The Tree of Swords and Jewels

FOURTEEN Fugitives

They had a burial to do in the morning. It was not the burying Siodhachan would have wished, being quiet, in the black-clouded dawn, with no cups of ale or tale-telling through the night; they were in too much haste and the matter of their lord weighed too heavily on them. They built the old man a strong cairn of Caer Wiell's gray stone and vowed him a greater one in better days. Leannan for his part meant to make a song for him; but there was no singing it until things were worse or better. So the harper only sat awhile by the cairn after everyone had gone, bowed with his head on his arms; and came in finally, drank a cup and washed his face, and wandered among the tents and shelters, among the hapless who had come for refuge.

"Sing a song," the steader children asked, of the friend who had always cheered them; for the night had been dreadful and the day ahead looked ugly.

"Hush," said their elders sternly. "He is the lord's own harper; and he is sad today. Show respect."

So silence went about him.

But rumors flourished, in the harper's downcast silence; in the grim rebuilding of the cloudwall after last night's storm; in the whis pering of one nightwatch to another and them to others of the men ... for the Bain Sidhe was silent today: She wailed for the old man, folk said. Now the lord will live.

But down in the kitchens: No more orders come from hall to scul lery. Something is amiss up there.

And again: His men went out last night. And came back with his children, but they never passed the gates before that. The Sidhe magicked them.

The lord is dead: it's himself in that cairn, and the old man's just gone to hiding.

"Lord Ciaran left last night," said Beorc to the men he gathered, with Rhys and Madawc and Owein, his own folk and the southrons. He said it loudly, so there would be no doubt and no mangling of the news. He shouted it out; and country folk gathered beyond the knot of men at arms and southrons. "He is not dead, hear? And where he went and how is his business; but he took his leave of my lady before he left and had a good reason for going. The rest of it is not for our bandying about in the yard. Get to business. Mind your tongues and reckon the lord knows what he's about. Meanwhile we have the Bradhaeth to deal with; the lord's order—look to it!"

Domhnull watched the people. He saw the stricken looks, the bewilderment on faces that had seen too much of disarray in their lives. But no one disputed what Beorc said: no one met that scowl of his or argued with that voice. Folk listened; and Beorc told them what wanted doing and how quickly.

When Beorc let them go again, Domhnull climbed the stairs, past Rhys, who stood on the bottom step; and Madawc and Owein near him. He had no part in what was toward now—in the defense of the north. The orders now were for others. He went up into hall to watch over Meadhbh and Ceallach, that being what his lord had last charged him to do, and it seemed to have been left to him even now that their southron kinsmen were at hand.

Muirne was there, infallibly, Muirne—sitting on the bench and spinning by the light of the one torch they kept burning, beside the pallets where the children slept at hearthside. The room was in order again; blankets had been taken away—doubtless Muirne had seen to it, the way she saw to everything.

He settled on the hearthside bench in the warmth that remained of the fire, taking comfort in Muirne's presence, watching the deft work of her fingers that coaxed thread out of wool, a work he had watched hour upon hour of his long convalescence. This was Muirne's Sidhe —gift, he had thought then, to spin, spin, spin peace out of chaos, comfort out of hurt. He had been ashamed once, when he had come out of the muddled days and nights of his sickness, that anyone should have seen him as he was. But Muirne never flinched, more, she had looked up from her spinning from time to time with a glance he might have laughed at once, seeing it from Muirne, shy and girl ish and wishing, years older as she was. His mother had been there in his fever, when it was worst; but Muirne had been there when the memories came, and beguiled his moods with questions—of the land, of places he knew; he discovered she had never been beyond sight of Caer Wiell's walls, though she had seen war and siege beneath them. She knew little of the world. She had always had the spinning, the children, the duties of the hold, for lady Meredydd, for Branwyn, as isolate in her world of women as some soldier in his world of men— shy, suddenly, to be in such different company but treasuring the moments in their trade of what they had to trade—Can friends be so opposite? he began to think. O if she were younger—

She went on spinning. He watched her fingers, the firelight on her face. So, so tenderly she had soothed brows in this room and in that through all these dreadful days, and whispered that she was there, close by, between them and whatever they feared—as if she were protection. But she was, he thought, if love and steadfastness meant anything in the world.

The hall seemed strangely silent now, empty of the orders and instructions that had always flowed from it. My lady slept, ex hausted; my lord—gods knew. And out in the courtyard, Beorc pre pared revenge, a gust of red-haired violence, ordering weapons and supplies and wagons and whatever horses they could gather.

And above them all, the clouds—for he had looked at the sky this morning—the cloudwall was taking shape again, after the wreckage of the night. Rampart-building moved apace in heaven, so that the forest was all dark and dawn winked out as the sun rose into the wall of cloud. The daylit space narrowed; and there were ominous mare's-tails to northward, many of them, advance from that border Ruadhan was holding.

A chill had fallen on him when he had seen that, not a sharp fear, but one that mingled with all the others of the day, so that the shouts Beorc gave to the wagoners, the noise hi the yard, the whisperings and the movements and the colors, all seemed perilously thin, like some last outpouring of vitality.

Before death, he thought. Before the world goes dark. He finally named what he had feared out there in the yard, that Caer Wiell's strength was ebbing, that everything they were preparing was wrong, while the clouds narrowed like advancing armies. Lord Ciaran was gone. Not dead, he insisted to himself but he remembered Ciaran tumbling from his horse, the black arrows, the waxen flesh that sus tained itself only by the stone—To go back into Eald, to enter it foredone as he was, to seek the elvish horse and fare outward on the last of his fading strength. . . .

