The characters herein mentioned are the property 
of ROAR and FOX Studios.  I do not claim them as 
my own, nor mean to infer any such ownership.  This 
story is purely for enjoyment, and no copyright
infringements are intended.

        My Name:  Alethea White
        My email:  agwhit@maila.wm.edu


        Tully's body was quiet before them, laid carefully 
on the bank of the stream.  A Roman brand was around 
his neck, a foreign wound through his heart.  He was 
dead.  Lost to them forever.  Catlin stooped beside him,
trailing her fingers in the hurried water, running them 
across his cheeks, a face that had once smiled so often.  
She would never feel his hands on her own again, never 
hear his mischevious laughter in the woods as he ran
through the shadows around her.  He had been so 
young.  He had been so full of promise.  I miss you, 
Tully.  
        Catlin began to cry, noiselessly, her shoulders 
heaving with little force, her hands wrapped across 
her face and over her eyes.  She was ashamed to show 
this, embarassed that tears could continue to victimize 
her, after all these years of sorrow that she had known.  
But those had been years of self-pity, years of torture 
and rape, beatings and dawn-to-dusk occupation.
She was loved here.  But they had taken one piece of 
that love from her. She would never be able to fight 
strongly enough to reclaim it.
        Firm hands encircled her own, pulling them from 
her face.  Catlin's cheeks were moistened, and the stray 
bits of water that fell downward christened the hands 
of her prince.  Conor pulled her close to him.  He held
her, silently.  She cried with her face in his shoulder.  
He was so strong. He lived through this.  He could 
survive anything.
        "Catlin, are you alright?"
        He pulled her face away from his body, held her 
cheeks in his fresh palms, searched her blinded eyes 
with his own.  
        "Are you alright?"
        He repeated the question.  He needed the answer.
        "No, Conor.  No, I'm not.  This place is our 
HOME.  It's our safety, our lives.  And he was taken 
from us here, right outside the boundaries of
the Sanctuary.  The Romans were so close to 
discovering us, Conor.  They could come back 
anytime.  With just a little bit more effort, they'll find
us.  They'll kill us all."  She put her hands over his, 
loving his warmth on her suffering face.
        "I can't stand the thought, Conor.  Fergus dead, 
you..."  Her voice trailed off.  The sounds of the cruel 
night whipping over the trees lashed into their ears, 
that lonesome pair, together by the stream.  Life 
rushed past them, but they were  snared in the maws 
of unforgiving mortality.
        "Don't think that, Cat.  They were here, yes, but 
they didn't find us.  They have no reason to suspect 
that Tully was anything but out alone, hunting.  Why 
would they come back?"
        "Longinus.  He knows things, Conor.  He 
murdered Christ and he was transformed into a creature 
of evil.  He was bestowed powers.  And he could
find us here, if only he tried."
        The blonde prince stood her up, leading her 
towards her tent.
        "Come on, Cat.  It's warmer inside."  
        He held back the flap and used his free arm, 
wrapped against her back, to guide her inside.  She 
stood weakly as she waited for him to join her side 
once more.  He led her to her bed, a pile of silken furs 
and soft dreams.  He prayed she could find happiness 
again.  He prayed he could bring her that happiness, 
by discovering what her feelings were.  Her feelings.
Could he ever hope to be the possessor of such secret 
wonder?
        They had barely touched the bed when she once 
again sought the comfort of his chest.  He wrapped his 
arms around her again, speaking over her head.    
        "Cat, you must try to be strong.  The people of 
this Sanctuary look to you for guidance.  They want to 
mourn Tully just as much as we, but we can't allow 
this place to become numb with grief.  Try to be 
strong for me, Cat.  Please..."
        He held her tighter, wishing never for Time for 
to release them. This was a dire perfection.  He had 
sought this peace all his life, and had begun to believe 
it would never be bestowed him.
        "Conor, I loved him."
        "I loved him too, Cat.  We all did,"
        She pulled away, hiding her eyes from his 
penetrating gaze.
        "I thought you would never be able to love 
again, after what happened with Claire."
        "I didn't think I would either.  But this place, 
these people, have taught me that hope lies waiting 
for all of us.  It was selfish of me to try to escape that 
Fate."
        Her lips became soft, the sound from them 
almost undetectable.
        "Do you...do you think you could ever fall in 
love again, Conor?"
        The question was Olympian honey to his ears.  
Could Fate provide him such happiness?
        He held her face in his hand.
        "I already have, Catlin."
        Catlin's body became quiet, her motions less 
grieving, her eyes searching.  Tully was dead.  The 
Sanctuary was empty without him.  But Conor was 
here, holding her face in his hands, tearing through her 
with eyes that bespoke a thousand nights of death 
and burning fear.  He was tormented.  He was a 
prince.  And he was unsure that he would find returned 
in her eyes the love he was nursing himself.
        Catlin's voice was uncharacteristically bold.  
        "You...you have?"
        Conor grabbed her neck gently, placing his palms 
in perfect symmetry around her jaw, trailing his 
fingers over the loose bits of hair framing her face.  
        "Catlin, how could you have doubted me?  I told 
you never to keep what was inside you a secret from 
me.  I beg you now to answer that plea. Tell me you 
love me, tell me you feel something for me at all.  Give 
me a chance to win you.  Please..."
        With the brown shadow of a tear drying in its 
path down her cheek, Catlin smiled.  She smiled 
because this was what she had hoped for, longed for, 
since she had first seen the reflection of this young 
warrior in the Roman's blade.  He was her savior, her 
protector.  And she had been so afraid she would lose 
him.  
        She placed her palms around his own, laying her 
head gently on his chest, pulling him down to the bed 
in the most chaste of needs.  She believed her heart to 
be speaking, when in fact the love poured forth from
her hungry lips.
        "I will never keep myself from you, Conor.  I 
have loved you all these days, wanted you to be the 
Prince, the leader of the Confederation.  I have lived 
only in your shadow, but happy to count myself 
there.  I would die for you, for your cause.  I only 
need to look at your face to know you understand 
me."
        Conor had no thoughts of Claire, no thoughts of 
his father, no thought of Tully, though the realization 
of that moments later shamed him. He felt only this 
perfection beneath his fingertips.  She was breathing
softly, his arm across her chest a balanced weight, 
almost a part of the rhythm.  
        "Cat, I would never..."  His voice trailed off, a 
tear flooding his eye.  "I would never let anyone harm 
you.  I have to know that you feel safe with me, that 
you feel safe in this Sanctuary."
        Catlin pushed herself away from him, gently.  
        "Conor, of course I feel safe."
        "Because, if you don't, we'll leave.  I saw what 
happened to my family, and to you, and I've come to 
believe that love is more precious than any battle.  I 
don't want you to lose me, and I can't lose you.  Tell 
me to leave, tell me you want to, and it's done."  
        "No, no!  Never say that, Conor.  I love you, but 
I love THIS part of you.  I love the fierceness in your 
eyes when you take command, the soft way you 
speak of Galen and feeling the roar in the land.  No one 
has ever moved me like you, Conor, and were we to 
leave, I'd blame myself for changing you."  She placed 
her head back on his chest, starving for the feel of his 
fingers on her face, wiping away her tears of mourning. 
"No, no, you are perfect here, now.  This place is 
perfect.  Perfect..."  
        Conor felt his heart beating against her face, felt 
her eyes slowly closing.  His heart surged forth.  
Crimson emotion clouded the edges of his sight, and 
he could have held her in that moment for eternity, 
where they both were safe from the Romans, from 
the pain in her past and the uncertainty in their 
futures.  But it was not to be.  He could hear Fergus
beginning to call for him outside the tent.  
        He stood gently, placing his sleeping archer on 
the skins beneath him, covering her and touching her 
face with a kissed finger before turning his back on her 
face.  The prince pulled aside the tent flaps to find 
Fergus sweating without, about to plunge inside to get 
him.
        Conor shushed him.  "Cat's sleeping, Fergus.  
What IS wrong?"
        Fergus waved away his peaceful moment.
        "Conor, they've taken his body."
        "What?"  Blue shock registered across his face.  
The only sound was the insects in the trees, the water 
rushing alongside them.
        "They've taken Tully's body, to make an 
"example" of him.  Longinus and his men, just outside 
the Sanctuary."
        "No!  Oh, Fergus, have they discovered us?"
        "No, no.  A few of the men carried Tully outside 
the boundaries to wash him in the river.  It's a custom.  
They thought it would purify his soul, help to rest 
easier.  Longinus discovered him, but alone, and we're
still safe."
        Conor stood, dumbfounded.  They had taken 
Tully.  Damn them.  Damn Diana and her spear-bearing 
legions.  
        "Conor, we have to go!  We have to get him 
back!"
        Wishing himself back in the tent, beside his love 
on her white skins, Conor called a band of men into 
action.  Fergus went to fetch the horses.  This deed 
must be avenged.


        The smell of burnt earth and midnight smoke 
howled across the field, trapping Conor's face and 
singeing his eyes.  Fergus' stare never wavered,
round eyes listening to the Romans singing around 
Tully's body in their fortress.
        "Conor, Tully wouldn't have wanted us here.  
He would have wanted us to stay at the Sanctuary, 
to protect the children.  Longinus got too close this 
time.  Too close for my comfort."
        The young prince shut his eyes, remembering 
the dewborn feel of Catlin's face beneath his hands, 
the light from a safe fire dancing across the skins of 
her bed.
        "Fergus, you know this is right.  You know 
we have to get his body back.  I will never let Diana 
and that beast have him.  He fought for us, for what 
we believe in.  And he deserves at least a proper 
burial. You can't tell me you wish to deny him that 
now."
        "Yes, but, Conor, Longinus could go back.  He's 
a smart man, with a mind that feeds off of the 
experience of centuries.  He'll know we were
close to Tully.  He'll look for the Sanctuary. And 
perhaps the next time we won't have the chance luck 
we had before."  Fergus stopped talking, finally
turning his gaze on the wisps of blond blowing beside 
him, the sun-kissed face of this Celtic boy.  "I'm 
afraid, Conor.  I'm afraid for the children. I'm afraid 
for the parents who came to us who don't want their 
babies to be orphans.  I'm afraid that one day Molly 
will return to find her father slaughtered, overpowered 
by some band of Romans.  I want to live, Conor. And 
I am just admitting to you that...that I'm afraid."
        Conor saw Claire once again in the forest clearing, 
her white skin a smoother shade of pale as the 
moonlight played across it, the burnt crimson on her 
fingertips, reaching for him as she fell, her Roman 
father with the glint of evil in his eye, just behind, her 
murderer.  He saw his friend Daniel with an arrow in 
his back.   He saw Tully, eyes still open, a Roman
brand around his neck, left dead in a pile of leaves 
and underbrush.  No.
        "Fergus, I am afraid, just as much as you.  But 
there are wrongs, things you and I must avenge.  I fear 
for the children. Do you think I want to see them 
orphans?  But if you and I turn our tails and run, 
they'll make those same children slaves. Look at 
Catlin, Fergus.  Look at what she had to go through.  
Those men beat her, they tortured her, they..."  He 
trailed off, finding the next words difficult.  "They 
for...forced themselves on her, and she has known a 
suffering you and I could never attempt to imagine.
I love her, Fergus." 
        His bald companion turned his head.
        "I love her, and I would die for her, and for 
everyone in that Sanctuary, to save them from 
becoming Rome's victims.  Say you're with me.
Say you fight with me, Fergus."
        The hint of a smile beneath that black mustache 
proved he still had a companion, still had the better 
part of his best friend beside him.  
        "We'll fight.  And we'll do it together."
        Fergus rose and took Conor's hand, helping him 
up.  They kept to the shadow of the trees, hiding 
themselves under the cover of hollow night, creeping 
closer to Diana's fortress. 


        Catlin felt her hands hitting the backside of the 
tent as she stretched, mouth wide.  She yawned 
deeply, satisfied that she'd been able to sleep when 
Tully's death was so fresh on her mind.  She pulled her 
hands back to her chest, keeping the skins tight around 
her chin as she remembered her late friend's magical 
efforts, his faerie powders and starlit nights. He'd been 
able to smile at a person and take the pain of the past 
away. He'd done it for her more times than she could 
remember. More times than she>could allow herself 
to remember.  Catlin got up, stepping over to the 
circle of grey stone around the fire, rubbing her palms 
together and heating them over the fire.  She spoke, 
praying the little man had found some way to keep
his spirit near her.  "I miss you, Tully.  I loved you."  
A hint of a happy smile tickled in her heart, and she 
knew he was with her.  She knew he always would be.  
A blue spark flew up from a licking flame and flashed 
by her cheek.  He always would be.
        The prince crossed her mind.  She turned around 
quickly, frightened that he had left her, frightened 
that it was so quiet outside her tent. There was no 
bustle of children, no cry of joy as Fergus told 
another outrageous yarn.  There was nothing but 
the sound of the night creeping past, coloring their 
unsafe world in an unhealthy darkness.  Oh, Jesus.
Please help me.  Please protect him.  She threw 
aside the flap to her tent. "FERGUS!  CONOR!"  
There was no answer.  Jesus, no.
        A bonfire was burning near the waterfall.  Catlin 
ran towards it, feeling relieved when she took notice 
of all the Sanctuary's inhabitants mingling around it, 
speaking low and throwing nervous glances at one
another.  She grabbed a woman's shoulder, Moire.  
The woman had a tear-stained face, highlighted by the 
shadows from the fire.  Catlin spoke.
        "Tears, Moira?  What's happened?"
        The older woman was distraught.  Her voice 
quavered as she answered.  
        "Catlin, Conor and Fergus have gone.  They've 
gone to get Tully's body back from the Romans."  
A soft sob shook through her, echoing onto Catlin's 
palm.
        "Gone against the Romans?  Alone?  Moira, when 
did they leave?"  
        "I don't know.  Just after Conor went into your 
tent.  He came out and Fergus took him off and they 
were gone."
        "How long was I asleep, Moira?  Oh, God.  And 
none of the men went with them?"
        Moira touched Cat's hand, and the contact was 
intensely painful. Oh, Moira.  You've suffered so very, 
very much.  
        "A few did, Catlin.  Just a few, ones with no 
families, but old enough to wield a weapon.  They've 
no idea where they were headed.  No idea at all..."
        Catlin held the woman's hand for just a moment.  
Moira closed.
        "I'm scared, Catlin.  The Romans were so close, 
so close..."
        "Don't you think that, Moira.  They'll never get 
us here.  You know Conor won't let them.  Fergus 
won't let them."  She took the old woman's face in her 
hands.  "And you know I won't let them hurt any of 
you."  A wide smile was her goodbye as she turned 
away, running to her tent to fetch her bow and arrow 
satchel before leaving the Sanctuary.  The colors of 
night water and sad fire faded behind her, and Catlin 
regretted that the island had ever fallen to the Roman 
powers, regretted that she had been pulled into this 
battle when she was content to live in peace.  But she'd 
never regret Conor, their first meeting, the feeling of 
safety that he and his cause brought her.  She loved 
him.  She turned her back to the Sanctuary and ran into 
the cover of the forest.


        A stray curl flung itself desperately into Conor's 
eyes as he turned his head to Fergus, hidden in the 
darkness just to his left.  
        "Fergus?  Fergus!?"
        "What?  I'm right here!"  It was a ferocious 
whisper, of the sort that would have been jest, had the 
circumstances been any different.
        "Are you ready?"
        The silence that gelled into the void was his 
answer.  The champion was afraid, for perhaps the 
first time in his life.  He had a daughter now to think 
of, friends whom he loved deeply, a life full of 
adventures still ahead of  him, and he was forcing 
himself to enter the Roman fortress to steal back the 
body of a dead man, who, in his consideration, would 
probably never know what trouble they'd gone to to 
help him, in his death.  Conor felt blindly in the 
darkness, thrusting his hand onto Fergus' shoulder.
        "It'll be alright, Fergus.  Molly would want you 
to do this.  We both know it's right."
        The shadows heightened, and Fergus was standing 
closely beside him.  
        "Enough talk.  Let's go fetch Tully."
        The brightness of a smile not seen dribbled into 
the night sky as Conor crawled up the wall of the 
fortress, a small corner of his face illuminated through 
the holes in the earthen side.  
        There was an archway to their right, with no 
door, no guard, no visible danger.  Conor put his hand 
on the hilt of his sword, steadying himself.  Tully, this 
is for you.  With Fergus to his rear, the Celtic prince 
turned his way through the arch, keeping his body 
closely against the side.  There was no one present.  
No sound moved, no light breathed.  There was 
absolute silence.  Conor remarked that the drunken 
sound of Romans singing over a captured corpse had 
ceased, seemingly without explanation. Fergus copied 
his movements with an exactness that was frightening.  
Conor had never before truly considered Fergus' 
expertise.  Now it was probably one of the only things 
keeping them alive.
        The pair crawled past the stables, some crudely 
erected sticks to support the thatched roof over the 
horses.  A few stray whinnies, a pawing hoof, and no 
revealing movements.  Conor remembered telling the 
Father how they could commune with animals.  He 
prayed now that they would keep silent. A leather 
bag was slung over one stick post, and Conor stood 
to look inside it, keeping his back to the darkness and 
one eye constantly turning.  Within there were a few 
empty bottles, a gathering of herbs, a tarnished silver
band with the engravings of the Norsemin tribe.  The 
Norsemin.  Eaters of the dead, dressed in the skins 
of the slaughtered, vicious beasts from the North.  
Surely the Romans were not to give the body to 
them?  Conor gritted his teeth, slung the bag off of 
the post and onto his shoulder.  One finger pointed 
to the north, while another went to the west.  Split up.  
        Fergus did not like the idea, but he followed.  
Blindly.  As he always would, the commands of this 
boy.  
        Listening to his companion slink off westward, 
Conor closed his eyes and thought of Catlin.  So 
gentle, so well formed, so much his dreams embodied. 
Pray to your Jesus, my love.  Pray that he will 
protect us.  Pray he protects you. He moved forward.  
        Around a corner, under the lightless hood of 
midnight, Conor passed. The smell of raw animal and 
savage intention lingered just around his face, and he 
often heard the ignorant snores of Romans drunk and 
asleep within the recesses of the earthen fortress wall.  
A curse on you.  A curse on you for being on this 
island.  
        The young prince passed a wooden door with 
arrows stuck near the handle, shot there by some tired 
guard for target practice.  The door handle was soiled, 
the handprints of so many soldiers marked there for 
days past. Curiosity grabbed him, as he saw the thin 
wool string  of orange lightbeneath the door, and he 
pursed his lips, pushing the wooden door inward.


        A trickle of blind must rose from the floor, 
steaming with the burning bits of fire still held in by 
a circle of moldy stones.  The embers glowed with a 
savage intention, but stayed quiet, barely illuminating 
the room.  Conor kept close to the floor, moving 
forward.  He judged it to be a makeshift blacksmith's 
room, the heat bright on the horseshoes and metal
bars locked onto the solid walls.  Some Roman coins 
were scattered over the floor, and Conor picked one 
up, throwing it into the leather satchel he had so 
recently acquired.  A small souvenir to give to the 
people of the Sanctuary, to show them he and Fergus 
had been victorious.  He prayed they would be.  
        Looking backward, guarding the door while still 
moving forward, the young prince narrowly missed 
stumbling over the outstretched leg of a sleeping Roman 
man.  Conor steadied himself, closed his mouth against 
the surprised rush of air that threatened to burst out 
noisily, and closed his eyes.  Keep your eyes level, he 
had always been taught.  Never waver.  Oh, never 
waver.  
        The man asleep on the floor was pale, with a thick 
black beard and mustache, coated in a light haze of dirt.  
His eyelids were dark, purposeless, and his cheeks 
were puffed out every so often as his breath came 
regularly.  His ears seemed open, but his hands were 
tightly clenched, and he slept curled awkwardly on a 
makeshift bed of straw and wool.  Conor could only 
imagine Diana's demands were harsh, his work 
overwhelming.  He stood over him, careful to not 
disturb the cast of fire being thrown in the man's 
direction, and held his sword's hilt.  He could kill this 
man.  With one thrust.  He was prepared to do it, 
should the sleeping man move.  
        But something stopped him.  Perhaps the memory 
of Catlin in his arms, the feel of Daniel beneath him, 
dying, suffering, afraid for them even as his own life 
was being stolen away.  Perhaps it was the memory of
Daniel's daughters, grieving, weeping, forgetting to eat 
or breathe in the wake of their tragedy.  He remembered 
himself, crawling back through the rubble of his own 
family home, burnt to a withered cinder by Gar and his
Roman legions.  He remembered how much he had loved 
them. How much he still did.  And he realized no death 
was truly necessary.  He had seen enough death in his 
years to satisfy his morbid curiosities for three lifetimes.
And to perpetrate another here, on an innocent man, 
dreaming of green, verdant places he'd rather be, 
would be an unforgivable sin.  
        Conor released his grip on his sword.  Fergus would 
be proud of him for this. Derek would be proud of him.  
He stole back through the room, kissing the fire with his 
eyes, feeling safe within.  There would be no death here 
tonight.  He wanted only his friend.  Tully, who was 
already taken from them.  The pain was more than he 
wished to bear.    
        Suddenly, as he was pushing outwards on the 
door, Conor heard a surge of Latin voices, howls and 
roaring laughter, cheers that were portentious and cruel.  
What had happened?  
        Leaving before the sleeping blacksmith could 
awaken, he ran towards the source of the noise, letting 
the blackness of dark corners envelope him as he ran 
blindly.  Please.  Please. 


