The Tree of Swords and Jewels

FOUR The Heart of Ciaran Cuilean

Branwyn came for him, cracking the door carefully and spilling the bright light of the hall into the stairwell where he sat on the steps, arms on knees, head bowed, hands clasped about his ankles as a child might sit.

"My lord," she said tentatively. "Ciaran, my love."

Her voice was so gentle and strange he shivered at it, called back from the place where he had wandered, lost in mist. Branwyn's voice also seemed charged with power, of a different kind, and he must answer it, must come back when she knelt and called his name with such anxiousness. He had worried her and he must not. He felt her hands warm on his, lifting his hands to her lips. Her eyes bore into his, with the shadow falling across half her face, his shadow from the torch behind him. It was his own hall, the steps, the flickering light, and that bunding seam was the hall aspill with lamplight and the smells of banquetry and the plaintive voices of his children—("Has father gone somewhere? Is he all right? —Let me go, Beorc!" "Hush," someone said. "Be still, young sir.")

"Ciaran," Branwyn said, and gazed at him, at that place which hurt him so, there, just at his throat. She reached out and touched it, gathered the naked stone into her fingers, and he flinched at that, jolted by all the dread, all the love, all the horror at once. He might have cried out or she did; and then he was in her arms and his were locked about her as if he were drowning. There was a sound of footsteps, a cry from the hall, and light drowned them both as the door was flung wide, a looming darkness and gathering of shadows.

"Lord," said Beorc's deep voice, "my lady—" A higher voice a smaller shadow thrust forward. "Wait," Beorc said, but their chil dren came to them, and Ciaran reached out one hand to Ceallach's, to Meadhbh, and felt their love like a draught of water where Branwyn's was wine, hers rich and theirs pure; felt the texture of their souls, which was too close even for father to know children, like gossamer, like wind with lilacs blooming.

"Ciaran," Branwyn whispered. Thunder broke; but that was outside, above their walls. Almost he fainted, and felt her arms strug gle to bear him a moment. Then he slipped his fingers between her hand and the stone he wore and thrust it safe within his collar, so that the room came clear again, so that he could make a pretense of command and look her in the eyes clearly enough, and look at Meadhbh and Ceallach. There seemed a light about them; but it was the light from the door. He drew a deep breath and gathered himself up to his feet leaning on Branwyn for an instant.

"I am well," he said. He looked beyond at the others who had gathered there. "I dreamed a moment. So Branwyn found me." He looked down at the children, set his arm about them, walked with them back to the hall, into the brighter light and the cloying smell of branches and the leavings of the feast. More faces waited for him— Leannan the harper, Siodhachan, Muirne, Ruadhan, faithful and concerned. He looked about at them. He reckoned that some small time had passed—that he had frightened them badly, not least of all his children, who were uncommonly still and clinging. And Branwyn —Branwyn— He felt her presence at his back, like something bleed ing.

"Our guest has gone," he said. "She wished us well and spoke to me awhile, of such things—of such things that mean good will to us. Never fear otherwise from her. I sat a time to think on them. Only go to your beds. And keep the counsel of this room—even the youngest of us." He looked at the children, one and the other, into their eyes. "That means silence."

"Yes, sir," Ceallach said ever so softly. And, "Yes," said Meadhbh half whispering.

"Go with Muirne."

There was never a word further from them. They embraced him, one and the other, and he bent to their embrace, feeling their arms so very frail against his own, and their warmth so much greater than his own it might have been that of the living embracing the dead, but they never flinched. Muirne took them in charge and led them up stairs in silence.

"Go," he said to the others, but while Leannan gathered up his harp and Domhnull and Rhys their cloaks to obey him, Beorc stood still and staring.

"Go," Ciaran said again.

"My lady?" Beorc asked, prepared to defy him if Branwyn should judge otherwise; he saw as much. There was love in such disloyalty, and devotion. Rhys and then Domhnull came and paused at Beorc's side, seeing what was toward, and the others stopped in their depar tures.

"Go," said Branwyn softly. "Only—Beorc, will you sleep below, by the door tonight?"

"Aye," said Beorc.

"There is no need," Ciaran said, but he saw that Beorc did not intend to regard him, not this strange night. They made themselves his warders, his wife and his own chiefest man. He felt it like his children's embrace, powerless but warm. Beorc went, last to leave; and perhaps Beorc would not be the only one to watch. Domhnull too, he thought, and Rhys, they might take turns. Branwyn had many allies.

