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Chapter One: Coming Home

Samhain, 1060

The sky was a low steel grey, and the wind was bringing with it spitting snow, stinging the cheeks of the riders who wound up the long, steep road to Pedrosa. The lead rider grimaced and then smiled into the wind, pulling her hood up farther, tucking it closer in front of her ears. "It's good to be home," she muttered.

"You mountain folk are all insane." The rider behind her had a sour look on her face, and she wiped her running nose on the back of her glove. "We're almost there, right?"

"Another hour, Myev," she called back gaily. "Then we'll be shut up tight in Pedrosa against the winter. We were almost late, but we'll be all right, now. Winter gets here early and leaves late. You have to love it, to live here."

"I go where my Temple tells me, but I think this is a little excessive!"

The lead rider turned on her saddle, trusting her gelding to keep walking. "You'll love it, I promise. There's nowhere in the world as peaceful, or as beautiful." She fell silent as she cast her eyes across the rest--they were five riders and one pack mule in all. They were high enough that she could just see the rooftops of Arinsal, white in the distance. The city was built on the site of another, more ancient city, now long abandoned by the builders. Whoever they had been, they had built in stone, and they had built to last. Many of the old buildings were still habitable today, and the newer buildings imitated the old, though only clumsily. Only the stone mages today knew how to work stone so cunningly that blocks would fit together seamlessly, without mortar. The secret had been lost to humans for centuries, if they had ever had it.

Three of those behind her--Myev, Lucas, and Piers--were, like her, newly trained priests, coming to the Temple of Epona that was carved into the granite and quartz of the mountain Pedrosa. Unlike them, for her it was a homecoming instead of a posting somewhere she had never been. She had spent the first ten years of her life in this Temple, and when she had been Called, she had been sent away to Madrid for training.

Seven years later, after her training and then her first rotation as a priestess, she was returning home, by special request of the Headmaster's Second, her father. The mountain-bred might go away for training, but they always returned. Granite in the blood, they said laughingly, but it was more than that. It was as if, once the mountains became part of you, you grew uneasy with too much open space, too much flat land, too much sky.

She knew that she was more comfortable now, with a stinging wind whipping her face and sneaking into her clothing, than she had ever been in Madrid. The southlands were pleasant, but she did not trust the land there. It was too soft, too quiet, too easy.

Here was her home. Here I stay. She settled back in her saddle and kept riding, urging the gelding to pick up his feet, leaning forward in the saddle as the horse blew out a breath and kept going. She glanced back again, this time at the child huddled on the back of what had been the spare horse. She was bundled up, holding the reins in shaking hands. Cecily had joined them in Zaragoza, handed to them by the prelate of one of the churches they had spent the night at. She was something of a mystery; evidently, she had simply shown up on the doorstep of the Temple, with little recollection of who she was or what she was doing there.

She spoke little and watched everything around her with wide eyes. Beatrice felt a little bit of a kinship with her, having seen the way she flinched from touch, and had volunteered to bring her to Pedrosa to start her training. The prelate, happy to wash his hands of a child that he had no time for training, readily agreed. And so Cecily had rode with them all the way from Zaragoza.

They reached the lower gates as it began snowing in earnest. "Who goes?" came the cheerful voice from the top of the gates, an indistinct figure looking down on them, muffled by a heavy cloak.

The lead rider pulled back her hood, white flakes dotting her ebon hair, a wide grin on her face. "Beatrice Shorl, Sir Berenguer. Priestess of Epona, reporting for duty along with these others!"

The figure on top of the wall pulled back his hood. "Bee? Bee! By the Name, girl, it's you! I didn't figure you'd make it before the passes closed!"

"We nearly didn't, we had to push the horses but good! Would you let us in so I can give you a proper greeting?"

The knight laughed and she heard the ring of his chain armor as he climbed down the ladder at the side of the gate and unbarred the gate, pulling one great door open. Beatrice dismounted fluidly, led her horse through the gate, and then threw one arm around Sir Berenguer in an awkward half-hug. "It's good to see you, Uncle Ber!"

"As it is you, Bee. You've gotten tall, just like I said you would."

"Aye, I did. Let me lead these others in and settle the horses, and I'll see you at supper?"

"After my watch-shift. Get on with you. Your father will be happy to see you, Bee. He's missed you."

The smile on her face did not dim, but one who was looking would have seen all emotion in her eyes suddenly shutter itself. "And I have missed him. I will see you later."

She did not remount but instead simply led the gelding up the last few hundred yards to the doors set into the sheer face of the mountain. She knocked, and the doors swung inward, manned by a pair of stablehands, young trainees.

Piers handed the pack mule's lead over to one of the stablehands and the spare horse's over to the other. They found empty box stalls for each of their horses, untacking them and rubbing them down. Only once the horses were dry, warm, and fed did they see to themselves, shucking wet cloaks and brushing off their packs.

"The spiral corridor leads to the nave, and the stairs lead up to the lower levels. Shall we go to the nave, and see if we can find the warden?" The rest nodded, and they began to walk up the spiral corridor.

On the walls were painted scenes of the history of the Temple, starting with the founding of the modern-day order a thousand years before and ending with the building of the Temple in Pedrosa, four hundred years ago. Men and women were depicted standing beside the goddess, tending to the hurts of animal and human alike, ministering to the communities in which they lived. Great deeds were recorded on these walls, too; a single knight, holding off a horde of Vikings while villagers fled behind him, a king kneeling before a priestess, his crown in his hands, her white hand on his bent head.

Beatrice loved this corridor and seeing it again lifted her heart. Walking through a thousand years of history was a moving prayer, a walking fidelis. She refused to walk down the spiral corridor from the nave to the stables, even when it was the easier way. It felt too much like undoing the spiral, as if by going down widdershins would unravel the history of the Order and the Order itself.

But now, going up deosil, through the history of the Order, she was comforted. She held that comfort to herself and reached for the calm that she had been taught in six years of training. As they grew closer to the top, the paintings began to change. They began to move, shifting themselves, the people in them moving. Beatrice did not know what magic had been worked to create this painting, but she did know that she often felt as if the magic in these walls was somehow alive and aware--and whatever it was had a sense of humor. As a child, she'd often walked the spiral and watched the stories as they unfolded for her. As often as not, whatever story the wall wanted to tell her would have some relevance to her life.

Today, the wall was filled with homecomings both welcome and unwelcome. A group of bloody, armored soldiers bore the body of one of their kindred to an older woman who screamed silently. A child was brought back to his parents by a stern knight. A priest carried a goat kid back to a stable; in the next scene, the kid sucked greedily at its mother's teat, warm and happy.

But as they got closer to the top, for her the scenes changed. She wondered, as she had since she was small, if everyone who looked at the wall saw the same thing, or if somehow the magic painted light just for them and none else. She hoped it was the latter, because for her the wall ran red with blood. Murder was played out, and executions were done. She averted her eyes, not wanting to look. The scenes of death shook her with a profound sense of loss, reminded her that her mother was not going to be waiting for her in the Temple. Beatrice wondered at that, at the aching place in her heart where her mother had resided, and tried to school herself to peace once more. It had been three, almost four, years, but she still grieved.

They reached the nave and were soon enough directed to the warden, who told them where their rooms would be and that they should report to the Headmaster after supper, but until then they were free to explore. He took charge of Cecily, leading her away toward the trainee dorms.

The rest scattered, but Beatrice headed through the cathedral, the great cavern echoing with her footsteps. Behind the cathedral was a wide corridor, and as she walked down the hallway she could hear a familiar voice, one that at once twisted her heart with joy and poured the cold water of fear down her spine.

Her father's voice spilled down the corridor, the words indistinct. She stopped and listened. Which man was he right now? It had been seven years. Did she still have the trick of knowing? Could she tell if it was safe?

Strange how I forgot the fear as soon as I left, she thought, pressing her shoulder into the wall. She had left the fear behind in the echoing halls within the mountain and thought it would die in her absence.

It had been waiting for her, she realized. Waiting for her to return like an unwelcome ghost.

Another voice answered her father's, the words still indistinct but the gravelly tones well recognized. This voice was a most welcome one, and hearing that voice meant that her father was currently the man she loved, not Jonas the bitter, violent drunkard. That voice promised safety, and always had.

Without hesitation now, she strode forward, stopping in the doorway that the voices had been drifting from. She stood framed by the lintel, hands clasped before her, head tilted.

The two men in the room looked up, and her father opened his mouth, and closed it again. "Beatrice? Is that--is that you?"

She spread her arms. "It is. Father--I've come home!"

They met in the middle of the room, her father lifting her up off her feet and spinning her around, both of them laughing. Setting her down, he folded her in his arms, saying, "My gods, daughter, you've gotten so tall! It's so good to see you, and a full priestess into the bargain."

She kissed him on the cheek, her eyes glistening with glad tears. "I've been away too long. The mountains have called me back, and I won't leave again if I can help it."

"That's my girl." He hugged her tightly, then held her at arm's length, inspecting her. Wordlessly, he saw tanned skin over a fine-boned face, hair dark as a cloudy midnight sky, eyes greener than any emeralds he'd ever seen. She had gone from him a gawky ten-year-old, and returned an adult, and a beauty.

For her part, Beatrice saw a man aged too quickly for his years. There was sadness at the corners of his mouth and eyes, lines plowed deep by grief and time. Her mother was three years dead and the loss had aged her father more quickly than she had imagined.

"Beatrice. It is good to see you again." At the rumbling voice, she turned to see the other person in the room, a smile creasing his craggy features. "The Temple in Madrid turns out fine priests indeed, it seems."

"I do my best, Aru. I'm glad to see you, too." Aru was still taller than her by more than a head. She remembered him as a giant and giant he had been in comparison to her as a child. He was still an imposing figure, heavy muscles on a frame large as any Viking's, his face lined with years of the sun and wind of the mountains, his long steel hair pulled back from his face and bound by a leather thong.

But the most extraordinary thing about him were his eyes. His eyes were a pure, blank white, with neither iris nor pupil. To someone who did not know him, they would be expressionless and unnerving, something he used to his advantage. Others might hide what they were, but the Headmaster of Epona in Andorra had no reason to hide his eyes from any who might look.

The solid-colored eyes were the mark of a dragon. Aru was a white dragon, a member of the smallest and fiercest Clan in Europe, born in what had then been the glaciers of Scotland, the land his people still held today. White dragons were the dragons of cold and snow, just as gold dragons were the dragons of Mediterranean summers and red dragons were the dragons of the volcanoes and steam vents, black dragons were denizens of the swamps and greens and coppers denizens of forests. For every kind of terrain there was a dragon suited for it, it seemed.

Aru wore his human form with a grave dignity and an ease that told the tale of millennia spent honing his power. Beatrice had never asked how old he was, but she knew he had been Headmaster here for four hundred years. It was he who had founded the Temple here, who had hired the dwarven stone mages to create the great Cathedral large enough for him to stretch his wings in even his dragon form.

She crossed the room and held out her hand. Aru clasped it in his own, and said in his rumbling voice, "Welcome, priestess, and well met."

"I'm happy to be home, Headmaster," she replied, equally formally. Then she flashed him a lightning-quick grin. "By the way, I finally grew out of the habit of keeping mice in my pockets, I'm sure you'll be happy to hear."

He chuckled and released her hand. "Good to hear."

"I graduated to sparrows and kittens, instead." She grinned and bowed slightly, inclining her head. "I should find the others I came with and show them to the hall. We will see you after supper, Headmaster, Second?" It felt very strange to refer to her father as the Second, though that was what he had been since before she had been born.

Aru nodded. She gave her father another quick hug, then left. Beatrice's father ran his hand through his hair. "Gods. Makes me feel old, to see her grown. As if somewhere in my mind I thought she was still the youngling we sent to Madrid."

The dragon quirked his mouth. "You get used to it quickly, Jonas. Children grow up, that's what they're for. She seems to have grown into resiliency, which is all that matters. Do you have an assignment in mind for her?"

"A few. I haven't decided yet, but I also haven't laid eyes on the rest of the crop. We'll get them sorted, I'm sure."

Aru nodded, then lowered his voice. "You wrote her about Ellian?"

The Second winced and turned his head. "Of course I did. Right after...well, after. I didn't want her to come home and expect..."

"I was hoping. Take her to see the grave tomorrow, Jonas."

"I will."

Waves battered the ship, winds howling. In the tiny cabin belowdecks, a small family huddled--a tall elven man, a slightly built woman, and a girl. The girl clung to her bunk, shivering.

"We should never have tried this crossing," muttered the man. "There's a reason nobody sails into the Channel after the equinox."

"What choice did we have, Shen? It was this or face the armies. Come here, Elata. It's all right." The girl let go of her bunk and lurched shivering across the small space separating her from her mother. "Sssh, we'll be fine. The seas are just rough."

"At least they could have let us leave Elata behind. She's a child, she shouldn't share in our fate."

The girl huddled in her mother's arms as the ship pitched again. "I am not a child, Father. I'm sixteen. If I were a human, I'd be married and have a trade by now. I wouldn't have let you leave me behind."

The small woman kissed her daughter on the top of her head. "You're not a human, though. You're elven. And you're innocent. They should have let you stay, instead of sending you into exile with us."

"She chose to come with us, Lani. Respect that. It was a brave thing to do, and I for one am glad to have her along."

Elata shivered and tried to pull her legs tighter to her chest. She didn't feel brave, right at the moment. She felt cold and seasick and scared. The boat was creaking alarmingly as the water seemed to pick it up and slap it down. She could hear shouts as the sailors topside tried to keep the boat steady. She wished she could help, but her talent was for fire and earth, not air and water. She was worthless as a weather mage, and that was what was needed. The ship's priest had died in an accident just after they lost sight of land, a day and a half ago, so nobody was available who could pray to Nechton that they be delivered from this ocean.

There was no warning when the ship broke apart. Just a louder-than-usual creak, a tearing crack, and suddenly the small room yawed alarmingly forward. Her mother clung to her, screaming, "No--"

Then all was water, and screams, and the cracking sound of the ship collapsing around them. Elata's mother was torn away from her by the water, her father's shout drowned by the roar of the waves, and then the icy water pulled her under. She flailed, panicking, unsure of which way was up, only knowing that the water had hold of her like a hand.

She felt a pair of hands catch her in the armpits, hauling her upward. As she wriggled to see who it was, something hard hit the back of her head and the world went away.

Elata woke, cold, the world spinning around her. Something seemed to be pressing on her chest, she couldn't breathe properly. Her eyes wouldn't open, and the only motion she could make was to twitch her hands.

There were voices, above her, saying words that she couldn't understand. The pressure lifted off of her chest, and then more words, these excited. There was someone brushing her hair away from her face, touching her ear--she jerked her head away from the intrusive hand, but didn't manage to get very far away. Her entire body hurt, nerves all screaming at her, and she felt herself lifted upwards.

She struggled, fighting weakly, but she still couldn't open her eyes. She felt herself cradled against a broad chest, some sort of cloth tucked around her. Consciousness began to slip away as she was carried towards some unknown fate.

She gave in, and let go.

The next time she woke, she was much warmer, and her head felt as if someone were hitting it with a hammer. She stifled a cry and with her eyes still closed, she took stock of her surroundings.

She was lying in something soft--furs, she thought--with the weight of what must be blankets on her. She could hear a fire somewhere nearby, and smell the strangely scented smoke in the air. There was someone else in the room with her, she could hear whoever it was humming under their breath. A man, she thought. Wherever she was smelled like smoke and horses and food.

She opened her eyes, then flinched and closed them again, gasping. There was light in the room so bright that it stabbed at her eyes, adding to the pounding in the back of her head. But her gasp turned into a cough and she tried to roll onto her side as her body convulsed with her coughing.

A pair of hands lifted and held her, and a male voice said, "There, good, get the water out. It's all right, you just have a bit of Channel water in your lungs." When she finished coughing, she collapsed to the furs, exhausted. She noticed for the first time that the furs must be on something soft--a straw-stuffed tick, it felt like.

"Can you open your eyes, child?" Elata complied and then shut them again as the light stabbed at her. "What's wrong?"

"Light--hurts. My head."

"Ah, a moment." She felt the man leave, heard a scraping sound, and then he came back. "Is that better?"

The light was much dimmer, and she found she could open her eyes without pain. "It is. But everything's blurred."

"Head wound. You had quite a bit of bruising and a nasty cut on the back of your head, but I think you'll mend. Here, try to drink a little of this. It should help with the pain." The man raised a cup to her lips and she sipped the bitter brew cautiously, making a face at the taste. Her stomach roiled with nausea and she willed herself not to vomit.

"There you go, child. Now, lie back down. Can you talk a little? What's your name? How did you come up to be on our shores?"

She swallowed. "Elata. My parents were fleeing. I don't know why, but my mother's father was sick for a long time and then he died and everything changed and nobody would tell me anything. We were going to London. Storm blew us--north? Then the ship broke up, and...did anyone find my parents? Are they all right?"