O ride quickly, he wished his lord, go where they go, find peace, whatever this fading is. When he shut his eyes he saw the hill outside Caer Donn, a black and terrible wind that blew the Sidhe's white fire in tatters.

He shuddered, a quick convulsion of his limbs. The air seemed thick and foul.

Something touched him; but it was only Muirne when he blinked, laying her hand on his shoulder.

"Hush, it's all right."

"They can't do it," he murmured, having a sudden clear vision of the yard, the wagons readying, Beorc amid it all, going north to the defense of the steadings. "They mustn't. The north is already falling. O gods—"

"Domhnull!" Muirne whispered. She was on her knees, clenching his hands in hers. He felt her grip at last when she shook at him. He was still cold, and what had been in his mind slipped from him like a passing dream.

"Forgive," he said, confused, forgetting it all like some fading glimpse of faery.

"Hush, you mustn't vex yourself. You were sleeping sitting up just then. You were dreaming. Go down to your own bed and rest. It's time you did."

He remembered then, distantly and coldly, how futile everything had seemed to him. He had had such nightmares often since Donn. He feared he might have cried out just then in his sleep, and heat touched his face. He glanced aside, where the children slept undis turbed on their pallets. He felt aches in his shoulders, in all his bones. "If Eald should fall," he said, a scattered thought as all his thoughts were scattered now, like doves before some hawk, "maybe I would go to moonbeams and cobweb. Or be what I was, where I was, on the rocks below Caer Donn."

"Hush." Muirne's fingers stopped his lips. Her eyes were anguished.

He caught the hand, touched it a second time with his lips and held it. She remained distraught, seeming so weary, so very weary.

Her eyes were full of tears and fright. "Muirne," he said, "if there are heroes in Caer Wiell, you are one. Did you know that?"

"Why?" she asked, as confused by this as by the other.

"Because you are." He let go her hand, for her cheeks burned red. Perhaps she suspected idle flatteries, herself unarmed and unarmored against the only man she knew. He sensed so. He rose, aching from the stones, awkward. There were few he let see him in pain, but Muirne knew, and so he indulged himself, too weary to hide it. A restlessness gnawed at him. The fears that had made sense a moment ago were vague, and he had the urge to see the clouds again, to do something toward the hold's defense, even to stand idle and watch those who were going to it. I still might go myself, he thought in the scattering of his thoughts. With a horse under me I might be well enough. The shield-arm . . . I can bind it

Then he recalled the children, and in that same instant he felt relief that he had an excuse not to be faring north, for he sensed something wrong.

"Domhnull?" Muirne asked. "Whatever is the matter?"

He blinked, gathering his mind back from that gray place where was such loneliness, so little formed and certain; where something flitted lost in the winds.

"Meadhbh!" he shouted. "Ceallach!"

"Domhnull—" Muirne cried; but he had gone to them, gathered them in his arms all limp as they were, holding them as tightly as he could, on his knees beside the hearth.

"Wake," he whispered to them, in that place where they had gone. "Come back. Meadhbh. Ceallach. Your mother needs you, do you hear?"

So they came back to him, obedient.

"Domhnull," Meadhbh said, and he laid his face against her chill one. "We're here," Ceallach murmured, and began to wake, stirring in his arms.

"O gods," Muirne said.

"Watch them, my lord said." Domhnull's heart was beating against his ribs. "Watch them. He had this danger in his mind all along. And I thought of leaving them. O wake up, wake up, hear? I know where you are and that's no road for you. Come. Come back now."

"It was dark," Meadhbh said. "The light was blowing away. Domhnull!"

"Wake their mother," Domhnull said fiercely. "Muirne, wake her, go!"

Muirne sped, flying on the stairs.

Then Ceallach shuddered in his arms and drew a great breath, and both of them were there.

He let them go when he was sure. Meadhbh rubbed her eyes. They sat looking at him with a sadness dawning on them, that it was only Domhnull holding them, he thought, and not the one they loved.

"If I could have gone in his place," Domhnull told them, "o gods, I would have."

Meadhbh wept, sitting there amid her blankets, tears rolling down her face. She wiped at them. She ran her hands back over her sleep— tangled hair. Ceallach sat as if lightning-struck. Domhnull gathered them both again, rocking them, though his bad leg ached on the stone.

"Morning's come," he said, "and the world is what it is, and you have to stay in it."

They said nothing, nothing at all.

"Your father said I must watch you," he said, "and so I will."

Steps came hurrying from the door. So their mother arrived with Muirne, herself all dishevelled, in a plain white gown, with her hair flying about her shoulders.

Then Domhnull worked himself painfully to his feet, leaning on the stones of the fireplace and on Muirne's offered arm. He saw the children go to Branwyn's embrace, saw tears shed, which ought to be —but then he watched Branwyn fuss at Muirne for their hair, and at them for sleeping here instead of upstairs in their beds. She rubbed at Ceallach's face with the tail of her sleeve and in all delivered as much roughness as of love.

She does not know what happened to them, or what danger they are in, he thought with a chill to his heart. And knows she doesn't Branwyn had waked from sleep, only sleep, a sleep heavy or light, but nothing more, never more. She is only clay, he thought, ay he was half of air—and knows it. Mortality was on Branwyn. Her shoulders stooped. There were lines about her eyes this morning. She turned from fretting over her children and looked at him.