The door closed. Their steps retreated down the distance of the stairs. He stood still, not alone, for Branwyn remained.

"Have you subverted them all?" he asked in gentle whimsy, and kissed her on the brow. "Go to bed, you too, only go and rest."

"Come with me."

"I am too uneasy." A chill passed over him like the wind from an open door. Outside the thunder muttered and rain sluiced off the roof. "An uncomfortable bedfellow. Will you sit by me, by the fire?"

She would. He drew the wide bench from the table and the ruin of the feast, set it before the sinking fire and made room for her by him, his arm about her. For a long time she asked nothing, but he knew everything that she would ask, and all that she would blame him for —for she knew that stone as no one in all Caer Wiell could know it. Dreams urged at him, and he fought the dreams—must fight them, with Branwyn so near. The mist threatened to take him, and he measured his strength against it, finding it for the present sufficient to fend the mist away.

"What she said," he began at last, in that silence Branwyn left for him, "was not all of comfort, Branwyn. But this—this gift—if I had had it today, do you see, Meadhbh and Ceallach would never have come so near to harm; and no harm could even come close to Caer Wiell but that I would know it—I must keep it. I have to bear this thing awhile." He could not bring himself to tell her all that he suspected and all that he doubted, that there was an end to his luck and to that of Caer Wiell, indeed, an end of many things. "I need not use it, I think, only keep it safe. I shall be wiser than to use it. But she may not come back again. And yet if she will help us, then this may be the way—a means to keep us safe."

"There is no safety in that thing!" Branwyn cried, and as if she had only waited the dropping of a shield she leaned on his arms and looked closely into his eyes. "Or let me carry it for you."

He was coward, he thought, for one brief moment hearing only the words that would free him and only then realizing that it was Branwyn, fragile Branwyn, who heard the forest singing in storms and had nightmares of being lost. "Love, no," he said.

"You would keep me from such safety?" she asked, deadly in her reason and defter than he with his mind all muddled. "What, will not share it?"

He stared at her helplessly, undone in all his arguments.

"Then it is not safety," she said.

"If my King had called," he said, "and told me to take the sword, then I would have gone and would you have held me? No."

"If the King had called," Branwyn said, "I would know it was a cozening lie."

Her treason shocked him. He had given her children and slept by her for twenty-two years. He had never heard such words from Branwyn so directly. They confused him now, coming as they did at the flank of his defenses.

"I was not speaking of the King," he said.

"Of her, then."

"And if she called," he pursued his reason, doggedly, distractedly, with the stone burning cold at his heart, "then also I would have no choice. There is war of a sort, Branwyn, and I am useless in it, except to hold to this. There is war." He saw banners and dragons in the fire, embers like falling walls, the silver sleet of arrows under the elvish sun. . . .

Liosliatht

His shiver surprised him. He felt her fingers at his neck, felt her loose the chain and lift it from him, and shivered a second time, rescuing the smooth teardrop stone from her fingers as it passed his head. He clenched it so, her fingers still caught in his, entangled in the chain.

"As a guest she was discourteous," Branwyn said in a short, small voice. "She gave our children gifts, and gave to you, and none for me —no gift for me at all."

He saw past the words, straight to the heart of the matter, to the fear in Branwyn's eyes. Perhaps it was the stone, in both their hands. But he saw, and Saw, and that Sight went on plaguing him, that he knew the difference between his blood and Branwyn's; and that Meadhbh and Ceallach were his own, for Arafel had given them gifts and in truth, brought none for Branwyn. There was nothing Arafel could have given to Branwyn. And Branwyn knew; and he did, with all his insight.

The last log fell, scattering sparks, and something crashed down in his heart then too, a lurching fall like that fall at the edge of sleep, like the chute in dreams, and the dream was the life they had had, their peace, their faith in age and death and passing beyond death together.

He would not age or die at all, not while he held the stone. And Branwyn knew that. Fade, he might, but never die. This was what Arafel had given back to him, a power he had carried once and returned to Eald because he had seen where it would lead him. He might have entered Eald, once for all, but Branwyn never could.

Already he felt the chill of it, which would leave him only elvish love, distant and cold; and make the human world seem crass and garish; which would show him horror and beauty and divide them forever.

"Branwyn," he said, like a talisman. "Branwyn, Branwyn." Names spoken three times had power. He longed for her love, her warmth to hold him. He did not want the dreams. "Be with me, Branwyn."

