Rhody pushed aside the hide flap, feeling the dagger in her boot pressing against her leg like a foul, morbid promise, and was surprised to see the young soldier standing before her, his brown face streaked with tears, a new wild kind of joy piercing his dark slate colored eyes. Behind him was an old man and a young girl, their arms about each other.

"Young maiden..." he stammered, cheeks burning red, "I was wrong to conform to something which I should have been defying all along," Lorn managed to get out. He bowed his head. "I hope you will forgive me, but if that it asking too much..."

Rhody felt peace and love flood her heart. Yes, this was right. This she could understand, a new master she could serve. The Great One had come into her heart and had washed away all bitterness. She carefully pulled the dagger from her boot and threw it upon the ground before the young soldier.

"Will you not come in?" she asked him.

Lorn smiled and the peace in his heart was worth a million tears.

"Are you one of the Shaddai-Trusters?" asked Rhody of the old man once the four had settled themselves down for an early morning meal. Outside a fresh springy wind was rushing through the tree's leaves, making them whisper, and a celestial golden light was touching upon every ice-coated branch, making the Lands sparkle like a royal crown. Gabriel nodded. "That I am, young healer," he answered her. Rhody nervously wrung her hands, unsure of how to tell him what the Great One had supposedly said to her.

"I...I have heard something....you all need to hear," Rhody said, and suddenly the memory of that great kind voice inside her soul, speaking to HER, a simple healer, erased all fear. She threw back her head, black hair falling in smooth tangles about her elbows, green eyes bright and eager.

"The Redeemer is coming...and He is to be born of me."

Northumbrio stood in the midst of a dark wood. Black boiling mists arose all around him and the setting moonlight glowed down on his bare black shoulders, making him look like an eerie phantom. The huge man slowly raised his corded arms up to the black unholy heavens and muttered some ancient word. For the first few moments there was still silence, and then all of the sudden a slow creaking groan sounded all throughout the woods. A sharp white smile appeared on Northumbrio's dark wide face, his bight eyes glittered madly.

They were alive. They would serve him for this, the final straw, the last battle.

The trees before him slowly unwound themselves from their sleeping postures, the leaves shuddered and a slow hot wind blew on Northumbrio's face like living breath.

"Come," he said, his deep voice harsh with bloodlust, "come to me, and slay this uprising of Goodness."

"We hear and obey, master," said a sighing, wild voice, as if many voices had joined together in the words.

The Yule had awaken.

The wild winds were a swirling mixture of the sickening death-stench and a fresh kind of beauty that the Lands-people had known smelled since before Wenceslas the Second had been crowned. It tore with strong fingers at the long dark cloaks of the Fairy army and the simple rough homespun of the ramshackle Hinterlanders as they lined up for battle. Across the wide open field, dotted here and there with small white flowers soon to be trampled, the King's men from the woods and a ragtag bunch of enraged townsfolk shook their weapons and held them up to the twisted black and red sky. Evil had been abroad far too long; it was as if the clashing winds were a sign that it was coming to a climax.

The Fairies and men looked at each other, sharpening their swords upon their dull silver armor. Long had it been, time out of mind, when they had fought together side by side, as equals, instead of spilling one another's blood as rivals. Yet now, when they had to fight for the same cause, to push Evil back to its place, they praised fate (or the Great One, if they were of the Shaddai-Trust) for the chance to swing swords beside each other. The strange wind rippled about the scores of legs standing strong, staring across the muddy heath field, and through the long smooth hair of the Fairy warriors. The Shaddai-Trust stared straight into the eyes of the ones who had cast them out, but hatred refused to be kindled within the bright gaze. No, hate was not the answer, yet there came a time when battle was necessary. This, upon that day, was such a time.

Suddenly from the forests came a roaring growl that scattered the King's men to every side and deafened the side which claimed to fight for Goodness and truth and Life. The very ground trembled with the force of crushing footsteps and the hot poisoned wind sprang up and made the heathlands into a foul mushy mess that caused the Shaddai-Trust and the brave Fairy warriors, female archers as well as male sword-bearers, lose their footing and crumple into one another. There was confusion for several seconds as the sky was torn apart by a wicked clash of thunder and a spire of light arrowed down through the roiling reddish black clouds and touched upon the heathland...right at the feet of the Yule tree beasts.

Melchior unshackled Conan and shoved him to the ground, relishing his clenched breath as the burns across his palms sizzled and turned blackish. Yes indeed, that minstrel would never be able to make music with those hands again. The lute strings would break apart the wounds if he ever tried, and who would wish to cause himself further pain? Melchior sneered as Conan tried to rise to his towering height without the aid of his hands. Drawing back his fine sandaled feet the spindly wolfish advisor kicked the young minstrel hard in the side and paced around his collapsed figure.

"I do not have to tell you that I have complete power over your life now," Melchior snapped. He was surprised when the young man looked up, blinking through tears of excrutiating pain, and smiled. "My...life is in the hands...of the Great One," he gasped, "only my...body can be yours." Melchior gave a screech of rage at these words, for he knew them to be true. Even so, it maddened him that such a pivotal slave to Darkness had conformed and had resorted to the blatant, rebellious religion of the outcast Hinterlanders. His fist came quick and jabbing into Conan's face and Melchior smiled grimly when he saw the blood drip down the minstrel's face.