        His face masked by the angular hip of a corner, 
Conor turned his eyes on a band of Roman soldiers, 
half dressed, gathered around a vicious bonfire in the 
middle of the fortress' courtyard.  One lone man stood 
to the left of the blaze, tossing random logs on every 
few minutes, feeding the flames.  His eyes were tired.  
His hands looked sore.  Conor felt a flash of pity.  
        A woman's screams pulled his attention to the 
right of the bonfire, sad, tortured howls, of pain and 
suffering beyond imagination.  The shadows played 
wildly across the stony ground.  A hooded man, whom 
Conor could only assume was Longinus, stood in an 
alcove above the scene, eyes red in the night sky.  The 
stars provided no illumination.  The minutes were evil.
        A soldier near him, back to the corner, pulled a 
studded whip from around his belt, his boots stamping 
out deep prints in the earth as he crossed the courtyard 
to the trapped woman.  The throng of men surrounding
her blocked her face from Conor.  He didn't doubt this 
was some slave, some beautiful young creature about to 
lose her life to a sick display, some twisted ritual.  He 
pitied her.  He could not let this happen.  Breathing 
deeply and listening for Catlin's voice in his heart, he 
turned the corner and set off around the throng, keeping 
himself barely concealed beneath the cover of obliging 
monuments, wagons tilted, stones overturned, horses 
tied to fresh wooden posts.  
        Conor kept his eyes open for Tully's body, for 
signs of Fergus in the fortress around him.  But there 
was nothing, only this pounding roar of laughter and 
cheering.  The things men could allow themselves to do.
        He cringed as the woman's screams became more 
wrenching, listened to the crack of the whip against 
the ground, as the head soldier moved closer to his 
prey.  His voice was barbed.  Conor despised him.
        "So, men, what have you found for me this 
evening?  Some pretty young thing?  Some nice piece 
of temptation for me?"  Though his back was turned, 
the young prince could see the man's smile, his crooked 
teeth and black tongue.  
        "My lord, we found her in the woods just outside 
the gates.  Didn't even have to hunt her.  She just fell 
into our view like a deer at the end of the arrow, and 
here she is.  Does she please you, my lord?"  Their
devotion was sickening.
        "We'll have to see about that.  Does she need to 
be taught anything, gentlemen?  Any lessons about 
how life is here?"  
        A cry arose, poignantly affirmative, and the 
woman, head bowed, was tied to a post quickly 
brought by well-muscled men.  Stuck vertical in the
soft ground, her hair masked her face, her leather garb 
torn, her taut stomach and fine legs apparent in the 
cool air.
        "Madam?  Madam, may I have the pleasure of 
your name?"
        She shook her head.  
        "Oh, madam, may I have the PLEASURE of your 
name?"  His voice was becoming agitated, the whip 
circled around his palm in readiness.  Conor had
no idea what to do.  He couldn't risk discovery.  And 
he couldn't allow them to hurt this woman.
        A wisp of sand brown hair fell across the angled 
slope of her nose as she raised her head.  Catlin.  
        "I'll never tell you anything, you bastard..."  
        No.  Oh, please, no.  Conor stood, without 
thinking of himself, letting his face fall into a slip of 
direct light.  Not my Catlin.  Not my love.
        The whip cracked.  She pierced the night in her 
agony.  Conor screamed out, "NO!  NO!"         
        Fergus' lean form appeared in the opposite 
corner of the fortress. "Hello, you weak-livered 
cowards!  Afraid to attack someone the same size as
yourselves?  Why don't you leave her be and try to 
get me, hmm?"  Oh, Fergus.  Please, please know 
what you're doing.  
        The whip stopped in midair, as the head soldier 
cried out commands. He, however, did not move. 
Catlin's head fell, her stomach gashed open, strong 
ribbons of blood blanketing her white skin.  My Catin.  
        The young prince drew his sword out of its 
sheath, excited to be releasing it.  He rushed up behind 
the commanding officer, as his face was turning, and 
ran him through.  Conor shoved him off of the end of 
his sword as his face froze in a mask of mortality.  
        Catlin.  He ran to her, slicing through the ropes 
that bound her with a sword afraid to do her harm.  
Her mouth fell open, and her eyes were weak, 
searching for his face.  
        "Conor?  Conor, is that you?"  
        "Oh, Catlin, I didn't know.  I didn't know it 
was you."  
        She lifted her hand to his face, as they had done 
only hours before, safe, alone in the Sanctuary.  Only 
now she was a mere whisper of that woman, near 
death, beaten, wounded.  His only love, in his arms.  
        He saw Claire, pale and light in the clearing, 
wasting  away without hearing his pleas.  No.  Catlin 
would not die.  
        A smash against his head from the rear, and the 
world became blackness.


        Conor opened his eyes, his hands reaching for his 
face, but finding themselves tightly strapped to 
shackles on the wall behind him.  His tongue sought out 
the painful crack to the left of his lips, and the salted 
essence of blood scraped through his mouth.  His left 
eye was swollen to the point of blindness, his right 
afraid of what it was seeing, the black room around
him, the everpresent flames in a fireplace recessed into 
the wall directly opposite him.  The smell of death was 
here.  The smell of tortured limbs drafted through the 
inches of dirt beneath him.  He may die here.  This
thought was most dangerous of all.
        Catlin.  The thought of her, lying injured 
somewhere without him, streaked through his heart, 
ravaging him with a mocking glee.  My love. What have 
they done with her?  
        A heavy sigh tickled the thick air of the dungeon.  
A shadow with braided hair stood beside the fireplace, 
white skin only becoming visible as the woman moved 
towards him.  Conor recoiled, pulled his head back to 
the wall, wishing himself safe, wishing Catlin warm 
beside him.  The Roman queen's face was grimaced, 
mocking, but pained.
        "Why?"  She posed the question with her 
forefinger and thumb decorating the sides of her 
mouth.  "Why do you CONTINUE to provoke me,
CONTINUE to come here and bother with what I 
was sent here to do?"
        "What?  Kill everyone on this island for Rome?  
Kill everyone so you can bring in your Caesars and 
your emperors and lay claim to what never belonged 
to you?"  His hatred was rising, his mouth trying to 
form words through his wounds.  
        "Well, basically."  Diana smiled, cruelly, a facial 
gesture she reserved for her most select of victims.  
"I don't even want to discuss how you came across 
the Spear of Destiny."  She leaned over Conor, her hair
brushing for the shortest of moments across his cheek.
        "I did...I did want to thank you, however."  
        The prince stopped fighting her gaze, loosened the 
muscles in his neck, turned to face her.  "Thank me?  
What have I ever done for you?"  His disbelief was 
monstrous.
        "Longinus.  He was telling me that he found the 
Spear in that temple, and that he was trying to...put 
himself to rest.  You wouldn't kill him.  And he hates 
you for that, but I...I will never be able to thank you
enough.  I couldn't live without him, and though he 
thinks his eternity would SOMETIMES be easier 
without me, I doubt that would prove true.  So I
thank you, young Conor, from the deepest reaches 
of my heart."
        The queen placed her hands over her heart in a 
moment of mock sincerity.  Her eyes, however, 
betrayed the little girl spirit bouncing around 
dangerously within her.  A child, with godlike power.  
This was never meant to be.
        "What have you done with Catlin?"
        Diana's eyes were suddenly venomous.  
        "You mean that little runaway slave girl that you 
took in so promptly?"  
        "She was never your slave.  Never.  Do you hear 
me?"
        Diana laughed.  "Ah, such courage, from against the 
wall.  You're not in the position to issue commands 
here, Conor.  Don't you forget that."
        He pleaded suddenly, too withered and afraid for 
her to keep up the charade.
        "Please, Diana.  Just tell me what you've done 
with her."
        Her white fingers were dark beacons around her 
mouth.  
        "Conor, Conor, if you had the mind to look around 
you, you'd see."
        The Roman queen stood, turning her back to him, 
the scarlet train of her robe slinking in the earth behind 
her as she stepped away from him.
        The young prince had no idea what she meant.  
The mind to look around him?  A wave of ripened 
pain spread like water over his face, and he closed his 
eyes and gritted his teeth against it.  The blackness was 
so welcome, so soothing.  No one could hurt him here.  
Catlin.  Have they hurt you?  His heart ached with the 
thought of her, without him, breathing without his ears 
to appreciate the sighing sound, stepping without his 
eyes to love the movement.  My Catlin.
        Diana's breath across his cheeks caused him to 
open his eyes.  She was a beautiful woman.  Beautiful, 
and heartless.  
        "Conor, my Lord, you're supposed to be this 
colossal leader of your people, this legendary spirit 
meant to unite the island, and yet you cannot see.  
Look here, Conor.  Look here to find your precious 
slave girl."
        The queen backed away, keeping her vicious eyes 
on his every movement, savoring his agonized 
expression as her foot treaded across the unmoving 
arm of his love, lying lifeless against a far wall of the 
dungeon.  
        Diana stooped down and wrapped her palm 
around Catlin's wrist.  She picked up the woman's 
arm, and Conor looked on with a sickened expression 
as she dropped it, and the dead weight thudded 
against the ground emptily.  
        "Aw, poor little thing.  So beautiful too.  Shame 
we lost her.  She had a few good years of hard work 
in her."
        Conor's eyes were filled with deafening tears, 
white, black, the colors of his endless night.  He 
wondered at the horrifying sound echoing off the walls 
of the dungeon, when he began to realize it was the
reverberation of his own voice, screaming out.  No.  
No.  You haven't really done this.  You couldn't have 
really done this.
        Diana frowned, shyly, and stepped back across 
the floor to him. Without the spectacle of her red 
robes to reflect the light, Catlin's body was once 
again enveloped in the darkness, invisible.  
        "What did you think?"  Her words were biting.  
"Did you think that I'd get you here and then just 
play nice and release you back into the woods like 
unwanted prey?  No, Conor.  No.  You knew before 
you came here that if I ever caught you again, I 
would be forced to teach you a lesson.  This is that 
lesson, Conor.  Life is a wrenching sort of pain.  
Longinus taught me that.  And don't you suppose 
he'd know better than anyone?"
        She smiled.  Conor weeped.
        "Why her?  Why her and not me, Diana?  She 
never wronged anyone. She never did anyone any 
harm.  How could you butcher an innocent woman?
She was an innocent woman..."  His voice trailed 
off.  Her eyes, her fragile smile, that crook in her 
arm as she pulled back on the bow.  All of that was
taken from him.  Claire.  Tully.  Catlin.  
        "Kill me, Diana.  Kill me, and end this agony that 
my life has become.  I can't live without her.  You 
knew that.  So do what you intend to do, and let me 
be with her.  Please, I beg you."
        "Tut, tut, Conor.  Now, you know I can't do 
that.  Should I kill you, I'd never be able to control 
the people of this island, and then Rome would come 
riding in with more men like that damned Red Boot 
and take over what I have come to call my own.  No, 
no, killing you would be too easy. But her?  She was 
nothing to me.  Nothing but a runaway slave.  And I 
am surprised that you let her come to mean this 
much to you."
        She turned and waved her hand.  The clinking of a 
chained boot struck the cold floor, and a large man 
with no recognizable face stepped out of the shadows.
        "Take her body away.  Put her in the burial 
chamber, with that other one."  She looked down at 
Conor.  "What did you call him?  Tully?"  
        Her hair whipped down around her face, her braid 
loosening, and she walked out of the dungeon.  The 
light from the fire was free to roam, and before Conor 
could shut his eyes once more, to stop the gruesome 
display, he heard a low grunt, saw the lengths of brown 
hair drip down that curved side as the keeper picked 
up Catlin's body and prepared to carry her off.  His
heavy breaths were all that Conor remembered as the 
world once again went black. It was a desperate 
darkness that took him in.


       Longinus was torn.  His aged heart beat so softly 
within him as to escape notice, but nights such as these 
were enough to set the organ to a fierce pounding, 
fiercer than any he had ever known when he had 
breathed as a common man.  
        "Diana, what have you done?"
        The robed man stood in the corner of the queen's 
chambers, half cloaked in shadows from the arched 
entrance, half illuminated by the fire coming from the 
far wall, against which Diana was leaning, head heavy.  
She was startled by his voice, but not enough to raise 
her eyes to him.  She kept her gaze on the married 
blocks of the floor.
        "What have I DONE?  I've done nothing, 
Longinus, nothing more or less than I ever do, nothing 
which should at all attract your attention.  I thought 
you were too occupied with making your place in 
history, my saint." The harmony of her voice was 
weighted down by the evil twist of her words.  
        "You've murdered that woman.  Murdered her, 
Diana."
        The queen balked at the suggestion.  
        "Murder, Longinus?  Really...  She was merely a 
casualty of this battle I'm engaged in on this island, to 
claim it for Rome, to help YOU," and she turned her 
blanched face to his, "find that damned spear, so you 
can end your four...hundred...years of agony.  Longinus, 
why have you come to me?"
        "Do not mock me, Diana.  I've known a greater 
suffering than you could ever imagine.  What do you 
suppose I've felt, living four hundred years, every 
dawn throwing on me again the cloak of sin for having 
murdered my own Lord? A Lord, Diana.  Only one 
man in human history has known that torture, and I 
stand before you as the last, the first, the only of my 
kind. Alone."
        "Oh, Longinus, please.  Spare me this reel of 
self-pity, depression. Don't you think I've heard it 
enough?"
        The man was quiet, pulling down his hood to rest 
on his broad shoulders as he neared her across the floor.
        "No.  No, I don't.  Diana, I have lived without 
love, without the hope of love, remembering eternally 
the feel of my wife beneath me, wrapped in my arms, 
the faces of my children as they smiled at me through 
their sadness, my face bringing them joy in their tears.  
Diana, I have known love.  And that boy knew love.  
With her.  With that woman you have slaughtered.  
You didn't NEED to kill her.  But you know that.  
Does it bring you enjoyment, Diana?  Does it bring 
you enjoyment to know that you have destroyed a 
love unlike anything you'll ever feel in your own time?"
        His face was incredulous, his mouth agape, and 
the Roman queen saw all her dreams, her nightmares, 
her own face mimicked in his searching eyes.
        "Longinus?  How can you say that to me?  I love 
YOU.  Can you have forgotten that?"
        He shook his head, the firelight glinting off of 
the brown highlights in his hair. 
        "No, no, this is not love.  This is a play for 
power.  You have it, I have it, and we want what we 
each can never possess.  You seek respect through me, 
Diana.  I seek...well...the feel of mortality again, the 
feel of heated blood through tight veins and the feel 
of a heartbeat that has never known death before.  
We need one another, Diana, but this can hardly be
termed love."
        The queen pulled out a chair, seeming unable to 
support herself at his words.  Longinus joined her at 
the thick wooden feast table to the right of the 
archway.  She breathed without meaning.  He watched 
her.  He was saddened to say it, but the truth was only 
pain.  Life was only pain. And he was tired of bearing 
the burden of that fact alone.
        "I didn't want her dead, Longinus.  But the guards 
didn't know. They were told to dispatch of any of the 
Confederation of Tribe's members that they came 
across, as they were human obstacles, and nothing 
more.  I didn't know that woman, or Conor, for that 
matter, would ever end up here, in these circumstances.  
I didn't know that the body they first brought back
was one of the prince's closest friends." 
        Diana placed her hand on the table, reaching across 
with her other arm to him.  He did not return the 
gesture.    
        "Longinus, you must believe me.  Me, the woman 
you love, even though we share an odd path.  Longinus, 
I would have spared her.  I spare him even now.  I 
would have spared that other man, Tully.  But now it's 
too late. It's too late to bring her back."
        Her dark companion stood, flexing his dead limbs 
that pulsed with the heartbeat of a monster in human 
flesh.  "It's never too late, Diana.  I keep my hope for 
him.  I must say I've lost some of my faith in you.
Realize that he will avenge her.  If you don't kill him 
now, he'll come back and destroy you.  Trust in that."
        He turned his head on her, leaving her sighing 
heavily as he stepped back through the arch and 
disappeared down the corridor.  Diana lowered her
head and weeped mutely.  Weeped for the wrongs she 
knew she'd done.
.

        Fergus lay in the corner of an abandoned room, 
darkness his only companion.  He slept fitfully, his 
dreams filled with the death and foreign destruction 
visited on him and his family by the Romans.  He saw 
Catlin smiling through the mists, saw Conor wielding 
his murdered father's sword, saw Tully throwing faerie 
powder from the treetops.  Saw them all, alive, well, 
happy.  And then the clouds descended, the slices of 
Latin steel through the heavy air, the smell of copper 
and blood and weeping mourners. Catlin was dead, 
Tully's body atop hers, both lying spreadeagled in the
scythe pattern of the Soul Reaper.  I loved you.  
        He awoke with a scream hugging his throat, 
basking in his misery. He nursed a wounded arm, 
barely beginning to heal from that night's inflicted 
injuries.  Fergus had barely escaped the Roman guards, 
running them through the mazed walls of their own 
fortress until their disorientation began to work in 
his favor.  He'd killed one, perhaps two. He detested 
himself for resorting to that sort of violence.  He 
imagined them as fathers, brothers, sons, and thought 
of mothers who would mourn for months, all as a 
cause of him.  
        And Conor.  He'd seen his blond prince from 
across the courtyard, mouth agape, a scream refusing 
Catlin's whipped body before him.  He'd seen the boy 
running to her, slashing through any Roman who 
stepped before him. Fergus could smell the sweat on 
their shoulders, the heat of their fear and exhilaration 
as they chased him.  Closing his eyes, muttering a 
"Sweet Brigit," he gritted his teeth and turned his 
back on the prince, running with Diana's legions on 
his tail.
        He wondered where they'd gone.  He'd dreamed 
Catlin dead.  Please, Jesus, don't let it be so.  Fergus 
spoke to the Roman god to whom Catlin had given her 
soul, spoke to Him with a reverence he'd never 
imagined himself able to feel for a deity so unknown 
to him.  But she'd loved Him.  And now, in her stead, 
Fergus understood.  He loved.  He prayed for her life.  
        The low tones of muttered speech rose from the 
far side of the room, and shadows played their 
dangerous flutes across the archway leading in. Fergus 
had no idea where he'd landed himself, but he stood, 
still hidden beneath the shrouds of that Octavian 
darkness, and began to walk slowly to the other side 
of the room.  Two warriors passed just outside, waving 
their hands wildly, gesturing the movements of battle, 
and Fergus, pulling his curious face back inside just as 
their eyes would have reached his own, cursed them 
for making his pain the excitement for the evening.  
Hearing their breaths diminishing, Fergus turned the 
corner with wild abandon and rushed down the 
hallway in which he found himself.  
        Rooms were open on either side, and he caught 
a glimpse of the vacant courtyard below, through a 
square cut into the earth of the hallway. The fire was 
dying down.  The blazoning embers cut orange holes 
into the dimming night.  Oh, Conor.  I've let you 
down once more.  I was never intentioned as a 
champion.
        He passed the window.  To his left, a wooden 
door was only inches ajar, a bright light forcing its way 
through the emptiness between door and arch.  Fergus 
pressed his eye into the crack, spied no one about 
within, and eased open the door, hand itching on the 
hilt of his sword, injured arm bent uneasily.
        Bodies.  Two tall makeshift altars, funeral beds 
of a sort, the resting place of a woman and a man.  
Sweet Brigit.  Catlin.  And Tully. Fergus turned his 
back, wanting so desperately to leave, the door 
beckoning to him, studded by its achingly masculine 
iron bolts, its strips of cool metal.  No. He closed 
the door, locked it as best he could, and turned back
to face his murdered family.
        The bodies had been arrayed haphazardly, Tully's 
arms fallen over the sides of his bed.  Catlin was much 
the same.  Fergus knelt beside the former, bowing his 
head, holding his friend's fallen hand.  
        "Oh, Tully.  It was never meant for you...this..."  
He shook his head.  "...this  idiotic battle, this loss of 
lives and loves and friendships.  You told me once that 
this land was fertile enough without my tears.  But I 
weep over you, my friend.  And I'll weep always."  
        The defeated champion stood, laying Tully's hands 
over his body, in a respectful fashion.  He would look 
on that dark skin and light smile no more.  Goodbye, 
Tully.  Goodbye, my friend.
        Fergus bowed his head once more, stepping across 
the small distance to Catlin's still form.  Her chest, the 
beautiful supporter of strong lungs and a fierce heart, 
now was motionless, laced with the damaging silken
strings of blood and injury, the whip that hastened her 
cruel death.
        "Cat.  Oh, God, Cat, I should be the one lying there.  
They should have taken me.  Conor must live.  You had 
to live.  I was nothing, am nothing, only a fringe on a 
battle for a justice that never embraced me. How could 
any man have done this to you?  How could any man 
do this a defenseless woman, standing strung up before 
him like a pig to the slaughter?  I can't..."  
        Fergus' voice trailed off.  Oceanic tears leapt to 
his cheeks, dotting his stubbled face with bits of his 
wet soul.
        "Conor loved you.  You knew that, though, didn't 
you?  You could always see directly through us, Cat.  
I always knew that you saw my heart. I always knew 
that you saw my mind.  And I always knew you'd 
never chide me for the secrets I kept.  But Conor?  
Ah, lass, he worshipped you.  He loved you with a 
passion I thought he'd never be able to find again.  
And you were everything to him.  Know that, lass.  
As you lie here, I'll avenge you. I'll keep you alive, with 
all the strength that your Jesus or my gods see fit to 
leave me.  Conor will never stop.  I'll never stop.  You 
haven't died in vain, my Catlin.  You were his 
everything.  And I loved you."
        Blinded by his own weeping, Fergus drew a 
small dagger from behind his boot, taking a handful 
of her hair between his fingers.  He sliced through a few 
strands, holding them as tightly as the palm of a 
newborn child.  The dagger returned, he laid her hands 
as he had done Tully's.  
        "Never forget you, Cat.  Never stop loving you."
        Fergus stepped out of the room.  He didn't allow 
his eyes to stray to the two forms before him as he 
closed the door.


