Mander sat in a dark corner of the dank pier bar, sipping the willowbark tea for the pounding in his head that had begun at days' break and not left him the whole of this very long day. His face was blackened by the soot and the fire. He smelled of cinders and tangy metals and his clothes were pocked with burns. Only his hands were clean, completely devoid of the marks of his trade, itinerant smith, mercenary ferrier.         The disagreeable old woman across from him at the dark table had commissioned the day's work, a set of twisted angle irons for her kitchen shelves. The forge had not been good to him today--too hot, too cool. He'd reset the fire twice and still the work went badly, finished finally by his own stubborn will and not much help from the forge.

        Mander couldn't stand them, of course, but he needed them just the same.

        He tried to be gracious when she offered him a "magical reading of the stones," instead of the agreed upon payment. Even though she did not know the reading, nor speak it well, still his incongruously graceful fingers reached into the ragged velvet pouch and brought forth the Five, the cross of stones. Mander sipped the tea and nodded pleasantly, even knowing the fuliginous marks over his features rather dampened the effect.

        While the woman prattled on about lovely wenches and chests of gold, Mander read his own story in the stones.

        The first rune to mark himself at the center of the cross, of course, dagez., the Divine Light, that flash of white heat which rises like lightning and retreats to abject darkness. What else for the fire dragon? They had called him Salamander for as many years as he had wintered in this godforsaken hamlet by the river. They spoke of him sleeping inside the fire of his forge, of transformations at midnight. Oh, and let one of their miserable shacks catch fire and burn, there were always the sour looks his direction, as if he had willed it so. Mander--they were sure to shorten the name in time, and then to forget what it even meant--had been beaten on more than one occasion, for matters incendiary.

        Mander still returned when the weather grew cold. He still needed them. They still needed him.

        It was a miserable bargain, to be sure, born out of a grudging necessity, but it was the only way Mander knew now. He had gotten used to the rhythm of the work, this place in the motley piecework of his life.

        Then came the rune that held sway over his past. It was the blank. Were it not for his tender temples, Mander might have laughed. Yes, Destiny, the Rune of Runes, the province of the helpless and the fated.

        And the damned, he thought. So was I damned. So am I damned, though this is a rather benign perdition at that.

        Two centuries earlier, he had left another life far behind him. In that life he would have ridden into this sorry burg and put it to the torch. This especially occurred to him the last time they tied him to the old oak at the center of the village and flogged him raw for some infraction or another. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse--another life, far away from him down the darkening slope of the distant past. He had known worse at the hands of his Brother Horsemen than these dim-witted villagers could imagine, let alone commit.

        Then came the rune for the future, laguz, a sensuous sign. It meant water and the tides of passion, the waves of pleasure and carnal union. Mander snorted and placed the stone to the right of the fire sign. The balance pleased him, even if the irony did not. He'd left sexual congress back in the long ago, just as he had left his horsemanship. Mander had vowed the day he broke with his brothers that he would never raid nor ride nor bed again.

        Two hundred long years had yet to see the breaking of that well-tempered chain, forged in the fury and quenched in the blood.

        Mander shook his head. He had thought it would be so easy, that the leaving would be the major obstacle. What a fool he had been! Out on his own after so long a time, and bound by vow not to do most of what he knew, Mander had spent some very lean years sorting things out.

        He had finally fallen back on the only skills he knew. He was not good enough at the forge to be a swordsmith, but he was handy enough with the lesser metal necessities of civilized living...and he was good around horses, even he weren't going to ride. Mander learned how to earn the things he could not make for himself. It was a difficult and tedious education, but he had all the time in the world to learn.

        Mander was more unlike these sodden dock folk than even they might suspect. His eye wandered over the dingy room:  the City Fathers gaming at a large table beneath a flickering bank of lanterns, the jaundiced singer in the far corner--probably be dead by morn, and the great plank, hung by the chains Mander had made, making up the main serving table, the bar. He noted that the urine reek of the men almost over-powered the salty fish smell of the River Auden which slap, slapped its presence against the pier bracings beneath the water ravaged flooring of the bar. Marking their territory, no doubt, he thought.

        Mander wished to be far less sober than his meager means might allow. This place was bad enough drunk. Ah, well, the next stone.

        This would be--he was momentarily distracted by the old woman's chatter about gems--yes, the rune which ran against him, which confounded him. And what else but isa, ice, immutable, slippery, unsure, cold, passionless and...

        Perhaps he had settled for a kind of death, even as he had vowed never to be Death again.

        The last stone turned, the rune perth, and positioned the right way! Mander's headache finally retreated. Maybe he would get out of this day with more to show than his very sore back and his blistered left ear. Chance was on his side this night, a game would go his way. That was it's meaning, simple and true.

        For the moment, Mander conveniently forgot the rest about how all things hidden are sometimes imprudently revealed and winning is not always a welcome state.

        The old woman moved away, taking the irons with her. Mander wondered when his good luck would strike. He did not have to wonder long.

        "Soot Face!" the burgermeister called out amiably, almost.

        Mander drank the last of his tea.

        "Mander, you old sod! Get your ragged ass over here!"

        Mander pressed his palms into the top of the table and levered up on his long arms. He wandered slowly over to the gaming table. They were playing with tessarae or, more likely, tali, the six-sided dice with only four sides marked, each opposite pair of sides adding up to five, one and four, two and three. Whichever, they were using, though, Mander saw no dice on the table.

        "Get the bones, Soot Face," Burgermeister ordered.

        Mander saw none such anywhere on the table. It was piled high with the last bet, but no "bones."

        Then he peeked over the table's edge and saw the Tender at Bar, himself, stretched out flat on his back on the planking, the dice still in his stubby fist and vomit all over his front and his hand and the dice as well.

        They all had a good laugh at that. "Went to bless the bones, he did and then spewed and keeled over," they explained.

        As if Mander could not have guessed that himself. "Here," he said, reaching deeply into the pouch at his waist. "You may borrow mine." The smithy brought forth a splendid set of three perfect dice and laid them on the table. The Meister rolled them into the wooden cup and tossed them over and over, testing their truth.

