The Tree of Swords and Jewels

SIXTEEN Light and Dark

Something dire came near. Arafel lifted her head, hearing the dif ference in the wind, the stillness of the trees. Beneath her Fionnghuala fretted, anxious. "Hush," whispered Arafel.

A darkness drifted close to her in the midst, growling, threatening her a moment, then sinking down to wait. She ignored it. It was not what she had felt.

Other small things had stalked her along Caerbourne. Most of the ill went two-footed, humankind, Men the like of which she had long known, robbers, bandits. She wasted no time on the likes of An Beag. Their ambush, which they had set for Caer Wiell, caught them noth ing but a sleepy shellycoat come rattling up out of Death's dark river into Caerbourne's willowed banks, and she had laughed to see them run. A tree had flourished at that laughter, put forth buds, tried life. As for the shellycoat it dived back again, rattling and grumbling; and the Men had run for walls and safety.

But other men had worked their malice. When she looked into the mortal world she saw the north asmoke, and some of that smoke came from Caer Wiell. In that sight she had no joy at all, in the ruin of the land, the orchards, the place to which she had set her own hand, greening it and loving it—less than her own woods, but greatly even so, respecting the Men who had poured love on that iron— sown earth. They had coaxed growth there, where forest had failed, in the land Dun Gol had ruined. Now it burned. Now its folk were homeless. Those who still strayed, she guided where she could, with what thought she could spare: West, she whispered, go westward through the hills; and scattered fugitives kept running, abandoning everything but hope of Eald—Men from the border, hurt and lost; a steader's fleet-footed daughter . . . such found the paths, following will o' wisps and wishes, while things darker than they knew how to fear coursed over the hills and under. They were the drow's dark dogs, hastening to a summons too great for them to wait for such small prey, to a border that was forming.

"Come," she said to Fionnghuala, and they trod their careful way farther—far more slowly than Fionnghuala might have carried her, but no more quickly could she work—touching here a tree that still had strength, drawing constantly on what remained of Eald, deep-rooted in Cinniuint. They were not great magics. She had done as much for Caer Wiell once, in the greening of its fields; but they were deep magics, all the same. They had needed all the might of Dun Gol to overcome them thus far and they were, with Cinniuint, the bind ing on Lioslinn's chill depths. She drew a tide of life in her wake, bringing her Eald with her. Sometimes her workings were fragile as a flower springing up where the elf-horse had trod; or seed's bursting its shell; or a failing tree's few leaves given strength to cling. Her work widened from that beginning, taking its own course east and west, flowed wide, dimming Duilliath's ghostly trees and giving place to smaller, truer growth. Across the waters of Airgiod lilies bloomed; on Caerbourne's banks an old willow drank a bit and ventured all his fading strength in a few new leaves, and an old oak did the same, mistaking the touch for sunlight. Even beside Death's river unaccus tomed flowers bloomed, ghostly white.

Drow could not cross this advancing tide. They fled before it.

But now the ill came near, appearing just before her: drow, pale and slim and having shadow and fire about them, so that looking at them was like looking beyond the sunset. A wind obeyed them, chill and killing; it warred with life. Even so a small gold flower bloomed, and threatened all their magic. They yielded backward, wishing to regroup, but she fought them, step by step in her advance.

"Such struggle costs you," one said, whose name had been Suileach.

"There is Cinniuint," the other said. "His roots are deep, but even there things delve."

"Lord Death will perish soon," said the first. "He prospers now. But he will pass when Men do."

"You are corrupt, o Arafel, to cherish such allies as Men and Death. You are Sidhe. It is unnatural."

"Your magic fails. It has Death at its roots. Look on us; remember what you are. No more of war." Suileach drew close. "The green shade might come again to Dun Gol. We might call it again Airgiodach, of silver leaves and stars."

"Do you remember? We were friends."

Against that one she drew the sword; and it vanished, but Suileach remained.

"Like the leaves in the forest," said Suileach, "are our numbers. And this Man—Ciaran is his name. Do you seek him? We have not forgotten him. We can show you where he is."

