Richard had ransomed the English nobles among the legates and aides who had fallen afoul of Saladin in the treaty camp, but had left the rest of them to their fates, especially the two young Welsh princes guaranteed to give him trouble back home, Caradoc of Balor and Morgan ab Kynan. Dain had merely been their expendable companion, though the English had good enough reason to rid themselves of Danes. By the time peace had been made in October of 1192 and Richard had sailed for Europe, Dain and Morgan had been four months in the red sands of the Nefud Desert, sold by Saladin as slaves to Jalal. Caradoc had been imprisoned with them in the beginning, but had been bought by another trader, Kalut ad-Din, within weeks of their incarceration. Such was the fate of the youngest captives. The older men had fared much worse.

Yes, Dain almost said to Ceridwen, he'd been with the Lionheart, but the Lionheart had not been with him. Only his strong aversion to confessions of any sort saved him from the folly.

"Aye, I was with King Richard," he finally answered. " 'Twas hot an altogether pleasant experience. Are you going to open your present?"

"Have you not been home in all the time since your return from the Holy Land?"

Persistence was one of her strengths and would surely be her downfall, if not his.

"I did not leave theHoly Land near as quickly as the English king," he said obliquely, hoping she would let the matter drop. He should have known better.

"What were you doing?"

He gave a short laugh. "Exploring strange new lands." Very strange lands. "Wasn't it dangerous to stay after the others left?"

"There is still a Latin kingdom in Palestine, and I was very well protected." Actually, he'd been guarded twenty-four hours a day after his trick with the dagger. The pope couldn't have gotten to him, which was a very good thing for the pontiff.

"What about the-"

"Shhh." He softly hushed her, laying his finger against her lips. "Open your present. It's magic."

Her eyes instantly lit up with a mixture of curiosity and excitement, and he wondered why he had not thought to tell her such before. If naught else, he should have learned by now that magic was the key to her heart.

She tempered her eagerness with care, gently unrolling the sheepskin to reveal the prize within. For a long moment she stared at the gift without touching it. Then she lightly ran one finger down the ivory handle.

"A mirror," she murmured, continuing her exploration by moving her finger up around the circular mount, also made of ivory. Inside the mount was a round of polished metal covered with glass. " 'Tis beautifully strange."

"Made by a Norse skald Toranen swore to me was from Thule."

"Thule?"

"A place said to lie beyond the farthest known north, a place many men seek, but none has seen."

"Except for the mirror maker," she teased, sending him a sidelong glance from beneath her lashes.

"Aye." He grinned. "Except for the mirror maker and mayhaps someday me."

"You would go so far north?"

" 'Twas my destination before Wydehaw caught my eye, to go north and evermore north and let the cold freeze the desert heat from my veins."

"Was it so hot as that?"

"Hotter," he said, telling her more than she knew, but doing it with an ingenuousness that gave none of the truth away, that the heat still crawled through him some nights, burning him.

"What are these holes?" she asked, returning her attention to the mirror. Toward the top of the glass were two almond-shaped holes, side by side.

"Keys to the magic." He turned the mirror over, laying it facedown on the sheepskin, and showed her the runic letters carved around the holes in back. "The runes speak of a god's journey in search of the love in men's souls." He glanced up. "True love, no less, the touchstone of every poet's fancy."

"You don't believe in true love?" "With all my heart," he assured her, though he let a grin belie the words. "I fear 'tis true love that does not believe in me."

"Posh." She dismissed him with a flick of her wrist. "True love believes in all of us."

"The runes say the gift of immortality, life everlasting, lies within true love."

"Then 'tis the love of God the god was searching for." Her brow crinkled. "That's strange isn't it? A pagan god looking for love from our God."

"Your God," he corrected her.

She gave him a vexed glance. "There is only one God."

"Allahu akbar!" he agreed. "God is great!"

"You speak too many tongues." She took another swallow of wine and gave him the flagon. "Sometimes I think I'm in theTowerofBabel ."

At that, he laughed again. "Sometimes I think the same. Here." He handed her the mirror. "Hold it up to my face and tell me what you see."

Ceridwen scooted closer to him while he set the flagon aside and lit a candle to put next to them. If there was love in his soul, she dearly wanted to see it. "Should the mirror be closer to you or to me?"

"To me, so my eyes are in place of yours while the glass reflects your face."

She did as he instructed, bringing the mirror between them, and instantly she felt a breath of wind brush against her left cheek, then her shoulder and arm, spiraling down and reaching toward Dain. The long strands of his hair stirred in the breeze, lifting to caress and twine with her hand where she held the mirror.