        Mander did not tell them these were a remnant from his other life, that they were carved in human bones. He did not tell them that he kept the tessarae to play the many intricate games he had devised to ease his loneliness and boredom, with only Fate to partner his play.

        "They are true," the Meister proclaimed. "You must roll them in the Tender's staid, and make the final bet upon the roll."

        Oh, bloody bother! Mander cursed silently. He had to assume this was not the come-out roll, not by the look of the bets piled there. Damnation! They had set him a trap and he had walked stupidly into it! He'd be hugging that old oak again if he were not very careful. Well, since he could not save himself in any case, he decided on an impossibly bold approach.

        "Horns," Mander said, hoping they were playing the game as he had learned it from the Romans.

        Bloodshot eyes went wide round the table.

        "Ye're mad," they said. Some of them said, others belched. The Meister laughed and licked his lips.

        If he lost the roll--which was all too bloody likely--he would surrender to their cruelty yet another time. But, if he won...

        ...well then, there was not enough money on the table, nor enough in the entire village to cover the bet. Now that would be something to see.

        Mander picked up the cup and the tesserae. He let the fine bone cubes tumble over his fingers into the cup. He watched their faces pale in the light of his splendid, if artificial, certainty. Slowly, he offered the cup to the Meister so that he might pick out the extra cube.

        Horns, the smallest and the largest number, the alpha and the omega, Mander thought, and so many, many possibilities in between. His back began to sting in anticipation, but he steadied his hand and spilled the bones out of the cup. They rolled to the opposite side of the table and stopped, far enough away that the roll was deemed good.

        Mander somehow could not make himself look down to discover his fate. He looked instead at the faces round the table, wherein he read the dread look of defeat--theirs, not his.

        Blessed Perth, he sighed as he finally looked at the dice. The one and the six. Oh, damnation, he shivered inwardly, his own dice had more numbers on them, and an infinitely greater chance that he would not have made his bet. He had been so lucky.

        Mander was not one to dwell on incidentals when there was power to be taken. "I want some ale and porter," he began. "And whatever you are calling stew this fine evening. And then--"

        He let them hang a moment on the hook of that pause while the least of their number went to fetch his requests. "We shall discuss how you are to pay your portions of my purse."

        Smithy Mander was well into his cups and full of what he referred to as "ewe stew," meaning the oldest sheep in the flock had finally succumbed to time and been thrown into the pot. No matter, it was filling and warm and more than he'd had to eat in a week. He was also in fine fettle and no good sense whatsoever when he accepted the Meister's offer of the latest full shipment, in that very day, lock, stock, and barrel...his.

        Mander had watched the scow come into dock and it had not missed his notice that it dipped below its usual water line, or that it was laden with all manner of textiles and ingots, spices and grain. He would be rich. Staggering out of the stinking bar, he began to hum a tune about the Friar and the Doxy, wishing he could remember all the words.

        "I'll have you deliver the goods out to my camp in the morn," he slurred his way through the order.

        "Oh, not at all, Master Soot Face," the Meister grinned. "You may have your winnings now."

        Mander stared at the man, thinking he could not have heard aright. "I can't carry all--"

        "No need, m'lord," Meister replied. "This way." The man led Mander up the bank where the other gamers had gathered.

        "What is this?" Mander muttered. There were no silks, no sacks, no--. Only a naked slave and a saddled horse, both tethered to a post, both splendidly wild, but with not much else to offer.

        "These are you winnings, m'lord," the Meister's tones went unctuous and rancid.

        "But I saw the last boat!" Mander complained.

        "Ah, but that was the last boat before sunset, Soot Face," the Meister laughed. "These came in after that, in the dark, but before the stroke of midnight."

        So much for luck. God Damn Mortals, anyway!

        The circle of men stepped back from the slave and the stone horse, but they did not leave, only retired to what Mander assumed was a "safe distance."

        Not a good sign. Mander approached cautiously. He could get something for the saddle and there was a sword, a fine claymore fastened in its scabbard to the pommel. That would surely be worth something. But these two were worse than worthless to him. These two would never make proper slaves. Both the man and the stone horse bore the marks of the struggle it had taken to get them up from the boat just to this post. Mander could not see how he would get either of them out of the village, let alone up to his camp north of here.

        Or what the hell he would do with them if he did get them that far.

        "They are yours, Soot Face," the Meister intoned. "If you take possession of them immediately. Otherwise, we cannot be held responsible for your bet."

        Well, Mander thought, he might as well give it a try. He walked unsteadily around to the opposite side of the post, wishing he'd been just a little more moderate in his consumption of the ale. Quick as thought, he had both of them untied.

        That was the easy part. The crowd backed away farther.

        At which point, Mander's two new acquisitions attempted to split him twain, the man going down on one knee and leaning his full weight, which was considerable, back against the line, while the stallion rose behind the smithy, nearly wrenching his arm out of its socket.

        Mander played out more slack to the stone horse who was bouncing up and down on his forelegs, preparing for another rear, or something worse. If he could only concentrate, but there was that nauseating burring thrum down his neck and--

        Oh, hell! An Immortal! The naked slave at his feet, growling at him like a cur was another Immortal like himself. "Can you understand me?" Mander tried to keep his voice calm as he reached into his memory for the dialect that would go with the sword, guessing by the look on the man's face that the horse and the sword were his.

        The man stopped pulling back. "Yes," he answered.

        Mander had guessed right. Maybe he would be lucky after all. "Can you stand? Please?"

        "Why should I?" the gloomy eyes cast a suspicious gaze on the smithy.

        "Because if you do," Mander smiled in what he hoped was a friendly expression, "then we can all get out of here and as soon as we get clear of this filthy hamlet, you and your horse will be free."

        "Why should I trust you?" the man replied.

        "Because you have no choice," Mander suggested, wondering when his other arm was going to give out under the stallion's persistent tugs and jerks.

        The man stood up, naked but for a tattered rag at his loins. He was so fully clothed in his indignation, however, the effect was admirable rather than obscene. Still, Mander reminded himself, the Gaels were not adverse to nudity. It was said they used their plaids for tents almost more than for clothing. This was a strapping fair lad, long raven's locks, hard bronzed frame. Two decades by the look of him, and younger still, older still, by various of his gestures and postures. An interesting one, this, Mander mused. What must he think of me, half-pied, and all over soot and grime, stinking like the docks?