"Where is Beorc?" she asked.

"With your cousins. Making ready the men that will go north."

She stared a moment. "No," she said.

"Lady?"

"No, they will not go."

"Lady, little good they will do the land here, in Caer Wiell." He felt heat go to his face. His tongue tied, that he had forgotten to whom he spoke. He stared into her eyes, which were blue and pale and passionless. "The border," he finished, trying to mend things. "The northern steadings. They can't stay waiting." But she was of Caer Wiell, bred and born here. She knew the needs of its defense. That too he remembered.

"They will not go," she said. Her mouth set, making lines at the corners. She folded her children against her like a wall. "Tell Beorc so."

"I will tell him." He cast a desperate look at Muirne, then bowed his head and went in haste, knowing how Beorc would hear it.

She was adamant, when Beorc came thumping back upstairs with him to argue, when Rhys and his brothers arrived on his heels and Rhys shouted at her—which spoke how desperate Rhys had become, how desperate all the men. Horses, saddled, fretted in the yard; wag ons already loaded, stood with their teams outside the gates, their drivers waiting. Folk murmured from wall to wall of Caer Wiell, once again confused, frightened what with the ominous sky above them and the shifting orders of those that led them.

"Good gods," Rhys cried, "you cannot take on like this. Grief is one thing, madam, but this immolation of your people is profitless. You have a border crumbling at this hour, horses readied, men standing in their armor, rumors running rife in the yard."

"The King is dead," she said. She sat calmly, in her plain blue gown, dressed and coiffed now, her hair severe in its braids, her face very pale. She might have been an image graven out of ivory. "Do you understand?"

"Laochailan dead." Rhys paced the floor, when the rest of them would have wished to, fretting as they were. Rhys stopped, held out his hands in entreaty. "Well, that would be no great surprise, cousin, but how do you suppose to know that?"

"My husband said it," she answered in that firm still voice. "Be fore he left. Send riders out, over all our lands. As far as the borders. Bring our people in and bring Ruadhan home with all our men."

"Lady cousin," Rhys said gently, "lord Ciaran was fevered."

She rose, unfolded upward from her chair, and for a moment small as she was, they were daunted. "Cousin—do you understand me? My cousin Laochailan is dead. He hated us. But he is dead. They murdered him, smothered him in his bed, since their poisons failed. The King is dead."

Domhnull's eyes wandered to the corner, where a slight, red-haired boy sat watching by his sister, and a chill went down his spine. O gods, he thought, which he had not thought, for until yester-eve there had been Ciaran, and the chance of alliances and maneuverings; and that Laochailan would declare some heir. But nothing was the same this morning. Ceallach. Gods, gods, this boy is King.

So others fell silent. The perhaps-King stared back at them in distress, his hand locked in his sister's.

Then: "Cousin," Rhys said, "if it were true—we may have little time. If it were true—there might come trouble up the dale, and quickly. All the more reason to take care of that matter to the north and be ready to face trouble from the west when it comes."

"No," Branwyn said.

"Cousin, give orders in the hold. Not in matters of arms."

"I tell you no."

"This is grief," said Beorc. "Lady, you know me, that I am your man as I was his. And I say the same. Leave this matter of the borders to men who know them."

"The King is dead." Her voice rose, losing both calm and dignity. "And we need all our forces here. And my husband is not dead, Beorc. He has gone away, but he is not dead. You are still his man, and don't forget that."

Beorc bowed his head and lifted it sorrowfully. It was clear what his opinion was. "Lady, wherever he is— But this matter of the border—Lady, it can't wait."

"Beorc, he looked at me. It was the last thing—the last thing he said. He looked at me as clearly as I look at you: 'Branwyn,' he said, 'look to Dryw. Go there if you have to. Go soon.' "

"Impossible," said Rhys somberly. "Would to the gods you could; but that is no sunny ride, cousin, not now. Almost we failed it. Safest to secure that one border northward and then close the westward pass."

"They will come through the hills like ants," Branwyn said.

"Lady cousin, that they may; but that will put them in our hands: Owein and Madawc and I—do you think any lowlanders can best our folk in the hills? Let them try. We will hold here."

"Domhnull." Her gaze turned on him, her hands outheld.

"Donnchadh—it is Donnchadh who killed the King. Do you under stand me?"

A chill went over Domhnull, a memory in once shattered bones, fear driven deep there, and doubt. "Beorc," he said, "Beorc—that one has allies—O gods, Rhys, the Brown Hills and the north—there is too much moving on us now. I saw it—It isn't the armies. Not the worst of it. She may be right."

So they looked at him too with pity and something worse. Beorc had his hands in his belt; at last he ducked his head and lifted it with a frown, looking at Branwyn. "Domhnull will stay here," he said, "to order the defense. You are my lady, but my lord is gone; and until he's here again, I do what he told me last, and I mind me that I never had his leave to be coming back here in the first place. Rhys, Owein, Madawc—"

The color has risen to Branwyn's cheeks. "I have told you," she said. "But you refuse to hear." Her lips trembled. Her eyes were filled with tears. "So go. Do as you will, Beorc. Domhnull at least will stay."

Domhnull stood still, feeling the heat in his face, looking still toward Branwyn while Beorc and Rhys and his brothers left, a mar tial clattering on the stairs behind; and his eyes went dim and blurred and painful.

"Well?" Branwyn asked sharply. Muirne stood there, witness to this. The children sat in their corner, in the corner of his sight.