The thing was magic, powerful magic. Her attention shifted from the feel of the wind to his eyes, and the sense of profound magic deepened. 'Twas her face she saw, every curve and line, but the eyes were an abyss, rich, dark, fathomless, thick lashed and terribly beautiful.

The runes lied. The god had not searched for true love-though her heart yearned to tell her that she saw some evidence of love looking back at her-but for the way to wisdom without pain. In this the mirror was clear, Dain had not found such a path. The wisdom residing in his eyes had all been wrought by pain. Despair shaded part of the path, degradation another. Fear had been there, and a thousand thousand hurts had lain along the track to wound and scar.

Unable to bear what she saw, she lowered the mirror and averted her gaze. She should not have looked.

No one should be laid so bare before another.

"What did you see?" he asked, and she could only shake her head. "Was there so little?"

"No. Too much," she answered.

"And none of it good?" Her silence condemned him, and she heard him sigh.

"Well," he began, "the mirror does not see all then, for I swear there is some good in me. Not much, but some, and of late, mayhaps even some love."

"Had naught to do with love," she told him, feeling awful.

"No love?"

She shook her head again.

"Then what?"

She would have kept her silence except for knowing he deserved to be told, if for no other reason than to protect himself from another who might try to look inside his soul.

"The knowledge that comes from suffering," she said, still not daring to meet his gaze. "The mirror showed much of this knowledge in you."

"Ah," was all he said, then, "Well, we are friends, are we not?"

"Aye," she said, and in that moment knew it to be true. They had become friends.

"Then you are unlikely to bandy it about."

Her head came up. "Never."

"My secrets are safe with you."

"Forever," she vowed.

"And yours with me." He held up the mirror and smiled in that way of his, making her wonder if he'd been teasing her all along. "Shall I take a peek into your soul, dear Ceridwen?"

'Twas a dismaying thought, knowing the power of the mirror, yet her reluctance was more for his sake than her own.

"I have it on good authority that 'tis not a pretty sight," she warned him. "And though I have learned to live with the darkness lurking in the corners of my soul, I would spare you, my friend."

Dain felt his smile fade. She was serious, and he could well imagine the pious authority that had pronounced her a sinner.

"Dear friend," he said softly, reaching up to caress her chin. "There can be no darkness on your soul that I have not seen even blacker in another, probably my own."

Still she denied him, laying her hand on his when he would have brought the mirror between them.

Reluctantly, he settled back against the wall and resigned himself to watching her in the shifting light of candle flame and hearth fire. A breeze was blowing around the tower, swirling up bits ofrihadinash. There would be rain before dawn; he could smell it on the wind. The mirror was no more magic than he, yet she'd seen true. 'Twas Madron's fault for peering around in his mind with her damned Druid's sleep. The witch had stirred things up.

"I did not mean for the gift to make you sad," he said.

" 'Tis not the mirror that saddens me, but that you suffered."

"And now you are suffering. Should we both be sad together?"

She looked up at him, and the candlelight revealed silent tears coursing down her cheeks.

Pure instinct compelled him to move toward her, his back coming off the wall, his arm gathering her close, his other hand cupping her cheek, and everything inside his heart welling up and spilling over like a wave washing over a dam, flowing toward her. "Ceri, do not cry," he murmured. "Do not cry for me."

She paid him no heed, her tears running beneath his fingers and down the center of his palm. He wiped the dampness off her cheek with his thumb and was struck anew by the childlike softness of her skin.

"Hush,min koerlighed." He called her his love, comforting her and kissing her on the brow, indulging himself despite the caution sounding in his head. He kissed her temple and the side of her nose, consoling her, and listened to the cry of caution grow ever fainter. Of their own volition, his lips slid down to the corner of her mouth, seeking contact, and 'twas there that comfort and consolation gave way to desire, in the place where breath and tears pooled in a delicate, wine-scented curve. He paused in the sudden stillness and felt her do the same.

"Dain..." His name was the barest of sighs falling from her lips. Her eyes were closed, her mouth partially open, her body warm and alive in his arms.

He could have stopped and taken no more. Verily the thought crossed his mind, yet he turned his mouth more fully onto hers, savoring the taste of her, like nectar and the sea. He bit her gently, so gently, along the fullness of her lower lip and at the corners of her mouth, one side and then the other, and soothed with his tongue, until his message became clear and her instincts responded.

With the opening of her mouth, he did not hesitate. He opened his own mouth wider and slid his tongue down the length of hers. A groan was released from deep in her throat, filling him with the echoes of her pleasure. There was nothing sweet about the sound. It had been born in the surprise of lust and dragged up from the core of her being. She clung to him, and he kissed her, again and again. His mouth roamed at will over the curves of her face, over her cheeks and brow and jaw, returning as often to her lips as she did to his, but he went no farther. He did not dally at her ear or let his teeth graze the side of her neck.

