The cromlech was a small circle of standing stones surrounding a dolmen, which consisted of three upright stones topped by a flat stone slab. Cormach’s hawthorn bier was set on the slab and the boughs were placed all around, once again forming a dense enclosure over the body. Hafgan raised his hands, uttered something in the secret tongue, and then said, “Farewell, friend of our brother, you are free to go your way.” He knelt and put his palms against the dirt. “Great Mother, we give you back your son. Treat him not unkindly, for he has served his master well.”

So saying, he rose, turned his back and left the dolmen, passing through the ring of stones. The other druids followed, each passing between different stones in the circle and moving off in their various directions into the hills and woods beyond.

Later the three sat near a fire in the wood, darkness like thick wool wrapped close around them. They ate some of the food which had been given to them by the people of Dolgellau and talked. When they had finished eating, Blaise yawned and rolled himself in his cloak and went to sleep. Taliesin was far from sleepy; brain brimming with images, he stared into the dancing flames and pondered all he had seen that day. Hafgan watched him for a long while, waiting for the questions he knew were swimming in that golden head.

Finally Taliesin raised his face from the softly crackling flames and asked, “What will happen to the body now?”

Hafgan picked up an apple from the small pile on the ground beside him and passed it to the boy. He selected one for himself and bit into it, chewed thoughtfully and said, “What do you think will happen?”

“The flesh will corrupt, leaving the bones behind.”

“Precisely.” He took another bite. “Why ask the question when you already know the answer?”

“I mean,” said Taliesin, gnawing his apple, “what will happen when the flesh has dissolved?”

“The bones will be gathered and taken to a vault in the earth where they will be laid to rest with the bones of our brothers who have gone before.”

“But the birds and animals will disturb the body.”

Hafgan shook his head lightly. “No, lad, they will not come within the sacred ring. And anyway, flesh is flesh; if it feeds a fellow traveler on his way, it has performed one purpose for which it was made.”

Taliesin accepted this, took another bite of his apple and tossed the core into the fire. “The bier floated, Hafgan, when you spoke in the secret tongue-was it an enchantment?”

Again the druid shook his head. “I merely called on the Ancient Ones to bear witness to our brother’s deeds and grant him safe passage along the way. The body was light”-his palm floated upward as he spoke”because there was no longer anything to bind it to the earth or weigh it down.”

The boy contemplated the fire, eyes sparkling. “Will we see him again?”

“Not in this world. In the Otherworld perhaps. A soul lives forever-before birth and after death it is alive. This world is only a brief sojourn, Taliesin, and it is doubtful if men remember it when we pass on-just as we forget the life before this one.”

“I will remember,” declared Taliesin.

“Perhaps,” said Hafgan evenly, gray eyes keen in the firelight as he watched Taliesin. In the shimmering light the boy’s face seemed to take on a different aspect. It was no longer the face of a child but a timeless face, neither old nor young, the face of a youthful god, an immortal beyond the reach of age or time.

Hugging his knees, Taliesin began rocking back and forth. He stared into the flames and said, “I was in many shapes before I was born: I was sunlight on a leaf; I was star’s beam; I was a lantern of light on a shepherd’s pole.

“I was a sound on the wind; I was a word; I was a book of words.

“I was a bridge across seven rivers. I was a path in the sea. I was a coracle on the water, a leather boat that plowed bright waves.

“I was a bubble in beer, a fleck of foam in my father’s cup.

“I was a string in a bard’s harp for nine nines of years; I was a melody on a maiden’s lips.

“I was a spark in fire, a flame in a bonfire at Beltane… a flame… a flame…”

The voice dwindled, becoming a young boy’s voice once more. Taliesin hunched his shoulders and shivered all over, though the night was not cold. “Never mind, Taliesin,” said Hafgan softly. “Do not strain after it; let it go. The awen comes or it does not. You cannot force it.”

Taliesin closed his eyes and lowered his head to his knees. “I almost remembered,” he said, his voice a whimper.

Hafgan put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and lay him down beside the fire. “Sleep, Taliesin. The world will wait for you yet a little longer.”

Time unwound in a slow, endless coil for Charis. at the end of the second week she felt well enough to fend for herself again. Each day she expected news from Kian, but the days ground away and no word came.

Lile came to see her often and although she repeated her offer of help, she did not press Charis in the matter. For her part, Charis endured these visits, maintaining a chilly politeness toward her father’s wife. Lile said little regarding Charis’ attitude. Yet, the cold formality must have hurt her more than she let on, for one day toward the end of the third week of Charis’ convalescence she threw down the tray she was carrying and left the room without a word.

A little later, Charis encountered her in the garden. Charis had grown restless, and despite Annubi’s warnings had decided that short walks would do her more good than whole days flat on her back. At first she contented herself with attaining the length of the corridor. But soon she was restless to be in the fresh air again, and one morning rose and tottered along the corridor and down the long winding flight of stairs to the garden. The lower garden flourished behind a decorative hedge, and to reach it one passed through an arch cut in the green wall. Charis approached on the stone pathway which led to the garden and found that a door had been hung in the formerly empty archway.

She paused and wondered at this, but the door was slightly ajar, so she pushed it open and stepped inside. She had not set foot in the garden since leaving home and marveled at the change before her. Gone were the flowers, lush and fragrant in tiered beds, the climbing roses and flowering vines, and gone too the ornamental shrubs with their delicate lacy shrouds of blossoms. In their places, and in greater variety and abundance than the flowers themselves, were herbs and grasses, ferns, moss, and mushrooms. The latter of these she detected by scent rather than sight, for the heady floral aroma she remembered had utterly vanished and was replaced with the sick-sweet, earthy, rotting-flesh fungal smell.

The garden was clearly well-tended, but the plants were left to grow as they would-unhindered, untrimmed, unencumbered. The result was distinctly shabby, seedy, and weedy-looking. Charis kept to the main path and walked deeper into the heart of the garden, passing stands of willow herb, nightshade, and nettle, rue, hart’s tongue, and moon-wort, cranesbill, wood sedge, and hare’s tail, and many, many more that she did not recognize and could not name.

And amongst the fallen branches, on deep beds of decaying leaves, there were puff balls, swollen and obscene; stink-horns, with their sticky, black ooze and fetid reek; death caps and black trumpets in darkly sinister clusters. From these and countless unseen others came the odor of decay that pervaded the garden.

Charis sauntered along the path and came to a small grove planted in the place where a greenspace had once been. In the center of the lawn there had been a circular fishpond; a fountain at one end of the pond splashed down a fall of marble steps to feed the pond. But the fish and fountain were gone, for on the shallow banks of the pond, and in it, grew numerous water plants: reeds and rushes and cresses of various types.