from one to the other and they all found themselves smiling in return. 'Do you not realise the seasons have changed? The dark is no longer a time for Fragile Creatures to walk abroad.'
'We are not as fragile as you think.' Tom stepped from behind Shavi to present himself to the visitors.
'True Thomas!' His smile grew broader, if that were possible. 'We have missed your rhymes in the Far Country. How have you fared, good Thomas?'
'As well as could be expected, Cormorel, under the circumstances.' Tom gestured to the others. 'You have heard of the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons?'
Cormorel looked surprised for an instant, but then the smile returned and he bowed his head, politely and formally. 'It is indeed a great honour to meet the blood-champions of the Fixed Lands. The fame of the Pendragon Spirit's vessels has extended even unto our home. Hail, Quincunx. The faithi have spoke proudly of the five who are one hero.'
Veitch surveyed the two new arrivals suspiciously, poised to move at the slightest sign of danger. Church was afraid Veitch's barely contained rage would force an unnecessary confrontation, until he realised his friend was surreptitiously watching Tom for his lead.
'This is my good friend and fellow traveller, Baccharus,' Cormorel continued. The other golden one's bow was more clipped than that of his colleague.
Church and the others introduced themselves hesitantly. Tom motioned to the campfire. 'Will you join us?'
'Gladly, True Thomas. It has been too long since we enjoyed the company of people.' Cormorel pronounced the last word as if it were alien to him.
Cormorel and Baccharus sat together next to the fire, seemingly revelling in the event. Church took a position next to them with Tom on the other side, while the others gathered around the rest of the fire with varying degrees of discomfort; only Shavi seemed truly at ease.
Church picked up his beer to take a sip, then noticed Cormorel's eyes following his hand. 'Would you like a drink?' Church said. 'Can you drink?'
'We can eat, drink, make merry in many ways.' Cormorel eyed Ruth and Laura slyly. 'Of course, we may not appreciate the sensations in quite the same way as you Fragile Creatures. But it is the experience we seek, the keys to existence.' Church opened two cans for him and Baccharus, which they took gratefully. They sniffed the drink, sipped at it cautiously, then nodded to each other. 'When we were last here there was something made of honey,' Cormorel noted thoughtfully. 'This is more to my palate.'
'What brings you here, Cormorel?' Tom asked.
'We are reacquainting ourselves with the Fixed Lands, True Thomas. It always held a special place in our hearts. We have been denied its pleasures for too long.'
Baccharus leaned forward and said quietly, 'Here, with your truncated existence, lives burn brightly. Experience is savoured. There is a potency which we find invigorating.'
'And you are all so much fun!' Cormorel added with a flourish.
'Glad we entertain you,' Veitch muttered coldly. If Cormorel and Baccharus noticed the offence in his voice, they didn't show it.
'We are revisiting the places we knew before the Sundering,' Baccharus said, 'but so much has changed. The air is filled with unpleasant particles. The water in the rivers is sour. Even the trees are in pain. I can hear the dryads whispering their distress as I pass. You have not fared well without us.'
'Things haven't gone well on a lot of fronts,' Church agreed. Baccharus' words touched a nerve with him that made him uncomfortable. Was humanity really better off when the gods ruled over them?
Cormorel suddenly noticed Ruth staring at him curiously. 'What is it?' he asked.
'We don't know anything about you,' she replied. 'The only ones of your kind we've met before weren't exactly easy to talk to.'
'And as you can see,' Cormorel said, raising his hands, 'we are not all cut from the same cloth.'
'Tell us about you, then. About your people. Where you come from, what excites you.' Church recognised the incisive gleam in her eye; she was using her lawyerly skills to extract information which might be of use to them later.
'You are trying to define us in your terms and we cannot be defined. We simply are. A part of the universe and outside the universe, outside of time and all reality. We move among the stars, slipping between moments. As great as the fabric of existence, as fluid as thought.' He winked at Tom. 'It is hard to know us, eh, True Thomas? However long you spend at our side.'
'But you seem comfortable with the way we perceive reality,' Ruth continued, undeterred. 'Try to express it in terms which make sense to us.'
Cormorel nodded thoughtfully. 'Then I will try to tell you of the glory and the wonder and the anguish and the pain. Of a race cut adrift from its home, condemned to wander existence for all time.' His voice took on a mournful quality which made their hearts ache; there was something in the way the Tuatha De Danann manipulated sound which had a dramatic effect on human emotions; Church wondered if this explained his confused feelings for Niamh. 'We have always been the Golden Ones. There when the universe winked into life. And we will be there when it finally whispers out. Our storytellers spin vast accounts of our days when all was well with Creation and we resided in four cities of wonder. It is the arch-memory, the homeland, to which we all dream of returning. We have never found it in our wanderings.' His voice grew sadder still. 'And I for one would say we probably never will. But the Far Lands, with their ebb and flow, and, strangely, the Fixed Lands too, are the closest in our hearts. And so we move between one and the other, and we stay and go, and we yearn. And though we remember our home and see the connections, we are always an echo away. That is our curse. Never to be at peace. We exist in the great turn of the universe. Our lives are lived at the heart of everything. And so our joys are great, and our sorrows too.' He fixed a sad eye on Ruth. 'Can you understand what it is never to have the only thing that makes you whole? Without our home, we cannot understand our place in the scheme of things. We are bereft. That is our character.'
'That is everybody's character,' Shavi said.
Baccharus began to sing in their lyrical, alien tongue; there was so much sadness in every syllable they felt as if their chests were being crushed by despair. Their heads bowed as one, and in that song they finally felt the true pain of the Tuatha lle Danann.
When the last note of Baccharus' magical singing finally faded away, there was a brief moment of ringing silence, and then Cormorel brightened instantly. 'Come. We have driven the sadness from our being for a time and now we are free to drink deep!' He raised his beer and emptied the can, letting forth an enormous belch. Church handed him another one, which he glugged eagerly.
'Now let me tell you of joy and wonder!' he continued. 'Would you like to hear how our greatest warriors crushed the Night Walkers beneath their heel at the second battle of Magh Tuireadh? Or perhaps a personal tale of my great wassailing? Or perhaps something of the Fragile Creatures who preceded you?' He gave a strange, weighted smile that none of them could quite understand. 'Not so fragile, some of them. For your breed at least. They did not accept us with kindness in the early days.'
'I heard they resisted you quite forcefully,' Tom noted.
Cormorel mused on this for a moment. 'They were slow to appreciate the true order of things. They were, I think, quite brutal in spirit. There was something of the Night Walkers about them.'
'A matter of perception, I would say,' Tom persisted.
Cormorel didn't seem offended by his tone. 'We crushed them in the end, you know.'
Tom nodded. 'Yet they still exert an influence. Knowledge encoded in the landscape for future generations to decipher. Information to be used to resist you.' Church and the others all looked at Tom, but he wouldn't meet their eyes. 'Their bravery is beyond question, but perhaps you have underestimated their intelligence. They were playing a very long game.' Tom let the words hang, but it was obvious he was not going to elucidate.
Cormorel maintained a curious expression for a moment, then shrugged as if it were nothing, but Church could tell Tom's comments were still playing in his mind.
'Tell me why some of you are almost like us and some are just… unknowable,' Ruth said.
Cormorel smiled condescendingly. 'None of us are truly like you.'
Baccharus held up his hand to silence his partner. 'No, that is a good question. Some of us are very like the Fragile Creatures, if only in our joys and sorrows. How many of our brethren would take pleasure in this, here, tonight, around this fire? Yet to me this is a moment of great pleasure, to be savoured and discussed at length once