He did not fill his palm with her breast, and he licked nothing beyond the inside of her mouth-for a kiss was a kiss and not more.

In the way of such things, the desperation between them weakened its hold, transforming itself into the delight of mutual exploration; a dangerous turn, Dain knew, for he would allow himself far more leeway in the pursuit of delight than he ever would under the influence of desperation. Yet if kept within strict limits, he assured himself, kissing alone could not fail to reach a natural end, and despite the allure of delight and the seductive forays of her mouth, he would find the end of their kiss in time.In time.

The moon coursed across midnight in the sky, trailing clouds and stars. Beltaine Eve had begun. All of Nemeton's cosmic map circled over their heads, the zodiacal beasts strung out in slowly swirling chaos: Aldebaran, Eye of the Bull in Taurus, followed by Fomalhaut, the beginning of the Water in Aquarius;Ram passing through Fish in a lazy circumference.

Ceridwen had not known there could be so much gentleness in strength, that one touch upon her mouth could make her whole body soar as if on wings, that the taste of a man would be like honey upon her tongue, making her want more, always more. She could not get close enough, yet she was closer to him than she'd ever been to anyone, her breasts crushed against his chest, her fingers winding through his hair, her mouth everywhere upon his face. The touch, scent, taste, and feel of him conjured a miracle with every breath; his kiss solved a thousand mysteries of life. Man was magic to woman.

Dain knew not how long the whole of it lasted before he lifted his mouth from hers, but he knew 'twas a kiss he would not forget. His body thrummed with the alive-ness of it. His mind rejoiced in the pure wonder of it. The kiss had been perfect.

He wanted more. Much more. Not getting it was going to be the price he paid for his indulgence. In her own fashion, Edmee had proved him still a man in his desires. Ceridwen had proved him a man in his needs.

Holding her close, he forced a calming breath into his lungs and looked up at the stars. Vindemiatrix, the bright star of the Virgin, floated by on its rod overhead, dipping low with the breeze and coming alongside the Lion's Heart in Leo. He almost smiled. Fate was truly guided by an ironic hand. His birth under the Red Fire Star put him firmly in Leo, and just as firmly, the virgin was in his heart. Her head rested in the curve of his shoulder, her breath soft and hot on his neck, inviting disaster. The kiss was over, only the fire in his loins remained. He needed to be alone.

"You must go to bed," he said, attempting a light tone. There was no reason for her to know of the new suffering he'd brought on himself. " 'Tis time for sleep."

"I do not want to sleep." She nestled closer, and he immediately began extricating himself from their embrace, rising to his feet.

"To bed with you," he said.

She rose with him, and in the midstofit, took his hand in hers. He wished she had not done so, for even her innocent touch made him yearn. Worse still, she stood too close, her eyes downcast, her clothing brushing against his, her thumb caressing the back of his hand, keeping him from his escape.

She did not speak, but she did not need to speak. What she wanted was very clear.

"I cannot," he said, his voice soft with regret, his fingers wrapping around hers.

"Was the kiss so poor?" She had turned shy on him again. He could see naught but the top of her head shining golden in the yellow light from the fire.

He dared not tell her the truth, and when he said nothing, she withdrew her hand from his and stepped away.

"Mayhaps the Boar will not want me either."

"Ceri..." He grasped her arm without thinking, and found himself still with nothing he could say-except the truth. "If I kiss youagain, it will not be sleep that whiles away the hours of the night." "I know, yet I still would ask."

Someday she would surprise the life out of him.

"And I say you do not know." His voice was harsh with frustration. "Your virgin dreams would not last a moment in my bed." One touch from her would have given her what she professed to want, but she had not known enough to put her hand between his legs.

"Virgin dreams are not meant to last."

Truth rang in her words, and too much hope. And wasn't that what he wanted? For her to hope and not give up and finally to push him over the edge of reason with her sweet implorations? He had played the innocent for Jalal, and he knew what a powerful seduction innocence was, especially to a consummate seducer.

The realization gave him immediate pause. A chill ran through his blood. Was he to become like his teacher then? Would that be Jalal's final triumph?

"I cannot," he repeated with conviction, though he still held her arm.

"And I cannot sleep," she told him honestly. "Not like this. You have... I want..." She stumbled over the words, trying to explain what did not need explaining.

He watched her growing shame and frustration change into anger, and knew himself to be a low bastard.

He should not have done such to her. She might be virgin, but she was still human, and she was young.