        "Can you quiet your horse, Lord," Mander said respectfully.

        The man strode past him and laid a broad palm on the stallion's neck. The blowing and squealing quieted instantly.

        "Now if you would just do me the favor of walking out of here with me," Mander suggested, "then we are all going to give these idiots a taste of there own poison."

        The man made a small, sinister sound, deep in his throat, that might have been laughing.

        The three of them walked forward and the crowd parted soundlessly.

        When they got up the bank and level with the village proper, Mander introduced himself. "I am Mander the Smith," he said.

        "I think you are Mander the Fool," the man replied. "How could you be so stupid as to let an enemy have his weapon and mount back, and you so drunk you can hardly walk?"

        "I trusted to your honor, Lord," Mander replied. "I know the Gaels are thought to be barbarians, but I also know that is a wrong perception. Your people are a noble lot, Lord, and you know the worth of justice and the nature of indebtedness. I saved you considerable bother back there and I asked very little in return. It would not be civil of you to assault me."

        "Oh, Draak," the man addressed his horse, "but he does have a sweet tongue, this one."

        "Well, it is my pleasure to meet you, Draak," Mander reciprocated by also addressing the horse.

        "Which only leaves yourself to the amenities," Mander commented.

        The man stopped stock still and his horse stopped also. This sent Mander two of his long-legged strides ahead of them before he realized they had stopped. Mander turned back around towards them and his heart caught in his throat.

        The moonlight had too swiftly cooled their fire and heat. They were turned to glorious stolid statues of metallic perfection, brilliant in their stillness, waiting only for the tempering to leaven their brittle hardness with a grace that would reveal their true strength. And what a fine thing that would be, he thought--a weapon, an ornament, a reliquary. Mander was so inflamed by the notion that he almost missed the formal introduction,

        "I am Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod."

        "Good morn to ye, Master Smythe."

        Mander stirred in the depth of his dreamings and surfaced in new morning and soft furs. "Huh?"

        "There is breakfast."

        The offer was nearly drowned out by the aura which brought Mander fully awake and up to a crouch, flailing about for his sword, which should have been--.

        "You are looking for this?"

        Mander felt the scabbard of his prized sword being laid across his palms. He opened his eyes and tried to focus, tried to make some sense...

        ...but all he managed to do was dive through the ragged blanket which formed the front wall of his "house," and be thoroughly, if not fatally, ill. When he was done spewing and gagging, Mander found himself tossed over a smooth, hard shoulder and trudged, quite unceremoniously, down the narrow path to the river and...

        Sploosh.

        Whereupon he set up such a caterwauling that, high in the forest eaves, the crows and the rooks took up his call.

        When Mander was done sizzling in the icy stream, he struggled out to the bank and collapsed, shivering.

        The brute loomed over him, a dark eclipse of the small heat afforded by the late fall sun.

        "Be merciful, damnation!" Mander spit out. "Kill me and be done with it!"

        "There, there, Master Smythe, ye've only the wages of over-indulgence to thank for yer miserable straits. If ye stop squawking and drink this--"

        Mander tried to swat the bowl away but somehow the bitter draft was down his throat before he could register his next complaint and he was soon enough able to stand...or at least to stagger. He followed up the path, back to his camp.

        "Why are you still here?" he asked rudely over his second bowl of Duncan's nasty healing brew.

        Duncan only laughed and excused himself to see to his horse.

        Mander took stock as the fog cleared. He was in his three-sided shack with the leaky roof and the forge in the center. Everything valuable--not much, sadly--was still there, his tools mostly, and the few boxes of ingots in the far corner. Something was different, wrong. It was all too orderly and, and--

        Clean. That stupid Gael had tidied up!

        Mander couldn't say why this made him so angry, but it surely did. Wait a moment!

        "You stole my clothes!" Mander burst out of the shack howling.

        Duncan and the stallion, Draak, both looked over at him. Then they looked at each other.

        He could have sworn they were laughing at him.

        "It will take them all day to dry in this cold!" Mander whined when Duncan pointed to the rope which held his sopping trousers and shirt. "Damn you! I don't have any other--!"

        A bundle of linen and wool hit him in the face.

        "Where did you get these?" Mander felt like light ash, drifting and swirling, this way and that, in the vagaries of every breeze. "Where did you get those?"

        The Gael was now resplendent in his clan colors, artfully, functionally draped over his fine frame and the loose swordsman's shirt, all of this secured by dark, soft leather, belt and baldric. This last was worn backwards, off his left shoulder, proclaiming a bastardy at odds with the rest of his dress. Mander found himself again fascinated by the riddle of this man, the incongruities of manner and of circumstance.

        The clothes which Duncan had thrown at him were equally intriguing: soft wool trousers in pale grey homespun and a simple shirt of linen, much-patched, but clean and comfortable.

        When Mander had finished dressing and settled down on a stumpish log by the open fire, Duncan handed him another bowl of--. "What is this?" Mander wrinkled up is hawkish nose and stared at the white and brown mush, thick as mud.

        "Breakfast," Duncan tossed his long black mane behind his shoulders and lowered himself down on the other side of the fire. "Amaranth and--," the Gael hesitated, searching for the word, "blàthach," he said, finally. [meaning buttermilk, or soured milk, or in this case, something closer to yogurt.]

        It was only then that Mander noticed the man had been speaking his own tongue--and quite well, at that. "You have understood all along?"

        "I know the language, Master Smythe," Duncan said, beginning on his own bowl of mush. "I cannot say I understand anything at all about these folk."

        "It isn't bad," Mander tried to be complimentary. He wondered that he could stomach anything so slimy such a short time after being so ill, but it was soothing and warm and, like the Gael himself, a new taste to tempt his jaded palate.

        "Is a storm coming?" Mander referred to the darkening sky as he finished the last of the grain stew.

        "Perhaps that is how you call it," Duncan answered in his own Northern Isle dialect, more Manx than Welsh, "but my people call it night."