        The wind was anxious, soughing through the 
vacant branches of oaks just outside the doorway to 
the courtyard.  The moon hid itself behind a string of 
dirty clouds, and the cries of anguished banshees 
whipped around Fergus' ears, as he crept along in the 
shadows.  Roman shadows.  Caesar had built this 
place, built the power that had taken two of the 
people he'd loved most in his life.  Diana wanted 
Conor, wanted him, wanted all of the people of the 
Sanctuary to be under her command.  And he would 
continue to fight, would continue to fight against the 
tyranny that flew into their homes from a strange 
land hundreds of miles distant.  He would fight for
Molly, a woman who'd become his daughter and the 
most special person in his life in a matter of moments.  
He'd fight for Catlin, for Tully, for the life he knew 
they were all meant to be living.
        Firelight burned under all doors to his left and 
right, save for one at the end of a hallway, at a bend 
from the main stretch.  It piqued his curiosity, too 
easily aroused.  Fergus turned off the main stretch and
followed the invisible footprints of the captured to the 
face of a black door.  Such coldness emanated from 
within, such absence of life, that the champion felt a 
chill course down his spine.  Are you within, my 
prince? Are you alive?  Pray, let you still breathe, 
Conor.  Let you still be my leader, my best friend.
        He pushed open the door, again his hand on the 
hilt of his sword. There was no fire, no glow, just the 
emptiness that murder offers to the bereaved.  
        "Conor?  Conor, are you here?"
        The prince awoke in the darkness, the view 
presented to him no different than the comforting 
one behind his eyes.  Was that... no, it could not be 
possible?  Fergus?
        "Fergus?  Fergus!"
        Conor did not guard the volume of his voice.  His 
champion ran to him, following his booming tones, 
hushing him as he drew near.  Feeling his way through 
the darkness, he placed his hands on Conor's shoulders.
        "Oh, Conor.  Sweet Brigit, I found you.  Thank 
the stars I found you."
        Fergus needed no illumination to place his head 
on Conor's, to kiss the boy's forehead.  Never before 
had he been so thankful to find life still thrived in a 
corporeal form.  
        "My boy, I thought I'd lost you.  I had no idea 
where they'd taken you.  I had to turn and run from 
you, to get them off of your trail.  I..." He paused. 
"I saw you running towards...towards her." 
        Fergus could feel the sudden tightness in 
Conor's shoulders, witnessed without eyes the smile 
of sudden exhilaration wiping itself into extinction.  
        "Catlin."  The one word bespoke fathoms of 
meaning, ageless love, eraless passion.  
        "Catlin, Fergus?"  His voice was pleading.  His 
eyes were wet, soft, and a tear dripped down onto 
Fergus' finger as he left it on Conor's face, consoling 
him, appreciating that he didn't have to see the 
mourning on the prince's face as he gave him this news.
        "I found her, Conor.  I found her...laid out...beside 
Tully."  
        The prince's chest ceased to heave with breath, 
ceased to cry out for life and survival and renewed 
hope.  Fergus took his hands off of the boy's face, 
gripping his mouth with his right palm.  Such 
desperate news. Such a horrid awakening.  Such love 
destroyed.
        "I'm so sorry, Conor.  I'm so sorry."  
        Fergus left him, turned to what he believed the 
center of the room. He took out his dagger once 
more and stabbed the handle into the barely lit pile of 
embers he made out on the floor.  The fire began to 
breathe to life, lending enough of itself for Fergus to 
discern a small gathering of twigs meant for the 
sacrifice.  He fed the fire, and mandarin light began to 
fill the black void of the room.
        His hand, still tightly clenched around the paling 
lock of Catlin's hair, began to loosen, as he turned back 
to the leader of the tribal Confederation.  Conor held 
his hands taut against their constraints, begging with his 
eyes for Fergus to free him, free this soul that needed 
nothing any longer, nothing but death, as his only love 
had received.  Fergus turned his dagger around in his 
palm and sliced through Conor's bonds.  The boy's 
arms fell to his sides, his hands beating against the 
floor harshly.  He felt nothing of it.  
        Fergus knelt beside the boy, wishing he were 
anything but the harbinger of such horror.  He opened 
his palm and left it before Conor's face.  Catlin's hair 
was within.
        The young man looked with difficulty on the limp 
strand.  He slowly raised his hands, took the hair in his 
own fingers.  A spiritless piece of water fell from his 
eyes to soak the hair bits together in his own hand.  
He weeped, and Fergus remained silent.
        "You saw...you saw her body, Fergus?  You saw 
her dead before you?"
        The man nodded, keeping his hand over his mouth, 
afraid to let his own grief surge forth once again.
        "Aye, Conor.  She's gone."
        The prince squeezed his eyes together, trying to 
dam off the flood bursting forth.  The pain whipped 
him into an unwilling submission.
        "Fergus, no.  No, I remember holding her in my 
arms.  I remember her saying...saying she loved me.  
I know she's not dead."
        Conor fell over into his friend's arms.  Fergus 
held him, and the men weeped together in the tentative 
safety of that abandoned room.


         Diana felt her heart beating within her, sitting 
silently as one of her ladies-in-waiting played endlessly 
with her hair.  She had requested this, this time, 
remembering the hours her mother had spent braiding 
and combing and toying with her hair.  She remembered 
the soft feel of her mother loving her.  She remembered 
belonging wholly to someone, feeling wholly welcomed.  
She had none of that here.  She had no one.
        No one, save Longinus.  But at this moment, 
Diana doubted he was hers anymore, really.  Never 
before had she seen him so intent, so cruel. Never 
before had he chastised her actions or doubted her 
steps of conviction.  Never before had he questioned 
her motives.  But he had tonight.  He had shown that 
attentive side of himself to her, in all its nakedness 
and primal strength.  She allowed herself to forget, too 
often, that he was calculating, that he studied her 
every movement with purer eyesight than she could 
ever hope to possess herself.  She was jealous of
his power.  She was jealous that he would never 
quite see her as equal, though he tried to make her 
believe he saw her as nothing but.
        "Enough.  Leave me."
        The frightened woman stood on shaky knees, 
gathered together the marble comb and pieces of 
rawhide she had intended for her queen's 
ornamentation,  and stole out of the room like 
an obedient hound.  Diana was sorry to see her go.  
        "How long have you been there, Longinus?"  The 
Roman woman stood and turned to face the fireplace, 
her robes twisting around her calves, highlighting her 
slim figure and taut waist.  Her eternal love had his 
back to her, his cheeks hugging the warmth of the 
blaze.  Because he has no warmth of his own.
        "Long enough to know you think of what you've 
done, and nothing else, Diana.  Long enough to know 
you regret your actions."
        She smiled coldly at him.  
        "Regret?  You believe I feel regret?"  Her voice 
rose with the lightened spirit of mischeviousness, and 
fell across him like a Divine blow.
        "I don't believe, Diana.  I know.  You know."
        "I know what?"  She played with her fingers, with 
the cheap jewels and quick molding that had fashioned 
her rings.
        "You know that what I said was right.  I knew it 
would not take you long to understand that truth, even 
if so many others are unseeable to you."
        His own robes teasing the floor, Longinus broke 
the immense distance between them, step after step 
seducing her.  Once reaching her side, he laid his hands 
across her shoulders.  Those hands. She believed no 
other objects on this earth could touch her so deeply.  
She loved him.  And she spiced her love with a hatred 
she reserved only for him.  For these moments.
        Diana stepped away from him, her body hungry 
once more for his touch as she forced herself to move 
away.  Her mind had always been stronger than her 
impulses.
        "I know that I pity him."  She weighed her 
thoughts.
        "I know that I wish his slave woman was alive 
again, but I can't make it so, Longinus.  We both know 
she's dead, and if what YOU said is correct, her death 
is going to paralyze him so, he'll be unable to rally an 
island-wide force against us.  And even if he does, I 
am sure Rome sees this place as an important enough 
conquest that they'll send me reinforcements, which 
I've been requesting for ages now.  They'll aid me in 
my own fight. In our fight, Longinus."  She said his 
name with a plea for reconciliation. 
        "No, you will NOT put this on my back to bear, 
Diana.  I have murdered my Christ and slain thousands 
throughout the centuries, but I dole out my style of 
death mercifully, to those whose lives are better ended.  
I never kill without cause, and never a woman, for 
God's sake.  Never a defenseless woman.  That man 
of his could have defended himself.  But a woman, 
Diana?  Think of yourself prostrate before a group of 
murder-hungry warriors, without a useful plea for 
your existence, and then stand before me and try to 
displace the blame."
        Venom rose in her throat.
        "The BLAME?  What blame?  A woman 
opposed to Rome is dead, killed by my soldiers in 
my own courtyard.  Did I ASK her to come here?  Did 
I ask any of them to come here?  No, Longinus!  If 
they kept to their own part of the island, kept to 
their own affairs, all of those people we have holed up 
on funeral beds in this fortress would be walking, 
breathing.  That woman. That man, Tully."
        "Diana, she came for him.  She came because she 
knew he'd come to fetch that man's body.  She feared 
for his life, alone here.  That was her reasoning.  There 
was no malice against you intended.  Again, 'me,' 'my,'
'mine.'  Do you think of anything but yourself?"
        "No. I try my hardest not to.  Everyone else is 
too difficult to manage."
        Diana left off fiddling with her nails and allowed 
herself to cross back over to her lover.
        "What is it you want me to do, Longinus?  
Obviously, though I had no hand in it, you see this as 
my doing.  Tell me what I can do to make this right."
        He raised his face to meet hers, their eyes fire and 
ice as their gazes danced.
        "Send a band of the soldiers to carry those bodies 
back to the river where the man was found.  Without 
question they have a sanctuary of some sort near there.  
They'll find the bodies.  And you must go with them, 
to make peace with the deaths.  That is the only way 
you can make this right."
        "Never, Longinus.  I won't stoop to their primitive 
level.  I won't. If they want those bodies, let them come 
and fetch them.  Otherwise I'll dispose of them at dusk, 
tomorrow.  I don't want their stench impregnating
my fortress."
        "Diana, don't do this."
        "It's done, Longinus.  You'll come around to 
understand that it's only two people.  Two little 
people, in this great war we've waged with history 
here."  She looked at him once more.  
        "You'll come to understand.  Or live another four 
hundred years and never comprehend.  Either way, it 
makes no difference to me."
        Diana, instead of motioning for him to leave, 
descended the staircase herself, leaving Longinus as a 
shadow and a soulless form in the middle of her 
chamber's finery.  
        Her words echoed in his ears.  Makes no 
difference to me.  His anger flowed outward, his eyes 
a stormy rouge in the darkness of the room. Thunder 
boomed out of the window.  I'll make you understand 
there is a difference, Diana.  One way or another...


        A deep-hearted growl of thunder rocked through 
the softly hard walls of the dungeon.  Conor, his back 
to the wall, was unable to distinguish the vibrations of 
Nature's fury from his own wracking sobs.  My Catlin.  
My love.
        Fergus sat beside his young prince, his best friend, 
his only son. He had watched this boy grow from a 
time when his attentions to him were an honor, 
watched him grow to this, a beaten and tormented 
man, at such a young age.  Nary a wrinkle mapped 
itself across his cheeks, and still he felt the pains of 
loss and love ripped asunder.  I pity you, Conor.  
You're alone now, as I have always been.  Utterly 
alone.  
        Conor pulled his hands, covered in the lifeblood 
of his own tears, away from his face.  His left hand 
clenched still the lock of Catlin's hair that Fergus had 
carried so piously to the dungeon.  He was a good man.
        "Fergus?"
        His voice cracked, and he was shocked to hear 
the strained chords of a broken heart whistling through 
his salted lips.
        "Yes, Conor?"
        "Was she...was she dead when you arrived?  Did 
you hear nothing of her last words?  Did she know...
know I loved..."
        Weeping conquered him once again.  The loss of 
his father, Claire, a generation of souls and flaming 
desires, quelled in one night.  He had overcome that 
despair.  This was a crushing blow.
        Fergus inhaled deeply, closed his eyes, imagined 
himself back in the Sanctuary.  He imagined Catlin 
firing a sharp arrow into a tree trunk, on which she 
had drawn a man's form, a heart centered perfectly, a 
face unseen. Perfect hit, each time.  He had never seen 
such precision in a woman.  He supposed fear and 
necessity bred qualified warriors, no matter the 
feminine heart that beat within that warrior's skin.  
He saw Tully throwing some faerie dust or another 
on a group of assembled children, happy that his
dark-skinned friend had taken their curiosities on 
for once.  Fergus grew tired of their youthful "why," 
their persistent need to know.  He smelled the 
running streams, saw the heat on the brows of the 
working men, the struggling women, and he felt in his 
fingertips the essence of their common goal.  They 
wanted peace.  They wanted freedom. They wanted 
what so many of their ancestors had assumed would 
always be.  This island, as an unconquered domain.  
There had been no Caesar, no Augustus, no Diana or 
slaughtered Christ, only the mountains, the dew, the 
sunlight breaking on innocent faces.  
        The stench of mobile death stung his eyelids.  
Fergus quickly opened his eyes.  Longinus was before 
him.  
        He quickly turned his face to Conor, who had 
stopped in his grieving, astonished at the stealth such 
a man could possess.
        Longinus only looked on them, not coldly, not 
wickedly, merely as a child confronted for the first 
time with open freedom, or tunneled Death.
        "I know you grieve.  I've felt it within myself 
for hours now, this pang ripping at my heart.  I know 
you grieve, Conor."
        The young prince spat at him across the 
dungeon, standing, yet remaining against the wall.  
He presented himself as strong, but needed the firm 
support.
        "Don't tell me you understand me, Longinus.  
Don't tell me you understand this pain.  My heart 
has been RIPPED out of my body!  My eyes see
only darkness and shadow.  She was my light, my 
perfection, my morning.  She was my freedom.  And 
you have STOLEN that from me!  Don't stand there, 
with your self-pity and sage utterances, and tell me 
that you UNDERSTAND this! You are not a man. 
You are not a beast.  You're something unknown to 
this world.  And you could never see what my heart 
sees now.  Which is nothing."
        Fergus remained silent.  His hand rested by his 
side, not seeking out the sword which was dutifully 
hanging against his thigh.  Somehow he knew he 
would not be needing it.  Never an explication.  He 
merely waited to comprehend this...man's intentions.
        Longinus never wavered in his gaze.  His eyes 
were as a coupled vortex, divided but seeking, thirsty 
for prey.  What had they seen?  What sufferings, what 
wailings, what men on their knees, reduced to begging
idiots who knew they would never smell another 
sunrise?  He left them hungry.  Always.
        "My pain is something...something that I don't 
share with anyone, Conor.  Your pain is something that 
you have written across your face.  You don't hide it.  
There's no need.  A scribe could not have made it any
plainer.  I see your heart torn from within you.  Why 
do you think I'm here?"
        Fergus almost smiled.  A friend, now?  It was an 
unbelievable quest of thought.
        Conor stood aghast, mocking.
        "Oh, I don't know, Longinus.  Maybe to threaten 
me.  Maybe to tell me and, and Fergus here, that our 
time is come, that we are doomed.  Spare me your 
high warnings, Longinus.  Kill us.  Leave us.  Only do 
not make this moment the worse for me.  My life 
ended as her breath expired.  I could care no less about 
your mission down here now."
        "You mistake me, Conor.  You mistake my 
intentions.  A wrong has been done you that needs be 
corrected.  Made right."
        Smiles waited patiently in the air, and would have 
found their proper places, had the cloud of green 
mourning that hung not stifled their thin throats before 
they could change the hue of their meeting.  These were
not friends making amends. These were the direst 
of enemies.  These were death and life, face to face.
        Longinus seemed to grow paler as thunder once 
again stroked through the dark walls.  Conor watched 
his every motion.
        "I have news of importance to you, young 
prince.  News of a pain you must prevent."
        "A pain?  What pain is there left for me in this 
life, Longinus? What more can you and Diana do to 
destroy me?  Is this shell of my self not enough to 
satiate you?  Haven't you seen enough in your four 
hundred years to tire of being the source of evil?"
        The light and darkness danced a geometric waltz 
across the young prince's face, tears reflecting with a 
jeweled brilliance the crimson flames, licking upwards 
to Heaven.  Longinus raised his hand.  Fergus remained 
silent.
        "Listen.  Do you hear that sound?"
        The distant hunger of thunder shot through the 
sky, looming in their ears.
        "God is angry with us tonight.  I have heard 
thunder before.  I have seen the whitest lightning.  But 
at this moment, I understand its anger in a way I never 
have been able to before."
        Conor had no inclination to speak.  He watched 
Fergus staring at this creature before them, awestruck 
with the man's eloquence and perfect speech.
        "Catlin is dead.  You know that, and my speaking 
it makes it no more real.  So I venture that fact.  Tully 
is dead.  His is a loss you suffer as well.  But I am 
here now to warn you of a plan to further shame their
bodies.  Diana has spoken to me this night her 
intentions to burn them both, tomorrow, at dusk.  You 
can prevent this, Conor.  If your love for this woman 
still beats within you, if your love towards this man 
still thrives, you must rescue them from that Fate.  
Christian burial.  Catlin was, I believe, a Christian?"
        Conor looked at his palms, at the labyrinth of dirt 
and sweat that laced through his lifeline.  He refused to 
face the man as he responded.
        "Yes.  Cat worshipped your god."
        "Then, as she worshipped him, she would have 
wanted to be laid to rest, properly, according to the 
custom of that religion."
        "THAT religion?"  Conor's tone was horrified.  
        "You distance yourself from it so easily, Longinus.  
Are you not the man who put to an end the life of that 
god?  With your damned spear and your sick 
intentions?"
        Longinus crossed the floor, faster than the eye of 
Fergus could follow.  He was before Conor in an 
instant, his hand around the boy's throat.  He neglected 
to squeeze, however.  Fergus stood at attention.
        "NEVER speak of that to me, boy.  Never speak 
of something of which you have no knowledge.  I was 
merciful to the Christ.  I spared him longer suffering.  
I was a savior to him in those moments.  And yes, 
now I dare to distance myself from THAT religion.  
I am not a mortal man any longer.  Why would I pray 
for the salvation of my soul, when this beating heart 
and weak pulse are my own brand of eternal 
damnation?"  
        He hissed as he spoke, angered more quickly than 
Conor would have suspected.  He removed his scaled 
hand from the prince's throat.  Conor looked to face 
him, frightened only for a moment at the picture of 
dust and decrepit age he saw reflected there.  Longinus 
breathed, and once more assumed his youthful 
appearance.
        "Catlin believed in Heaven, in God's power, in 
preserving the truth. I tell you of Diana's intentions 
only to aid you in your love for her.  I feel that, that 
the Romans have committed a wrong.  No one should 
have died, not for the amusement or pleasure of any 
creature.  I AM sorry that you suffer.  I know what 
it is to grieve.  So I warn you.  Do with this what you
will..."
        Fergus looked at the boy, then turned his head 
once more to face Longinus, to confront him.  He was 
confused as to the man's intentions. Helping them?  
After the torment he had caused?  What was the 
reason?
        A hollow rectangle of putrid air was all that stood 
at attention to meet his gaze.  Longinus was gone.   
Conor realized, slumped again to the ground.
        "Burn them?  Oh, Fergus, this will never end.  
They've taken her from me, and now they want to 
burn her?  What am I supposed to do?  I don't know 
any more how to act, how to breathe, without her."  
He turned his washed eyes to his friend.
        "Help me, Fergus.  Help me know what the right 
path is."
        The champion lent him a hand, helping him to 
regain his footing.  He pulled the boy close, hugged 
him fiercely, patted him on the back, and pulled him 
away.
        "Why, lad, why do you think you and I came to 
this forsaken place? To take Tully home with us.  We'll 
get Cat as well.  Don't you worry."
        "Fergus, I never came here with the intention of 
carrying her body back to the Sanctuary.  I would 
rather die than see my love buried.  I can't live like 
this, Fergus.  Nothing means anything to me anymore 
without her. Do you understand that?  Nothing..."
        "Lad, lad, don't you go talkin' like that.  You listen 
up.  Catlin would never have wanted this for you.  She 
loved you, Conor.  Do you know that?  So many times, 
she pulled me aside in the Sanctuary, just to have some 
company while she watched you move around, ride 
your horse, practice with your sword.  Everything you 
did was magic to her."
        "She...she told you that, Fergus?"
        The faint beginnings of a happiness of sorts began 
playing around the boy's eyes.  He was getting through 
to him.
        "Yes, Conor.  She told me that, if anything were 
ever to happen to her, she'd want you to know that she 
had never dreamed life would give her a gift half as 
precious as you.  Cat never believed she was good 
enough for you, Conor.  She thought you'd shame her 
for believing herself good enough to stand beside you, 
to lay some claim on your heart.  But I told her she
was wrong.  I told her you loved her.  I'm just glad now 
that you do that truth justice.  She knows you, Conor.  
She sees you even now."
        The prince placed a hand on Fergus' shoulder.
        "Thank you, Fergus.  Thank you."
        Fergus motioned for the pair of them to leave the 
dungeon.  The keeper never returned, and the doorway 
was unbarred.  The awaiting hall welcomed them into 
its  entrails as they abandoned the sadness of the 
dungeon to their past..