"Be gone, Suileach!" She extended not her sword but her left hand toward him, with the magic that she wove. "Or yield to me—you know what I offer. Memory. Green shade, fair sun—"

It cried aloud, cold as it had grown; it could still feel torment, and the green magic burned it. "We will have these things. We are wiser than we were. Peace, Aoibheil! Who now makes strife, but you?"

"Cold jewels, lifeless wealth, the fall of Caer Righ—these things you wrought! You serve a dark thing that hates us—have you never seen that?"

"Hates us—do Men not hate us? You would have shared the world with them and look how they repaid you."

"Men the Worm corrupted—O Suileach, think! if thought is left you. The dragon used you; it never loved elves or Men. It set one against the other."

"O Aoibheil, does that stone of yours remember? Of Caer Righ you made Dun Gol." Malice came through the voice, so great a malice it almost overthrew her. "Come closer."

She had flung up her hand to shield herself; her sword was dimmed; the stone at her breast went cold.

"Lioslinn," it whispered, and not Suileach, but another thing speaking through him, in the face of which she shivered. "Hail, Arafel. Come, Arafel; you must keep coming. Others will attend this Man. You and I must meet. The bindings—o weave them with all your strength: with all your strength—come, spend it. Mine will not diminish in the least and yours is fading."

Even Suileach had faltered. The draw retreated in disorder, recov ering them with distance. "Ciaran," it called back spitefully. "Ciaran, Ciaran Cuilean."

She ventured no attack, no answer. She only stood still, and that itself was effort, in the dread that blew about her. "You cannot touch him," she cried to the empty air. "Try, Suileach. Try. When one of us goes that way, neither you nor I can hold him."

"Because he desires nothing—recalls nothing." Malice leapt and crackled like fire in the voice from among Duilliath's black trees. "But for you to use him he must keep something of himself—and by that something we can hold him, by that something bind him, in pain and torment, o Aoibheil, as long as yours will be— Revenge, Aoibheil—revenge and patience—these we know. We will give you to the dragon."

"Begone!"

"To this Man of yours?"

It vanished. But the voice was slow to fade.

Something touched him, faint and far away. He remembered, . then: sometimes he wandered, and even Aodhan lost the way, in the woods that were everywhere across the face of the world, in the maze of his thoughts, the tangle of his desires. Going anywhere was diffi cult; going the way that he must made his heart ache. But that voice spoke now in a tremor of the ground, in small shudderings as if the earth itself knew pain.

He looked over his shoulder, toward the darker trees, and there were elves.

"Brother," they hailed him kindly, "what do you here, astray?"

He had seen them before. They had never come so close. He gazed on them, on faces fair and perilous, into the eyes of Sidhe. They were not Sidhe of the kind he knew. He read cold power there and lust for a thousand things to which elves might be tempted.

"Let go the stone," they whispered. "It hinders you."

Aodhan shied, breaking the spell. Then he could look away, des perately toward the west.

"Let it go, Ciaran Cuilean!"

He clutched the stone within his hands; they held his Name in theirs, and it was hard, hard, not to hear them. There had been a place, a hall, faces that he loved. They wished to show him these things, to bind him to the name that once had been enough for him; they offered these things, and his heart ached, somewhere in the stone.

"Ciaran," they called behind him. "Ciaran!"

Aodhan ran, ran toward the west, spurning the earth beneath him. Small darknesses leapt at him. The dark elves pursued. On and on he fled in his despair, seeming at last to gain a little.

But there was worse ahead. He felt it, like a rift in the world itself, a blight on all that was.

He broke from the woods on a hillcrest, and it was there, in the plain that stretched before him, a darkness the like of which he had never seen, not in the world and not in Death's domain. It lay from hill to hill, and reached toward the sea, casting a pall everywhere, from Caerbourne to the north. The likeness of horses moved in it; it glittered with spears and arms.

He had never felt so naked as on that hillside, where distance meant nothing and that darkness might see as well as be seen. The stone burned with icy cold, and Aodhan faltered, shivering, coming to a standstill. Love, duty, all these things seemed small and far and fleeting against such a thing. The hills lay broken, having given up the secrets at their roots; every tree was slain; every blade of grass had perished in that darkness.

"No, go on," he urged Aodhan, though all the fear that was gath ered in him counseled otherwise. "They are at our heels—go on!"

You will perish, the doubts assailed him.