        "Night?"

        "You have slept the whole day, Master Smythe," Duncan poured something like honey out of a small flagon into Mander's empty bowl. "I did not think it wise to wake you sooner."

        Night, Mander thought, an entire new day in my life and I have slept through its entirety. He sipped tentatively at the honey liquid--ah, perfect. Mead! Yes, this was the end of his lucky day. As he listened to the Gael's lyrical explanations--the lai of the day, as it were--Mander settled into the offered fur and wondered idly if heaven could be far different than this: a warm belly, a sip of mead, and a gaelic bard to sing him back to sleep.

        Duncan's stallion nosed in beside him and slumped down on its belly, humph, laying his head on Mander's log. Didn't he know that horses were supposed to sleep standing up?

        Mander wasn't even surprised when the dark horse nuzzled into the bowl in his lap to lick up the last of the mead. After today, Mander thought nothing much would surprise him any more.

        How very wrong he was.

    "Well, Dear Master Smythe, if you think your day was a paragon of days, then Brigitte bless me, but mine was its equal, if not in type, then in tenor. I set out that morning to make Ipston by the third day and seek out a cousin that a wood witch had seen in my future. I stopped on the road to help a poor wretch who'd been trapped 'neath the axle of his ruined cart, and next I knew I was bound below decks, with Draak tied above, screaming to the High Heavens, and the brigands eating the last roasted bits of my sorry pack pony.

        "Three days in that foul hold and I was beginning to give up hope of seeing the sun, or dry land again, not to mention my cousin, when the hatch was thrown open and I was hauled out roughly and handed over to the dockmaster, or some such. It was clear soon enough that they meant to sell me and my belongings. I listened to them, but I said nothing, and acted as if I did not understand them.

        "Which went with their thinking of me as baggage, in any case. My father always told me to pick my own field of battle and this was surely not it. I tried to stay my temper and keep my wits, but the Tender at Bar handled me most obscenely and I went blind with rage. I cannot swear but he would be dead now had they not all tumbled on and dragged me away, with Draak, to that stake on the rise, where you first met us."

        Mander's thoughts drifted towards the fire, popping and spitting, its red coals beginning to frost over. The horse climbed back upright and wandered off to graze while Mander sorted a few pieces of poor quality wood to contribute to the pyre, leaving the more evenly-burning pieces for his forge.

        "Which doesn't really explain how all of this," he indicated Duncan's tartan and the food stores and packs, and his own clothes, "got here."

        "The townspeople seem to think you are a draoi," the Gael replied. "A drui, a wizard, a mage," Duncan added, speaking to the confusion on Mander's sharp features.

        "Oh," Mander chuckled, "they think I'm a great many things."

        "They are convinced you ensorceled myself and Draak," Duncan continued. "So they thought better of shorting you your bet."

        "Huh?"

        "Since they didn't think you'd get me or the stone horse out of the village, they neglected the rest of my gear, the stores I had on the pack pony. They sent two men out with the rest this morning. Afraid you would make them burst into flame in their sleep. Something like that. I didn't quite understand."

        Mander stood up slowly and stretched. "Which only leaves the question about why you are here."

        Duncan leaned over his knees and stared at the fire. "You passed out. Well, you got quite ill and then you passed out. I put you on Draak and we rode the direction we'd been walking. You woke up enough at the forks to spew again and give directions. Somehow we made it here and I pulled off your clothes to wash and put you to bed. The men came at dawn with the supplies, as I have said, and you know the rest."

        So, Mander thought, two hundred years and the vow is broken in one night by this sapling Gael and some pitiful Auden ale. He wondered this did not bother him more. "But you are still here," he commented.

        The young man drew a heavy breath and said quietly, "I might as well tell you this now, so there will be no misunderstanding between us." There was a long and painful pause.

        Which Mander could not help but find delicious.

        "I am an abomination, Master Smythe," Duncan lifted his chin and looked straight into Mander's eyes. The fire lit his fine features, the brave jaw, the liquid eyes.

        Damnation! Mander thought. Another night and who knew what would be left of two hundred years' honorable restraints? "I hardly think--"

        "A monster, Master Smythe. An unnatural thing. An evil in the sight of Our Lord," the Gael spoke the words as if by rote, as if they had been said to him on more than one occasion, by someone who mattered greatly.

        "Oh," Mander's brains deserted the romantic ether of his lucky day and returned to their more usual salience and clarity. "A monster is it? You died," he said, with as much mystery as his deep voice owned.

        The deep eyes went wide, the straight jaw slacked. "Yes," Duncan whispered.

        "But you rose from the dead, like the Christ Himself," Mander continued.

        Duncan crossed himself, "No, do not say that. There was no glory in my rising."

        "You found that everything you knew, everything you were, was a lie," Mander could not stop himself. He had known power. He could not resist taking it up again. "They turned you out," he finished.

        "Yes. Banished," Duncan's rich voice caught.

        It all made sense, really. "You were the MacLeod Clan's prince, the son of the Chief. You have so recently taken to wearing your baldric backward that you still buckle it twisted. You still have most of what you took with you when they sent you away from all that you knew. This has just happened, perhaps in the last turning of the moon, but surely no longer than a season."

        "A fortnight," Duncan murmured, stirring the coals absently with a stick. "If I knew how to do it, I would end my life, but everything I tried--"

        Poor child, Mander thought. There is no justice you should think this way when you are a Prince of the Greater Order, perhaps even, The One.

        "I am here," the Gael was nearly to tears now, "because I have nowhere else to go."

        Mander felt his whole being slump as if he had been annealed, smooth and soft and bent. The Gaelic soul was all about family and clan and home. Duncan's soul had been taken from him, even as his life was given back to him. Too short a time for a teacher to have found him, the lad had wandered into trouble and ended in this sorry place. He felt such a tender pity for the princeling, but his was not a life for two. It was hardly--were he pressed to be truthful--a life for one. Still.

        "Open your eyes, Duncan," Mander commanded. "And see what is before you."

        Duncan looked up. "You, Master Smythe. I see only you."

        "Does it not occur to you there is a reason I know this about you?"

