“O my children, I am glad,” he said, “that those who will be Bards have eyes yet to see. Noble One, will you tell me the an-swer?”

“Yes,” said Neirin, and he sighed. “You guard the spirit of Britain: the truth within the language, the language within the mind, the mind within the soul: you guard the past, and the present, and the future of our people. While you are here, the tongue of our people will endure, and with it the knot, the soul, the spirit of our land. Do I speak truth?”

“You do, Little Hawk,” said Claddedig. “Let us go back to the room.”

When we were seated again in the warmth, he poured a drink for each of us from the blue-glazed pitcher. “Yes,” he said then, raising his cup, “I know now who is your master. A blessing on him, and on you, and on those who come after you: it is for this, O my children, that I went into the ground. Now, the testing is over, but I am times and times a-lonely here: do you stay with me this night, and entertain me, and my blessing will go with you hereafter. Is it fair?”

“It is very fair,” said Neirin, and he smiled. “Will you hear a tale? For I know that my friend Gwernin has one ready…”

Somehow, somewhen, somewhere, we found ourselves in the forest again, with our horses; and it was dawn. But the last conversation that passed between Claddedig and Neirin—I do not remember it all, though now I understand it—concerned the way of his dying. For the Consenting, as he said, is the all…

But that, O my children, is a story for another day.

Chapter 4: In the High Hills

Elmet is a land of contrasts. It stretches from the Low Peaks in the south to the Pennine Gap in the north, from the Western Wall above Aquae Arnemetiae to the eastern hills that fall by slow stages to the Saxon plain. Much of it is moorland and mountain, little peopled or visited, broken here and there by deep and fertile valleys. Once it was a big kingdom, but bit by bit it has been nibbled away by the Saxons in the east and northeast and by Rheged in the northwest, until only the rocky core is left. But rock can be very strong, and falcons are no less fierce for nesting high. On the high tops the old ways still linger, and stone circles are more common there than churches.