"Did she eat the chicken pottage?" Aye, and a good portion of bread too. "And you, dear Edmee? Did you also sup?" When she answered, he understood that he no longer had any nut and honey sweetmeats in his cupboard, for she and Ceridwen had enjoyed every last sticky piece. He grinned at the audacity of the maid. The sweets had come dear. "Mayhaps you'll come another day, after I have replenished my supply of comfits." A teasing light lit Edmee's eyes, and his smile broadened. She laughed then, the silence of the sound in no way diminishing her enjoyment. Edmee loved nothing better than getting the best of him, and God knew, she had a rare talent for that.

He was tempted to reach for her, but it wasn't to be. One of his pots bubbled over, sending a pale golden liquid hissing into the brazier. By the time he'd saved the pan of egg distillate, she was gone. He caught the last flash of her skirt as she disappeared up the stairs and dropped something behind her. A rolled bit of parchment it was, floating to the floor with uncommon grace.

He wiped his hands on a rag before picking up the message and bringing it to his nose. Madron. There was no wax seal, which in no way meant the letter was not important or private. Madron never lowered herself to flagrant measures when the subtle sufficed. The scent of smoke and the herbselagowas enough to warn any local ruffian of whose wrath he would engender should he violate either the messenger or the message. A thief from outside the demesne would not fare so well.

The witch had shown Dain the magic of it one night, taking a letter written to another and passing it over a brazier of coals holding a sprig of the herb. Smoke had curled up and around the folds of parchment while she'd chanted the person's name. When she'd given it to him, the letter had been warm but unchanged. He'd felt it all around and found nothing, then he'd opened it and damn near burned his fingers on the flame that burst forth and consumed the message. Much to his annoyance Madron had not shared the secret of the trick, and he'd been too full of wine that night to discern it for himself.

Not so this afternoon. The only wine he'd had was what he'd put into his still.

The letter opened without mishap, but not without effect. 'Twas an invitation to dine in the witch's own lair, always an interesting evening, and this one promised to be even more so. He had never been encouraged to bring a guest, let alone commanded to bring one. Ceridwen, it seemed, was the exception.

Madron wanted to meet the maid.

The Cypriot picked her way through the moonlit forest, her warm breath clouding the night air, her delicate hooves snapping twigs and crushing dry leaves. Ceridwen flinched at each sound, sure they were announcing their folly to wolves and any number of beasts and brigands.

"These woods are safe, else I would not have brought you," Dain said at her back, shifting his hold on the reins to better cover her with his cloak.

His assurance helped but little when combined with his nearness and her unshakable conviction that they were being watched.

" 'Tis not far," he added-as if that helped. She saw no reason to meet the woman named Madron, especially when it meant riding through the Wroneu Wood at night. She'd told him as much and had made not a dent in his course of action.

He had not won all, though. One good thing had come from the night's journey. She now knew there was another way out of the tower besides the door in the middle chamber, which, unlike any other she'd ever encountered, did not open when the latch was lifted. There were no locks on the damn thing. It looked ordinary enough, but it did not open. The first time she'd struggled with it, she'd thought mayhaps it was the weight that kept it from moving-'twas a huge door set into bluestone. But she was strongernow, and when she'd found herself alone for a few moments that morning, she'd tried it again. Nothing had moved. Escape, if it was to come, she'd realized, would have to come by another route, and tonight Dain had shown her the way. True, she'd been blindfolded, but she had other senses. There was a door in the lower chamber, a vile, sulfurous-smelling room, and beyond the door was a tunnel leading to freedom.

A shiver coursed down her spine. She had not liked the tunnel, the closeness and the cool damp of it, the echoes of sound bouncing from wall to wall. It had reminded her of another long-ago place that was reaching out for her again, calling for her to return-the caves beneath Merioneth and the passage markedpryf.

"Are you cold?" he asked.

"Nay, 'tis only-Ahh." She let out a gasped cry as the mare snorted and reared up.

Dain swore and lunged forward, flattening Ceridwen against his chest as he grabbed a fistful of the Cypriot's mane.