        "Because you are a drui?"

        "Oh, Child, I'm not even a Master Smith--"

        "But your fine gold sword--" Duncan argued.

        "Was stolen, not made, by me," Mander answered. "I make sundries and hinges, wheel rims, and I shoe horses. I am no one's idea of a Master Anything. Those fools at Auden Port were just as astonished that I survived my last flogging at their hands as they were that you went with me out of the village."

        "They beat you?"

        Mander screwed up his mouth in disgust, "On more than one occasion. Where was I? Oh, yes, see what I am--no monster, Duncan. Just a man, as you are a man. No different."

        The Gael's glorious dark locks draped over his face as his head ducked down. "You don't believe me."

        Mander considered. He had not worked today. His hands were still clean. He really did not have to indulge this night in the ritual which made the world right. Let the world be wrong this one night, he thought. But there was the matter of the princeling's wretchedness and what better way to prove his words?

        "Duncan," Mander called out the young man's name as he stirred the coals and built the fire up to a roar.

        The Gael did not answer, but he did lift his head out of those strong, broad hands of his.

        "They call me Mander because that is easier than what they have named me. Salamander is what they named me. The dragon that lives in the heart of the forge. They think I am such a creature, such a beithir, an éidigh, as you have named yourself. And so I am."

        With that, Mander knelt before the fire and put both his elegant hands straight into the flames, letting the fire play between his fingers, setting his mind at peace as the pain took his thoughts away.

        Duncan started screeching and Mander drew his hands back out. They appeared to be covered in black and red gloves, edged with an eerie blue sparkling flame which followed them out from the fire. Mander had never done this with another to witness. Usually he'd be rolling around on the ground in a righteous, wallowing agony. Somewhere he found the strength to just be still and await the finish of the healing while the dispossessed Highlander shivered and wept.

        "Ye're not going to sleep in your clothes," Duncan snorted as Mander lay down on the furs which formed his home's only bed.

        "Your sense of awe doesn't seem to have lasted very long," Mander complained, even though he'd spent a long while explaining that awe away, so long, in fact, that the fire outside had burned down to embers.

        "It's disgusting," Duncan commented. "No wonder your clothes were so filthy!"

        Mander was too tired to argue. He stripped off the shirt and the trousers and snuggled back under the fur pile. Duncan retrieved them off the dirt floor and folded and laid them on his own neatly-folded tartan and shirt atop one of the dear, departed pony's packs.

        The former MacLeod heir slid under the furs beside Mander without a word.

        Mander wondered if he should say something. Offhand, he could think of at least a dozen different cultures where such a gesture might be taken--oh, any number of ways, really. He moved away from the lad and turned on his side towards him, his back to the wall.

        "Mander?"

        "Yes, Duncan," he answered evenly, waiting for his luck to end.

        "I've questions, Mander," Duncan continued. "You said we were both Immortals."

        "Yes."

        "And you said there were rules that went with being Immortals. And there seemed to be a lot of rules, Mander: Holy Ground and combat etiquette and the rest."

        "Yes, Duncan."

        "My heart is empty and my love is dead," the Gael continued on, so obscurely that Mander asked him to repeat it in his own tongue, and still it made little sense. "She died, Mander. I lost her before ever I had her, but if I had nay lost her--?" he paused. "Mander, would our sons have been Immortal?"

        "No," Mander answered. "We do not have bairns, Brave Prince."

        "Oh," Duncan said sadly, rolling onto his back and folding his arms behind his head. "I had a vision once, when I was a boy. There was a tall man with dark, brooding eyes. He said I would have no sons, no daughters, no wife."

        "I am sorry, Duncan," Mander started to reach for him, but thought better of it. His weariness made him lie, or something else which he could not quite explain, even to himself. "There are really only two aspects of Immortality that inform us. First, there are no women Immortals, and second, all you will ever know, for certain, is loneliness."

        Mander rolled away from the princeling. He had made him weep again, and for no apparent reason. He knew very well how he had upset the lad. He just did not know why he had done so.

       Mander heard something at the edge of his consciousness, the margin of his scattered dreams. Cassandra, he thought, stirring in her sleep. But as the murmurs continued, his mind swam slowly back to the present, leaving the other life on some infinitely distant horizon. He blinked his eyes open and yawned.

        The noise started again behind him. A breathing of sorts, Mander thought, or a snore. No, not exactly. The exhalations labored in a whimpering, raspy tide. Must be a night's mare had born his new guest away in the night. Well, the lad certainly had enough to trouble his sleep.

        Mander slipped out of bed. Not dawn yet. The shack was dark as death. It did not do to wake strangers in the dark. He reached unerringly for the oil lamp and set it, by feel, on the anvil, spilling some over his right hand.  Mander retrieved the tinder set from under the anvil's base and lit the wick. All the while the oddly disturbing whisper and moan of Duncan's dreaming set his teeth on edge.

        Bringing the lamp back to the bed side, Mander set it on a crossbeam and gazed down, stunned by the sight which greeted his sleep bleary eyes.

        Duncan had kicked the covers off his splendid flesh, glowing in the lamp's subtle light. The bronze was everywhere flushed and slick with sweat and heat, writhing in the unmet passion of his dreaming. The words the Gael had said before about empty hearts and losing his love before he had her--Duncan had been trying to say he was a virgin. Mander sighed silently. And he was far too good a child of the Dear Mother Church to have even satisfied that conflagration himself.

        Mander told himself he should cover the lad and then wake him, but he found he had lain down beside him, that his own breathing was following a similar course...

        ...that his newly-healed hands, so pale and long and tender, wanted no other thing than to touch this other fire, to find the slow quenching which would make the perfect edge, neither too brittle nor too weak.

        "Duncan," he called softly. "It's all right. Easy." He felt the lad's entire frame shudder beneath his first touch against the broad, hard chest. The whispering whimpers turned into deep throated moans as Mander's fingers traced solidly down the flat belly, the sensitive place where the Immortal's bore-- as did the more normal sons of Man--the one mark that proved they had ever had a mother.

        Mander feathered out his fingers and let them settle lightly over the Scot's swollen cock, eliciting a scaling howl that made the stallion scream outside.