The man paused. "Ah, child...no, we haven't found them. They may still be alive." Elata realized the man was speaking her native German, but with a burr of an accent. His voice was gentle, pitched low.

They might still be alive! Hope bloomed in her, warming her. She tried to nod but realized very quickly that was a mistake as nausea spun within her. She clenched her fists and then asked, slowly, "Where am I? Who are you?"

"You're in Ewna, which is a village in the middle of nowhere, in Scotland. I am Cainnec, a priest of Epona, and luckily for you I happened to be on rotation. I patched up your head, but there's not much I can do about the aftereffects of the blow except wait for your brains to unscramble themselves. How many summers have you, child?"

She tried to remember. "Sixteen."

"I would have thought you were much younger, but then I've not much experience with elven children. Do you have a trade, then?"

"No." She closed her eyes. "I was studying to be a mage. Earth and fire. Some help I was when the storm came."

"You'll not find too many mages to study with here. Is there any chance you can go home?"

Her mouth twisted as her fuzzy thoughts lighted on icily angry elves, their eyes narrowed and their hands on their swords. "I...don't think so. I think I'm stuck here. I have to find my parents..."

The voice paused again, and this time his voice was slow and sad. "Don't worry, Elata. We'll sort you. Sleep, now, and heal. You should be up and around soon."

But the priest was wrong. The seawater that had gotten into Elata's lungs caused a bout of coughing illness, complete with fever and difficulty breathing. She descended deeply into unconsciousness, only washing ashore into life three weeks later.

For his own part, the priest watched over her and cared for her, feeding her broth and tisanes when she could be roused enough to swallow, bolstering her body's fight against the sickness with his power. He wondered about this child the Goddess had seen fit to send him; he saw enough of her body while doing what was necessary to keep her clean to know that she appeared to be standing on the brink of puberty. She was tiny and slightly built, with straight flaxen hair and dark blue eyes, her hands small and thin-fingered. She had clearly taken after the female elf who had washed up on shore a few miles north, a few days after Elata became ill. Even dead, the elf had had a translucent beauty that her daughter was very likely to inherit.

There was a chance her father was still alive, but it was very slim. It appeared that none but Elata had survived the shipwreck. The child was orphaned in enemy territory. He wondered what had driven her parents to the extreme of fleeing to the Outer Isles, to the land of their ancient enemies. He wondered what Epona was thinking, sending this elven child to him, in this land that was undoubtedly going to be more cruel than kind to her.

In the back of his mind, another suspicion stirred. His life had been far too simple for too long. Perhaps this was the first sign that his relative peace was about to come to an end.

When at last Elata awoke, she felt weak as a newborn kitten. Even trying to lift her head was too much work. She coughed, and then called out, "Hello? Hello..."

The door opened, and she flinched, but this time the daylight outside did not stab her eyes as it had. "Elata? How are you feeling?"

The man standing in the doorway was wearing a loose coat, the type that Epona dedicates wore. A priest, then. She tried to remember coming here, but everything was a fuzzy flicker in her mind, after the crack of the ship and her mother's screams.

She shivered, and gave the priest a weak smile. "Flat. Very flat. What happened? The last I remember, my head hurt and everything was fuzzy."

"You were very ill. You're lucky to be alive. Under the care of the village midwife, you'd have died two weeks ago. I'm Cainnec, by the way, in case you don't remember." The priest came in, closing the door behind in, and in the gloom of the room sat on a stool next to her bed. He helped her to sit up. His hands were very cold, but he had just been outside, and Elata chalked it up to that. He had not been wearing gloves, after all.

"How long..."

"It's been twenty-five days since you were washed up on shore. I sent a messenger ahead on my route, telling them I was delayed. We're here until you're well enough to travel. Now, I'm going to heat some broth for you. Stay here."

As he bustled with a pot over the low peat fire, she asked, "Travel? Where are we going? And where are my parents?"

Cainnec's hands stilled. "We found your parents after you became ill. They were drowned. I'm sorry, Elata."

"Drowned." The word seemed to swallow Elata, a crystalline black wave of grief rolling over her. She swallowed and the room sparkled around the edges. Her mother, her father, soft voices and gentle hands, so happy to have a child at last. They had fled so they would have a chance to live, but the flight had instead doomed them.

And stranded Elata, without a mark to her name and completely alone, on these cold shores.

She tried to choke back her sobs but found to her dismay that the tears were sliding out of her eyes without volition. She turned her face away from the fire and gulped, trying to master her emotions. Her mother's voice came back to her. You can feel things as deeply as you like, child, but never let that show. It's not safe... But thinking of her mother only loosed the storm within her, and she drew her knees up to her chest, holding them tight with her arms, sobbing.

She felt Cainnec's hand on her shoulder. She at first flinched away, but then leaned into his hand. He slid an arm around her shoulders and drew her to his chest. She abandoned all pretense of elven calm and wept until she was dry of tears.

After she could cry no more, her eyes stung and her chest hurt, but she also felt a sort of delicate peace, a feeling like being a wet cloth wrung out. Cainnec, without comment, gave her a rag to wipe her face with, then rose and turned back to the fire.

His voice was low as he dipped broth into a clay cup. "We're going to finish my rotation route, and then we're going to Holyrood. We should be able to find a mage for you to train with there." He stood and opened the shuttered lantern, and then turned to her. "If you still want to become a mage, that is."

In the now-brighter room, she saw the thing she had missed before. His eyes, instead of having the iris and pupil of a human, were white from corner to corner. She did not hear his words as she stared at the priest, her mouth dropping open in shock. She shrank away from him, trying to scrabble back against the wall. "You--you're--"

"The same person that's been changing your linens and feeding you broth and medicines for the last three weeks, child. The same priest the villagers brought you to when you came here." The blank white eyes looked at her, seeming to strip her to her soul. "Aye, I'm a dragon. But I am also a priest. Will you please stop looking at me like I'm about to eat you? It's a discourtesy."

She kept staring. Cainnec was a compact man, with weathered skin and dark hair. He wore his beard trimmed short, and his mouth was smiling kindly at her. That smile crinkled the corners of his eyes, the white eyes that marked him as a dragon. She found herself wanting to trust him, against everything she'd heard of white dragons. They were supposed to be the most temperamental of all of the dragon races and the most tenacious in battle. She had never heard of one that was a priest, and especially not one of Epona. Finally, she bowed her head. "I am sorry. I was surprised."

"And you are weak from your illness and your injury, alone in a strange land. It's all right, child." The burr of his accent seemed to itch the inside of Elata's ears. "At least you did not scream. Here, drink this." He placed a cup into her hands, curling her fingers around it.

It was a rich broth, tasting of herbs, steaming hot. She drank greedily. "How long until I can be up and around?"

"You can try walking today and see how it goes. As long as you do not overexert yourself, I think you'll be ready to travel in two weeks. The villagers are grateful to you, by the by. Because you could not be moved, I've spent quite a bit of time tending the people here. They'll have a far more comfortable winter than they usually do. It's too bad we're stretched so thin. We could use a priest in every village."

"Oh." She thought about this. "Where is Holyrood?"

Cainnec was clearing a space on the table, setting out what appeared to be parchment and ink, and a board sanded smooth. "Just outside Edinburgh. It's the largest Epona temple for four hundred miles. So, do you still want to be a mage? Sure you don't want to be a priestess, instead?" There was a laugh in his voice, and Elata smiled.

"I think my talents don't lie in that direction. The Art is the only thing I've ever wanted to study."

"Fair enough. Mages are rare and valuable in these parts. You could certainly do worse for a trade." The priest bent his head, and she saw that he was writing something on the parchment. Seeming to feel her curious gaze, he lifted his pen from the parchment and said, "I'm writing a letter to an old friend. He was my student for a time, and now he's the Headmaster of Epona in Andorra. I'll send it to him when we reach Holyrood. There's one or two of our people who travel between here and the Continent once a month or so. They seem to enjoy the challenge of flying through storms." He stretched and added, "If the winter descends before we're ready to go, we're here for the winter. I could fly you to Holyrood, but I've never been able to talk Jasper into flying well."

"Jasper?"

"My horse." Again that kind smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes. "Back to sleep with you. I'll wake you in a few hours."

Elata set the clay cup down on the stool next to her bed. Suddenly exhausted, she lay back down and was asleep in moments.

Cainnec kept writing. And in other news, an elf child washed up on the shore here, badly wounded and ill. It seems she and her parents made the very grave error of trying to sail the Channel after the solstice. She is on the mend, and I'll take her with me to Holyrood. It's hard to tell, but I think that when she's well she'll be a delightful child, in that way that elven children are. I believe her parents were heading into exile, but she's not telling me why. If you hear anything about the elves in Gywellis exiling some of their own, could you let me know? I have a feeling I'll never extract the full story from her.

If I can, I'll keep her with me. This is not a friendly land to elvenkind, and even a child will be treated with much suspicion. But we will abide, and with a bit of luck I believe she will thrive...

It was another day before Elata could stand, and three more before she could walk any distance farther than across the room.

On the day after that, it began to snow.

It snowed fitfully for a day, and then winter got down to the serious business of burying everything in a blanket of clean, cold white. The storm lasted for three days, there was a break for a day, and then another storm came, fiercer and colder.

Cainnec went outside during the first storm, telling Elata that he was going to go check on the villagers and make sure there had been no accidents or illnesses. He went outside wearing no cloak, only his Epona coat, the leather bag he kept a variety of herbs and simples in slung across his body. While he was gone, Elata explored the small house in which she'd found herself.

It was a small place, especially compared to the spacious rooms she'd grown up in, in Gywellis. Fifteen feet by twenty feet, with an attached shed where Jasper was kept. Cainnec had explained that most of the villages of any size on his route kept a house like this, ready to shelter any priest who might need to stay there for a time. There was a table and a pair of chairs, a cozy hearth on which burned a peat fire, and tucked in the farthest corner from the fire a pallet and blankets where Cainnec slept. Near the pallet was a split door, the top half open, leading to a sort of earthen shed where Jasper, Cainnec's cobby roan stallion, was kept.

The priest had been doing some work on the place, in case they needed to stay here for the winter--mending the thatch roof, re-hanging the door. It was not entirely free of drafts, but it was enough to keep her warm. She spied something she hadn't seen before--a shelf above Cainnec's pallet, with some things on it that caused her eyebrows to raise. It appeared to be--books?

Her stockinged feet scuffed quietly on the wood floor as she crossed and stood on tiptoe, trying to see the books. There were two of them, both large and heavy, bound in tooled leather. What sort of books would a priest own? Epona had a holy book, but priests did not carry copies of them. Books were too expensive, too precious, to be risked to travel. And here Cainnec had two of them.

She reached out to touch the top one, and then froze as a warning tingle woke in her fingers. She pulled her hand back and then cautiously reached forward slowly. Again the tingle, like pins and needles in her hand. The closer she got, the more it hurt, and she snatched her hand away.

These were not just books. They were magic books. If a priest owning books had been an anomaly, a priest owning a mage's tools was a downright aberration. She stepped away and went to curl up in her bed again, thinking. There was no explanation for it. Those books were not only a mage's books, they were obviously keyed to someone, which meant that they weren't the property of a mage who'd had the bad luck to die here. Magelocks expired with the mage; it was only right, that the books be freed to a new owner with the old one's death.

If they were Cainnec's, and she rather thought they were, what did that make him?

A word rose from the depths of Elata's mind. Priest-mage.

They were rare, but they did exist. The most notable one Elata had heard of was the human Arcanis, who had led the largest army the world had ever seen against Dragonhome, and broken the back of the rule of the dragons in this part of the world. He was also the only human priest-mage that she'd ever heard of. The rest had been elven and drow; it took a long time to become a good mage, and the discipline needed for the mage arts was altogether different from that of the clerical arts.

Dragons, like elves, were exceedingly long-lived. If they were not killed, they would live--and continue to grow--for millennia. It was certainly possible that before Cainnec had been a priest he was a mage, and if he still kept his hand in, that would account for the books. She realized that she had no idea, truly, how old Cainnec was, or how he had come to be in the service of Epona.

She lay with her eyes open for a while, thinking about this, but soon gave in to exhaustion and fell asleep once more.

She was woken by the sound of boots stomping outside. The door opened, bringing with it a blast of wintry air and swirling snowflakes, and Cainnec. He was brushing off his shoulders and closing the door behind him. "Everything's well in the village. One of the children burned himself yesterday, but it's minor and it'll heal on its own. And next time, he'll remember to never grab a poker that's been sitting in the fire without protection."

Elata yawned and sat up. "Are we here for the winter, then?"

"Looks like it, unless we get a break in the weather. Even then, it's a long trip to Holyrood, and making it in the snow's not something I want to do unless I have to. Jasper's not as young as he used to be."

"Oh." She clambered out of bed and pulled a stool near the fire. Silence fell between them as Cainnec took off his damp shirt and hung it to dry. She said, in a quiet voice, "I found the books. Are they yours?"

He looked down at her. She was beginning to be able to read even his white eyes, and she thought she glimpsed just a bit of trepidation. "Yes. I was going to tell you soon enough."

"You're a priest-mage."

"That I am. Though much more a priest than a mage, at this point. It's very difficult to serve two masters as demanding as the Art and the Goddess. But She wanted me, and I answered the Call."

Elata bit her lip. "Can you--could you--" He raised an eyebrow at her. "Would you teach me?"

He gave her a measuring look. "Perhaps. I want you to be entirely well before you start up with the Art once more. That will take some time."

"How long?"

"A month for a full recovery--if you don't get ill again! That will give you some time to think about whether you truly want me as a teacher."

"Why wouldn't I?"

"Like I said, I serve two masters. You'd be signing up for the life of an Epona priest, without any of the benefits. I travel for at least six months of the year, and sometimes eight. I could teach you in the evenings, but I won't be able to bend my full attention to your training."

Elata thought about this, chewing on her lower lip. "It's not like I had full-time teachers, in Gywellis. I was mostly expected to learn on my own. I think I could manage. As for the travel, well, I'm not really very tough at the moment, but..."

"You have some time, Elata. If nothing else, I can tutor you this winter, and in the spring we can find you another teacher."

And so the winter passed. Eventually, Elata met some of the villagers, who treated her with polite distance. She learned a little of their language, enough to ask for simple things and to introduce herself. On days when the snow wasn't flying, Cainnec would do outside chores such as clearing snow from the roof and chopping wood. He made quite the sight, stripped to the waist and splitting wood with one blow from his axe. She noticed that there were certain of the village maids who would come by the house on these days, to bring the priest and his student meals cooked on the hearths of their mothers.

She assumed that these maidens had an eye on Cainnec for marriage. She supposed, despite being a dragon, he would be quite a catch for a maid who wished to see the world--this part of it, at least. Cainnec neither encouraged nor discouraged them, treating each one with the same deferent politeness.

On one of these days, sometime in late December, Elata asked if she could help.

"There's a small axe in the shed. You can make kindling from a few of these pieces." The dragon was grinning in the cold. Elata was bundled in layers, herself. It was bitterly cold, but at least it was clear, one of the few days they'd had so far that winter that did not at least threaten snow.

Obediently, she fetched the small axe, and picked up a piece of wood in her free hand. She looked from one to the other, and then sighed. Sometimes, growing up in an elven city had its disadvantages. "Cainnec?"

The dragon finished his blow and tossed the pieces into the growing pile. "Yes?"

"Ah, how do I make kindling?"

"How do you--oh. Right. I forget sometimes that you're a child of Gywellis. Here, I'll show you." He spend the next half hour showing her what needed to be done and then watching her do it. Elata was initially clumsy with the tool, but quickly improved, and when she was done she had a pile of kindling and a pleasant ache in her shoulders and arms. She suffered the amused glances of the girls who had come by, trying to hide her embarrassed blush.

From that day forward, she did her best to help with everything that needed doing, and as she worked she grew stronger. Cainnec even taught her how to care for Jasper and the basics of horsemanship, and she grew to enjoy the myriad tasks that encompassed caring for the horse. The village had a small stash of magic books left from a mage who had died twenty years before, stored against the need to sell them or equip a talented youngster with them, and Cainnec borrowed a few of these that were appropriate for Elata. Life in the winter village went on; babies were born, meetings were held, youngsters fell in love. One of the oldest members of the village died in her sleep, and among the cows there was a recurrent cough that Cainnec spent much of his time trying to treat.

Elata worked and studied, studied and worked. Her former life in Gywellis seemed more and more like it had happened to someone else, and though she still grieved her parents, that fierce ache was becoming blunted with time. The more she worked with Cainnec, the more she came to trust the priest-mage, and the more comfortable she became with his draconic nature.

But it was not until March that she saw his dragon form. It was a week after Ostara, and the weather was beginning to gentle a little. But with the breaking of the weather came what the winter had kept away--bandits and raiders.

