The turf cut from the side of the mound revealed an underlayer of peat. The eastern end was a jumble of loose soil of varying textures. No peal had formed over it. At some point the tomb obviously had been reopened. They could very well be on the right scent, and Dorelei need not worry too much about profanation. The occupants were used to it.

And then, of course, at the height of expectant excite- ment, the inevitable distraction of children. Morgana Mary was damp and unpleasant, needing a change of swaddling no one had thought to bring. Bruidda was cutting teeth and not at all happy about it, and Crulegh howled when they took away the loose soil he wanted to taste.

"Ah, then." Neniane passed her pick to Guenloie, swooping down on the children like a harried hen to herd them alt to the brook for washing. The rest of them worked on, swinging their tools with energetic purpose, not stopping when a brief rain shower passed over, damp- ening the earth and making the work more difficult.

They shouted with glee when the rainbow appeared to vindicate them: to the southwest of Cnoch-nan-ainneal, and from this point probably miles from any spot mea- sured from the circle of stones.

Padrec crowed: "Be not where but only when!"

"Or from sea down to us," Dorelei answered. "Come, dig."

Gouging, shoveling, and scraping, they laid bare an inner covering of stones, not large but heavy enough

356 when passed from hand to hand to be piled neatly by the strips of turf. Time passed, the pile grew higher. Then the mattock pried a stone aside and left empty dark under it, a ragged hole. Darkness and a sudden mustiness issuing from the gap, stale air undisturbed for untold years.

All of them worked together to clear il, joined by Neniane when she brought the cleaned children back. In a very short time the hole widened to a flat overhead lintel resting on two huge upright stones. To Padrec's Roman logic, recent disturbance or not, the barrow had to be of extreme age. When their toots scraped against the lintel stone, it was roughly at the levei of Padrec's calf, and the excavation went far down. Either the heavy stones had sunk, or time raised the moor over it, or both.

They were all sweating and the children cantankerous when Guenloie unwrapped the cold porridge and sliced mutton for the midday meal. They sat in a circle near the turfs, feeding the children and themselves. After stretch- ing lazily in the grass for a rest, Padrec flexed his whole body like a cat, got up, and wandered back to the lintel with his male fascination for a riddle with more to reveal.

The recumbent stone found yesterday tweaked his curiosity. The face of the lintel stone was partially smoothed but smeared with earth yet. He took a wadded handful of grass, wet it, and scrubbed over the stone's face until it was dean. Before Padrec Finished, the others were close around him. peering at the stone. Dorelei brushed a hand over it like the blind feeling out un familiarity. The face had been roughly smoothed with a tool less durable than bronze, but now something more definite emerged from the clean, dry surface: two straight lines painted on the stone, a reddish double bar thinly bordered in blue woad that barely defined the ocher used to fill it in. To the right, even fainter, another double bar.

Dorelei wiped the shredded grass from her fingers.

"Barrow be of Reindeer fhain."

Malgon appreciated her meaning, but many things were changed this year. He had a child and more of an interest in the future, a thought not so important before.

"Would be shame to leave a now."

Neniane just said, "Will need the torches."

"Stay." Dorelei took up an antler pick. "Be a sacred place. Must show respect for presence.'

357.

If any spirits lingered, they might be alarmed and . offended by intrusion. The spirit-hole at the western end must be cleared to allow them to escape. Fhain agreed with the wisdom, and the air would be fresher inside.

They trooped around the barrow. Doreiei felt at the turf with the pick like a physician, then probed with Padrec's sword at various points. The blade struck rock at the same depth again and again. Then in one small area, so slightly depressed it might escape even her eyes, the sword went in to the hilt.

"Here. Dig."

The small but definite opening was quickly exposed.

"Light the torches," Dorelei ordered.

She felt a moment of apprehension. For such near- ness to spirits, she was not properly prepared. Her body should be rubbed with nightshade and foxglove that would 1 let her soul speak with them, fly with them. None of these she had, only a stubbornness born of hard lessons too well and suddenly known. She saw the same resolve in the . others, especially Malgon. They would survive. Prydn could be as cruel and small-minded as any tallfolk when it came to that, and they would not share in this. Salmon alone would borrow from the borrowers; for the rest-in Padrec's tallfolk speaking-they could go to hell-

By the sundial stake near the entrance, it was two hours past noon. Padrec remembered that later. No more than two hours past noon on a day of bright sunlight and clear sky.

