Eithne and her companions spent a cold night in a shabby old cow-byre, taking turns at sleeping on wet straw between the legs of cattle that snuffled and coughed in the darkness. Even the little tinker girl had stayed with them, determined to see that they stayed safe and hidden.

They’d abandoned the place before dawn could bring farmers and discovery, and moved out onto the grassy knolls, away from the settlement.

The acolyte inveigled her to return to the Droma camp, but Eithne didn’t relish going back into that madding crowd. The Gods alone knew what had happened after she’d fled. Were Lorcán and Medyr alive and at liberty? Her aunt and her brother? Were Mother and Father safe?

And what of Eowain? She couldn’t abandon him to whatever fate the priestesses held in store for him.

From a distance, Eithne looked down on the few hundred people that lived within the precincts of the Vale, and their many buildings. The quarters for the wardens, the guards’ barracks and slaves’ huts, the storehouses and sheep pens and goat pens and farm buildings. The camp of traders, pilgrims, mercenaries, and other fair-goers settled on the pasture had swelled the Vale’s population four times over. Among them, knots of armed men could be seen, moving through the lanes. Looking for me, no doubt.

Eithne’s arm ached. She rubbed at her bandages.

The merchant noticed. “Attacked by giant bats, you said?”

She made a dismissive gesture. “Aye. So it seemed at least. Honestly, in the clear light of day, I wonder if I didn’t imagine it.”

“Sure and it’s more than passing strange, my lady.” Adarc’s face was drawn with worry.

“More than a few things have struck me passing strange since we came here,” she agreed.

After taking in the sight of the village and the fair and the patrols, she insisted they scout the approaches to the shrine instead. Perhaps there’s some other, unguarded way in. Eithne had no desire to put herself into the power of the priestesses again, but she wanted answers just the same.

Foremost among them: Is Eowain even alive? Eithne had to know. He’d risked so much for her already. And Gods only know what more his men risked through the night.

The sacred hill loomed more than a hundred feet over the floor of the Vale. Encircling the whole crest ran a massive wall of rock, laid without mortar and half fallen down in many places. Inside the loop of the wall, several black stones eighteen or twenty feet high stuck up like huge fingers from the Abred.

Once the eye caught them, it returned to them again and again. They stood there, full of meaning, and yet there was no saying what they meant, crusted with grey and blue-green lichens as if splotched with paint, save for one that was naked and black, with a dull gloss to it.

The inner cluster was a horseshoe of five trilithons—two vertical stones capped by a horizontal lintel. Of them, three complete trilithons still stood, and two were partly fallen.

Around that horseshoe were the remains of an outer circle. There might have once been thirty stones, but many had fallen and most of the lintels were missing.

Adarc had whispered awfully at the sight of them. “Sure, and it’s said the stones have stood there since before the time of Men, my lady. That they were planted in the darkness when the lands were raised from the ocean’s depths. That they’re older than the Lost Emperors of the Shynn. Older than the Goddess Thaynú. Older even than light…”

The merchant, still picking the night’s straw from his fine shirt, simply groused. “It looks only like the tumble of old rocks to me.”

A ditch with an inner bank and a smaller outer bank surrounded the stones, low earthworks on the grass-grown solitude. Two entrances pierced the enclosure— a smaller one on the southern side, and a broad grassy avenue to the north-east. That corridor ran a mile or more away toward three snowcapped peaks that rose beyond the rugged valley, and was some forty feet wide between low banks.

Halfway up the southern face gaped the entrance to the shrine beneath the hill, accessed by the steep stone stairs that framed the tumbledown cataract of spring water.

She and Tommalt noted the movement of the hill’s guardians. Four Huntsmen patrolled the stones. Four more in their wolf-head hoods stood atop the stairs at the entrance. And Eithne knew there were still others inside.

“My lady,” ventured Adarc. “Sure and it would be wiser for us to go back and learn what has happened.”

Bells from the village tolled the Sixth Hour. Midday had come. Still they’d found no way into the shrine save by the guarded stairs.

Eithne chewed at her lip. “There must be a way.”

“You say swords were drawn. The Lord Lorcán, my master Medyr, sure and they may need us, my lady.”

“Your king needs us, too.”

Adarc frowned at her. “Sure and King Eowain is safe with the priestesses—”

“Why should we think so?” She scowled at him. “They’re up to something, I tell you. All this talk of portents.” She didn’t know what the drymyn priests and priestesses were playing at, but surely, the portents and omens were just a ruse. What interest should the Gods take in my love-life?

But Tommalt disagreed. “Mum, really, we should go back. The acolyte’s right, we ought to find out what’s happened to Lord Lorcán.”

“What if they intended to hold me for a hostage? What if that’s why they’re still holding Eowain?”

“My lady—!” Adarc was aghast. “Why should they do such a thing?”

