"No!" She pulled me closer to her, hissing with urgency. "It was one of your dreams, Cay, and I know about your dreams. Now think hard, before the veil closes. Did you see anything else? Was Rufio alive?"
I resisted asking her how she came to know about my dreams, drawing comfort instead from the way she evidently had no doubt of my abilities, and forced myself to concentrate on the image that had brought me shouting from my sleep. Closing my eyes, I sought to breathe deeply and evenly, emptying my mind of everything that might distract me. Tress seemed to be aware of what I was doing and remained silent, looking down on me, braced on one elbow. Somehow, it seemed as though a mist swirled in my mind, and then it began to settle and the vision came back to me, hazy and indistinct, but real and discernible,
"He's masked in blood, unmoving ... no telling whether he's alive or dead ... Helmet's missing ... Blood everywhere—on the grass, on the stones ... He's lodged between two trees ... moss on the trunks, and blood on the moss. I can see where his fingers have clawed the moss from the bark ... " As I described it, the image shifted, as though my eyes had adjusted, and I saw something else, half-hidden in the shadows among the surrounding trees. My mind rebelled in disbelief, and the scene faded back into mist, leaving me staring wide-eyed at the dark ceiling. I held my breath for a long time, struggling with my thoughts, and then expelled the air from my lungs, allowing myself to relax. "That's all. It's gone. That's all I saw."
"Hmm ... " She released me and swung away, out of the bed. I watched her naked form as she moved across to the door into my main room. "Come, Cay, I'll rekindle the fire. Get dressed, and hurry."
"What? Why? What good will it do to sit up by the fire? We don't know where he is, Tress."
"We might. Or we will. Put on your clothes."
I rolled out of bed and went to the bowl on the night- stand, where I threw cold water on my face before beginning to dress myself, fumbling in the darkness for the clothes I had shed with abandon when I realized that Tress would not leave that night. By the time I had shrugged into them and crossed into the other room, Tress had candles lit and the fire was alive again, flames licking hungrily at the new fuel she had piled on the freshly stirred coals.
She herself was still naked, crouched over the fire with her arms out to the heat. I crossed directly to her side and caressed the smooth, warm bareness of her, loving the firm softness beneath my hands. There was no thought of such matters in Tress's head, however, and she pushed me away, motioning me towards one of the two chairs flanking the fire as she ran lightly back into the bedchamber and emerged moments later wrapping a woollen blanket about her. She sat then in the chair opposite me and stared at me, wide-eyed and expectant.
"What?" I asked her. "What is it? You obviously expect me to say something significant." She made no reply. "Well, I have nothing to say, that I'm aware of. You'll have to prompt me."
"Rufio. We know where he is."
"No, we do not, Tress. It was dream, and I saw no signposts."
"Of course you did, you silly man. We don't know exactly where he is, that's true enough, but we know more than we did earlier today."
"How so?"
"Because you saw him lying in a hollow, in a clearing on a hillside. Is that not so? And he was lodged against two trees, with moss on their trunks, that he had scraped away."
"So?"
"Ach! Cay, that tells us much, or it tells me much. There was a rock face by him, too. That tells us more."
"I don't follow you, Tress."
She shook her head sharply, to silence me.
"He was lodged between two trees, you said, with a rock face behind him. How did you know he was on a hillside? And how was he positioned between these trees?"
I blinked, thinking back. "The ground sloped down, sharply. He was on his back, his head hanging backward, down the hill. The trees were close together, almost touching—perhaps a fork, two trunks of the same tree. His spine was arched over them. He had tried to push himself outward. That's when he clawed at the moss."
"So the moss was towards his head."
"Yes."
"And the rock face you saw. Where was it? You said behind him, but was it to his right or left?"
Again I sought the memory of my vision. "On his left, running parallel to where he lay."
"Aha! You looked in the wrong places."
I looked at her with a measure of scorn. "That makes as much sense as my dream."
"I know it does, even though you do not. Think about it, Cay! Moss grows mainly on the northern side of trees— every child learns that on first entering the woods—and it grows thickest on the very northern side. You saw Rufio lying with his feet pointing south between two northern- facing trees, his head hanging downhill to the north, with a cliff face on his left, his east side, facing west. That means he's on the hillside, below the pass, where you didn't search, low down, in the river valley."
"How do you know he is low down?" I was convinced she was right.
"Because the moss was thick on the tree trunks. There's no thick moss on the trees on the high slopes."
I nodded, acknowledging my own short-sightedness, then shrugged.
"What," she asked immediately. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing, Tress, nothing really. I admire the way you make sense of my vision, but it was only a dream, and it was incomplete."
"How incomplete? I don't understand."
"I didn't tell you all of it, and the part I withheld makes nonsense of die whole thing."
She sat up straight, the blanket falling away from her shoulders, waiting for me to continue.
"I saw a man called Peter Ironhair just beyond the clearing, watching me."
"Peter Ironhair?" She was frowning. "You mean the ironsmith who tried to kill Arthur in Camulod, and then ran off to Cambria and thence to Cornwall?"
I sat staring at her. "You know," I said, eventually, "I find myself amazed by how much you know of things I've never told you."
"Shelagh has told me everything about you. I know everything there is to know." She stood up and crossed to where I sat, then settled into my lap, placing her right arm around my shoulders and wriggling until she was comfortable. The fire in the brazier snapped and spat sparks onto the stone flagging of the fireplace. When she was settled, she pulled my head down towards her breast and spoke into my ear.
"You know, Caius Merlyn Britannicus—" She paused, then leaned forward, blowing the warmth of her breath against my ear. "You know I love you, do you not?" She waited for an answer and I nodded, mutely. "Well," she continued, "know this, too. I believe in you, and in your gifts, which you think are some kind of curse. I believe that you have the gift of prophecy. What was it Master Lucanus called it? Foreknowledge. Is that the word?" She waited for an answer, and I nodded, again. "Well then, I believe in your power of foreknowledge, and I believe you have seen Rufio, lying hurt, perhaps dead—the gods forbid—in a place unsearched till now. Tomorrow, therefore, you must go down into the valley and along the cliffs until you reach the downfall of the fell behind us here, to the east."
"And what if he's not there? Not only will I appear to be a fool, but I might well have destroyed any chance of finding the real place where he is lying, at least in time to save his life."
"He will be there." She took my right hand in her left and slipped it between the folds of her blanket to lie between her breasts. "You feel that? My heart beating? My knowledge that you're right is as sure as the beating of my heart." She released my hand, but left it where it was, to behave as it would while she continued talking.
"As for the face of Master Ironhair, that is as far beyond me as it is beyond you. Shelagh told me you sometimes fail to understand all that you see. Is that true?"