This place reeks! If the stink doesn't take your breath away the noise will hammer you deaf in a very short time. Doran oozes smoothly into the thick bubbling stew and drags me with him when my senses halt my feet just inside the door. "Ya won't even smell it once ye've had a few!" he yells in my ear.

I don't want to be here. I think of Baine and how her nose would crinkle at this stench. She's with Winter Mist, I assure myself, probably somewhere clean and comfortable by now out of courtesy to the sidhe woman's pregnancy and for the sake of the stolen little prince.

Why am I here now and not with my raven-tressed lover in a warm feather bed? Because I dare not let Doran out of my sight.

He wants to sell the little prince to the Crom Cruach druids. This would ruin the plan that we all agreed on (more or less) to hold him for a rich ransom from the Niafer. When I accidentally discovered Doran's intentions I responded in such a way that he would be unsure of my loyalties. I might even be a secret worshipper of Crom Cruach myself! I let him guess, thinking I'd string him along until I could think of how I could use this knowledge of his plan to my own advantage. I am a mercenary at heart after all and my allegiances change according to where the most benefit can be gained.

Doran knows little of my past except that I killed the druid Morann during the battle in the bog last summer. Everyone in the outlaw band knows it. Only Baine knows it was not a random slaying in the heat of the battle. Only she knows that I had lived in fear of him for years. Suddenly my past is catching up with me in a dangerous way. Doran informed me this morning, with a wicked grin, that the man I killed was a brother to the high chieftain of the Crom Cruach worshippers. If that secret is told to them, they will find me and take my life for Morann's.

While these thoughts torment me Doran worms his way to an empty place in the filthiest, noisiest corner of this rotten rat hole. In the feeble flickerings of greasy torches I can hardly make out the faces of the ones who sit around us. Doran's ragged yellow teeth flash at them from the shadows. He knows them?

With a shiver I recognize them more by their voices than by their looks. He is meeting again with the men of Crom Cruach! A reeking, raucous alehouse would at first seem an unlikely place to discuss the bloody sacrifice of a royal baby. On second thought, it is the perfect spot. No one can hear the conversation and if they do they probably don't care anyway.

I put my head down and sink my nose into the drinking bowl that a dancing, barely clad servant girl sets before me. Odd that she dances when there is no music. Then I realize she's hopping around to avoid the grasping, grimey hands that constantly grope for her wherever she goes. Whatever's in the bowl smells not much better than the combination of unwashed bodies, rotting wood, and the vomit, urine, and whatever else lurks in the sogginess underfoot. Doran tosses his drink back in one gulp. I do the same, to avoid tasting it. It burns like fire in my throat and hits my belly like a war hammer. The room glows bright and cheery red and immediately gets even darker than it was before.

Gold gleams in the darkness. There is some bartering going on among Doran and his co-horts. There's no need for any of them to shout to be heard because they are talking in finger-signs that I don't understand. Doran could be selling me off to them for all I know. My heart is pounding so hard it feels like its trying to punch a hole in my chest. To calm myself, I throw back another bowl of the tepid, greenish brew and wipe the bitter foam from my lips.

The scream of a badly played whistle shrieks out above all the noise. Someone starts banging on a drum. A chanting sort of song breaks out in a howling chorus. The serving girl leaps and hops through the madness to bring us still more to drink. I toss mine back and wait for it to kick me again, as before. Why not? I am probably as good as dead right now.

It kicks me straight up into the air. Baine's sword is in my hand. I am dancing on the table. A circle of screaming drunkards forms at my feet. The drum has become my heart and the whistle my voice. I am the music. I whirl the sword over my head and let out the battle cry that is burning in my throat. Wings sprout from my arms and I fly around the room like a crazed bird trying to find the sky. I pick up a train of followers who chase me round and round until at last I find the door.

My feet leave the ground. I spin in the air. There's a splash and I'm drowning in an ocean of slime. I lift my head and throw up a flood of putrid mud before slipping back under the scummy muck. Something pokes me and I cringe. My own weapons are turning against me as I twist and turn to escape the mucous tides.

After a long struggle I find my feet again and stand at the edge of the pond dripping putrid ooze. Through a layer of greenish brown goo I think I see Sean the archer sauntering away down the road. He must be going to Winter Mist. Where there's Winter Mist, I figure there's Baine. I stumble after him oblivious to the stares that cling to me as I go. What was in that bowl I drank? That is my first thought. My second thought is that Doran must die.