Malgon volunteered to lead the way, but Dorelei re- fused. If there was danger inside, she and Padrec would confront it first. She took the torch. They'd guessed the barrow was very old. The truth of that was the first thing to greet them. The huge supporting stones were not carved but painted with ocher as the entrance lintel.

Even the hard-packed earthen floor was different from any soil they knew, not dark brown or black but of a reddish, sandy composition. Truly this was the threshold to Tir-Nan-Og.

They moved along the central passage, Padrec bend- ing low under the overhead slabs. The light from the entrance spilled in only for a few yards; after that, gloom.

Padrec, Malgon, and Dorelei moved ahead with torches,

358 Neniane and Guenloie following with the wealth. On ei- ther side of the central passage, the barrow was divided by stone slabs into rows of cells or stalls. In each, stacked neat as the records in Marchudd's library, were innumerable human bones, all broken to some degree. Leg and arm bones, now and then a cell with nothing but skulls.

A little farther on they found the first whole skeleton.

Clearly a gern, the body faced them from its stone bench, legs crossed in formal position, although one arm had slipped down to dangle at her side. A few strands of hair hung from the parchment skull. The children whined, afraid out. People should not look so. Draped about the body were the remains of an upper garment and a skin of fringes. A heavy gold circlet rounded the skull, etched with Reindeer sign.

They moved on. The gloom closed in behind them as the passage angled slightly to the right, which disturbed Dorelei; there seemed no reason for it. More stacked bones, pile after pile; then they came upon the second gern.

By now the children vehemently wanted to be out of the dark, whimpering continually. Crutegh clung in fear to the nearest grown-up leg. They looked closer at this second honored remnant: subtly different from the first to Padrec's objective eye. The circlet about the skull and the heavy tore were of intricately etched but green-tamished bronze. The tattered hide wrapping, now crumbling to dust, had been carefully painted with strange signs in woad.

"Do nae know such marks," Dorelei said. She reached out to part the rotted wrapping. A piece of it fell away.

Malgon held his torch closer. The small ribs were smashed through over the heart.

"Spear or arrow," Malgon decided.

The woman died in fight, a braw gem of the first days. If she borrowed no gold or even saw it, she de- fended her fhain. Before passing on, Dorelei tried to rearrange the tatters about the broken ribs; the stuff sim- ply came apart.

No real way to judge, but it seemed they'd come a long way under the hill to find one gold circlet that must be left inviolate. Still, the air was fresher now. The passage 359.

must turn again somewhere ahead. They couldn't see the spirit hole. The only light against the gloom flickered from their tallow-soaked pine torches.

More cells of stacked bones.

And a new sound.

It began as a whisper ... if it began at alt; perhaps it had been just below the threshold of awareness alt the rime. A whisper that grew into a moan, rising and falling Hke the cry of the bean sidhe. Bruidda began to cry.

Guenloie picked her up for her own comfort as much as the bairn's.

"Must be getting close to the hole," Padrec hoped aloud. "Just wind, like blowing through a pipe, that's all it is."

"Aye, the wind." Agreeing with him took much cour- age for Dorelei, and more not to drop her torch and flee hack along the road of the dead. Determined she was, but that made this no less of a profanation. Padrec heard only the wind, but there was more than wind through the spirit hole. The pipe that blew was not of this world. Some- where in that eerie wail, a voice knew her name.

Dorelei. . .

Her hand clenched tighter around the torch. Who calls me? Who is't from the first days, Bruidda's blood or mine, who calls me so? Have I angered Mother, breaking her flesh this way?

Come forward, Dorelei.

Padrec would not understand. These were things he would never hear. Firmly she stepped in front of him and moved ahead, blood pounding in her ears.

"Must be close to the end," Padrec said behind her.

No, she knew better. They were gone under the hill to world's-edge, to the very opening ofTir-Nan-Og, down and around forever. It could be that they were never to leave this place, the way back coiled in a circle like the stones. . . .

She felt a freshet of cooler air on her skin.

"Where's the hole?" Padrec fretted. "We cleaned the hole, can't be that far from it. Should be light."