and the tiny impression of an infant hand. A baby crawled here.

'They were here. We're close, Mai."

Next day, following the riverbank, they found the arrangement of small stones: the water sign of Salmon, and an arrow pointing north to the sea. The discovery helped put heart into Malgon but posed a mystery as well. They'd left the last crannog behind; there were no more between here and the sea. Land ended, world-sea rolled away to its edge, to nothing.

In this place a man could believe himself at the end of the world. The sea wind drove the rain like a whip into their faces. The few birds they sighted were feathered dull gray or black above, fish-white below.

"Cannae be far to sea!" Malgon shouted against the wind. "See? World-edge comes to meet us!"

Ahead of them, the leading edge of the storm obscured everything; the land simply disappeared into it. Padrec wondered where they'd shelter for the night. There was nothing in this place, not even the nomad Atecotti, whose land it was supposed to be. Only the storm and the harsh-voiced seabirds driven before it or huddled on the ground.

Plodding ahead, hunched against the rain, Malgon straightened, suddenly alert. "Guenloie!"

Not waiting for Padrec, he pushed the worn horse ahead into a stumbling trot, then a lurching run, squandering the last of the animal's stamina. She was near, unquestionable as the footprints in the crannog. Beyond this storm was nothing familiar, but if anything lived in it, Guenloie did. Malgon felt her like a heartbeat.

The horse could do no more, breaking gait and slowing to a walk. Well enough. Malgon wiped the rain from his cheeks and slipped to the ground. He hugged the animal's drooping, matted neck. Far enough.

He was gazing ahead at the dark shape looming up out of the storm when Padrec drew up and jumped to the ground, exasperated. "There's thick, Malgon. Poor beasts dead as it is. Will have to walk them now."

Malgon only pointed ahead. "Broch."

The tower reared up perhaps fifty feet from its foundation on the edge of the cliff that dropped off to the sea beyond, broad at the base but tapering as it neared the top; in this bleak place, perhaps the loneliest reminder of man that Padrec had ever seen.

"Did say was nothing atwixt crannog and sea, Mai?"

"Not that Prydn use."

"Then what's this?"

Malgon just dropped his reins and moved ahead on foot, leaving Padrec unanswered. Against the slate sky, a darker smudge rose on the wind over the tower: smoke. Malgon began to run.

1 * Yahyahyah! Guenloie!' *

Leading the spent horses, Padrec felt the urgency and need in that last headlong dash. There might be folk at least, even if not ours. Let them be kind. Give him a reason to go on.

A cloaked head appeared in the tower's single low entrance, peering out into the rain at Malgon. Then the woman forgot the rain and let the cloak go flapping down the wind as Guenloie shrieked and ran to meet her husband. They collided and tumbled into a heap, laughing, trying to kiss and talk all at once, nipping at each other like fierce, joyous puppies, rolling over and over in the wet, weeping.

And Padrec swooped down on the drenched pair to embrace them both. "Sister! Oh, sister. Did tell thee, Mai. We're in the puddle all the way. What else—aye, kiss me, sister—what else can happen but joy? Ai, sister, and hast nae grown even more fair than before ..."

Another small head appeared in the entrance, a face with the intense set of a curious kitten, and behind her the other woman with a graver beauty and a small boy in her arms.

Padrec moved toward them like waking from a dream.

They passed the winter in the broch that was almost as old in Britain as Dorelei's folk. Not even the Atecotti

remembered who built the towers that dotted the northern shores from here to Catanesia, but it was long before the first word of Padrec's tongue was heard in the island.

The round broch-tower rose fifty feet from its base, built with a dry-stone technique cunning as Prydn cran-nogs. The single entrance led into a short passage that gave on the circular interior of the tower. There were no upper tiers; the open inner space reached from ground to the open tower rim, but the thick-based walls had separate chambers built into them. Open to the sky, the tower had been partially covered with Salmon's rath skins to protect the ponies and few remaining sheep. This done, peat could be cut from the heath and brought inside to be dried and burned for a fair degree of corn-fort.

A place of stone, as they were used to, but with subtle differences. The chambered tower afforded them a degree of privacy not available in a crannog. By common consent and with no argument, Padrec and Dorelei claimed one chamber for their own, Malgon and Guen-loie another. Neniane slept in the chamber used for eating and meeting together. The new separation was less surprising than the ease with which they grew accustomed to it. Each of them had more reason for solitude now.