"Nej!" he commanded, pulling the horse's head down by the reins. She obeyed immediately and stood trembling beneath them, her flanks heaving. "Llynya, damn your hide, show yourself before the mare's heart bursts from fright." He called the words out into the trees, but was answered with naught but silence.

Her pulse racing, Ceridwen searched the overhanging branches and reached for the gold-and-silver dagger she'd hidden in her boot. Her instincts had been right. They were being watched.

"Llynya," the sorcerer warned in a tone that set the hairs on Ceridwen's nape on edge. He'd used much the same voice the night she'd tried to sic Numa on him. Llynya would do well to run while she had the chance, though what a woman was doing in the forest alone at night was beyond Ceridwen's imagining.

"O Great One," a female voice boomed out, coming from on high.

The Cypriot shied to the left, into a patch of gorse, and was startled all over again by the prick of a spine. Ceridwen pulled her knife, prepared to fight.

"What's this?" Dain grabbed her wrist and turned it to throw light on the blade, letting the horse prance between shafts of moonlight and the shadows.

"Mayhaps my life," she said through gritted teeth, trying to jerk free and failing. "Or yours."

"I think not." He disarmed her with one hand and hollered again, "Llynya!"

A faint rustling was heard from above, followed by a branch falling to the ground and a soft curse.

"Aye, you're losing your touch, sprite." Dain laughed and pulled Ceridwen even closer, much to her dismay. "Come hither and state your case."

" 'Tis not my case, O Great One, but Rhuddlan who bids you welcome in his camp." Another curse followed the pronouncement, then a dark-haired angel fell out of the sky and landed in a thicket of elderberry bushes. "Jesu." Dain was off the horse and racing for the woman even before she hit. "Llynya." He pushed his way into the bushes and bent over the slight form.

Ceridwen didn't wait to discover if the foolhardy Llynya had died. She leaned close over the Cypriot's neck and kicked the horse hard. The mare broke into a run, only to be brought up short.

"Bliv!" Dain barked out the command, and Ceridwen's escape came to a hoof-sliding halt.

She kicked the horse again and was rewarded with a nip to her leg. She would have given it another try, but suddenly she was surrounded. Half a dozen men dropped from their hiding places in the trees, each one landing with a lightness that belied the height from which they'd jumped. Like nighthawks they were, with their hair streaming down behind them and their cloaks spread out like wings.

Four instantly nocked arrows into their bows and stood facing out from the circle they made around the edge of the clearing. The fifth sprinted toward Ceridwen and took the Cypriot's reins. The sixth, their leader by his bearing, strode directly to Llynya and Dain. All the newcomers were tall and slender, with broad shoulders, long legs, and all but one had pale hair that shimmered in the moonlight. Their cloaks were multicolored in shades of gray and green, their leggings and tunics the same, all belted with braided strips of a tawny hue. More strange than the commonness of their dress were the marks upon their faces, broad swaths of darkness painted on in lines both horizontal and diagonal. Ceridwen near swooned, sure she and Dain had brought wood demons down upon themselves.

"How fares she, Lavrans?" The leader spoke, his voice soft and deep, and clear like the winds of spring, not at all like any demon she'd imagined.

"She is of the Quicken-tree clan, Rhuddlan," Dain said. "It will take more than an elderberry bush and a fall from an oak to kill her. See, already she comes back to us."

Assured somewhat by Dain's familiarity, but heartily wishing he had not taken her knife, Ceridwen strained to see around him and the man called Rhuddlan to where the woman was beginning to stir.

" 'Twas Shay I sent to find you, not Llynya," Rhuddlan said, "but she is always overeager to prove herself. We caught up with her just as she fell."

"I didn't fall." Still splayed across the elderberry, the woman spoke in a weak voice. "Shay pushed me."

"Did not," the young man holding the Cypriot's reins said, his shoulders squaring and his chin jutting out.

His paint was diagonal, as were all the bowmen's, leading from his right temple to the left side of his jaw, and his hair was dark, near black. "Ye slipped."

"Slipped with your hand pressin' on my back," Llynya retorted with surprising strength.

"I was trying to keep you from breakin' your neck."

"And you knocked me clean off my perch with all your care."

