I'm not usually so skittish, but the spider people eat elf children, and it being a while since they might have seen one, I was afraid they would make a mistake and acci-dentally chew off my arm, or take a bite out of me middle before they realized I was full grown."

Christe. His jaw tightened, yet he felt some relief. Compared to spider people, he must indeed seem as a savior.

"You should have killed me, if you thought that."

"I was trying, going for your throat, and 'tis the gods' truth that I don't know what's worse, that I missed, which could have been the death of me, or seein' that 'twas you, that I didn't miss a little more. Here, eat this." She came up with another piece of wet seedcake and gave it to him. 'Twas as bald an admission as he'd ever heard, yet there was some hint of remorse in it.

He took the cake and found it sweet, still redolent of clover honey. The taste heartened him. Next out of her pouches was a small bundle of wrapped leaves tied with petioles, the rasca. He knew about the salve. Moira used it on everything from scrapes to breaks, and its soothing touch would be welcome.

"Come and sit, so I can tend you." She dropped to the floor to sit cross-legged in front of him, artlessly arranging herself in a tangle of arms and legs.

Obeying for reason's sake and not because she had told him to-for it seemed she had done naught but order him around since she'd regained her voice-he sat down and gave himself over to her ministrations.

Mayhaps 'twas just her way of disspelling her fears, which he was all for, and the rewards for being this close to her were well worth the small annoyances. For certes the scent of the lavender she'd eaten was like the very breath of spring flowing into the cold, dark corner where they hid-and the view was unsurpassed. Her eyebrows were drawn close in concentration, two perfect black wings sweeping over long lashes and aquamarine eyes. For a moment, he'd thought she was going to cry again, but the crisis seemed to have passed, and without doubt she'd realized 'twas he who had rescued her. That knowledge heartened him even more than the seedcake.

She leaned in close, using the wet hem of her tunic to clean his face, and a length of her hair slipped over her shoulder. He watched it slide down and find a resting place across his thigh, where it dampened the leg beneath and made his mouth go dry. Aye, she stirred him, aright. Near ebony the strands were, a startling contrast to the pale fairness of her skin. He'd felt silk once, on a bishop's robes, and was sure her hair would have the same soft fluidity should he dare lift it with his fingers. He did not, but he was sorely tempted to steal one of her leaves. She had arboreal badges to spare, not only in the live cockades of oak, hazel, and rowan in her hair, but in the sinuous tattoos twining 'round her wrist and up her arm. He could see long, curved willow leaves and pairs of lance-shaped ash leaflets winding through the elfin runes marking her skin. A delicately lobed oak leaf, glistening with river water and no bigger than the center of his palm, dangled precariously above one of her pointed ears-magical things, those, intriguingly pretty when seen up close, and faintly erotic.

He shifted uncomfortably on the floor.

Gods, he wondered, would any Welsh maid entice him so?

With her fingers pressing the last of the rasca into Mychael's wound, Llynya stilled, startled into a moment of immobility by what she sensed. Her nose twitched. Not daring to move anything else, she kept her gaze on the herbal and the curve of his cheek, wondering at this unexpected turn and how it was possible that a man with a four-inch gash across his face who had been dunked in an ice-cold river from the waist down could be aroused-and the even greater improbability that it was she kindling his response.

Yet there was no one else about.

Mayhaps she'd changed even more than she'd thought, or more likely, she was mistaken. Would be a rare wonder indeed if anything got through her nose in one fragrant piece.

Double-checking, she closed her eyes and gave herself over to her next inhalation. Warmth flowed into her slow and easy, a sweet-edged heat wrapping around her senses and tracing a path that led to a memory she had forgotten... acool spring night in the Mid-Crevasse glade, moonlight shimmering on the entwined bodies of a man and a woman.

Her eyes opened on a start, but the deep-scent vision did not all dissipate. The warmth stayed with her, settling into her veins and kindling her own response.

Unbidden, her gaze drifted a few degrees lower, to Mychael's lips-soft skin caressed by his breath, a gentle indentation in the upper curve, the small nick of a scar near the rightside corner. He wanted to kiss her. In truth, he wanted more than a kiss.

And would she set her mouth to his? She knew kisses. Morgan had kissed her in the boar pit beneath Carn Merioneth, pressed his lips to hers in a sweet touch.

Aye, she was tempted to try kissing again, mayhaps overly so. The fascinating changes she sensed taking place between her and Mychael was a lure near impossible to resist. Beckoned by the breath warming their shared air, she moved a hairsbreadth closer and sniffed ever so quietly, more a trembling of her nostrils. The scents were soft and rich with a restlessness not his alone. With a kiss she could taste the mystery of those scents, let them dissolve on her tongue and flood her senses. She had not felt the desire for such before, not with Morgan, and not from Shay's brief kiss. Was this, then, an enchantment of Rhiannon's son? Some druid charm?

A warning sounded in her mind, making her pull back a bare degree.Sticks! He was far more dangerous than Aedyth thought, for she feared she could be caught in this spell. Was her heart not already racing in anticipation? She moved back to where she'd been and took his chin in her hand to scrub at a recalcitrant spot. The rasca had stopped the bleeding and would keep the wound from putrefying. "I could teach you how to counterblock the strike I used," she said, feigning ignorance of his state and applying common sense to her own. She would not be caught in the trap of a kiss.

