“Are you quite sure this is less abrupt than apparating?”

“Well, it certainly makes for a better landing.”

Helga and Goderic stood at the bank of the Icen, near the place where they had apparated the day before, bathed in the golden orange light and fine mist of a first summer sunrise. It was very early morning, and the whole landscape around them seemed still asleep - even the insects hadn’t yet begun to make their droning mild-weather noises. Only one thing in the whole scene appeared awake and alert. Standing in front of them, reins held tightly in the hands of Eafa the groom, was the most beautiful winged horse Helga had ever seen. He was a blue roan stallion, his muzzle and legs a deep black that faded into a shimmering, dappled iron color across his withers. The charcoal feathers in his wings caught the morning sun and sparkled like black stardust. He was tugging fitfully at his reins, his front hoof pawing restlessly at the streambank. Helga took a deep breath.

“Are you sure?” she repeated, and Goderic chuckled.

“His name is Heremod, and he’s a Granian horse, so yes, I’m sure.” He patted the horse’s nose, and the animal snorted in protest. “Abraxans have the pulling power, but Granians are much faster. He’ll take us to Cymru in a few hours. Not as immediately gratifying as apparating, but fast enough to get us there by midday, and without making you feel ill.” He looked as if he wanted to be congratulated for his chivalry, so Helga managed a weak smile and thanked him; but the horse had a wild, manic look in its eye that made her doubtful.

“Won’t people notice?” she said as Goderic stirruped his hands for her to climb onto the Granian’s back. “If we come flying into their village on a winged horse, I mean. Even if you are a wizard, you don’t see them very often.”

“The Eryr family live in the middle of a forest,” Goderic reassured her, “so there is no village, mundani or otherwise. We’ll fly high until we get there, and then we’ll descend into the deep forest near their estate and climb the hill from there. No chance of accidents. My word as a thegn.” He climbed up onto Heremod’s back behind her, and Eafa handed the reins up to him.

“Now remember, my lord Grifondour,” the master of horse admonished, “you be sure to tell their master of horse that he likes a hot mash flavored with flutterby blooms after a long trip. If he doesn’t get it, like as not he’ll refuse to carry you home.”

“Don’t worry, Eafa, I remember the last time,” Goderic nodded, and Heremod tossed his mane snappily in response. He was prancing even more now that he sensed flight was imminent, and Helga grasped Goderic’s wrist.

“Goderic, where do I hold on?” she hissed. “You’ve got the reins, and I don’t think he’d appreciate my fingers clawing at his mane.” Behind her, she felt Goderic’s stomach shake as he laughed softly. 

“No, he certainly wouldn’t. Just hold onto my arms, and you’ll be fine.” He put his arms under hers on each side of her and held the reins in both hands, and she laid her hands on his leather wrist cuffs like the arms of a chair.

“Well, at least I know that if one of us falls off, we’ll both plummet to our deaths together.” She started to turn around and make a face as she finished this statement, but before she could twist all the way around, she heard Goderic laugh - and then they were no longer on the ground.

Such was the speed with which the earth dropped out from under them that Helga let out a little scream before she could clamp her jaws together. She dug her fingernails into Goderic’s leather cuffs. This was, in fact, quite as abrupt as apparating, thank you very much, and she planned to tell him so if she didn’t die before they stopped moving. But a moment later, they broke into a layer of low clouds and Heremod slowed his arrow-like ascent into something resembling a slow canter. His shiny charcoal wings opened to their full span on either side of them, and his wingspan was so massive that Helga’s initial terror was extinguished in fascination as she watched droplets of moisture begin to collect on the quivering feathers.

“Absolutely exquisite beast, isn’t he?” Goderic said behind her, and she nodded. “My father,” he went on, “brought a small stud of breeding Granians with him from Normandy when he married my mother, and I’m told those came from a herd that descended straight from the original Norse wild Granians. Heremod here is the best stallion in my herd.” He patted the horse’s neck and received a whinny of agreement.

“How do you keep the villagers from finding them?”

“They live in the forest outside King’s Worthy. There’s a barrier spell on the forest border to stop them getting out, and a repelling charm on it to keep the mundani from wandering in. That way they have the whole forest to roam in, and a little space above it to fly around, and the mundani are none the wiser.”

“That’s what we’ll have to do, won’t we?” Helga mused, watching Heremod’s wings brush swaths of cloud out of their path. “Repelling charms. On the school?”

“Hmm,” Goderic grunted. “Yes, I hadn’t thought about that, but I suppose we will. Repelling charms all around it to keep the mundani out - and perhaps an illusion to make the location appear unappealing to them in the first place.”

“Of course, we have to find a location first.”

“I think the lady Hræfnsclawu would be able to show us some good candidates in her scrying glasses, as well as finding children.”

“Well, then I hope she’s as eager to help as Gwydion implied.”

Their journey to the northwest was gentle and unhindered, the smooth flight of the Granian horse belying how fast they were actually moving. Every half hour or so, Goderic would descend just below the cloud cover to check their course, but the majority of their morning was spent gliding through an absolutely silent dreamworld of clouds whose colors shifted with the sun from gold to cream to brilliant white. To pass the time Helga sang the Charm Song for Goderic, who had never heard it before - unlike her palfrey, Heremod seemed to enjoy it - and Goderic sang the popular song “Deor.” Helga was pleased to discover that he had a lovely deep singing voice, smooth and resonant like his speech, and she applauded him warmly in spite of the depressing choice of song. Helga told him about each of the children she had been caring for, and Goderic told her stories of his father’s dragon hunting in Normandy. After a while they both had to put up the hoods of their cloaks to keep the little droplets of water from clinging in their hair; Heremod was already glistening wet, but he didn’t seem to mind.

