Of the three women, Neniane was the most natural mother, a blessing since she was alone now but for Morgana Mary. Padrec reflected it was belter, if such a thing had any good in it, that Neniane's men were lost than Guemoie's.

They were no different than any women in this. Some could Fill their lives with children and be content, but Guenloie defined herself by the presence of men, her daughter dear but secondary. She was quite willing to let Neniane's surplus love spill over Bruidda. Malgon was home and center to her life now, if even more laconic than before. He loved her, his body said what his tongue could not. They tore at each other like starved foxes in the language Guenloie knew best, but Malgon grew moodier through the winter. The tower was an alien place to him.

This last year had wrenched his life into a tangle of twist- ing channels impossible to follow. He grew less tolerant of Guenloie's prattle or teasing. Malgon didn't know why any more than she, except he'd been in a place of men where women need not be considered at all- If strange, that was sometimes a relief. And there were other thoughts to haunt him that Malgon understood not at alt.

"Ah, woman, be still."

Wanting to understand. Guenloie would twine herself about his neck before the fire in their chamber. "But dost love me?"

A sigh for the inexpressible. "Truly."

"Then come lie with me."

"Not now."

Guenloie ran her tongue over his neck and ear. "Now."

Malgon only parried her absently. "Later."

It put her off. He'd never been the one to say when, neither he nor Drust, that was always her prerogative.

"Did weary thyself with tallfolk women?"

Malgon lifted his eyes to Lugh. Understand? She couldn't even fathom why he laughed. "Oh, aye. Did pass them out three to a rider, like spears."

"Afa/gon!" She was horrified. "Dost have second wife?"

"Oh, peace! Dost nae have wealth? Then took to her.

Must Neniane be a's mother always?"

Remarks on her lack of maternal instinct hurt Guenloie less than an unreachable man. It left her helpless and resentful. "Drust would nae speak so."

"A was a gentle man."

"And thee, sad lump, will nae even speak of thy brother husband."

316 Silence, his back to her. She had no way through the wall of him. "How did Drust die?"

"In war. Holy war."

"How?" she screeched, capable of anything when he rejected her- "A's daughter would know in seasons to come."

A cruel insult, the most degrading a fhain wife could level at a husband to speak directly of parentage and deny his. But Malgon's smite was even cruder when he turned to her with acid invitation. "Thee's a marvel, Guenloie.

Did say thee wished to bed? Come, will lie with thee."

No, she couldn't couple with such frigid distance.

"Malgon . . ."

"Nae, come. Did wish't."

Not an invitation but a thrusting away. Guenloie felt lost. "Thee do nae want me."

"Oh, come." The contempt froze the words. "Do have nae better to do. And thee'll not prattle the while."

Guenloie slapped him hard. To her absolute shock, Malgon backhanded her sharply and left her alone to understand why.

Dorelei did not fly to punish Malgon for the breach of custom as once she would have, but it troubled her on a deeper level. They were not really fhain anymore.

"Just people," Padrec murmured as they lay together- "You're growing, all of you. Men and women now. Leave them be. They" manage."

The peat fire made the small stone chamber warm and sweet. Gazing into it, Dorelei's profile had a firmer set to it than Padrec remembered. The exquisite girl was a woman now, harboring her own silences within her as he did. With no wisdom to give her out of any conviction, self-excommunicated, he could only put his body to hers like a bandage. Yet even their loving was different. Join- ing with Dorelei, tender or fierce, he could feel the space between them and hear a deeper echo from the woman, as if her own war eroded sea caves in her soul. Not a lessening of love but a greater complexity.

She came to this tower because it was safer, partly because she had to go apart to deal with things she didn't understand. Padrec gave her magic, and through what she 317.

deemed a love of her people, she brought them to ruin.

She trusted, was a fool, denounced and deserted. She felt betrayed as the rest of Prydn, apart from Jesu and Mother as well.

To Padrec, it was the bleak but logical consequence of his own truth as confessed once to Meganius. By raising man's soul/row the dust, we must inevitably part it from the dust, the nature he has known.

He brought her his faith and told her to believe. That was his mission. But although he called himself Christian, his own acceptance of faith was innately more self-centered than Dorelei's. The Greeks had done their subtle work.

Man stood apart from himself and thought on belief in abstractions with names, making it all the easier to part one dust from another. Dorelei made no such division.

Earth, sky, body, faith were all one. She existed in a wholeness from which, intended or not, he had riven her.

Dorelei would never distance herself from faith by medi- tating on its nature; it would be part of life or not exist.

Any move she made now would be toward that wholeness again, by whatever name she put to it or road she followed.

Not a subtle woman, still Dorelei knew the difference now between real and false pride, and the figure she must have cut before the older gerns. That hurl less than the thought of those who followed without question. Until the Taixali fell on them through her own blind folly and arrogance.

Until I punished Cru, I never put a knife to human flesh before, but the da} of the Taixali, I did it with blood cold as brook water. When the boy ran at Neniane with his spear, I knew I would do it. He turned on me, roaring to frighten me, hoping to fall me. He hoped but I knew. That was the difference. His spear slid across my shoulder and my iron went into him as if it always belonged there. And then trying to pull Guenloie and Neniane and the wealth away from danger, Crulegh screaming with fear, blood on Guenloie's hands .. . I needed to be sick and yet had to deny it and stand straight before Bruidda and the rest, turning sickness to rage. crying/or vengeance mad as the rest of it. And they turned away. The youngest and lowest of them turned their backs on me.

Sweet Mother, we grow as used to darkness as worms and to death as the smell of sheep. I do not need presence as Bruidda

318 does, not any longer, but somewhere it must be found and life itself must be found again, if only for the wealth.

The weight on her hean overbalanced the squabbles of Malgon and Guenloie. "True. Will let a heal't alone."

Padrec drew her down beside him, wrapping the cov- ers about her new-scarred shoulder. Dorelei squeezed tight against him.

"What be happened to us, Padrec? Do nae believe anymore."

"Why should you?" He stroked her cheek. "Mi a-sudden we live in the world like everyone else. Not special, not chosen. I imagine every disillusioned Jew who ever cut off his ringlets felt much as we do."

"But can nae live in a tallfolk world."

Padrec raised up on one elbow over the dark head of her, the glossy tumble of hair, the features delicate-carved as any Egyptian's. "So quick to say what thee cannot?

You're no different from anyone else."

"Speak so?"

"Just smaller. And more truly religious."