The great circle of stones towered around him as the moon sank in the west. His fear drained away into exhaustion and shuddering. The throbbing in his legs settled to a deep, dull pain. Patricius felt gingerly at the swelling ankles. Broken for sure—fractured, more likely. The bones did not seem wrenched out of place, but he couldn't be sure. If he lived long enough, if he could find someone who'd care enough to set them, he might survive. Small chance; they'd have to find him, he could barely crawl. He finished his contrition, crossed himself, and tried to keep warm by curling his misery into a ball. The moon went down, and gradually the light brightened in the east. Patricius woke from shallow sleep

to cold morning and terrible thirst, nauseous and lightheaded when he tried to sit up.

Cold sweat prickled his forehead. After a few moments the nausea passed. His lower legs were swollen twice their size, with huge blue-black bruises edged with yellow. Part of the pain came from his sandal straps cutting into the swollen flesh. With considerable pain, Patricius loosened the thongs and eased them off. It took all the strength and will he had left. He lay back on one elbow, panting with the exertion, and only then noticed the small bundle close to one of the stones. Something wrapped in lambswool with several smaller objects by it, including a bowl.

Food.

Yes, of course, the same way he wrapped his own rations when out all night with Miliucc's flocks.

"Sweet Lord, I thank you."

His voice sounded ragged and weak as he dragged himself toward the bundle. Whatever shepherd had left the food would come again and find him. Not Veni-cones; this was obviously a place they feared, but no place on earth was hidden from God or His arm. Patricius felt some of his courage returning. They thought they could finish him with broken legs and a night in the cold? He'd spent more cold nights on Irish mountains than there were stones, and each night in the Hand of God. He would pay for the food and pray for the shepherd when he came.

Queer objects: the bowl contained only a handful of oats. Beside it lay a sheaf of grass carefully tied with a strand of flax. Chewing the oats, Patricius unwrapped the bundle. The food turned to ash in his mouth.

The swarthy infant lay amid the fleecy folds, the clay discs great staring white eyes in the small face. Each of its limbs had been broken like his. Already the small toothless mouth tightened in the rictus of death, as if the child itself mocked his hopes.

"Savages ... animals."

The child had been left dead or nearly so. No one

would come. Besides the Venicone village he could see only hills and unbroken moor. Crawl as he might, in two days or even one he'd be too weak to move. The wolves and ravens would find him long before that.

He heard the sudden rustling and turned his head.

One of them had found him already.

The raven perched like disinterested Fate on a stone across the circle. Two more wheeled in the morning sky.

Patricius dragged the little bundle closer to him. A poor end to his mission, but the child was already gone. He would follow shortly. He must pray for them both, even though the infant was probably unbaptized. He mumbled through dry lips, felt the weak tears of self-pity welling up. "And yet I fear the hour of— oh\"

He was jerked over onto his back, felt the cold blade at his throat. The scarred faces peering down at him were detached and expressionless as the raven. They looked like twins, two small,'fierce children. Quickly the boy cut the thong that held the iron Chi-Rho medallion at Patricius' breast and hurled it beyond the circle.

When he realized they were more curious than predatory, he managed to speak. "The child is dead," he croaked, hoping they understood. He nodded weakly at the boy's bronze knife. "No need of that. I'll die soon anyway. Do you . . . have some water?"

He had to ask again. The girl said something to her companion, pointing to Patricius' legs. Then she scurried behind one of the stones and brought back a clay jar. She pointed to the wounds again, excited. She seemed overjoyed at his injuries.

"Drink," she said.

Sweet Jesus! Not water but good, strong mead. He swallowed greedily. "Thank you."

The girl touched the thick, gold tore around her brown neck. Able to think more clearly now, Patricius noted the incongruity of the opulent tore against the rest of her scant, ragged costume. The fine-worked gold was rich enough by itself; the emeralds and rubies inset made it worth a prince's ransom.

She spoke again, something about. . . being sent by the raven? Mother? Her dialect was akin to the Venicone but even more archaic, with some words he understood not at all, especially with her queer, aspirated manner of speech. When he could only sign his lack of understanding, she touched the tore and said it again.

"Be Dorelei. Dor-a-lay, Gern-y-fhain."

The boy jabbed his knife at Patricius. "Thee's Briton-man?' '

"I am Fa... Father Patricius.''

The boy cocked his head at the queer sound. "Pad...?"

"Patricius."