        
        A torch hung precariously from a metal gargoyle 
on the wall.  Conor picked it up, careful to keep the 
flame out of the wake of a soughing wind that crept 
along the upper quarters of the corridor.  Fergus wet 
his thumb, lifted it high into the air.  
        "Bit drafty in here, ay, lad?"
        "Don't care about that, Fergus.  Just get me to her."  
        The boy's intense gaze was unnerving.  Fergus 
cringed as the prince turned away his face.  This grief 
was powerful, but the need to save Catlin from further 
humiliation at the hands of the Romans was even 
stronger.  It was bred of a generations-old fierceness, 
the line of Derek famed for their curdling blood, lava 
intense.  Conor took each step only after a measured
moment, aware that sleeping or alert warriors could be 
around each bend.  
        A burst of singing, some voices out of unison, 
some hopelessly out of tune, rose from the courtyard.  
The Romans had once again begun their celebrations.  
Or, better spoken, they picked it up where they'd left 
off. Endless imbibing and greedy feasts.  Rome was 
nothing more.
        Conor stopped at the window, where hours before 
Fergus had stood and looked down on a deserted 
bonfire, the remnant of the wooden pole where Catlin 
had been whipped, humiliated.  He thanked Brigit that 
Conor had not that remembrance.  He prayed he'd have 
none at all.  It was a searing hurt, one that mercilessly 
branded Fergus' heart.  It was useless.  All of this
suffering, useless.
        "Look at them, Fergus.  How can a man celebrate?  
How can a man smile, that has does this to a woman?  
A defenseless woman, Fergus..." Conor turned to him, 
his bitter spirit freshening his eyes.  
        "She'd wronged no one.  And they used her.  The 
only woman I'd ever allowed myself to love, after Claire, 
and they've taken her from me, Fergus."  He placed an 
errant hand over his heart, his chest a cruel covering of 
skin that hid a pounding organ, lost without its better 
half.  
        "I can't live, Fergus.  We'll take Cat, we'll go back 
to the Sanctuary, we'll see her laid to rest properly.  
We'll summon that priest from the Rock Tower.  He'll 
bury her with us."  Conor paused.  "And then I'll leave.  
I'm no leader, Fergus.  My rage now is of no use to the 
people of this island.  I want only to see them dead, 
not to see the tribes united, to see people living in 
harmony.  I want blood spilt.  I want suffering to wipe 
itself over them with a cold finger.  I want to see them 
dead..."  
        The prince left off, the breeze tossing his hair 
across his white cheeks.  Fergus reached to put his 
hand on Conor's shoulder, and the young man pulled 
away. 
        "Lead me to her, Fergus.  Now."
        The command was issued, and the champion was 
powerless to resist its fulfillment, though it pained 
him more greatly than any other act he'd committed in 
his  long days.  Molly would not be proud of him at 
that moment, leading a boy to his dead beloved, only to 
stand idly by, his mouth devoid of comforting 
comment.  He was useless.  He was thankful no one 
was there to share his embarassment, at being an utter 
failure.
        "Alright, Conor.  This way."
        The torch cut through the hanging air, suddenly 
heated where they stood.  They advanced, and Fergus 
smelled the incense of sulfur and spark. That light 
would lead them back to that room.  Tully dead.  Catlin 
murdered. Nothing warm, nothing soothing.  Death.  
It seemed that was all life offered them anymore.
        The chorus of the courtyard picked up as Fergus 
advanced towards the door.  Left untouched, still 
barely ajar, he began to push inwards, when he 
suddenly paused.  
        Conor stepped to his side, to protest.
        "Fergus, don't you stop me from going there.  
Don't keep her from me.  I owe Cat more..." 
        The prince stopped, as Fergus' hand rose to his 
mouth.  
        "Quiet, lad.  Tully and Catlin are not alone in 
there."  
        Conor laid his hand on the hilt of his sword, 
which he had taken from a post on the dungeon wall.  
Fergus palmed a small dagger, placing his eye to the 
crack in the door.  The prince stooped, placing his 
eye also in the inch of light the door offered.
        Two Roman soldiers staggered across the room.  
The taller, a man beyond six and a half feet, with 
waving black hair and a full beard, rested his torso on 
Tully's funeral bed, placing his elbows between the 
dead man's calves.  
        "Look at this, Dinchures.  A dead dark-skin.  And 
given a funeral bed to boot?"  A wicked smile crossed 
the man's face.  
        "Let's have some fun, shall we?"
        The other, Dinchures, with light brown hair, 
cropped short, uneven, a scar running through his left 
eye and stopping by the corner of his mouth, nodded, 
holding onto the end of Catlin's funeral bed to keep 
himself upright. 
        "They're drunk, Fergus.  We can take them."
        "Hush, lad.  Quiet."
        They looked on silently as the two men picked 
up Tully's body, one at his feet, one at his head, and 
threw his body onto the floor.  He landed with arms 
askew, eyes knocked open.  His left arm remained 
starkly vertical in the air, the laughter of rigor mortis 
set upon him.  
        "Good dark man.  Salute me."
        The unidentified Roman made a mock gesture, 
hand out from his chest, and then burst into inebriated 
laughter.  Dinchures followed suit, again laying on 
Catlin's funeral bed.
        The Roman stopped.  "Now, this one.  Pity they 
did away with her down there.  I could have had some 
fun with her, ay, Dinchures?"
        Dinchures smirked.  "Who's to stop you from 
having fun with her now?"
        The other soldier stopped.  "Aye, who's to stop 
me?"  
        Dinchures climbed onto the head of the funeral bed.  
"I'll hold her for you."
        The other Roman turned his back to the doorway, 
hands reaching for Catlin's leather tunic.  He began 
unlacing the topmost strings of rawhide, one after 
another loosening under his transgressing palms.
        Conor stood beside Fergus.  "No, you bastard.  NO!"
        Before Fergus could stop him, Conor burst through 
the door and withdrew his sword.


        It was a burst of orchid lightning, this anger that 
carried his feet before him, kept his eye steadily on his
target.  The Roman heard the door slamming to a stop 
against the wall behind it, turned his head just enough
to catch a shimmer of the Celtic boy rushing to stop 
him from doing this, this horrific deed, to the dead 
woman.  The steeled glint of murderous happiness rose 
forth from Conor's eye as the Roman fell to his knees,
Conor's sword a beautiful ornament reaching from his 
mid-torso.  A wisp of stinking breath and death speech 
fell from his mouth as he took his last sight, sliding off 
of the prince's sword as he slowly withdrew it.  
        Dinchures looked on, horrified.  Fergus, led by 
Conor's riled actions, slid his dagger into Dinchures' 
shoulder, as the point of the other blade reached into 
his heart.  He died with a half-smile on his face,
unaware that he had done any wrong, unaware that he 
would never breathe again.
        Heavy, ragged breaths ripped through him, and he 
felt as though his heart would explode.  Light reached 
in from the boundaries of his vision, pulsing in time 
with his racing chest, and he was horrified at the jagged
strains of red crisscrossing his palms.  Another man's 
blood.  Blood everywhere.  
        At Conor's feet lay the dead Roman, his eyes 
still open, his legs bent awkwardly beneath him.  He 
had withdrawn no weapon.  There had been no
screams.  Just cold murder, stealing in in the quiet 
and cover of the darkness.  Conor had never done 
this before.  And he prayed he would never have to 
do it again.
        Movement seemed a foreign presence in the 
shadowed room, until the young prince spied Fergus 
moving towards Tully's body, lowering his steel to the 
ground in favor of reaching for the fallen body, 
disrespected by drunken warriors and thrown in this 
awkward position.  His eyes were still, closed, his 
body stiff and difficult to raise.  Fergus groaned, the 
quiet hint of a "Sweet Brigit..."  lingering on his lips 
like a forbidden tear.  He would have enjoyed a bit of 
aid in the endeavor, but Conor was dumbstruck, 
looming over Catlin's funeral bed.
        Conor stirred.  He listened as the syrup pouring 
through his veins slowed, breathed deeply as the 
whiteness of his eyes receded.  Cat.  He stepped 
closer to her, dropping his sword to the ground.  The 
butt of the weapon struck the floor with a wrapped 
thud, the steel crossing the thighs of the fallen 
Roman and remaining quiet.  It spoke an eternity of 
knowing only the stoppage of life.
        Catlin's leather tunic had been undone by the 
Roman's hand. Callous, unforgiving fingers and 
knuckles and palm, that cared nothing for her spirit, 
for the creature she had been.  Conor merely looked on 
her.  He had not seen her since the whipping in the 
courtyard, when he had spoken his love to her.  He 
would never have that chance again.  
        An errant tear slid down his right cheek as he  
stooped to relace the tunic with the randomly laid bits 
of rawhide.  He realized as he repaired the damage that 
he had never seen those breasts in his life, and would 
never be given the night of love with this woman that 
had only so lately become his object.  He would never 
lay her down gently, brush her hair away from her 
forehead, promise her the world and give her the stars, 
whisk her away to his magic fort where the countries 
and emperors and tyranny of the land would mean 
nothing at all.  He would never be a father, would 
never hold her in his arms as she cradled their firstborn.  
Never.  Never, never.  
        A new path of blood trailed across her blanched 
chest, running from his fingers.  The Roman's blood.  
He turned his shirt over to wipe it away. Conor would 
not allow any bit of that man to remain on his love, to 
stain her when she lay so defenseless.  Utterly 
defenseless.
        Fergus tapped him on the shoulder.  Conor lay 
his hand across Catlin's, his elbow resting beside her 
on the bed.  The prince turned.
        His champion had Tully slung over his shoulders, 
holding him like a newborn lamb in a pasture, a 
creature that knew nothing of sin or innocence, content 
only to breathe and live and drink of the sunlight.  
Tully had been such a creature.  Would the world ever 
know him again?
        "It's time to go, Conor.  We can't stay here longer.  
They'll find us.  Longinus can't stay loyal to his 
promise for long. He'll tell Diana. They'll take us here.  
And then we'll be of no use in laying these two to
rest properly."
        He spoke a hurried truth.  Conor drew his hands 
away from Catlin, bending down to replace his sword 
in its sheath on his thigh.  He touched her arms, and 
grabbed her neck gently, lifting her to a sitting position.
My, Catlin, you're still so warm.  I could almost 
believe you lived still.  
        "Oh, Fergus...  Look at her.  Look at what they've 
stolen from me." Conor buried his face in her hair, 
holding her as he would have held her in life.  They've 
stolen my life from me.
        Fergus had left his side, opened the door a bit to 
catch a peek at what stirred out of doors.  The band 
of singing Roman warriors in the courtyard had not 
yet smelled the trouble brewing in that room.  
        "Conor!  Pull yourself together, lad!"  
        Conor dragged his wet face from Catlin's, strands 
of her lifeless hair clinging to his cheeks as he pulled 
away.  He put her onto his shoulders much in the 
manner of Fergus, and slid her off of the funeral bed.
As he stepped towards the door, he cast a glance 
quickly back to the center of the room.  
        The prince thought to himself, This never would 
have been a proper resting place for you, my love.  
I'll take you home.  Fergus and I will.
        The champion slung the door its full width and 
led the pair of them out, carrying the saddest victims 
on their young backs.  Spying a staircase to their left, 
Fergus hid from the aura of the torches and kept against 
the wall, Conor following suit.  The night was thin and 
pale.  Dawn was almost upon them


        Their bodies were taut and strained, beads of 
sweat daring to form upon their brows but not wild 
enough to fall.  Tully was stiff against Fergus' back.  It 
was horrifying, to feel his friend irreversably made 
mortal upon his very back, carried like a deceitful 
corpse to the lands he had called home.  Catlin was 
exceedingly warm against Conor, one of her arms
having fallen from its position, caressing the side of his 
face with its underside.  Following Fergus, he took 
steps blindly, caring only to smell her with him, 
pretending to the essence of his own soul that she lived
still.  Conor could not accept that she was gone.  Hope 
had not abandoned him, and he remained illuminated in 
its ecru shadow.  
        He knew it was irrational.  To picture her once 
again armed with bow and arrow, finding the center 
of the bulls-eye with one eye cocked, challenging 
herself to miss.  To picture her laughing, the glint of 
the sunlight off of the wet, moss-covered rocks by 
the stream flashing like the point of a spirit's wing in 
her sky eyes.  He had found himself in that stream, 
in those rocks, in the very note of her laughter washing 
over him like a cleansing bath.  I loved you, Catlin.  I 
still love you.  And I swear on my father's soul that 
I'll not give up.  As you loved me, don't leave me. 
Haunt me, turn me to despair, but do not leave me.  
If I feel you with me, I'll survive this.
        Fergus raised a hand, silencing his thoughts and 
stilling his advancing foot.  They waited.  A group of 
stumbling Romans passed directly in front of them, 
torch held so closely to the ground that no illumination
rose from it.  The stench of homemade drink was 
lingering as a line behind them, ensnaring their ankles.  
Foul men.  Foul purposes.  Foul intentions.
        They stepped out.  They were once again in the 
courtyard, passing directly by the bonfire, but concealed 
beneath the shadows offered by various abandoned 
pieces of wagon, horse harnesses and bits of broken 
swords lying in the hay-covered dirt.  It smelled of the 
earth, of raw male nature and swaying trees.  This 
place was wrong.  It could never hope to belong in
an island of savagery, this "civilization" trying to play 
rough.  They would never take them.  The Confederation 
would survive.  If not only, Conor thought, for my fallen 
Cat. I'll honor her the rest of my days.
        The pillars of the gate were only feet from them, 
and their footsteps seemed beautifully guided, Divinely 
interpreted and led ahead. Fergus rounded the corner, 
able to see the outlying forest just beyond the crudely 
tied wooden posts. Conor breathed deeply.  This was 
their release. Sneaking out like birds in the night to 
murder  some rodent prey.  Our freedom is there.
        From out the shadows on the opposite side there 
emerged a figure in a crimson hood and cloak, dark hair 
playing around the edges like a burnt tumbleweed on 
the desert horizon.  Diana.
        "Oh, would you leave me without so much as a 
word of goodbye?"
        Her eyes were cold.
        A wave of her hand.
        "Seize them."
        A group of guards, heavily armed, thrust 
themselves out of the darkness, all involved oblivious 
of the singing and drunken ranting occurring only 
feet away in the courtyard center.  
        Conor felt a stab of pain, and the world was 
blinding.  Fergus howled in pain as well beside him, 
and he felt himself being dragged away. The last 
thing he saw before he slipped into an unconsciousness 
brought on out of necessity of mental escape was 
Diana's brown eyes, coldly sizing up their attempt.
        "Pitiful.  Pitiful little creatures."