No woman, this, Ceridwen thought, listening to them bicker. Llynya sounded no more than a girl. A tousled head lifted up from the bushes between Dain and Rhuddlan. Twigs and leaves were stuck this way and that in the tangled and plaited hair surrounding the imp's dirty, but otherwise unmarked face. She stuck her tongue out at the stoic Shay, confirming Ceridwen's guess. " 'Twould be safer to let them resolve the shoving match in camp," Dain suggested, helping Rhuddlan free the trapped Llynya.

"Aye." Rhuddlan laughed and dusted the girl's bot-torn before setting her loose. She disappeared in a twinkling, melting into the forest with nary a sound to mark her passing.

The unnatural feat brought a frown to Ceridwen's face, tugging as it did at a memory she could not quite bring to the fore.

"Come," Rhuddlan said, clapping his hand on Dain's shoulder. "Share our meal and let us fill you with drink."

"The air fair reeks with hospitality this e'en, Rhuddlan," Dain said, smiling at his friend. "Madron has also invited me to sup."

"That one will do naught but work you over," Rhuddlan warned with a knowing grin. "Let her wait until morn."

"She takes to waiting like an unmilked cow," Dain said dryly.

"Aye," the Quicken-tree leader agreed, "but we travel north before dawn, and I would talk with you."

"North?" Dain repeated, not bothering to hide his surprise. "You could have hardly more than arrived, and are weeks early, at that." The people of Quicken-tree did not often come to Wroneu Wood before Beltaine. "What awaits you so urgently in the north?"

"Trouble at the least," Rhuddlan said, his expression growing somber. "Mayhaps more."

The Quicken-tree camp was set deep in the heart of the woods, approachable only by a trail that wound a narrow path behind the cascade of a thundering waterfall. Ice crystals glazed the water-worn track, glinting in the torchlight and adding treachery to each step. Dain led the way, the river sheeting in a liquid arc over his head.

He had not been to the secluded grove of oak and rowan since the Yule, when the river had been frozen and the trees had been deep in snow. He'd spent the night alone, nursing a strange melancholy and tending a fire in the remains of one of the previous summer's willow shel-ters. 'Twas the first time he'd been in the grove alone; Rhuddlan and his people had long since left. They were always gone before the first snow and never returned until after the last one. Summer folk they were, with the freshness of spring always about them, new and green like tender young shoots. Except for the bowmen. "Liosalfar" they were called, and they had the demeanor of an elite guard.

Madron knew them well, though she'd said little beyond the advice she'd given him when he'd first come to Wydehaw, that any service he could provide the Quicken-tree would be repaid tenfold.

Dain smiled. Madron was a witch. He had no doubt that she had known exactly what service Rhuddlan and his people would need of him and exactly how much it would cost him to provide it. They wanted nothing less than on one night a year, May Eve, that he who believed in nothing should believe enough for all of them. Beltaine, they called the night in an older tongue, and Galan Mai in an even more ancient language, but by any name the night was filled with the heavy magic of a fecund, blossoming earth. His smile faded as he pulled his cloak tighter around himself. It had been a lot to ask of a cynic, yet time and again he returned to the Quicken-tree. Their demands were not so great that he could not comply, and they paid him well enough: this year in cinnabar, the year before in gold. Their first gift had been the Cypriot, freshly foaled from Rhuddlan's mare.

The Quicken-tree leader was generous with his knowledge of the planets and the stars too, and was especially learned when it came to the elements of the earth. He had also known Nemeton, builder of theHartTower .

In truth, Dain had come to look forward to his time with the strange, landless folk who wandered at will, bound up in a religion that no longer existed except in their own hearts.Wales was full of pauper princes, men with a noble lineage and little else, men like Morgan. Rhuddlan and his band fared better than most, carrying with them no more than the poorest desert tribes did, but never going hungry, and never-reduced to wearing rags to keep out the cold.

The midway point of the water track was marked by a rock jutting out of the overhanging ceiling. The massive stone sliced an opening in the falls, leaving a space for the river fog to gather into a misty, earthbound cloud. Farther back, a cave entrance loomed darkly, sucking little wisps of vapor toward its mouth. Dain looked over his shoulder to check Ceridwen's location before stepping into the mists.

