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clamor of busier seasons. There was learning to be gained from all things: especially from dreams.
    The Lady’s Veil was not frozen; its fall was too heavy, its face too open to allow the ice a grip. Pools at the base were fringed with tiny crystals and the ferns were frosted. Bridei scrambled up the rocks to the top.He stood awhile watching the sky, but the eagles did not pass over. He practiced his one-legged stance, wondering which of his eyes saw truer than the other. After a while his feet began to go numb and his ears to ache despite the sheepskin hat, and he gathered his bow and quiver and set off for home. Ferat could be relied upon to have hot oatcakes available on such a day, and Bridei was hungry.

    Beside and below the waterfall a granite outcrop marked the hillside; around it clustered holly bushes, glossy-leaved and dark. Bridei was perhaps two paces along the track at the base of the rocks when he heard it: a snapping, small, insignificant. He froze. Something was there, not far off under the trees, something that had gone quiet as he had. Something following him; stalking him. A boar?A wildcat? Bridei’s heart began to thud a warning. His feet wanted to run. He was a fast runner for his size; it wouldn’t take him long to get down to the stone dike that bordered Broichan’s outer field, where there was a guard. His whole body felt ready for flight. His mind said no. What if it was the Urisk? The Urisk didn’t need to run. Once it saw you, once it wanted you, it stayed with you likea shadow, however quick you were. The only way to escape was to trick it: to stand so still it couldn’t see you. Bridei was good at standing still.
    Then the cracking twig became a footfall, not furtive at all now, and he turned his head to see a man clad all in brown and gray, a man not so easy to spot in the winter forest, and the man had a hood with eyeholes over his face and a bow in his handswith an arrow aimed straight at Bridei’s heart.
    No time to run; no place to hide. He would not scream. He would not beg for mercy, for he was Bridei son of Maelchon, and his father was a king. He reached for his bow, backing slowly against the rock wall as his assailant moved closer; he could see the fellow’s finger on the string, and knew above the clamor of his heart, above the clenching tightnessin his chest, that this warrior’s purpose was death. The stone was rough behind him, full of chinks and crevices lined with soft, damp patches of moss. Part of the earth; part of the heartbeat . . . As the man’s finger tightened on the string, Bridei slipped backward between the folds of stone and into the dim security of a tiny, narrow cave. He squeezed his body against the back, trying toget out of sight, out of reach.
    Outside, the man cursed explosively and at length. Bridei waited, trying to remember to breathe. A sword came, angled through the narrow gap, slashing up and down, reaching, probing, seeking. Bridei pressed back, making himself small. The sword hacked, stabbed: it seemed the owner could not maneuver it into the position he needed, for the gap itself was too slight.Bridei wondered, now, how he had ever managed to get through.
    “Godforsaken druid’s get!” a voice muttered. “Smoke, that’s what we need . . .”
    Then there were other sounds, and Bridei knew the man was gatheringtwigs, leaves, bracken, things that would burn. Most of it would be damp; still, Bridei had seen Broichan’s fires, started with no more than a snap of the fingers, and he moved cautiouslyin the narrow space so he could get a sliver of view. The man was indeed heaping material at the base of the rocks, his movements quick and purposeful. There was no point in calling for help. If this warrior was canny with a flint, thick smoke would fill this tiny chamber well before any guard could run up the hill from the fields. If he didn’t want to die in this hole or walk out to certain slaughter,Bridei would just have to save himself.
    In the