She took him in her arms. He let his head sink against her shoul der, his hand with the rescued stone fallen into his lap, a great tall man, for all the sons and daughters of Caer Donn were tall, as Branwyn's folk were not. A daughter of Men held one of elvish kind, a man the King himself feared, whose sword the Boglach and the Bradhaeth knew to their regret; and rocked him like a child.

So he slept a time, but only a little while, and woke and held her in his turn, her small fair head against his heart.

The fire died, and the candles guttered, until only the embers winked in the dark hearth, and the stone was peaceful for the hour.

He looked out over all the land in his vision, a swift unrolling of distances, and if he looked in one way it was mist and shadow; and if in another, only an ordinary dawn with the rain diminished to driz zle, dripping off the leaves. So the stone gave him power to do. There seemed less threatening than had seemed a few hours ago. He was conscious of Arafel, but dimly. Her days flowed differently than his, and this long night had been a moment to her, an indistinction of intent and motion and the feeling of the land, which fretted in its unease.

Liosliath, he wondered, trying to cross a gulf he had crossed once, but the stone was still now. He suspected that Arafel had willed it so, had set a kind of peace on it in giving it to him That this gift was betrayal, he could not believe of her. She had no need for subterfuge with him: the debt was too deep and too absolute on his side. In this his trust was unquestioning.

Liosliath. But there was a sudden grayness between himself and the presence the stone had once held, as if all of Eald were cloaked in mist and the sea were cut off from him.

He slept again, with the chain tangled in his fingers, and his dreams were gray and dim.

But a darkness sat amid the mist, a piece of night perched on the stump of a dead tree by a sluggish river, for lord Death rested from his Hunt. His horse and hounds were nearby, a sestlessness beyond the leaves.

"You need not be afraid," said Lord Death. "You have the stone, after all."

He was afraid, all the same. It was not their first meeting, not the first in which he had faced that shapeless dark inside the cowl and wished not to be facing it, for fear that he would see what was inside it. "She asked me to carry it," Ciaran said. "Do you know why?"

"I am not privy to her counsels. She shares them only with Men, it seems. But then—" The shadow moved in a semblance of a gesture. "Then you might invite me to your hall."

"Someday," he said, feeling the cold of a wind that blew from that third and dreadful Eald. "But not yet. I wish to ask you—what I ought to do. Surely you have some advice, my lord."

"Ah, not your lord. But I am lord of those you love."

"Have mercy. Were we not allies—and are we not allies still? You've hated me for cheating you once. But let me beg you. I know nothing else to do now, and I am not too proud, if it will make a difference. These of mine, my family, my friends—I need them. Ev erything I am asked I will do. But stay away from Caer Wiell."

There was a long silence. "You suspect me of kindness."

"Perhaps. Sometimes."

"Give me your hand. Do you dare that?"

The darkness extended the likeness of a hand to him. All his in stinct rebelled, but he reached out deliberately, ignoring the cold, and felt the touch of fingers so dark the shape of them seemed cut out of the world, and the touch of them numbed, but not utterly. They brushed his forearm as if there were no cloth between, and a pain leapt through his body at that touching of an old wound half-healed. The hounds of the Hunt had made it years ago. He had left a part of himself in their jaws and they had devoured it, he suspected. This much of him Death already owned.

The touch passed on, and the robes enfolded him. Very tenderly Lord Death embraced him, and as if it were his brother or his King he returned the embrace, his arms about a body less body than burn ing cold. Perhaps Lord Death meant to mock him; but there had touched him such peace, and peace parted from him as Death drew back from him, leaving him chilled and prey again to the wind.

"You are bold," said Death, and the voice seemed gently wistful. "Few would dare that, even the most eager. It's your pride, is it not? If I asked that too, would you give your pride, to ransom Caer Wiell?"

Ciaran sank to his knees, one and then the other, out of practice, having been ten years a Kingless lord. He felt a flush of shame, and lifted his face. "That too," he said.

But Death was gone, leaving only a swirling in the mist.

"Lord," he called after him, rising to his feet. He suspected Death of laughter at his expense; of cruelty passing his expectations. "Lord Death!"

But a third time he dared not call, and he waked in Branwyn's arms, in the dark of his own room.

The children crept down in the morning, late, but not that they looked to have slept well, only desperately, exhausted. They came hurrying silently down into the hall with Muirne behind them, Meadhbh's bright hair flying loose and both their faces ruddy cheeked from a violent scrubbing, but pale all the same, large-eyed and anxious and very unlike his children, so unlike it chilled him.