The first Elata knew about the raid was the screams, carrying clearly on the cold air. She was carrying water back from the well and the shout startled her enough to drop the bucket she was carrying. She looked behind her and saw figures moving, more people than were in the village, and all of them armed. Elata's heart pounded with fear, and she ran down the path to the house.

She burst in, crying, "Armed men in the village! Cainnec, we have to do something!"

"I heard the cry." He was digging next to his pallet for something, coming up with a sturdy wood staff, then nearly ran out the door. For lack of a better idea, Elata followed.

There were men running in and out of the houses. Elata saw one of them dragging off one of the village girls by the arm; the girl was screaming and fighting, but she stood no chance against him. Cainnec hesitated, watching, and Elata said, wide-eyed, "What are we going to do?"

"You are going to go back to the house, Elata. I'll take care of this. This isn't something you should see."

Confused but obedient to her teacher, she started back. Behind her, she heard a strange sound, like distant thunder or wind crackling great sails, and turned.

Before her a dragon stood, white hide against white snow. Cainnec. Sweet Caridwen. He was enormous, probably two hundred feet from nose to tail, and his voice filled the air as he spoke.

"Enough."

Everyone on the ground froze. Elata forgot all about going back to the house, staring. Fear filled her; this was the person she had shared a house with for four months?

One of the bandits threw a spear at Cainnec. It glanced off his hide, and his head snaked forward lightning-quick, snatching the attacker in his jaws and throwing the man for a few hundred feet. The man hit the village wall and did not move again. Cainnec regarded the rest with those unnerving white eyes, and said, "This village is under my protection. I suggest you all leave immediately."

Mutters from the crowd. The bandits, evidently recognizing that to press on would be to invite death, began to back away. None of them took their eyes off the dragon for one moment.

A hard hand grabbed Elata's arm, another clamped over her mouth. "No way I'm leaving without a prize," muttered the bandit, foul breath in her ear. "Come with me and you'll stay alive for a little while, elf girl. Fight and you're dead here."

She ignored his warning and began to kick back at him, flailing. If she could get her mouth free, she could try a spell, but the man only clamped down harder. She opened her mouth and bit the finger that slipped into it, hard. The man yelped and let go of her mouth, though he still clung to her arm.

"Gen shal-imerist!" A pair of magical darts came from her hand and impacted on the man. He'd hoped it would hurt him enough to make him let go, but the bandit was persistent, swearing and beginning to drag her backward. Elata struggled, her mind trying desperately to find some other spell that would work. She knew so little!

She felt Cainnec's presence before she saw and heard him crunch into the snow in front of her. The bandit stopped moving and drew a knife with his free hand, laying it across her throat. "Let me go, or she dies."

The dragon's eyes narrowed. "Let her go, and you might live."

The knife bit into her throat, and Elata swallowed. It was a standoff, and she wasn't sure if the bandit would break. She had to do something!

Inspiration struck, and she kicked backward. With a certain satisfaction felt her heel connect with his knee, hard, and with her hands wrenched the man's wrist away from her throat. The man yelped and swore, snarling, the knife coming down--

Elata felt pain bloom on her shoulder as she rolled away from him, and a white blur passed between her and the bandit. She heard a short scream, quickly cut off. When she struggled to her feet, she found that the snow around her was stained red, as was Cainnec's muzzle. The man who had accosted her was lying in the snow, unmoving.

The dragon bent and quickly wiped his muzzle on the snow, and then his form blurred and shrank, changing to Cainnec as she knew him. He came to her, touching her bloody shoulder with gentle fingers. "How are you feeling?"

"Shaky." She was telling the simple truth. The aftermath of what had just happened hit her like a fist, and her knees were trembling as she stared at the fallen man. Cainnec probed her shoulder, seeking the extent of her injury. "Ow!"

"Stand still, girl. It's not deep, but I won't have you weakened by blood loss." He laid a cold hand over the knife wound, and improbable warmth trickled into her shoulder. The pain eased as muscle and skin knit back together, and when it was done she gave him a grateful smile. "Off with you now," he said. "Let me take care of this fellow and go check on the villagers, make sure that nobody's dead or missing."

She went into the house and stirred the fire, unshuttering a lamp and bringing out a book to study. She was unable to keep her mind on her task, though; her mind kept wandering to what she had just seen, the casual way that Cainnec had killed, her own inability to rescue herself.

But when the priest came back, they did not speak of it. Elata tried to apply herself to her studies and failed miserably. She stared blankly at the page, lost in thought.

"If you keep doing that, you're going to fray that hem long before its time." Cainnec noted this from across the table, where he was repairing a piece of Jasper's tack that had broken a few days ago.

She looked up in confusion. Then she looked down and realized she had been fidgeting with the hem of her sleeve. "Oh. I'll stop." She sighed and tried to find her place on the page.

"What's eating you, Elata? You've been reading that page over and over. Surely it cannot be that interesting." The priest's voice was unexpectedly gentle, an edge of humor sneaking into it. "What's wrong?"

She bit her lip, thinking. "The raid. I--I couldn't defend myself. And then you--. I hadn't realized."

"Hadn't realized what?" He was watching her carefully now, putting down his mending.

Elata looked away from him. "I knew you were a dragon. I didn't think about what that meant. I didn't realize you could kill so...easily."

The words came reluctantly from his mouth. "I am what I am. And I will point out that I could have killed every one of those bandits. Instead, I killed one to show I was serious, and the other because he threatened you. They lose more people on successful raids, I imagine. You've seen my true nature, Elata. I am a dragon. We are, at the very bottom of things, killers, and no amount of civilization will ever change that." He picked up the halter again, taking the needle in one hand. "Then again, if I had not been here, the men of the village would have fought, and several of them would have died. Not to mention the women who would have been stolen and compromised."

Elata was silent, her head bowed. Cainnec's voice was gentle, regret haunting the edges. "Spring is nearly here, Elata. You only have to tolerate my presence a few weeks more, and then we will travel to Holyrood, and find you another teacher. You will never have to see me again."

The elf gasped, her head coming up. "You're sending me away? Cainnec, I--" She swallowed, remembered her manners, and began fidgeting with her hem again. "If you think it is best. I suppose I have been a poor student."

"Nay, child. You've been everything I could have hoped for. I simply thought, now that you have glimpsed my true nature, that you might wish another teacher."

Elata shook her head, wordless. When she recovered her voice, she said, "I have been happy here. I was just surprised at the depths of my own ignorance. Please, don't send me away. I am more worried about my inability to defend myself."

He chuckled, the sound resounding in his chest. "Then you will stay. And you are still merely a beginner. Mages are vulnerable for the first years of their studies, you know that as well as I do. Don't worry. I won't let you get that close to danger again, not until you can handle it. I will protect you." His voice was quietly confident, and the sound of it eased Elata's fears. Not entirely, not enough to completely still the cold doubts in the pit of her stomach, but enough that she was able to smile at the dragon crookedly.

She returned to her studies, finding she could read the pages now instead of staring uncomprehendingly. And if the seam in the halter Cainnec was sewing was a bit crooked with inattention, she wasn't going to point it out to him.

April 1st, 1061

"Is spring ever going to come?" Myev's voice was exasperated as she stomped snow off of her boots, leading her mare into the stables. "It's past Ostara, and it's still snowing!"

"Patience, Myev." Beatrice had been mucking out a stall, and she straightened and leaned on her pitchfork. "Usually, spring arrives here around Beltane."

"That's a month away! We're going to run out of henbane long before that, and hellebore. I can't do any foraging until the snow goes, and things begin to grow again."

"Weather's getting gentler, though. As I remember, my mother used to send to Arinsal the moment the snow broke, trading for whatever we'd completely run out of during the winter." The tall woman turned back to her work, picking up soiled straw and putting it in a wheelbarrow. "The road to Arinsal should be passable soon enough."

"At least the stillroom's warm." Myev loosed her mare into the box stall, untacking her and putting the saddle and halter on the forms outside the door. Her snub nose was reddened with the cold, and her fine red hair flared around her head in a frizzy halo. "I'm not used to the cold yet."

"You'll get there. Might take a few winters, but you'll get there." Beatrice paused again to watch the dark-haired woman rub down her mare with practiced hands. "I've heard good things about you in the stillroom."

Myev's shoulders tensed. "I overheard someone saying that with time, I'd probably be almost as good as the former herbmistress."

"As my mother. I know."

"It's very...strange, to know that every move I make is compared to someone four years dead."

"You're holding up well." Tactfully, Beatrice sought to change the subject. "Have you seen Piers lately? The archivists seem to have buried him deep in their stacks, he hardly even shows up to supper any more."

"I think I saw him...must have been eight or nine days ago. I don't think he's left the archives very much this winter, the others are driving him pretty hard."

"Hah. You let old Jared have an inch, he'll take a mile. We should go find him, make him do something fun, for once. I know a spot, from when I was small. I wonder if that grove is still there?"

"You know, I could use a break. You too, I think."

Beatrice laughed and finished mucking out the stall, fetching new straw to spread down. "I've been doing this work since I was little, Myev. I just have the assistant stablemaster title to go along with it, now. It's where I've always wanted to be. You done there?"

"I am." Together, the priestesses headed up the stairs toward the archives, where they would surely find Piers, their classmate. They found the towheaded junior archivist bent over an open folio, reading and making notes on a wax tablet.

Beatrice leaned over the folio, scanning the page. "Stud reports? Wow, they've got you on the interesting stuff, haven't they?"

"Tell me about it." Piers grinned and put down his stylus, closing the folio. "It is actually interesting. We've some unusual blood in the stables here, some each sith, even."

Myev objected, "Each sith are just tales, Piers."

"Tell that to the person who wrote that a Fae came to call and allowed his horse to cover three or four mares while he was here. The affinity for water was bred out, it looks like, but the longevity remains."

Myev looked doubtfully at him, and then said, "We've come to take you away from fantasies about fairy horses. Bee said she knows a grove that might do for a picnic."

"At least, it's out of the wind, and we can probably clear off the snow on the boulders. I've got to get outside for a bit. Come with us?"

He stretched and stood. He was a compactly built young man, dark hair and bronzed skin and just the faintest trace of a Andalusian burr in his Spanish. "Ach, yes, I've been sitting too much the last few weeks. Let me get my gear, and we can be off."

Half an hour later found them gathered at the stable doors, pulling on mittens and heading out into the cold. Beatrice led them to a path off the main road to Pedrosa, one that rambled along the side of the mountain. "It's a deer track, I think," she said, after Piers had discovered a hidden stream the hard way. She helped him free his boot from the ice and then jumped over where she guessed the streambed lay. "I used to come out here as a child, it was one of my hiding places."

"Didn't your folks worry?" Myev carefully followed Beatrice's lead, landing in her footprints. Piers followed after.

"My mother did a bit, but my father always told her I could take care of myself." She closed her mouth on the rest of the sentence that wanted to be spoken. Even when I couldn't, he told her I could. She remembered a long cold autumn night when she'd gotten lost on the mountain, huddled in the hollow under a dead tree, hoping that someone would come find her before one of the mountain predators did. When day had come, she'd found her way back to the Temple, and discovered that her father had beaten her mother bloody and then drunk himself into a stupor the night before. Neither of them had spared a thought for the eight-year-old Beatrice, as far as she could tell.

I am amazed that Aru's never caught on to Jonas' drinking, she thought as she climbed a steep slope. Aru comes near and Papa stops being drunk, he doesn't even smell of it any more. Quite the talent. Now that she was grown, she appreciated that her mother had been doing the best she could, hiding in the stillroom, wearing heavy clothes even in the heat of summer. Ellian had hidden Jonas' violence and shielded her daughter as best she could, and as if by some silent pact nobody ever told Aru what was going on.

Now Mama's gone. But I'm old enough to care for myself. Which meant, largely, knowing when her father was Jonas and avoiding him when he was--and knowing that if she asked any of the horses in the stables to defend her they would, to the death.

Her thougts were interrupted by the familiar line of a crooked tree limb. "We're here! The grove's right in here." She ducked low--surely the entrance had not always been so small?--and pushed through branches into the grove.

As she always did, she stopped once she was inside and simply looked. The light, filtered by the pines that stood guard, was soft, illuminating granite boulders and duff-covered ground. There was little snow in here, thankfully.

She stepped out of the way as Myev and Piers came in and straightened. "Nice, Bee. Out of the wind, no snow, and everything."

"Thanks. Should we spread out over here? I think it's dry. Mostly."

They had carried food wrapped with warm stones and mulled wine that was still almost hot. They ate brown bread and venison, laughing and drinking the wine out of clay cups. It was still cold, but none of them minded, much.

In the distance, they heard the sound of a bell, brought by the wind. "Was that six or seven? I'm going to be late! I'm supposed to teach a trainee class tonight." Myev jumped to her feet, looking worried.

"Six. And it's fine. It wasn't that far to get here--we can just clean up and be gone." Piers started to clear off the cloth they had brought to sit on, tucking wrappings back into the bag they'd carried.

The back of Beatrice's neck prickled. That was a warning sign she never ignored. "Sssh!" She rose, turning, scanning. Her two companions obediently fell silent, seeing the tense set of her shoulders and the intent look in her eyes. Beatrice held up a hand to them and they froze in place. Finally, she said, "I see you. You might as well come out and say hello."

Surprisingly, it worked. The man who stepped out of the trees that surrounded the clearing was of middling height, his body mostly obscured by the mottled cloak he wore. He had dark hair that fell to his shoulders and eyes that seemed to look right through Beatrice, a startlingly clear blue.

"Well caught, priestess. Not a few would never have noticed me."

"I could feel you looking at me," she replied shortly. "Who are you?"

In response, he shrugged his cloak back over his shoulders. Around his neck was a holy symbol, much like the one Beatrice and her fellow priests wore, only his had a different design. The enameled background was blue instead of green, and though she could not see it clearly she'd bet that the symbol was a sheaf crossed with a sickle.

"Druid of Sucellus." She bowed shallowly. "I apologize for my suspicion. We don't see many of your kind here."

He was studying her, frowning. "With that hair and those eyes, I'm guessing--you're Jonas' girl, aren't you? We've met, but you were too young to remember."

She closed her eyes. That voice...

She was seven years old, and the shadows of the Temple echoed her footsteps back around her. Her parents had been fighting again in hissed voices, and Beatrice had slipped silently from her bed and out of the quarters she shared with them. She had walked down the back ways of the Temple, but to get to the stables she had to go through the infirmary, the part of the journey with the most danger of getting caught and returned to her parents. There were people awake at all hours in the infirmary, priests tending the ill and wounded.

She had prayed to the goddess for luck, but evidently Epona wasn't listening to her small voice because as she tiptoed down the row of curtained beds, she heard the booted feet of a priest approaching. She dove behind a nearby curtain and under the bed it surrounded, keeping still and holding her breath.

The feet went by, hurrying away. Beatrice sighed silently and slipped out from under the bed, intending to head for the door at the end of the row and then the stairs that led down to the stables.

As she rose, a hand caught her arm in a tight grip. The hand was as hard as iron, and she squeaked as she turned to see who had hold of her. It was a man she didn't recognize, not someone who belonged to the Temple. She had heard of a stranger who had come to them a few days before, quite ill; this was probably him, then. His dark hair was matted and his eyes seemed to stare into her. She flinched from that gaze.

"You're up late, small one." His voice was low and rough.

She swallowed. "I...couldn't sleep. I was going down to see the horses." Lowering her voice, she whispered desperately, "Please don't call anyone! I'll go back to bed, I swear. I just don't want to get in trouble again..."

He kept looking at her for a long moment, and then said, "I won't tell, child. It's none of my business if the Temple's littles go wandering about in the wee hours." He loosed his grip on her arm, lying back on the pillows. "Go on, then. Leave me alone."

She turned to go, and then hesitated, turning back. "I'm Beatrice Shorl. What's your name?"

The look he gave her was cool and measuring. "I am called Marcus. You're the Second's daughter, then? Odd, you look little like him."

"He says I look like my mother. I don't think I do. I don't look like much of anyone, really." Her matter-of-fact tone was weary beyond her years.

"It happens sometimes. Tell me, what were you doing out of bed at this hour?"

Her shoulders drooped. "Mama and Papa fight sometimes. It's..." She trailed off, wondering how to describe it. "Noisy. Not out loud. In my head. And here." She touched the center of her chest with thin fingers. "I couldn't sleep."

Marcus raised an eyebrow at her. "Is anything else noisy like that?"

She nodded seriously. "Lots of things. Lots of people. The Headmaster is, a lot." She tilted her head. "So are you. You hurt. That's why you're here, isn't it? But I didn't think they had anything to fix that kind of noisy. Other kinds, they can fix. But not this." Her child's face was grave, her mouth set.

A certainty was stealing over her; she was afraid of him and the strangeness he carried, but, somehow...he needed. He was hurting. And the priests could do nothing for him. Beatrice felt a strange sensation swirling beneath her breastbone. When she was older, she would know that feeling as compassion, the first time she remembered feeling anything for another human. He was looking at her, and his eyes were stricken, his soul stripped bare. She feared the pain that was in those eyes. And she needed to do something.

