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and laughed at him in childish voices.
    The manlings and wisps danced about him in a circle, dodging his rushes with glee. Spittle ran from Brand’s mouth, his eyes bulged from his skull and only hoarse croaking sounds came from his throat. Fully in the grip of the berserkergang, he charged at first one flittering shape then another, axe upraised. He didn’t slash and cut at them, but always kept the weapon high and ready.
    Sure that no mortal man could catch them, the Faerie played the game, expecting him to collapse in a shivering heap. None accounted for Ambros. Perhaps they didn’t truly know what it was that they faced.
    The axe waited for its moment, and when it came, the Eye of Ambros winked, as brightly as a stroke of silent lightning. Blinded, one of the scattering figures dashed the wrong direction, and Brand struck. The axe cut the creature in twain. It tumbled to the grassy mound like a stricken child.
    Gasping, Brand halted. The Faerie were gone.
    He blinked at the dark world around him, uncomprehendingly. It took a hazy length of time for his eyes to fall down upon the small corpse at his feet. He gazed at it in growing horror.
    It was an elfkin maiden. A beauty not so perfect as the Shining Lady, but much more innocent and child-like. Letting fall the axe, Brand gathered up the corpse and clutched it. He wept to see such a lovely creature in death and to know himself as her killer. He found that a lock of her spun-silver hair had been shorn off and lay in the grass. He grasped the lock, brought to his lips, and felt its light, feathery touch.
    “Why?” asked a voice from behind him.
    Brand cringed with guilt. “I lost my temper and my mind with it. One of them kept poking and prodding at me!” he said, hating the whining sound in his voice.
    “None of my folk touched thy person.”
    “But, I felt…” Brand trailed off and realized the truth with new horror. It had been the axe itself. There had been no elfkin poking at him. The axe had prodded him and rapped his skull just as it had in the past, trying to warn him about the Shining Lady. In his charmed state he had become enraged and misdirected his wrath toward the Faerie.
    “Thou hast taken from me Llewella , one of my own daughters. I request repayment of this debt,” said the voice.
    Without turning, Brand knew the voice to be Oberon’s.
    Unbidden, the image of Myrrdin came to his mind. He recalled Gudrin’s story about Myrrdin’s youth, so many centuries ago. He felt he understood the moment that Myrrdin had met with the farmer, bearing the man’s dead daughter in his arms. He hung his head in shame. When he could speak, he nodded to acknowledge the debt. “Tell me what you want.”
    “The Axeman will grant my wish?”
    Brand felt some of his composure return. He felt distant from himself. He touched the silvery lock of hair that reflected the liquid moonlight into his eyes. “Tell me what you want,” he heard himself say.
    “Thou art wiser than when last we met. I request a small thing.”
    “The return of Lavatis,” said Brand.
    “Wiser, indeed wiser,” said Oberon, as if to himself.
    “I need something as well,” said Brand quietly. “I need to be attuned to my accursed, but beloved axe, so that I might never strike down another innocent.”
    Oberon laughed. He laughed long and loud, he laughed until tears burst from his eyes and the world rang with the sound, but there was no mirth in it. “One debt of blood is not enough!” he cried. “He commits murder upon my family, Llewella’s body is not yet cold before him, but still he asks for a kindly boon!”
    “I would not want to repeat tonight’s mistake,” replied Brand.
    Abruptly, Oberon stopped laughing. “That is not a matter to be decided by me, Axeman, but rather by thee.”
    “Why do you call me Axeman?” asked Brand. Finally, he turned to face Oberon. He looked so marvelously young. He was the father perhaps of a hundred generations of his folk, but still his