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considered the big Leinster games at Carmun, he had been planning this year to go elsewhere. But now, standing by the stone with its spirals, the feeling had come into his mind that he should go to Carmun, though he did not know why.
      He listened. Everything was quiet. Yet in the very silence, there seemed to be a significance, a message being carried by a messenger still far away, like a cloud that is hidden over the horizon.
      Goibniu was a hardheaded man; he was not given to foolish moods or fantasies. But he could not deny that, now and again as he had walked across the island landscape, he had experienced the sensation of knowing things he could not explain. He waited. There it was again, that echo, like a dream half remembered. Something strange, it seemed to him, was going to happen at Carmun.
      He shrugged. It might mean nothing, but one shouldn't ignore these things. His eye travelled along the southern horizon. He'd go down to Carmun then, at Lughnasa. When had he last gone south? The previous year, collecting gold in the mountains below Dubh Linn. He smiled. Goibniu loved gold.
      Then he frowned. The memory of that journey reminded him of something else. He'd crossed by the Ford of Hurdles. There had been a big fellow there. Fergus. He nodded thoughtfully. That big fellow owed him a debt-to the value of a score of cattle. A debt that was long overdue. The chief was in danger of annoying him. He wondered if Fergus was going to the festival.
      Deirdre had not enjoyed the journey to Carmun.
      They had set off from Dubh Linn at dawn with a light, misty rain falling. The party wasn't large: just Deirdre, her father, her brothers, the bard, and the smaller of the British slaves. The men rode horses: she and the slave drove in the cart.
      The horses were short and stocky-in a later age they would have been called ponies-but sure-footed and sturdy. They would cover most of the distance by nightfall and arrive the following day.
      The rain didn't bother her. It was the kind that the people of the island disregarded. If you'd asked Fergus he would just have said, "It's a soft day." For the journey, she was dressed simply-a wool dress with a tartan pattern, a light cloak pinned at the shoulder, and a pair of leather sandals. Her father was similarly dressed in a belted tunic and cloak. Like most of the men on the island, his long legs were bare.
      For a while, they went in silence. They crossed the ford. Long ago, so the story was, the hurdles had been laid down on the orders of a legendary seer.
      However that might be, as the chief who controlled the territory, Fergus maintained it now. Each hurdle consisted of a wattle raft held in place with stakes and weighted with heavy stones-solid enough, though they could be washed away if the river flooded. At the far end, where the bridgeway passed over boggy ground, the cart broke some of the wattle that had rotted. "That'll have to be seen to," her father muttered absently; but she had wondered how many weeks would pass before he got round to it.
      Once across, they had turned westwards, following the line of the Liffey upstream. Willows grew on the riverbanks. On the dry ground, as in much of the island forest, ash trees and fine oaks abounded.
      Dair they called the oak tree in Celtic, and sometimes a settlement made in an oakwood clearing was called Daire-it sounded, approximately,
      "Derry." As they went through the forest track, the rain had ceased and the sun appeared. They crossed a large clearing. And it was only after the track had led them back into the woods again that Deirdre spoke.
      "So what sort of a husband am I to have?" We'll see. Someone who can meet the conditions."
      "And what are they?"
      "Such as are appropriate for the only daughter of this family. Your husband will be marrying the great-granddaughter of Fergus the warrior. Nuadu of the Silver Hand himself used to speak to him. Don't forget that."
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