She stepped back toward him, coming to the side of his bed. She reached out to touch his face, his cheek rough with whiskers like her father got when he didn't shave for a few days. In a small voice, she said, "I could stay...would you like company?"

Wordlessly, he nodded. She perched on the hard chair next to his bed, and spoke to him in a low voice for a time, talking to him about the horses and her places on the mountain. The fifth or sixth time she had yawned largely enough to almost crack her jaw, he sent her back to bed.

The next morning, when she'd gone looking for the strange man she had met in the small hours, she had found him gone and the bed empty. He had disappeared, leaving no trace behind.

Beatrice blinked, coming back to the present moment. She said, "I remember you, Marcus. I remember everything."

She had startled him, she could tell. But that was only a brief moment before his preternatural calm returned. "Then it is pleasant to see you again, priestess. I was on my way to visit your Temple, and thought I would scout about a bit for good places to spend the night. I do not sleep easily indoors, and especially not surrounded by a mountain."

"Ah. Well, this is one of the better places around here. We need to be going, though. I will see you in the Temple?"

"Likely. I have business with the Headmaster."

Beatrice nodded, then turned to help her friends pick up all that they had brought with them. Marcus made no move to help, only watched with those unnerving eyes.

The back of Beatrice's neck itched all the way back to the Temple.

It was scarce a week after the raid that Elata saw her first Fae.

The trees in the wood were waking up and beginning to bud, despite the persistent cold. Elata, still bundled up, wandered the wooden wall on the eastern side of Ewna. She was working on learning an incantation that was powerful in its simplicity and provided the basis for many other spells. It was a large thing, and crowded her head, and so she felt the need for breaks from her study of it. She did not have it quite mastered yet, but it was close within her grasp.

She was thinking of this as she wandered, and the movement did not attract her eye until she was nearly upon it. When she was nearly upon it, she stumbled to a stop, looking closely.

Out of a thin, stunted pine tree quite near the wall, an equally thin woman was leaning. Her skin was grey and brown, neatly matching the bark of the tree her lower half still appeared to be within. Her hair, too, was mottled as bark. Her eyes were shiny black, and her mouth, as she yawned, was lined with sharp white teeth.

The bark-woman looked at Elata and wrinkled her nose, saying something in a language she'd never heard before.

Elata blinked, then inclined her head to the tree-woman. "I apologize, my lady. I was lost in my thoughts and did not see you. I am sorry if I have disturbed you."

The bark-woman replied in that same singsong tongue, and then stretched, stuck out her tongue at the elf, and leaned back into the tree. She seemed to submerge herself in the tree, and within a few moments she was gone.

When she asked Cainnec about it, he grunted. "It was a dyelm, a wood-wife. The countryside around here has a few of them. Not too intelligent, but their presence means that the trees nearby will survive things they otherwise would not."

"She didn't seem to like me much."

"No, I can't imagine that she would." But he would elaborate no more on that statement, instead suggesting that she go back to studying that incantation that had been giving her so much trouble.

A few days later, the weather broke entirely, and for the first time in months the air was nearly balmy. Elata and Cainnec were packing, preparing to leave for the rest of the priest's rotation and then on to Holyrood. They would take little enough with them, depending on the charity of the villages and towns they would visit on the way; Cainnec's pack mule had been given to a family a few villages back after their own had sickened and died suddenly, leaving them no way to get their goods to market or their fields plowed. But there were still things to be put right here, preparing the house to be used by the next priest who came through.

There was a whisper of a sound behind her, and Elata turned to look. She blinked and stumbled back, confronted by six warriors surrounding a woman dressed in what appeared to be liquid silver, flowing and shifting across her form. She was dark-haired and dark-eyed, her ears coming to a sharper point than elven, her face the picture of bladed beauty.

The warriors surrounding her wore bright chain mail and helmets that hid their faces. Their bodies were slim and curved in ways that suggested that they might be female. She said, "Hello, friends. May I help you?"

"You would do better to not assume we are your friends, aelt." The dark woman's voice broke over her like a cold wave of honey, sweet and icy at the same time. Elata felt Cainnec's hand on her shoulder, and tried not to shrink back against him as she desperately wanted to do. The dark woman transferred her gaze to the dragon and spoke a long flow of singsong syllables to him.

"And you'd be more courteous to speak in a language the one you are talking of can understand, Tef." The dragon's voice held an edge Elata had never heard before.

The woman sniffed. "I merely asked how our Tenrohim, someone who has been such a good friend to us for years, came to be harboring one of the aelt. How he could betray us so badly."

"She is a child, not the first wave of an invasion. She came to be here by accident, a shipwreck. I cared for her when she was ill and injured, and I am now her teacher."

The woman made a moue of petulance. "Give her to us, Tenrohim. We will make sure she harms none of our people." Elata felt fear trickle down her spine. Would Cainnec give her over to this woman? She could have nothing good in mind for her.

The dragon tightened his grip on her shoulder. "She is under my protection. Mine, and the Order of Epona. Deny my claim if you like, but don't be so quick to discount the Goddess. I have a feeling she would not take kindly to your interference."

The woman curled her lip, and the warriors around her shifted uneasily, armor creaking. "She is aelt. Many of my kind bled and died to drive her kind out of our islands. She may be a child, but already she taints what she touches. She must leave, or she must die."

"Tef." Cainnec's voice was low. "I have told you, she is under my protection, and accepts my guidance. Do you think I cannot teach her to be equal to the taint? Do you trust me so little, my lady, that you will not give me some time to do the work I have been given?"

The woman seemed to be thinking about this, and then nodded. The guards that surrounded her relaxed slightly. "All right, then. What is she called, so that my people know her life has been spared for the moment?"

"My name is Elata, my lady." Elata was glad that her voice was steady.

Those dark eyes narrowed sharply. "And your people, and your place? Surely, the aelt have not changed so much in the time since we drove you out that these things are meaningless."

Elata took a moment to think before she answered. It seemed that a truthful answer to this question was important, for some reason. "I am formerly of Gywellis, my lady, the elven fortress in the forests of the east. But my parents were exiled, and killed on the crossing. I have no place but at Cainnec's side, and no people other than my teacher. I have no name other than my given one, my lady. Any claim I might have had to another died when my parents were driven out with little more than some coin and the clothes on their backs."

The woman pursed her lips, considering this. Finally, she said, "Elata, then. It is a name I have not heard before. Tenrohim, she is under your protection. I will give you ten years with her, and if I am not convinced by that time, her life is mine."

"It is almost fair, Tef."

She laughed and came out from the protection of the warriors, crossing the yard. "My concern is not fairness. My concern is keeping the land we have won. Tenrohim, beware. The grief you carry as a shield is beginning to wear away with the turning of the years. And when that wall falls, you are mine." She laid one pale hand on the side of his face, looking into his white eyes. "I do not know why you fight it so. It is not as if by my side is an uncomfortable place to be."

"It might be comfortable, but it is also not my place. I belong to another woman entirely, and Her power's not one even yours can hold a candle to. You'll never have me, Tef. Be content with friendship."

The woman backed away, an unreadable expression in her black eyes. "If you know me at all, you know that I am never content. And I never will be. Goodbye, Tenrohim. Have joy of your student. We will watch, and remember."

She motioned at the ground, and a light flowed up around her feet, wreathing her and the warriors in flame. They were gone in the space of a breath.

Cainnec gave a gusty sigh and then turned. "We've a lot to do before daybreak tomorrow, Elata. Have a care to keep moving."

She wasn't going to let him get away with that so easily. "Who was that? And why did she call me aelt?"

"It's a long story. I will tell you tonight, after we retire."

Hours later, after Elata was tucked into her bed and Cainnec was ensconced on his pallet, she asked for the story. He sighed. "What have you heard of the Fae?"

"That they are ten feet tall, have hair that flames, and eat elven babies for breakfast. And other less savory things."

"The dyelm you saw was one of them. Among the Fae, the sidhe are the rulers, and the Queen that rules the sidhe is Tef, who you met today. I knew, when you saw the wood-wife, that it as only a matter of time before we received a visit from her. She likes to keep a close eye on me and my people, though we are more kin to her than not."

"What was that she called me? Aelt? What does that mean?"

"It means tainted. In specific, tainted by demon blood. Which is, in a manner of speaking, accurate."

"Demon blood? Why have I never heard of this?"

"Your people have long memories, but the Fae are the eyes, ears, and voice of the earth. They have even longer memories than dragons. They remember things that have otherwise passed long into forgetfulness." Cainnec shifted, and she could see him as a dim shape in the near-dark. "The elves were originally the product of breeding between the people who were the ancestors of the drow and a race from another plane, called demons because they were alien to this land, and they poisoned it where they stepped. They call you tainted because tainted you are, Elata. The elves use death magic to feed their long lives, I expect you're aware. It's my job to teach you how to use your magic in ways that will not harm the land."

There was nothing Elata could say to this. She wanted to argue, say that she was no such thing, but Cainnec's words brought back to her memories of a ceremony she had witnessed when she was very small, guttering candles and the smell of blood. She stared into the fire, thinking. "If it's not too personal, Cainnec...what was she referring to? Wall of grief, you being hers?"

He chuckled. "Tef, like all of the Sidhe, never met anything she couldn't have that didn't immediately become an object of obsession. She wants me. I keep on turning her down. As for the grief, well." His voice dropped low. "It's...not a topic I will speak of tonight."

"All right. Should we sleep?"

She heard him chuckle. "If your curiosity is satisfied for tonight, we should. Tomorrow, we travel."

They were silent then, and Elata began to doze. As she descended into sleep, she heard her teacher's quiet voice. "Elata. You claimed me as your family today. Rest assured that I do not take that lightly. I will strive to be worthy of the honor."

She smiled, and murmured, "Cainnec, I'm the one who has to work to be worthy of you. I spoke only the truth. I have no people in the world, save you..."

But anything else she was going to say was forgotten as sleep claimed her, holding her in its velvety grasp.

As they prepared to leave Ewna the next day, Cainnec loaded Jasper's saddlebags, making sure they were balanced. Elata would ride, at least for a little, and Cainnec would walk until they came to a church or another place where they could procure another horse. Once the saddlebags were settled, Cainnec frowned and said, "I almost forgot something. One moment."

He retreated into the house and came out again with what appeared to be a handful of cloth. He closed the door securely and said, "Here, Elata. You'll need to wear this."

He handed her the undyed cloth, which turned out to be a collection of a pair of wide cloth bands and a round piece of hemmed cloth perhaps three or four feet across. She looked at it in incomprehension. "What is this?"

Cainnec had bent, cinching Jasper's saddle a little tighter. "It's a veil. I convinced one of the goodwives to spare it for you. Because we're going to be traveling outside the village, you'll need to wear it."

She stared at him and then her eyes narrowed. "You mean I have to go about veiled like--like a human? But I'm an elf! We don't cover our heads!"

The priest looked down at her with no trace of humor in his expression or voice. "Elata. This is human country. While you are here, you will follow their rules. I do as well, when I wear my human form. And their rules state that all women must be veiled when outside the privacy of a village. The only reason I haven't required you to wear a veil inside Ewna is that you're already known as an elf, because of the manner of your arrival. You'll need to wear it inside the villages we visit next, until Holyrood."

Elata's hands balled in the fabric of the veil, crumpling the cloth. "I won't hide what I am."

"Nor is anyone likely to mistake you for a human even on first glance, child. Your face gives away much. But you will stand a greater chance of winning people over if you don't scandalize them first." Elata stood, her teeth gritted, defiance in her eyes. The priest sighed to himself. "If it makes you feel better, child, call it a requirement of my patronage. If you want to be my student, you will follow my rules."

The elf stood for a few moments longer, her eyes burning with fury. Then, slowly, her expression softened as the dragon focused his will on her. He did not do anything, merely stood there, giving the impression that he was willing to stand there till the end of time.

She finally blew out an irritated breath. Then she looked up at Cainnec. "All right. You're going to have to show me how to wear it, though."

Fortunately, the priest had thought ahead, asking the goodwife that he'd gotten it from to show him how it went. "Come here. I'll need both of those bands, first of all." The first one went beneath her chin to the top of her head, the next around her head like a circlet. Both were pinned in place, then the veil was pinned to those. Cainnec gave the headdress a final tug and stepped back with a critical eye. "It'll do."

Elata's expression downcast. "It feels strange."

"You'll get used to it. Come on, then, up with you. It's time to go."

The first day was a long one and by the time they reached the next town, it was a few hours after sunset. Through the pitch black they traveled, cold biting Elata's cheeks. Jasper occasionally hesitated, but Cainnec guided him with a firm hand.

"How can you see? I can barely see my hand in front of my face."

The priest chuckled. "There is starlight. It is enough. We should be seeing the village soon, don't worry." And he was right, it was a bare half hour later when there was the glimpse of a dancing torch ahead on the road. They stopped at the gates and Cainnec talked to the guards for a few minutes, in the end being let inside.

"We'll spend a few days in the castle here. The laird's friendly and sets a fine table, even in the spring. Torcadall mac Seamuis is a good man, and pious in his own way. We should be able to talk him out of one of his horses, as well, so we can both ride."

Elata was finding that the major drawback of the veil was that it restricted her peripheral vision, and she found herself doing a lot of neck-craning to see the stone buildings they were passing. "There is a castle? Where?"

"Ahead." He pointed, and she did indeed see the dark bulk of something ahead of them. "We'll get Jasper settled, and then we'll go in and talk with Torcadall. How are you feeling?"

"Tired. But I'll do."

"Good. Keep in mind that you'll be seeing these people again, if you ride rotation with me."

She scrambled down off the horse. When she hit the ground, she moaned; her legs felt as if they were afire. She stumbled and would have fallen if Cainnec hadn't caught her. "Sorry, child. I forget you're not used to long rides. Can you walk?"

She nodded and straightened, her mouth set in a firm line. "I'll be fine." She had resolved that she would not shame her teacher, and that included showing weakness in front of others. Cainnec gave her a doubtful glance but took her at her word, and the two went into the courtyard of the castle, where a large man wearing furs waited.

The two men greeted each other with much laughing and back-slapping, and from what Elata could gather Torcadall was ribbing Cainnec about being late. The man raised an eyebrow and gestured at Elata, who stopped herself from stepping back just in time. She had no wish to appear to be timid in front of these people, even if that's how she was feeling.

Cainnec answered Torcadall's question about her with what sounded like easy humor, and the fur-clad man nodded, said something in reply, and walked away. Cainnec said, "We're off to the stables, then. Torcadall is going to rouse some of the kitchen staff and have them make something up for us."

"Is he a king, or a prince?" she asked, partially to get her mind off her legs and rump, all of which were howling with protest at the day's journey.

"Not in the way that elven society puts it, no. He controls a patch of countryside large enough to take a man three days to ride across. There's a king named Malcolm, who holds sway over most of the lairds in the lowlands. Not so much in the highlands, though." Elata saw a smile hovering at the corner of his mouth as they found an empty stall and loosed Jasper into it. "That is due in large part to the fact that a large part of the remaining white dragons live there. The king will have trouble with the highlands as long as my people are allied with the highlanders."

"So what are you doing in the lowlands?"

"I was Called, and here's where I was called to. Could you dig out one of the blankets for Jasper for me?"

After Jasper was settled, they walked into the main part of the castle. "Elata, are you sure you're all right?" asked the priest as he saw his student limp, gritting her teeth.

She nodded, not trusting her voice. Instead of the large dining hall that Elata assumed existed, they were directed to a smaller room, one that had a low peat fire burning on a hearth and some more or less comfortable chairs. A servant brought in trenchers with venison and oatcakes on them, to which both of them fell with a good appetite.

Torcadall came in, and Elata finally got a good look at him. He was perhaps in his forties, a muscular man now run a bit to fat, in the way that former warriors often did. He wore a full beard, red-tinged gold hair now greying, and his nose had been broken a few too many times for anything like beauty. He seated himself across from the priest and his student, and he and Cainnec fell to talking. Elata barely understood one word in ten, and after a while simply stopped listening, closing her eyes and pulling her legs up under her.

"She doesn't understand us, does she?" asked Torcadall, the big man's eyes glancing over Elata's small form, her veil disarranged a bit by the travel of the day.

"Not much. She's still learning."

"Fell thing, an elf washing up on our shores. The Fae tolerate her?"

Cainnec shrugged. "If she were not under my protection, she'd be long dead. I talked Tef into being reasonable, for the moment. She'll have to reckon with the Sidhe on her own terms one of these days, but with any luck it won't be soon."

"Why did you keep her? It seems a foolish sentimentality, priest."

"She's a child. She's not responsible for the sins of her ancestors. I am hoping that the faults of her people aren't inborn but rather drilled into their heads from birth."