Just before midday Goderic directed the horse to drop below the clouds again, and this time he stayed there, giving Helga a good look at the terrain over which they flew. Cultivated farmland and pastures far below were stitched with a lacework of streams and divided by patches of unworked moorland or strips of thick forest, all of it in deep and enchanting shades of green. Tiny white specks that Helga assumed were sheep were scattered here and there, so small she couldn’t really see them for what they were. Cutting through all of it, winding here and there in a broadly northwest-to-southeast path, was a tall and sturdy turf wall with a deep ditch on its western side. A gravel walking path ran along the flat top of the wall, and the ditch was filled with murky water. As they crossed over it, their shadow jumping up at them and then flickering back down to the grass again, Goderic laid a hand on her shoulder.

“That’s the great Mercian Wall below us,” he offered. “It marks the western edge of England - everything from here onward is Cymru. We’re very close now. See that forest ahead?”

Helga did see it. Rising up in the distance before them was a range of low hills draped in a blanket of dense green trees. It looked a great distance away, but Helga felt a change in the muscles of the horse beneath her, and Heremod suddenly put on a little burst of speed. The forest seemed to swell up toward them rapidly, and it was the work of but a few minutes for Heremod’s powerful wings. He carried his passengers steadily toward the center of the forest, where Helga thought she could see the tips of a stone building peeping out among the thick foliage atop the largest of the hills.

“Is that Eryr house?” Helga asked, raising her voice slightly over the wind as their descent picked up speed.

“Aye,” Goderic nodded, shifting his arms under hers as he changed his hold on the reins. He directed Heremod toward the thick trees at the bottom of the hill. For a few seconds Helga felt the familiar and uncomfortable rushing of air coming up at her from below, and she ducked deeper into her hood as leaves slapped at her from all sides. Then they were through the canopy, and Heremod was prancing to a halt in a forest clearing, shaking water from his feathers.

Helga let down her hood and stared around her in awed silence. This forest was nothing like those in the east, full of rough gray bark and sweet wildflowers, nor was it like the tall pine forests of her father’s homeland. All around her, trees wove in and out of each other in serpentine patterns, their limbs wriggling and curving in unnatural serpentine shapes. Moss, thicker and more vitally green than Helga was accustomed to seeing in the Danelaw, grew not just over the rocks and roots around the swept-earth path but up and over the trees themselves, making the trunks look like sculptures carved from the moss. Even now near midday, not all of the morning’s mist had been able to escape the thick foliage, and sunlight had to do battle to gain entry through the canopy above, resulting in dense forest air that was wet, lambently glowing, and which smelled of the oldest kinds of magic.

“Are you awake up there?” Goderic’s voice broke her trance, and Helga gave her head a little shake. Goderic had already dismounted and was holding up a hand to help her down, a cheeky grin forming among his whiskers.

“It’s beautiful here,” Helga said softly, taking his hand and slipping off the horse. This place felt like somewhere one shouldn’t speak too loudly, out of reverence. “If I was born here, I don’t think I’d ever leave.”

“They usually don’t,” said Goderic, beginning to untie his sword from his shoulders so he could put it back on his belt. “I think Rhonwen only married a Saxon out of necessity. The Cymry like to grow where they’re planted. In fact, I think--”

But Helga never found out what Goderic thought about it, because he broke off at the sudden noise of hooves galloping hard and fast downhill toward them. The forest was thick enough that they couldn’t see who rode toward them, and Goderic began tugging more urgently at the laces that held his sword across his back.

“BASTAAARD SAXOOOONNNNS!” The voice was harsh and grating in the misty silence of the woods, the Cymraeg accent made thick with anger. Helga tore her wand out of her belt and stood ready as Goderic finally loosed his sword and brought it around to the front.

“It sounds like just one person,” he whispered quickly. “We outnumber him, so unless he’s got a better sword than I or a better wand than both of us, we should be able to take him.”

“Right,” Helga nodded, lifting her wand hand a little higher.

“MAKE READY FOR BATTLE, YE WALL-HOPPING SAXON CURS!” the voice rang out again, and now its owner broke through the foliage into view. Helga’s mouth dropped open. Thundering down the forest path toward them, sword outstretched, was a fat little man with long white whiskers, wearing ill-fitted armor and riding a tiny Cymraeg pony. The pony had an almost frantic look in its eyes and appeared to be only just able to sustain its rotund passenger on its stubby little legs. Helga lowered her wand in utter surprise before jerking her arm back up again, just in case; but the man took no notice of her. He made straight for Goderic instead and pointed his sword directly at de Grifondour, the light of battle gleaming in his watery eyes. “I command thee to hand over thy sword, sir, or else give me the satisfaction of taking it from thy hand in honorable combat!” He tried to dismount his pony, realized that his leg armor was unintentionally strapped into his saddle, and gave up, opting to menace Goderic from the pony’s back instead. Goderic leaned over to Helga without taking his eyes off the old man.

“Helga…. am I being offered battle by a tiny little man on a tiny little horse?”

“It appears so, yes,” Helga muttered out of the corner of her mouth.

“Good. Excellent. I was afraid I was going soft in the head and having visions.” He began to lower his sword, but the old man on the pony whipped his own blade out and slapped it against Goderic’s to push it back up.