        "Shhh, Duncan," Mander said breathily. He still had the oil from the lamp over his palm and he began stroking gently down the shaft. Duncan gulped and his breathing quieted to a hum as he arched into the caress. "Yes, Prince," Mander crooned, soothing the air with his deepest tones. "Easy, easy."

        With his free hand, Mander reached up and stroked Duncan's head, loosening the arch in the neck which had driven his crown deep into the furs. The beautiful face relaxed and the full lips parted slightly in a deep soughing purr. Gradually, Mander built the rhythm until Duncan was once again in the same state that he had first found him, but this time the agony was over in the briefest instant and entirely forgotten in the rapture which followed.

        Duncan collapsed into the furs, utterly flaccid, muscle and bone, as Mander gathered a clean polishing rag from the anvil bench and dried him off in gentle long strokes as if the Gaelic Prince were a fine blade.

        "Sleep well, Orphan," Mander murmured, stroking his fingers through the dark curls.

        Mander rolled back over towards the wall, thinking he should attend to his own erection, but he just lay there, sore and pulsing and cold. He couldn't have said why he made no move to touch himself, to gain his own release. Perhaps he did not want the moment to be ended.

        Or perhaps it was because it felt condign, a fitting punishment for having broken two solemn vows over the brief course of one single, and very lucky, day.

        Mander opened his eyes and stifled a squeak. It seemed that no time had passed, but the lamp was out and the sun had begun to peek through each chink of the drafty shack. The Highlander loomed over him, all bright skin and brighter eyes. How long, Mander wondered, has he been watching me sleep?

        Which begged the next question, "Why?"

        And the next one after that, "Is he going to kill me for what I did last night?"

        "Duncan," Mander was suddenly reminded of what the Gael had said about the Tender and being handled obscenely, "I never meant any--"

        Two large fingers crossed the smith's lips and quieted his sputterings. The smoky eyes caught his own and held them there in silent communion. Mander felt the broad, strong fingers travel down his chest and belly and--.

        Oh, Dear Lord, Mander thought, he means to do worse than kill me!

        But his eager flesh rose to the touch of that strong hand, even as his fear sent his testicles diving for cover. The juxtaposition of terror and ecstasy was too much sensation for Mander to contain with any discretion. He was soon bent backward, splayed wide, and babbling profanity in any number of ancient languages, under Duncan's unpracticed, but effective, ministrations.

        He came as if stricken by a seizure, or a Quickening, full, wracking spasms of unbelievable resolution which left him in a puddled, strengthless heap beneath the Gael's admiring eyes.

        Mander expected him to laugh, but Duncan instead leaned over him slowly and kissed his forehead, saying something about breakfast. Then the Highlander was gone out through the blanket and Mander was left to his many and divers wonderings.

        That odd beginning lead fluidly into the days and nights which followed. Mander worked at his forge each day, while Duncan set about building them a more suitable winter dwelling. The smith shared his knowledge in the marriage of fire and metal, by day, his more intimate versions of that same knowledge, by night--though, in truth, their pleasurings never passed that initial imprinting pattern. Duncan imparted the rudiments of carpentry and plumb and true. Mander's single attempt to cook them the venison the Highlander had brought down, decided them both to let the Gael take over all matters culinary.

        By the time the snow began to fall in earnest, the two men had moved out of the forge's shack and into a respectable little cabin, complete with a simple hearth and fire...and Draak moved into the adjacent stall which Duncan had built into the back wall. It was something of a horizontal peale, the architecture favored in the North Country, where they lived in the second story above a barn.

        A particularly bad blizzard drove them indoors for a seemingly endless batch of grey days, which were bound to end, sooner or later, in near mortal combat.

        "...and how," Mander screeched at the top of his lungs, "can you complain about my slovenliness, when you let your horse shit in our house?"

        "You know very well," the Highlander replied through jaws clenched so tightly they seemed banded in steel. "That he stays in the back, beyond the wall and the split door."

        "Well, that doesn't help the stench, now, does it?"

        "I'm surprised you can find his scent above your own. What is it, Smythie, five days now since you've so much as wiped off your face?" Duncan turned back to the fire and his venison stew brewing there.

        "And it isn't your house," the Gael added.

        "What do you mean by that?"

        "You heard me," Duncan grumbled back. "Did you build it? Did you do any bloody thing to even help?"

        "I must have made a thousand times a thousand nails," Mander complained. "And who helped you lift that lintel? Who paid for the glazings and the bridge-planking for the floor?"

        Evidently, Duncan was not in the mood to be accurate. "Nothing. You did nothing at all to help. This is my house!"

        "Oh, well then--!" Mander snatched up his sword and one of the furs from the real bed that Duncan had made. "I hope you and Draak will be very happy together here. In your house!"

        With that, Mander stomped out the door leaving only snow swirls and cold in his wake.

        Knee-deep in drifts is not the proper place for a Salamander, so it was not unexpected that the smith would soon lose the heat of his ire, and then his way, in the blinding white of so much cold. Surely this was the path to town, he thought, and ran, smack, into an obstinate Elderberry.

        Well, then, back to the right, but this only took him deeper into the woods. Within an hour, Mander could feel his strength deserting him, with his will. All those soft, white hillocks, laid out before him like God's Own counterpane, lulling him and tempting him and drawing him down, covering him like a doting mother, kissing his face with crystalline tears. It would be so wonderful just to sleep until spring.

        Too late, Mander's dying flesh rallied and he struggled to fight his way back, but his long legs were numb and useless, his heart already failing against the slush and sludge which his blood had become. He felt his own fire dying down at last as his eyes went finally blind. Isa, he thought, the rune which had predicted this pass, the rune which worked against him. It was his own bloody stubbornness, his own desperate cowardice, the crystalline matrix of his ordered life before Duncan, which had been less life and more a feeble sort of just not dying yet. This was the force against him, the thing which held the sway over his uncommon luck of late.

        His own damn self.

        Mander, Mander!

        Yes, the same one, he agreed silently. Old Worthless, Frozen Solid, Ne'er Do Well, Salamander, present and accounted for and fully at fault. He remembered his forge-lessons to Duncan about tempering.

