Guenloie looked from one to the other of them to see if her point was followed; it was not. "Well, then: with a great rading into Briton-land and out again, and the ponies all lathered under treasure-weight, look thee, how far would wise Prydn go afore sharing some and bar-rowing the rest?"

Padrec nodded carefully. "Dost make sense."

' 'Would carry it through Venicones or Taixali, whose blood I curse in my own veins?"

"Wait." A spark from Guenloie's idea caught fire in Padrec's imagination. "Be only certain places to cross, and those only in the dark."

"On moonless nights or in storm," Dorelei prompted.

"And those crossings ..." Padrec tried to picture the army maps of the Wall and the crossing places he knew. Camboglanna, Brocolitia, near Cilurnum. The notion made excellent logistic sense. My God, the perfect place, not a day from the Wall.

' 'Cnoch-nan-ainneal!' •

"The Hill of the Fires." Dorelei glowed with vindication.

"Thee's right, right, rightl" Padrec swept Guenloie up into his arms in a thrill of excitement, flustering her.

"Nae, Padrec, stop."

"Why did thee nae tell thee was genius, cousin?"

"Oh..." There was no vanity in her self-effacing blush. "Did nae ever ask me." A furtive glance at her fhain sisters. "Tallfolk blood be always last in fhain."

4 'Cousin, thee's been long clean of that," Dorelei said.

"But was habit, Gern-y-fhain. Gawse did call me slow and stupid, and thee and Neniane. So." Guenloie shrugged ingenuously. "Did think't myself."

Malgon toyed with the new notion, liking it. "Why not Cnoch-nan-ainneal?"

"Why not?" Dorelei sealed it. "Hast been ours since first days and closest to Wall. Mabh herself put a rath on the hill."

The simple truth of it awed Padrec. They might have walked over the Prydn hoard many times. No longer a mere puzzle to divert them at supper. So the song-map was heard by Brigantes trading across the Wall and taken home as doggerel for lulling children like himself to sleep, already half forgotten by Prydn with their own foreshortened sense of the past.

Until now.

The Hill of the Fires. It could be.

Dorelei crossed her legs on the stone, back straight, arms resting on her knees in the formal position for gern-speaking.

"Salmon fhain will rade early this season to Cnoch-nan-ainneal. Will trade with Atecotti for what be needed even an be naught but fish and vetch. Will take our flocks. Those that die on rade will be eaten, the fleeces saved. Will be on the hill before other fhains even think to move."

She paused, distilling the cold remainder of her thought.

"For other fhains, a's cast us out. An a try to take rath from us, will be a's misfortune. If Salmon be no longer of a's blood, then they none of ours. Will find this treasure for Salmon alone. Will walk again in Mother's breast, but alone."

Padrec bowed his head toward her. "Yah, Gern-y-fhain."

The others agreed sibilantly. Yah.

"Be a thing to end or begin, be there't will happen. So speaks thy gem."

End or beginning, her people, even for a little while, would have a new faith and purpose. Beyond that hill there was nothing for them but Tir-Nan-Og.

Mother, it is I, Dorelei Mabh. There is no circle here for you to find me in, no moonstones to please your eye. We lose many things in this new world, but we learn as well. The other gerns cast me out, so we are no longer bound by Prydn law to share or be a part. They are not as wise as I once thought. Truly, I think Bruidda is only a tired old woman and a frightened one. The world is more than I knew; I am not on the edge of Bruidda's world, but in the center of my own. Mabh had the sight to see and the courage to change, and though she angered you, she was your first great gern, like Mo-ses. Watch over our rade.

Lugh Sun, let Rainbow point us to the hoard, and as well to Tir-Nan-Og, which you promised in the first days. Be much needed now. Show us the mole on our back that we cannot see, for we can wait no longer. Let ending be beginning. There is no place else for us now. I promise when we come to the first circle on rade, I will leave my last gold tore for you to remember with. Send us Rainbow at Bel-tein.

Jesu, Son of Father-God—I leave farewells to the last. We are very sorry to leave You, but we must return to what we know, to Mother and Lugh. Will be hard for You to understand, but we must go where the magic lives, even beyond world-edge. I will be promised no longer, but will have Tir-Nan-Og for my folk. You, who are a god of the small soul, will understand. Mo-ses only listened to the bush that burned. I must go into it, take the god by the hand, and demand miracles, not for later but now. You will know how low hope can burn in gerns who are only human women.

