Charis closed her eyes hard and bit her lip to keep from crying out.

“Now you know,” he said, and then added apologetically, “I did not mean to tell you like that.”

“Annubi said nothing of it.”

“Annubi remembers only what he wants to remember these days.” He spread his hands helplessly. “Anyway, it is best if I do not go home again just yet. The last time I was there we fought.”

“Over her?”

“She was part of it,” he admitted. “I told him to get rid of her and he threw a knife at me.”

“You know he did not mean it. He would not even remember it.” Charis took her brother’s hand. “Come back with me.”

“If I went back, it would only happen again. Besides, I have to meet Belyn. For the first time in a very long time we have Seithenin and Nestor on the run.” He flashed a quick smile. “Small, mobile mounted forces capable of striking anywhere in the kingdom-it is paying off. The ambush you spoiled was a last effort to try to keep us from closing on them.” He paused. “What will you do?”

“I cannot say.” She smiled sadly and lifted her head. “Farewell, Kian.” The carriage rolled away and Charis did not look back.

Cormach stayed at caer dyvi four days and each day took Taliesin to the bower in the woods where they sat together and talked. Rather, Cormach talked and Taliesin listened, hearing in the old druid’s words the music of the Otherworld: lilting, magical, strange, frightening, fantastic.

On the last day Cormach settled himself on the oak stump and gazed steadily at the boy seated before him for a long time without speaking. Taliesin grew self-conscious under the old man’s stare and fidgeted, pulling tufts of grass and scattering them over his feet. At last Cormach stirred. “Yes, yes.” he muttered, “it must be done.” And he put his hand into his mantle and withdrew a small leather pouch, opened it, and poured into his palm five fire-browned nuts.

“Know what these are, boy?” the Chief Druid asked.

“Hazelnuts, Master,” Taliesin answered.

“Yes, they were-once. They are Kernels of Knowledge, Taliesin, Seeds of Wisdom. They are useful in their way. Would you like to taste one?”

“I would if you want me to.”

“It is not for me, Taliesin,” answered Cormach, who paused and then added more truthfully, “Well, maybe it is. But it is not from idle curiosity, lad. Never that…”He fell silent again, staring. This time Taliesin felt that he was not staring at him but through him, at some other presence-one of the Ancient Ones perhaps.

“… never curiosity, boy, remember that,” Cormach said, as if he had been speaking all the while. He lowered his eyes to his hand and looked at the hazelnuts. “These are the last I shall need,” he said, choosing. “Take it, Taliesin. Eat it.”

The boy took the hazelnut and put it in his mouth. It had a slightly burned taste but was not disagreeable. He chewed slowly and looked around, trying to discern whether the nut itself had special properties. There were none, so far as he could tell.

“Now then, lad, do you know what an awen is?” asked the druid.

“I do, Master,” Taliesin replied. “It is the place a bard goes in his heart. Hafgan says it is the gateway to the Otherworld. “

“Good, good.” Cormach nodded to himself. “Would you like to discover that gateway for yourself, Taliesin?” The boy nodded. “Very well, just close your eyes and listen to me.”

Taliesin did close his eyes but found listening very difficult indeed. The Chief Druid began singing softly and although Taliesin tried to follow along, his attention kept lapsing, drifting off to other things, and he soon lost the thread of the song altogether. Cormach’s words droned in his ears and Taliesin tried to concentrate, but the old druid’s song had become an unintelligible tangle of meaningless syllables. For it seemed as if he had closed his eyes on one world and opened them onto another-a world very like the ordinary one, yet distinctly different.

There were the familiar trees, grass, and shrubs of the natural world, but the sky shone with a luminous bronze color, as if the only light in this world came not from the fiery orb of the sun, but from the sky itself or some great, obscure source behind it so that illumination reached this strange world dimly diffused, as rushlight through the glowing cloth of a tent.

He looked closer and saw that the trees themselves and even the blades of grass radiated this unearthly light. The air of this place-if it could be called air, for the atmosphere was dense and turgid, more like transparent fog-was also faintly luminous, so that it seemed as if the land were wrapped in a shining mist. The air trembled ever so Sightly with the sound of eerily exotic music, bright and flowing like the music of shepherd’s pipes, though purer, finer, and changeable as water. This music apparently emanated from the growing, living things around about, for there was no human creature or being near that Taliesin could see.

Away in the distance, across a wide and rolling plain, there were mountains whose tops were lost in the glowing sky. And the notion came to Taliesin that he had only to lift his foot and start toward them and he would be instantly transported across the plain and onto those faraway slopes. There would be caves in those mountains with passages leading down, down, down into the darksome underworld. But Taliesin did not lift his foot and did not travel to the mountains; instead he turned and saw a stream winding among the trees to a forest pool a short distance away.

The turf was springy underfoot, as if the grass resisted his footfall; he glanced behind him to see that his feet left no normal imprint upon the earth, though a slight glimmer outlined each step. He followed the stream to the pool and knelt in the bracken at the water’s edge where the stream entered the pool. Here he gazed into the crystalline water as it flowed over smooth-polished stones that shone like smoked amber. And there, just beneath the surface of the gliding water, he saw a woman, asleep among the long, flowing strands of green horsetail.

She was dressed in a white garment that shimmered as the water rippled over it. Her hair, golden like his own, was long, with two shorter braids at her temples and the rest streaming and waving in a golden halo around her head as if a gentle breeze, not water, vere passing through it. Her skin was fine ivory, her lips red and slightly parted so that he could glimpse her pearl-bright teeth, perfectly formed. Her eyes were closed; dark lashes lightly brushed her cheeks; and judging from the soft orbits of their sockets, her eyes, when awake, would be large and, like her other features which were shaped with such grace and symmetry, unutterably beautiful.

Her long, exquisite hands were folded over her breast where she held, lightly clasped, a gleaming sword whose gemmed hilt rested just beneath her chin. The long, tapering blade was chased with odd symbols and a strange inscription Tal-iesin could not decipher. It wavered in the play of water and light over its keen surface, which to Taliesin indicated that it was in some way alive.

Taliesin was not astonished to see this woman asleep beneath the rippling surface of the pool; rather, he was pleased, awed. And he was glad that she was sleeping, for he could not otherwise have stared at her with such audacity.

In looking, he experienced a longing to know and be known by this mysterious and beautiful woman, to lose himself in her presence. In all, a strange sensation, and one which the young Taliesin did not understand but identified as Belonging to that other, older part of himself. Overcome by the confusion caused by the intensity of these feelings, he rose and, letting his eyes linger over her comely form a last time, turned away.