Dantalion tells three things

“This had better be worth it!” Myrddin snapped. “I sleep in a dormitory, you know. I had to put the brothers to sleep.”

“Next time I shall simply visit you there,” Dantalion chuckled. “I have been meaning to pay another visit to your abbot.”

“That will not be necessary!”

The jinni tapped his chin thoughtfully with a dark finger. “No, but it would be agreeable.”

“What is this about?” Myrddin cried harshly.

Dantalion folded his arms across his broad chest and scowled at him. “There is no need for you to be discourteous with me. Surely you do not think you intimidate me.”

“Let us say I am getting impatient in my old age. What is it, Your Grace?” Myrddin repeated with a low bow and a cold sneer.

Dantalion smiled at him. The old man never seemed to notice he was being baited when he thought he was baiting.

“Three things,” the jinni said. “I am certain at least one of them will be worth your trip.”

“Begin.”

“The first is this: We have learned that the elf Lena is expecting a child. However, the Khir has taken her into his bed.”

“His wife is not dead!”

“But he cannot have her.” The jinni shrugged, and the old man’s face was briefly made monstrous by the crackling blue light of his wings. “No one has objected. And so it will be said that the child is his.”

“I do not care what is said.”

“But he took her almost at once. Therefore it might be.”

“She was two weeks together with the Scot!”

“I would have left them longer, to be certain. But we did not count on the wolves.”

“That is your error, and I expect you to remedy it. If the child is not the Scot’s, then you will make another.”

“That is the second thing,” Dantalion nodded. “There is a Scot woman who has been visiting the unnamed elf in his cave.”

The old man leaned closer and smiled wryly. “Visiting…?”

“We have no way of knowing. Lar’s elves can get no closer to the cave than that.”

“For how long?”

“At least one moon.”

“That means it was over Midsummer.” Myrddin rubbed his hands together in delight.

“That is no matter anyway. The male is an elf, but the female is a woman, and they are fertile every moon. The female is all that matters.”

“That is true…” Myrddin smiled.

“You are growing forgetful of such things in your old age,” Dantalion laughed.

“Watch her.”

“But if it is a boy child,” Dantalion mused, “what will it tell us? Is it because its father is an elf, or because its mother is a Scot?”

Myrddin frowned and stroked his hand down his beard. “Nothing, I suppose. It will only be of interest to us if it is a girl child. But you must get it before it is baptized!”

“I know that.”

“Oh, forgive me, Your Grace, for telling you something you already know!” Myrddin snarled. “I prefer to err by telling you too much than by telling you too little. The wolves, for example?”

Dantalion rolled his eyes. He would have liked to have stroked his hand down the old man’s beard himself… and finished the gesture by grabbing him by the throat and popping the insolent head off his body.

“I left it to the elf Lar,” he said, “to manage the elf Lena and the Scot Aengus. I did not specify how I wanted the affair handled.”

Myrddin stood on his toes and thrust his insolent head directly before the jinni’s. “And I did not specify how I wanted you to manage anything! I want to know how these men have had boy children with elves, and I do not care how you find out! You may get every female creature in the valley with child if you like! I only want to know why!”

“Understood.”

“Now!” Myrddin huffed. He dropped back onto his heels and brushed himself off as if he had been wrestling with the jinni. “What is the third thing?”

“Only a bit of information that might interest you personally.”

“Which is?”

“The Khir went to the lake again last full moon.”

“Why?”

“I can no more tell you that than I can tell you why he stopped going.”

“He was not abroad on the last new moon, either.”

“Perhaps he will be out on this.”

“Then so shall I be,” Myrddin murmured to himself.

“It will be another restful night for the brothers!” the jinni smiled. “And an opportunity for me to pay a visit to the abbot.”

“Don’t you dare!” Myrddin growled.

Dantalion threw back his head and laughed, and his dark face was briefly monstrous in the dancing blue light of his wings.