Rhuddlan brought up the rear of the small band, his gaze straying often to Rhiannon's daughter, searching in vain for signs of the mother. For all the fairness of Ceridwen's face, a softness was missing, a softness of spirit that had enabled Rhiannon to stand in the gateway of time and see the present clearly. He had been in the caves the last time she had done so, the night men had brought war to Carn Merioneth, the night she had died.

He would have saved her life if he could have; but all the fighters of Quicken-tree and Carn Merioneth together hadn't been able to hold the keep against Gwrnach and his war band. All of Quicken-tree had been unable to save Nemeton. There had been only one victory for Rhuddlan that night. Deep in the caves, much deeper than the place where a maid had used fire to protect the ancient ones, he and another had drawn the ether up from the earth and the tides and had sealed the doorway to thepryf'sdark maze; and by so doing, had sealed their own fate.

They had not had a choice, not with Rhiannon dead and Nemeton dying and all of Carn Merioneth in flames and overrun by men. The union of the two, forged in the crucible of the dragon wine, was of the Sun and the Moon, was the weir of balance, and it had been torn asunder. The sanctity of Carn Merioneth had been breached. With chaos ruling above and all of Quicken-tree on the run, the gateway could not be left open and vulnerable.

For fifteen years they had been exiled from the land beyond the labyrinth, unable by themselves to break the seal. Nemeton, their Beirdd Braint, a privileged bard, had been lost to them, but Rhuddlan knew another always came.In time, in time.

And so, in time, another had come. Dain Lavrans, a mage who, Rhuddlan knew, didn't fully understand his own adeptness and skills. There were subtle levels of power within himself that Lavrans had yet to discover, and others he had yet to control. The paths to such discovery and control were wound throughout theHartTower , hidden within the structure and yet blatantly exhibited for those who could see. Certainly Lavrans had found enough of interest to keep him in residence.

The Dane had been the one to open the Druid Door, closed tight and unbreachable for all the yearssince Nemeton's banishment. The feat had been beyond the skills of the hundreds who had tried, hoping to gain Baron D'Arbois's favor and his prize of gold. Lavran's success where so many others had failed had brought him the double-edged blessings of Rhuddlan's patronage and Madron's scrutiny. So far, the sorcerer had survived both.

Now the north was again in turmoil, and they had need not only of Lavrans, but of another like Rhiannon. Rhuddlan doubted if the woman riding the Cypriot would suffice. There was strength in her, to be sure-he felt it even from a distance-but no softness. She would break before she would bend, doing none of them any good.

The mists ahead of him swirled with a gust of warm air, earthy and rich, startling the woman. He followed her wary gaze to the mouth of the cave, and a surge of excitement laced with unease pulsed into his veins.

Someone was trying to break the seal, someone with an unsure touch. He'd sensed the stirrings of Ddrei Goch and Ddrei Glas in the deep beyond, and he'd felt the crude power of the one calling them ripple through the earth and rouse thepryf. 'Twould be good to go home again, but not at the cost of having strangers invade the dragon nest.

Chapter 10.

Lanterns were tied to tree branches throughout the grove, glowing like low-hung stars and warming a night wind filled with the scent of budding flowers and the soft nickering of horses. People were here and there amongst the rowans. Ceridwen had glimpsed Edmee in one of the groups, seeming quite at home.

The maid had lifted a hand in greeting and smiled before going about her business. A few people were making camp under the huge, graying oak that rose up at the base of a densely wooded limestone cliff, the western defense of the hidden place the Quicken-tree called "Deri." To the east and north of the grove the trees and thickets gradually grew into an impassable tangle of vegetation called The Bramble.

The river guarded the south.

Ceridwen learned all this during the meal, surrounded as she was by women pleased to talk about their home. There were apple trees in the wood, they told her, and hazelnuts grew close by, along with dewberries and mulberries. Grain they harvested from the wild grass.

'Twasn't wheat, Ceridwen thought, taking another bite of the small cakes they'd served. Nor barley, oats, or rye. The cakes weren't spiced, yet were nonetheless flavorful. The flavor of what, she couldn't guess.