"Get 'em young, raise 'em up right, eh? Good luck with that, priest. I noticed you're short a mule, by the way."

"Left it in Geddrec. Suppose I might impose on you for another?"

Torcadall chuckled. "I'll do you one better. I've a young stallion that needs a firm hand. With old Gawter gone, we don't have anyone here who can give him what he needs. Take him off my hands and return him to me a year from now, and you can have a mule into the bargain."

"Seems fair. What happened to Gawter?"

The laird's smile held no mirth. "The stallion I'm going to give you threw him, then kicked him in the head. Beast's a menace. We're going to have to put him down, if you can't train him."

Cainnec's eyebrows rose. "You're giving me a mankiller? I thought you would have cut its throat."

"I knew you were coming. He'll make the best warhorse you've ever seen, if you can gentle that temperament enough to ride him. And warhorses we're going to need."

"That is the truth, my friend. I should get my student here to bed, it's been a long day for her."

"You know where the priest quarters are, Cainnec. I'll see you tomorrow."

Cainnec nodded and rose. Elata was fast asleep, and instead of waking her he simply picked her up and carried her to the priest quarters, a small but well-appointed set of rooms on the second floor of the castle. He bundled Elata into the furs of the bed and made himself up a pallet for the floor next to her.

The young elf never awakened, the fatigue of her long day showing clearly on her features. Cainnec himself felt sleep approaching rapidly as he closed his eyes.

He thought, as sleep overtook him, that the laird's reaction to Elata was probably the most welcome she was likely to get, and she'd only received that because Cainnec was good friends with Torcadall. He hoped, for her sake, that he was wrong...

"It's been a while, Marcus." Aru poured a glass of brandy for the druid, and passed it over to him. He filled his own glass, and then seated himself in the chair farthest from the low fire. "How are you doing?"

"Well enough. There's much work to be done, but isn't there always?"

"The truth, my friend, indeed. And are you still seeing Selket?"

"Aye." The druid chuckled, his rueful smile deepening the lines around his mouth. He sipped at his brandy. "Not like she gives me much choice. But I found I've grown fond of the minx."

"I've always liked her. She suffers no fools, and I respect that." The Headmaster's rumbling voice resounded in his chest, filling the small room.

"That indeed she does. Unfortunately, often enough I'm the fool, and she takes great pains to tell me so. You'd think she were the Hierophant, and I the priest green as grass, rather than the other way around. She's on her way here, by the way. She had a few stops to make."

"Will she be able to make it up the road? It's not really passable quite yet. Despite the fact that you seemed to have no trouble."

"Something tells me that spring will arrive along with her." Marcus shrugged and took another sip of his brandy.

Aru chuckled again. "Ah, yes, Selket whom the world rearranges itself for. I'll look forward to her arrival, then. While I'm quite fond of winter, I have to admit foaling season's one of my favorites."

"Ha, the great ice dragon has a few soft spots after all. There's hope for you yet."

Aru raised an eyebrow. "So tell me, did you come for conversation, or did you have some actual business you wanted to conduct?"

"Oh, that. Minor things, really. I did want your opinion on something, though. Tell me, have you ever heard of a group of people who call themselves the council? Led by Morgan le Fay?"

"Somewhat. Morgan tried to recruit me. After witnessing what happened with Arthur, I don't want anything to do with whatever it is she's planning. Morgan's let her power go to her head."

"What on earth is she trying to accomplish?"

"Not certain, really. She was muttering something about power." A half-smile crossed the dragon's weathered features. "I have quite enough, thank you, for any purpose I might want it."

"No aspirations to run the world?"

"None, though I think that's what Morgan has in mind. She and her son." He could not quite suppress his shudder. "Both of them have become completely insufferable lately."

"As if they were not before. The throne's made her mad for more power." Though the words were light, the steel in Marcus' voice was not. His hand tightened on his glass, his fingers going white. "Show up and convince the King you're his niece, kill him and the Prince off, and install your own son as King. I can't believe Morgan actually pulled it off."

"Certainly the woman has no lack of balls, so to speak. I understand why Avalon threw her out, but it's just made her the rest of the world's problem." Aru was keeping his own tone light, watching Marcus carefully. The druid was not always the most temperate of men, and the current leadership of France was a touchy subject for him. Morgan promoting her son to King personally offended him, in large part because she'd done it over the corpse of someone he had loved..

He remembered back a decade, to the day he'd learned what had happened. Marcus had stumbled into the nave, his complexion grey with fatigue and pain. He had collapsed on the stone floor, and Aru had helped carry the unconscious man to the infirmary.

Before, Aru had always seen Marcus in the company of Cloud Shoulders, a wolf nearly twice the size of a normal wolf. Marcus had been linked to the wolf as all druids were linked to their companion animals, as some Epona clerics were linked to their horses. The day that Marcus collapsed in his Temple had been the first time that Aru had ever seen Marcus by himself, without the calm presence of the wolf beside him.

After Marcus recovered his wits, he talked a little of what had happened. He said, "Anne is dead. Cloud Shoulders has left me. And Morgan le Fey reigns in France." Anne, Aru knew, was Marcus' lover of many years, a Russian princess who had fled her homeland when it was discovered that she worshiped Aine. It seemed even a princess in disgrace was good enough to make an alliance with when one was needed, and Anne had married King Henry a few years before. She'd had one son, a boy named Louis.

That Anne had married Henry was common knowledge. That she had been, previously, the lover of one of the most powerful men in Europe, only a perhaps twenty knew.

That Marcus and Anne had maintained their relationship despite her marriage had been known by five people--the two involved, Cloud Shoulders, Aru, and Armand. The same group of people knew that her son was not Henry's, but Marcus'.

The druid had never said what exactly had happened. Hw would only say that Morgan had killed Anne and Louis, and afterwards he and Cloud Shoulders had had words. Whatever he and Cloud Shoulders had fought about was enough to make the wolf turn his back on Marcus. Aru had never heard of a familiar electing to leave its partner before. It was one of those things that just didn't happen, but happen it had.

In the same day, Marcus had lost his lover, his son, and his companion. He had run into the hills, unaware of where he was going, trying to outrace his grief. He'd found himself on Pedrosa, and staggered up to the main gate of the Temple to collapse in the nave.

He had stayed in the Temple for three nights, speaking to no one but Aru, eating what they brought him but otherwise staying absolutely still, locked in a private universe of grief. The fourth morning, Marcus vanished from his infirmary bed, not to darken the door of the Temple in Pedrosa for five years.

Aru had grieved for his friend, and for Anne, who he had met a few times. She had been a brightly shining thing, compellingly complicated. The next time he had seen Marcus, he had been struck by the druid's tightly controlled demeanor. Marcus had never worn his heart on his sleeve, but it was as if the true Marcus had been buried under a mask of a Hierophant.

A few years later, Selket had walked into Marcus' life, and very slowly, the druid was beginning to thaw. Aru had seen more smiles from him today than he had in the decade since Anne died, and that he considered a good sign indeed.

He returned his mind to the present moment. Marcus was speaking, still gripping his glass tightly. "She's made a deal with the drow, they're dancing to her tune. I can't figure out what her game is, and I need to know. I think the politics she plays is only a small part of something greater. I have an uneasy feeling that we may have underestimated her."

"What do you propose to do about it?"

The druid grimaced. "I don't know yet. I was hoping you'd gleaned some insight into her plans."

"Her son doesn't sit easily enough on the Glittering Throne for her to start anything serious, I'd think. But once his power is solidified, she has things in mind, I'm sure."

"The gods save us all from ambitious sorceresses."

"I'll drink to that one, Marcus." Aru raised his glass and then took a swallow of the brandy. It burned pleasantly all the way down his throat.

"I ran into some of your priests out on the mountain, by the way. It's a bit early in the year for picnics, but they'd found a good spot for one."

"Which ones?"

"Jonas' girl--ah, I forget her name. It's hard to believe she's grown already. I didn't recognize the others, but they all seemed about the same age."

"Probably some of the new priests she came back with. You know the friendships that form during training. One of them's bidding fair to be a replacement for Ellian."

"Jonas' wife? What happened to her?" Marcus shifted in his chair, leaning on one elbow and pulling a leg up underneath of him.

"Died. She and Jonas were traveling to Zaragoza when they were set upon by bandits. Jonas got bashed over the head; they cut Ellian's throat."

"Was she...?"

"Yes." Aru looked away, hoping to hide the pain that her death still caused. "That is what I gathered from what Jonas told me. Terrible thing. He's aged twenty years in the past four."

"It's a shame. She was a good soul." Marcus' voice was gentle. "At least he still has Beatrice. Some part of her lives on."

The dragon quirked his mouth. "Indeed." The druid did not need to know that Beatrice was adopted, had been a foundling left on their doorstep as an infant. Ellian and her daughter looked enough alike that in time the Temple almost entirely forgot that the herbmistress had not birthed Beatrice herself.

Nobody had ever mentioned it to Beatrice, as far as he knew. He wondered if it had been the correct decision to withhold the information from her, but she wasn't his child, and whether or not to tell her had never been in his hands.

Aru took another sip of his brandy. "So, tell me, what minor business did you come on? We should dispense with the pretense for your visit before we fall to exchanging gossip."

Marcus smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling. "Well, there is a matter of a border war..."

Elata woke to the sound of stone on steel.

She rubbed her eyes and sat up, blinking. She was still in her travel clothes, but her veil had been taken off. She said, "I fell asleep during dinner last night, didn't I?"

Cainnec paused in his sharpening and replied, "It was just two old men muttering to each other, mostly in a language you're still learning. I'd have done the same thing, in your position." He returned to his work stroking the stone along the length of a dagger that Elata had never seen before.

It was a long, thin dagger, of blue-tinged steel, wood handle dyed a deep red. Cainnec handled it as he handed all steel, with easy respect. She said, "Where have you been hiding that?"

"Bottom of my saddlebag." He held the steel up to the light. "I don't bring this one out unless I think I might have to use it. Unfortunately, I think I might."

"What is it for?"

"It's my misericorde. All Epona dedicates carry one. We don't generally wear them, because we prefer not to remind people of that particular duty."

"Misericorde? I don't recognize the name."

"It translates as merciful heart. It is used to give quick death to those who cannot be saved--human or animal. When we cannot give healing, we must give surcease." Cainnec put his stone aside and ran his finger down the flat of the blade. "Morrigan holds more of the secrets of the moment of death, but we know it well in our own way."

"Oh." Elata bit her lip, worrying at it. "Who--why are you bringing it out today?"

Cainnec sheathed the dagger, wood dyed to match the handle, and loosely peacebonded it with a leather thong. "Torcadall has decided to give me one of his young stallions to break. Problem is, he had an expert horseman in charge of his stables until a month ago, when this one kicked in the side of his head. I respected Gawter's skills--for someone without magic, he was very good indeed with horses. He was Temple-trained, and he was incapable of getting careless. This stallion's a mankiller, and the laird wants him broken and trained as a warhorse. My professional opinion is that this horse is probably mad and probably should have been put down after he killed Gawter. I've promised to take a look, and if I think he's not salvageable, I'll put him down, Torcadall's hopes to add him to his breeding program be damned. No telling if madness is bred or beaten into a horse, most of the time."

Elata relaxed, hearing this. Just a horse, then. Not a person. "What will you do? To find out, I mean."

"Come along and see. It'll take a while, and you'll need to be quiet. You can use the time to study, if you want."

Elata weighed possible boredom against the prospect of being alone in this town, away from the priest-mage's protection. "Let me change my clothes, and I'll come with you." At the words Elata could anticipate coming out of his mouth, she said, "I'll wear the veil, yes." She wrapped herself in a fur-lined coat someone had dropped by the priest quarters, and followed her teacher outside.

They went down the wide stone stairs and out the back of the castle. There were extensive stables, and a number of paddocks outdoors. A gruff question to one of the older stablehands got them directions to one of the farthest paddocks, where a horse stood, watching.

The stallion was heavily built, his coat black and his eyes wide-set in a slightly dished face. The only white on him was an irregular pattern over his shoulders. He moved somewhat hesitantly; to Cainnec it looked like the black had been hurt somehow and had not healed quite right. He was shaggy with his winter coat, and he stared at Cainnec and Elata as they approached.

"Stay well back from the fence," murmured Cainnec. "This may take some time."

Over the fence he went, circling so he was upwind of the stallion. The black's head came up and his nostrils flared, but he did not move, facing the dragon straight on. The priest stopped, and then murmured the words of a spell. He extended his hand. "Greetings, favored of the Goddess."

A warning stomp from the black's back hoof. You are man, yet not man. Free me.

"I cannot. And if I did, where would you go? Where would you get warm mash in the evening and hay in the morning?"

Ear-flick, eye-roll. Free me.

"No. You have no herd, save this."

Dragon and horse stood staring at each other. The stallion began to toss his head, snorting. Cainnec simply stood, looking at him. He was starting to get a feel for why this horse was like this, but his suspicions would only be confirmed when the black let him touch him. And that would only happen when the horse chose to let him near.

So on with it. He faced the horse straight on, beginning to move forward in the horse version of threat behavior. The staioon responded predictably, pinning his ears back, moving away from Cainnec around the edge of the paddock.

The dragon altered his stance, and unlooped the rope he had brought with him. He threw the rope out and the stallion snorted and danced away from it. Cainnec reeled in the rope and did it again, driving the horse slowly back and forth. The stallion calmed more quickly than Cainnec expected, which confirmed his thought that Gawter had gotten reasonably far with his groundwork before triggering the stallion's attack. From the way his hindquarters moved relatively freely, the horse turning unexpectedly tightly when the dragon flicked the rope at him, it seemed that Gawter might have gotten quite far indeed with the groundwork. He still didn't like the tightness in the horse's forequarters, though.

He finally started to work the stallion around the round paddock, trying to set up a pattern of action and reaction. As he came closer, the stallion swiveled tightly and showed his hindquarters to Cainnec, lashing out at him with his hind feet.

Cainnec did not flinch, just stopped and watched the stallion, still face on to him. The black flared his nostrils, tension held vibrating in every line of the horse's body. Not on your life, said the set of the horse's ears.

For the entire morning, the priest and the horse circled. There were spells that would calm him, but spells did not last, and he was going to have to live with this horse for a year, if he turned out to be at all biddable. Best to tame him without resorting to magic, if he could.

Eventually, the stallion began to respond to small changes in Cainnec's movements. The stallion was fearful, and had very likely been abused somewhere along the line. But at the same time that the black feared Cainnec, he was also starting to believe that he might be a herd leader. One of his ears tenatively came forward, though the other remained pinned back. As Cainnec paused, he began to think that perhaps the stallion was salvageable after all.

Elata had been alternately studying and watching the priest and the stallion circle each other. Until she had come to Scotland, she had never had much to do with horses, and she had never thought about the process of taming them. She could tell Cainnec was making progress, but how much she couldn't say. She was cold, and she blew on her hands to try and warm them, wondering if Cainnec was planning on stopping for dinner. She looked around, saw that nobody was nearby, and unpinned her veil, rubbing the spot where the chinstrap had irritated the skin of her neck.

The wind shifted, coming from behind Elata. Cainnec was working the black over towards the fence on her side, matching him step for step. The stallion was shivering its hide and flicking its ears back and forth. It seemed to catch Elata's scent and threw its head up, turning to look over its shoulder at the elf.

For the first time since Cainnec had entered the paddock, the stallion's ears were both pricked. It walked to the fence and stopped, making small noises in its throat. It turned side-on in obvious invitation, trying to prove it was no threat.

Cainnec watched, flatly astonished. Why was the black responding to Elata in that manner? It made no sense, but he was never one to let an advantage go unused, no matter how strange. He called, quietly. "Elata. He seems to like you. Come closer to the fence, but stop out of bite range, please."

Elata obeyed, nervously approaching the fence. The black stretched his neck out towards her, then glanced back at Cainnec, flattening his ears and raising one of his back hooves in an obvious threat. Don't even think about it, buddy, said that kick-ready hoof. Cainnec respected that and didn't come any closer.

The stallion returned his gaze to Elata, who had stopped. He whuffed at her, nosing the air. She glanced at Cainnec and at his nod took a few more steps forward.

The black took note of this interaction, looking between Cainnec and his charge. He whuffed again, and Elata took a few more steps forward. Other than the cocked hind hoof that still threatened, the stallion seemed to be absorbed in trying to make the elf come closer.

Finally, Elata was within arm's reach of the fence. She reached out gingerly, and the horse flared its nostrils, sniffing at her. Then he nosed her palm, and very gently the elf stroked his soft nose. She stood very, very still, afraid to make a wrong move and startle the stallion. Up close, he was an imposing creature, and she remembered what Cainnec had said about him being a mankiller. And she remembered seeing him lash out at Cainnec not an hour before.