So Branwyn left her breakfast and hugged them and wanted to do Meadhbh's hair herself, but they tore themselves from her and came to Ciaran's arms, touching him only carefully, as if he could be bruised by their small hands. Laugh he wished them. Oh smile at me and never look that way. But they did not In a single day they had learned to fear and to doubt and to know their father and their mother were not omnipotent to save them; more, they suspected helplessness. It was in their eyes, the touch of their hands.

But he gathered Meadhbh's small hands in his large ones and kissed them, and smiled at her, trying to restore her courage, if not her innocence. He set his hands on Ceallach's shoulder, feeling how slight the bones were, how frail his shoulders were for any weight.

"What," he said, lancing straight to the center of their fears, "did you think I would vanish with the moon? There is nothing real about what happened; and there is—It was all very real. Do you under stand? There are Men and there is Eald and they are most real when they are farthest apart, but when dreams come into hall and sit at table and leave a gift in your hand, it confuses things. Your mother understands. Perhaps Beorc does, though maybe not. —Do you, Muirne? No. Not truly. One should wake from dreams. But this one left substance. Do you both have your gifts?"

"Upstairs," said Ceallach. But Meadhbh, having pockets, brought hers forth, unfolding her hand carefully as if she had trapped some moth. The leaf shone silver and incorrupt on her palm, which trem bled.

"So," he said, "you must always do as she said and keep it by you."

"It feels strange."

"So does mine, you see." He brought the stone into view and prevented her hand with his own cupped over it, a slow and desper ate move which left his heart pounding for dread, though he smiled gently at his daughter. "But one should not let another touch such things. Only keep it safe and secret. Did you dream last night?"

"There was a forest," said Ceallach after a moment.

"Was it a good place?"

"Mine seemed to be," said Meadhbh.

"So." He kissed her on the brow and folded her hand upon the leaf. An unpleasant thought came to him and he looked into her eyes. "But when you wander in your dreams, never let it go, this gift. Never let it go. Names called three times will bring a thing. Be careful what you call, that you can send it away again. Do you hear me? Do you understand? You must be able to send it away."

Their eyes were not so perplexed as he would have wished they were. They reached back into something they knew and agreed with him, silent understandings.

"My name you can always use," he said. "And I will come. I will be there. I promise it. Go have your breakfast. You can sit at table with us this morning, will you like that?"

They would. Their eyes were lighter. In a moment they looked like children, squirming into their seats. Ciaran looked past them to Branwyn, appealing for absolution, for all that had divided them; but she was seeing, mother-fashion, to Meadhbh's hair, to Ceallach's collar, and giving orders to Muirne, where they should be allowed to go this day and how Muirne should watch them.

"Mother," Ceallach said, downcast and shamed.

"Well, what would you?" Ciaran said. "I think you went far enough and saw enough for two young folk in a day. Let us have some little rest, your mother is due that, is she not? Is she not? And the next time I ride the west road you can come part of the way. Rhys will ride escort for you."

"When?" asked Meadhbh, twisting in her seat, her eyes childish again.

"Oh, in a day or so. If I find you have kept your mother happy."

"Meadhbh is my daughter," Branwyn muttered, "not your son, to be out with armored men."

It wounded. Meadhbh's face went blank and hurt at once. It was that sort of wound only friends and kin could deal, so strong he felt it in the stone. But Branwyn never saw, or if she knew, wrapped her common sense about her like a cloak, and poured cider to give to them, golden liquid spilling down into silver cups, smelling of apples and age. She was quite intent upon it. Of such tiny details was the hurt elaborated.

"I have promised," Ciaran said with finality.

Branwyn shrugged, hurting him as well, but this much he allowed. They deserved their wounds, he, his children, being what they were. He dealt none in return, except by being what he was. Neither did Meadhbh, being dutiful. In that moment he saw he had become then-father in a protective way, for they had come out of him and only sojourned in Branwyn. He recalled Caer Donn, his own folk, his brother, parted from him—Donnchadh; and his father, dying without his being there, because of his exile. Only Caer Wiell would take such a man as himself to its heart, being itself close to Eald and accustomed to it over long centuries; only Caer Wiell could smile over such children as these two and give them stones to climb and walls to shelter them. He could not send his daughter off to marry, to be what she was in some strange hold, to wither or to smother what she was . . . if there were any one who would court her, the daugh ter of Ciaran Cuilean. Nor would any lord or King ever trust his son in alliance. The orderly, ordinary hopes collapsed about him, had never stood secure. He reached across the table and laid his hand near Meadhbh's.