"I will go out, by your leave," Domhnull murmured painfully, "and see my cousin off."

Branwyn nodded and turned her shoulder to him, finding some thing to do in the clutter of herbs and jars in the corner that was hers.

The gates stood open. The wagons already groaned their way out onto the road. "Take care," Domhnull said, standing close beside the way, looking up at Beorc as he rode past; and Beorc reined aside from the others.

"Domhnull." For a moment Beorc sat looking down, a line be tween his brows; and then he heaved himself down from the saddle and offered an embrace, tentative and shamed-seeming.

Domhnull took what was offered, looked Beorc in the eyes, at arm's length. "Take care," he said doggedly. There was a fear in him like sickness. He saw the riders pour past, almost all Caer Wiell's strength. He was conscious of the sky above them. Donnchadh, rang in his mind with the rattle of the armor. Donnchadh, Donnchadh. "Do it quickly and come home."

The fear showed. It woke pity in Beorc's eyes, who was not accus tomed to failings. "Cousin—" he said, and bit his lip on what he would have said. "See to matters here. We'll be back as quickly as we can."

The ache of Beorc's fingers lingered on his shoulder. He stood there staring from the gate as Beorc galloped off to the fore and the column of riders bent northward. His heart had gone cold, for all the brave color of the banners of Caer Wiell and the black of the sons of Dry w, the thunder of horses, the clash of armor of riders hard upon their way toward the north, toward the gathering mare's-tails of new rampart building. There were folk about him, above him on the walls, watching from all manner of vantages, and only a few had cheered, a silence unlike Caer Wiell.

"Son."

His mother stood close, by the stairs. He turned to look at her and her face changed at his look to something quieter—a tall woman, his mother, her hair shot through with gray and her eyes full of living. "Come," she said wisely, as she had coaxed him in younger years, of bruised knees and falls and prizes missed and loves spurned, in the years before he thought himself a man and ran off to Caer Wiell. "Come, I've somewhat to spare this morning. Come breakfast with me."

It was not the food he sought. His lady wanted him in hall; he had duties and no time to spend, but Beorc's look still stung, and he had duties here in the yard as well as anywhere else, if Branwyn and Muirne had the children well in hand. Someone had to be seen out here, someone to still the rumors.

So he let himself be seen; folk stared at him and murmured. Of the breakfast he took only a cup of cider and a bit of bread, while his mother talked of everything but wars. He sat on a sack of goods by the scullery door and the traffic came and went, of impudent goats and running children, of women going this way and that with water and food and stores. Most in Caer Wiell now were women; and the young and halt and old. So he listened while she talked of neighbors' lives and scullery gossip, and children played tag in the sunlight (but there was shadow beyond the wall) and squealed and screamed until the noise was like to drive him mad in one moment and seemed precious in the next. She asked no news of hall; no, she had no wish to go there. She had her friends and neighbors, and insisted on telling him of them, small, simple things, so he knew it was like Muirne's bravery, innocent and wise. And others lingered near them, pretend ing tasks and errands, listening ears and watching eyes of women all thinking of their sons, of husbands, brothers, cousins—and himself one maimed man, one marred and somewhat broken and now, with a handful of men left to him, commanding in Caer Wiell.

So he lifted his head and looked at his mother and marked how she was beautiful in his eyes, how other women deferred to her. It was the way she was, full of good sense. His father had loved her for reasons he only then saw, having only then come to manhood, this morning it seemed, in Caer Wiell.

He felt a great calm then amid his fear, finding himself knowing more of the world than he was wont. He knew where he belonged, and where his oath to his lord was pledged. "I have to get back to hall," he said deliberately. "There are plans—" Several score breaths bated. He knew. "—My lord left clear instructions to carry out; there are things to do." His mother sat quietly, her wise fair eyes intent on him, well knowing what he did. "Say that." He pressed her hand where it rested on her knee and looked straight into her eyes. "If others ask. Our lord is not lost. I've been where he fares now. And I came back. He's gone for healing. As I did. Say that too."

He rose. His mother did. He had become a liar. He had no shame in that at all. He kissed her on the brow and turned his cheek for her. So he walked away, not limping, though his bones ached.

He crossed the yard, took the stairs under hundreds of silent eyes. He felt them on his back. He heard the tide break behind him as he gained the wall, a flood of women's voices. He did not look back even so, but walked on up the inner stairs and up again through the accounting-room to the hall.

"Well?" said Branwyn, pausing in her combing of Meadhbh's hair.

"Nothing, lady. They've gone, that's all. A while ago. I've been down in the yard. Taking breakfast."

Branwyn tightened her lips, and Meadhbh braced herself and suf fered, her head bowed as she stood. Her red hair shone and sparked in wisps beneath the strokes of the comb.

And after a moment: "And where would Leannan be?"

"Somewhere about. Since the burying."

"So. Well." More strokes of the comb. "Now hear my morning's orders. Bring in every horse we have, mares and foals too. Find every cart Beorc has left us, and every weapon. We shall be going south tomorrow. Every soul in Caer Wiell."

"Lady—" His certainties ebbed from him, regrouped behind his reason. "You want a man to ride after Beorc, then. To force him and Rhys."

Two motions went on, Branwyn's combing; and Ceallach, who was at the grinding of Branwyn's herbs. There was the talisman about the boy's neck, that swung with the fierce effort of his arm. There was a madness in all this, that ordinary things went on, that Branwyn insisted on them. The air was full of rosemary and grief.

"If they would listen," Branwyn said, "they would have. Are you faithful, Domhnull?"