There was intelligence in his eyes, which were a pale green. Elata wondered if that was unusual--she seemed to remember most horses had brown eyes--but didn't dare raise her voice to ask. The stallion seemed to tire of having his nose petted and he tossed his head in the air. Elata quickly backed off, and the horse turned to face Cainnec.

In the horse's own tongue, Cainnec asked, Why her?

The horse replied, I remember. A debt. I am...indebted. That was a difficult concept for an equine to express, and it was actually expressed as an idea of a strange stallion helping defend one's foals from a threat. An unlikely thing to happen in a horse herd, indeed.

The stallion lowered his head, laying back his ears in an unmistakable threat posture. You I am not indebted to.

Cainnec replied, She is my herdmate. My foal.

She is not the same as you, breath of the mountains.

All the same, she is of my herd, and I protect her.

You lead? That, too, was a complex concept. There was definitely an air of incredulity there, comparing the relatively puny two-legs with the image of a lead stallion, young and strong, and a lead mare, old and wise.

I lead. She submits to my authority. Image of a foal chastised by its mother, hanging its head.

The horse snorted, disbelieving, and then turned its back on Cainnec. It was evidently done talking to him, and something about the set of its ears told the priest that he had better push the stallion no farther that day. He let himself out of the paddock, closing the gate securely behind him. He nodded to Elata, who gathered up her books and followed the priest.

When they were almost back to the stables, the elf asked, "What was that all about? Why did he let me touch him, and not you?"

"I don't know." The priest's voice was thoughtful. "I get the impression that he's been abused by someone, probably a human male. Likely that was what killed Gawter--he may have touched some nerve in him, done something that made him think he was going to be abused again. He didn't know quite to make of me--I look like a human, but I don't smell anything like one. And you're about the opposite of a human male. Under the bluster may actually be a sweet temperament, if you don't smell like those who instilled the fear in him. But whether he shows it again--I don't know." He didn't mention what the horse had said about the debt.

"What are you going to do?"

"Right now? I'm famished, and I'm going to convince the kitchen to get us something to eat. And then, Elata, you get a crash course in horse training. I'd like you to help me with the black, if you think you're up to it."

Elata thought of that great bulk of the stallion and how quickly he moved, yellow teeth and sharp hooves. She thought of the way the horse had nickered at her, beckoning her closer, and how soft its nose had been. She thought of the trust Cainnec was placing in her. If he thinks I can...I'll trust him. "I...as long as you can train me, yes."

"Don't worry. It's not exactly easy, but the basics will come quickly." He smiled at her and Elata felt herself warm with his approval. She vowed silently to herself that she would not fail in this, or in anything else her teacher asked of her.

Tears unexpectedly pricked her eyes, and she looked away. She swallowed and let go of the feeling of longing, burying it under her elven calm. She had felt the same way about her parents, so determined to be the best she could be and win their approval forevermore. They had died before she had managed to distinguish herself in any way.

Cainnec saw the expression of grief cross his student's face and disappear, but made no comment. He worried about her burial of her grief--and everything else she happened to be feeling--under that mask of unfeeling. She would deny pain, grief, fear, even joy if she thought it at all undignified. He felt the edges of irritation for a society that would go out of its way to quash anything like true emotion in a girl who obviously felt anything that came her way quite deeply.

And he worried about the fact that, as far as he knew, she had not cried over her parents' deaths since the day she had learned what had happened. Grief delayed is grief magnified, the saying went among his people. He hoped she was dealing with it in her own way and not just pushing it away to deal with later.

Perhaps he'd try to talk to her about it again, tonight. But for the moment, they both needed to be fed, and he needed to inquire if Torcadall was expecting to see them at supper tonight. He stretched out his stride, Elata hurrying to keep up.

The early afternoon was spent teach Elata the basics of the art of horse-taming that the Order of Epona had been using and refining for centuries. It was still chilly, but Elata tucked her mittens into her pocket, finding that she didn't need them any more. "The real point of all of this is that horses are creatures of the herd, and they don't like not having a herd around them. You have to establish yourself not only as part of the herd, but as a leader of the herd. Horses get all sorts of troublesome notions in their heads when they think they're leaders. The black's got some of those, I can tell. It's your job to convince him that we have a herd, and we want him to join, and there is a place for him." Cainnec was perched on the fence of a paddock, and Elata was sitting beside him. "The first thing is that you absolutely cannot be afraid of him."

"Easier said than done," muttered Elata. "He tried to kill you."

"He didn't, actually. He wanted me out of his space, and he was afraid of me, but if he'd actually tried to kill me he wouldn't have missed when he kicked. Unless I miss my guess, he might try to push you around, but he won't try to hurt you."

The elf bit her lip. "What do I need to do?"

"I'll show you right now. First you have to get him comfortable with touching you. Then, you'll need to get him accustomed to a bit of tack--probably a rope halter to make catching him easier, and a surcingle to go around him. We'll see how he is after that. He's an intelligent lad; it might make things easier."

Remembering the feel of the stallion's nose under her palm, she said, "His eyes were a strange color. Sort of green. Are horses' eyes often like that?"

"Green? That's pretty rare, especially in a black horse. I noticed that his eyes were light, but didn't pay any attention to the color. Ah, here's Jasper. Ready for some practice?"

Elata practiced approaching the patient gelding, moving as if, like the black, he was nervous and needed soothing. With Cainnec's coaching, she touched Jasper lightly, then more firmly, on the parts of his body that were least likely to provoke an angry reaction. "The black will tell us where he was hurt, I think, if we pay attention. I'd like to get my hands on whoever was responsible for the way he is. They'd be too busy being dead to even think of abusing another horse."

Her hand on Jasper's shoulder, she replied, "Did the laird tell you where he got the horse from?"

Cainnec shrugged. "Sold to him one day by a young woman, who said he'd belonged to her brother. She accepted a pittance for him and then disappeared. It was only after Gawter tried to saddle him that they discovered his nature. Do you think you're ready for a bit of the real thing, now?"

Elata swallowed and nodded, her mouth suddenly dry. She patted Jasper, thanking him for his help with her instruction, and she and Cainnec walked back to the far paddock where the black stood, watching.

At their approach, the stallion's ears pricked. He took a step forward and then stopped, tossing his head in apparent irritation.

"I'll stay by the fence. If he spooks, I'll intervene--I'll have a spell ready that I can use to control him briefly if things get dangerous. Concentrate on inviting him to join your herd, let me worry about whatever danger he might pose." Cainnec reached out and laid his hand on his student's shoulder. "Good luck, Elata."

She gave him a tremulous smile in return and then let herself into the paddock. The black did not move, only watched. Elata took a few steps from the fence and then looked back at Cainnec, eyes worried. He nodded reassuringly, and the elf took a deep breath and stepped forward.

Again, the black noted this interaction. Then, apparently satisfied that Cainnec was going to stay where he was for the moment, the stallion stepped forward, nervousness showing in the set of his tail and the flare of his nostrils.

Watching the two circle each other, Cainnec was put in mind of a pair of younglings who liked each other but who weren't sure enough of the other's feelings to show any of their own. There was that tentative quality to the energy between them, the give and take of their movements. In only five minutes, Elata had made as much progress with the black as Cainnec had in an entire morning of working the horse. The elf had the stallion's full attention, and though she came close, other than occasionally tensing up the stallion did not react.

Elata was gaining more confidence, feeling and seeing how the black was reacting to her. The black was also relaxing, and was starting to make nickering noises in his throat, quietly calling the elf towards him. His ears were focused on her, entirely. Without the safety of the fence between them, the invitation was a bit tremulous, but it was still offered.

She came closer to him, and the black stopped moving. Elata stepped back, as he had coached her. Keeping an eye on the stallion, she took ten steps backwards.

The stallion had turned his body so he was at an angle to Elata. As she backed away, he took a few steps forward. The stallion had "hooked on" to Cainnec's student, something that in the hours that he'd worked with him that morning Cainnec hadn't been able to accomplish. There was an almost visible energy between the two, as if there were an invisible rope connecting the two of them.

Cainnec held his breath as Elata stopped and lifted her hand, palm up. The black came close, stretched out his neck, and touched Elata's hand with his nose. He stepped a little closer.

Elata had forgotten to be afraid, forgotten about the fact that this horse had killed someone not a month ago. The horse's green eyes were frightened but his ears were focused on her, and with an apparent effort of will he was staying in one place. She murmured quietly, "I won't hurt you. I'll never hurt you. I promise."

I know. You were promised.

Elata jumped as the voice entered her mind, a young man's voice that somehow felt very strange. The stallion flinched as she startled but did not jump away. Her hand on the horse's nose, she said, "You can understand me?"

Of course.

There was nothing Elata could say to that. She began slowly stroking the horse's face lightly as she had been taught, and the moved on to behind his ears and to the proud neck. The black lowered his head so she could rub behind his ears and scratch the crest of his mane.

The stallion's hide was lumpy with scar tissue under the skin. She asked, "Is there anywhere you hurt? Anywhere I should not touch?"

Withers were cut. Still hurt. The dark one did it. But you may touch. Only you!

Cainnec watched as his student talked to the horse, eyes wide with astonishment. The stallion was speaking to Elata, and Elata understood him! This was unprecedented, and argued that this was a very unusual horse indeed--and that Elata was not of the usual run of elf. He wanted to go speak with the stallion himself, but he knew better. He kept a close eye on the proceedings, rooted to the spot.

The elf was barely tall enough to touch the top of the black's withers, and the horse shivered his skin as her hand came close to the sensitive skin there. Her hand passed over a place gnarled with scars, and suddenly a dark wave seemed to break over Elata, bearing her away.

It was a stall, a small, closed-in, foul-smelling place. There was a man, a man who might have been pretty if his mouth hadn't been twisted in a angry snarl. His voice was startlingly familiar--if it hadn't been a human standing there, she would have sworn it was her great-grandfather. "Still fighting, are you? Not broken yet? Too bad, horse. Too bad." He was holding a weapon of some sort in his left hand--a flail, glass shards embedded in leather straps. The man muttered, "You'll submit, horse. Or I will hurt you until you do." He brought his arm back and struck out at her near shoulder, tearing skin, laying it open to the muscle underneath.

She screamed. She had to get away--but where could she go? She stumbled against the rough walls of the stall as he hit her again. She tried to rear, but there wasn't enough room. She screamed in panic and then lunged at the man, trying to get him to stop--

Elata was back in her own body, her hand still on the horse, tears streaming down her face. With her free hand, she wiped her eyes. "I cannot heal you. I'm sorry. If you want that to stop hurting, you'll have to let Cainnec touch you."

The horse raised his head and snorted. The breath of the mountains? Is he truly your herd leader?

"He is. I trust him. If you're going to come with us, you have to do the same." It was very strange, having this conversation with this horse, talking to him. As the black's head swung around to regard her with those oddly intelligent eyes, she suddenly could not imagine this happening any other way. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to be standing talking to this--person--who she was finding that she liked, very much.

I will try. The black flicked his ears, sighing. Elata resumed petting the horse, touching him with light pressure and long sweeps over his hide. She could feel his pleasure at her touch, and flushed with happiness herself.

She asked, quietly, "Will you let me halter you?"

Halter! The horse's head jerked up and he jumped away from her--even separated from him, she could see and feel his fear and horror. Halter, halter, no--

The horse danced, white rings showing around his eyes. Behind her, Elata could somehow sense Cainnec tensing, getting ready to intervene if necessary. Elata stood very, very still. She said, quietly, "Halter. No bit. Just halter."

They horse trembled, and rolled his eyes.

Elata stayed very still. "I promise, I will never hurt you," she reiterated. "Please?"

Slowly, reason returned to the stallion's eyes. It took a step forward, then another. It came within reach and Elata put her hand on his neck, stroking gently. No bit? it asked.

"Not until you're ready. Not until you're healed. Just a halter." Quietly, seductively, she said, "It will show that you are a part of our herd."

The black shivered. Elata could feel longing and fear in the way he moved under her hand. Your herd. I could join?

"You could. And Cainnec can heal the places you still hurt, if you will let him touch you."

He jerked his head upward and his gaze settled on the dragon, watching from the fence. Then he dropped his head, ears forward. His voice came again, quiet, frightened, determined. Show me.

Elata had tucked the halter in the belt of her dress, and now she freed it and held it up. It was made of soft, thin rope, a token thing, really. The stallion examined it, first with a cockeyed gaze and then with snuffling nose and probing lips, feeling for what Elata could not guess. Then his head dipped lower. I--accept.

The elf could feel the determination that lay in the black's words. She asked, "Before that--what is your name?"

Which one?

He had more than one? "Whichever one you like best. Whichever one you would like to be called by."

Kivan. My name is Kivan. Elf, finish--before I lose my nerve!

She could see that the stallion's energy to fight his fear was running out. Smoothly, she slipped the headstall over Kivan's ears, the noseband over his nose, and knotted the halter loosely at the side of his head. She released him, and stepped back. In a moment, she was glad she had: the horse danced away from her, tossing his head up and down, squealing and kicking at the air. Elata backed to the fence, watching him.

Cainnec murmured, "You're doing very well. Keep it up."

Her eyes did not leave the horse. "If I bring him to you, can you take a look at some old wounds for me? Quickly?"

"Aye, I can. Where?"

She frowned, remembering the vision she assumed the horse had shared with her. "His withers. Someone used a glass flail on him."

The dragon growled, very softly, "I will find the person who did this to him, and I will feed them their own intestines. There is no excuse whatsoever for that. And how do you know what a glass flail looks like?"

"Him. It was a him. A small man, pretty on the outside, ugly on the inside. And my great-grandfather, the Speaker, has a collection of...instruments. The glass flail is one of his favorites. I was never allowed to touch it, even when he was showing the collection to me." She spoke almost absently, the largest part of her attention still focused on the black. "It looks like Kivan's calming down. I'll see if I can bring him over."

Cainnec watched her go, an image rising into his mind of a younger Elata inspecting a wall of torturer's tools, her grandfather handing them to her, explaining what they did. He wondered how far down that path she had gone, if her grandfather had taught her what was evidently his own trade. He didn't think so--she was still too sensitive to other people's pain--but fr the first time he considered the idea that being seperated from her own people might have been the best thing that could have happened to her.

Kivan stood, blowing, his head low and his mouth working. Elata stepped toward him quietly, and he brought his head up, looking at her. She spread her hands. "Herd-mate. There is healing, if you wish it."

I do not want the breath of the mountains to touch me.

"But you would like to be free of the pain in your shoulders, would you not? I have no healing. He does. That is part of the reason he is the herd leader."

You submit to his authority.

"I do. He is my teacher. My herd. He defends me and teaches me. Will you come, Kivan?" She bent her entire attention, every scrap of concentration she had developed in six years of learning the Art, onto him. The horse took a step forward, then more, until he had come within reach and Elata held his halter in one hand, stroking the side of his neck with the other. She then turned and led the black towards the fence, towards Cainnec.

As they grew closer, Kivan grew more nervous, eyeing Cainnec. The dragon hesitated, and then reached with his will for his power. There was no reason to make this any more traumatic for the frightened horse than it had to be, and if it had pain he could heal, it would make the rest go much more smoothly. Three whispered words and he sent power spinning outward to envelop the horse in it.

He could see the set of the black's ears relax as the spell took hold. It would last for only a few minutes, but that was all Cainnec needed. He called out, "Lead him nearer, Elata. Let me see what I can do over the fence."

Elata and the horse came nearer, and Cainnec realized that his spell, a simple charm to calm animals, had not worked nearly as well as it usually did. It had certainly taken the edge off the stallion's fear, but it had by no means made him trusting. He would have to work very quickly and very gently indeed. Elata led the horse so it was parallel with the fence, and at encouragement from her, he sidestepped closer until he almost touched the wood of the enclosure.

Kivan trembled. Elata pressed her shoulder into him, trying to reassure him. She thought, I'm here. I'm here. I will not hurt you. I promise. The black shuddered but stood still, and Cainnec rested one hand on his mane, healing sense open fully, looking for broken places.

Old scars burned, but the worst thing was those withers. Muscle and skin had been torn, become infected, and healed wrong, and the entire mass of scar pulled wrongly. There were still pockets of infection burning within the mass and there--small bits of glass still embedded in the scars. The mystery of Gawter's death was solved; any pressure on the black's withers would cause massive pain, and if Elata was correct there were many bad memories associated with that particular plain. Cainnec frowned, concentrating. First things first--

His healing sense was like a thousand tiny fingers, extended into the body of the horse. First, he stunned the nerves leading to the mass, laying a shield over it so the horse would feel none of what he did. Then he lay his hand on the mass of scar, gnarled and lumpy under the skin. He could not replace scar with good flesh and he could not remove the glass, but he could make it so it hurt much less and encourage the horse's body to heal what it could of the damage. Cainnec sent his soul questing with his healing sense; the first thing was to burn out the pockets of infection, the places where wrongness burned and poisoned the horse. Then he quickly examined the underside of the mass, and loosened some things, tightened others. He pushed and pulled on the scar mass, thinning it out, giving room for what was underneath to heal.