And an attention which he had felt but slightly until now turned full upon him.

There, it said, he is there, and the hills themselves quaked with it. He was shaken; his bones ached; he looked behind him for retreat, and Aodhan broke stride and turned.

But: "No!" he cried then; and the elf horse veered back to west ward. He kept going, into the darkening wind. His substance blew in tatters. He heard his name called behind him and before, but it was not all his Name. They thrust at him with weapons, but those nearest him were shadows to him: iron pained but could not touch him. Drow sought him with their cold power: they named Aodhan, and Arafel; and at every naming the stone burned, until there seemed nothing more desirable in that maelstrom than to cast it away, to have relief of pain.

There was another voice. He could not hear what it said, but it reminded him of life.

But, Ciaran, the wind sang, Ciaran Cuilean—what do you here, astray?

He went forward. Over all that distance, he heard the gulls.

"It is your brother coming," the Dark Man whispered calmly; and Donnchadh, the body that was Donnchadh's, lifted its face from the plain before them. There was little left that answered to that name. That which did remain remembered kinship, and a shiver passed through the flesh, a remnant of fear for vanished reasons, a remnant of jealousy and regret.

She still drives him, said Duilliath. She moves other things, in other realms. But these are thin shields, King-of-Men, unlike ours. I speak of dragons. Come, let us deal with him.

My nephew, Donnchadh remembered the reason of his fear, recall ing that this was not the direction that they had begun, not the thing the Dark Man had offered him when first he let him in. Ogods, what have you done?

O, sweet self, it is late to ask, is it not? You must meet him. Think, think, how to name him—think of him, and show me that.

The host advanced. They moved slowly, being great in number, being in this world and others. They shed small groups which sped as things could which traveled one realm only, one band toward the south, to the siege of Dry w in his mountain fastness; another by An Beag toward Caer Wiell, but these were nothing to the numbers that remained. They had crossed the Caerbourne, and some had drowned in that flood, but advanced the more swiftly in Death's dark realm, yet another front, a portion of the whole.

A pair of youths climbed a hill outside Caer Donn, one fair, one dark, but the hill was hollow and full of promises.

You are not afraid now, the voice told him. You are Sidhe the same as he, no, more—old as the world and direr than Death.

A pair of brothers embraced outside the King's tent at Dun na h-Eoin. But he was the King now; and his brother—out there beyond the lines.

An Beag has served you well, the dark Sidhe whispered, even by being there. Caer Wiell has come to us; we have no need to seek it.

They have found a place: Men could never take it—but we shall. Your brother's elvish ally . . . her name is Arafel. Remember it. She has favored this haven. But we shall have it And the last of her will fade.

Donnchadh's visions faded; he remembered such a valley as he began to remember darker things, prison beneath the hills, elvish dead . . . cold and heartless hate, smothered under bindings and hatred of Men and all their doings.

That which had been Donnchadh winked out, lost in that gale of wrath. Those about him had another aspect than they had had, hav ing gone pale and strange; and the horses that bore them had brought their other aspect into this world. Some of his followers had sought to flee, but these were hunted, and no more tried after them. Most had ambition only to be the hunters, which was all they had ever wanted, to give pain and not to feel it. Breandan, one had been, seneschal of Donn; Geannan another; Wulf, new lord of Ban, mur derer of the last. They had acquired the calm, cold grace of elves; they had become beautiful, but no Man met their eyes.

Duilliath looked out on the world unhindered now; he smiled with Donnchadh's lips as the black horse leapt forward, a fuath of shifting shape, speeding with speed no horse could match. He drew his tainted sword.

"I know why you have come," said Beorc, the stranger who was so like their own, as they shared his table in the yard beneath the tree, "and I know where you hope to go, lady. You will ask have I seen him; I will tell you no. And all of that is too simple. I will tell you you must not go, and I know you will never heed. You cannot. Your luck is on you. And on all your house. Against that I have no power. I fare as you do. No more will I say than that."

"Riddles," said their mother. She was not wont to raise her voice. It trembled now, so that Meadhbh clenched her hands and stared at this Beorc at whose table they were guests.