“You dishonor us both, sir!” the man shouted. “Either stand and fight like a man, or else surrender thy blade to me by the hilt, but do not lower thy sword like a common peasant dropping his scythe at sundown! Hengroen, charge the Saxon dog!”

The pony Hengroen did no such thing, choosing instead to snort and attempt to turn back uphill. Livid with frustration, the little man began shouting at the pony in the Cymraeg language and tugging at its reins. Helga heard Goderic swallow a laugh.

“I intend no dishonor, sir,” he managed to say, forcing himself not to smile. “This lady and I--”

“DA’ST bring the lady into our parley??” the old man gasped, cheeks turning red. “This is between me and thee, Saxon! Now. State thy name, so that I may know to which house to send thy broken hilt upon thy defeat!”

Goderic glanced at Helga and raised his eyebrows, and she shrugged - they would have to play along. “Goderic de Grifondour, son of Ivo de Grifondour and Eadhild, thegn of Salisberie,” he said with a slight bow. “And you, sir?”

“Cadwgan ap Hywel, descended of that Cadwgan which sat at the table of Arthur, and protector of this great house. No Saxon dog will enter here and trouble my lady cousin while I draw breath, sir! Now, up swords and let us be--”

“UNCLE DWG!”

The voice was tiny but strident and came from up the hill, beyond the trees. At the sound of it, Hengroen the pony began to turn himself back around against his rider’s wishes, which brought on another bout of angry Cymraeg grumbling. 

“Uncle Dwg!?” the voice repeated, and as Cadwgan fought with his pony, a little girl of perhaps eight or nine years came running down the path, skidding to a halt in the swept earth as she saw Goderic and Helga. She had the lovely complexion and long dark hair typical of the Cymry, with deep autumn-sky blue eyes. She had hitched up her long gray dress in order to run, and Helga saw that she had lost one shoe somewhere on her journey.

“Stand back, damsel!” Cadwgan admonished, finally getting his pony to face the right way again. The little girl bent over, hands on her thighs as she caught her breath, and then marched around to stand in front of her bellicose relative, blocking him from advancing.

“Uncle Dwg, Mother told you to stop scaring travellers!” 

“They are Saxon invaders, young lady!” Cadwgan protested. “But fear not! I shall drive them back ‘cross the wall!”

“Uncle Dwg, they’re not invaders, they’re the two guests Mother told you we were expecting!” She turned around to face them then, raising her eyebrows to Helga. “You are, aren’t you?”

“If your mother is the Lady Rhonwen Hræfnsclawu, then yes, indeed we are,” Helga smiled at her. Goderic put his sword back on his belt and went down on his knee in front of the child, swirling his cloak out around him.

“Goderic de Grifondour, my lady,” he said grandly, and the little girl stood a bit straighter and gave him a small bow. 

“Lady Helena Hræfnsclawu,” she said importantly. “Or at least, I will be when I’m old enough to be called lady. Are you the witch from the Danelaw?” She turned now to Helga, who nodded.

“Helga Hunlafsdottir. Would you take us to your mother, Helena?”

“Of course,” the little girl said, and then she added with a giggle, “if you’ll help me find my shoe on the way back. I seem to have lost it.”

“Well, you’re in luck,” Helga said, giving her a wink. “I happen to be excellent at finding things that are lost. It’s a gift of mine.”

Helena grinned back at her. Then she reached out and took the reins of Cadwgan’s pony, who began walking toward her almost instantly. There was a distinct look of relief in Hengroen’s large grey eyes.

“Now, see here!” Cadwgan sputtered, once again trying to dismount before remembering that he was stuck. “Young lady, I have offered combat to this Saxon and I insist that you release my steed so that I may do battle! Hengroen, turn about and face the enemy! We do not retreat!” Both the girl and the pony completely ignored him, and he continued to protest and grumble as the four of them made their way up the winding forest path to where Eryr house waited for them at the top of the hill.

Helena led them first to a stable near the crest of the hill, where - as promised - Helga found the girl’s shoe on the path. Goderic gave the master of horse all the proper dietary instructions for Heremod while three stable boys tried to untangle Cadwgan’s armor from his saddle. They left him there, in the midst of challenging the stable hands to battle, and followed Helena further up the hill to the house.

The Eryr family lived in a great greystone building that could almost more properly be called a castle - instead of the long rectangular halls and boat-shaped roofs of the Saxons and the Danes, this home looked much more like the constructions Goderic had seen in Normandy, with flat roofs and a turreted tower. When he mentioned this, Helena nodded and told them that her grandfather had gotten wizard builders from Brittany to come and remake the ancient family house - before he had fallen on hard times with the ddim-hudolus leaders of Gwynedd and lost his wealth. Helga asked the little girl to repeat the Cymraeg word she had used for non-magical people, and after this the two of them spent the rest of the walk up to the castle exchanging words with each other in their native languages, which made Helena feel very smart and grown-up indeed.

When they arrived at the castle someone took their cloaks, and then Helena led them up a narrow staircase into the tower they had glimpsed at the western end of the courtyard. The door at the top was made of dark wood and was set with large metal spikes arranged in spiral patterns. Helena pushed it open and ran inside, and Goderic and Helga followed.

“Mother!” she called out, and ran across the room into the arms of a woman who had been standing at a lectern writing in a book. “The guests are here, Mother!”