“Annwn if I know,” she cursed. She eyed the movements of the guards around the stones. “Why should they need a troop of elite warriors? Yours is a peaceful Order, isn’t it?”

“In an isolated place like the Vale, mum? Bandits, mum.” Tommalt pointed into the mountains. “Mountain folk ain’t friendly folk, they say.” He remembered where she was from and knuckled his forelock. “Begging your pardon, mum.”

“What if they’re holding Eowain until some ransom is paid? Or some political concession made? Damn it, we can’t leave him—!”

Just then a monstrous crow flew down, black as a tar-barrel. It so frightened them, they quite forgot their quarrel.

“Oh!” exclaimed the little girl. She’d wandered off a little ways, picking spring flowers from the meadow.

They were standing under a tree, each with an arm round the other’s neck. Two squat, ruddy-visaged brutes, little taller than seven-year-old boys, with hardy little bodies, large-boned but lean. Their pale brown had a reddish tint to it, and each wore a cape of hair and fur, raw-hide leather breeks, and stern leather boots.

Large eyes of a pale, washed-out blue peered at them from under the left one’s cap of straw blond hair. Between the eyes was a broad hook nose, and below that a tangled thatch of tawny beard. Beneath his cape, he wore a black cuirass of leather-scaled mail, and a belt of small pouches strapped around his waist. A hand ax and a steel headed hammer—blunt at one end, spiked at the other—had been shoved into the belt.

His companion had braided hair and beard of flame-like red. Under his cape was a cuirass of many small bronze plates arranged in overlapping rows, like the scales of a lizard. Into the broad girdle around his waist, the haft of a hand ax had also been shoved. From his hip was hung a leather quiver of bolts, and on his back was strapped a small round metal shield. He held a damned big crossbow —cocked with a fresh bolt—upright in his free hand.

They stood so still that Eithne and her companions quite forgot they were alive, so unreal did they seem.

The little man in the brass-scaled vest gabbled at them.

“I'm—I'm very sorry,” was all she could say.

“You've begun wrong!”' cried the one on the left. “If you think we're alive, you ought to speak. The first thing in a visit is to say, ‘How d’ye do?’ and shake hands!” And here the two little men broke their embrace. Each held out a small hand, calloused and rough, like the hands of mature men who’d spent their lives at labor.

Eithne stared at the hands, looked for reassurance to her companions. Their dumbfounded expressions reflected her own thought: Surely, this is madness.

Only the little tinker girl seemed at ease. She stood half a head taller than either of them, stepped forward, and took each of their hands in one of hers. “How d’ye do?” She giggled.

“Quite well, thank you.” The first little man put his free hand to his chest. “Dwo,” he said with a bow. “Dwo bofnalthólode Boffik.” He gestured to his comrade with the crossbow. “Kilim. Kilim bofnalthólode Boffik.”

Talwyn put her fists to her hips and announced proudly, “I’m a Cockam, I am. Talwyn Cockam!”

The little brutes from the grotto… Eithne had seen such men carry Eowain away from the strange cauldron. She looked up at the hill.

“I know what you're thinking about. But it isn’t so,” said Dwo.

Eithne frowned at them. Why does everyone pretend to know what I’m thinking? She put her fists on her hips. “And you know who I am, too, I suppose?”

Dwo pointed to her. “Eithne. Eithne bofnalthólode Dolgallu.”

And how in Annwn did they know that? She patted a hand to her own breast. “Aye, Eithne from Dolgallu.” Now what’s this all about?

She crossed her hands under her breasts. “I was thinking,” she said, “What’s the best way into the shrine. Would you tell us?”

Dwo shrugged. “There’s a good many ways. Some are better than others.”

Eithne checked herself at hearing something that sounded to her like the growling of a wild beast in the tall grass near them. She backed away from them, pulled the yellow-jewelled dagger from her belt. “Are there lions or bears about here?”

Kilim shook his head. “It's only the Horned-King snoring.”

Indeed, it was nothing more than wind through the rocks and grass. “The Horned-King? You mean, the God? Kârn?”

“He's dreaming now,” said Dwo. “And what do you think he’s dreaming about?”

Eithne said, “Who can guess?”

“Why, about you!” Kilim clapped his hands triumphantly. “And if he left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you'd be?”

“Where I am now, of course,” said Eithne.

“Not you!” Kilim retorted contemptuously. “You'd be nowhere. Why, you're only a sort of a thing in his dream!”

“If that there Horned-King was to wake,” added Dwo, “you'd go out—bang!—just like a candle!”

The Foreigner Jôkull grunted. Tommalt pointed toward the hamlet. “I ain’t so sure it’s wise to stay here, mum.”

Smoke, black and thick, billowed from the campground. Distant echoes of angry shouts rode the wind. Across the field, a dark knot moved out from the tents into the pastures. Soldiers led by five men in dark blue robes, and three women—one dark, one fair, one ginger.

One of the women pointed to their position on the knolls.