F He liked the neatness of his thinking, but even deciphered, the results were meager. Obviously after a spring rain, which often occurred several times a day at

-, that season. Still no clue to where. Quite possibly there ^ Was a line lost in the telling through the years. Rath and

*fe crannog were suspect because all of them were known and ^used.

Brigid-feast came with early February. They slaugh- ^ tered an old ewe who would not live to rade again in any t case. Dorelei told the traditional stories of their ancient t' covenant with Mother and Lugh, and the coming of Mabh Ato Britain. She spoke slowly with care to the words, ad- ^ dressing much of it to the children. They wouldn't under- t stand yet, but in another year or two, the ritual tales '^ would be part of their memory by pure sound and rhythm ^ atone.

'T The Rainbow riddle took Dorelei's mind off her fail- ' ures and the hard truth that many of them were her own

fault, but not all. She would rade north in triumph through , the lowlands. She traveled in a haze of vanity, a folly of confidence that infected her younger women but alien- ; ated the other gerns. She showed herself in daylight in

Taixali land and gave gifts in Jesu's name to those she

met i When Naiton attacked, Dorelei found how much of a

- Christian she really was. As she wanted vengeance for Gawse, she ordered it on the Taixali, demanded it, with no

' 326 . prudent Padrec now to temper her rage with sense, only 3 the aged, the very young, and women-many of them wounded, some of them dead. They'd simply lost too many, and all the young men gone. The other gerns moved against her then. led by Bruidda. They laughed at her openly, called her no gern but a stupid, willful child.

They said things that were not true, and it was clear much of their betrayal was envy. She'd taken presence over them on a tide of enthusiasm and new magic that seemed strong but failed m the testing. They left her with the warning that Salmon could henceforth expect no rights or place in any rath or crannog. Bruidda, descended of Mabh, branded her false. She was not the promised Bright One, nor was any child of Salmon. They threw away their iron and left her outcast, goaded by the jealous gerns whose power and presence she'd blithely put below her own. So be it: she was young and arrogant in her power, but they, with alt their talk of wisdom and prophecy and endings, were only too quick to avoid the new. Did she not have to plead with Bruidda to challenge the iron, and then save the woman's dignity by sheer quick wit?

Neniane and Guenloie were blessings. They might have gone with other fhains but remained loyal, thanks for that. But there was the hard reality of three women traveling alone with infants, pack ponies, and sheep. Word of their disgrace preceded them. Every rath warned them off or avoided them. They slept in the open, huddled against their ponies, curled around the children to keep them warm. The wolves took Rot one night while he circled the remnant of their flock. More than one, for sure: Rot was a match for any one wolf.

They didn't feel safe until Mother's mooneye shone over this barren Atecotti land. Atecotti, of course, knew all that happened to her but made no judgments. In their soft, throaty tongue, very close to hers, they guided Dorelei to this ancient broch and even found a few oddments to spare by way of provisions. Few and shy, like Prydn, but they understood reality as Dorelei knew it. Perhaps like her own folk, they would fade from Pictland with no trace but the sinuous animals pocked into stone.

If she was a fool. who played her false? Not Padrec;

as faithful and as sold as the rest of them. And he came 327.

hack to her, not with prayers orJesu-reasons, but because he needed her. Dorelei knew how much without words.

The need was in his hands when he made love to her, not even caring when Crulegh woke to watch, fascinated, which happened often. Padrec's body against hers was like sea sponge in its need to absorb her everywhere, and nothing enough at such times. She felt the fear as well as the need in him, as if she must make up, if only in loving, the other things lost or no longer believed in.

Well, they were all a long way from Dronnarron. She loved him, not by any of the comfortable, sustaining things once clung to, but because he was there and both of them terribly alone. It was lonely to be godless. The joining proved them real, like the stark tower itself against endless sea and moor.

Frightening at first to be gone from any god at all, but in time it removed walls from Dorelei's thinking. Slowly, hesitantly, she began to place one fact on another toward her own tower of existence. She wasn't sure Prydn could live away from Mother, but she could think beyond Bruidda's small scope and for once beyond the pale of gods.