       Fergus' stilted breathing woke Conor from his 
pained sleep, the sound of his patient friend controlling 
his intake and exhalation of air, almost with a wicked 
purpose.  Conor was once again groggy, his eyes 
swimming in and out of focus.  How much more did 
these people want?  They killed his love, murdered his 
friend, beat him, gave him the sweetest morsel of escape 
before ripping an entire bite from his searching mouth.  
I want to die.  Either kill me, or let me go, only do not 
prolong this misery.
        The champion was beside him, their knees 
touching.  He was stretching against his bonds, his 
hands tied neatly against his back.  The others in the 
room could not see him struggling.  They were too 
busy staring at the awakening prince.
        Diana was across the room, seated, the firelight 
playing around the right side of her body, the 
sputtering Dawn illuminating her from the window
on the left.  Dawn.  The first morning of his life 
without Catlin.  The first morning of the end.  
        "Welcome back, Prince.  How did you sleep?"
        He refused to speak, only watched her dip her 
luscious fingers deep into a bowl of exotic fruit, 
biting off bit by bit, her eyes widening and
then contracting like some sort of uncontrollable 
urge.  She was a beautiful woman.  Beauty proved 
deceiving painted on the innocent cheeks of some.
Beauty proved fatal for others.  My lovely Calin.
        "Fine then, you don't have to speak.  Only 
tell me one thing."  She paused.  "Just when did 
Longinus come to you and tell you of my plan?"
        The petal of silence that draped over the room 
was stifling.  A far off bird chirped out a sunrise tune, 
and it carried over the Celtic breeze into the open 
window.  Conor tasted it, tasted that morning liberty 
sweeping into his palate.  He prayed he would one 
day know the morning beholden to none, his own 
man, away from this destruction.  Away from this 
grieving.
        His voice was tender and hoarse as he spit out 
his first words.  
        "Longinus?  He told us of no plan, Diana.  I 
don't know what you're speaking about."
        She smirked, placed a half-eaten slice of orange 
fruit back into the silver bowl.  Juice hung on her chin, 
and she seductively wiped the back of her hand across 
her mouth, carrying it away.
        "Oh, he didn't?  Well, then, why did you do it?  
Why did you risk yourselves to carry their bodies 
out of here?  Why not just run?"
        Fergus began to speak.  "We don't operate like 
you Roman vermin..."
        Conor cut him off.  Better to be cordial.  Better 
to play around this hatred.  
        "Diana, we loved those people.  Do you know 
love?  Do you understand being unafraid to die for 
someone else to live?  Do you know the sweet
feeling of a stolen kiss, or an unrequested smile?  
That's love.  That's life.  And to save them from 
being burned, destroyed, here, in this forsaken
place, that is worth my life.  That's worth Fergus'  
life.  And if you understood love, you would 
understand that."
        She was taken aback.  Her coy smile dripped down 
her chin, much in the manner of the juice, but she was 
unable to wipe away the residue.  The Roman queen 
turned her back to them, her black hair swooping down
in a foreign arc as she looked onto the fire.  It reflected  
in her eyes, and she blinked quickly.  She waved her 
hand and the others in the room quietly exited, her 
command powerful and voiceless.
        "I HAVE known love, Conor.  I know love now.  
I just..."  She turned back to face him.  "I just...don't 
see myself willing to die for it."
        Conor lowered his face, letting his eyes fall to 
the stone floor, swept immaculately, sparkling in its 
beautiful, distant quality.  Caesar stone.  Laid here 
by the exhausted hands of slaves, those taken against
their will.  He spoke.
        "Perhaps you wouldn't be willing because 
what you love could never die for you.  Could 
never wish to."
        "Longinus, you mean?  Is that love?  Longinus 
doesn't see me as a woman.  He sees me as someone 
as powerhungry as himself, as ready to kill or
be killed as himself.  But you're right, Conor.  He 
could never die.  I don't have that luxury."
        She turned to Fergus, stooped beside him, began 
trailing her fingers across his jawbone.  He kept his 
face still, quieting his maniacally rhythmic breathing.  
        "No, I don't have that luxury, and therefore, I 
can't allow myself to be some romantic, to let everyone 
run around this island thwarting my every step.  
Those...people of yours died because they interfered 
with what I'm doing here.  I didn't kill them because of 
a lack of love.  I killed them out of necessity."
        Conor's heart galloped through his chest, rearing 
up and beating against his lungs.  He stood, his hands, 
tied to the wall, remaining attached as he kept them 
around his waist.  
        "And Catlin?  She was...interFERING with your 
plan, Diana?  How? Tell me how you see your bastard 
soldiers TYING A WOMAN TO A POST AND
WHIPPING HER, when she had NO DEFENSE AT 
ALL, as being necessary and for your CAUSE?"  
Steamed blood simmered under his cheeks, and the 
queen stepped back to the wall, as frightened of his 
advancing words as she would have been at his 
advancing steps.  
        Suddenly, her legs seemed to lose their strength, 
and Diana crumpled to the floor, still seated upright.  
Her hands cradled her chin.  
        "I don't, Conor.  I know she didn't have to die.  
But I also know I that I didn't stop it.  And if you 
ask me now to give you a reason why, I won't be able 
to. It made me feel strong, to watch men that I 
CONTROLLED, to kill an enemy, be it a woman or 
an animal, because they knew I would applaud
their efforts.  It made me feel strong.  A queen."
        He was sickened.  He sank back to the floor.  
My Catlin, my love, died for her pleasure, died for 
her sick need for strength.  He thought these things, 
but his mind raged against itself.  He was spent.  He 
could fight no more with her.  Conor could see that 
reason and justice were not necessities of her 
thoughts, were not at all byproducts of her creativity.  
        "Release us, Diana.  Release us, or kill us.  I am 
not able now to fight with you.  I can't live under this 
grief.  I can't."  
        "And I can't release you.  You know better than 
to ask me that. You're an excellent bargaining chip, 
Conor, you and your bald champion here. The 
Confederation will fall to its knees as long as you're 
in my possession, and tonight, we'll burn that 
woman's body, along with that man's, and all of
this island will see that I am not to be toyed with."
        The gleam of Hell's own wrath drew tornadoes 
in the whites of her eyes, and the prince lost his hope.  
Fergus ceased his struggle.  It was over.
        A whip of cool air tossed into the room, and all 
faces turned towards the arched entrance.  Longinus.  
His face was as smooth as a newborn's, his eyes 
innocent and virgin, as though they had not seen four
hundred years of useless confession and gleeful murder.
        "Let them go, Diana."
        "Longinus?"  Her face was quizzical, her mind 
desperate to understand him.
        "They've seen enough unnecessary grief at your 
hands. Now I am telling you to release them."  His 
mouth was pursed tightly, and it was clear he spoke 
to be obeyed.  She turned from them all, putting her 
hands on the bottom ledge of the window and leaning 
out her head.  The sunlight lit her hair as the raven's 
wing, circling to speak of man's suffering.
        "Longinus, you know I can't.  Don't ask that 
of me.  What, have you, the greatest of sufferers, 
the hardest of hearts, fallen victim to their "grief?"  
Have you, my great sorcerer, fallen prey to their 
sadness and heartbreak?  Please..."
        The creature was across the room before anyone 
realized he had moved, his face the mass of starched 
wrinkles and rotten flesh that marked him as God's 
own cursed. He placed his hands harshly around 
Diana's wrists, let his face drift near her own.  His 
breath was rancid and aged as it struck her face.
        "You WILL do as I say, Diana.  I am a man still, 
beneath this, and I remember how my heart cried 
for my love stolen from me.  God cursed me, Diana.  
He cursed me for killing His only son, and I will 
never know the purity of that passion again.  
Conor has been visited by an unnecessary death, 
perpetrated by you, and I will not allow you to toy 
with him.  This island will fall on its knees before 
you, and before Rome, without this mockery of 
power.  Release them."
       She stared at him with mouth agape, pulling her 
wrists from his grip in an expression of obvious pain.  
        "I'll re...release them, Longinus."  
        He vanished.  Diana turned to face Fergus and 
Conor, both standing, both with arms against the wall.  
The Roman queen turned to the archway, calling out 
for her serving man.  A clanging of keys trickled up the
stairway, approaching them.
        She once again sat in her chair, put the silver bowl 
into her lap, never one to be intimidated and weak.
        "You're free, Conor.  Take your champion, take 
your woman, take the man.  Bury them as you will.  
I'm done with you.  Just be sure you never enter 
these gates again, because if we're ever in this room 
alone, I swear to you you will not live to breathe 
about it again."
        Conor remained silent, as the serving man 
unlocked their shackles and released their captive 
arms.  He and Fergus turned to descend.
        "Conor?"
        The blond prince turned back to Diana.  She was 
paused in her chair.
        "What?"
        "I'm...I'm sorry, about Catlin.  I am sorry."
        He breathed with disbelief and anger as he and his 
friend stooped beneath the archway and took the steps 
down and away.


        The dew was crisp underfoot as a pair of aged tan 
horses carried Conor and Fergus from the Roman 
fortress, a litter trailing behind each of the animals, 
Fergus' carrying the weight of the fallen Tully, that of 
Conor supporting the still-supple figure of Catlin, 
her arms fallen haphazardly by her waist.  
        The smells of the forest were cold and clean, and 
the dawn had succeeded only in hazing the sky with a 
pre-sunlight blue, as desperate and as needing as an 
injured heart.  The young prince rested his elbow on 
the horse's neck, his weight dragging on the creature's 
back, its feet clopping along on the pressed ground.  
Fergus' breathing was regular, his hands unmoving, 
and the ravenous birds of prey that claimed the night 
sky were circling to find a place of rest for the 
onrushing day.  Grief was tangible. The sky was hard 
along their spines, and Conor faced the day alone.  
Without her, without his family, without Claire, he 
would always be alone.
        Diana stood in the archway of the opened 
wooden gates, a shawl drawn across her shoulders, 
sewn with the finery of slave fingers.  A chill crept
through her, that was no byproduct of the morning, 
or of the seasons.  She had done an irreversable 
wrong.  Never before in her life had she regretted
any thing, any one thing of which she had been part.  
It was all committed for the greater good, for her 
blossoming pride,, for a chest anxious to swel with the 
successful air of its own accomplishments.  But her 
lungs were empty now, swirling around only the air 
of her own disgust.  What had she done?  
        The Roman queen watched as the pair trailed 
their mournful cargo into the embrace of the fog, 
and then turned her back, waving her hand carelessly 
to signal the guards to close the gate.  Shut them out.  
Shut it all out.  I want none of it, none of them.
        Longinus was characteristically hidden in the 
fabric of darkness beneath the overhang a dozen 
feet above her.  He watched her every motion, his 
eyes the only piece of his flesh that dared to stir.  
This was his game. This was his revenge on her.  
She stopped, only for a moment, arrested her foot 
in mid-step and looked up to challenge his gaze.  
Diana dared him to take away his diseased love, to 
take away the passion that was her every thought.  
She dared him, and underneath the pressure of his 
unwavering gaze, she turned her head down once 
again.  Loving the power of her raven locks to shield 
her pain from his view, she quickly stepped beneath 
the balcony, thereby removing herself from his field 
of vision.  But she continued to feel his eyes on her 
back, on her heart, on her mind.  Longinus, love me.
Or leave me.  Only do not torment me so.
        The man in the inky shadows above, hating the 
blue of the morning, despising the purity of the land 
that came only from God's healing touch, ran from 
the thought that he could never be a shard of that 
purity.  Never again would the Lord's sunlight 
christen his face.  He may stand fully in its rays, all 
the while knowing he was only an intruder, not a 
child of a faith that embraced all others.  He was alone.
        Longinus stepped back inside.  He closed his eyes 
and reached out, feeling with his eyes and his heart, a 
heart that throbbed only on cursed time, to the body of 
the slain Catlin, a woman dead, yet still hot to the
touch and fire to the eyes.  He threw his wandering 
spirit onto her, willing her to rise.  He begged God to 
return her, to save her.  He called on Him, a shrill cry 
being birthed by his mind, but he heard no answer.  
Longinus felt no stirring within her, only the jar of 
the worked animal's hooves striking the grass and 
brittle leaves.  Please.  
        He felt a tear drip down from his lower eyelid, 
trickle onto the bunched cloth of his cheek, trail 
through the labyrinth of centuries-old wrinkles, resting 
finally on the side of his gray hand.  Illusions.  All
illusions.  I am nothing, only animated dust.  Why did 
I believe I could save her, that I could do this?  It is 
beyond me now.  
        His black magic too lightless for such a Christian 
venture, Longinus pulled the hood tighter around his 
face and willed himself once again the young man, 
handsome, heartless, horrific.  He willed  himself a 
beautiful apparition, and fled into the corridors of 
torched blackness that waited within the fortress walls.
        The sun cut a sliver of yellow mist in the 
enveloping  fog, and shone on the spot where Longinus 
had only so recently stood.  The clouds parted, and the 
light of Heaven shone full on his vanishing footprints.  
A call had been heard.  The answer, however, had yet 
to be given.


        Fergus parted a group of downreaching ferns from 
his pathway, inhaling deeply as the morning air swirled 
over his skin like some faerie fog.  He closed his eyes, 
and the blue of the passing dawn faded into an underplayed 
violet behind his eyelids.  He missed being so young that
everyday seemed hopeful, no matter the grieving of the 
days past.  He missed innocence lost.  He turned to the 
horses, slowly devouring the sporadic patches of green 
grass by the foot of the trees.  Conor had walked away.  
        The champion stepped behind them, to look on the 
litters that had been detached and were lying flat against 
the ground.  Tully's appendages had been rearranged, legs 
horizon straight, toes upreaching, hands laid neatly across 
his chest.  Peace be with you, my friend.  Fergus was too 
lost to cry, too afraid to weep any more.  A warrior, a 
champion, was stronger than this.  When had he become a 
mortal man, instead of the vengeful apparition he had been 
in youth?  When had he found his heart again?  He looked 
down to his sword, hanging in its sheath against his left thigh.  
The grip was covered in strings of knotted rawhide, worn, 
and the glint of the unemployed steel was subtle.  There was 
no bloood to dull the shine.  He had taken no life with any 
pride in the deed.  Death was visited on some, delayed a 
journey to others.  He had had no part of the Reaper that 
morning. He saw only his aftermath, in the smooth cheeks 
and cocoa brow of his murdered comrade.  I will miss you, 
Tully.  
        Fergus bent down to touch Tully's forehead, closing his 
eyes and wondering, if only for a moment, where his cheerful 
soul had gone.  Did Catlin's God take him?  Was he still at 
play among the trees of the forest, a true spirit like the ones 
he had so longed to command with his mock sorcery?  Fergus 
looked to the brush and smiled half-heartedly.  Are you out
there, lad?  Are you anywhere I can find you again?
        He turned to Catlin's litter, only to discover her body 
gone.  A bit of dried leaf clung to the spot where her pretty 
face had lain.  Nothing else remained.
        The weak champion drew his sword from his side.  He 
held it, in wait, but for an enemy whose face he knew not. 
        Then he heard the low weeping.
        Fergus lowered his hand, keeping his sword horizontally 
prepared by his thigh.  He imagined no need for it, however.  
This was his prince whose cries he was party to. 
        Keeping quiet, Fergus crept up to another gathering of 
loose ferns, drawing them aside in a manner that would 
attract no notice.  He saw Conor by the riverside, holding 
the missing Catlin.
        The young prince's curls wafted in a watery breeze, 
and the dampness of the ground had soiled the leather tunic 
around Catlin's chest.  Conor had his back to the woods, his 
arms vanished from sight, tightly wrapped around Catlin's 
chest.  Her head rested on his left shoulder, and their legs
mingled in voiceless conversation, outstretched towards the 
river's bank. Water rushed by.  Rocks spoke in their abused 
tongues.  The prince was singing.  
        Fergus recognized the song.  An old folk melody, sung 
at grievings, sung by widows, widowers, mothers of 
slaughtered babes, fathers of stolen daughters.  It was a song of 
pure sorrow, a chanting of untainted pain.  And it belonged to 
no other that morning but Conor, lost to all but his own
sorrow and the feel of the woman in his embrace.  
        The man moved to approach his friend, but he arrested 
his foot in mid-stride.  No.  Better to leave him be.  There 
was no further help he could offer. Fergus stepped back, 
and returned to the empty litter, where he sat, waiting for 
his prince to fulfill his need for mourning.
        Conor saw the line of water betrothed to the far trees, 
the steep drop of wet earth to the current, the blanched 
rapids drinking all the life from the cliff side.  You're so 
warm, Cat.  I can feel you.  I know you feel me.  
        He looked down, his braid entangled in his slain 
love's hair, the mustard yellow of his own a subtle highlight 
in her walnut locks.  So beautiful.  He kept his hands over 
her own, which he had crossed over her chest.  He held her 
so tightly.  Conor had never known the true feel of a
woman, so weak beside him, so...lifeless, though he was 
loath to let the word gain admittance to his thoughts.
        His cheeks were splotched with the prisms of oval 
tears.  The clouds hung low over the river, and there 
seemed only the charcoal blue of his inner despair, mirrored 
in Nature's looking glass.  It mourns a lost beauty.
It will never find one comparable to her again, to touch its 
face, to bathe in its waters.  You have lost her, as have I.
        The smell of her was married to the breeze escaping 
ffrom the river Conor laid her down, keeping her gently 
positioned, and leaned to gather some water in his cupped 
palms.  He brought it back and bathed her face, still soiled 
by the hands of the filthy Roman warriors who had carried 
her from the courtyard, where they had watched her murdered, 
to the room where they had placed her on her funeral bed.  
Soiled her face, but never her spirit.  She is pure, despite your 
efforts, Diana.  Despite everything you've done to us, she 
will always be a perfect woman.
        Conor laid down beside her, nuzzling his head into the 
crook of her neck.  His nose brushed her skin, and he felt a 
drop of his jagged spirit fall down his face and onto her 
shoulder.  Oh, Cat.  Why has your God allowed this?  Does 
he hear me?  Does He know you did nothing wrong?  
        The young prince sat up, keeping her hand locked 
between his own. He cried out into the bankrupt air a withdrawn 
"NO!," holding the sound as long as his own breath would hold 
out.  No, no, no.  She's not gone from me.
        Conor sat on his knees, laying his love's hand beside her 
motionless form, and gathered his palms together as she had 
shown him once.  In prayer. He closed his eyes, and began to
speak to the Christian God, asking, begging, desperate for a 
miracle. Never had he felt the pull of something so deep within 
himself.  He prayed.  And he wished.
        Fergus, startled by the sound of Conor screaming out, 
ran back to his place in the peeking ferns.  The boy was 
praying.  The sound of an errant "Jesus" escaped to the 
champion's ears, and though he was not at all familiar with 
the practice, in Catlin's honor, he mirrored the word.


        Longinus sat back against the hard chair, crafted of an 
Irish breed of oak, and let his breath come as regularly as it 
desired.  He was so tired.  This life, this hated heart within 
his breast, this hair, these sinning hands.  None of it was 
worth anything anymore.  He was an abhorration in God's 
kingdom.  And he had never meant for it to be this way.
        It was moments like these, when the Romans were 
silent and the prayers had dissipated, when Longinus 
remembered.  He thought over his childhood, always wishing 
to become a proud warrior as his father had been. He fondly 
recalled the first look he had tasted of his wife, when they 
both had been too young to know love from hatred, and he 
had seen that burnt look in her near-black eyes.  She was an 
exotic temptress, but with the purest heart he had ever come 
to know.  
        A tear slid slyly down his cheek.  God, take me.  Please.  
I beg of you to relieve me of this burden of life.  Take me....
        He raised the silver mug which had of late sat beside him 
on the floor, throwing it into the blaze across the room.  The 
alcohol within sparked and sent up a tendril of sky colored 
flame, and then the mug clanged against the flaming wood and 
bounced out of the fireplace.  It sat, dripping its red fluid onto 
the dirty stone beneath him.  Life blood.  I wish mine could 
only do the same.  I will never bleed again, never feel pain, 
never suffer another to know my loss.  I will never.  
        Soft hands, gentle knuckles, white palms, snuck up 
behind him,  caressing his shoulders.  Such a pleasant touch.  
Still wrapped up in the dreams of a man he had once been, 
Longinus was startled to turn his head and see Diana's wretched 
form behind him, and not the woman to whom he had given
himself in matrimony.  Before God's eyes.  You have taken 
everything from me, haven't you?  Even the pleasure of a 
good woman.
        "I've missed you, Longinus."  Diana laid her chin on 
the top of his head, and the pressure there suddenly caused 
him to pull away.  He supported himself with his hands 
on the arms of the chair, and neglected to turn back to her 
as he walked across the room to the fire.  
        His voice was cruel, and he was unsure whether or 
not he intended that.
        "What do you want, Diana?"
        Her crimson lips were agape, her teeth sparkling with 
the captured beads of light that flung themselves throughout 
the room.  She became aware that her mouth was open, and 
she closed it, quickly, keeping her forearms at rest on the 
head of the chair, where his own head had rested only moments
before.
        "It...it seems hours since I last saw you.  Where have 
you been?"
        Her brown eyes were accusing, but strangely 
guilt-ridden at the same instant.  What are you hiding, 
my Roman queen?  Would you prefer I look into your 
soul to find you, dastardly and dying, instead of hearing 
your sins in your own words?
        "You released them."  He paused, turning back to 
face her, his arms crossed across his chest.  His robes 
clung to his muscular legs, and the shadows of the folds 
made him a sliver of the creature he was.  He
appreciated shadow. He appreciated mimicking light.
        "Thank you."  He finished, satisfied with what he 
had said, pleased she had listened to him.  As always.  
She rebelled, then obeyed.  It was a sick pattern of lovers' 
hierarchy.  Lovers.  Can I ever be again?
        Diana swung her head in frustration, a wandering braid 
swooping from behind her to land across her left breast.  She 
threw herself gracefully into the wooden chair.
        "Must you continue to speak of them, Longinus?  I did 
what you asked.  And you're welcome, as always."  
        Her gaze lingered on him, dropping every so often 
to his broad chest, his pointed calves.  He was a beautiful 
illusion.  And what did she care, if a mirror would reflect 
back only a twisted mockery of a man?  He was this, 
now, and she had not mirrors for eyes.  She loved what 
she saw, and suddenly had to be near him.
        Diana crossed the room, wrapping her arms around 
her lover's neck. Longinus did not move, only looked on 
her as though he were a mile away in some two-storied 
observatory, watching an experiment in progress.  
        "You're welcome, you're welcome.  But do you 
appreciate it, Longinus?  That all my power lays at your 
feet?  Is it not irksome every now and then, to know you'll 
always be obeyed?  Do you not want me to do something 
wild and random, to give you cause to think just a bit more 
than you already do?"
        She was teasing.  With her stretched fingers 
interlocked behind his neck, meshing themselves against 
his hair, she laid a single kiss on the edge of his nose.  The 
perfumed ambrosia of her breath was perfect there,
resting at the precipice of his senses, and he wanted more.  
Which was why he once more pulled himself away, the 
breeze he created by moving enough catalyst to destroy 
her lingering scent.  Save me from her temptation.
        "Diana, you never fail to give me cause to think.  
But only because I can never hope to understand how 
your mind functions.  You are a woman, a woman who 
rose to her station by sacrificing herself time and time again.
The Red Boot knew your dirty little secret, Diana Metallis.  
And you were ashamed to hear your own tale uttered by 
someone you hated so very much." Longinus leaned against 
the chair.  Her cheeks rouged under his stare.
        "And yet, when Catlin was in your possession, as it 
were, whipped and beaten and forced to receive men she 
never would have cast a second glance at, given the choice, 
you did nothing to save her.  To help her. Whatever became 
of the trusty female bond?  Did you honestly care nothing
for her?
        Diana sighed with pained frustration.
        "Longinus, really."  She stooped to pick up his fallen 
silver mug, pulling a stray drop of wine from the rim with 
her finger, rubbing it over her lips.  It is all a game of seduction.  
Stop trying, my queen.
        "Why should I concern myself with the fate of one 
woman, a woman who is allied to that damned tribal 
confederation, who fights contrary to my goals, and would 
never offer me aid should our situations have been
reversed?"  An incredulous look rested on her face as she 
stopped speaking.
        "Because you know that's not the truth, Diana.  You 
knew her heart. Anyone could have seen it, as splayed open 
as it was, out there in that courtyard of yours.  Those men 
were making a festival of her pain, and as she lay dying in that 
boy's arms, all she could do was tell him how much she
loved him.  How much she LOVED him, Diana.  I believe you 
didn't help her because you have never known love, CAN 
never know it.  Admit it, Diana.  You enjoyed watching 
her suffer."
        "Never.  You may have an opinion about me, Longinus.  
You may believe anything you want, but by the time I saw 
that she was dying, it was too late for my word to do much more 
than stay that warrior's hand.  I had come across the situation 
too late.  I have other PRESSING matters to attend
to, which do not concern my soldiers having some drunken 
celebration downstairs.  It didn't concern me, and when I 
made it my  concern, it was too late.  I absolve myself of 
any blame.  You have to believe that."
        Longinus did not respond, only cast his eyes to the floor,
disbelieving of her displacement of self.  Absolved herself.  
What gave her the right, the power?
        "Why do you care so very much, Longinus?  Those men 
fear you, much more than they have EVER feared, or WILL 
ever fear me.  If you knew what was happening, why did you 
not stay that man's hand?  Why did you not stop it?
What makes you less guilty than me in the affair?"
        He raised his eyes once more, a stray piece of sanded 
blonde hair hanging across his cheek.  He lifted it away and 
tucked it behind his ear.
        "Because I loved her as she was dying, Diana.  I pitied 
her.  I di not stop it, but I felt something as she died.  And I 
regret that now more than anything else, that I watched her 
agony like a spectator, instead of a commander.  And I regret 
now that all my powers are useless in reviving her. I can tell 
that her spirit is not entirely gone.  Her body was warm when
Conor took her out this morning, her limbs supple.  Some 
part of her can't leave him.  True love, Diana.  A thing more 
precious than all others, a thing I have lost and will never know 
again.  A thing that is battling Death to keep that woman here.  
I pray, should God still listen to me, that she lives.  I pray 
some miracle occurs.  And I pray she comes back to smote this
pitiful Roman stronghold.  I pray she takes you down, and that 
she sees fear in your eyes when she has you under her power.  
I pray, because you have grown callous, Diana.  You have 
lost touch.  Me, I have a reason.  God made me this 
everwalking Demon.  But you?  What can be your excuse?  
Do not speak to me, until you have realized, Diana.  Do not 
tell me you love me.  I hate myself, that I ever allowed 
myself to believe that I loved you.  This is not
love.  It's a greed for power.  Power, and nothing more."
        Diana, in tears, but with a snarl across her sculpted 
lips, turned and hurried down the stairs from whence she 
had come so soon before. He turned back to the fire, 
keeping his hand near the flame as his young facade
melted away.  I am a devil.  A devil, in a savior's clothing.