“I can see that,” the woman replied, bending to stop her daughter’s forward motion. She smoothed back her daughter’s fly-away hairs and gave her a smile. “Helena, why don’t you go and practice your harp now while I speak to these people? You’ll see them again at table. Go on. Aneirin is waiting.” The little girl gave her mother a nod and smiled at Helga before scurrying off out of the room and down the stairs. When she had gone, her mother came across the room to greet her guests.

Rhonwen ferch Eryr, now Lady Hræfnsclawu, was shorter than Helga by nearly six inches - but somehow Helga thought that, in a contest, this woman could intimidate more with just her eyes than Helga could with both a wand and a sword. Her skin was so snow-pale that Helga could see the faint blue of veins below the skin of her temples. She wore her dark brown hair loose like an unmarried girl, though it was tied in a thick knot near the bottom to keep it out of her way, and the light from the low hearth fire reflected off it in red glimmers like tiny garnets. There were little hazel flecks in her blue-green eyes that could look golden in the firelight, giving her gaze an eagle-like quality that befitted her house and family name.

“Lady Hræfnsclawu,” Goderic said in greeting as she offered her hand.

“Please, call me Rhonwen,” she answered, her Cymraeg accent much thicker than that of her daughter. “I was sad to hear of your mother’s passing, Grifondour. I greatly admired her when I was a girl. And you must be the wandmaker’s daughter?” She turned now to Helga, who also clasped her hand in greeting.

“Helga,” she filled in. “Your daughter is a treasure, my lady.”

“She thinks so,” Rhonwen said seriously, but there was a cheeky lift at the corner of her mouth. “Has she been a talkative host?”

“Oh, she taught me some words in Cymraeg,” Helga grinned. “We’re friends now.”

“Yes,” Rhonwen smiled weakly. She held out her hand to indicate some high-backed wooden chairs at a low table, and they all sat as she went on. “Most of her friends are adults. I can’t give her any brothers or sisters - God knows I had enough trouble getting her - and none of the household have children. I wish she had some friends of her own age.”

Goderic glanced over at Helga and gave her a meaningful grin, then leaned forward in his seat. “Actually, Lady Rhonwen… that is, in some ways, why we are here.”

“Oh?” asked Rhonwen, mildly surprised. Helga got the impression that true surprise was something very rare for this woman. “How would you be able to help with that?”

Goderic nodded in deference to Helga, and she explained the whole idea to Rhonwen, beginning with the day she found little Hnossa speaking to a serpent, and ending with Gwydion Pyk’s suggestion that they come to the Eryr family for help finding orphaned wizards. As she finished, Rhonwen laughed musically. 

“Gwydion Pyk, what an old rambler. Do you know last time he came here, he got hanging drunk with my cousin Cadwgan and wandered off home - naked except for one of my tapestries?” Helga and Goderic both recalled Pyk’s attire during their visit and tried not to catch each other’s eye for fear they’d start laughing. “I’d ask for it back, if I wasn’t afraid of what he’d done to it. Have you met my cousin Cadwgan yet?”

“Ah,” Goderic mumbled, clearing his throat. “Yes, actually. He….”

“He and Helena greeted us at the bottom of the hill,” Helga finished for him, and Rhonwen laughed even harder.

“You’re very polite, both of you. Did he threaten to kill you, or just cut off body parts and send them to your families?”

“The latter,” Goderic laughed, and Rhonwen got up from her chair with a sigh. She crossed the room to a rectangular niche in the stone wall and withdrew a handsome beechwood wand. There was a harp propped in the corner, and she pointed the wand at it; it began to play a soft melody that reminded Helga of watching raindrops collecting and dripping from the overhanging thatch of her cottage in autumn.

“God bless my cousin,” Rhonwen murmured, “but sometimes he is almost more trouble than Helena. That gets even truer as they both get older.” She came back over to her chair but didn’t sit down. “So. You want to build a school for witchcraft, to educate those children who have no family to teach them. I suppose you need me to scry for all the orphaned witches and wizards in England?”

“Not just England,” Helga put in quickly. “Here in Cymru as well. And up north, Alba and such. I don’t want any children on the island left out.”

Rhonwen’s eyebrow lifted gently, as though she hadn’t expected such an inclusive attitude. “There won’t be many here,” she told them. “In Cymru wizards live close, and the families are all connected. If a child is orphaned, someone in the village takes them in. Only out in the most remote areas would you find a child with no one to teach them. But I’ll scry for them here anyway.”

“Thank you,” Helga grinned, but Rhonwen held up a finger.

“Don’t work for free, though,” she went on. “I have conditions.”

“Conditions, Lady Rhonwen?” Goderic asked cautiously. Rhonwen nodded, tapping her wand against her palm.

“If I’m going to scry for them, I want to teach them too. And I want to go and live wherever we set up the school.”

“Oh, of course!” Helga breathed, and she saw Goderic relax back into his seat. “We’d be happy to have you. Divination isn’t my best discipline anyway, and we should all teach what we’re best at.”

“Aye, we thought we’d have to twist people’s arms to get them to come and teach,” Goderic agreed, “but if you’re a willing volunteer it saves us lots of trouble.”

“And my Helena can come and study with the other children? She’s not an orphan, but I don’t…. well, her father would not be an attentive or thorough teacher in my absence.” Helga thought she heard a hint of bitterness beneath the words, but she told herself she was imagining it. Goderic was nodding.

“Of course,” he said. “My younger brother will be one of the students as well.”

“Alright, then,” Rhonwen smiled. “Helena will be thrilled. She’ll have other children to play with for once.” She turned and walked halfway across the room before stopping and looking back at them. “Well, come on,” she said. “If we start now we can finish before it’s time to eat.”