"Lady, those men are faithful to you. They only see a danger—"

"So do I."

"I will ride after them, persuade them—if I stood with you, to do this, then they might listen, and fortify Caer Wiell."

The combing stopped. She patted Meadhbh's shoulders, dismissed her. Meadhbh only stood and stared. Branwyn looked straight at him.

"You do not well hear me. And Beorc would hold you to prevent me," she said, "because he sees a danger. No. Send last to them. Before that, bring the last few steaders in. Send riders."

"The folk will be afraid, down in the yard."

"Say what you like. Send Cein's boys: they have close mouths. Find Leannan. And Cobhan. This hold will be ready. Tell that where you like. Take every weapon, everything that can be mended and every hand that can hold one. Most of all keep them busy. Will you do these things?"

"Aye, lady." He looked at Muirne and at the children both, at Branwyn, last and longest. "What is in your mind to do? Lady, you were not there when Rhys told us what he had seen on that southern road. Things that took men and horses. The forest is deadly."

"The Sidhe will protect us. For my children's sake, they will save us all."

There was fey madness in Branwyn's eyes. There was fear there too. Both were contagious.

"Lady—for the sake of those out there—who would suffer in siege, but most would live—with a half dozen men I might take you south to lord Dry w. If you are sure the risk is worth it. But to set out on a road like that with the old folk and the infants still in arms—gods, my lady, that's a forest trail we're speaking of, no way for carts and wagons. We haven't enough horses for all of them to ride."

"Domhnull—the King that sits in Dun na h-Eoin is Donnchadh. You of all people should know his manners."

"Aye," he said after a moment. O Beorc, come home, come quickly, reason with our lady. "But if Donnchadh comes into the dale he would waste no time on Caer Wiell if we were not in it."

"You think in numbers Caer Wiell could raise. You never saw the armies Dun na h-Eoin might lead. Well, I have seen them. Do you think they couldn't divide that force and come at Caer Wiell too, to let Damh and Bradhaeth and An Beag loose inside these walls? No." She drew her daughter back into her arms. Ceallach had come to stand beside her. Lines seemed graven in her face after these last, horrid days. "My husband's word, Domhnull. Do you believe it?"

"I saw Caer Wiell burned," Meadhbh said, so faintly he could hardly see her lips move. "I dreamed it last night, Domhnull. I think that it is true."

The world seemed cold and frail about him. He stared at both; at the boy-King who came to join them, red-haired, his sleeves rolled up, hands dusted with herbs and country simples.

"I will do what I can," Domhnull said to Branwyn. It seemed impossible to him that his lord was not there, that they were left with such choices. The Sidhe to protect them, his lady believed. But he lived with the ache in his bones, the memory of the hill and the fading of the light.

The Sidhe has lost, that is what, he thought, on the stairs leading down from the hall. He limped, using his hands to steady him, he, the guardian of Caer Wiell. About him constantly he seemed to see the stones, the lightning, the Sidhe tattered in the black winds.

Sidhe faded. Ciaran had gone, Sidhe-like; but even in that place was no refuge—or he would have let the children seek it. Branwyn was blind, hoping to pass the forest, hoping because she had no other hope.

But Meadhbh had visions.

Your brother is gone, the Dark Man whispered. Lost. Donnchadh started and looked about him, in the solitude of the gloomy hall in Dun na h-Eoin. Armies were about it: his; the lords had gathered like carrion birds at the King's failing; and among them had come one eagle.

"What—dead?" he whispered aloud; but the voice came creeping inward, cold as ice.

Last night, the voice said, soft as spidersilk. The Bain Sidhe has sung it daran of Caer Wiell, of Bonn, Branwyn's husband—he is gone.

Donnchadh sat down on the plain wooden throne, that being where there was to sit. He felt it like a blow, a hammer-strike to the heart. He felt like weeping; and felt relief at once. Dead—of the wounds An Beag gave him?

Dead— The voice grew softer still. Ah, well, but nearly. At least as dead as Sidhe can die.

This was a dagger-thrust. He looked up at the shadows, but there was no one to see. A man is dead or not, ghost.

Oh, but a Man is—dead or not. But there was less and less of Man in him—cousin. Now he has no boundaries. He might be here, this moment—or stand beside your bed of nights. He might easily come this way. He would still defend his hold, his son—with every means at his command, and those means are many.

A chill came on Donnchadh. It grew, as if warmth were leaving him forever. It was true: there was his brother's son, heir through Meara, Evald, Branwyn; and all those armies knew it. It wanted so little to produce one rebel, one of those lords to rouse others in the name of a boy who could be brought up as they pleased, if he fell into their ambitious hands.

That is the first danger, he thought; and it was his thought, per haps; or it was the Dark Man's, who had come so close now there was no distinguishing one from the other. The boy. Ceallach. Laochailan's heir; and my brother's; and Dryw's kinsman. In Caer Wiell, near the Sidhe.

"It is quite mad," Leannan said. His pale blue eyes were mazed with ale when Domhnull found him outside the scullery, with ale and too much of losing folk he loved; and with doings of the Sidhe and a sky that seemed worse and worse. But: "Say no word of it," Domhnull said. "Only give me help—to keep the folk quiet. Go among them. Find out how many there are here; and how many of those could not ride—somehow. Or be carried."

"Aye," the harper said, who had a skill at remembering things, and at numbers.