He could feel the black's fear growing, and he realized that he was going to have to stop. He finished what he was doing, and then backed away from the fence, lifting his hand. "I've done what I can for the moment. He'll need more healing before he can bear weight on those withers, but what I've done should help it not hurt quite so badly."

The stallion stayed in position, Elata leaning against him. She was stroking his neck, murmuring to him, telling him that he was good, that he was brave, that he was safe. Finally, she led him away from the fence, doing a slow round of the paddock. Now that he was paying attention, he could see that the black's shoulders moved more freely, his stride becoming tentatively longer.

"Does it hurt now?" asked Elata.

Kivan's voice was reluctant. Less now.

"And some day, it will not hurt at all. He has healed me, too."

The horse blinked, stopped, and swung his head around to give Elata a cockeyed gaze. But you still hurt.

Elata frowned. "No, I don't."

You do. Kivan's voice was quiet. Inside, you hurt. Inside, you bleed.

"Oh." Was it so apparent? "Cainnec can heal bodies. As far as I know, only time and love heals souls."

The horse made a sighing noise, and nudged Elata with his nose. Done for now. Tomorrow?

She realized she was starving, and the sun was beginning to go down. "Tomorrow. Can I take the halter?" Kivan assented, lowering his head so she could untie the rope and take off the headstall and nosestrap. The stallion accompanied her to the gate and watched as she let herself out, and watched as she and Cainnec walked away, toward the castle.

Elata's shoulders drooped as she began to feel the fatigue of the day press on her, letting go of the nervous energy that had driven her and realizing that under it she was exhausted. She stumbled, and Cainnec caught her. "I told Torcadall that we would not be eating dinner with the rest tonight," he told her. "You did very well today, Elata. I'm proud of you."

She smiled, his praise warming her. "I've never talked like that to a horse. Does that happen often?"

"Unless you've converted to the worship of Epona in the last six hours, no. I think our lad's something special. I overheard him speaking to you, and he sounds much different than an ordinary horse does."

She rubbed her eyes and asked, "What do you think he is?"

The dragon shrugged. "Not sure. There are things that look like horses and are cross-fertile with horses, but aren't exactly horses. Might be that he's one of them. I think, though, we should take pains to keep our suspicions about him quiet. Let's not give the priests at Holyrood any reason to separate the two of you."

Elata went pale. "They could do that? But--he's part of our herd! They wouldn't!"

"If the Headmaster thought it right, he would. But don't worry; teach him how to mostly act like a normal horse, and they'll not complain. You made a good start today with him." He watched her, carefully; her upset at the thought of being parted from the horse was somewhat worrisome, especially for a girl who was neither an Epona priestess nor a trainee.

She yawned widely, and pulled at her veil. "What's next?"

"We'll work with him for a few days. I need to finish working on that patch of scarring on his withers, and you need to eventually persuade him to let you ride, among other things. Then we can move on from here, and head towards Holyrood."

There was food and wine in the priest quarters, and Elata applied herself as much as she could to both. But like the night before, she found herself nodding over her plate, and finally gave up. The pair of them bedded down, Elata in the bed and Cainnec on the pallet, and both closed their eyes.

Elata thought she would fall right to sleep, but she did not. Finally, she murmured, "Cainnec? Are you awake?"

"I am. What's wrong?"

"Nothing. Oh--maybe something. Kivan said something to me. He said..." She trailed off, remembering. "He said that I hurt, inside."

"Do you?" Cainnec's voice was carefully neutral.

She shifted, pulling her knees closer to her chest. "I'm not supposed to. And if I do, nobody is supposed to know." That last was nearly whispered, her voice murmuring in the dark. "A horse isn't supposed to see it in me."

"They can be sensitive to such things. What hurts you, Elata?"

"I--it's nothing, really. It's just that...I miss them. My parents. And my grandfather. I never was close to my mother's father, but his father, Malkath...I called him my grandfather and he's the one who found teachers for me. I used to spend every afternoon at his house. He would tell me stories and show me his things." She shivered, remembering. "And I miss Gywellis. I like this place, but everything's so different. But my parents are gone and they're never returning, and I can never go home to my grandfather again, and I still remember them..." Elata bit her lip, trying to shove down the sobs that were rising in her throat. She wrestled with her grief, trying to ring it with the emotional control that her parents had spent her entire life teaching her. But remembering those lessons simply made it hurt worse, until Elata's fragile control over her emotions finally broke.

The young elf turned her face into her mattress, sobbing. After a few moments, she could feel Cainnec sit down next to her on the bed, the dragon's cool hand stroking her hair. He murmured, "It's all right, Elata. There is no shame in tears, as much as elven society thinks there is."

His words only made her cry harder, her small body shaking with the force of her grief. He pulled her close to him, holding her against himself, and she felt an enormous, inarticulate gratitude towards him, one that expressed itself as more tears. She thought, I am not alone. I will never be alone again--

Elata fell asleep mid-sob, her whole body suddenly relaxing, and the dragon laid her back in bed and pulled the blanket up around her shoulders. Cainnec smoothed the hair away from her face, looking at her with those white eyes. He contemplated this child who had been sent to him, who worked so hard at being good that he was afraid that she was submerging her real personality under her fear that he was going to abandon her.

We will both learn, little one, he thought as he lay back down on his pallet. You will learn that I do not put down what the Goddess has sent me. And I will re-learn how to raise a child. Mother of ponies, it's been a long time. It's probably about time I had a refresher course.

The dragon closed his eyes, but sleep came slowly. He lay for a long time, listening to Elata breathe, thinking about the young elf in his care and the frightened stallion, and the ways in which the two were altogether too much alike.

A scream rang out in the slumbering Temple.

Beatrice, afflicted with the insomnia that was back now after having entirely disappeared when she had been away for training, was awake, walking past the doorways of the trainee dorms. She had been wandering down to kitchens to see if there was anyone awake or any small task that needed doing. When she had sleepless nights, she often found it helped to do something, anything. At the scream, she started and then lengthened her stride until she was almost running down the hall. She wasn't sure where she was going, exactly, but it sounded like it was coming from the dorm just ahead and to the left.

She reached them, pushing through the door, and was startled to find that the trainees were all asleep. How anyone could have slept through that scream was beyond her, but there was some noise in the room--the sort of noise that Beatrice associated with someone who was in severe pain, a pressure inside her head.

In the dim light of a lamp kept burning low in the corner, she could see a figure sitting up in bed, rocking slightly back and forth. She recognized the rumpled hair and the snub nose--it was Cicely, the trainee that had come with her from Zaragoza. Quietly, she walked over to the girl and put her hand on the child's shoulder, murmuring, "Are you all right? What's wrong?"

A black wave reached up and swallowed the priestess whole.

Unprepared, Beatrice tumbled helplessly into the void. There was light now, dim flickering light, and she could feel her limbs, aching and heavy. Her body felt the wrong size, her skin too small, and she jerked as she realized there was flame dancing along the skin of her arms. The smell of burned hair filled her nose.

A voice, so cold. A woman's voice. She felt a rush of fear as she shrank back from that voice. "I could let the flame have you, child," the woman was saying. "I could let the flame eat your skin and your pretty eyes. Perhaps I will, some day. The flame comes from within you, and unless you do exactly as I want, I will let it have you. Only my power stands between you and death."

Whimpering noises came from her throat. She tried to say something, anything, but she couldn't. She was conscious suddenly that she had no control of the situation, no control of her body. I'm in someone else's dream--or memories--

"Hush, child. You will be good, won't you? Learn what I and your teachers have to tell you?" The woman's face swam into focus. Dark, intent eyes, soft, round face, mahogany curls arranged perfectly atop her head. Beatrice's heart beat like a sparrow fluttering against the cage of her ribs. "You will learn, Cicely, and then you will forget. Until it's time. Until I call..."

Beatrice threw herself backward and finally pulled herself free of the dream or vision, awareness of her own body and her surroundings abruptly returning. She gasped, flinching away from the child in the bed. The girl had her knees pulled to her chest and she was still rocking gently. The dim light reflected on the tears that shone on her cheeks, running from tight-closed eyes.

Tentatively, she reached out again, saying, "Cicely, Cicely, ssh, it's all right..." She laid her hand on the child's shoulder and braced herself, but the black wave did not reach for her again. The child was vibrating with pain and misery, and she seemed to be in some half-conscious state. Beatrice stroked the child's curly hair, automatically reaching out with the part of her mind that seemed to be in change of such things and trying to soothe away the girl's pain.

The change, when it happened, was sudden and startling. Suddenly, as if someone had blown out a candle, every bit of the pain disappeared. Beatrice got the impression of a shield crashing down, obscuring the emotions. The girl's bowstring-tense body relaxed, and she muttered, "Wha'? What's happening?"

Beatrice stilled. That voice was familiar. "Cicely. I think you had a nightmare. I came by to check. Are you all right?"

Cicely yawned widely. "'m fine. Tired..." She lay down and Beatrice pulled up the blankets. Cicely fell immediately asleep in the way that children do, abruptly and completely.

Beatrice stood and turned away, and then a thought struck her. She closed her eyes and unfurled her magical sight, the eyes within her that could see the magic in the world, and she looked at Cicely.

There was no magic about her that was not part of that possessed by all who worked with any sort of magic, until she looked very closely indeed; a tight knot of fire seemed to burn underneath the child's breastbone. But as the priestess watched, the fire faded from sight, and became no more than an irregular place in the child's native magic.

Then the knot of fire winked out, leaving Beatrice almost to wonder if she'd imagined it.

Finally, she turned and walked out of the dormitory, her eyes dark with thought.

The next morning, she had almost decided to go to the Headmaster with her concerns. She was trying to think of a way to tell of what had happened the night before without making either her or Cicely sound insane. If the vision had been a nightmare, then telling Aru would be overreacting; if it were a memory...Beatrice could not imagine what might have to be done. That woman, saying that the child would forget until she was called--what sort of fell magic would that be, that could make a person forget something until they were reminded?

She had a responsibility to report what she had seen, but at the same time, she liked Cicely, who was so small and lost in the large Temple. The child had seen enough pain in her life already, and she was not yet well-enmeshed in the temple here. If she were to be frightened badly by something, she might flee. While Beatrice had enormous respect for her Headmaster, he was probably one of the most intimidating people she had ever met. A child who had not grown up under Aru's eye might well be very frightened by the Headmaster's probing questions.

She was walking down the stairs, deep in the Temple, towards the stables. Her preoccupation with her thoughts dulled her usual edgy alertness, which was why the hand that came out of nowhere, caught her shoulder, and sent her spinning into the wall came as such a surprise. Pain radiated from her shoulder and elbow where they had smacked into the stone of the mountain.

Immediately, she braced herself against the wall, ready to absorb another blow if one was coming. The sour smell of cheap wine filled her nose and her conscious mind realized what her unconscious mind had known the moment that the man had touched her. Jonas, the man who was not her father but lived within his body, snarled at her. "Lazy girl. What are you doing down here? Probably looking for someplace to hide, aren't you?"

Beatrice pushed herself away from the wall. Taking a firm grip on her emotions, she replied, "I was going down to the stables, Second Jonas. I've work to see to." Best to treat him with formality; perhaps that would remind him of their official relationship--not father and daughter, but Headmaster's Second and priestess.

No such luck. Jonas' voice dropped, and his tone sent fearful shivers down her spine. "Don't pull that on me, little girl. You're still my daughter. You still belong to me."

Her grip on her emotions faltered. Cold anger flashed in her eyes, and she said, "I don't belong to you. I belong to the Temple and to the Goddess." She listened to herself speaking and knew the moment the words had left her mouth that they were a mistake. Yet she could not stop speaking. "I am an adult, Jonas, and I have been for years now. Leave it be."

"You leave it be, girl. You'll do as I say."

She wrinkled her nose. "You haven't told me to do anything, Jonas. Like I said, I have work to see to." She turned her back on her father, intending to head down the stairs and away from him.

Hard hands caught her, spun her around, shoved her against the wall with one hand on her throat. Her father thrust his face into hers, and she gagged at his breath--he was drunk as she'd ever seen him and the sun had only been up for four hours. In the back of her mind she made some calculations and figured that this must be a drunk from the night before, still going strong. Not a good time to provoke him, Bee. Not a good time at all.

At the same time as she was making calculations, she was trying to figure out what she could do to free herself. She did not want to hurt him, but if she had to, she had to. She could feel the wrongness pouring off of him, so much stronger than it had been before she left.

Jonas stared her in the eyes for a long moment, and then said, "You will do anything I ask of you, little BeeBee. You will do anything I ask, or you will end up like your mother."

Beatrice's mind went blank, and she froze. My mother? Oh--

Her father was still speaking. "Remember that, daughter. Think of your mother with her throat cut. Take good care of the horses and don't stick your nose where it doesn't belong. And remember, if you step out of line, it's the Second who decides the punishment for most transgressions."

Her eyes wide, she could only stare at him, speechless. Finally, she stammered, "And Mother--what did she do? Did you punish her?"

A look of annoyance crossed his face and he answered, "Your mother got what she deserved. She got curious. It's a dangerous habit, curiosity. Remember that." He loosed his grip on her throat and stepped back. "And if you think you're going to tell anyone about this little chat, BeeBee, remember what position I hold. Who are they going to believe, you or me?" He held her eyes with his for a moment longer, then broke the gaze and turned, striding away from her, muttering under his breath.

Beatrice watched him go, feeling as if she were rooted to the spot. Her mind whirled uncomprehendingly. He killed her. It wasn't bandits. It was him. Take her with him on a trip, kill her on the road, bury her somewhere remote and come back here. Goddess. Goddess! What am I supposed to do?

There was no reply from the deity. As usual, Beatrice was on her own.

She slid down the wall until she was sitting against it, bringing her knees up to her chest. She buried her face in her arms and wept.

"He's never going to be a warhorse, Torcadall. I'm sorry to say it, but it's the honest truth."

A day had passed since Elata'd had her first session with Kivan. She had spent some time yesterday working with him, getting him more comfortable with her, practicing haltering and unhaltering him, learning how to do groundwork with him.

Torcadall gave Cainnec a sharp look. They were sitting in what could conceivably be called the laird's study, one of the few private places in the castle. "I trust your judgment, but why?"

Cainnec shrugged. "He was abused. Someone used a glass flail on him, and it tore his withers to shreds. He'll probably never be able to carry much weight on his shoulders, and certainly not a man in armor. And I don't think he'll ever suffer a human male to touch him."

The laid sucked in air through his teeth. "By the gods, that's nasty. So what should I do with him? I could keep him for stud, but you know as well as I do that an unworked stallion is a dangerous one."

"If you wouldn't mind, I think the Temple of Epona can take charge of him. We can compensate you, of course, but I can also let him stand at stud when I'm on rotation. He's an intelligent lad, and I think he'll sire fine colts."

"And then I don't have him on my hands. Sounds like a deal to me. So what are you going to do with him?"

Cainnec gave him the ghost of a smile. "My student is working with him."

Torcadall's eyebrows shot up. "The elf girl? Are you serious?"

The dragon shrugged. "For some reason, the black likes her. I think, since she's not human and not male, she's dissimilar enough that she doesn't trigger the panic response. It's good for her to have something to do, and she seems to be making progress."

"Still seems strange, but this is your business, not mine. When do you think you'll be moving on?"

"Five days, I hope. Perhaps longer. We need to be able to have Elata ride the black before we go."

"Think she'll do it?"

"She's a smart little thing, and like I said, the black likes her. I think she will, if I can get those withers healed enough."

In fact, Cainnec realized later that day that he hadn't seen Elata for a few hours. He went down to the paddock to see if she'd gone down there and found that she indeed had; she was walking around the ring with Kivan, talking to him quietly. He noticed that she'd yet again taken off her veil, leaving it draped over the fence. He didn't blame her; the veil would restrict her peripheral vision, and she needed every bit of sight she could get. When she caught sight of him, she left the stallion on the far side of the paddock and came over to where Cainnec was. "Sorry I didn't tell you where I was going. I didn't know where I was going until I got here."

"Don't worry about it." He didn't say that he was pleased she'd taken the initiative on something; time enough for that praise later. "I have a question for you, actually."

"For me? What about?"

He nodded at the stallion, who stood watching them, much less wary than he had been. "He still has glass in his shoulders. Before you can try riding him, it needs to be taken out. I need to have him down so I can cut out the pieces of glass."

Elata bit her lip. "How long will it take?"

"Half hour. Maybe a bit longer. Once he's lying down I can put him into a state where he won't feel a thing, but you're going to have to get him to lie down, and keep him down as I approach. Once I have my hands on him, I can put him into a deep sleep. I have a stronger calming spell than I used the other day that should help, but a lot of it's going to be you demonstrating how much you've taught him. Think you're up to it?"

She nodded slowly. "If you tell me what to do."