The infants tumbled about the chambers, crawled among the sheep, and made life busy but warm. Mealtimes were sometimes chaotic as the children grew stronger and more rambunctious. Someone always had to leave off eating and tend or scold them. Padrec and Malgon took vast delight in playing with the children and lavishing love on them, up to a point. The men were changed since spring; there was a detachment to them, an incoherent but catalytic male experience the women couldn't share. There were times, like most men, when they didn't want to be bothered with children. They spoke of the vision at Camlann, sharing that with their wives, but never the war. Now concerned them more than then. They could winter here and give the children

strength. The broch-tower was an adequate truce, a stillness, not a future. The future must be thought on.

Of the three women, Neniane was the most natural mother, a blessing since she was alone now but for Morgana Mary. Padrec reflected it was better, if such a thing had any good in it, that Neniane's men were lost than Guenloie's. They were no different than any women in this. Some could fill their lives with children and be content, but Guenloie defined herself by the presence of men, her daughter dear but secondary. She was quite willing to let Neniane's surplus love spill over Bruidda. Malgon was home and center to her life now, if even more laconic than before. He loved her, his body said what his tongue could not. They tore at each other like starved foxes in the language Guenloie knew best, but Malgon grew moodier through the winter. The tower was an alien place to him. This last year had wrenched his life into a tangle of twisting channels impossible to follow. He grew less tolerant of Guenloie's prattle or teasing. Malgon didn't know why any more than she, except he'd been in a place of men where women need not be considered at all. If strange, that was sometimes a relief. And there were other thoughts to haunt him that Malgon understood not at all.

"Ah, woman, be still."

Wanting to understand, Guenloie would twine herself about his neck before the fire in their chamber. "But dost love me?"

A sigh for the inexpressible. "Truly."

"Then come lie with me."

"Not now."

Guenloie ran her tongue over his neck and ear. "Now."

Malgon only parried her absently. "Later."

It put her off. He'd never been the one to say when, neither he nor Drust, that was always her prerogative. "Did weary thyself with tallfolk women?"

Malgon lifted his eyes to Lugh. Understand? She couldn't even fathom why he laughed. "Oh, aye. Did

pass them out three to a rider, like spears."

"Malgon!" She was horrified. "Dost have second wife?"

"Oh, peace! Dost nae have wealth? Then look to her. Must Neniane be a's mother always?"

Remarks on her lack of maternal instinct hurt Guen-loie less than an unreachable man. It left her helpless and resentful. "Drust would nae speak so."

"A was a gentle man."

"And thee, sad lump, will nae even speak of thy brother husband."

Silence, his back to her. She had no way through the wall of him. "How did Drust die?"

"In war. Holy war."

"How?" she screeched, capable of anything when he rejected her. "A's daughter would know in seasons to come."

A cruel insult, the most degrading a fhain wife could level at a husband to speak directly of parentage and deny his. But Malgon's smile was even crueler when he turned to her with acid invitation. "Thee's a marvel, Guenloie. Did say thee wished to bed? Come, will lie with thee."

No, she couldn't couple with such frigid distance. "Malgon ..."

"Nae, come. Did wish't."

Not an invitation but a thrusting away. Guenloie felt lost. "Thee do nae want me."

"Oh, come." The contempt froze the words. "Do have nae better to do. And thee'11 not prattle the while."

Guenloie slapped him hard. To her absolute shock, Malgon backhanded her sharply and left her alone to understand why.

Dorelei did not fly to punish Malgon for the breach of custom as once she would have, but it troubled her on a deeper level. They were not really fhain anymore.

"Just people," Padrec murmured as they lay together.

"You're growing, all of you. Men and women. Leave them be. They'll manage."

The peat fire made the small stone chamber warm and sweet. Gazing into it, Dorelei's profile had a firmer set to it than Padrec remembered. The exquisite girl was a woman now, harboring her own silences within her as he did. With no wisdom to give her out of any conviction, self-excommunicated, he could only put his body to hers like a bandage. Yet even their loving was different. Joining with Dorelei, tender or fierce, he could feel the space between them and hear a deeper echo from the woman, as if her own war eroded sea caves in her soul. Not a lessening of love but a greater complexity.