 *   *   *

While Rhonwen set up her scrying materials, Helga and Goderic wandered around her tower room, marveling at the wide array of magical tools she had at her disposal. More than once Goderic reached out to touch some intricate device, only to have his hand slapped away by a flick of Rhonwen’s wand. Helga spent several minutes staring at a shelf of books in an alcove; there were thirteen of them, more books than she had ever imagined could exist in the same room. Several were ancient, cracking parchment that had been rebound in new hide covers, and Helga knew they must have been treasured by generations of the Eryr family. One had Norse runes written on the front, and Helga saw that it was a treatise on the interpretation of runecasting. The others were in Latin, Cymraeg, or some language she had never seen before, a strange collection of straight lines like a chicken’s scrapings. She sighed, realizing what a daunting task it would be to teach magic to so many children when she might not even be able to read what they wrote down.

“Do you like books?”

Rhonwen had appeared at her shoulder, and Helga jumped a little before smiling wistfully. “I’m more accustomed to listening to stories,” she said truthfully. “We Norse aren’t much given to writing things down. I can read, but only runes. Can you read all of these?”

“My father insisted on it,” replied Rhonwen. “Latin, Saxon and Norse runes, Cymraeg, some of the northern tongues, ogham, and enough Greek and Hebrew to get by.”

“Greek and Hebrew?” Helga exclaimed. 

“So I could read Scripture without the bias of the Roman translators.”

“Oh.” Helga traced her finger along the binding of one of the books and sighed. “You must have an excellent mind. Far bigger than my own, I’m afraid. You’ll be a wonderful teacher.”

Rhonwen put a hand gently on her shoulder. “And so will you,” she reassured. “My father told me that learning is the only thing that cannot be stolen, and that an idea is eternal once it has been born. And not all of that learning is found in a book. A book just helps in the transmission.” They shared a smile, and for a moment most of the fierceness was gone from Rhonwen’s face.

“Will you teach me?” Helga asked. “Latin, at least?”

“Of course I will. But let’s find our students first, hmm? Come on.”

Rhonwen led her to a table at the back of the room where a copper cauldron with a wide mouth had been placed below a window. Goderic wandered over as well and stared down into it.

“You use a cauldron for scrying?” he asked. Rhonwen’s eyebrow peaked in mild annoyance.

“In Cymru we use cauldrons for most things. Why, what do you use? The skulls of your enemies?” Helga felt a snort of laughter escape her nose as Goderic held up his hands defensively and backed up a step from the table. Rhonwen winked at her, and then she took a tall copper vessel from further down the table and began pouring water from it into the cauldron.

“How does it work?” Helga asked. “I’ve only ever used runecasting for divination. Is the water bewitched?”

“Not yet,” Rhonwen explained. “The water must come from a safe and protected source, that’s the first and most important thing. Otherwise your Seeing can be influenced by outside magic. This water is from the spring beneath our castle, so only we have access to it. And both this vessel and the cauldron are copper, which keeps the water further protected.”

“It’s protected because it’s in a copper jug?” Goderic said dubiously. Rhonwen jabbed him in the ribs with her wand.

“I don’t like your attitude,” she said in a very parental tone. “Go away. You’ll spoil the water.”

“Go away??”

“Go stand over there so you’re not breathing doubt onto the cauldron. Here, take this and write down the children’s names as I call them out. Go on.” She handed Goderic a piece of parchment and a quill and shooed him away from the table. He took it grudgingly, but he only walked a handful of steps away from them. Rhonwen shooed him again, only turning back to Helga and the cauldron when he was standing all the way into the book alcove. Then she picked up her wand. “Dangos,” she said, tapping the surface of the water. A soft ring of ripples spread out from the touch of her wand; as they did, the water inside the ring went cloudy for just a moment. When the last ripple touched the outside of the cauldron, however, the water became crystal clear again - in fact, it became so clear it almost sparkled. Rhonwen smiled. “That’s the part you can learn from a book,” she said. “With that spell and the right tools, most people could see something in the water. The years of practice and the right mindset are what help you know what you are seeing.”

Goderic scoffed in the alcove, but they both ignored him.

“Now what?” asked Helga. Rhonwen picked up a small bundle of velvet cloth from the table and opened it. She showed Helga a beautifully polished round stone, some kind of opal, so dark blue it was almost black and shot through with fiery streaks of white and colored crystal.

“Heart of Myrddin, we call this. It’s the best stone for water scrying.” Putting the cloth aside, she dropped the stone softly into the cauldron, where it sank to the bottom of the bewitched water. Almost immediately the water began to look as though it were not water but liquid light; it sparkled and rippled of its own accord, and the streaked opal stone at the bottom cast dancing rainbow shapes throughout it like a prism. Rhonwen turned to Helga. “Now we scry. I ask the cauldron to show me whatever it is I’m looking for, and the answers appear in the shapes cast by the reflected light and colors.”

“Would I see anything if I looked?” Helga asked, and Rhonwen shrugged.

“Maybe, if you have Sight. You would certainly see something. Whether it would be a recognizable image, it’s hard to tell.”

“Excuse me, but am I to stand in the corner waiting all day like a bad puppy?” came Goderic’s voice from the book alcove. Rhonwen gave Helga a meaningful look, and then she straightened her posture and took a deep breath.