"My mother deserves more than that, sir," Ceallach said, who was never wont to say anything at all. He stood up from the table beside Meadhbh, tall as he could. "If you do know—"

"Young lord," said Domhnull.

"I am not any lord," Ceallach returned. "My father is."

"You are King," said Beorc quite gravely, and Meadhbh's heart turned in her, for there was a great silence down the table, among the steaders and those of Caer Wiell who had found seats. Others moved about the yard, children shouted, horses called to each other down at stable, being in a strange place; Beorc's own folk went to and fro with baskets and baskets of bread and plates of cheese for their guests and they had breached a cider-keg on the porch of the ram bling house where folk gathered, finding heart to laugh. But at the table no one stirred.

"Ceallach," their mother said, "sit down, please." And Ceallach did that, quietly, but he was not quiet, not inside: Meadhbh knew. The elf-gift burned, and the master of the steading gazed at them in a way that made it worse. He is Sidhe himself, Meadhbh thought, or something very like; but there is iron in this place, if not in getting to it. We would not be safe if this man were angry.

But he was not angry. He gazed at them quietly, holding his secrets, his beard and hair stirring in the wind which came on them then. His wife beside him, Aelfraeda, he called her, who was crowned with gold braids that shone in the torchlight—she sat still and wise-looking—Like some king, Meadhbh thought, and queen. One wants to call them lord and lady. And our father would like them —he always talked with our farmers, of horses and weather and grain — She found herself remembering all in one tumbling moment, and gathering up the pieces of everything that had shattered; but sadness came with it too, a different kind of sadness than she had ever felt, a sureness of loss, of change imminent that could not be called back.

He was looking straight at her, in that way the Sidhe had done, and that gaze passed on to all of them.

"Here is shelter," he said, "young King, lady of Caer Wiell, and all who come with you—but outside, all about us, there is evil gath ered. This is truly what it is, not as Men measure it, wanting this and that and naming their enemies evil, who also have desires. This wants nothing. It is. What it does it does because of itself." He rose from his place, towering above them. "Once upon a time, my friends —is that not a fair beginning?—the Sidhe came into the world; they came, and loved it, and would not see it change.

"They had wars. They were not without ambition. There were older things in the world. With most of them they warred—but not the dragons. The dragons seemed fair and wise; they shone beneath the sun like gold and brass together. Their wings—ah, their wings, like sun through ice, their wings.

"But they hated change themselves, and the Sidhe to them were change. The oldest of them was fairest, but no Sidhe could master him—he was too great, he said. But he would give advice to any who would seek him out.

"After all, he said—the world might change again, and who knew what way his folk would go? Even then a folk arose who shifted from day to day, who brought iron and mortality. Perhaps the dragons would go and serve humankind instead.

"There was nothing fairer than Nathair Sgiathach, prince of drag ons.

"There was a prince of the Daoine Sidhe; Duilliath was his name, and of all Sidhe his was the proudest, quickest temper.

" 'Come,' said the winged Worm. 'I shall bear you on my back and show you what Men and Death are.'"

The way grew darker, the chaos roiled, and still they cried his name. Aodhan flew, spurning Aescbourne's flood, striding long past mortal steeds. But those came that were not mortal, that were night mares and worse.

"Brother," he heard. "Ciaran, my brother—" shouted across the tumult.

Then he looked. He must. A Man rode toward him; and he knew this Man, through all the toll of years and other changes too. "Donnchadh," he said. He faced this rider, weaponless.

A darkness passed between, a sheet of darkness, a torrent of horned things and hounds, a rider on a horse that gleamed with bone.

"Lord Ciaran!" someone cried. "Run!"

It was Ruadhan, from the border; it was Madawc and Owein the southrons, and others come besides, a rush of shadowed riders. There were border archers—a black sleet of arrows fell into the press; they were figures that moved like dream, arrows that fell with deceptive swiftness.

"Lord!" cried other voices: it was Beorc and Rhys, not dead— arrived on lathered horses, with haggard faces, and their weapons solid iron. A troop of riders was with them, coming from darkened air. "Lord, wait for us!"

Aodhan turned beneath him, leapt forward, bearing him away. Tears were on his face, blinding him; there was pain again, of loss and grief. But: "Go!" he shouted, consenting, and now the elf horse flew, faster, faster, faster, till all the world blurred about them to a dim gray light, till the air smelled of sea and they found the sun.