        Conor woke with his nose nuzzled in Catlin's neck.  
The honeyed scent of her pale skin, the taut look of the 
sun's wrinkles through her veins, lying just below the surface.  
Blood, that no longer flowed.  Eyes that no longer opened.  A 
heart that no longer desired him.  Where are you, Cat?  I loved 
you so much...
        Fergus cleared his throat.  Sitting just behind the young 
prince, he kept his face respectfully towards the grass as the 
boy turned to face him.
        "Fergus?  How long have you been sitting there?"
        The champion's face remained unmoving, quiet, introspective.  
He answered.
        "Ever since I heard you crying out, Conor.  Ever since I 
realized you weren't back there with the horses, that Cat's body 
was gone.  What are you doing out here, lad?"
        "Something I would have to do, Fergus, whether we be at the
Sanctuary or here.  I am mourning.  Mourning a woman I loved 
more than my own life."
        "Loved?"  Fergus' voice was questioning.  His eye was 
fiercely brown, skeptical.  
        "Yes, loved."  The prince was defensive.  A distant cry 
erupted from the shrill throat of some unseen bird.  It was a 
mournful sound.  Lonely.
        "Do you not still love her, Conor?  Can you have stopped 
so soon?"
        The question seemed to beg no answer, as it was harsh and 
demanding, but the boy stood in defense of his own emotions.  
The shards of pink water lying on the grass continued to guard 
the fallen Catlin as Conor stood to speak.
        "Of course I still love her, man!  What could you be thinking, 
to say such a thing to me?  I mourn her, but I will NEVER stop 
loving her!" The prince raised his hands in some sort of emphasis, 
but let them drop back to his sides.  His voice became resplendent 
with tears, and sadness erupted from within him like some 
grieving genie set free.  
        "Never, Fergus.  Never...."
        The bald man stepped closer to his comrade, pulling the 
boy into his arms.  
        "Don't weep, lad.  You'll always have her.  You'll never be 
made to stop loving her.  And remember..."  
        Fergus pulled the boy's face from his chest, and held his 
cheeks in his beating palms.  The sun whipped through the 
greyness that hung over the earth, and lit on a nearby spot of 
ground, dancing with Fergus' speech.
        "Remember that she knows your heart.  Maybe she's 
not entirely gone from us.  Maybe we can still save her, 
Conor.  Perhaps that love you bear for her is mirrored within 
her, and it keeps her alive."
        "Alive, Fergus?  What sort of cruelty are you planning?  
Don't tempt me with those thoughts.  I can lose her this once, 
but I find myself lost with her.  And if you raise my hopes to 
some point where I have only to lose her again, believe me when 
I say that I will not survive it."  Conor stepped away.  "I have lost 
my family.  I lost Claire.  I can lose this island, the Confederation, 
but Cat again?  Never.  I am just not that strong, Fergus."
        The man laid his hand on the bare arm of his friend.  
        "You won't have to, lad.  I believe.  Just promise me you 
will as well."
        The sunlight flashed into Conor's hair, weaving an aura of 
promise, of sparkling futures.  It seemed harsh, but so warm, 
and he wanted to believe.
        "I will try, Fergus. I promise you to try."
        The champion nodded.  It was unspoiled, this agreement 
between them. Whatever he had to say, whatever flights of fancy 
he had to release, Fergus knew Conor had to make it home with 
her.  Only there could they try to save what was left of her 
bruised body.  What they could save.  It seemed so
pointless, but miracles could occur. Whether a gift from a Druid 
deity or a Roman god, someone had to hear, to see, to know 
the pain that had veiled his prince's eyes.  Hear me, whoever 
you are.  Save her. And save us as well.
        He took his hand off of Conor's arm, and nodded once 
more, turning back to part the ferns, returning to the horses.  
The daylight blinked with a watery gaze, disappearing into 
the sky once more.  The clouds swallowed it like a Turkish 
delight, and then only the despair of colorlessness washed
over him once more.  The rain fell in thick drops, splashing 
through his fingers and landing around him on the trodden earth.
        Catlin seemed untouched, as though she lay between 
the pieces that fell from the sky.  He looked on her.  Her 
eyes, closed, but blackened.  Her arms, laced with dainty 
strips of congealed blood, from the fierce whipping. Her lips, 
red, but grey and pained as well.  Oh, God.  Do you see what
they've done?  Please, please.  Help me. 
        The prince found himself praying for her redemption.  
Praying.  He was ashamed, but felt it a necessity.  Was it 
wrong, to plead for her, in her marked stead?  There was no 
way for it be so.  Wrong, right, it was love, and love was 
never mistaken.  
        Conor leaned over and laid a gentle kiss between 
those eyes.  Look on me again, my love.  Look on me, and 
know that I love you, loved you, will always love you.  He 
picked her up, hating the warmth she continued to exude, like 
some sleeping enchantress.  Be dead, or live, but I cannot
accept this middle ground. It is torment.  Feeling her supple 
limbs supported by his own, he raised her.  He squeezed his 
eyes against the hurt, the searing cast that engulfed his heart.  
Oh, God, Catlin.  Catlin.  
        Hearing the horses neighing, Conor took step after step, 
focusing only on getting there, on letting Fergus help him, on 
riding home.  Step by step, he would make it.  And once they 
were there, he would save her.  The prince knew not how.  He 
had no plan, no inspiration.  He merely knew he would be able.  
Or he would lose her.  He had no choice.
        The rain increased in speed, the drops thinning into 
pricking stabs as they struck the skin of his bare arms.  He felt 
the torture was due.  He had not saved her, when given the 
chance.  Fergus patted him on the arm. The horses were 
spurred on, the litters bouncing gently behind them.  They
had covered the two bodies with ferns and pine needles.  Catlin's 
face was hidden beneath, as was Tully's.  It kept the temptation 
of seizing on her countenance at every bend subdued.  It kept 
him from dying as he lived.

        The horizon was rose, the sky a delectable shade of 
burnt heart. She breathed, but felt no pressure in her chest, 
no rise or fall.  She could hear no heartbeat echoing in her 
ears, but she knew she was alive.  Her hands rose, and she 
marveled at the white frost of which she seemed to be crafted.  
So thin, so perfectly invisible.  There was no sound.  There 
was only this love, this passion and need that made the 
world soft and gently colored around her.  The sky, the sea, 
the clouds and the mountains, all mauve, all round and subdued.
        And she saw him.  He rode without seeing what he 
passed.  He listened to the wind and touched its curvaceous 
hips and quivering thighs, but felt none of the passion for his 
life that he had been so proud of bearing before...this.  What 
had happened?  She could not remember.  She felt only a 
need to be with him, to keep his face between her palms until
the minutes forgot them.  She wanted to dress him in tight kisses 
and keep him safe in her embracing arms, keeping all of them 
away from him.  Why was there so much anger, so much conflict?  
Why would they want what had never been theirs?  This land is 
mine, his, but not hers.  She remembered the queen with the 
ebony hair who was surrounded with the grey soul of apathy,
of cruelty.  She remembered that she was supposed to hate.  But 
she no longer had the power.  
        She stood, keeping in stride with the muscled horses.  Their
quivering nostrils smelled her, their strong eyes picked up her 
faint outline.  They knew she was there, a friend with good 
company and kind words.  She spoke to them, laughing at this 
childlike mischeviousness in her heart.  I am here.  Why do 
you not know I'm here, prince?  
        She ran her fingers over Fergus' leg, pinching the skin of 
his calf that bounched on the animal's back.  He looked down, 
taken by surprise, rubbing his palm over his leg and looking 
around, as though he couldn't determine what it was that had 
caused the tight flickering of pain.  It was me.  Do you know 
that?  The man resumed his fierce posture, eyes never wavering, 
grip as strong as ever on the horse's bridle.  
        She swooped in front of the horse's foreleg.  It wavered in 
midstep, anxious to avoid her, but resumed its motion when it 
passed through her with no effect.  I am here.  But you can't 
hurt me.  No one can hurt me again. She stepped over to 
Conor's young steed, laboring under the load of some burden 
behind him.  She caressed the animal's mouth, sweetening his 
lips with sugared kisses from her own.  I love you.  And her 
gaze traveled slowly up.  
        God, let him see me.  Please, please, let him know I am 
here.  I haven't left you, Conor.  She rose, encircling his proud 
face, now dripping down in uncovered sorrow.  I love you 
still, Conor.  Know that.  I will never leave you.  And you 
will never lose me.  You haven't lost me now.  She kissed his 
mouth, stroked his hair, felt a tear fall from her cheek, a wisp
of a mortal bit of agony that dried before it could strike his 
shoulder. I'm lost without you, Conor.  Don't lose hope.  
Don't abandon me here.  I can't come back without you.  
        The blonde prince felt the wind suddenly wisking through 
his hair, a stray hand touching his face.  His lips were wet.  He 
looked down on the bare flesh of his shoulder.  A lone drop of 
water.  Conor looked up, around, confused.  Fergus noticed 
nothing, only looked ahead, as stoic as ever. There was nothing 
amiss.  But he felt...her.  Yes, he felt Catlin with him.
        Cat?  He spoke no word, but cried out with his expiring 
soul.  Oh, Cat, are you there?  No, it wasn't possible.  But he 
was sure she...
        He stopped himself.  This grief lived almost as a 
companion.  Leave me.  You'll destroy me.  Don't you know 
that?
        Fighting an urge, he turned around on the horse's back, to 
see her body lying still on the litter.  The ferns had slipped 
from their place, and her pale face shone through.  Her lips, the 
color of beating crimson, her eyelids as smooth as a waterpressed 
stone.  Oh, God, don't rip me apart. Please, please...  He found 
himself pleading with that Roman god.  Foreign,
a stranger, but as close to help as he could be then.  He 
imagined her smiling, standing, waiting for him, arms open to 
embrace him with a written love that was scripted with 
perfection.  I love you, Catlin.
        Conor turned back to face front, tears welling in his 
lagoon eyes. I love you.
        Catlin heard him, her heart soaring within her.  He 
needs me.  She turned her face from his own, weeping so 
quietly, and stopped.  She saw herself laid on the gently 
swaying litter.  No.  No, no, I'm here.  I'm alive.  
        The sun kept itself hidden behind the cloud cover, and she 
began to weep.  I am alive.  I am full of love.  I need him.  
Don't let him believe this is how it must end.
        She leaned over, touching her pale face, which seemed so 
lifeless. Her arms, folded, so still.  No.  Jesus, no. Help me.
        The wind soughed in the bare Celtic branches.  Help 
was a distant traveler, who galloped into the horizon, his 
back to the lone men sweeping through the Irish underbrush.


        He was exhausted, every rise of his chest a bother, 
every fatigued exhalation an annoyance.  There was so little 
purpose left.  So little need to go on.  Conor turned around 
more than he had allowed himself to before, now that he 
knew her face was exposed to the elements.  He could profess 
a desire to keep the wind and the rain from harming her, but 
in truth, he could not get enough of her skin, her eyes, the 
woman she had been.
        The prince remembered.  More now than ever.  He 
thought back to the first time he'd seen her.  A stinging bite of 
his own powerlessness called forth from the depths of his 
mind, and he saw her leaping like a gazelle over the rocks and 
hanging limbs, stumbling through the water, finally falling at 
the foot of the Roman.  He was smug, foul, covered in the filth
of his kind.  She was breathing rapidly, blue eyes lit like an 
autumn squall, mouth motionless, white teeth virgin in the 
point of the Roman's sword.  Her hair was broken, jagged, 
wildly woven with bits of leaves and dirt, from the falls she 
had taken in the escape.
        And he had seen her.  She was so helpless, strong, but 
outnumbered. He had, in his foolishness, believed he could be 
her savior.  Anyone's savior.  That had meant so much to him 
then.  That young boy, so inexperienced, clothed more like a 
sheep herder than the son of a Celtic king.  He was only the 
prince of his own mind that cold morning.  He had rushed on 
them, so eager, and proven he could get her out.  She had looked
on him, and he tasted still the dangerous trust she had lathered 
over him with that stare.  What did he mean by coming to her 
aid?  Was he just another man, who wanted her for his own 
selfish purposes?  Did he want to force her...  
        Conor refused.  Refused to look on her past.  She had been 
strong enough to break away from her history.  He could do the 
same to honor her now.  
        But she was so pure.  Amazing to him that he could see a 
woman so abused as still so untouched.  She had taught him to 
look on her with that indifference to foundations.  They may 
have taken her body, but none took her mind.  And her inquisitive 
mind was what she had offered to him.  None other had ever 
tasted the fruits of that cultivated ground.  He had had so
little time.  So little time.  
        He once again felt that strange breeze across his lips.  
Where are you, my love?  Touch me.  Need me.  I am lost 
without you.
        Later, in the Sanctuary, a reluctant orphan had seen 
that same woman, the savage tamed by the temptations of 
companionship, quiet among the crowd of men and women 
who needed him to lead them on to victory.  He had seen her 
smile for the first time that day.  She had looked on him with a
need, something he knew she must have been fearful of 
expressing.  Conor's life had stopped in those moments.  He 
had turn and fled, afraid of being what he had never been 
expected to become, afraid of feeling something for a
woman who was not Claire.  Had he not promised to never 
love another?  And here he stood, a weak man, lost because 
he had not defended her, had not kept her safe, had not had 
one eye always on her back.  He was at fault.  He had not 
kept her safe, all he wanted ever to do, all he had ever intended,
as he had held her that night in her tent.  He had professed his 
love.  She had loved him.  
        Oh, God, she had loved him.  He had repaid her with 
his weakness, his fear.  His inability.
        He raised a hand, almost calling out to Fergus to stop, 
but he arrested the motion.  No.  Stop for what?  To look on 
her face once more and hate himself for being able to do nothing?  
To weep like a coward?  He could not let this take him.  He 
could not become paralyzed with his self-abhorration.  It was 
not what she would have wanted.  She would have wanted him 
to make it right.
        "Fergus?"
        He called out.  The champion turned, halting his ebony steed.
        "What is it, Conor?"
        "I know what we can do.  I think I may know how to 
save her.  I think we can do something to bring Cat back."


        Diana sat undetected in a long and must-filled corridor in the
depths of the fortress.  A sputtering flame was the only illumination
combatting the darkness.  She prayed it would not go out.  She 
never had been able to abide her own thoughts in the face of 
lightlessness.
        What had she done?  There had been death before.  There 
had been suffering. There had been pleasantries committed beside 
the slums, galas in Roman temples, while the poor screamed for 
alms just outside the doors. There had been so much.  She had 
given so much, tried so very hard, and it had come to this.  She 
was to be condemned by the only man she believed herself to 
have ever loved.  She was to see herself as a wrongdoer, a slave
to greed and power, such naked possessions.  Why had she ever 
let herself believe that she would find happiness in controlling?  
Channeling the anger of a thousand hell-bent soldiers into the 
weak forces of an innocent land? This land.  
        She remembered what she had not told Longinus.  She 
remembered the triumphant wave through her breast as she had 
watched her guard whipping the defenseless woman.  Time after 
time, slowly.  Diana had savored the screaming, licked her tongue 
across her mouth in anticipation of the next lash.
        And she tasted that pain now.  She was ashamed, 
sickened by her own thoughts.  What had she been in those 
moments?  What manner of loveless beast?  What sort of 
desperate representation of cruelty?  
        She had watched Catlin die.  She had seen, her sharp 
nose hidden in the hanging shadows, the boy run to the 
beaten woman, slicing through Roman men to reach her. 
And when he had, he had touched her with such childlike 
curiosity, such a mature hand with such a young face.  Diana 
found it hard to believe that Conor had ever seen suffering.  
And then she remembered.  He had, all that she had delivered 
to him, her and her people.  
        She envisioned Gar before her, an old, tired man, bent 
under her power, eager to please the jet black temptress who 
had claimed him in a false matrimony.  Always her power.  
Always those trying to please her.  It grew stale somehow
now, a thing she had never expected to see.  She remembered 
the pale corpse of Gar's daughter, the prince's former love,
slain by her own father.  She remembered consoling her husband, 
telling him that he had done what he had to do.  And then she 
remembered driving that dull steel through him, his flesh parting 
in the wound like the oceans parting under God's touch.  I was 
a God then.  He was mine to take.  
        Diana closed her eyes, afraid to make the darkness even 
thicker by adding the boundary of her own cordoned-off face, 
but she had to.  The pictures of all her sins were playing before 
her as though it was a day of final judgments, and she had been 
banished.  Her own darkness was strong and sound.  The 
glimmering light from the torch stuck in red bars through the
labyrinth of her eyelids, an odd blend of cinnamon and orange 
swirling through her unlit eyes. She realized she could not 
escape it.  Never escape it.  And one day she would stand 
before her god, as naked as she now felt, unable to run 
away from what she saw in the gates below her.  Flames,
torment, eternal grief.  I must repent.  I must stop.
        The grieving queen asked herself, in that lonely hall, 
why she had not stopped it.  Why had she watched like a 
powerless visage in the crowd, happy to let another take 
the blame?  She had done nothing.
        But she knew.  Deep within her bosom, she recalled the 
reason why she had stood so idly.  It was her own life.  For 
years, given over to men she would have refused voluntarily, 
beaten, burdened with a reputation that laced itself to her back 
with a sick joy, Diana Metallis had been an abused woman.  
She had climbed the ladder of her own pitiful successes only 
after much suffering.  She had often felt the yellow sting of the 
lash across her own back, punished for talking rudely to those 
who had paid for her time. She had never understood why her 
own body was no longer her possession.  She had never 
understood their rage, their desire, their perverse needs.  But
she understood now.
        Diana had not helped.  Another woman, as weak as she 
once had been, having done nothing to deserve such a lackluster 
end, whipped.  She supposed only that it had filled some void 
within her, to see the same punishments she had once received 
herself visited on someone else, the same crime perpetrated 
on a feminine body too soft to throw off the bonds that held it
captive and break free. It had tried to fill that void.  But what 
sickness was still within her that left that void uncovered?  
Catlin's death had not appeased it.  Diana was frightened of 
mulling over just what it would take to end its tyrannical reign.
        She tasted the salt on her lips, wiped her dark eyes with 
the back of her hand, the color of abandoned mahogany in the 
glare of the torch.  She stood, her hands against the wall, 
supporting her.  I am evil.  I am the body of evil.  Oh, Jesus...
        Diana gathered up her skirts and set to running down 
the corridor, frightened suddenly, needing to find some sort 
of light, any light.  She needed Longinus. But he would never 
want her.  She would never again want herself.  She took step 
after step, afraid of the roaring behind her in the corridor, 
until she realized it was the sound of her own bewitched 
howling. I am this world's evil.