“Learn patience, de Grifondour,” she said quietly. Then she placed one hand on each side of the cauldron’s rim and closed her eyes. “I wish to see,” she intoned. “Show me the children who have need of us to teach them.” The water rippled again of its own accord. As Helga watched, the quivering and prismatic reflections began to come together and move apart, and for a split second, she thought she saw the vague shape of a child standing in front of a large body of water. She gasped, and just as quickly the picture became dancing light again. Rhonwen’s eyes didn’t leave the cauldron, but she grinned.

“You saw something, didn’t you?”

“Just a silhouette, for a moment,” Helga whispered, and Rhonwen’s smile widened. 

“You might learn scrying yet,” she said softly. Then, louder: “Goderic, is your quill ready? Write what I tell you.”

“Ready,” Goderic said, and he took a step out of his alcove, quill perched above the parchment. Rhonwen’s face became still, and she ceased blinking.

“I see a boy,” she intoned, and her voice had a gentle echo. “Alone on an island. The far, far north, where the ocean is cold as ice.”

“You mean the islands above Alba and Strathclyde?” asked Goderic, the quill scratching quickly across the parchment.

“He wears a plaid,” said Rhonwen in response. “Yes, I think so. Black hair, black as night.”

“Can you know his name?” Helga whispered. Rhonwen’s head tilted to the side, as if she was listening to something they couldn’t hear.

 “Mac IainUidhir,” she said after a moment. “The only wizard of that clan. Do you have that? The picture is changing now, I see another child.”

“Yes,” said Goderic, scratching a line under what he had written. “Go on.”

“I see another boy, lying down to sleep under a stone cross. I think he is being cared for by monks.” She narrowed her eyes at the water, as if straining to see something. “I see behind him Saint Aidan - he points his staff south to show me… Saint Peter, standing beside a well.”

“What does that mean?” grunted Goderic, unsure of what to write down. Rhonwen tilted her head again.

“By a well.... Oh, of course - Bywell. St. Peter’s monastery at Bywell, south from Aidan’s home at Lindisfarne.”

“Oh, of course,” Goderic mumbled as he wrote it down. “Riddles as well as copper cauldrons. I don’t suppose there’s a riddle to tell us his name, is there?”

“I think Cross may be his name, or something like it,” Rhonwen murmured, ignoring his sarcasm. “It’s enough to contact him. Make ready, another picture is coming.”

Goderic eyed her sideways, but he scratched a line below the second entry and started another. “If you say so,” he muttered.

“I see a girl now,” Rhonwen was saying, “not orphaned but put aside. Put aside, and now running. I see men following behind her, each carrying golden chains. Wait - I recognize one of them. That’s Gronwy ap Tudur, from down by Oswalt’s Cross. This is a Cymraeg girl. She must be Gronwy’s granddaughter. That’s what you write down, we’ll find her with that.” She paused while Goderic scribbled, mumbling to himself as he puzzled over the spelling of the Cymraeg name; then she took a deep breath and began again.

“A new picture - a field of flowers that look like stars, with a child sitting among them….”

 *   *   *

Rhonwen went on scrying for half an hour before the water in the cauldron went dull and flat again, signaling that the stone had shown her everything it wished to show. After putting away the stone and cauldron, Rhonwen led her guests downstairs to the main hall where a meal was being laid out for them on a large round table. Helena was already there with a young man Helga assumed must be Aneirin the harp instructor, and she ran to them and took Helga’s hand immediately, insisting that she be seated beside her. Seeing his charge was in safe hands, the harpist excused himself and went to the kitchen for his own dinner. While a servant filled their drinking vessels and began to cut some bread and cheese, Goderic laid out the long parchment scroll and weighted it down at the corners with cups and platters, and Helena stood on her chair and craned her neck over Helga’s shoulder to get a look at his scrawled writing.

In all, there were fourteen children named on Goderic’s list - they had not written down the five orphans they already had in their care, although the scrying stone had shown them those faces as well. Eleven of these new children were from English territories, two from Cymru, and one from the far northern islands, and there were three pairs of siblings among them. Goderic took a slice of cheese and laid it on his bread, munching the two together as he studied the names.

“Most of them shouldn’t be too hard to reach,” he mused aloud, “except for that poor devil up north of Alba. Long way from here to those islands. Should we start with the two here in Cymru?”

“I think we should start with any of them that might be in danger,” Helga countered. “That poor boy in Alesworth looked like he was living in a cave, hiding from the villagers.”

“They’ll all keep,” Rhonwen said calmly, dipping her bread in honey. “The stone would have shown me if they were in imminent peril. Besides, where would we put them? No. We have to set up the location of the school first.”

Helga thanked the servant who poured her drink and patted Helena’s chair to encourage her to sit down. “You said you could scry for a location, as well?” she asked Rhonwen as she turned back to her host. Rhonwen was tracing the edges of her lips with her fingernail, apparently deep in thought.

“I may not need to,” she said finally. “I can think of a place, actually - one that is perfectly suited to our purposes. It’s in Alba, in the highlands. There was once an ancient hill fort there, at the edge of a loch, and the Romans built a temporary barracks there when they were foolishly chasing the Caledonii about. There are no villages of any kind, magical or non-magical, for several miles in any direction of it. It’s defensible, it has both forest and lake close by, and it has a remaining building and good cellars we can build upon.”

“Excellent,” said Goderic, bumping his fist against the table decisively. “It’s perfect. We can start at once.”

“Oh, not at once,” Rhonwen cautioned, sipping her wine and not looking directly at Goderic’s face. “It’s perfect - and it’s also inhabited.”