Even when You spoke in riddles, You were a gentle and generous god, Jesu. You gave us iron-magic. You

gave me Padrec, who is my joy, and though he is gone from You, have eye to his care now and then. I do not think he can live without his gods any more than I without mine.

You were a braw god, Jesu, but. . . You and Your priests have very strange notions about men and women, like Padrec when he came to us, but marriage cured him. It would have been better if You married. You would have known a little more about women. But You helped me find not only the name of Mabh, but Dorelei as well. You helped me say my own name aloud in the world. I will not forget. Father-God bless you. We go.

-cAo-

flJHERE

the jwagic Lives

It was still March and the wind sharp when they led their ponies up Cnoch-nan-ainneal and entered the stone circle. With Crulegh in her arms, Dorelei turned slowly in a full circuit about the center.

"Was here I offered my first stones to Mother as gern, Cru. Here we found Padrec." And here we could end. "Here we begin again," she announced firmly to her people. "Be much to do."

She assigned their tasks. For this day, she and Neni-ane would take charge of the children and consecrate the new fire with unburned fragments of the old. Malgon would hunt (and be frugal with good arrows, mind), Guenloie would search out and prepare moonstones to offer Mother.

"And Padrec will make the magic of the tallfolk numbers. The mathe-matic. Let us begin then."

Alone in the circle, Padrec noted the position of the afternoon sun moving into and out of cloud. It could be a beginning; failure wouldn't be for want of trying. They'd traveled nigh the length of Pictland, from Moray Firth to the Wall. The few encounters with tallfolk tribes were ticklish but bloodless, since they kept to the high ridges. The decision to rade early was wise. No other fhains were yet on the move. They used bits of gold and small jewels from the last of their treasure to trade for

barley and winter vegetables, and now and then they butchered an old ewe for mutton. They met no fhains on the way, and very few signs were observed. Beyond the generation that died in the holy war, the rest of Prydn seemed to have melted away.

Were there so few to begin with that less than two hundred would make such a difference?

Why not? Last year the fhains massed on this hill numbered less than a thousand, and all said it was the largest gathering in memory. From here to Catanesia, there were probably less than half that in all now. Vanishing.

Lord God, no matter that you and I are not getting on, but these people gave more than I ever did or will Let's not haggle faith or the purpose of miracles. They need one now.

He picked up the sharpened stake by his foot and began to pace the circle, which was more elliptical than round on an east-west axis. With the Roman gradus as measure, he estimated as closely as possible the exact center of the stones and hammered the stake upright with his sword hilt.

Begun.

Padrec noted the position of the sun and the pale shadow angling from his sundial-stake. Not quite gone two of the clock. No hint of rain, not yet. But a generous distribution of rain and sun with accurate notings of time could give him a spread of rainbow positions, morning and evening. On Bel-tein the sun would rise directly over the most easterly stone; thus it was aligned.

If he was right, and if they were in the right circle out of hundreds, if the sun shone enough to help his perilous mathematics, if it rained often enough at the right time of day, and if his theory was correct to begin with, if another fhain didn't challenge them for the hill or the Venicones drive them out, they just might be within arm's reach of the miracle they needed.

The next morning at dawn, he and Dorelei were waiting by his stake to see where the sun rose. Dorelei had

no word for complex numbers but knew exactly how many days to Bel-tein.

4 Tour tens and five."

''Forty-five days." Padrec grinned at the wry coincidence. "The Ides of March. Caesar died on this day. Did make great roil in Rome."

She looked anxious; had they begun on an ill day, then?

"Just for Romans. Look, see what Lugh tells us."

He drew a circle in the earth with his knife, two lines slicing into it at close angles, one for this day, one for Bel-tein morning. Knowing this much, he could halve and quarter the difference and virtually predict where Rainbow would appear and point in the world-dish round them, even before the day came.

Dorelei flushed with admiration. What other man could, with a few scratched lines, so foretell the movements of Lugh? Truly Padrec was Raven-gift and his magic awesome, but she could still help in some things.

"Barrow will be higher in the west than east. And must look sharp. Will be hard to find."

The weather warmed day by day. They moved out of the crannog, set up, and sodded over the rath, wondering when the Venicones would notice them, and one day Malgon found out.

He was hunting in the wood north of their hill just after daybreak, hoping for a buck deer. Doe was forbidden now, still needed to mother the new fawns, nor was it the best time of year for Stag, and Malgon apologized to his spirit beforehand, but food was needed. The hunt should not be difficult. Fhain knew all the thickets favored by deer and their morning and evening trails to water. He planted himself upwind of the freshest trail and waited as morning grew brighter.