Water scattered from Aodhan's hooves, splashing droplets that seemed to fall and fall.

The pain stopped then. "Liosliath!" he cried, flinging out his hands. "Liosliath! Liosliath! I have come as far as I can! Come to me now—the rest is yours!"

He ceased. That was all.

The elf horse threw its head, it danced and turned; its rider straightened and lifted his face again toward the shadowed east where riders clashed and died.

He had brought little with him; he touched the stone about his neck and shut his eyes and came more fully into this world. He had neither weapon nor armor; he had not even fully his own shape: but one thing he drew with him by the power in the stone—a silver horn. Daybreak was its name: Camhanach. He had no strength as yet to sound it; he was still mazed in the change, mazed as battle swept the plain.

"—Duilliath," he said. And louder: "Duilliath!"

He rode forward, as far as Aescbourne's banks. Men were being pressed back and back toward him, behind their shield of ghosts; drow came at them, fuaths, every sort of ill amid the darkness. He felt the world different than he had known and dimmer; but from the stone a thousand memories came flooding, a Man's memories, his love, his life, his understanding of the world. He knew all of these Men, the allies of Lord Death. Love welled up in him, and pride, from somewhere in the stone. Hard-pressed, mortal men and ghosts made a wall about him, taking him for their lord: with iron and lives the living defended him; with courage, the human dead.

He lifted the horn and sounded it.

The earth quaked. The drow shrieked one awful cry. "No," one shouted, who lifted a venomed sword. "Fall back—O cousin, you do not defeat us! You only draw new battlelines. And she is there, our cousin, when you release the Worm—A world divided, Liosliath! That is what you win—but Aoibheil is ours!"

They retreated; the lesser evils flowed after them, less swift, leav ing mortal allies in confusion and panic on Aescbourne's wooded shores.

"Lord!" Beorc cried. "O gods, my lord—"

A second time he set the horn to his lips and pealed out a note wilder and louder than the first.

The meal was done, the tale ended. Beorc turned down his cup and looked at them all. There was a scurrying beside him. The Gruagach scrambled up on the bench.

"A thing has happened," said Beorc gazing at them all. Aelfraeda rose and took his hand. The wind increased. Leaves began to fly from the tree above them as if autumn had come in an instant. They fell onto the table, among the dishes. Meadhbh's heart was beating hard with a fear she could put no name to, but some spell had been on them all the while Beorc was speaking. And now the Gruagach was staring at them with round dark eyes, and her mother's hand sought hers on one side, and Ceallach's on the other. "Lady," Beorc said, "you brought your folk for refuge. But no one can claim it who does not wish, for whom it is not the last of hopes. And you cherish others. So good night to you. Farewell. A horn has blown in Eald; and that summons we may not deny."

Their mother rose; and they stood, dismayed to see the tall steader walk away from them, and all their folk withdrawing. He turned again toward them, lifted his hand as if he would bid them farewell.

Then everything ceased to be—the house, the fences—all the tu mult of people. They stood alone, they, their mother, Domhnull— beneath a dead and leafless tree, on a hillside whispering with grass.

"Domhnull!" their mother cried. "O Muirne—!"

Meadhbh shivered. The elfgift burned and dazed her. There was ill all about them, except in one direction.

A horn sounded across the hills. Yet again the air thickened about them and they stood in twilight, on a riverside littered with the dead, where a rider on a white horse stood amid a knot of Caer Wiell and southron riders—

That one slid down from the horse and came to them as others dismounted there in this dreadful place. Their mother stood still, by them and Domhnull—not our father, Meadhbh thought, with a new and more terrible ache within her heart. She felt Ceallach's hand clench hers.

He came to their mother, this tall elf with so much like their father and so smooth-faced young: he took her hand and knelt and kissed it as if she were some queen. Then he rose again, and their mother's hand left his slowly, with such sorrow as she drew away. Domhnull moved at once to take her arm; Beorc was there glowering, and Rhys—but Meadhbh could never stir from where she stood, gone cold inside as the stranger turned to her.

