had the right measurement of the feeling within the kin
house. He was indeed "son of-no man," but since the chief
acceptedўoutwardly at any rateўLugaid's assurance that
his daughter had been impregnated by a Sky Lord, the
boy was not openly shamed. Neither did he find any ready
acceptance among those of his own generation, however.
In the first place he was oddly slow to leam. The
women of the house looked on his backwardness as a fit-
18 Andre Norton
ting answer to the mystery of his conception. Nor was he
forward in walking either. Had it not been for the fierce
championship of Julia he might have been neglected, al-
lowed to fade away into early death. For within six
months of his birth Brigitta had been given in marriage to
a widowed clan leader old enough to have fathered her.
She left Nyren's fortress and her son behind.
She had made no protest over his separation for, from
the hour of his birth, after she had awakened from the
swoon into which she was always sure Lugaid had sent
her, she had had no feeling of tenderness toward the baby.
Rather the Druid appeared to have taken her place, with
Julia to supply those comforts of physical existence
Myrddin needed most at his age. And it was Julia who be-
came most fiercely maternal when comments about the
child's slowness were voiced aloud. It was to Lugaid that
Julia appealed when her own faith in Myrddin's intelli-
gence wavered.
"Leave him be." Lugaid had taken the child on his
knee, was locking eyes with eyes. "He lives by another
time, this one. You shall see. When he talks it will be
clearly and with purpose; when he walks it will be
straightaway walking, not crawling about after the manner
of the animals. His heritage is not ours, so we cannot
judge him by the actions of those wholly of this world."
Julia sat quiet for a "moment, glancing from Druid to
child and back again.
"I have thought sometimes," she confessed, "that the
tale you told was to save my young lady from shame. But
that is not so. What you say you believe. Why?"
Now he looked from the child to her. "Why, woman?
Because on the night he was conceived I felt the coming
of the Power which was to bring him into being. We have
