But she could make no sense of sound. The name blurred out to a wild keening. She drew her knife from the body and hurled it away in grief. The mourning was taken up by Reindeer and then Salmon. Far away, as the morning wind carried it, the Venicone heard the sound, misunderstood it as always, and never knew how much of an ending cried in it.

378 When the Picts took up Christianity in earnest, there was one story of native source of which only half ever appeared in any Church history: the surprisingly easy acceptance among Venicones of the Nativity as penned by Luke. for did they not know a story much like it?

Not in winter it was, when even sheep have the wit to stay inside, but nigh to the festival of Bel-tein fire, that certain Venicone shepherds abided in the fields with their flocks. And did they not hear the ghostly music as the priests described? Not angels but the bean sidhe, and one did not wander from the firelight in search of those singers.

On a night in spring, the shepherds heard the bean sidhe crying near and were sore afraid. And when the keening died away, there by the fire, half in light and the rest shadow, were three of the Faerie folk-a young queen, a man with a sword, another with a bow that bent on the shepherds. The Venicones did not ask why they came.

When you have the ill luck to meet Faerie at night, you hear them out, praying it be good news and brief. The tidings were strange. Men argued their meaning for many years, and this was the way of it.

Seven statues-the four shepherds on one side of the fire, the three Faerie on the other, just within the spill of light. Weird they were, so still. The woman's lips hardly seemed to move when she spoke.

"Dost know me, Venicones?"

They did that, but none wanted to speak and be especially noticed by this creature. Her hands opened.

Something jingled, glinting in the light, spilling to the earth at her feet, a shower of gold coins.

"Be gift from Rainbow's end. Be more, much more.

Tell thy wealth that the tale-speaking of thy fathers be true. At Rainbow's end, nae where but when, Prydn hoard may be seen again."

At her sign the man with the great Michael-sword sprinkled rubies like dark blood over the gold.

"Gift be for a purpose," the woman said. "Tell thy wealth and let a tell theirs: let Prydn be nae forgot in Mabh's island. We were first to walk this land. Did greet thy kind in peace in the time of Dronnarron. Remember us."

Then one of the shepherds, bolder than the rest or 579.

perhaps encouraged by the gift, asked, "Great queen, it is our thanks you have, but where in this island does such a gift come from, thai we may tell our elder?"

The poor shepherds and their bootless question; even as they asked it, were not the three fading into the dark, and only the woman's voice left to float on the wind?

"From Faerie-land, tallfolk. From Rainbow's end."

So the shepherds were left alone with large wealth and larger curiosity about the hoard it came from. They never found it, but all know it to be stilt there. Some of those red rubies can be seen yet in the crown Brude wore and that he passed to his son Erca as king of the Picts.

So where was the wonder in angels appearing to shep- herds? In this island such magic was born and yet lived- The children were told and their children in turn. Differ- ent tales, to be sure, since there are as many stories as there are men to guess and lie about the matter, but it is a rare man and a fool who does not give careful respect in the matter of Faerie, scarce as they are now and always shy of human folk. But they are still there on the hitltops, although not many Venicones are that wilting to go and prove it.

Some histories are never written, only remembered.

On Bruidda's death, her daughter Nebha became Rein- deer gern, a young woman with a yearling daughter of her own, named Cradda. The next year Nebha bore a second daughter. That was a year of more winter than warmth, when all Pictland came close to starvation. Nebha's second daughter was left in a tallfolk cradle that she might at least have a chance at life, a Roman woman whose husband was envoy to the Picts. Britons came to call such children changelings. Prydn mothers called it sacrifice when they spoke ont at all, but Prydn always know their own, and Nebha's grandson found his way home to wear the mark of Reindeer.

Cradda became Reindeer gern after her mother and bore two sturdy daughters. The elder, Dorelei-named for a gern of fabled if troublesome magic-was a gentle, playful woman. Her younger sister was anything but gen- tie, a passionate, moody girl named Morgana for no clearly remembered reason. Morgana had three husbands, and

380 the third was Belrix, the son of Reindeer who found his way home by way of Cornwall, Severn, and VI Legio under Ambrosius. Britons remembered him as Arthur, a fact of no great interest to Prydn. They were not a people to write more of themselves than animal signs on stone, but. as in Genesis, someone begat someone. With Belrix, Morgana bore Modred. For a few years that flashed more than they shone, the Prydn moved closer into tallfolk light, where some image could be sketched from them.

Like Doreiei, Morgana had her own vision of Tir-Nan-Og and tried to carve it out with Modred for a sword. Arthur broke them and died in the necessary act. After that, the Faerie were never seen again in any great numbers in Pictland, eventually not at all.

The storytellers forgot names such as Doreiei, Cruad- dan, and Malgon, while Morgana and Modred are clearly remembered among Britons. Their courage was the same and the desperation that bred it, but war leaves a more indelible impression than any peace. Still, Dorelei's fhain was remembered indirectly by men who never knew or spoke her name. Her first husband's name became one of those odd specks of fact that lodge forever under the eyelid of history; her second, that passionate man who lost his way so often, found he'd never left home at all.