Branwyn pretended ignorance of this, of all her injuries. But he loved her and knew that he was loved. When she was harmed, she struck and thought that she was right. When the world threatened to harm one of them, there was iron in Branwyn. He knew this and even Branwyn did not, who seemed to lean on him; but it was the other way around. It was so now, or the gulf would have taken him. She had been there, in the dark, when no one else knew how.

"Eat your breakfast," Branwyn said.

Beorc was looking askance at him when he went out along the wall into the daylight, on that narrow walk; but he was content to walk, to feel the sun's warmth on his back, to hear the sounds of voices in the yard, the laughter of children playing tag among the supports of the walk. He inhaled the smells of straw, of stables, of leather and oil and woodsmoke and someone's baking, all the scents of Caer Wiell and home. These things were good on this morning, after the night, doubly and trebly precious. The colors, the green and brown, the broad swell of lands he tended, the sky, were all dazzlingly bright. The banner over the gate snapped and cracked in the wind. The gray stone was spotted green and white with lichens. Flowers spread themselves in yellow dust like treasure on the hills. There was a delirium in such sights. They had been there all his life, spread wide, stretched thin. He cast back through his memory for the darkest mortal things, but every dark thing in all the world had left some color in his mind, like Dun na h-Eoin in the morning, with the mist lying near the trees all pearled and strange in the first light; and the bristling of spears that morning orderly as a woods on the move against them, by twilight scattered like jackstraws among the dark, humped bodies of the dead—lumps like sacks across the trampled ground, like the spillage from some cart, but a wreckage so vast it covered all the plain as far as the eye could see—while close at hand life glowed like pools of ruby wine in footprints driven deep into the mire. And in twilight moths came to the torches in small frantic sputterings, their wings trailing sparks in the flames. Dun na h-Eoin was the midst of horrors, but these small details were there among the rest; like the silence, the vast, vast silence after so much clamor, the simple taste of air. The moths came back, even on the last of their wings, for love of the golden light. Even death had colors. He had been in worse places, where there was no comfort, no refuge for eyes or mind. The moths flew like prophecies, blind with their desires.

"My lord?" Beorc had come up behind him; or had been there for some time. He turned to face this huge man with hair like a burning fire, a violence at rest—broad shoulders, strong back, hands capable of everything—and nothing, this morning; they hung empty and of fering, the honest face bemused. The massive head held wit in a cup of bone; sense and love peered out at him through a skull's eyes. Ciaran blinked and shuddered, seeing it; or perhaps Beorc saw him that way.

"Lord?"

"I am well enough this morning." He drew a great breath and looked toward the light, the fields, the hills. "The sun is bright, is it not? A good day."

"Aye." Beorc moved up beside him, leaned his arms against a crenel of the wall, likewise gazing outward. The sun glanced off his golden bracelet, whitened scars which crossed and recrossed Beorc's strong hands, glistened among red-gold hairs on his arms. The bearded face still frowned in its web of blowing hair. "Did you sleep, lord?"

"Somewhat. More than you, perhaps. No more watching at my door. Go to your own bed tonight."

Beorc looked at him, a sideways motion of the eyes.

"Your own bed," Ciaran said again.

Beorc nodded once, not moving otherwise.

"It was a strange company," Ciaran said, "last night. Did it trouble you—that?"

There was a long silence, in which Beorc stared outward over the wall. "So I have seen one of the fair folk," Beorc said. "That was something."

"Not for the first time," Ciaran said.

"They say." A deeper frown settled on Beorc's face. "What I saw last night—I'm not sure. Like the war. The young men ask and those that were out there on the field will never say what they saw. Or we try, sometimes, and it never comes twice the same. Like men that meet bogles and the like in the dark—they tell the best they can and never agree, even in their own remembering." Beorc looked about at him. "It was like that, lord—last night. Like that."

"But you will remember. From time to time—nights are easiest. It comes back then."

"In the war—that faded."

"When Eald comes out in sunlight nothing seems reasonable. Ex cept in the woods, in shadow."

"Whenever I have been there," Beorc said, "anything might hap pen."

"You followed her once."

Again was silence. "So you tell me that I did. Lord, how did my father die?"

"After all these years?"

Beorc shrugged uncomfortably. "I never doubted him; don't now. But you were there. I wasn't."

"He was at my back—I never saw just how it happened. But now and again I saw him in the battle. He was foremost, that day, of all that rode for Caer Wiell."

"But behind you."