With the prophecy of the black fawn and the vision at Camlann, then clearly, as Wolf once told her, Prydn were not to be long in the land. Grant this, then perhaps the older prophecy was as true. Perhaps Rainbow-song was a map and Lugh Sun could point them to Tir-Nan-Og as well as treasure.

"Will be no rath allowed Salmon in spring. What fhain gets, must take, this side of Tir-Nan-Og."

She confessed it to Padrec as they rode together trying to ferret a hint of spring from the sea wind knifing over the bare, low hills. Propped before his mother, Crulegh rode swaddled in blanket, red-cheeked in the cold air.

There was a nuance of the turning of Mother toward Lugh in the weather, not so much warmth as less gloom in the cast of sky, less edge to the air as it filled the lungs.

Coming spring meant more than rade. This time it meant decision. Dorelei had no more leisure to brood over foily or wrongs. What to do, where to go now?

Like their tower, any human sign stood out sharply against the windswept world around them. Dorelei hooted with sudden delight, pointing.

328 "See, Padrec' Atecotti."

Far to the west, the four small figures trekked along the side of a low rise, distant but quite aware of them.

Dorelei waved and received their salute m return.

"A never come close," Padrec remarked, "and yet do feel them neighbors."

"Good folk." Dorelei thought of the fish net left out- side the tower, worn but needing only a little mending in Malgon's clever hands. She nudged her pony on- "Did come in the first days and bring the bronze for Prydn to work. Have always been friends."

Her own folk were once spread over Mabh's island, but Atecotti came to this northern place, and here they remained. Perhaps the remoteness appealed to them.

"A's barrows be still marked in the land as ours."

Dorelei concluded. "There: be Atecotti barrow, one of them."

The small hillock rose ahead of them, worn with age and situated so as to seem a natural part of the rolling barrens.

Padrec knew Prydn barrows by now, even harder to separate from the landscape than this, and long where this was circular. He would not have noticed this one by himself.

Dorelei explained the mound to him as they walked the horses in a slow circuit around it. In the days of Prydn and Atecotti greatness, such were the customs of burial.

Great slabs of stone were cut from the hills or sea cliffs and dragged into position to form the core structure, which was then covered with smaller stones and earth and left undisturbed until Mother made the barrow part of herself again. The great ones from the first days slept in Mother's breast, which stilt breathed around them. Nae, look where even now the first green showed-

Dorelei jerked the pony to a short halt, wheeling about to Padrec, radiant with discovery. "Barrow."

"What?"

"Barrow!"

As Padrec looked on, mystified, Dorelei lifted Crulegh and jumped to the ground, dancing away along the edge of the burial mound.

" Barrowbarrowbarrow!"

She capered, bouncing and jiggling Crulegh into a paroxysm of squealing delight as he tried to imitate her.

329.

"Barbarbar!"

"Barrow!" Dorelei whirled and leaped in a savage triumph that totally eluded Padrec.

"So? A barrow. What other thunderbolt hast thee to shatter the world with this day?"

"Dost nae see?" Dorelei wheeled her arm toward the round cairn. "Greening hollow sods. Barrow, Padrec. Did think Rainbow could be map, but nae sure until now."

She spun about in the thrill of realization. "Barrow!

Where else? Prydn gold be harrowed with the dead. Will yet find this treasure and Tir-Nan-Og. Yah!"

She forked Crulegh over the saddle, jumped up be- hind, and cantered away toward the broch while Padrec stared at the mound and the absurd possibility of it all. He shouted with glee at the sight of Dorelei, happy for once, prancing the bewildered pony in circles for sheer good spirits while her victory floated back on the sea wind.

"Barrow! Barrow! Barrow!"

If they raded, it must be soon. Food for themselves and the stock would not last forever, and here at the end of winter even the benevolent Atecotti had little to sell or 'trade other than fish- There must be graze or vetch; that meant movement, and this gloomy tower, warm and well built though it was, would never be home to Prydn.

These were urgent matters, but nothing beside Dorelei's discovery, which was turned this way and that by fhain, tike picking the last meat from a bone. Neniane ladled out barley porridge while Dorelei, excited on her gern-stone, held forth with such thoughts as not even Reindeer gern would dare, may her shriveled spirit be forgotten of the ages, never to be young again.

Dorelei's shadow danced on the fire-lit walls of the chamber. Now did they have all the pieces of it, look you: