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placed on Myrddin so that he could not share his very strange adventure with anyone, even Lugaid, whom of all the clan he thought might understand. But there was no barrier on his thoughts or memories. And sometimes he was so excited by what he had learned from the mirror that back at the clan house he went about in a kind of daze.
    Lugaid, who might have suspected a little, was at thattime absent, acting as messenger between Nyren and certain other chiefs and petty kings, trying to hammer into being an alliance which would hold, even among hereditary enemies, until after this season’s raids on the Saxon encroachers. For Ambrosius did not often have the forces to take the field boldly against the Winged Hats and Vortigen’s traitorous followers; he had, rather, to employ other means of whittling down their strength, mainly swift punitive raids across the unrecognized border lands.
    Thus Myrddin was enabled, during the years which followed, to slip away to the cave often and there lose himself for long hours with the mirror. He did not at first grasp much of what he was shown. He was too young, too limited in experience. But the mirror’s succession of scenes, while not repetitious in detail, did repeat over and over certain facts until they became as much a part of the boy’s memory as incidents of his daily life had always been.
    Myrddin tentatively began to put into practice what he learned. He discovered that the information imparted through and by the mirror had practical use. And young as he was, for short times he was able to influence the boys nearly old enough to take weapons in the war bands. He learned early that apparently no one else could see the crevice in the mountainside through which he was able to enter the place of the mirror, though he had no knowledge of distorters in action.
    In addition to the fact that he could thus vanish without a trace, he could also implant in the minds of any companions he might have on the hillside during hunts, or herding, the idea that he had been with them throughout the day, even though he had been spending those same hours in the chamber of the mirror.
    As eager as he might have been to use this talent for his own end, however, there had been planted with the knowledge of how to use it a kind of safeguard blockage which, when he tried twice to make Julia see what was not there, prevented him from achieving his goal. Thus he learned that his new weapon-tool was not to be used for any light purpose, but mainly to cover his time of schooling.
    News trickled in very slowly to the mountain fastness. Lugaid did not return. They learned instead that he had gone on a journey of even greater length to some mysterious Place of Power, inspired by some desire of his own.And Myrddin took this ill, for he had hoped to share with the Druid some of the wonder of his own discoveries, feeling that he could only communicate them to the one man of Nyren’s people who already held some bits and pieces of the ancient knowledge.
    Shortly after the message concerning Lugaid, a deeper and more tragic word came with a handful of broken and beaten men, some only keeping in the saddles of their wiry mountain-bred ponies by strong will or their comrades’ ropes. For Nyren’s force had met with betrayal during a foray and their chieftain and more than half of their people were cut down. The harried survivors made their way home through the heavy mists and torrential rains of late autumn, and they brought such ill tidings with them that all in the clan house cowered, waiting for the blow to strike them down.
    When there was no swift pursuit they brightened a little, but the house was a place of mourning and dread. Gwyn the One-Handed, younger brother of Nyren, took command of the house, since Nyren had left no son. Gwyn could not truly be named chief because of his maiming, though he had a clever arrangement of bronze which he could strap to his left wrist to serve him as a mighty war club.
    Had