 	The litters bounced gently, a tickling wind pushing 
them from four sides, even as the two men halted their horses.  
        "Save her?  Conor, lad, what are you talking about?"  
        Fergus' eyes belied a thought of intense disbelief.  He 
could not believe the boy's grief would grab him so tightly.  
He had to let her go. Death had never been, for anyone, a 
take or leave situation.  There was no saving.  There was 
only releasing, forgetting.  Loving, without having.
        "Fergus, you know Catlin.  She was strong, and a fighter,
and...well, I know she wasn't ready.  And if she wasn't ready, 
then maybe she fights Death even as we speak.  Perhaps she 
knows.  Have you not felt her here with us, Fergus?  Among 
us, traveling beside us?"
        He shook his head.  
        "No, Conor.  I've seen her with us, laid low on that litter 
behind you.  She's gone."
        The young prince seemed incredulous.  
        "No..."  
        His eyes were wild, round, the blue of a lightless ocean 
in the maw of a storm.  "No..."
        "Conor, I've wanted to believe.  Ever since I saw her dead, 
ever since I knew they'd taken Tully from us, I've wanted it to 
be an option.  I wanted to see the cowardly face of the death that 
stole them from us, but we can never see him, until we're gone 
ourselves.  Conor, we don't have any time to sit and reason with 
a shadow that steals among us.  Catlin was taken.  Tully was 
taken as well.  I can't let you go on believing that we can snap 
our fingers and cry into the wind and everything will be made
right.  It simply doesn't work that way, lad."
        A side sweeping breeze picked up some trampled leaves 
and whisked them over the bodies, so still amidst the commotion 
of Nature.  The strong smells of rotting bark and hidden 
honeysuckle married themselves in the wind.  It was a time of 
grief.  But Conor would not look it in the eye.
        "Fergus, look at her.  Tell me what you see that you don't 
see on Tully."
        The champion was confused.  Perplexed.  What was 
wrong here?  What was the boy prey to, that was feeding on 
his healthy mind?
        "Conor, I see two dead fighters, two dead friends.  
There's no difference."
        The prince, the blond in his hair a brilliant aura circling his
face, sat smug on the steed's round back.  He was smug.  He 
crossed his arms neatly over his chest and let one finger reach 
out from his hand to point rearward.
        "Look, Fergus."
        The bald man, frustrated with such antics, turned around 
in his saddle to confront once again the closed eyes of his 
friends.  It was torture, a delicate pain that wrapped over his 
mouth, constricted around his heart.  Was he meant to live  
life so fragile?  Was he meant to have to guard his soul against 
breaking forever?
        Tully was unmoved.  His face remained under the guard 
of wet fern and browning pine needles.  His arms, solidly 
crossed on his chest, hands one over the other.  Catlin.  Catlin?
        Her face was turned in the litter, facing to the left, eyes still
shut, but cheeks pink, as with the healthy chill on a young child.  
Her arms had fallen a bit from her chest, and a few stray fingers 
hung over the side of the makeshift bed, trailing her cropped 
fingernails in the wet dirt beneath.  It was as if she had shifted 
in her sleep, a body laboring under a nightmare, not a dead 
woman meant to freeze in a mocking portrait of the beautiful 
face Death sometimes assumes.
        "It looks like she...moved somehow."
        Conor smiled.  
        "I know.  It does, doesn't it?  Can Death animate the 
shell of the soul it takes, Fergus?  Can it really push her from 
position to position? Or is it something else that makes her 
so restless?"
        The horses neighed in unison.  A few bounces on 
playful hooves, a snicker of wet noses in the cold Irish 
air.  The sun screamed out in laughter, but hid its lemon 
face behind the wall of clouds.  A tease, always.
        Fergus sighed.  He raised his arms in despair, and then 
dropped them once more to his sides.
        "Conor, the litter bounced as we were moving.  Her 
arms fell from where we laid them.  It's not uncommon.  There's 
no spirit at work here. Catlin is not trying to tell you anything, 
or to seek your help.  She's gone to the other world, Conor.  
Look at me, boy."
        The prince's eyes lost their shimmer, and refused to 
meet his friend's.
        "She's gone."
        A howl, only momentary, ripped a hot wound in the 
air around their ears.  The sound of a woman in pain, tortured, 
a soul whose love was dead, a body whose life was thieved.  
The men turned.  Conor's skin raised in warning, and seemed 
to ripple.  Fergus could sense the cold of a watchful eye 
over his back.  They turned to face each other, the horses 
uneasy.  Catlin?
        Conor jumped down from the horse.  He moved his face 
into the wind, sensing her.  I was right.  I know you, Cat.  I 
know you're with me.
        "Fergus, did you hear that?  Did you hear it, man?  Do 
you understand me?"
        He had never been superstitious.  Spirits, some sort of 
divine protection, other worlds, black prophecies, they had 
never been his thoughtful companions.  But now, Fergus was 
unsure.  He was uncertain as to what manner of man or beast 
could have raised such a curdle in his warm blood.  Only the 
sound of a soul in torment, of the dead wishing to live, or
the living wishing to die, could have let loose such sorrow.  
He hated himself, for doubting.  But could Catlin be here?  
Could she truly be with us?  Why can this not end?  If 
Catlin, then Tully as well?  Had Death always been so 
conquerable?  Had it always been like a sporadic visitor, 
who would steal a heart, only to return it later with a 
guilty conscience?  Could it be that we haven't lost them?
        "What do you need to me to do, Conor?"
        "So you believe me?"
        "I don't know what I believe, lad.  Sweet Bridget.  I've 
known that sound, Conor.  It was the sound my heart made 
when I looked my last on my daughter, only a babe, and 
realized I had to leave her and her mother.  It was the 
sound my heart made the first time I raised my sword against 
another man, ending his days.  It's a sound of pity and fury, 
of ice and flame, and I am afraid.  So you tell me what you 
need me to do, and I'll obey.  I fear the penalty of 
questioning."
        The prince approached his champion, his hands wildly 
gesturing.  A plan was on the precipice of his mind, and it 
fell over to his mouth, words pregnant with his anxious nature.
        "Ride home, Fergus.  Take Tully to the Sanctuary.  
Mourn him.  Bury him.  Let the people weep for one of our 
own, fallen."
        "And you, lad?"
        His eyes were resplendent with opal tears.  Glaciers and 
bbonfire danced a Celtic jig around the stories of good drink 
and good times he had left to tell.  You'll be fine, my Fergus.
        "I'm taking her to the Rock Tower, Fergus.  The priest 
who keeps the records of their god.  He'll know what I can do.  
He's seen miracles in his time.  He's seen the dead healed.  I pray 
he will lead me to some sort of solution."
        Fergus placed his hand on the boy's shoulder. 
        "Conor, don't do this to yourself.  You'll raise your hopes, 
and then you'll fail.  It'll be like losing her again.  I don't think 
any man would be strong enough to take that."
        The prince smiled, taking his friend's hand between his 
own and holding it, letting his thumping pulse beat out a 
confident appreciation.
        "Fergus, I have never needed someone, or loved 
someone, with such force before.  Catlin was my gift, my one 
chance to be the man that every man is destined to become.  
I was always afraid, always too young, too anxious, too wild, 
to be of any use to anyone to but myself.  And then she
looked at me, and she asked me that night if I could ever love 
again.  I hadn't realized until she said it, that yes, I had the 
power.  Catlin gave that to me, Fergus.  Her spirit was so 
clean, and her body so strong.  I hate the name of Rome, and 
the face of the men who hurt her.  I swore no one would hurt 
her, ever again.  And I was unable to protect her.  I should have
died, Fergus.  Perfection is never meant to fade.  Hers did. I 
blame myself for that.  And even if it crushes me, even if I 
never see the sunset again for all its beauty, if the dawn never 
sings and the roar of this land can never again lift my soul, I 
will still think myself spared the punishment I deserve for 
having let them hurt her, beating her in my stead.  They hated
me, Fergus.  And I hate myself.  This is what I must do.  I 
mean nothing anymore.  She is with me, and with you.  Can I 
deny her this?  Can I deny her another day to spend in the 
comfort of her own skin?  I love her, Fergus.  God will see 
that.  Her god will give her life again because I offer myself 
up.  Let me go, Fergus."
        The man stood there, dumbfounded.  He nodded 
quietly, his lungs afraid to disturb the peace of the forest 
then by raising his chest in breath.  He touched the boy's 
shoulder, nodded again, and mounted his horse.  
        As he spurred the animal on, Fergus turned his head 
and looked on his prince.
        "I'll be waiting at the Sanctuary for you, Conor.  For 
you both."
        The animal took off, and it was only a moment 
before the copses of thick trees covered over the sight of him.
        Conor, given once again a purpose, a sweetened clarity, 
stooped to lay a gentle kiss on Catlin's forehead.  As he 
expected, it was rose water on his mouth, a wing to his spirit.  
He laid her hands over her chest once more, mounted his 
steed, and prayed the forest to part and lead him to the
tower.  Their salvation lay in the distance.


        She knew his brilliance, knew his intentions.  And her 
world was made more beautiful by them.  She followed him 
on the horse, watched him breathe, watched him taste the 
sky with his fingers and spur on the pounding animal.  She 
was loved.  And the smells and flavors of that were stronger
than any she had ever known while...alive.
        She confronted herself with the truth.  She didn't 
believe any longer that this white form she had become 
breathed.  She no longer thought this was some elegant dream 
from which she would awaken in her love's arms. She had 
died.  But something was holding her here.  That was her 
truth, the only one she had to hold onto, to grip ferociously 
in the hopes that it would be proven by the prince.  The 
truth of the heart.  As long as I live through you, Conor, 
you must believe that I will never die.  
        Death seemed so trivial now, such an easily answered 
query that sparked black images and nightmarish eves 
while alive. We always wondered. And now I know.  Now 
I see.  I see, like I never was able to before.  Every fiber of 
the leaves in the trees, the green stripe of Nature's breath that
paints this familiar land. I am part of this.  But I do not 
want it without him.  
        She thought on her God, as she saw His saintly image 
mirrored in Conor's face, so intent, cheeks thrashing in the 
cold air.  He drove his boots into the horse's sides, urging 
him on, ever faster, faster.  There was no obstacle to him 
reaching the tower. She knew he would find it.  She could
not explain the prophecy, but she knew. 
        And she was afraid.  She could see that far, could see 
the priest's face as he dropped the weight of Holy Water 
over her dead arms, her heavy eyes.  She could see Conor, 
gripping one set of fingers with the other, blood pooling in 
his heart as he feared his last chance would slip away,
like loose sand on a clear river bed.  She could see herself, 
unmoving.  And the light...
        Jesus?  She wafted around her love's face, touching the 
branches and marveling at their creamed brown coloring, the 
scratchy feel of their bark against her swirling form.  Jesus, 
can you help me?  Can you protect him? Are you there?
        She had believed so many things.  She could admit to 
losing her fear of this burden called Death while alive, when 
she had accepted that God would summon her to his right 
hand when her body was destroyed.  She had not doubted.  
        But here she was, so light, so free, but still so bound.  
There was no robed being, no gates of yellow or faces on 
the clouds.  There was only this pure earth, this water and 
sky, this ground and this man.  She could not leave.  And 
she could not hear Jesus calling to her.  
        She cast her hands over Conor's leg, strapped so tightly 
against the steed.  Two creatures, locked in an embrace of 
hurried power, sharing a need of urgency.  The blond prince, 
so pale under the bland sky, the horse so fatigued and still 
so obedient.  He cut his own path through the trees, the
underbrush like a pious disciple as it kneeled alongside him.  
He could not stop.  Could never stop, as long as his heart 
nourished a pink hope of her life.  
        She was saddened for him.  Yes, she needed him to go on, 
needed him to try.  This existence was unbearable.  She could 
not go on forever seeing him while invisible herself.  She could 
not bear to piece the morning together with her fingers as he 
slept unaware.  She could not live without him.  
        Such an egregious beating, this heart in her chest that 
had fallen by the wayside, slipping away from her silently.  
She could feel its need, though it was no longer a part of her.  
She did not know where it sat, pounding, alone.  Surely it 
was not in this, this transparent body that was so thin and 
necessary.  Surely it was not in the blanched figure behind
Conor on the litter, a figure on whose face she saw her own 
despair.  What was that woman seeing behind her eyes?  
Does she know I love her?  Does she know I need her back?  
        She prayed then, whispering the Lord's language, weeping 
with eyes that were wet with parched tears.  I pray you hear 
me.  I pray you see I need your help.  Help me.
        But she didn't know.  The priest.  Would his words call 
her back? Would he know to save her?  Would he be able to see 
her, tormented and passionate, effulgent in the darkness that 
was this day?  She recalled with such divine clarity the rooms 
of scrolls, the old wood, the fire surrounded by worship and 
devotion.  She recalled the peace she had known there,
recovering her eyesight, her first look into the reclaimed world 
that of Conor before her, his hot fingers wishing love onto her 
face.  Oh, God.  I remember you, Conor.
        Again, she saw her tears leap onto Conor's flesh, but to 
her they seemed white, dry.  Could her sadness manifest itself 
so?  She was no longer.  She was nothing, only a tortured memory 
of the beauty that lay behind the horse, bouncing as the hooves 
blessed the hard ground beneath. No longer.
        Conor once more felt the wet ovals on his shoulder, falling,
entangled in the leather tunic across his chest. Catlin?  
        "Catlin?"
        She had heard his thoughts, but she marveled at his voice.  
Her name.  I love you, Conor.  Oh, God, I'm with you.  I'm here.  
Please don't abandon me.
        "Catlin!"  The prince screamed her name through the black 
and white sky, sending his voice heavenward, stitching together 
the clouds with letters that spelled the dead woman's memorial.   
"Catlin!"
        The rain fell, splashing in his hair, darkening it as the sun 
shied away, letting its face sleep beside the downpour.  The 
horse kneading the earth, Conor raised his arms and threw them 
out as Jesus' upon the crucifix, outstretched, pained, magnificent.  
She threw her efforts into loving him, needing him, and she sent 
her wispy form through his very core.  She shook with the impact. 
It was nothing she had ever known before, this ultimate touch. 
        The prince shivered on the beast's back.  Catlin.  I feel you.  
        Her urgency, her presence, and his own heart, fed the horse's 
speed as his legs tramped onwards.  The Rock Tower.  Conor 
marked its drawn silhouette in the far distance.


        Nature hid the time, hid the sun, hid the daylight from the 
crying face of the earth.  There was only this intolerable blue, this 
captive grey, hanging everywhere, battling him in his efforts to press 
on.  But he would not stop.  Not until he had her once again smiling 
on him, laid warm against him, never to be harmed again.  It was his 
dream, his mission.  I love her. I will never stop.
        An owl fell from one branch to another, crackling the harsh bark 
and shaking the wet leaves.  Drops of diamond rain fell to moisten his 
head. The downpour had ceased.  Catlin's face still shone from 
beneath the covering of ferns and pine needles.  She was protected.  
But she would not speak to him. 
        And Conor no longer felt her with him.  He thought back, only
moments before, to that rush of cool dusk and the taste of the white 
wind breezing through his very core.  It had been her.  It had been 
Catlin.  And now she was gone.
        Gone.  The word disturbed him, made him suddenly 
uncomfortable on the horse's galloping back.  He shifted, bracing 
himself against the wind, anxious only to keep his mind occupied.  
If he would not think on it, it would not be.  He believed that.  
Conor repeated it to himself, over and over.  It would not be.  
        But it was.  He had only to turn to see her so statuesque in her
funeral bed, so still and yet so alive.  Could it be that Death mocked 
him, turned a brilliant grin to his weeping eyes, watched him suffer 
with a joking heart?  Could Death have a heart?  He thought yes, if it 
had had the pleasure of a moment with his love.  She was a star in the 
fog of confusion, the round light of the heavens to lead him home.  
She had always been that.
        The horse stopped abruptly beneath him.  The blonde prince 
was shaken from his reverie.  He could hear the anxiety in the 
creature's breath, smell the rancid sweat that was exuded like a blanket.  
There was fear here.  There was fear all around.
        His heart was still, his mind racing.  Conor turned around, his 
hips facing forward, his neck craned to the rear.  Catlin lay unmoving 
behind him, and the dry smells of the hot ground rose to envelop him.  
He lay his hand on the hilt of his sword, awkwardly swung over his 
left thigh, yet he did not draw.  He seemed to believe there was no 
need.  There was no sound. The animals of the forest watched him 
with sly eyes, black hearts.  The horse pranced in place, tripping 
back and forth on the hopeful leaves beneath, fallen while green 
from the trees, unwilling to let themselves go. Crushing them.
        A twig snapped to his right.  He squinted his eyes, but the robe of
mist that hung like a cloud web from the trees blocked his view.  Conor
heard the branches parting, another stick snapping viciously underfoot.  
The prince threw himself off of the horse, his hand withdrawing his 
sword before his booted feet touched the ground.  There was the 
sickening echo of man on wet underbrush, a grasping feel that churned 
in his stomach.  
        He moved back to stand by Catlin's body.  Even in death, he 
would protect her.  Nothing was to happen to her.  Not now. He had 
come too far.
        A spitting rain began as he stood, vulnerable.  He swung his 
sword to and fro, carving a wicked silhouette in the thick air.  His 
brow was wet, either from the rain or his own perspiration. The 
stench of that fear tickled his ribs.  He would not be a victim.  Could 
not be a victim.  He'd never allow that for himself.
        A man, dressed in simple brown robes, emerged from the 
overhang of the mist.  He carried only a reed basked over his left 
forearm, a thick hood creating an elegant square of shadow to hide his 
features.  Roman?  Conor stood in readiness.
        The man lowered the basked to the ground, using his free hand to
pull back the hood.  The priest.  The priest had come.
        "Please, please, put down your weapon.  I mean you no harm.  I 
mean you no harm..."  
        As he repeated himself, the priest raised his arms in a gesture of
innocence, holding himself prostrate before the biting teeth of the 
sword. He stood, unafraid, seemingly ready to accept whatever 
irrationality claimed the wet, unknown young man that stood before 
him.  None did.
        The prince flung his sword to the ground, crossing the few steps 
to the stitched outline of the trees.  He lay himself on his knees 
before the priest.  This was his hope.  His fear.  God, help us.
        "Please, you have to help me.  You have to help her."
        Conor closed his eyes, bowing his face to the ground.  Rain washed
over him with an unprecedented gentleness.  He felt cleansed, refreshed.
His exhaustion dripped off of him like a snakeskin, and he grabbed the
priest's hands and gathered them over the top of his own head.  
        "Please.  Help me."
        The priest withdrew his hands from the boy's firmly unyielding
grasp.  He placed his right palm on the back of Conor's head, and the
pressure of that chaste, spiritual flesh was welcoming.  
        "What has happened, child?  Stand, tell me."
        An eager smile, a calm smile, spread to the east and west of the
priest's face.  Conor was so happy. He believed in this man. He believed
this was the end of the sad road he had traveled for so long.
        "The Romans. They kidnapped her, and they whipped her, and I
couldn't stop them.  I couldn't stop them."
        The pain of his own inaction claimed him once more, when he had
convinced himself he had long ago sloughed off that self-pity, that 
weeping. His face became a torrential waterfall, his guilt clear as it stung 
the pale prairies of his cheeks.
        "Who, child?  They've done this to who?"
        The priest kept his hands locked in his own.  Conor pulled free one
dirt-ridden palm, and pointed in the direction of the litter.  
        "There.  Catlin."
        At her name, the priest's eyes lengthened, a pale green that lit
with the fire of a deep ocean.  
        "My God.  Catlin?"
        The Lord's disciple, he crossed himself, then stepped quickly 
across the distance to the fallen woman.  Her eyes.  How bruised they 
seemed.  Her cheeks, how severely angular, how pale.  The priest knelt 
by her, pulling to his mouth the roughly carved crucifix and kissing it, 
one hand on the woman's forehead, his own eyes closed in prayer.
        Conor watched him, not understanding.  He ran to the man, knelt 
once more by his side.  He put his hands on the man's shoulders.
        "Tell me you can bring her back, Father.  Tell me this is not the
end for her."
        The priest looked at Conor with drooping eyes.  Tears welled in 
his rims, and suddenly a cinnamon pain trickled in the whiteness of 
his eyelids.
        "Child, I don't..."
        Conor shook him, seeing only the heat of his own anger.  No.  Do 
not say that to me.
        "NO!  I won't let you tell me this is it. I won't let you say you
can't help.  She was a good woman.  She was pure, and virtuous, and if
anyone deserves your aid, it was her.  She was always willing to 
sacrifice her life for mine, for anyone's, ready to sacrifice for her beliefs, 
for this God you bow before.  Don't you give up on me before you try."
        "Child, why this woman?  Should I believe God didn't call her back
to be with Him?  Who am I to decide in his stead?  I don't have that sort 
of power."
        "I LOVED her!  Can't you see that?  I love her still.  I can't live
this life without her.  Surely your God can see.  Surely your God can
understand..."
The prince sank to the ground, his elbows finding well-formed niches 
in the soft earth underneath.  He weeped.  He felt his heart ripping in 
twain within his breast, falling to the wayside.  He loved her, and it 
had destroyed her.  It destroyed him now.  Don't tell me you won't 
help me. Don't tell me I have to let her go...
        A picture, Catlin's face, smiling in the hush of morning, feathers
of sunlight bouncing off of a wet rock to touch her face, to illuminate 
her wide grin.  She had smiled at him so often.  He had not touched 
her face in love enough in life.  She could never feel how strongly he 
wanted to know her, to touch her heart, to keep her protected and 
safe.  That was all he could ever have desired, in the moments of such 
a smile.  Don't tell me I have to let her go...
        The priest felt tears of his own spill over the smoothly-curved
precipice of his eyes.  
        "Child, child...  Please, stand."
        Conor looked with wonder at the priest's face, through the fortress
of his tears.  
        "Please, stand."