"Look where you Great One has brought you!" he barked, his voice made hoarse and rasping from the sulphuric air of the dungeon. "He has left you, boy, left you to cope with your wretched Life alone, in the darkness." Conan smeared the blood from his mouth and his eyes blazed in defiance to the words as Melchior grabbed him by the collar and pulled him from the dungeon. Taking a large string of keys from under the folds of his blue and gray robes, Melchior opened the dungeon door in the side of the heavy flagstone stronghold wall, and threw Conan out into the sharp wintry winds, slamming the door behind them.

"Then live it, boy; live your Life as an outcast who will never forget what a beautiful chance for easy servitude and lush comfort stood screaming his name over and over again into the perfumed breeze!" Melchior turned on his heel and left Conan standing outside the dungeon, his back stiff from the spread-eagle position on the hard table, his sensed whirling from all that had been said, and his hands bubbled with deep black scars. His fingertip, praise the Great One, was no longer marked with the dark flame shaped brand of Evil, but with the mangled wound of the outcasts, the steadfast Shaddai-Trusters, who would rather have their homes burnt and their bodies ravished than to recant their blazing, piercing, wildly sweet faith. To love, to live and not regret a single rebellion against what the soul knew deep down to be wrong...it was all worth it, all of the pain and the darkness and the taunting. Conan held his head high, the stinking winds slipping longing fingers through his thick curly hair, the astounded looks of Northumbrio's other followers boring into his back, all as he walked out the gate and into a ferocious blast of snow and death-stench, that sought somehow to hold him back from his decision. But no, Conan who would never again be able to play his precious lute again but who was blessed to carry it upon his back like a token of the false Life he had been offered, would never give up the Goodness he had found within the embrace of the Great One and the promise of the Redeemer, His Son.

"Let your grace fall upon the Lands soon, Lord," Conan breathed into the red black sky. It was then that the bolt of pure white fiery light ripped through the sky and touched down on the battlefield. Conan was in no battle; he was going home through the snow without his heavy black cloak nor the nail-studded boots to his dear little mother...and yet, he had indeed fought and won a kind of a battle, the battle against Evil to win and prevail!

Rhody and Lorn were promised to be married.

Gabriel and his little daughter, whom he called Rebekkah, had witness Lorn's tender promise that he was no longer of the King's men, but of the Trust, and he had vowed to protect Rhody from anyone who sought her harm. True enough, there had been an inward battle inside of Rhody's soul. Should she finally embrace that mysterious conversion that had taken the Lands by storm, and become of the Shaddai-Trust? Long had she fought whether or not she would be able to forgive the King of his wrongs. But the King was dead, and she felt a kind of an emptiness within her that tore at her heart. Wenceslas the Second would now never know the sweet peace, the awesome Goodness of the Great One. Convinced at that, Rhody, outcast and simple healer of the twin village-kingdoms, became of the Shaddai-Trust and told her companions of the wonderful promise the Great One Himself had made to her, that she would bear His Son, Shaddai. Now the joy bubbled up inside of her, spilling out in bell-like laughter and flooding her bright green eyes with all the intensity of the Great One's love for His Lands-people, flawed and confused and sometimes Evil though they were. He still loved them, He always would, and to doubt this would be a grave mistake. Rhody intended never to doubt peace and truth, and sweet beautiful Life again.

She and Lorn decided to move into the highlands. In her happiness, Rhody could finally accept that her dear brother Skerry had died defending what he knew to be true. Sometimes, to live a Life worthy of living was to give it up for the passion you pursued. There was nothing wrong or dishonorable in that. Rhody herself felt she could even forgive her dear brother's killer if it meant keeping the incredible joy that had invaded her soul.

She and Lorn packed up everything they had in the hollow tree house, after saying farewell to Gabriel and Rebekkah, who returned safely to the Hinterlands to live a long, peaceful and happy life.

Rhody was just pushing aside the thick hide flap for the last time, staring lovingly at the smoke-blackened walls of the wide tree room and the rich black earth underneath where her cot used to lay, when she heard the clink of sword sheaths and whirled around to face the bitter winds. There, borne between two Fairy men and trailed by a young boy with curly brown hair and big blue eyes, was her brother Skerry. His black hair hung limp in his weary eyes, he swayed upon his feet and blinked at Lorn when the young soldier appeared out of his home, but he was Rhody's brother and he was alive.

Rhody flew into her brother's arms and began sobbing tears of joy as she had never known. Skerry hardly noticed the blood still staining his entire back nor the pain that ripped up and down his spine as he wrapped his stiff arms around his younger sister and buried his nose in her smooth black tresses. The Fairies said not a word, but looked on for a moment or two and then disappeared into the turbulent winds as the sky cleared of its blackness and bloody trailing red, and the spear of light thrown down by the Great One, by His own hand, even, spread throughout all the Lands and brought a strange kind of peace and joy to the people as they had known long ago, and had all but forgotten.