Come with me. We must talk." The woman, flagged Heidlyn to come with a fluid motion that belied her age. Heidlyn gathered her horse and led it along the road beside the Mother Druid who was moving hurriedly away from the hut. She pointed to a low spot in the plain where a caravan of dust covered men with banners on their wagons--white with a red cross--whipping in the breeze.

She spoke again to Heidlyn in a low voice drawing an unspoken connection to Corman and these strangers. "It is not yours to decide Corman's fate. His way will be his to determine and, though your intention is to straighten a crooked road, it will only turn him against you. It is his way to determine. The wayward horse must wander alone if he does not wish to be found." The
Mother Druid took her rough, weathered hand and gripped Heidlyn's shoulder. She looked deeply into Heidlyn's eyes while finishing the thought, "His way is with us, but not of us. Even if he seems lost to you, he is forever yours. He is forever ours."

Heidlyn didn't understand, but didn't expect to. The Mother Druid spoke to others as if they knew what they clearly did not. She did understand what she should do--she looked back at the Druid Mother, "He is my son. He may have my blood, but he has yet to earn my respect. I love him dearly, but if he does not change soon I will speak to him regardless of your confusing words. I will not have a son that can't find the road for his feet and wander through life as a stranger to his own family."

With that, she shrugged the Mother's grasp from her shoulder, spun on her heel and took to her horse. "I will watch, Mother, but soon I will act. Your words will not stop me a second time." Heidlyn jabbed the horse with her heels and sped off dusting the sky in her wake.
---
Shep of the Clovermen, was swaying with the rhythm of the wagon, while deep in thought. He has spent many a year in service of these "passive crusades" to bring these heathens into the fold. Maybe one or two would fully give over to the ways of Cuthbert and his Saints, but with so few, there wasn't enough to establish a self-sustaining parish. The Druids seemed to make sure that this never happened, but it was a mystery as to how they went about undermining it.

The Clovermen had often visited the great Chiefdoms in the past, but only now had they been given leave to start frequenting the outlying towns. Many of those from the mainland had thought that proselyting the heathens would only beget woe and misery. Their beliefs were so singular and contrary that they rarely changed their entire lifestyles. It was always belief in Cuthbert with a reliance on Dagmar for their strength, or Graava for their crops, or Moon who cared for their deceased and their ancient ancestors. Cuthbert ruled all these stations. It was baffling to think that you would have to answer to many gods to get things done. You could always supplicate to Cuthbert without knowing the Saints. It was hard to imagine any other way to do it.

This thankless appointment was wearing him thin. He needed to see something beneficial come from his actions, and soon. "Maybe this will be my last time in these barren lands," he mumbled to himself while his weathered face cracked a smile, "I could be home again." He could almost smell the grasses of his home wet with morning dew mingled with the salt breeze from the ocean blowing over his island. Right now, ever time he looked into a glass, he saw the grizzled countenance of one of those cursed female Druids. The younger ones were pleasing, but it didn't take long out in this harsh land to age into the grizzled old hags he usually encountered.

The thought struck him, "Oh, isn't this rich... and this is the home of their leader." He and his kind had been rebuffed often by these shriveled Druids. Never to violence, but sometimes just short of it. Their ways... it didn't seem like they drew on the sources of the Dark One himself, but there had to be a loose association with him in order for them to have any power that wasn't from Cuthbert directly. It was a twisting of the true divine power that Cuthbert had given his people. When he spent time watching the druids perform rituals, he felt a surprising lack of good and evil inherent in it. It unnerved him to the point of avoiding all contact with the Druids or letting the other brother's deal with them. "I didn't come here to debate. I came here to teach." A few more mumbled words escaped his lips. This, apparently, happened quite often. His compatriots glanced at each other, but didn't say a word aloud. It was as if the same trying assignment was weighing in on them as well.

His current destination, the temporary home the leader of the Druids, the