Young Fia had been slow to finally succumb to sleep. The conclave was long over yet still its vitality fought sleep’s pull until a full little belly of her mother’s milk and the steady rise and fall of a mother’s breast gentled her across the twilight sea into dreams.

Morrigan handed the sleeping child to her father, and watched as he settled against rough stone, the babe cradled in his lap. She’ll have his chin, she thought. And ears. This made her smile.

The first gurglings of boiling water brought her around to lift the pot from the coals and place it on a flat rock beside two stain darkened wooden cups. Adjusting her tunic over her breast, she reached into a small pouch hanging from a braided belt at her waist and brought forth a pinch of sweet smelling powder. Soon the tea’s steam filled their tiny cave with rosemary.

Still facing away, she placed her hands in her lap and took a deep breath. Releasing it, she shivered, just a tiny shudder, and found her eyes blurred with tears. Another breath, and another, and she felt her control returning.

Stirring the tea, she spoke in a quiet voice. “Those years gone, when I watched as the new religion took root all around, with that bloody damned Patrick whispering into the king’s ears and preaching the Christ on the cross, I saw the power behind faith, especially blind faith. But mixed in with it, at least amongst the chiefs and those who ruled, even to many of my brother druids, was a fair measure of calculation. To what advantage could this new religion be adopted? What gain secured? For the rest, there was only hope. Hope that their wretched lives could indeed be helped by this new faith. At least in the next life if not this one. Ha! Such a promise. Cruel, I thought. And clever.

“And so, here we are, our faith still blind, our hope nailed to a promise we barely understand.” She sighed and turned around to face Dael. “None can doubt your intent. I, more than any, believe. It’s just . . . just the blindness that’s so cruel. I want to believe. I do believe. But I’ve no understanding beyond witnessing the impossible things you’ve done. And those a mystery!”

Morrigan’s gaze held her husband’s with desperate passion while a tear slid down her cheek to catch in the tight crease of her lips. “I fear we’re all beset with such blindness. How are we to do this thing? How can even your powers save us from such cruelty?”

Dael’s eyes opened like two great orbs of infinite wonder. “I have it, Morrigan. I’ve traveled beyond Time, beyond all, to the very beginning and end. I know how to save us.”

“But how, my love?” Morrigan’s plea was a torn whisper in the quiet night. “How? How does coming to this world, killing this Drägorîsh, save our home?”

“I’ve all the Nine Disciplines of the Scroll of Dôrmingrísh, the Scroll of Time. With . . . with those powers we can undo what has been done.”

“Undo? How?”

“With Time, Morrigan, with Time.”

“Time? How can time help us?”

“I can master it.” His eyes held Morrigan’s in a febrile embrace, but one imbued with cold sanity for all its fervor. “There is a moment in Time where a High Shaman evokes the Ninth Discipline. With it he opens a . . . a gateway. A gateway into another realm, our realm. If I change, or destroy that moment, then what follows will have never been. Hordes of Krîll will never pour out of a rift in Time and rip our world apart. At least not in our reality.”

Morrigan blinked. “Our reality? Isn’t there but one true reality in which we all exist?”

“That’s just it, Morrigan. There are as many as there are possibilities. Right now,” he waved his thin arms around in a circle, “we live, we exist, in a time and a realm where all that we know, and much more, has come about as the result of a series of, well, of actions and reactions. More of them than there are stars in the heavens. They all move through Time, one causing the other which in turn causes something else to happen.

“A man and woman meet, fall in love, have children, who grow up to marry and so forth. The wind loosens an acorn, which falls to the ground, which is eaten by a boar, which gores a young hunter, who never meets a certain girl, who has another’s children. Do you see?”

Morrigan pursed her lips. “Yes, I think so. But they all happen here, in our realm of existence. And some have no possible connection to others, do they?”

“An interesting question that can never be answered completely. Imagine all of the . . . the events, the occurrences that went into my being born, growing up, and now sitting here with you. Now, imagine another disparate series of events occurring on the other side of our world, all of which over thousands of years led to the birth of Chogs Tsang, he who instructed me in the lam chung, the short path. Without him, I wouldn’t be here now. So who can say what is connected and what isn’t?

“But they still happen here, in our realm, in our time,” Morrigan said. “This is the reality in which they exist.”

“True.” Dael nodded. “But can we say that the only realm of existence is our own. That we just happen to live in the only place where time and chance have created a world? A heaven? People?

“What if for each turn of chance, there were a realm to encompass all the possibilities? A world where I am born, and a world where I’m not. A world where there is one moon, and another having two. And another whose night is lost with no moon at all.”

“Then it’s not too late,” she sighed and reached out to brush a damp strand of dark hair from a tiny brow. “The gods only know we’re in dire straits. But if you have a way to save us, Dael, then it’s not too late.”