"Where I rode—it would have been difficult to follow. More than difficult. But you know. You followed her."

"They say," Beorc said, and let his voice fade away. "We fought at the narrows of the river—the King led; and the battle spilled to Caer Wiell—twenty miles. We could never have ridden so far, spent as we were. But a kind of dark came down, or the morning never came. There was a light—or a banner; I took it for a banner. The lights they name that shine in the wood, and a lost man has to follow: he takes it for someone else walking in the dark, and follows, and it leads. It was something like that, but blazing in the dark—I thought it was the King—or his banner—or it might have been a rider; but it was a light, so clear in that murk, and not a man but saw it and went after it, with all the others, as if it was the only right thing in the dark, man and beast, but never sound of hooves—or sounds were far, and if anyone shouted, it was somewhere far away —Then the light broke, and battle was round us no different than before —But it was not where we had been, or we had fought our way there, over twenty miles."

"She brought you through the shadow ways. Iron can never pass her realm—gods know what path she used." But he knew, was cold with thinking of that trespass, in Death's own domain, where neither Sidhe nor living Man belonged.

"There was light in front of us. That was all I saw."

"Be glad." Ciaran felt the stone cold at his throat, like ice, like a weight too much to bear. The world was mist again. He heard a horse sneeze, heard the thump of hooves close at hand, then blinked and found himself atop the wall, in light, in human color, the stones rough and warm beneath his hands. "What was I? What did you see —of me that day?"

"Like light. Only there was shadow too, or like something wrong with my eyes, like a shadow on your face. But, lord, it was a feeling much as anything. There was this quiet, this awful quiet, like stop ping in the woods, or in some dark place too old, where nothing moves or has moved—" Gooseflesh stood on Beorc's arms. He was not wont to talk like this. He shivered in half a shrug and covered it with a laugh, turning with his elbow on the stone. The laugh died. "Lord, it was like that last night. Even through the wine."

"Beorc, what do they say of me? Now. Across the countryside. Tell me the truth, even the worst of it. How do they see me, our farmers, our weavers, the men who guard my doors? What kind of lord am I?"

Beorc leaned there as if something had pinned him to the stone, as if that silence he had named had wrapped them both in too much intimacy. "Lord, I am your man. They know that. What would they say to me? But I have kin in the country, my mother's folk. Domhnull's too. And in the guardroom they curse you sometimes, the way men will curse hard duty, but, lord, they are your men. They say you have the Sight. They say in the country that the land never fared so well, that there is some luck on it since the war. In the country they set out pannikins of milk, that they never used to do, so the old women say, but they say now—to keep the fair folk on their side. That they fight for us."

"Pannikins of milk." Ciaran gave a frightened, bemused laugh, walked a step away and looked back again. "Aye, I have seen the like."

"There are the small things," Beorc said with a set of his lip that was not to be argued with.

"In them, I have no trust." Ciaran laughed, for he had dismayed Beorc. "Aye. In some things I do not believe."

"Believe you may, lord. My father knew the like."

"Then he was in danger of them. I trust none of the small fair folk. There are such about. The each-uisge. The fuathas. Their saucers may catch more than flies. They are dangerous, that sort."

"All the same, lord, the fields have the luck on them. Burned even to the trees, and no planting fails since, not a seed falls but it grows, and apple trees shoot up like weeds. Trees bear before their time, the rain misses the haying and falls at seedtime, all these years. Where the blackest burning was, the cattle and the horses were kneedeep in grass inside a year. Shall I say what country folk say, lord? That you are too easy in judgment, but always true; that there be no hiding a thing to your face, that one look of you on them and a man thinks of all the wrong he might ever have thought to do, so there were two neighbors up by high Bainbourne settled among themselves rather than have it come to court: the neighbors say for shame of all their doings for years. So they say. They say a horse will not go lame crossing your lands and a cow will drop twins; that the lightning turns in the sky and hits An Beag, missing anything of yours . . . they say. In short—aye, you are loved, lord. Have you never seen that?"

The light hazed in Ciaran's eyes; the colors blurred. Of a sudden he found it more convenient to look out over the walls, for the stone hurt him where it lay, a burning pang of things wild and green and intricate.

"Lord?" said Beorc.

He wept. He did not know why, except that he was cold, as lost as ever he was lost on the field before the gates. It was hard to breathe, as if someone he loved were dying, that keen a grief. "They make fantasies. The grass always grows."

"All the same," said Beorc. "It is the truth."

