"Rainbow song, Mal? Sing more."

"Do forget the rest." Malgon came down to the trough to splash himself. "Be most oTd."

They breakfasted on bread and tea sitting outside the rath in the gift of sunlight. Something niggled at Padrec's memory.

304 "That's a Brigante song. My nurse sang it to me."

"Prydn." Malgon corrected with a trace ofcondescension.

"Do remember dreaming it when the uisge made us sick in Eburacum. Be called 'The Road of the Gods.' Have not remembered it for tens of seasons."

Malgon chewed stolidly. "Rainbow song."

"There's strange for thee."

Most strange: his old nurse came out of the hills, where they spoke a more antiquated dialect than in Ro- man Clannaventa. Their word for rainbow translated lit- erally as "road of the gods."

Malgon sang the couplet again at Padrec's urging, all he or fhain remembered of it. But the words were wrong, the lines didn't go that way. Padrec's hand remembered the rhythm on his knee, the way his nurse crooned it to him, and as they later sang it together. The fragments rearranged themselves in memory as he tapped them out.

Beneath the greening, hollow sods, The Faerie gold be seen again.

The road is pointed by the gods, So be not where, but only when.

"Do remember, Mal. Mark how't goes-"

"Thee mark." Maigon stopped him, ear cocked. "Dost

hear?"

The distant but unmistakable song of Finch, which

told them the days of good weather were numbered.

They traveled cautiously, keeping to the high country but: below the skyline, hiding from laHfolk while searching in vain for any sign of Prydn. When they came down from the high Cheviots onto the plain before the ruined Antonine Wall, they were in Taixali country. The crannogs were empty. No sign of Salmon at all. When they neared the crannog where Padrec gave iron-magic to Dorelei, they moved even more carefully. These lowland glens were Naiton's, and they'd already glimpsed his hunters nearer the high fells than Taixali usually dared-

"As if do know Prydn be gone," Malgon worried- Once they risked asking an old Taixali shepherd with no one else about. Padrec offered him a few small coins, but the ancient kept his distance.

305.

"Where are the Prydn, old man? Where gone?"

"North." A gesture of riddance. "North."

What's happened? Where are the women9 Where's Dorelei?

Even the hardy pines thinned out as they left the Taixaii behind and moved through the barer hills of the Damnonii. The wind grew colder and sharper each day.

At night, Wolfs song was more purposeful as the adults spoke, den to den, of prey seen and the hunting lessons their cubs must learn. Sunlight waned to monotonous gray, and a day came when they could gaze full circle about the windswept bowl of earth and see nothing but brownish moss stretching to infinity. No tree or human, not even sheep.

"Atecotti land," Mdlgon said. "Most old. like Prydn.

Friends, but will not see them till a come to speak."

The loneliness was oppressive. They'd found no cran- nog to stay the night, and they camped out of the wind under a rocky overhang, hobbling the horses to keep them close. Wrapped in cloaks and a blanket apiece, Padrec and Malgon lay close to the small fire. Even fuel was difficult to find, a few chips of dried sheep dung and moss, the flame guttering in the never-stil! wind that car- ried many voices. There was a tacit knowledge that since the vision at Camlann, they'd gone past the edge of the known, but known or not, the women had gone or been driven even farther. All that day they'd seen pony tracks across the hills, most of them fresh. If Prydn were that near, they were aware of any newcomer within a day's ride.

"But do nae show themselves," Padrec mused across the small circle of light. "And no fhain signs, nothing to tell--"

Pure learned reflex jerked their bodies aside at the brief, whined warning of the arrow. It drove deep into the dirt beside the fire on Padrec's side.

"Do nae move, Padrec." Malgon's voice was tight.

"Did nae mean to kill. but could. Be still. A will come."

Deliberately, Padrec pulled the arrow loose. A bronze head, the straight lines painted on the shaft clear as a written word. "Reindeer."

Malgon wetted his lips. waiting.

"Reindeer? Be Salmon fhain. Brothers."

306 Parks Godwin

The second arrow lodged even closer, an inch trom his knee.

"D'nae move, Padrec."

They waited. There was the dark and the wind-and then Bruidda stood in the fringe of their small firelight, flanked by two grizzled Prydn men with nocked bows-

"Gern-y-fhain," Padrec said. "Where be Salmon?"

Bruidda ignored the question. "Where be our sons, Raven?"

"Thee's nae heard?"

"In part."

"Gone. Dead. All dead," Padrec said heavily. "Romans were false to us."

The woman's mouth twisted in a hard grimace. "Could have told thee as much, fool. And thy proud wife."

"Do seek her, Gern-y-fhain. Where is she?"

"Was a fool always, like thee. A child who found evil and thought it a toy. And brought it with thee into fhain."

Padrec stood up carefully, hands spread to show them empty. The two bows lifted with him, deadly birds poised to tly.

"All dead." Whatever Bruidda fell did not show in her firelit face. "And what saved thee. Raven?"

"God knows. Or the gods. I don't. Tatlfolk prince offered us land where Prydn could not live and then laughed at us. We wish only to find our wives. Where are they, Bruidda? And where are Prydn? Have seen none even where a should be."

"Nor will thee," Bruidda told him. "Fhains now do nae dwell anywhere close to tallfolk. Dorelei has done that,"

"Gern-y-fhain." Malgon stretched his hands to her in respect. "Blood of Mabh, hear me. There are strange signs. Thy spirit was seen al Camlann, in a field of dead men and ravens."

Bruidda barely looked at him. "Speak."

"Did see spirit-battle, and thee did call to the Bear.

Have seen that which we cannae know. Where be Guenloie?

What ill be on Prydn that hides my wife from me?"