"It's easy enough, especially since you can explain to him what you want." He gave her some specific directions, and then turned her loose.

Elata walked over to Kivan, who blew greeting in her direction. What does the breath of the mountains want?

"To heal you. Will you gentle?"

Kivan shook his head. If I must.

"Then here is what I want--"

She took hold of lead rope attached to the halter. She had been practicing handling Kivan's legs, and he had yet shown no inclination to try to kick her. She was still wary of his heavy hooves, but she found that she could pick up his near forefoot without any problem.

She could not, Cainnec told her, use the time-honored method of tying up the horse's near forefoot and then use a rope attached to the other hoof and run through a surcingle to force the horse to his knees, because the black's withers were so painful that the pressure of the surcingle would make him unmanageable. She could, however, lean her shoulder into the horse, pulling his head down and murmuring encouragement.

Kivan went to his near knee, and then rolled into his side, Elata stepping out of his way. Finally down entirely, he lay perfectly still. Elata stroked him, petting his face and neck and moving on to his sides and legs. This was coming easier as she worked with the horse, as if she were not learning it but remembering it.

She nodded at Cainnec, who muttered a spell and came forward. The stallion tensed but did not attempt to rise. He nodded at Elata. "Good job. I'd like you to stay here. Hold his head, comfort him. There will be some blood; if you can't handle it, don't look." Elata's cornflower eyes widened and she nodded, swallowing. She retreated to the horse's head, petting him, speaking in a low voice.

Cainnec spoke another spell, calling on his Goddess to hold the soul of this creature out of pain so he could ease its injury. He felt the life of the horse under his hand and without thinking reached for the knot of fire that controlled the stallion's consciousness. A quick manipulation and the horse was sent into a sleep deep as he could be sent. Cainnec still laid a barrier between the scarred area and the good flesh; no reason to chance hurting the horse if the magical sleep did not hold.

That taken care of, Cainnec slowed his breathing, clearing his mind and focusing his healing sense on the place filled with wrongness, spread over the black's withers. He opened the bag he had brought with him on the off chance that he would get to try this today, pulling out a small bowl and a roll that protected a set of small, sharp knives and other instruments. He worked quickly, laying out what he would need, finally picking up a medium-sized knife. He spread his healing sense into the mass of scarring, looking for the glass he knew was in there.

He chose a place to start, and began to cut into the horse's hide.

Cainnec worked in silence. Elata stroked the horse's sleeping head and didn't look at where he was cutting, nausea twisting her belly as the smell of blood hit her nostrils. She heard the strange dragging sound of steel in flesh, the occasional tink as Cainnec dropped a shard of glass into the bowl, the low mutter as Cainnec occasionally spoke aloud, seemingly to himself.

At last, Cainnec dropped the last piece of glass into the bowl. He laid his hands on the bloody hide of the horse, and called power to himself one last time. Under his hands, flesh and skin knit together as his power recalled to it what it was like to be whole. The tingle in his hands as he healed the damage he had done to get the glass out intensified, and the dragon smiled fiercely. It is always such pleasure, to heal.

The power finally found no more damage it could heal, and Cainnec pulled his healing sense back into his own body, feeling the momentary sensation of the world having turned upside down around him that he always felt when he did so. Before he shut it down, his healing sense told him that this body he was in now was fine, but the other, the one he had been born in, was not--

He closed firm mental fingers around his healing sense and ignored the warning. It was telling him nothing it had not been telling him for three years, after all. He lifted his control of the horse's autonomic functions, and let him return from the unnaturally deep sleep he had been in to normal sleep. He murmured, "Let's stay here while he comes awake. Careful, he may want to get up suddenly." Elata nodded but otherwise didn't reply.

Together they waited silently as the horse woke, his breathing shifting from the deep slow rhythm of sleep to the quicker one of waking. Kivan opened one eye, and asked, Is it done?

"Done," the elf replied. "The glass is gone."

Ah. The horse did not move to get up, even though Cainnec still had his hands on him.

"You can get up, if you like," said Elata, unsure if the horse thought he was supposed to remain lying down.

Be away when I do so. Kivan's voice held an exhausted sorrow. Elata suddenly had an impression of him, fighting every moment his memories and the pain his body contained, filled with sadness he could not quite contain but still willing to fight it, to try to find his way into a herd. Something Cainnec had said came back to her. Horses are much like many creatures. Two things matter to them--their lives, and their herds. They will fight to the death to defend them both.

She bit her lip and nodded. "Cainnec--"

"Your lad's loud. I heard." The dragon rose, wincing as his knees crackled a little from being on them so long. "To the fence, dother. Let's give him some room."

They retreated, keeping a careful eye on the black. When they were well away, the horse lifted his head, green eyes looking around. He rolled carefully to a more normal lying position, his legs tucked up under him. Suddenly, he surged to his feet, ending on all four feet, head lifted high.

Kivan took a tentative step, then another. He began to walk around the paddock, shifting into a canter, then finally going into a spate of kicking and bucking, whirling and striking out at the air. Finally, he stopped, his head hung low and his eyes closed. Elata watched him anxiously, and Cainnec laid a hand on her shoulder.

The stallion's head came up again, and he stretched himself into a canter once more. Cainnec watched, the new freedom in Kivan's stride warming his heart. Elata said, "He's moving a lot better now, isn't he?"

"Several of the pieces were lying alongside major nerves. He needs some more work still, but yes, his shoulders are a lot freer. And you can probably touch his withers without sending him into the sky, now. We should probably give him a few hours to get used to it. You can work with him some more tomorrow."

The elf watched the stallion as he moved around the paddock. Cainnec added, almost offhand, "By the way, Torcadall has accepted my judgment that the black will never be a warhorse. He'll never be able to bear the weight of a man in armor. So Kivan now belongs to the Temple of Epona." Elata blinked and looked at the priest, puzzled. "Since you seem to get along with him, I'm putting him in your care. Kivan is your mount, and your responsibility. Permanently."

Her eyes widened and he saw them fill with tears. She whispered, "Really? He's mine?"

Cainnec nodded. "Yours. You'll have to balance his needs with those of your training, but--" He was interrupted by Elata jumping up, throwing her arms around his neck and latching on for dear life as she buried her face in his neck. Hot tears slid down to the collar of his shirt as she whispered, "Thank you, thank you, thank you..."

He let her cry for a few moments before he replied, "You're welcome, dother. He'll be work, but I imagine you know that already, and your horsemanship still needs a lot of work. But you and Kivan will teach each other much, I think. Come on, let's leave him be for a bit. We can come down in the morning."

They climbed the fence, unwilling to go all the way to the gate. Kivan saw them leaving and executed as pretty a turn as Cainnec had ever seen, nearly doubling back instantaneously. He came to the fence, and nickered at Elata, stretching out his neck. She petted his nose and then climbed up a little on the fence so she could lay her face along the side of his. She said, "Tomorrow, all right?"

He whuffed agreement, and Elata kissed him and climbed down. The horse looked at Cainnec, and then extended his neck. Cainnec offered him a hand, palm up, and Kivan touched it briefly with his nose. The horse then whirled and trotted away from the fence, his ears flicking.

It was more than the priest had dared hope for from the stallion. Elata was pinning her veil back on without complaint, and he went to help her with it, smiling when he saw she could barely stand still long enough to have the veil pinned before she flew from his hands, running around him in a swirl of skirts. They walked back to the castle, both of them smiling.

A figure leading a horse traveled the road to Pedrosa.

The woman leading the horse had skin the color of a river at night and hair that was just a shade or two darker, her ears pointed but her eyes not quite as tilted as an elf's. She wore a white cloak that was a bit too long for her, nearly dragging on the ground, and a loose tunic and trousers, the usual gear of travelers. She grinned as she splashed through a puddle, the mud splattering mostly away from her. The horse she led carried packs but no saddle, the patient mare trudging though the same puddles as the one who led her, and getting much more muddy into the bargain.

There was still snow in patches along the side of the road, but the air had a decidedly balmy feel to it and the flowers that were coming up seemed to be of the opinion that spring had come to the mountain.

A rustle sounded behind her. Abruptly, the woman whirled and dropped into a crouch, letting go of the mare's lead rope. A pair of daggers had appeared in her hands, seeming to spring from nowhere, as she surveyed the one who had made the sound.

She tilted her head back and whooped. The daggers disappeared again as she lunged for the man who stood in the middle of the road, his arms crossed. Reflexively, he caught her as she hurled himself at him, laughing. "Marcus, you gods-forgotten idiot! You know better than to surprise me!"

He was laughing too, swinging her up and around. "I missed you too, Selket."

She answered that with a searing kiss, making it quite clear that the sentiment was mutual. After she had finished kissing him into silence, she said, "All right, I missed you. Happy now? But it was a productive six months."

"Got everything you wanted to do done?"

She grinned, flashing white teeth. "One elven disaster mostly averted, one imposter Speaker for the Elves revealed, and one horse and one child swiped out from under said imposter's nose. It's worked out...well, mostly. Few details didn't go quite right, but I'll tell you about it later. Right now, I want to get Feani here settled and then enjoy some of Aru's hospitality. You did tell him I was coming?"

Marcus chuckled. "He's looking forward to seeing you. Come on, I'll let you sweet-talk the stablemaster into taking care of your horse for you."

An hour or so later, Selket and Marcus were ensconced in Aru's study, Marcus with a glass of brandy and Selket with one of wine; usually, she didn't drink distilled liquor, claiming it gave her a raging headache. She was curled up, pulling her knees to her chest and somehow making the normal-sized chair look as if it were much too big for her. She asked, "So how are things here? Aru found a girl yet?"

"Ha. Not as far as I know. If you remember Jonas, his wife died a few years ago. The man looks positively haunted, and I could swear he drinks--but every time I see him in Aru's company, I can't smell a thing. Other than that, things here are much as I remember them being when I visited on a regular basis."

Before Anne died. The words hung in the air between them, and Selket smothered a sigh, watching this man who she loved but found positively impossible at times. He claimed that he had moved on from his lover's death, but it still tore at him, she knew. She wished, sometimes, that she'd had the chance to meet her predecessor. She must have been something special to have captured Marcus' heart as completely as she had.

I am constantly fighting against her memory. She gave Marcus a sweet smile to hide her dark thoughts and said, "Well, since this is my first time here, you'll have to show me around and introduce me to people.

"I am sure we can arrange for that." This voice was new, a bass rumble coming from a broad chest, and Selket turned. Aru smiled at her, the corners of his eyes crinkling. "It's good to see you, Selket. It's been too long."

She grinned and unfolded herself from the chair, shaking out her legs like a cat, and went to twine her arms around Aru's neck and give him a kiss on the cheek. "It has been. And your mountain is pretty, if a bit muddy at the moment."

"It's very early in the spring. The foals will start dropping any day now, and then we'll be too busy to notice the mud until the summer." He hugged her and then released her, going to sit in his own chair, the one nearest the window. "Marcus tells me you've been working on a project, but wouldn't give me any details."

She curled up in her own chair, bringing her knees to her chest once more. "That's because he didn't have any. It was a little something of my own, and I'm happy to say that it seems to have worked. I've been playing games with Mordred again, you see."

Marcus quirked his mouth. "How did I know this would involve him? Can't leave him alone, can you?"

"We all have our little goals. It's mine to make sure my old friend the King of France never manages to succeed in anything he does. Call it a hobby." She wrinkled her nose at Marcus and continued. "Mordred, despite the fact that he should be busy being King and all, has been being a very bad boy, probably at Morgan's orders. He's good at being other people. He's been pretending to be an elf for, oh, four hundred years or so now. They made him the Speaker, can you imagine?"

Aru frowned. "Is that why the elves have pulled in on themselves? I've hardly heard anything out of them for the last century."

"Indeed it is. Not only that, but while he never married, he fathered a child on an elven woman about three hundred years ago. Morgan, as you might imagine, wasn't very happy when she found out. Locked him in his room and wouldn't let him out for a week, she did. Then she told him in no uncertain terms to clean up the mess he'd made. Implying, of course, that he was supposed to kill everyone who carried his blood. That woman is completely insane."

"No more so than she's been for the last seven hundred years." Aru's voice was dry. "She's always been possessive about Mordred."

"This seems to go a bit beyond possessive. Anyway, surprisingly enough, Mordred's line were really not half-bad people. His son died of old age a little while ago, and I made sure that the one who found him would be outraged when she found that he was a half-elf, and would be sure to rase a fuss about it. With just a little bit of coaching and a bit of magical help from yours truly, she saw through the spell that made Mordred appear to be an elf. They didn't kill him, but they got closer than anyone has since Arthur. His grandson's family--him, his wife, and his daughter--escaped, though, and fled the Continent. He was close to his great-granddaughter, a girl named Elata. She's going to be a match for Morgan, if she lives long enough."

Aru raised an eyebrow. "She's that strong?"

"Stronger. Give her a century, and she'll be able to match Morgan spell for spell. Mordred was hedging his bets with her. Making sure that if things took a sour turn between him and his mother, he would have a weapon against her." She took a sip of her wine, her eyes distant. "Mordred and I were playing the game in earnest, then. I made sure they got to the coast all right and arranged for a ship. Mordred arranged for the Nechton priest to be killed when they were a day away from shore. The ship went down with all hands in one of the usual autumn storms. I tried to save them, but I only managed to get Elata. I left her in quite capable hands in Scotland, and I have no doubts she'll do fine."

"Who did you leave her with? Some farmer?" Marcus looked intently at Selket. "The outer islands aren't a friendly place for the blood of the aelt."

Selket shook her head. "No. An Epona priest, a white dragon named Cainnec. A member of your Clan, Aru, as far as I know."

The priest's eyebrows shot up. "He was my teacher, yes. And how did you manage to convince him to take her on?"

The dark-skinned woman grinned again. "I didn't. I dragged her ashore near the town I knew he was staying in, and counted on that Epona weakness for strays to do the rest of my work. She'll do fine, and Mordred thinks she's dead, so she's much safer than she was. I regret that I wasn't able to save her parents, but I think the girl will be better off where she is."

"Cainnec will set her feet on the right road, if anyone can," rumbled Aru.

Marcus asked, "You said something about a horse, Selket? How does that tie in?"

"Oh, that was a minor thing. I was spending some time figuring out what Mordred was up to in Gywellis, and that took me into the elven stables. They've got some unusual bloodlines in there. Mordred was in a foul temper one night, and he headed for one stall in particular. He used a glass flail on the stallion inside. Where I come from, that's not training, that's torture." She heard Aru suck his breath in between his teeth in outrage. "I fear I resorted to common horse thievery. I got him out of there and I don't think Mordred will ever be able to touch him again."

"Good." There was an edge in Aru's voice. "Did you get him to someone who could help him?"

"Into the hands of an Epona priest. He'll be fine." She did not mention deliberately planting the stallion in Cainnec and Elata's path. She'd felt badly about the girl losing both of her parents; she thought a horse might be, if not consolation, at least help her feel a little less lonely. The stallion had agreed readily enough. She only hoped he remembered his promise. "As far as I know, the next Speaker will be Jheris--he's of the Cartmage line, the same generation as Lanara, who currently holds Cartmage. He's generally a reasonable sort, if stiff-necked. I like him."

"I've met him." Marcus nodded. "He'll make a good Speaker." The conversation drifted, touching on what each of them had been doing in the six months since she had seen Marcus and the two years since she had seen Aru, until finally Selket stretched and claimed she was tired from her journey.

The corners of Aru's white eyes crinkled again. "You are welcome to stay in the Temple, but I believe that Marcus has a camp set up out on the mountain. I'll warn you that spring's still young, and it gets very cold at night at the moment. I find it delightful, but I'm sure you might not."

She wrinkled her nose impishly at the dragon. "Thank you for the warning, but I think I'll stay with Marcus, tonight at least. He and I have a lot of catching up to do." She looked at the druid sidelong, a sly smile lifting the corners of her mouth.

In response, Marcus rose, holding out his hand. "I believe that is my cue to say goodnight, Aru. I'll see you tomorrow."

The priest inclined his head. "Tomorrow, then."

After they had left, Aru remained in his study. He pulled out a book and made an effort to read, but instead ended up staring into space, wondering how his old teacher was getting along with the student that had been foisted upon him by Selket. Perhaps this spring there would be an occasion for a trip to Scotland, after all.

• Chapter One: Coming Home
• Interlude: The Dragon's Gift
• Chapter Two: Call and Answer
• Chapter Three: Circle of Fire
• Interlude: Child of Avalon
• Chapter Four: Ascent and Descent
• Interlude: Arcanis
• Chapter Five: Into Something Rich and Strange
• Chapter Six: Old Sins
• Chapter Seven: Never Close My Eyes
• Interlude: The River God's Weapon
• Chapter Eight: The Stars' Choir Vanished
• Chapter Nine: No Quarter
• Chapter Ten: The House of Cold Stone
• Chapter Eleven: To Sail You Home

© 2004 - 2006 Kris Millering.
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