"Milius Apullo. My ship's for cargo hire. What do you transport?"

Themselves, they told him. A few ponies and sheep.

"Oh, well, you realize that's expensive. Have to take on supplies for passengers, ballast cargo. Very expensive."

The woman's hand passed over the rough table between them. Lying on the planks, lustrous and undeniable, was the fattest garnet Milius ever saw. Interesting, even of some value, but not near enough for...

Milius looked again and swallowed hard. The stone was not garnet but a ruby. His eyes widened as one of the little men, the one with the limp, solemnly laid a heavy gold trading stick between Milius and the ruby.

"Well." He cleared his throat. "Well, now."

The other man, the sleety-eyed one, put down a second bar to bracket the stone. Then another woman, the tastiest of the lot, reached into the bag, which must have come from Croesus' treasure-house, and drew out two more trading sticks. The woman who obviously led them completed the golden square and spoke to Milius.

"Be square, the tallfolk shape of things."

Milius thought nimbly. What he saw would pay for the voyage, but there must be more where that came from. None of them looked like they'd ever been near the sea.

"Enough." He clapped his hands together with a show of expansiveness and business well concluded. "That will do it. Now, where do I take you? Massilia? Antioch?"

More than a little disturbing, all of them, they were unearthly. The cold-eyed man with the bow leaned over the table toward him. "West."

"I see. Ireland. Leinster?"

A shaking of the dark head. "West."

"The western coast, then? Conaill? Shannon?"

"More west."

"West of Ireland?" Milius regarded the weird group and their round-eyed children, digesting the magnitude of their request. "There is nothing west of Ireland."

They didn't understand or didn't care. At the edge of

the world sea the water boiled and whirled in a race that made the swiftest rapids look like a garden pool, didn't they under—

While Milius talked, the woman began to double the golden frame about the ruby.

—stand? Milius faltered. He hefted one of the bars. Full weight.

"West/' said the woman, then whispered something to be translated by the man with the bow. ' 'Gern-y-fhain says thee knows nae the shape of the world. Water does nae boil at edge but turns calm." Malgon hovered over the ship's master as if expecting him to rise and be about it. "Can go now?"

Well, it was a hard world for sailing men, even harder for those who didn't know fortune when it lay before them. Such people would be no problem, not to the crew Milius was already recruiting in his experienced calculation. He needed ten men; five had disappeared the night they dropped anchor at Brodick. Nothing new there; men were always to be had on Arran, especially for a very short voyage like this.

"GoldV he exhorted the new men, most of whom were known to him. "Gold, feel it. Look at this stone. Here, give it back. We'll coast them down the channel, then two nights out, three at most, when they're bent over the rail and bringing up the bottom of their bellies ...then."

Preposterous. Milius was more amazed than amused. The woman said he didn't know the shape of the world? Due west, was it? Ah, yes, of a certainty.

Intended or not, that was his course. A week later, whether the edge of the world boiled or lay calm, Milius' ship was rolling through open sea toward it.

Off the edge—she was off the edge of her own world when the last hills she knew sank behind the unfamiliar ones. Cru was back, and that a last true miracle from Padrec. If one barrow in her heart was opened and its dead risen, another was sealed and must remain so. Do-

relei mourned his going, but nothing stayed. She accepted that. It had to do with paying for what one got, and Cru need never know.

She didn't trust Milius or his tallfolk crew. The food was good, the water still fresh, but all of fhain felt a sickness in their bellies. On the second day out, making south along the Irish coast, one of the sailors said it had to do with the motion of the ship. Salmon found this dubious; they'd ridden all their lives without this nausea.

"Dost lie," Cru said, sick as the rest. "Have been on Mother's breast two tens of Bel-teins and one. Did never feel so close to death, even in uisge."

Something was amiss. They squatted about Dorelei among their animals, the miserable, messy children patted and washed and rewashed as they dampened the straw with clear fluid from their emptied, agonized stomachs. Cru put the question for all of them.

"Gern-y-fhain, what shall fhain do against these tall-folk?"

Since that morning, when she found Milius snooping near their treasure-sack for no good reason, Dorelei needed no reflection on the matter. "Milyod be nae a heart to trust. None of them."

"Do mean to kill us with this unnatural sickness and take fhain treasure," Neniane worried. "Do nae go west. Dost Milyod think fhain ignorant of the sun? Sister hast flown with Mabh: tell us what to do."