"Southward," Cein said when Domhnull went to him at the sta bles. "O gods. With wagons?" But: "Better Sidhe luck than Donnchadh's mercy," Domhnull said. "I can swear to that. Don't say anything here. Send your boys for the steaders. I want them back by sundown. And tell them to be discreet in it."

And last to Cobhan, who was grooming Ciaran's Iolaire, stub bornly, faithfully as every morning: "Every horse, Cobhan. Every one. We leave none of my lord's horses to An Beag bandits. Bring them in. And oxen for the wagons."

"Aye," said Cobhan, tight-lipped and thinking. He called a boy to him and gave instructions, never pausing in his work.

So the matter proceeded. There was further gossip: The enemy is near. The border is giving way. So these preparations.

Domhnull did not gainsay that rumor. It served him. He went here and there with a worried frown and cared little now who saw it.

"Is it so?" his mother asked. "Is the north in danger?"

So there was another soul he decided to trust. "It may. Mother, it's southward we are going. And soon. For good reasons. It's not to be told, not yet. But if Beorc is driven back—we will move quickly; for our lives, we must move, to shelter with lord Dryw until this thing is over. You know the steader woman, who's to rely on. Name them to me, the ones to move the others."

She set her lips, frowned a bit, and named them.

There was smithery in the yard, the hammering of iron, the mend ing of a wheel. Leannan moved here and there like a fish through troubled waters, visiting shelters, playing small songs to keep minds elsewhere, asking after this old man's health, that old woman's, the weeks a baby had. Cein and Cobhan brought in the horses, a great protesting of mares and nervous foals; of old geldings too long out to pasture and showing their tempers; of oxen, lastly, moving their great bulk past shelters and collapsing one tent by the Old Hall, to wails and protests of the old woman in it.

Domhnull went from place to place, keeping pages and steader lads busy sharpening old weapons and the old warriors at more me ticulous tasks restoring old horse gear out of storage. He took care to be seen often; he gave, if not detailed orders, at least approval of what experienced folk would do; and wider and wider he spread his trust where he dared, taking oath of this one and that one to keep quiet.

Even silence begat rumors. There is too much quiet, folk began to say. There be those that know things. He heard other whisperings and murmurings which he could not make out; and these made him uneasy. Whenever he chanced up to the wall he could not forbear looking northward himself, wishing for some sight of riders, just enough to be Beorc and Rhys coming home, with Ruadhan beside them: but what he dreaded was a larger band—the whole of Caer Damh and the Bradhaeth turning up on that horizon. And always there was that unnatural ring of sunlight, against their walls now on east and south: we must pass under it if we go south—into that shadow.

When such chill thoughts came on him he would think, unthink ing: Lord Ciaran would know what we ought to do—

Then with a reeling of his mind he would remember why they were doing all of this at all, that lord Ciaran was not in hall, nor likely to be again: that there was no chance of things being what they had been, no days stretching before them of summer and harvest and winter and spring, no more, no more, forever.

O gods, he would think then, and there would come a leaden pain about his heart and a panic desire to go up to hall if only to look and be sure no further calamity had fallen. They do not know how to watch them, he thought of Meadhbh and Ceallach, remembering that they were fey, and willful, and desperate. I would know. I might. O gods. Muirne; my lady—keep them from wandering.

But he had tasks enough at hand. The counting of the horses came to him; Leannan brought him the tally of the people. "Cipher me the thing," he begged Leannan, helpless in the profusion of numbers; and so they squatted together by the steps and made an obstacle of themselves while Leannan traced figures in the dust and told him the tale of it.

"The fittest men have to have the good horses," Domhnull said. "To ride at the fore. They cannot carry double; we must not tire those horses or those men—for our defense."

"So," said Leannan. "But what will we do with the twenty-odd left walking?"

He had no answer. So Leannan left him, saying nothing more. He ran his hands over his aching head, sitting as he was on the step; and remembered then that there were always eyes on him, and gathered himself to his feet.

A shadow fell, abrupt twilight. Thunder rumbled. He looked up at the cloudwall, towering up and up above them. A dark thread had torn from it and streamed across the heavens, headed northward. Another mare's-tail, in sky that had been pure. A chill went up his back.

"Domhnull."

The voice was high and clear and urgent, from the steps above him. He looked up at Meadhbh and Ceallach.

"Go inside," he said. A dread was on him because of the clouds. He felt the whole of Caer Wiell defenseless, naked to storm and lightning. "Get back inside!"

The thunder cracked. They flinched together and looked up. He took the steps, reckless of the pain, and suddenly saw another sight but Caer Wiell stone—saw the border hills all shadowed, tangled figures locked in battle, men in route and dying in the black hail of arrows. Lost, he thought, between two steps; and like a thunderclap remembered that he had dreamed this once before, in early morning. The north is fallen. Ruadhan!

"Domhnull—" Small hands gripped his, thin arms embraced him at the stair's crest. He swept the pair up with him, carried them both, aching with the pain and stumbling. An icy wind rose; it battered at them, carried dust, smelling of rain. He thrust them inside the door way where there was some shelter, and looked back again.

"They're going north," said Ceallach. "The clouds are going north."

They were: the gray mare's-tails streamed off the cloudwall above them, all tending in the same direction like strands of black wool all drawn by some invisible hand.

"Like weaving," said Meadhbh. "Look!—there are more coming from the north below them."

The lightning cracked. Wails of dismay came from the yard, the screams of children. "Get inside," he shouted at them. He went out onto the wall and yelled at the men who were running down the steps to safety, to the folk who were hurrying in the yard. "Get everyone within walls! Go to the Old Hall: go to the barracks! The doors are open!"