“Inhabited by who?” Helga asked, and Goderic frowned at her.

“But you said--”

“I said there were no settlements or villages around. And there aren’t,” Rhonwen corrected. “But the old barracks tower itself is inhabited by a wizard, and we’ll have to do a lot of convincing if we want him to let us fill it with children.”

“He doesn’t like children?” mused Helga, and Rhonwen snorted a small laugh into her wine goblet. 

“He doesn’t like anyone.” She paused for a moment, putting down her goblet. “But he does know what it’s like to be young and alone, with nobody to help direct his magical abilities. We might convince him to help these children as he would have liked to be helped himself.”

“Who is he?” Goderic asked as he waved his wand at the wine jug, which floated itself over to him and refilled his cup.

“His name is Salazar,” Rhonwen replied, lacing her hands together on the table. “Salazar Slidrian. His parents were of old wizarding stock in Vasconia, south of Aquitaine. They were in danger from the Moors on one side and León on the other, so they came across the sea and settled in Alba to be away from all the fighting, and took that Saxon surname to blend in. My father met them on his travels up north and they became friends, even brought me to visit once or twice as a child. They died when Salazar was still fairly young - old enough to care for himself, but just barely. My mother kept an eye on him by scrying until he was full grown. He’s become a sort of recluse over the years, and I think the hardest part of it all will be just getting through the door to speak to him. But we can try.”

“Perhaps we can do him some good as well as the children,” Helga suggested, and Rhonwen smiled a mischievous and knowing sort of smile.

“I think I want to try it just to see how he reacts to you,” she smirked. “You are composed entirely of sunshine and good intentions, and those happen to be the two things Salazar Slidrian hates above all else in the world.” 

Goderic snorted, spraying breadcrumbs onto the table, and Helga pursed her lips at him.

“Well, we shall see,” she said, aiming her wand at the crumbs he had spat and vanishing them. “Sunshine melts wax, you know.”

Goderic pushed more bread into his mouth and mumbled, “And it hardens clay.”

Helga stuck out her tongue at him, and Rhonwen laughed. “Either way, I will be entertained by the outcome.”

 *   *   *

After their meal, Rhonwen’s servants cleared the table and brought her a large parchment, which she unrolled over the whole space where the food had been. It was a map of the island of Albion in its entirety, from Strathclyde and Alba down to the south Saxons and Kent and from Cymru to Helga’s home in the east. At the top, written in both Latin letters and Saxon runes, were the words Tir o Prydein. Helga had never seen a drawing of the whole island before, and she marveled at the unfamiliar and intriguing outline. The image was crude and did not show great detail, but when Rhonwen tapped her wand on any given place, the picture in that spot would suddenly rush toward them - as the ground had rushed up to meet Helga and Goderic earlier that day when they’d landed in the forest - and the parchment would now be showing a much more detailed sketch of that town or location. Rhonwen bade Helena run upstairs and fetch her special quill, and when the girl had brought it back down, her mother began to mark the locations of each child they needed to collect. The ink that streamed from the quill was a bright, shimmering blue that looked still wet no matter how long it had been on the parchment. Rhonwen drew a circle around each village or landmark where a child was to be found, and beside it wrote the name or description she had been given by her scrying stone. Her hand was as lovely and precise as any Helga had seen in one of the priest’s books in Norwic.

“...and… lastly… the girl Mildryth, here near the border of Kent,” she finished, writing the final few words at the bottom of the map. Helena traced a small finger around her mother’s letters, careful not to disturb the ink.

“This one is the same age as me,” the little girl pointed out. “Will she be my friend, Mother?”

“I should hope they will all be your friends,” Rhonwen replied, tapping her quill with her wand. The ink bubble clinging to its tip changed from the starry blue to a royal purple. With this new color, she walked around to the other side of the table and began to draw a careful circle around a blank spot on the map that Helga assumed was the location of Salazar Slidrian’s hermitage. There was a small black oval on the parchment beside it that must be a lake, but nothing else was drawn on the map for several inches in any direction. Helena was still examining the name and description of the little girl at the southern end of the map, walking her fingers along the line of letters spelling out the names of the different regions.

“What language do they speak in Kent, Mother?”

“Some of them speak Frankish or Norman, I imagine,” Rhonwen answered her daughter as she tapped the quill again and made the ink disappear from the tip altogether. “The high born ones, anyway. The Kentish noble lines all have ties to Normandy and Brittany. But most of the common people will speak Saxon.”

“If I want her to be my friend, I shall speak Saxon most of the time, then?”

“I think we’ll all be speaking Saxon nearly all of the time,” Goderic commented. “All of these orphans are from Saxon lands except the boy in Alba, the two Cymraeg children, and your Hnossa.” He nodded at Helga as he said this. “And she speaks good Saxon, from what you’ve told me. My two Norman boys speak excellent Saxon as well.”

“And the Cymraeg girl is of the family of Gronwy ap Tudur,” Rhonwen agreed, “so she will be educated in languages as well. I expect the Cymraeg boy will know a little Saxon, even if he is not as comfortable with it as the others.”

“Which leaves only the boy from the far north,” Helga sighed. “He will speak the language of the Picts.”

“He can learn Saxon,” said Rhonwen thoughtfully. “And in the meantime, I can translate for him until he settles in.” She gave her quill back to Helena to be returned to her tower room and sat down, watching the little girl pound up the stairs as though she were racing someone. “The question now,” she continued, “is how to contact each child and explain what we’re offering to them.” She tapped her wine goblet with her wand and murmured something, and Helga saw tendrils of steam begin to drift upward from the dark liquid.