He shivered. It was panic. "I have Sidhe blood. Do they say that?"

"Oh, yes. That too."

He folded his arms. "They expect too much. You are my right hand, Beorc. Does it not frighten you, to be the right hand of the Sidhe?"

"So was my father," Beorc said.

Ciaran looked at him.

"He told me tales," Beorc said further. "Did you not know? He served the Cearbhallain, and the luck was on him too, and the Sight. Ask Rhys. They tell tales in his hills."

"Watch after Meadhbh and Ceallach," Ciaran said hoarsely. "Mind, tell Rhys and Domhnull—to keep an eye to them, where they go. Always."

"This warning of the Sidhe—Lord, there's always trouble of some kind. Or is there more than usual?"

Ciaran forced a laugh. "Perhaps we have had the luck. But hereaf ter luck rests on what we do. Mind you talk to Rhys and Domhnull. Say—Say I rely on them in that." The laughter failed. He looked out over the land and for a moment the colors dimmed. A mist lay over the land, and strange forests rose about him. Toward the hills, the west, the north, everywhere he faced, there seemed a shadow, but to the south he could not see, nor to the east.

Liosliath! he cried in his heart. But now there were only echoes, and the pacing of a horse, the slow striking of hooves. And shadows lowered, flowing in small curlings about the hills, pouring between him and that presence.

"Rhys and Domhnull will not fail you," Beorc said, heedless of such things as coiled across his sight. "And I will watch them too."

"Do." He looked back at Beorc, flinching from what he had seen. He felt after Beorc's solid shoulder, found it, let slip his hand.

"Lord," Beorc murmured, courtesy. Ciaran went away. He had wanted something different than worship, had wanted friendship, brotherhood, something somewhere lost. But there were no more comrades, no one but Branwyn, and even there he suspected a gulf too wide to cross. He had served his King; he had a living brother: neither wanted the sight of him. He felt the grayness about him like a shroud.

So the elves had gone, the tall fair folk, the Daoine Sidhe. The melancholy came on them and they no longer suited the world, but faded, deed by deed. Death could not touch them. Like Liosliath, whose heart he wore.

It was his heritage. He was alone, except the few brightnesses of his life—like Branwyn; like Meadhbh and Ceallach; like what he had hoped was comradeship and feared was distrust—but it was all too great a weight of trust instead. He felt the stone as a burning at his throat; he was cursed to See while he carried it, and nothing he saw was hopeful.

The trees which had loomed black and barren out of the mist gave way to stranger geography, hills looming up out of shadow, them-selves touched with the elvish moon. A stream ran here, still pure, and Fionnghuala leapt it with ease, running more smoothly now. Here were fences of stone and rail, neat pasturage and fields where never war had come. A farmhouse squatted against the farthest hill, under a tree broad and gnarled and strong; a cluster of barn and sheds stood near, with orchards beyond.

It was a human place, and not. It was refuge, where Arafel rode more quietly, like a wisp of wind along the reedy bank. Fionnghuala moved with the lightest pulse of thunder, like a storm muttering in the sky, but hushed, hushed, and ceasing, for Arafel whispered to

The elvish horse paused a moment, set one hoof into the clear running water, dipped her head and drank, for here she could drink, of waters which fed clear Airgiod. The wind whispered in the reeds. A heron watched in tall solemnity from a little distance away, seem-ing unastonished, but herons betrayed little. An owl called.

"Come," Arafel whispered, and Fionnghuala moved, delicately, softly. If sleepers had stirred in the farmhouse thinking a storm might be blowing up, they settled into their pillows again and thought that they had dreamed. Fionnghuala's steps glided soundlessly; she slipped like moonlight along the banks and finally along the fences, tossing her head somewhat, for this was strange to her, the fences, the hewn wood, the buildings in the very fringe of Eald.

There were horses here, who put their heads out of the barn as they came near and drank in the strangeness with eyes as dark as night and nostrils quivering, a piebald mare, a fat dark pony, plain and mortal-born. They watched, and ventured no farther from their barn. Wings stirred in the loft, then settled again.

''Gruagach," Arafel called softly.

There was, if only to her ears, a tiny movement within.

''Gruagach."

Stillness then.

"Will you make me angry, Gruagach?"

It was the third calling. He must come. A small, shaggy darkness crept out past the feet of the pony and the horse, a moving untidiness shot through with straw, a small brown man looking up at her with eyes darker than dark.

"I hear," he said, "I hear."

"So. I had thought you must. Has it slipped your notice, the trouble hereabouts? Are you so comfortable at night?"