Wind whirled up sand from where it gathered by the stairs. Lean nan came out of nowhere, clutching his harp like a babe before him, rushing up the steps. The awning of the scullery ripped loose; a stack of pots overturned and went racketing about in the wind. A stray horse bolted through the yard, shying from the pots and running children.

"Domhnull!" It was Muirne's voice behind him. He stood staring outward. The sun was going. Shadow covered them. The winds howled. If he let himself he could see dark and flickerings of light ning, like that night at Donn.

"Domhnull!" A hand seized his arm. It was Leannan who pulled him back inside shelter. The door slammed: Muirne dropped the bar. Meadhbh and Ceallach hugged him as if they feared he too would fade; he hugged them blindly to him and went up the stairs inside with them, while thunder shook the stones.

Branwyn waited there, sitting by the fire.

"It's happened," Domhnull said. The children were mute beside him, too prophetic, shivering. He held to them. "Lady Branwyn, the border's fallen."

She was unamazed. She stared at him. Her eyes were dry. She was stone, ice, immobility. "So Beorc will come home now," she said. "If he can free himself. Rhys with him."

"No," said Leannan. "Likeliest they will be at Hlowebourne by now. And if Ruadhan retreats Beorc will stand there, Ruadhan's shield."

"He mustn't," said Meadhbh. Her teeth were chattering. Domhnull clenched his arm about her. "It's coming. Something dark —dark on your path, he said; he told me."

"Hush," said Ceallach, "Meadhbh, don't."

She grew cold a moment. Domhnull felt it, as if some winter wind had chilled her skin, even beneath his hand. "Meadhbh," he said. "Stay, stay here."

Eald quaked. The silver trees shed gold in the darkness, a cascade on the hill, an ebbing of their light even with the first glimmering of dawn.

There was silence for the moment. Then the wind began, driving more leaves before it, and the day hesitated, whether it could dawn at all.

The night's cold lingered. Arafel sat still within the grove, head bowed against her knees, her sword embracing them in her hands.

The moonstone's light was dimmed, murked with shadows, and she could not bear to look at it.

Darknesses crept close among the trees, regaining courage in the fading of her spell. They whispered there.

Then she lifted her head and clenched her hand on the sword hilt, and the silver light gleamed.

"Where is the horse?" one mocked her. "Do you know that, Duine Sidhe? Has it run away like the Man? Or has something caught it?"

"There were two," said the other, whose eyes were lamps in shadow, "but she has lost them both."

Her heart grew cold. She rose with the sword held before her. "What mean you—run away? Be plain, wight."

They edged back into darkness. Others were there, tall Sidhe, slim and pale of face. They were armed and armored, and the rising day shone through them.

"Begone!" she cried. "Dun Gol hold you! Begone from Eald!"

They vanished. They were prudent still. Her wound ached. The sword sank point against the earth, impaling golden, once-silver leaves. The leaves still fell, spiraling about her, gentle and desolate; and a longing was on her—how fair they had seemed, even as they were, how fair and how proud and how much what the Sidhe had been.

"Fionnghuala," she whispered. And aloud: "Fionnghuala."

Rain began to fall, cold as death, hazing the struggling day, mak ing the leaves one sodden carpet and sending shivers to her bones. It heralded change, like the falling of the leaves. Even Miadhail, the youngest of trees, had green only in his uppermost leaves; a dozen at least fell to the onslaught of the wind.

"Fionnghuala."

There was a breath near her. The elf horse stood drenched in rain, her bright head lifted, nostrils wide.

"So you are here," Arafel said, and shivered at the doubt that had been so easily sown in her heart; like the rain, like the death of trees, it was the waning of her strength. And Fionnghuala hesitated, as if that doubt had come between them.

She went to the horse, offered her hand. Soft breath came against it in return, trust and faith. The night was past; elvish day had come, even a murky one and dim. And time—mortal time—how much of it had fled?

Ciaran—Ciaran—Ciaran!

Run away, the voices had whispered. She felt something, but it had changed, vastly changed. She felt another presence when she strove to reach through the mist, the prisoning, black trees.

"Aodhan," she murmured. The stone pained her, went cold. "What of Aodhan—Fionnghuala?" She stroked the damp neck, felt the shiver, brisk and impatient. A fey dark eye regarded her, full of dread and madness. Come, it said. Come. There are things yet to try.

She sheathed the sword, seized the mane and swung up, and Fionnghuala began to move, in a muttering of thunder, shifting through here and now with increasing swiftness. In the long night she had lost much. The day promised to be brief and dim—but it was her day, all the same, when the drow must wane.

Ciaran, she thought, and shivered at what the stone brought her, a lost and lonely grayness, far from any sun. "Aodhan!" she called, and the names wound together inseparable in their fate.

She rode even into mortal Eald. But here there was no sign or touch of them. "Lord Death!" she called.

But even he was gone.

One touch of Eald remained in this world. For memory, she had said once, for memory that Eald is true.

And again: I have set a virtue on them of finding.

Thunder rumbled in the night. Meadhbh wished to be brave, but she shivered, even wrapped as she was in warmth, in the hall and the glow of fire and the presence of those she loved.

Fire, she thought. She imagined the small safe hearthfire licking out at the floor, running the stones, down the stairs, cutting them off from safety. Her gift prickled at her throat like nettles and when she shut her eyes there was the mist. Her brother wandered there; and they were afraid, both of them, of something nameless.