        "The more you work the metal, the more you force it towards the shape it will take, Duncan," he heard himself saying, "then the more it fights the change and risks its own breaking. That is where the slow temper and the perfect quench enter in. Like this. You see how the piece just blushes like a new bride? Well, then, take my word for it. Now! See how the stroke into the water is straight and sure and swift? The gentling in the heat to ease the tension of the shaping and then the quench to set the form and grant it strength. You understand? Duncan?"

        Mander! Please, Mander!

        "It is all right, Princeling. You will understand in time. You are so young, so very, very young, Dear Child."

        "Mander, damn you! Wake up!" the summons was accompanied by a hearty shake.

        "I am too brittle!" Mander cried out. "I will break. I will break!"

        "Snap out of it, Smythie. Ye've been thawing over an hour, and back alive twice that long."

        "What?" Mander lifted his lids cautiously. His grey-green eyes began to water. He was staring straight into the fire and the light felt as if it were impaling his skull through his eye sockets.

        "Wait a moment," he heard the Gael's rich voice behind him.

        Then Mander felt himself lifted and turned away from the fire.

        When his screams died down to gulping sobs, Mander found the darkness of his own shadow soothing indeed, though the journey to his other side had been a dreadfully painful excursion at that.

        "Sorry," the Gael offered, plopping down on his belly and leaning down on his elbows, level with the smith's poor eyes. "Do you feel like some stew, then?"

        Mander sniffed. "Just don't touch me again, you bastard!" he managed to rasp out.

        "I can't tell, Mander. Was that a yes or a no?"

        Mander just could not believe how very awful he felt...worse than the last whipping. "What happened?" he wheezed.

        "You fell into a drift north of here and froze solid, Mander," the Highlander started to stroke his head, then remembering the admonition, tucked his hand back under his other forearm.

        "How did you find me?" Mander cleared his throat and blood filled his mouth.

        "Do you really want to know, Mander? Here, rinse."

        The warm water was wonderful. He spit the metal taste out.

        "Steady on, there! You missed the bowl, Smythie," Duncan laughed and moved away from him.

        When the comforting bulk of his shadow returned, Mander asked him again about how he'd been found.

        "Here," came the cheery answer out of the darkness along with a cloth which settled over his face.

        "Ooooh, that smells awful!" Mander was grateful the Scot pulled the cloth away again.

        Duncan was several minutes' choking and laughing before he could speak again. "It's your shirt. The one I missed washing because you threw it under the bed. I used it for Draak, so he could find you by scent. It took him a while to get the idea, but when he did, we found you straight away. You were buried an el 'neath a drift and solid as a board.

        "We'll thankye not to make rude comments about Draak's quarters from now on. Right?"

        "He smells like bloody roses," Mander spit again. "Blessed, bloody rosebuds, for certain and sure."

        "You're warmer now, Mander. I'm moving you to bed."

        Mander would verily liked to have convened a forum on that decision, but he was already up in the strong arms, with no chance to suggest otherwise. Soon enough, he was buried in furs and the watchful concern of the Scottish stepson. Drifting off again to sleep, Mander couldn't help a last word.

        "My house too," he mumbled.

        The next time Mander awoke, it was in fine fettle, light-hearted and at ease, of body and of mind. "I know what is wrong, Duncan."

        The Highlander turned back from the kettle at the fire where he was ladling out some broth for the smith. "Yes, I do too, Smythie. It is called mainigh dorch, the madness that comes when it is dark too long."

        That was an interesting notion, but it did not pertain. "No," he answered, taking the bowl and sipping carefully. "No, it isn't that at all." Now that he was fully thawed and back awake, Mander found he did not actually have the courage to put his revelation into words. Maybe it did not properly belong in that realm. He finished the broth in silence and lay back down, idly watching the Highlander pad around the cabin, tidying and ordering and talking to the horse, Draak, who was dozing with his head hung over the half-door to the back shed.

        Mander watched as Duncan folded the rag and hung it near the fire to dry. He watched the Highland stepson float the MacLeod tartan off his frame and onto his arm, re-pleating and folding and--. Mander sighed. Such a fascinating bit of clothing. He never tired of watching Duncan put it on, the pleats--on the stripe, if you please, never on the plaid--and then all the many ways he twisted and tied and hung the top half of the long bolt: shawl and pockets, cape and train and--. Someday he would learn how to do that, though he doubted he would ever have that easy skill that made it all seem so wonderful.

        Duncan climbed in beside him and nuzzled his neck.

        It had become a habit, a ritual, between them, something they did for their mutual benefit. If it were not entirely satisfying, if it were not actually something they did together, it had been an adequate substitute. Just as on that first night, now some hundred days' gone, Mander would pleasure the Scot with his hands and, when he had recovered, Duncan would reciprocate. This they did with no words between them, only the sounds they made, only the questions and the acquiescences of their mutual glances.

        They had worked the metal out to its thinnest dimensions, Mander thought, and they were long past due the tempering which might have prevented their brittle fights of late. He knew the fire would hurt him, knew he would come through the quench very different than he was now. There would be no returning, but it was settled for him. He was ready for the fire. He was ready.

        Mander pulled Duncan down on top of him and the Scot drew back, leaning on his elbows, his hands beneath the smith's broad shoulders. His stare was questioning, but there was no fear in the dark gaze, only wonder.

        Mander reached his right hand over his chest pulled on the Highlander's wrist. Duncan shifted his weight to his left elbow and freed his hand. The Highlander's gaze never left Mander's own, but his hand began its more usual journey over the smith's sensitive skin, his lank musculature. He paused only a moment to reach up for the lamp oil, and then the broad hand encircled Mander's erection.

        Mander slipped his hand between them and lifted Duncan's hand from his throbbing sex. He was almost surprised he had the will to do this, but he was decided. Gently, but definitely, he pushed Duncan's hand down and further down, until it came to rest behind his sack. The Gael tilted his head and stared at the smith's sharp features. Mander's eyes closed calmly and he splayed his knees to their limits sideways, either side of the young Scot. He pressed Duncan's fingertips into him and felt only the lad's resistance and none of his own. "It's all right, Duncan," he said, breaking their tradition of silence. "I want you to mount me."

