He and his wife broke the age-old magic of iron. They came bearing gifts, one of them quieted three vicious dogs with a look, were rumored dead and gone, and now stood here before him, and he seriously doubted in his superstitious soul if the priest, the demon-bitch, or any of them could be killed. The priest was once an easy target for ridicule; now his very stillness was formidable. He dangled the sword casually, motioning Vaco to one side in private speech.

"Vaco, let us end this. Take the boy, mend his arm, leave us the hill. We ask no more. Do that, and this night

you will hear the bean sidhe cry out our bargain to the gods. Will it be so?"

"You will stay out of our glens?" Vaco demanded in a loud voice for the others. "You will work no magic against the Venicone, man, woman, flock, or field?''

"None."

"Then I grant you the hill." Vaco sealed the bargain with an expansive gesture. "So long as Faerie keep their place, agreed?"

"Agreed. The Venicone are old and mighty in the land. Get the boy home before his arm festers."

And that was, happily, the last they ever saw of Vaco. His presence acknowledged and the Faerie respectful, he allowed them what he would not have labored to take in any case. He and his brother helped the shaken youth away down the hill through the trees.

Aiid Malgon was very pleased Padrec happened by at such an opportune time.

"Luck. Was on the ridge and saw them set out for the wood." Padrec sheathed his sword. "Will be no buck this morning, brother."

Malgon agreed reluctantly, not with such noisy tall-folk in the wood. Stag would be far away now and running yet. Malgon might as well wait the evening or try for smaller game. They squatted in the thicket, grinning at each other as the sun rose higher through the trees.

"Must keen tonight, Mai. Did tell them bean sidhe would sing on the Hill of the Fires."

"Be none dead."

* 'Be nae poison to thy arrows, either. Will nae tell an thee won't."

Malgon sifted the idea. Very tallfolk it was to make profit of a belief, but shrewd in this case. "Will sing Venicones to sleep."

"Tonight and often." Padrec sniffed at the air. "Will be showers. Must watch from circle."

That night the wind whispering about Vaco's stockade was haunted with the dark song of the bean sidhe. No man, for his life, would go near Cnoch-nan-ainneal when

the shadows lengthened eastward, and few during the day. Fhain breathed easier.

Sighted from the center of the stones, the sun slid each day closer to the Bel-tein stone. Rain showers were brief and frequent but not always followed by a rainbow, so another variable factor had to be worked into an already fragile hypothesis. The length of time between cessation of the rain to the clearing sky and sunlight. To compensate, Padrec estimated the time at optimum: a rain shower with no fading of sunlight, which happened quite often. He marked the morning and evening position of rainbows, no matter how faint or brief. For each observation, he set up a sapling rod notched at the top which, from his center, he sighted on that point where the rainbow would touch earth.

Forty days to Bel-tein, thirty-five. Thirty. The center of Dorelei's worship place now looked rather complicated. Padrec's rods became a cage in which he gradually mewed himself up. Each sighting called for an investigation. One of them, whoever could be spared, would saddle Padrec's horse, the fastest they had, and ride out sometimes for miles to the sighted point. One rider alone could more easily elude Venicone detection. The truce was unbroken, but they would ruffle no feathers meanwhile.

Report was always the same. "Nae barrow/' Guen-loie said, slipping down from the saddle.

"Did look sharp? 1 '

"Until my eyes pained, Gern-y-fhain. None."

Prydn barrows were not that numerous or easily detected. From the first days, the bones of the dead were stored in temporary houses, split, dismembered, and stacked neatly until the death of a person of note, usually a gern. When the gern died, the barrow would be put up and communal ceremony done for all the waiting dead, who would then be interred with the great one.

So it was in the first days, Dorelei told Padrec. Many of the oldest barrows were forgotten, all kept secret. Was

never good to let tallfolk keep count of their deaths with Prydn so few in the land.

Twenty-five days to Bel-tein. Twenty. Fifteen.

"And ... midpoint." Padrec drove a notched rod between the two stones and swung back to Dorelei with long strides, flourishing his writing shingle peppered with calculations.

"Fifteen days past, fifteen yet to come. Mind the rod, don't jar it. See."

She dutifully admired the incomprehensible bird tracks, curves, crosses, and odd scribblings. "Most braw. What dost say?"

Padrec was rather pleased with himself. "More than it did. Have marked where Rainbow went down for fifteen days. Nine times: six of the evening, three of the morning. Beginning to get some sense of distribution. Proportion."

Dorelei was impressed. Mathe-matic was sorcery to be reckoned with, but... proportion?

' 'Well, percentage.''

No light there, either.

"Be simple." Padrec swept his arm over the southern horizon. "Because of where Lugh Sun is now, Rainbow shines south of our hill. Southeast in the evening, southwest in morn. Be nae so close thee can put the point of a pin to it but can make areas to search. So."

He carved two short arcs in the dirt with his knife, two more under them, joined by straight lines into two warped rectangles. "Twixt now and Bel-tein, Rainbow will nae wander that much." Padrec bent over his latest planted rod, squinted through the notch to the southwest. Not an hour before by his sundial stake, there was a shower so brief the sun didn't even bother to cloud over. The colors bent to earth only for a few minutes, but Padrec was there, like Cruaddan on the track of deer, to mark it.. .yes. So.

He straightened up and pulled Dorelei close, planting light kisses on her mouth and narrow cheeks. "Will Gern-y-fhain ride with me?"

4 'Where?"

He pointed again to the southwest, delineating two points. "Atwixt there and there."

Dorelei's gaze narrowed like an archer's, fixing one point, then the other, and the ground between, a rumple of sparsely wooded low hills, rarely used for graze or anything else.

"Come."

The approximate area of search was about a mile square, the winter grass turning lush with mild spring rain. Violets peeped from the humus at the foot of young trees, and oak saplings were coming into leaf. Padrec and Dorelei rode as much for the beauty of the afternoon as for any quest, but her awareness of the place was as much instinct as sight. Coming out of the trees onto a little knoll, she pointed to the stone slab lying flat, slowly disappearing under moss.