"You've been hurt," a woman named Moira said, her fingers stroking the scar along Ceridwen's temple.

Moira had a cherub's face composed of soft curves, rose-blushed cheeks, and grass-green eyes. Her hair was a honey brown and plaited into a crown around her head. Like all the others, her tunic was made from a cloth with patchwork shades of gray and green, though in better light Ceridwen noticed the gray shimmered more like silver and the green shifted hues with every movement of the cloth, not that there was much cloth to move. The women's tunics were far shorter than anything Ceridwen had ever seen, falling to just past their knees. Startling enough, but nothing like the shock she'd felt when aninadvertent glance had shown them to be wearing braies with their hoseen coulisse.

Convents were not courts of fashion, yet Ceridwen couldn't fathom that women's clothing could have changed so drastically in fourteen years. The dresses she'd seen at Wydehaw had seemed normal enough.

"Is this Dain's healing work?" Moira asked, her fingers again stroking down the side of Ceridwen's face.

"Aye," she said, and wondered at the lightness of the woman's touch. 'Twas as if the tips of Moira's fingers were warmed by an inner fire.

" 'Tis good work," Llynya said, her hands busy as she combed and plaited Ceridwen's hair into the little braids she'd promised to make. A thousand at least, she'd sworn, mayhaps more. The sprite had claimed Ceridwen for her own, staying close to her where they all sat on thick rugs in a lean-to of woven willow wands. The rugs were of exceptional quality, uncommonly soft and heavy and woven in the most intricate sinuous patterns. Ceridwen could scarce keep her hands from rubbing along them.

"Aye," another young woman said, "but he should have brought her to us." She clicked her tongue and reached out to touch the scar. Her fingers, too, felt warm and soothing.

"We weren't here yet, Elen," Llynya said, her voice like birdsong in Ceridwen's ear.

"Then Madron should have sent for me, at least," Moira said. "Elen, bring me therascasalve."

The younger woman excused herself and went to do as she was bid.

"Madron could not have known," Ceridwen said. "My own traveling companions didn't know what had happened to me until well after Lavrans had locked me in his tower."

Moira dismissed the explanation with a wave of her hand. "Madron knows everything."

"Locked?" Llynya asked, her confusion showing in the tilt of her head. The tumbled mess of her coal-black braids and twigs shifted with the gesture. For all the care and attention she was lavishing upon Ceridwen's unruly curls, she'd given no notice to her own. "The Druid Door has not been locked for years."

"I've brought Aedyth's salve," Elen said, returning from the neighboring lean-to. " 'Tis her newest batch."

"This will set you right." Moira smoothed a dab of the stuff onto Ceridwen's skin, but the patient's interest was focused on Llynya, who obviously knew something about the damn door.

"It won't open," Ceridwen said. "I've tried. The latch lifts, but the door won't open."

"Did you speak the magic words?" Llynya asked, her nimble fingers making quick work of one plait after another, each bound with the tiniest strip of silver-gray cloth.

"I know no magic words."

"Ah, there's your problem." The girl laughed and leaned forward, placing a kiss upon Ceridwen's cheek.

"You must get Dain to teach you the magic words." Ceridwen lifted her hand to where the kiss warmed her skin. Sweet green-eyed child. There was much she wanted to learn from Dain Lavrans, especially in magic words, though she had yet to approach him on the subject. She looked around the grove, searching until she found him near the oak.

He and Rhuddlan sat on the leaf-covered ground, apart from the others making camp in the maze of the giant tree's roots. The gnarled curves swept as high as a man's waist close to the trunk, providing shelter and privacy. The boy Shay was acting as their cupbearer, taking the two men murrey, small cakes, and flagons of warm honeymead dipped out of a cauldron set amidst a circle of banked coals in the middle of the grove. Dain and Rhuddlan appeared deep in conversation over the small fire burning in the brazier set between them.

"He has one very special word he uses," Llynya said, her voice growing thoughtful. " 'Tis a strange one, it is, 'sezhamey.' 'Twas what he said the first time he opened the door and won the tower and the gold."