"Meadhbh, Ceallach," said the elf prince—only that; but when he bent a look on them it felt—there was no word for what it was: the elf-gifts ached with it, with all the world was not and she wanted it to be again.

He walked away; the elf horse came to him. He swung up to its back and it leapt away with him, so swiftly only the heart could see it, away from them, across the river where there were things she never wanted to see. He is in danger, Meadhbh thought. Nothing was what it ought to be; there were men lying dead, blood everywhere and such a poison of iron—She wanted to run, run, run, where none of this was true; she wanted to strike and make things what they were again, wanted, wanted, wanted—

Lost, a voice wailed from the river. O lost, lost—the kind children. I follow, follow through the waters—I hear; o come! come! o help—"

She went; it was so easy. Her brother came with her—or perhaps he had gone before. They were there on the banks deep within the trees. They heard their mother calling. "Meadhbh! Ceallach!—o gods —Beorc—"

"Caolaidhe!" Meadhbh called.

A horse snorted, close by their feet. They looked and it was a young man clad in nothing but the shadow, with red and dreadful eyes.

"Seaghda am I," said that one. "Caolaidhe is afraid. Camhanach has sounded and the world is in danger of it Come! I will carry you. I have no master. But I will take you up."

The water stirred and sang: a fair face drifted in muddy water, in flood and rapid current. "Where river runs, run I. O children, trust me, trust Seaghda—where river runs, run I. Seaghda is frightened too, but he will never say it. Come with us, kind children; come, o come—keep us free, no slave to Sidhe or dragon."

"Help us," Ceallach said. "Help us if you can."

Water splashed; a branch snapped. The each-uisge was coming up, trailing weed and water; the pooka came to Ceallach, moving through the brush. "Meadhbh!" came their mother's voice. "O Ceal lach—"

Meadhbh seized the each-uisge's mane. Here was help and power, if she could only tame it. She climbed and it was easy: all at once she was up and the each-uisge was moving, not like a horse, but like the river itself, smooth and dreadful; and Ceallach raced beside her.

They ran along the river south, so swiftly—"No!" Meadhbh cried; "Wait, turn back!" cried Ceallach; but the fuaths never heeded. Black and dreadful they ran the rivercourse, turning into another; and now toward the sea, where other horses came, white horses out of the foam, in the breaking of thunder.

Then ships came from nowhere, from the sunlight, wide-sailed, gliding swift as gulls before the wind; and light was all about them.

"They're the Sidhe!" Ceallach cried; and it was as sure in them as their own names. "O Meadhbh, the Sidhe have come to help us!"

A stormwind swept the weary men that held a hill at Aescbourne. It scoured their faces, cracked in the tattered banners, brought the smell of green things where was the stench of blood and death. Men swore. "Hush," said Domhnull, getting to his feet. And Branwyn lifted her head, hearing something—feeling it, who had lost too much to feel any hope at all: her heart beat faster—it was the wind, and thunder, and something passed them, skirled about them, raced off eastward, like storm. The sound of horns came pealing, pealing off the hills; and it set a faint cold tingling in her veins, like nothing else she had ever felt. It was Eald; it was brightness, and something of her own, sped safely—O run, she wished them, O run, run, my children!

"My lady—" Domhnull was by her, gathering her cloak about her. He had armed himself: there was no dearth of weapons on this littered ground. They stood in stormlight now, in thickening murk as sunset faded; perhaps he had seen what had passed him—there was that look within his eyes. "The Sidhe," she said. "Domhnull, did you hear them?"

"I heard it," said Beorc, who came up from the shoulder of the rise. "Something went past, at least. They know it out there too, and they'll move." He pointed into the dark, by the trees along the river. "They're gathering. It's getting dark fast, and that wind on whatever side won't help our archers. I'd advise the horses loosed. They'll only be confusion. And gods know we've nowhere to be riding to."

She looked at him. If there was any fear in Beorc, if there was grief or weariness or any other thing, he showed none of it. When they had not found the children he had set about ordering this and that calmly, choosing this place, this sandy hill halfway to the sea. He and Rhys and Domhnull—Hold here, he claimed his orders were; and none of them gave any hint in voice or look that they could not hold this place forever.

"Do that then," she said. She wrapped her cloak about her. She felt the earth tremble, heard the baying of hounds.