He was roused the next morning well before dawn by a cup of cold water dashed over him. Murdo leaped up, spluttering and swinging his fists. 'Here now,' Jon said, 'and I thought you were eager for leaving.'

Murdo shook the water out of his eyes and, with a grumble about the coarseness of the jest, fell to helping the others fill the water skins; meanwhile, the monks, yawning and scratching themselves, stowed their cooking utensils, and within a few moments of rising, the crew and passengers were aboard and rowing the boat towards the open sea once more. Murdo nestled himself among the grain bags in the centre of the ship and leaned against the mast; he watched the early-morning mist swirling over the water and listened to the birdcalls in the trees along the river. He must have fallen asleep again, for the next thing he knew, he was rolling on the bottom of the boat.

Scrambling to his feet, he grabbed the rail and looked out to see low, green, cloud-covered hills far behind, and nothing but empty sea and sky ahead. The sail snapped sharply and the ship plunged into the swell again. Jon Wing, pulling hard on the tiller oar, turned onto a new heading, and the ship began to run smoothly before the wind.

Murdo felt the sheer exhilaration of the chase stirring his blood. Somewhere out there, across the grey and vasty sea, his father and brothers were fighting the cunning Saracen, and he, Murdo, would find them and bring them back. It would happen; it must. He would make it happen.

He spared no kindly thought for the pope or his innumerable lackeys, nor for the sacred duty of the pilgrimage. Whether the crusade succeeded or failed was all one to Murdo; he could not have cared less one way or the other. His heart was filled with a single desire and had no room for anything else: to see the lands of his fathers restored. His life, his future, his happiness with Ragna -everything depended on saving Hrafnbu. That meant more to him than all the empire's gold-and certainly, far, far more than the pointless protection of a handful of churches and a few dusty relics no one he knew had ever seen.

'You are very grim for a young man,' Emlyn observed cheerfully.

Murdo turned his head to see the round-shouldered monk reclining on his elbows against the rail. 'I was thinking.' He shifted on the grain sacks for a better look at the jovial priest.

'About the crusade, yes?'

Murdo heard the word, but the crusade was so far from his thoughts that for a moment he could not make sense of what the cleric was saying. 'No, not that,' he answered at last. 'I was thinking about my farm-home, I mean.'

'You are wishing you had not left home perhaps,' suggested the monk. 'Ah, fy enaid,' he sighed wistfully. 'I, too, sometimes grow melancholy thinking of my home in blessed Dyfed.'

Murdo had never heard of the place and said so.

'Never heard of Dyfed!' cried the monk, aghast. 'Why, it is the best place on earth. God has showered every gift on that fair realm and the people there are the happiest to be found under Heaven's bright vault. How not? The land abounds in streams and lakes and springs of every kind-all of them flowing with water sweet and good to drink, water that makes the lightest, most delightful ale ever known, water that makes the thirsty kine content and the lambs' wool fine as silk.

'Truly, the weather is never harsh, and the breeze is soft as a mother's breath upon the cheek of her dearling child. The days are warm and the sky always blue as the lark's egg. Never does the stormcloud threaten, less yet conceal the glorious sun, for it rains only at night and then but gently, gently, wetting the land with dew as mild as milk. Thus, every good thing grows in abundance, and one has only to scatter the grainseed wherever he will to reap a bounteous harvest. Everywhere the grass is green and lush, fattening the cattle most remarkably well.'

The rapturous monk gulped down a breath, and plunged on in praise of his magical home. 'The women of Dyfed are beauty and elegance made flesh, and the men are bards and warriors every one. They live together in peaceful harmony, never speaking rudely to one another, much less raising their voices in anger. They spend their days making songs which are the envy of the angels themselves. Indeed, it has often been known that a bard will sing a song before his lord, and that night be taken up to Paradise so that he may teach the Heavenly Choir the blessed refrains he has composed.

'The wealth so coveted by other nations is wholly despised by the Cymry. Gold and silver are mere enticements for craftsmen to take up their tools and practice their masterly arts. The trifles they fashion become adornment for kings and queens, and even children are skilled in making the most wondrous and delicate designs. And… and…'

Overcome by the memory, Emlyn lapsed into an enraptured silence. Murdo gazed at the man and thought again how odd these monks appeared. Were they, as they professed to be, truly clerics? If so, the church they served must be different by far from the one Murdo knew.

'It seems a most remarkable realm, the way you tell it,' Murdo observed.

Emlyn nodded solemnly. 'I tell you the truth: when Eden was lost to Adam's race, our Kind Creator took pity on his wayward children and gave them Ynys Prydein, and Dyfed is the finest corner of our beloved isle.'

'If it is as you say, I wonder anyone should ever leave it at all.'

'Oh, but that is the very heart and soul of our predicament,' the monk wagged his head sadly from side to side. 'For the Cymry, blessed of the Gifting Giver with all the highest boons, were also given a solitary affliction lest men of other realms and races eat out their hearts in hopeless envy. Heaven's Most Favoured were endowed with an irresistible taithchwant so that they might not become too proud in the enjoyment of their many-splendoured homeland.'

Emlyn spoke with such a soulful longing, that Murdo's heart was moved to hear it. 'What is this tai-taith -

'Taithchwant,' the monk repeated. 'Oh, it is less an affliction than a cruel travail. It is a kind of wanderlust, but more potent than any yearning known to humankind. It is that gnawing discontent which drives a man beyond the walls of paradise to see what lies over the next hill, or to discover where the river ends, or to follow the road to its furthest destination. Truly, there is nothing more powerful, and only one thing that is known to be its equal.'

'What is that?' wondered Murdo, entirely taken in by the monk's sincerity.

'It is the hiraeth,' answered the monk. 'That is, the home-yearning-an aching desire for the green hills of your native land, a matchless longing for the sound of a kinsman's voice, a greedy hunger only satisfied by the food first eaten at your mother's hearth. Alas, the hiraeth is a hankering torment so strong it can bring tears to a man's eyes and make him forget all other loves, and even life itself.'

He sighed. 'So, you see? We are forever pinched between the two most formidable cravings men can know, and therefore we cannot ever be happy to remain in one place very long.'

Murdo admitted that it did seem a very shame, at which thought the cleric brightened once more, and said, 'God is good. He has made us his special messengers, equipping us to take his pure and shining light to a world benighted and lost in darkness. We are the Cele De,' he proclaimed proudly, 'the Servants of the High King of Heaven, who has abundantly bestowed his grace and favour upon us.' Emlyn leaned close as if to confide a secret; he lowered his voice accordingly. 'Hear me: we are the Keepers of the Holy Light, and the Guardians of the True Path.'