        She wiped her smile over the sky and left him, galloping so 
fiercely through the hungry underbrush.  He would be alright.  She 
kissed him with her eyes, willing the wind to love him with the 
fierceness she knew.  It was all she could desire anymore.  She didn't 
know if her own hands would ever know the exotic tastes of his flesh 
ever again.  She'd had so little time to be his.  She'd had so little time to 
live by his side, buoyed up by that auburn happiness that had sustained 
her through her final moments.  He loved me.  He loves me still.
        She turned her back to him, amazed by the watery smell of the air,
the absolute difference in her face, her arms.  She had become a
heart-filled nothing.  And she danced on the wind, pouring herself 
forward into the forest where Conor had not yet ventured.  She left him 
behind.  I know he'll follow.  I dare, and he will come.
        The Tower bloomed peacefully on the backdrop of the trees, the
virgin green of the forest wanting her to live.  She wished she could
answer.  But she had learned that her voice was too quiet to bear itself
along.  She would have to be silent, to be part of the roar Conor had 
spoken of so often, that power that gave him his strength.  Give me 
strength.  Give me what I cannot find on my own.  
        She tickled the edges of the hollowed-out windows as she entered 
the priest's sanctuary at the height of the black tower.  There was no 
one.  The candles were snuffed, the wicks twisted and tortured in their 
unappealing darkness.  There was no life, no light, no beacon to her in 
this tormented day.  The scrolls of the disciples were stacked so 
painstakingly to the left and right of the wooden podium that stood by 
the fireplace in the center of the room.  Dead logs lay crying within, 
staring at her with a vitality that had been whipped into submission.  
The priest was gone.  
        She felt herself beginning to sink.  She could no longer feel it,
that power of her God that had so recently imbued this room, this 
place, with a peace undetectable outside.  Outside.  That's what she 
was now, set apart from all this life, the breath, the aroma of a dawning 
morning.  It was not hers any longer.  And she thought of how she had 
never appreciated that while alive.  How she longed for a glimpse of her 
love's face, eyes poring over her own, finding their own depths within.  
But she could not hope for that.
        She sank to the ground, spreading herself thinly over the cracks in
the mortar.  God, help me.  Help him.  I cannot be this...thing.  I am 
meant to be with him.  
        She turned her eyes heavenward, gasping for a response, a prayer
heard.  I would be with you were it not for him.  I would be at your side.
But you have left me.  You have abandoned me to this cruel wind, and I
cannot breathe.  I am not alive when he is apart from me.  His tears are 
my agony, and his heartbeat the timing of my own.  Please, please, send 
him love, send him peace.  Help him to help me.  He knows I am here. 
And he knows he is powerless.  Please, God....
        The Lord's name unwritten across her thoughts carried itself with
feather-like mobility out of the window, and through the thick clouds, 
to the budding sun that hung like a naughty child in the sky.  The orange 
globe smiled.  

        Fergus kept one hand on the horse's reins, the other held in front
of his face to drive off the downhanging branches.  Weighted with
purple-specked water, they threatened to stop him.  And nothing 
could stop him.  
        He turned his thoughts so frequently to Tully.  How he had cared 
for him.  There had been few men Fergus had admitted into his heart 
throughout the years.  His mentors, his father, all had told him that 
warriors never felt.  They couldn't afford to, or their own love would 
destroy them, as they watched their friends perish at the enemies' 
hands.  It had been true. There had been men, men he had looked on as 
brothers without ever voicing his emotions, that had been slain cruelly 
and quickly on brown battlefields in his memory.  He regretted he had 
never spoken to them what they'd meant. He had promised himself it 
would not affect him, any further than the sun setting on his day of loss.  
But now, years later, he remembered every detail of their dying faces, 
spattered with cloud outlines of blood, mouths agape, souls coloring 
the sky a quick blue as they escaped.  Escape.  But they had left him 
behind, to grieve so silently.  
        And Conor.  The boy had never before known loss, not until the 
past few months.  His family, his love, and now these two fallen 
crusaders, Tully and Catlin.  Fergus had not known Conor loved Catlin.  
He never would have ventured such a thought.  Why, he asked himself.  
Because of what he had been taught.  Instilled with the belief that men 
don't love when they must defend what is precious.  But that was the 
greatest paradox of his existence.  He kept himself in this bland cycle 
of loving and agreeing not to love.  And he hated himself for it.
        Now the sweet woman was gone.  Lost to them.  He knew Conor 
would never be the same.  Fergus admitted he did not believe.  He 
couldn't bring himself to believe.  Why would Death spare her, and 
spare no other?  He had known Death throughout his life as black, 
unforgiving.  He had never returned the friendly spirits he had reaped, 
and he had no reason to.  We all must die.  But Conor could not accept 
that.  Catlin had been the best woman he'd ever known.  Passionate, 
pure, forgiving.  She had triumphed over the hatred of the Romans, their 
ill treatment of her, the dirty men and soiled intentions that had made 
her their victim time and time again.  She had triumphed, and emerged all 
the more beautiful for her trials.
        Conor had loved.  He had become the weakest sort of man.  Fergus
pitied him for that, for letting his heart reign supreme over his body, his
mind.  But he also envied him that.  The champion knew what it was to 
love. He had loved his wife, and he loved his daughter now.  
        He thought of Molly.  Her pale face, her red lips.  He counted
himself lucky for having found her.  Or perhaps she had found him. Who 
kept count of the blessings of unpredictable Fate?  He only thanked his 
stars that she had come his  way.
        Then he imagined her laid low, laid behind him as Tully lay now.
No.  That was why he had always been afraid to love.  He had been 
afraid to lose.  But that was over now.  He had seen the sweetness of 
love.  He had known the pleasure of a warm story and a friendly fire, 
and the comfort of friends to surround him.  He had known Conor's 
father, had known his brother.  They had been good men.  And Conor 
did not concede defeat now because of their example.  He was a strong 
boy.  And would continue to be strong, with or without her.  Fergus 
would not discount the miraculous powers of Fate.  He would only be 
skeptical until the lad returned to tell him.  It would work, or it 
wouldn't.  But he would be there.  All the followers of the Sanctuary 
would be there.
        He saw the familiar patches of forest approaching.  Fergus turned 
to make sure Tully's body was secure, and then took the hidden turns 
to enter the hideaway.  He could hear the buzz of murmured 
conversation as he first entered.  They were quiet, respectful, as his 
horse clopped through the archway into the Sanctuary.  Respectful.  
Their faces looked on him with hushed dignity as he dismounted and 
stood facing them.  The hooded cheeks, the sinning eyes, the mouths 
that spoke of a fury at their oppression.  The Romans had once again 
stolen from them.  All eyes turned to Tully, stiff and fallen, as Fergus 
turned to the water-jeweled litter.  They all had loved.
        
        Conor stood, a shaft of morning light piercing his eyes.  The
reflection of amber pain was heartstopping, and the priest was taken 
aback, a dazzling halo of the hidden sunshine enough to illuminate 
the boy before him.  The prince's heart was dancing, his hopes 
tiptoeing around the fast running blood.  The priest's hood was wet, 
hanging lifelessly against his back.  The men were in such stark 
contrast, each crying out for help from the other.  The priest was 
afraid to tell the young man he could do nothing. The priest was 
afraid to doubt himself.  The priest was afraid to doubt his
God.  Was there a reason?
        "My son, I need..."
        Conor raised his hand, simultaneously lowering his face.  His 
cheeks bore witness to the dense underbrush that spoke heatedly 
with his booted feet.  
        "No.  Don't say you need.  Don't say you can't.  Only say you 
will help me.  I will do whatever it takes.  If my life hangs in the 
balance, it's offered.  If my mind must be sacrificed, I give you reign.  
If my love needs to be stronger, I can urge my heart.  Only say you 
can.  Please."
        He lowered his palm, the lines of his tattoos crinkling as his flesh
pruned in the damp air.  The priest was smiling, tears dotting his face.  
        "Pick her up.  Pick her up and carry her into my tower." 
        Conor didn't permit the smile that threatened to steal away his face
cross his lips.  He bit it back, shook his hair to release the pressure of
captured dew, and lifted the prostrate Catlin into his arms.  Such a
desperate pressure against his muscled shoulders, her limp fingers biting
with no grip into his flesh.  He kissed her cheek as the priest turned his
back, to lead the way into the tower's base. 
        With one foot in the archway, the man turned back to face Conor.
Catlin was free in his grip, the trees quiet storytellers behind him.  He
was afraid.  No, please don't reject me.  Tell me this is where it begins.
        "My son, I can.  I will.  Don't fear this.  It's what must happen.
The Lord will protect and keep her.  I can."
        The priest turned back to the orange-pale darkness of the tower.  He
placed a pious palm around the staff of a torch waiting in a symmetrical
wrought-iron holder, and led the way up.  
        Lagging behind, the young prince gazed on the grey sky, now 
wounded with yellow sunspots that refused the shelter of the clouds.  It 
was thelast sadness to be offered him before she would be his once more.  
Catlin, you're coming back to me.  You're coming back.
        A quick rush of air, a rose-scented breeze, swirled around him.  
Catlin.
        Conor looked down at her pale face, so tired, so abused.  He wanted
to touch the heart of her pain, the black-robed center of her memory that
caused her to remember their perpetrated cruelties, the vicious Romans 
who had worked her, forced her, hurt her.  And he would drive those 
memories out, with his love.  With the love he'd offer her every moment.  
Conor was only certain that she would be restored.  No longer the 
motionless smile that trailed him on a makeshift litter in a depressed 
forest.  No longer the thought of her dying in his arms.  No, he would 
remember her from her new life only, waking to his face, his eagerness.  
Like a small child, offered the sky for the first time.  Catlin had become 
his soft moon, his dark-hued sky.  She was his everything.  And she 
would be restored.
        The steps beneath him were the soft of field grass, the darkness no
longer threatening behind the priest's cloak.  The torch lit their way as
they wound upwards to the priest's room.  She would be saved. This 
God would give him back his love.  He would give him everything.
        "Lay her here, child."
        The priest had cleared a space beside the fire for Conor to lay
Catlin.  He put her down, careful to keep her hair beneath her neck, 
doing what he could to retain her beauty.  Her restoration was out of 
his hands at this point.  He was helpless, but satisfied to become a 
bystander.  Conor was happy.  It was so rare that he found the 
opportunity to admit that. He hadn't.  Not since Claire, not since his 
family.  But she had brought that back to him.
        The priest laid his torch into the fire, and Conor stood back,
watching sparks of the foreign fire reaching into the heart of the 
accepting flame.  It was beautiful, the purity of saving heat.  
        The priest leaned over, placed his fingers neatly on her cheeks.  
        "She's a good woman.  I pray we'll..."
        The man stopped.  He would not pray.  He would expect, but 
allow no room for any doubt.
        He searched his altar, withdrew a handful of dry scrolls, bits of
dust and aged parchment fluttering to the floor.  The priest was 
confused, the fire littering his face with an unholy blackness.  He looked 
at his hands, Conor trailing his movements with his open eyes.  Please.
        The priest laid the scrolls back on the altar.  His disappointment
was palpable.

        The young prince searched the man's eyes, hoping to see a God 
within that would promise him her eternity.  He saw only the priest 
doubting.  No. You swore this to me.  Don't hurt me now.
        "These are of no use to me."
        No use?  What did he mean?  Conor kneeled on the floor, his eyes
respectful, holding her hand.  She was so still.  I promise you, Catlin.  I
promise you that I won't give up.
        He turned his head back to the priest.  The man had his back turned
to him, facing the altar, the blue and scratched yellow of the fire.  His
robes absorbed the shadows and spat out a long speech of 
disappointment, of faith rejected.  
        "I can't call up God with this paper.  It's not Him.  I need you, 
son."
        Stray bits of thatched hair fell across his forehead as he watched
the priest turn back to face him, the sounds of the approaching night
outside the window increasingly more insistent, more frequent.  
        "You need me?"
        His accent pulled the words out of their statuesque English,
distorted them into needy Celtic pleas.  
        "Yes.  She needs you.  I beg you, my child, if you want this, if you
want her, you'll have to help me.  You'll need to pray here, by my side."
        This last sentence was spoken as a query, asking the boy if he was
ready to accept an unfamiliar Christian yoke.  Conor was unsure.  He 
loved her.  Could he sacrifice what he had learned all his life, his gods, his
father, to win back from an unseen lord the bounty of this pale face 
beneath him?  Would it be forever?  
        Conor stood, his leather tunic suddenly dry before the heat of the
fire.  He felt a cold sweat break out on his shoulders, his forehead.  He
needed someone to tell him what to do.  There had always been a 
commander, a leader, someone with a greater purpose than himself, 
someone for him to follow blindly.  He was eager for that blindness once 
more.  Galen, his father, even Fergus, someone to offer him that urging 
advice.  Fighting the Romans was simple.  See, and attack.  But this.  
This was an entirely different form of battle.  It was one against his own 
heart, the half that beat with the pride of his abandoned island, his 
invaded land, and the half that tasted the sweetness of Catlin's lips on 
his own, and touched his mind with the most urgent pleas for her return.  
He didn't understand whether he was meant to listen to the one, or the 
other.  His Celtic deities, or this Christian God.
        He felt a cool knuckle of the breeze wipe across his cheek.  Catlin.
Conor looked down, and for the slightest moment, he could have sworn 
he saw her eyelids flutter, her cheeks turn in on themselves with a need 
for cold breath.  She was there.  His decision was made.
        "I'll do what you need of me.  I'll do anything."
        His eyes were eager, his chest rising and falling with his purpose.
The priest leaned back, his hips poking forward through the dark 
brown robe. He was satisfied.  This was no conversion, no success for 
God.  It was bred out of necessity.  It was bred out of love.  Perhaps 
there was no better conversion.  Perhaps there was no better symbol 
of love.
        The priest laid his scrolls to the wayside, bits of dust trailing to
the floor.  The words of God, rendered useless in an effort to call Him 
into action.  It was difficult, believing in a lord whose documents were 
too weak to restore, but whose powers could summon life out of the 
jaws of death. Conor would believe.  He had to.  She needed it of him.
        The priest pulled out a bowl out of the darkness beside the
fireplace, dropping a melange of black herbs into the fire, creating a
toothy maw of purple and green flames.  He laid the bowl back down, 
held his hands together, pointed by his silently moving mouth, and 
began a prayer.  
        Conor felt useless, his meager talents in Christianity too feeble to
offer any aid.  He had paid so little attention to that facet of Catlin's
life.  Her ended life.  He swore he would never let his attention waver
again, if only this God would give her back to him.
        The hooded priest, grinning with some special knowledge, turned to
the boy, who had once again taken to kneeling.  He felt his offer of
reverence was sufficient, to make up for the lack of prayer or 
subservience he felt he needed.  The man put two fingers under 
Conor's chin, lifting the blond prince's face heavenward.
        "Stand with me, my child.  Stand here, beside me."
        Conor stood, feeling only an infant in a sea of maturity.  He 
heard the priest begin to pray.  A moment of piety took him. It 
was love.

        The words were foreign, but meager.  The priest's eyes were closed,
his lips speaking a Christian tongue, a language that something deep 
within Conor seemed to remember.  Though from where he did not 
know.  A smell of crisp potpourri filled the air, the cheekbones of the 
fire spitting out a perfect line of boned aromas.  The scents of a piety 
he would have to learn. For her.
        "Son, repeat after me."
        Conor looked up, brushing away some wisps of hair that were
haphazardly caressing his forehead, not thinking.  He remembered to 
keep his hand in that of the priest, and felt the callouses on the older 
man's palm biting into his own knuckles.  Age brought wisdom.  And 
this wisdom brought God.  Where did you come from, that you ended 
up here alone, with your Lord only as a companion?  What pain did 
you need to escape?
        The prince dropped his indifference, his apathy about the
Christians, and let his heart speak through his lips, let the love he felt
for his fallen woman speak his truth through prayer.  
        "On your knees, my son.  Believe what you're saying.  You have to
believe."
        The priest continued to speak the prayer, a circular pattern of
desperation that Conor recognized was touching head to tail, repeating 
over and over.  He didn't understand what he said, didn't understand 
what he was promising this God.  He closed his eyes, felt the orange 
of the fire behind his eyelids, the tunic burning against his back, the 
breath of his Celtic father on his left shoulder, Catlin's weak whispers 
to his right.  He followed them all, the burning prayer, the determination 
to remain faithful to Derek's memory, his steadfast promise to do what 
he must for his love. He was ripped in countless directions.  Help me.  
Someone, help me.
        Though he did not open his eyes, Conor felt the priest release his
hand, lay it down by the boy's side.  The prince's face was turned up, 
his chin angled to Catlin's body, his chest heaving in and out, his breath
refilling even as he continued to speak the words.  Words.  Only words.
What can they do for you, Cat?  What can they do for any of us?
        The priest watched on in admiring reverence.  He had no intentions
to convert the boy.  He trusted only that God would understand this 
break from tradition, this turning from the island's ancestry to a foreign 
power, to an imported belief.  Jesus had not saved him, but he could 
now.  The priest had given him the words, had given him the belief.  
The man prayed within himself with much more personal demands.  
Help him.  She is a loyal, faithful woman.  She didn't deserve this.  
Help him.
        Conor began to feel...something, an odd trembling in his
extremities, the feeling of blood rushing through his veins with before
unseen speed.  Even his hair felt alive, turning like forbidden serpents
across his scalp.  His fingers felt moved like those of a marionnette, his
eyes rolling across some prairie behind his eyelids, of prisms shattering
the darkness that had shrouded him since she had breathed her last.  It 
was consuming him.
        The priest looked on, his mouth following his eyes, both widening 
as they saw a miracle working itself on the floor of the room.  The father 
kept his hands back against the wall, welcoming, and yet somehow afraid, 
of the power dancing through the dank stones beneath them.  A light was 
filling the room, originating over the dead woman's chest.  Rays of 
sunshine suddenly shot themselves into the room, breaking through the 
night that had fallen. Everything was alive, breathing, pulsing with God, 
with love, with an answered prayer, a responded-to need.  Catlin...
        Conor opened his eyes, feeling the onrushing breeze circling over
his skin.  Oh, please.  Is this true?  His heart pumped twice for every
beat, and he felt her beside him.  He leaned over her, holding her arms,
rushing his fingers over her cheeks.  Catlin?  He spoke her name. 
        "Catlin?"
        The priest sank to his knees before God, for He was surely here,
commandeering this mission of restoration.  Both men's eyes turned to 
the window from whence the stripes of light were radiating.  They 
witnessed a form entering slowly through the carved out square between 
nature and sanctuary.  It was her.  The being had the whitest skin, the 
palest hair, flowing gently behind it, arms that were long and lazily 
brushing up and down in the wind.  Her feet were molded like arches of 
pure beauty.  She was beautiful.  She was restored. 
        Conor watched her smile grow, as she turned her face to him.  My
God.  It is you.  Catlin.
        The whiteness touched the cheek of the dead woman's form, and 
then laid itself over her.  It disappeared.  The light fell with the heaviness 
of a summer rain, and a busied silence filled the priest's room.  Tears wet 
the faces of both men.  Witnesses to a miracle.
        Conor leaned over Catlin, touching his lips to her own.  He spoke
her name, questioningly.  
        "Catlin?"

to be continued...
Alethea