part0005

Guard!

Light as a dancer, Bruidda followed through the motion of her slash, whirling in a tight circle to cover herself again. Against Dorelei's defensive crouch, she darted in, slashing, whirling again as Dorelei faded aside like a shadow.

She moves to the right, Dorelei realized, her strength and balance always to the right.

They hovered like hunting birds on a lethal air, poised, coming together— to the right, but faster this time than Dorelei judged. Again she feinted aside from the slash, but Bruidda was too quick, not enough time before the line of fire burned across her upper arm.

She was bleeding, didn't know how deep it was—not too bad, not the dull shock that meant the deep muscles, but deep enough to stiffen the arm in a matter of moments. The pain lanced through her concentration. She wove, lowering her guard a little. The faltering did not escape Bruidda. Dorelei saw no hatred in her eyes now, only purpose. Bruidda feinted with a false step, swiveled sideways, and lashed out with her foot. The blow caught Dorelei in the stomach, tearing the breath from her lungs. She stumbled back, fought for balance, but her heel caught against a hummock, and she went down.

Even as she rolled aside to spring upright, Bruidda dove like Hawk, the long bronze blade streaking up to slash backhanded across Dorelei's throat. Dorelei's youth and desperation were quicker. Her own blade met it with a metallic sound loud in the deadly silence. Iron screamed at softer bronze, bit deep into it, snapped it short. Dorelei drove her fist into Bruidda's left eye, rolled away, and came up on guard.

Bruidda's eye was closing. She was shaken, crouching with the useless blade in her hand. Dorelei faced her, feeling the blood warm her skin as it flowed from the

wound. The muscles were stiffening. She couldn't last much more, but Bruidda couldn't win. Her arms and legs trembled as she pointed the knife.

"Bruidda? Will say be over, done?"

The woman only shook her head, wasting no energy on talk.

"Need nae be, woman!"

"Thee's a shadow on Prydn," Bruidda panted. "A filth."

Dorelei lowered her knife. She felt suddenly ages beyond this woman, understanding her as a child. Not her crimes Bruidda wanted to expunge, not the loss of a generation, not even Dorelei's pride, but the place she took and the name of Mabh, the presence usurped from Bruidda: more blows of the whip after the death of her son, a defeat never intended. Dorelei, who had no word for tragedy, found herself knowing it.

"Woman, enough," she said quietly. "Let us put it away. Salmon will go."

In Bruidda's voice there was still a rag-end of triumph. "Dost fear, Dorelei?"

"Do mourn thy death, old woman." Sadly, hating the words for their leaden truth. "Thee died so long ago."

An instant before she sprang, something flickered in Bruidda's eyes. Dorelei never knew why she did it; perhaps to deny the truth or because Bruidda knew it all too well. Dorelei melted away before the attack, sinking to one knee, catching Bruidda's wrist. The iron came up, driving home under the scarred ribs. Bruidda jerked, crumpled to one side, and lay still.

Only when she knelt beside the body did Dorelei realize the sun was shining bright and full on them. "Pad-rec," she piped weakly. "Pad ..."

But she could make no sense of sound. The name blurred out to a wild keening. She drew her knife from the body and hurled it away in grief. The mourning was taken up by Reindeer and then Salmon. Far away, as the morning wind carried it, the Venicone heard the sound,

misunderstood it as always, and never knew how much of an ending cried in it

When the Picts took up Christianity in earnest, there was one story of native source of which only half ever appeared in any Church history: the surprisingly easy acceptance among Venicones of the Nativity as penned by Luke, for did they not know a story much like it?

Not in winter it was, when even sheep have the wit to stay inside, but nigh to the festival of Bel-tein fire, that certain Venicone shepherds abided in the fields with their flocks. And did they not hear the ghostly music as the priests described? Not angels but the bean sidhe, and one did not wander from the firelight in search of those singers.

On a night in spring, the shepherds heard the bean sidhe crying near and were sore afraid. And when the keening died away, there by the fire, half in fight and the rest shadow, were three of the Faerie folk—a young queen, a man with a sword, another with a bow that bent on the shepherds. The Venicones did not ask why they came. When you have the ill luck to meet Faerie at night, you hear them out, praying it be good news and brief. The tidings were strange. Men argued their meaning for many years, and this was the way of it.

Seven statues—the four shepherds on one side of the fire, the three Faerie on the other, just within the spill of light. Weird they were, so still. The woman's lips hardly seemed to move when she spoke.