They had difficulty until he repeated it again, each syllable distinct. Then the girl flashed a sudden smile of comprehension, small white teeth startling against the brown face and even darker lips.

"Padrec, Cru. Padrec."

Although she came to love him dearly, that was the best Dorelei could ever do with such an ungainly name. He was Padrec.

cAo

©IFT FROM BAVEN

They were already weighted with the death of Nen-iane's child. This new thought of Dorelei's was odd and dangerous, that Padrec was sent by their Parents to aid them. They saw only a crippled stranger, and tallfolk at that. They didn't question Gern-y-fhain, who appeared a rock of certainty. It must be so, she said: how often did Venicones venture to the hill of fires in the daylight, let alone the dark? And see where the bones of his legs were broken as they broke those of the dead child to let the spirit out. So the living spirit of Padrec was now at the service of fhain.

Well—it could be true, but not even staunch Cruad-dan was convinced at first. "Be sure, Dorelei?"

She only gazed down at him from the height of her infallibility and touched her gold tore. "Did speak as Gern. A's sent to us. Gift from Lugh-Raven."

Once the rest accepted this much, that Dorelei herself believed it, they took good care of Padrec, shared un-stintingly, and drowned him in comfrey tea to heal his bones. Padrec missed his Chi-Rho; they might have left him that, but when they prudently removed his tinderbox as well, he realized it was not the symbol but the iron itself they feared.

"Worst evil of all," Drust warned darkly while Dorelei whispered magic over the tinderbox to dispel any

lingering evil before it was abandoned a goodish way down the hill.

They splinted his legs with meticulous care and made sure he had soft fleeces to rest on. Hardly a laconic lot, they talked to him all the time—talked at him, rather; Padrec had difficulty at first catching the queer fall of their dialect. Under the Roman veneer, the Brigante of him took it as axiom that Faerie were less than human. His ear, sifting its knowledge of various dialects, knew otherwise. If alien, they spoke an argot he analyzed as more Gael than Brythonic, older than both and akin to that of remote villages in Gaul. Some words were completely foreign, more aspiration than sound. They reminded him of the old Atecotti man from the barren country of the brochs in the far north who'd been one of his father's slaves.

"You are Atecotti?" he asked Dorelei.

She knew the name, apparently, and with gestures and few words told him Atecotti were honorable folk, oldest in Mabh's island next to hers. Then she touched her own breast.

"Prydn. Pruh-din."

"Faerie?"

She only shrugged, squatting beside him with her wrists dangling over her knees. That was his word, if he wished to use it. Prydn was an older name from before Britain was an island. "Most oldest."

Her stunted size confused Padrec at first, no larger than a child of twelve. The smallness was deceptive. Dorelei was a full-grown young woman in exquisite miniature. She would be ancient at fifty, if she lived that long, but her slight body would remain tough and supple throughout the brief, rigorous life of her kind.

They were not that far from the village that cast him out to die, yet no men came any nearer Cnoch-nan-ainneal than they could help. Not that it mattered. Soon enough fhain would be moving to new pasture before settling into crannog for the winter. To a certain extent they hibernated like bears.

When his legs were well on the mend they carried Padrec out of the rath to enjoy the last of summer. He breathed deep of the fresh air after the heavy atmosphere of the rath. It was no longer offensive to him, an effluvium of food, dog, human skin and sweat, sheep-odors, the oil of raw fleece, all blended into a pungent must. But the view from the hillside was breathtaking at early morning, the heath and its swaths of color—red, yellow, blue, and lavender against the azure of the sky and its always stately procession of many-mooded clouds. Sky was important to fhain. Sky was male, Lugh's domain, and changed moods as their Father did, so that from the hillside, Padrec could see many different moods at once, much as in Ireland. The beauty was sudden and stark. The unreal brilliance of the colors hurt his eyes, a scene removed from time. Presently time would start up again with a jerk and the mundane world move on. But the moment and the stillness were a treasure.

Knowing sheep, Padrec found the Prydn variety a queer breed, the wool growing in shaggy twisted strands intermixed with rough hair that had to be separated out after shearing. Ewes and rams alike bore horns, and their meat had little more fat than wild game. The fatter breeds on the downs of southern Britain were stupid, vapid animals, but these had a feral wariness and a will of their own. The dog Rof had to control them constantly, which he did through a precise communication with the herder. Sounds and hand signals would stop Rof short and send him wheeling off on a tangent to execute the new order, shouldering or nipping the strays back into the group, always alert for weasel or wolf or the occasional hawk.