"I did block you." Wincing, he showed her the proof, the bleeding cut on his wrist.

She released his chin and turned his wrist up to the light. Not only had she sliced his face open, but his knife-hand too. She'd probably ruined any chance she'd had of getting him to help her. He'd saved her and she'd done naught but hack into him.

"You're scent-blind," he said abruptly. "You can't smell friend from foe, or north from south, or danger when it's upon you."

" 'Tis a passing thing." She made her admission brief and scooped up another dab of rasca.

He caught her hand when she raised it to his cheek. "Then until it passes, you should not be allowed beyond Lanbarrdein. Bedwyr lies dead in the dark, and I would not have the same happen to you. Nor would Trig."

"Trig doesn't know." She pulled her arm free with a quick jerk even as he released her.

"He will soon enough."

"Not if you keep your silence. A simple promise could-"

"Promises made in the dark are easily broken in the light of day," he told her, then immediately wished he hadn't. The words had naught to do with what she'd asked; they were oft quoted advice for the lovelorn, which of course she was not. Nor was he, he added in silent disgust. The trouble he suffered from, while not all lust, was most decidedly not love.

"Mayhaps," she answered, "but I would have yours."

Sweet innocent. She nearly swayed him with the hesitancy of her request, as if she knew his promise might come with a price, but his course was clear-and did not include her.

"No."

Her mouth tightened, and after wiping the last of the rasca back onto its bed of leaves, she began retying the petioles.

"I would stand with you, Mychael ab Arawn."

Not so much as a flicker of emotion inflected her words, but 'twas the first time she'd spoken his name, and he was not unaffected. Just as quickly, he renamed himself a fool. 'Twas idle banter at best.

Rhuddlan would not listen to a lavender-addled maid should the tide of opinion turn against him.

"I stand alone." He always had, since he'd been five years old and ripped from family and hearth, and he saw no end in sight until Ddrei Goch and Ddrei Glas were at his side.

"So will I, if needs be," she said, pinning him with her gaze. Emotion aplenty inflected that statement, andit was all coolly convincing. She was the warrior again.

Stubborn wench, he thought, stifling an aggravated sigh. No Quicken-tree alive would choose to travel alone past Mor Sarff. Except for this one, it seemed, the one least likely to survive the journey.

"Why?" he asked. "What calls you so strongly into the dark?" She'd already gotten herself lost and half-frozen and frightened, and was scent-blind into the bargain. The spider people were still skulking about, and she knew she was their preferred first course. So what compelled her?

No answer was forthcoming.

His gaze skimmed the contours of her face, and for once he did not allow himself to be misled by her delicate beauty. Rather, he noted the furrowing of her brow, and her eyes, grown old before their time, and the resolute line of her mouth as she bent to her task. The years did not lie as tenderly upon her as he'd thought. The sadness he'd first seen months past in the oak grove above Carn Merioneth, and again in Riverwood, was still with her, a sadness that had begun when Morgan ab Kynan had been defeated by another's blade.

Aye, she'd lost a friend.

Or had Morgan been her. lover?

The question formed all too clear a picture in Mychael's mind, and he swore to himself. He'd been ludicrously naive. He had known Morgan and the thief's easy way with women. Llynya was of an age.

Both Ceridwen and Lavrans had still been mourning Morgan's loss when they'd left to go north.

The elf-maid must be in mourning, too, and mayhaps contemplating a foolhardy venture into the wormhole that would surely bring her death. Did she think she would find Morgan in there?

"There is no margin for error in a wormhole, Llynya," he said, restraining himself from grabbing her and shaking some sense into her. "None, especially in the weir gate. No safe passage if a traveler missteps, and the cost of failure is higher than any sane soul would choose to pay."

"You are here," she countered, her chin lifting.

"By the grace of God I survived, but I would not trust your life to the same. Nor would Rhuddlan. You know as well as I that the wormholes are forbidden to the Quicken-tree." And there was the end of it.

Rhuddlan had forbidden him the same, but he felt no compulsion to obey. He was not Quicken-tree.

"I am only half Quicken-tree," she said, sending his unvoiced argument back at him with a hint of challenge, as if she dared him to gainsay her to do whatever she willed.

A fierce chit, aright, he thought, rising to his feet, sure to give someone trouble. He'd been wise to avoid her up to now, and as soon as he got her out of the caves, he'd take to doing it again. No good could come from trailing after her. He'd meet someone else to kiss, someone who was not in love with another.

"And the other half?" he asked, handing back her dreamstone blade.

"Yr Is-ddwfn." She stood up and took the knife.

"Then I'll make sure Rhuddlan also forbids your Yr Is-ddwfn half from coming below." " 'Tis not so easy to forbid the Yr Is-ddwfn."

"Mayhaps not," he conceded, sheathing his own dreamstone blade in preference of the iron dagger, "but I'm sure Rhuddlan is more than equal to the task." No maid, however brokenhearted and bent on self-destruction, would get past Rhuddlan. Nor would she get past him. With a gesture for her to follow, he started back down the tunnel.