187.

It was an image they could understand. Padrec held up the Chi-Rho again. "Salmon gern has learned in her dignity that this is no easy sign to follow, but what fhain . has ever known an easy life? This magic is not that thee fear, but that thee believe, even as Dismas, the thief who died with Jesu."

Padrec passed the Chi-Rho to Drust and took the iron bar from the forge. "Be gerns here who have made strong magic for a's people- Who will be the first to laugh at Blackbar? Who will be strong as a dying thief?"

"Here!"

Dorelei did it, and Padrec understood why where a year ago he wouldn't. He'd cut her from one comfort, Cru from another, the Venicones from her mother. She darted at Bruidda, took her hand, and pulled the startled woman to Padrec. "The biood of Mabh be first."

"Yah!"

Bruidda was stunned, shrinking as far as possible from the iron but unable to pull away from Dorelei with- out a loss of presence. "Girl-"

"Sister," Dorelei prompted in a tone of honey and steel.

"Did bless thee once in thy fear and newness, even with my own grief. Thee answers with insult."

"If Reindeer runs from iron, who of these will dare?

Take the iron."

"In (he name of Christ Jesu," Padrec urged.

The three of them huddled close in that whispered conference, each with his or her grasp of ultimate truth.

Bruidda had been forced by an arrogant girl into a posi- tion from which there was no retreat but forward. And she must hide the fear from her people, dared by a child yet to bear wealth or see it butchered. She must do this thing but would not forgive it. She glared at Dorelei and raised her right hand.

"Let be, then. Reindeer dares Blackbar by its true name-iron!"

Among the squatting Prydn about the hill, her sister gerns and many others rose in respect. Bruidda took the moment to her advantage. "Even Salmon stands for Rein- deer. Hear! Have called on the name and spirit of iron!

Feel how a do ring us about. With this hand, and in the

188 name ofJesu, I dare ihe iron." Her fingers closed about the bar, lifted it from Padrec's hand, raised it overhead.

"Glory to God, Alleluia!" Drust shouted.

"See!" Dorelei sang. "See where Reindeer tames the-"

"Ai! It burns me-it bums!"

Stunned, they all saw Bruidda drop the bar as if it were blistering hot, clutching at her hand. "The evil marks me!"

Padrec's heart skipped a beat as Bruidda held up the palm with its red mark like a burn. He should have grasped the moment himself, but there was a quicker demon in Dorelei. She swooped down on the petrified Bruidda.

snatched at the stricken hand, and plunged it into the tempering trough.

"As did burn me," she proclaimed to all of them, "before the blessed healing water. But a moment and see."

Then, in an urgent whisper to Bruidda: "The magic needs belief. Was like burned and like heated. Believe, sister.

Jesu be stronger than iron. Believe."

"Does burn like fire."

"Believe. Let go thy fear."

"Thee's shamed me."

"Believe. Be nae pain, nae chronachadh come to thee.

Even now the pain lessens, fades, runs away. Believe."

"Burns . . ."

"Would be lost in hell? One moment of belief. Mark how all spirits, good and ill, hover about-aye, thee be- lieve that. Tread on the evil as I did upon the pride of Nakon. Believe."

A rush of sun-sparkling water as Dorelei putted the hand from the trough and held it high. The red mark of the evil was fading even as the drops rolled from the palm and wrist.

"Now," Dorelei exulted. "Who will be reborn in Jesu?"

Padrec wondered: She did it, not me. Without my help or blessing. God worked through her. The moment of uncer- tainty drowned in enthusiasm. He loves me no more than Dorelei. Truly there's more to existence than I knew. "Glory to God, Alleluia!" Padrec shouted. "Come forth, all of you."

"Yah! for the Shepherd and a's fhain!" cried Drust.

"Yah!"

"Jesu!"

189.

A few hung back afraid, but others surged forward, needing no encouragement. The brown hands stretched out to touch Dorelei, Padrec, Bruidda, and the magical Chi-Rho, strong enough to put down iron. In the babble and excitement, Bruidda looked into Dorelei's face and saw the new hardness beneath the triumph.

"What be this we do, sister? What dost bring us to?"

But Dorelei had accepted God's leaven of triumph tor her grief. "Jesu treads upon a's enemies! Who will ride south with the flocks ofJesu and Salmon?"

Doreiei stalked through the singing, cheering Prydn, Padrec at her side. Where they walked, the people made way, the sun itself made way for them, and their shadows stretched long and longer across the light on the hill, tall as the Chi-Rho itself. They heard no sound but praise and saw only where their own proud images marked the earth.

Fhains moving together: it was unheard of, but new magic swept old reasons before it. In the warm early autumn, even before Finch's song was heard, the flocks swirled south like an avalanche to Cnoch-nan-ainneal, where Doreiei first found Padrec. They settled not only on the hill but spilled down into the lowland pastures of the apprehensive Venicones, their raths not sodded over but bright-painted as Rainbow. In the flush of the enthusiastic numbers that followed, Padrec did not separate his success from God's. In honest moments, he fell more Alexander than Apostle.

Entering on the easier part of her pregnancy, be- tween the early sickness and the late awkwardness, Dorelei bloomed, basking in the deference paid her by the Prydn who joined the rade south. They placed their hands on her belly in respect, and when the courtesies were done, she asked the question that never left her.

"A man of Salmon fhain, Cruaddan. Who has seen him?"

None at all. Cru had vanished.

For Vaco, the Venicone elder who once cast Padrec forth to die on the hill, this was the worst time to have such compounded troubles shadow his house. A Faerie rade was ill wind any time, a migration of this size plain ominous. They drove their long-horned sheep down into

190 his pastures with mere show of asking permission. What could he do against such numbers, and every cursed one of them mounted and armed and the unkillable Christ- man with them? That one was tougher than Vaco thought;

not only throve among Faerie, he led them now, he and his Faerie queen clanking with the treasure they wore. To Vaco's clear logic, the man was incomprehensible: preach- ing chastity, yet married now. Should have died but didn't.

His hair was red-well, perhaps he was favored of Lugh Sun despite his muddled views.

To curdle the milk thoroughly, were not the Romans themselves in his village, thick as flies and friendly as lions pausing among lambs, talking alliance, a new war and bargaining for Venicone recruits?

Vaco had to be a generous and courteous host. He preferred Romans at a distance. Close up they were stiff- ish, too sure of themselves and brusque-no nonsense, get on with it, that was their way. And their tribune! Vaco had sons older than this presumptuous brat who wore his hair so short and his face so clean-shaven he looked like a picked chicken. His name-almost as long as the boy himself-was Ambrosius Aurelianus. Tribune, mind you, an important son of an important Somebody, very high in the Parisi court. Vaco had older sons, but none of them nearly so self-assured in negotiation, nor so quick to brush aside the traditional courtesies of business transaction with his damned Roman know-it-all. Well, let him talk. He'd get courtesy but no recruits. He wasn't respectful.