That was already decided, Dorelei said, and waited only on the act that must be now, before they were too weak to move. The sickness was an evil magic, but Salmon had broken evil before, prevailed even over Bruidda (may she be young forever), and prospered even in Jesu. Clearly they were favored of all gods. This Milyod would quickly turn west. Dorelei described fhain's task in words they understood.

"This one or that among the tallfolk has the look of death about him. Just the look, mind, but must be ready."

Cm reached for his knife and honing stone, Malgon for his bow.

"Neniane and Guenloie will stay for now with the wealth." Dorelei beckoned the men to follow her up the ladder to the deck.

Milius himself was at the tiller aft. The three Prydn stood just outside the hatchway for a moment, a little clump of determination, their eyes summing the situation, spying out a coil of rope. Then they drifted toward Milius, Cru bending to pick up the coiled line, paying out the end of it into a loop. Malgon casually inspected an arrowhead, strung bow under one arm.

"Milius," Dorelei approached him, "thee will turn west now."

He barely glanced at her, busy at the tiller. "Be off, woman. It isn't time."

"Be time long since. Turn west, Milyod."

"I said—"

"Cru!"

Behind Milius, Cru flowed like a shadow. His knife flashed, then the loop jerked tight around Milius's neck as Malgon kicked his feet out from under him. Before Milius could choke out half a warning, he was lifted in arms too strong for such a small man and sent flying over the side, arms flailing. Cru secured the line to the rail. The gulls squee-uked their gratitude. The fish would come now. They might get a few.

The thing happened so quickly, most of the crew still didn't know what had occurred when they heard the strangled cry for help. Then Sejus the navigator felt the vibration of the arrow as it drove into the rail between his legs, just a hair below what he held most dear. The mean-eyed little woman didn't even change expression, only beckoned him to the yawing, abandoned tiller.

"West."

Quick as a Barbary ape, she leaped onto the aft rail, hanging out from the shroud, calling to Milius, who floundered, clinging to the rope. "Thee bleeds, tallfolk?

Birds will smell it, and fish soon. Do go west with us, or east alone?''

He thrashed about. "Pu-pull me in." One of his arms was leaving a dangerous trail of blood in the water that sharks could trace from far away. "P-pull me in. Lay to!"

Dorelei looked back at the stunned crew and Malgon and Cru facing them with bow and sword. Once more she waved Sejus to the tiller. "West. Give the order, Milyod. Westl"

Sputtering, hanging on to the line, Milius spat out salt water and cried his will to Sejus. Dorelei gripped the rigging tighter as the craft heeled over. "Pull up thy master."

A day later they were farther west than any man wanted to go. The first night after Milius' near-death, they planned to finish the Faerie for good and all and put about. Milius left one man at the tiller while they conferred on the foredeck in whispers: it's righted, we've come about. Aye, headed back for land. Right then, on my signal...

Yet someone thought they saw the shadows move on the aft deck. Milius called softly to the steersman. "Sejus? You hear me?"

Then he felt the craft heel sharply over, coming about yet again.

"Come on."

They got no closer to the tiller than half a dozen yards before the shapes emerged from the shadows, the implacable woman and the limping man, and the archer to one side. Milius saw that the tiller was held firmly by the one called Guenloie while her absurdly small daughter clung to her leg.

"Where's Sejus? Where's my steersman?"

"There." Cru pointed to the form spread out in the rigging like a clumsy spider. A muffled, plaintive sound came from it. "Dost have the look of death."

"A's veins be opened," Dorelei informed them. "Must bind him up or lose him. West."

Milius thought on it. Next to himself, Sejus was the only other competent navigator, and none of them that good so far from land.

Dorelei spoke to them without raising her voice. 4 'Mark me. Next hand to turn us back will nae be bound up."

Milius began to believe the stories about these creatures. They weren't human. They'd like to kill us, they'd enjoy it. "Woman, this is not reasonable. You need us."

"Then would do thee much profit to stay alive, Mil-yod."

No, she'd never heard of reason, none of them had. Insane. "You fool, do you know what you ask? Where you go? Two days, three at most. The edge. Nothing else."

"Lift the evil from our bellies."

"Nothing out there!" Milius screamed at her. "An edge. Frost, fire, serpents big as three ships like this."

"Lift the evil."

Quite mad. They were plain men against demons who would kill for no prize but the act. At a sign from Dorelei, Cru twisted Milius to his knees, the knife at his throat.