Their father would have warned them back; but he was not with him; and they did not know this place.

"Meadhbh." That was Domhnull. A callused hand took hers and held it, ever so gently. "Ceallach."

So they were back in hall, within gray stone walls. Muirne and Domhnull were by them. Their mother slept in her chair, and Leannan nodded, while the rain came down against the roof above them. It was like that night, the last night, the rain, the dreadful rain, their father lying abed.

"Leannan," Muirne said. "Play. Play, will you?"

The harper lifted his head, weary that he was, settled his harp on which he had been leaning, sent his fingers wandering over the strings, and the lightest music came, the gentlest, saddest beneath the rain-sounds.

It is a Sidhe song, Meadhbh thought; and so long as the harper's fingers moved it made a magic in the hall.

But when the song was done the silence seemed the grayer and the thicker for it.

Sometimes she heard horses; heard sounds she had only heard in the practice yard, the hiss and strike of arrows: but harsh cries fol lowed. She heard the clash of metal, smelled iron like poison in the air. She rested her face in her hands, and could not escape it.

She slept true sleep but little. Domhnull held her and Ceallach, each in an arm; and so she had a little rest, her head against his heart, with Muirne close beside her.

The light failed, no longer than a mortal day now: the nights grew longer and this one would be longest of all. The sun was rising in the mortal world. Armies moved. On Airgiod's banks darkness returned.

But Fionnghuala strode in and out of this world and the other, searching.

And in Caerbourne's waters she found it, a quiet creature, hiding, baleful in its shadows.

"Come out," Arafel said, in mortal dawn; it fled to Eald, a quick shifting; but Fionnghuala was quicker. It shifted back again: and now it shivered, white and shriveled in the rocks where it had hid den.

"Despair is your name," Arafel said. "Andochas." Her sword whispered from its sheath and the water shivered. "You have tres passed, hear me."

It shrank farther. Two pale eyes shone like moons beneath the water.

"Where is he, fuath?"

The moons rose. The white face broke the surface. The air shivered to its wailing. "I warn, I only warn, Duine Sidhe."

"Baneful, spiteful creature! Lord Death is patient! I am not, not today—Andochas. Tell me!"

"He fled, fled, fled. Another life went out." The Bain Sidhe shifted into elvish night; but Fionnghuala did not lose her.

"Where?" Arafel asked.

"Dark to me, dark his path. Death lost him." The Bain Sidhe shrank farther, became a pale strange fish, that dived deep into Death's dark realm, leaving only a ripple on Caerbourne's surface. And into that place Fionnghuala would not venture unbidden.

"Men," a far voice whispered. "Men have failed you, Arafel Aoibheil, whose name is Joy. Aoibheil, Aogail—joy and death . . . o Arafel Arafel, Arafel ..."

"No," she said ever so softly. "No. You do not have him. Here, Duilliath—come here to me here, Duilliath, my cousin."

Her whisper sped, winding through mists and among the ghostly branches of that other Eald. She clenched the moongreen stone she wore and willed a harping from it, an elvish sound, of a harp now broken. It had power in it. It was heard in all three realms of Eald. It was heard forever; if that harp had been whole she might have changed that song, but it was not and that was beyond her power. It bound and drew, having magic in it; it had Men in it, for a Man had made it.

It reached to the halls of Caer Wiell, where that harp had hung; it reached to Dun na h-Eoin, where Kings had had it; it reached even to the plain before the gates of the King, where in the dawning Donnchadh rode on a black, powerful horse. The eyes of that horse were green and sometimes it seemed other than what it ought. And Donnchadh seemed other to his men than he had been the day before —or perhaps they had never seen him so fired with purpose: he was lean and fair and strange and sat straight as a younger man; no one looked him in the eyes, no more than they looked at the horse more directly than they must.

The standards moved. The points of countless spears glittered wanly in the greenish, stormy dawn; these were the contingents of the plain. There were archers: and these were the Boglach folks and their lords. They had gathered to Laochailan's deathbed, to seize what could be seized; to have power; but power had seized them instead, and they had no doubt now who of them was most perilous.

"Hail," the shout went up against the murky sky, "hail, Donnchadh King!" The hills rang with it like the sighing of the sea.

"King," the voice whispered which had become Donnchadh's own. "O sweet self, I shall make you more than this. What you dreamed of is dross beside my dreams, long and long inside Dun Gol King is only the beginning of it. Caer Wiell was ours once, like Caer Donn; but those were not the names. I shall teach you to call them. Of all Mankind only you will be left, my self, my very soul You wanted Eald thrust aside; I shall cast it down, and make the world again what it was. And you will see, self, what wonders there are to see—of jewels like the sun and moon, of elegance and pleasure, of things so rare no Man has seen them. We shall scour the world and own it."

He had no fear now, of his brother, of armies, of any shadow. Least of all of the Sidhe. He gazed about him and Men flinched. He moved to the fore, the black horse at a canter.

That harpsound reached one other, far lost in gray and cold. Aodhan had slowed his pace, wandered in the woods, in the maze of darksome branches. But that sound came like light through the murk the world had become, like springtime through the winter, like a friend's hand offered among a world of enemies.

For a moment he knew the way. He made himself remember. There was very little of him left. He looked at his hand that clung to Aodhan's bright mane, and he could hardly see it;

"Come," he said to Aodhan. "This is the way."

The elf horse began to move again, running uncertainly, shaking the lightning from his mane.