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lit by the silvery light. He didn’t dare to look up at the swollen, gibbous moon that surely hung overhead. Like a great baleful eye in the heavens, it had taken notice of him, one particular insect crawling around this sensitive spot upon the night shrouded world. As he completed the eighth circuit, the breeze died and the world seemed to hold its breath.
    As he walked the last circle around the mound, his head slowly filled with lovely sounds and smells. Hot, fresh honey and spices seemed to boil beneath his nostrils. Rippling music played in the distance. It grew harder to place one foot ahead of the next, but still his boots went on, seemingly of their own accord.
    His gaze, fixed down upon his boots, fell upon shining cloth of a radiant garment. He looked up slowly to see who he had answered his call. He faltered and almost fell. It was the Shining Lady.
    He opened his mouth to speak, but words were far beyond him. Hers was the unearthly beauty of the moon and the stars. Telyn was crude and simple beside her, flawed in a thousand ways. Compared to her ethereal beauty, all human women were as animals: gross and unrefined.
    She smiled at him and her arms floated forward to poise, ready for his embrace. Brand’s knees threatened to buckle, but he kept his feet. Hot desire flooded through him. He took a single step toward her.
    Vaguely, he became aware of others that moved around him, but he had eyes only for the Shining Lady. Wisps flittered and swooped. Slit-eyed goblins scuttled about the crest of the mound. His back felt the prodding of what was perhaps one of the elfkin. It poked at him with its finger and doubtlessly laughed. He imagined that the elfkin joked with its fellows, but he didn’t care. Nothing mattered but the White Lady.
    He took another step forward, and now he knew that he would embrace her, that he would lie with her. Her eyes told him that he wouldn’t be refused, that he would know more pleasure than any man of the River Folk could ever comprehend. The fact that her embrace meant death was nothing.
    The elfkin prodded him again, more insistently this time. He rolled his shoulders, trying to evade it. He didn’t turn away, he remained fixated by his Lady. He took another step. He reached out with his hands and his fingertips almost met hers. An electric thrill ran through him. Sweat flowed from his hair down into his eyes and burned them.
    The elfkin rapped upon his shoulder now, rudely. It all but drove its fist into his back. Brand snarled, but could not, would not turn from his Lady. When he had her in his grasp, he vowed, he would strike the blighter down with his axe.
    His boot swept forward again. Now his fingers touched hers, and he knew expectation and tension that he had never felt before. Her lips curved to form the inviting shape of an open-mouthed kiss. He began to fall into her embrace.
    The elfkin struck him. Hard. It rapped him on the skull so hard that for a moment, it seemed that his vision faded out. Purple splotches of color and pain marred the vision before him.
    Enraged, he knew there was nothing for it but to act. Thinking not at all, he wheeled, snarling, and reached up to grab the haft of the axe. He lifted it out of the stifling knapsack and it flashed, shining brighter even than the giant moon overhead.
    There was no elfkin there. A few wisps floated curiously about, but the nearest creature that could have struck him a blow seemed impossibly far from him. Confused, Brand turned back to the Shining Lady, who still rode foremost in his mind.
    She too, was gone. This horrible fact all but broke his mind, then. Tears sprouted from his eyes. His knees gave out and he fell upon them, weeping.
    He heard a twitter, then a giggle. “You stole her!” Brand screamed. Raving, he lurched up from the ground. He didn’t need the axe to urge him into a lumbering charge.
    The Faerie gave way before him as he reached the top of the mound. They circled him, dancing away as he came close