Padrec didn't question Dorelei's decision any more than that of a man vowed to make pilgrimage to Jerusa- lem. It was a thing to be done. They would go to Tir- Nan-Og, and if they fell over the edge of the world, which she maintained was no edge at all, at least they would die determinate.

They sealed the barrow again with Reindeer, taking only as much treasure as would be needed, and one extra pony to carry it. The rest they left to Nebha for Reindeer.

Doreiei invited and Doreiei reassured, but Reindeer would not join them. They would rade anywhere a pony could carry them, but world sea was a different matter and a dubious one. Would stay. And so the last great children of Reindeer-Morgana, Belrix, and Modred-were born in Mabh's island and not somewhere else. The underpin- nings of history and legend alike are sometimes that slight.

Two days journey to the sea, but fhain took four, 381.

graveling mostly at night. An easy rade without the flock, which Doreiei left to Nebha with the treasure. She held back only three rams and three young ewes to start over with in Tir-Nan-Og. Father-God and Noah might make do with one pair, but three allowed a better margin of husbandry. If she departed the tailfolk world, Doreiei would not leave her common sense behind.

They made southwest toward Cair Ligualid and beyond to the estuary that cut inland past the end of the Walt.

There, at the mouths of Lyne and Esk, many boats could be had for hire; not large enough for their venture but, as Padrec reasoned, always bound out for the Isle of Arran.

The island had been part of the main trade routes from the Middle Sea since time out of mind. In the looted tombs of Egypt, dropped or ignored by thieves in their haste to be off with more valuable booty, were necklaces of British jet that Phoenicians shipped from Arran while Moses still wandered in Sinai. To Arran came the ocean- going galleys and their mariners. It was the place to start.

The west was sparsely peopled, and those few they met spoke in Irish-tallish, handsome men and women, not timid but with no desire to linger in the path of a Faerie rade. Padrec explained it from some experience.

The Sidhe of Ireland were even less predictable in their goodwill toward tallfolk than Prydn were, very like for familiar reasons. When one met them, one was polite and brief. To meet such nomads on a rade reminded Faerie and tallfolk alike of wrongs done, land usurped, and des- tinies cut off.

"Irish feel a guilt toward fhains, like Picts," Padrec told his folk. "Guilt be father to fear, and fear to hate."

Doreiei knew from her own pain that it could be that dismally simple. For all the sense it made, that was how they came by the staves. They were well on their way after the third nightfall, moving out of a low gorge onto open heath, when they almost collided with the tailfolk party in the dark. Riding ahead, Malgon and Padrec heard some- thing approach. Because the strangers were afoot, they were less detectable, but there was the distinct chank-chank of iron chain, then a growing mumble of voices. Then someone called out sharply.

Padrec and Malgon pulled up short, bow and sword

382 ready as the first figures became visible in the moonless dark. The wind was at Salmon's back, carrying sound away from them; they would have heard the strangers far earlier otherwise. There was the tall figure lemming up in front of them, not a dog's bark away, surprised and not al all happy about it.

"Who is it there? Speak out. Who's there?"

"Irish," Padrec muttered to Malgon. He let the wind work for him, thinned his voice to a plaintive buzz, and answered in the Gaelic. "Daone Sidhe. Make way . . ."

The words trailed off into a keening that floated on the wind to the startled Irish, who heard one voice, then two, half a dozen swelling on the black night air. They weren't warriors but slave traders bound for Esk them- selves. They feared Sidhe but lost profits more, and there were ten of them, armed. Their leader decided to stiff it out.

"Merchants we are. Sidhe, creatures of the night, be- gone. We have no fear of you."

The moon slid out of the clouds then. and Padrec saw the mute. manacled stock-in-trade of these merchants.

"Slavers, Mal."

They both heard more than one sword hiss from a sheath. Malgon didn't hesitate an instant. His bowstring bent and hummed. The nearest Irishman went down with a choked-off grunt. In the moment of shock among the traders, the other-world wailing still chilling about them, Malgon sent another arrow for effect and shot his horse forward.

"We go, Padrec!"

It was like the day of the Coritani patrol in the fog.

Howling like Malgon, Padrec kicked his mount after his brother, flailing about with his sword, scattering slavers in all directions from their merchandise. The tactic worked because Malgon didn't hesitate to kill, nor Padrec to follow him. They both remembered Churnet, where one man's hesitation cost so much. Screaming on the wind, counter- pointed by the keening of the women, they wheeled their horses this way and that after the demoralized slavers until they were dead or in rapid flight, leaving a dozen terrified slaves all praying to different gods and not at all sure about the sword-bearing man who bore down on them out of the gloom.

383.

"Now, then. Who's Brit here? Who's Pict or what?

Speak up."

A moment of uncertainty among them, then the ten- tative voice of a man ready to drop for weariness. "I am Brigante."

"We are all British."

"Na, there's Crow the Halt. He's Picti like yourselves."

"Be nae Pict," Malgon asserted stiffly.