"Dost know me, Venicones?"

They did that, but none wanted to speak and be especially noticed by this creature. Her hands opened. Something jingled, glinting in the light, spilling to the earth at her feet, a shower of gold coins.

"Be gift from Rainbow's end. Be more, much more. Tell thy wealth that the tale-speaking of thy fathers be true. At Rainbow's end, nae where but when, Prydn hoard may be seen again."

At her sign the man with the great Michael-sword sprinkled rubies like dark blood over the gold.

"Gift be for a purpose," the woman said. 'Tell thy wealth and let a tell theirs: let Prydn be nae forgot in Mabh's island. We were first to walk this land. Did greet thy kind in peace in the time of Dronnarron. Remember us."

Then one of the shepherds, bolder than the rest or perhaps encouraged by the gift, asked, "Great queen, it is our thanks you have, but where in this island does such a gift come from, that we may tell our elder?"

The poor shepherds and their bootless question; even as they asked it, were not the three fading into the dark, and only the woman's voice left to float on the wind?

"From Faerie-land, tallfolk. From Rainbow's end."

So the shepherds were left alone with large wealth and larger curiosity about the hoard it came from. They never found it, but all know it to be still there. Some of those red rubies can be seen yet in the crown Brude wore and that he passed to his son Erca as king of the Picts.

So where was the wonder in angels appearing to shepherds? In this island such magic was born and yet lived. The children were told and their children in turn. Different tales, to be sure, since there are as many stories as there are men to guess and lie about the matter, but it is a rare man and a fool who does not give careful respect in the matter of Faerie, scarce as they are now and always shy of human folk. But they are still there on the hilltops, although not many Venicones are that willing to go and prove it.

Some histories are never written, only remembered. On Bruidda's death, her daughter Nebha became Reindeer gem, a young woman with a yearling daughter of her own, named Cradda. The next year Nebha bore a second daughter. That was a year of more winter than warmth, when all Pictland came close to starvation. Nebha's second daughter was left in a tallfolk cradle that she might at least have a chance at life, a Roman woman

whose husband was envoy to the Picts. Britons came to call such children changelings. Prydn mothers called it sacrifice when they spoke of it at all, but Prydn always know their own, and Nebha's grandson found his way home to wear the mark of Reindeer.

Cradda became Reindeer gern after her mother and bore two sturdy daughters. The elder, Dorelei—named for a gern of fabled if troublesome magic—was a gentle, playful woman. Her younger sister was anything but gentle, a passionate, moody girl named Morgana for no clearly remembered reason. Morgana had three husbands, and the third was Belrix, the son of Reindeer who found his way home by way of Cornwall, Severn, and VI Legio under Ambrosius. Britons remembered him as Arthur, a fact of no great interest to Prydn. They were not a people to write more of themselves than animal signs on stone, but as in Genesis, someone begat someone. With Belrix, Morgana bore Modred. For a few years that flashed more than they shone, the Prydn moved closer into tallfolk light, where some image could be sketched from them. Like Dorelei, Morgana had her own vision of Tir-Nan-Og and tried to carve it out with Modred for a sword. Arthur broke them and died in the necessary act. After that, the Faerie were never seen again in any great numbers in Pictland, eventually not at all.

The storytellers forgot names like Dorelei, Cruaddan, and Malgon, while Morgana and Modred are clearly remembered among Britons. Their courage was the same and the desperation that bred it, but war leaves a more indelible impression than any peace. Still, Dorelei's fhain was remembered indirectly by men who never knew or spoke her name. Her first husband's name became one of those odd specks of fact that lodge forever under the eyelid of history; her second, that passionate man who lost his way so often, found he'd never left home at all.

Padrec didn't question Dorelei's decision any more than that of a man vowed to make pilgrimage to Jeru-

salem. It was a thing to be done. They would go to Tir-Nan-Og, and if they fell over the edge of the world, which she maintained was no edge at all, at least they would die determinate.

They sealed the barrow again with Reindeer, taking only as much treasure as would be needed, and one extra pony to carry it. The rest they left to Nebha for Reindeer. Dorelei invited and Dorelei reassured, but Reindeer would not join them. They would rade anywhere a pony could carry them, but world sea was a different matter and a dubious one. Would stay. And so the last great children of Reindeer—Morgana, Belrix, and Modred— were born in Mabh's island and not somewhere else. The underpinnings of history and legend alike are sometimes that slight.