“Perhaps we should visit each of them, so we can explain in person and answer their questions?” Helga suggested. “I’m not so fond of apparating, but I can do it if I must, and this way we’ll be able to address them individually and make sure they have a chance to ask for clarification.”

“No,” Rhonwen shook her head. “We want to be ready before harvest time, and we need all the time we can get to convince Salazar to go along with our proposal - and to prepare his home to receive the children. Visiting each of them in turn would take too long.”

“What if we split up?” offered Goderic. “One of us could go ‘round to each of the children while the other two worked with Slidrian.” Rhonwen didn’t seem convinced by this idea either.

“It would have to be me that went visiting - neither of you speak Cymraeg or Pictish. And we can’t have that, because Salazar won’t even open the door for you two if I’m not with you.”

“Could we send them messages?” Goderic asked, and this time Helga shook her head along with Rhonwen.”

“Most of them probably can’t read,” she reminded him. “I can only read runes - and some of the poorer children won’t even be lettered in any language at all.”

“She’s right,” agreed Rhonwen. “Written messages would be no good.”

“What if you used singing parchment?”

All three of them turned to look at the unexpected voice. Helena’s harp instructor was standing timidly in the doorway that came out of the kitchen, his harp tucked under one arm and a bowl of blackcurrants in the other hand. He dipped his head toward Rhonwen deferentially.

“Apologies, Lady,” he said softly. “I did not mean to listen to others’ business.”

“It’s quite alright, Aneirin,” Rhonwen smiled. “Please, sit with us and explain your meaning to our guests.” She waved her wand at a chair across the table from Helga, and it scooted itself out a few inches so the young man could sit down. Aneirin stood his harp against the table leg and sat, holding out his bowl of currants to Goderic and Helga for them to sample.

“Singing parchment,” he began. “It’s a charm I use to help my students learn to recite or sing with correct pronunciation and pitch. I write the words I want them to learn on parchment, and then the parchment, once bewitched, can sing or recite the words aloud for the student. This way they can take the parchment home and practice when I am not with them, even if they cannot read.”

“So we could write a message,” said Goderic, picking a few particularly fat currants from the bowl, “and send it to each of the children, and the parchment could speak our written words aloud to them?”

“Indeed,” Aneirin nodded, looking proud of himself. “And the charm also makes the parchment able to translate languages, so if the child doesn’t understand the language you write in, the parchment will speak it to them in their own tongue.”

“Can it answer questions?” Helga asked. Aneirin waggled his hand.

“Simple ones. It can clarify the meaning of a word; it can repeat itself; and I’ve made them to explain the rules of a certain type of poem before. I suppose my Lady could modify the charm to be able to answer more complex questions, if she desires.” They all looked to Rhonwen, who took a sip of her hot wine before nodding slowly.

“I think it’s a solid idea that solves all our problems at once. Do you bewitch the parchment before or after you write on it?”

“I always wait until after,” Aneirin explained. “It doesn’t affect the charm itself, but if you write on parchment that’s already been bewitched, the blasted thing will keep critiquing your penmanship and trying to offer rhyme suggestions.” He picked his harp up from the floor and seated it in his lap, plucking idly at a few strings. “Would you like me to cut you some parchments tonight, Lady Rhonwen? I had planned to go and cut one for myself in a moment anyway.”

“If you would, please, Aneirin,” Rhonwen instructed. “Medium length, enough for a detailed message. Eleven should do it - we can send just one letter to each of the pairs of siblings. If we manage to convince Salazar to join our venture, the first thing we’ll do is compose the message and get them sent.” She stood up from the table and tapped the parchment map smartly with her wand; it bounced up at the edges and rolled itself neatly back into a scroll, coming to rest gently at the base of Rhonwen’s goblet. “Aneirin,” she said, tucking the long scroll under her arm, “I want you to look after Helena until we get back.”

“And you want the both of us to look after my lord Cadwgan, I suppose?” the harpist grinned. Rhonwen didn’t answer verbally, but she gave him an amused grimace. Across the table Goderic also stood up, one hand still full of blackcurrants and his goblet in the other.

“Until we get back?” he repeated. “D’you mean we’re going tonight? Won’t Slidrian be asleep by the time we get there?”

“Oh, quite the contrary,” Rhonwen smiled. “If he’s anything like he was as a boy, then he’s still sleeping until midday and skulking about half the night, making huffy, misunderstood faces at the moon. If we showed up when the sun was still out, he’d probably pretend he wasn’t home. We’ll try to arrive just around sunset. I’ll have your satchels taken off your horse and brought to you, and I’ll go pack one for myself as well.”

“Will we need our satchels?” Helga asked, quietly vanishing the crumbs from Goderic’s side of the table with a flick of her wand. “You think we’ll be staying there overnight?”

Rhonwen tilted her head in thought. “If he’s in a good mood and wants to humor us, we’ll probably stay a night and maybe two. If he’s not in a good mood, we’ll be back here before moonrise.”

“And if that’s the case, we’ll have to think of another location,” Goderic grimaced, downing the rest of his goblet. Helga surreptitiously vanished the stray droplets of wine that ran down the cup’s sides as he put it on the table.

“One step at a time, my lord de Grifondour,” their host smiled. “Salazar can be difficult… but he may yet surprise us.”

“Yes,” Goderic sighed, tucking the remaining blackcurrants into his belt pouch. “Surprises are what I’m worried about.”