        The beautiful sad eyes went smokier still as the Scot nearly refused, but Mander's hand closed round the younger man's shaft and guided it into the forge he was fast becoming, the implement and the object of his own tempering.

        The intense sensation, so different from their usual play, drove the Highlander into the smith in one smooth stroke, completely buried. A sound that came from somewhere at the bottom of his heart woke the stallion...

        ...and sent Mander into dizzying spins of pure abandon and delicious surrender.

        Duncan went wildly mindless and plowed into Mander again and again with no thought of anything at all, growling like a fiend and bracing up on his arms in an elegant arch, coming violently, wave after wave, and then collapsing completely onto the lesser frame of the fire dragon.

        Mander wound his long arms around the Highlander's wide back and gentled him through the aftermath, judging, as he always did, the true of the piece.

        And all he said was, "Yes," and "Yes."

        It was nearly a fortnight before the blizzard broke enough for them to spend any time out of the cabin. In truth, the storm had lightened by the third day after their first true tryst, but they paid it no mind whatsoever.

        "Will you stop that," Duncan called over to the smith who was trying to tidy and clean quietly enough not to wake the Scot.

        "You haven't cleaned for days, Duncan," Mander observed lightly. "I am not totally unable to see to things, you know."

        "And haven't I been distracted by those very abilities, Mander," Duncan slipped out of bed and took the cauldron from Mander's hand, toting it over to the door. "And look at this, but the sun's out and it's a beautiful day."

        Something about the strapping Scot scooping up snow, naked and glowing, set the old Immortal's heart to thumping somewhere south of his stomach. He fought back a notion about charging out and taking the Highlander in some soft bank of snow and sun. Too damn cold.

        Duncan returned and set the cauldron over the fire, dropping a new load of wood near the hearth to dry.

        "We're not going to drink that?" Mander asked, trying to remember which direction he'd turned last night when--.

        The Scot drew up tall. "Mander! You're supposed to go around to the back of the house! And, no, this is for washing. Well, it was for washing," Duncan retrieved the cauldron and went back out of the cabin where he emptied the slush and strode away a moderate distance before he found some new snow he could trust.

        Mander had not been so happy for a long, long time, nor had he ever been so thoroughly exhausted. God, but the boy was a satyr! He wondered if he'd ever get the crick out of his back again, but he really didn't care. He hummed as he set the simple table and wondered how he'd even thought he was living before now, if he'd ever been truly Awakened before.

        The Highlander returned and they ate breakfast as the snow melted.

        "I need you to ride Draak into town and get us some supplies," Mander asked over the last of the venison stew. Here is the list and the coins and a letter that says you have my approval."

        "Your what?"

        "They think you are my bedeviled slave, remember?" Mander reached for some jam and ate it straight off the spoon.

        "They are not far off, Mander," Duncan joked, reaching under the table and walking his fingers between the smith's lean thighs.

        "Perhaps," Mander phrased carefully, feeling one of them should be starting to show just the least bit of civilized restraint. "Perhaps we should not do this so often, Duncan."

        "Really?" the Highlander looked truly astonished at the suggestion. "How many times a day is too often, Mander?"

        Mander cleared his throat, trying not to choke, "Never mind."

        "Oh," Duncan said wickedly, "you are joking." He cleared the table with a single sweep of his brawny arm. Lifting Mander out of his chair, he draped him over the table as easily and wonderfully as he draped his tartan.

        Mander was still laughing about it as he waved a God-be to the Scot and his stallion an hour later. Twice more they had gone at it, and each time Duncan had stopped suddenly, just at the worst possible moment, and crooned solicitously, "That's not too many times now, is it, Smythie?"

        Mander did not expect Duncan to return until the next day. He'd sent extra money for a room and for stabling the stallion. It might be one day more, depending on whether the supplies were available, or if Duncan had to wait for the next ship to dock. The smith cleared the path to the forge shack and spent the day cleaning his tools and firing up the furnace, to clear its chimney.

        By the third day, he had become anxious.

        By the morning of the fourth, Mander was packed and dressed and almost ready to head to town, when he heard a familiar snort and whinny, felt the familiar buzz.

        Rushing to the door, his wide smile dropped open in disbelief. Not one MacLeod, but two, came riding up the snowy lane, their bright blue tartans whipping round their legs like sigils.

        "Good Day," Mander called out to them.

        The two men reined their horses to a halt and Duncan dismounted, handing his reins to the other man.

        Mander's pale eyes narrowed in the glare from the white road as he watched the splendid Scot stride towards him. As he neared, Mander opened his arms, not realizing until this moment, how very empty they had been.

        When Duncan got up even with him, Mander leaned forward and the Scot let fly with a roundhouse that landed the smith on his back in a drift.

        "You lied to me, Smythie," Duncan's beautiful face was drawn in haggard, rage-filled rigor.

        "What?" Mander wiped his bloody mouth and tried to rise.

        "I found my cousin at Auden Port," Duncan went on, heedless of any other purpose than to speak his piece and be gone from here. "Connor has been looking for me all this time. He knows of many women Immortals and he has many women friends, some of them mortal also, one he wed. You only said that to make me sleep with you. I should kill you, but I would not dirty my blade.

        "Here!" With that he threw the coins at Mander, turned on his heels, and walked away.

        Mander made no other attempt to rise. He watched the proud Scot stride back to his stallion and his cousin--his teacher, no doubt. I have lied to you about the first tenet of Immortality, Highlander, he thought, but I pray it is long while before you discover that the second tenet is all too true.

        The price of Immortality is a terrible loneliness.

        Much as Mander might have wished otherwise, this was the real way of the world. It always had been. It always would be. His time with the Highlander was the dream, a wisp of smoke only. This was the substance of his life, the metal, with its ugly patina of all the uncountable days.

        It was time to return to the real world, to descend from his brief sojourn in heaven's hearth.

        He glanced over his shoulder at the shack beyond the cabin.

        It was time to fire up the forge.

        It was time to wash his hands.