It squatted, arms clenched about its chest, peering up at her as if it would tuck its head between its shoulders if it could. It shivered. "I have seen it, Duine Sidhe. I watch, oh, I do watch my Men to keep them safe; I make confusions in the hills. There was a nasty thing. I threatened it and it went running."

"So." It touched a sense of mirth in her, and not, for small and twisted that it was, the dark eyes sparked sullenness at her tone. She dropped lightly to the ground, still towering, and then, for she sensed its pride, bent down as it bent, until she looked at it eye to eye. "A secret thing have I to ask, Gruagach."

"Ask " it repeated, flinching back ever so slightly, its shoulders tucked about its shaggy head. "Ask, she says. The Duine Sidhe be longs in the deep shadow, the far places. Oh leave my Men alone, elf. Leave them be."

"Is there no trust, small Sidhe?"

It flinched the more. "I love them. I will fight, I will."

"In truth you would," she said, resting her arms on her knees and gazing full on the round, dark eyes. "It is a warm place you have made. Even with the fences. Do you know I have guested with Men?"

The eyes grew rounder a moment, perplexed. It shook its head.

"In their hall," said Arafel.

This was too much to credit. The eyes blinked and the doubt grew. "An elf likes my fences."

"I did not say I liked them, Gruagach! I said I forgave them."

"Ah. Ah. This is the Daoine Sidhe."

She had drawn herself up somewhat. The Gruagach flinched back again, then frowned.

"There is bravery in you," she said. "Greater than your size. I have long thought so. So I have come to you. Will you listen?"

"The Duine Sidhe says what she likes and the Gruagach has to listen."

"There was a time—" she began, nettled despite herself, but made a further effort, her hands clasped upon her knees. "Gruagach, I beg."

The hair shifted backward, the lifting of unseen brows, showing bewildered eyes. The Gruagach clasped hands about its own knees, straighter now. "Please, elf, nothing against my Men."

'There are two children across the hills—such bright children, they are, uncommonly bright and good. Polite too. You would like them. And a land—not so fine as yours, but for Men's doing, very neat. I have seen them put out milk and cakes of evenings. They are mannered folk, even if the gifts go unnoticed. The children—you would know them if you saw them. You would never mistake them."

"But I have my land, Duine Sidhe, my farm, my Men to take care of—"

"It would take so little notice, only now and then. I do not say you should do the work of their fields; but shadows have come close there. If there were now and again your eye turned that way, or your care— They are very mannerly folk. They would appreciate the at tention, I do think, small Sidhe. I have business to tend to. But the shadows do not trifle with you, I know that."

The Gruagach leaned forward. "What are they to you?"

"Something precious. Men that they are—precious to me. I ask, Gruagach. The Daoine Sidhe ask, and hope. I know it is no small thing."

"You made the hills to quake," the wight accused her. "You loosed them. Now you come asking help."

"I do."

It shivered then. Its eyes rolled up. It moaned. "The Gruagach sees. Oh, I see, I see, I see, the dark thing."

"Is it near, Gruagach?"

A convulsion trembled through its limbs. A murmur began in it, that became words.

Dark, dark and dark it lies and lost is he who finds it; Cold it burns and heartless lives and never heart can bind it

Arafel shivered and rose, laying a hand on Fionnghuala's neck. "I read your riddle. I would I did not."

For a moment the Gruagach seemed lost to sense. Then it recov ered itself, hugging itself, rocking to and fro. "Cold," it complained.

"Yes, cold. And my fault, among others. I own it. Will you grant my favor all the same, Gruagach?"

It stood, never tall, coming scantly to her waist, and having to look up at her, the more as she took Fionnghuala's mane and swung up astride. "The Gruagach will do what he can," it said. "I will try. I am very strong."

"Small cousin, I do not doubt it."

Its eyes went bright. "Cousin, am I?"

"Cousin," she said.

It laughed and capered by her as the elf horse began to move. But the thunder boomed now as the horse increased her stride, and the Gruagach had no such swiftness. Lightning flickered. The trees sighed with wind. The Gruagach fell behind, where soon a storm might break, light patter of rain and mutterings of thunder.

Arafel rode not fully in the shadow ways, not daring them. There was true shadow ahead, a darkness where no stars shone nor clouds rolled, an opacity and increasing cold not so far north.

They were old, these hills near Donn, older than Man. They were prisons, but their roots were shaken and what had been loosed had only gone back for shelter.

The greater things were slower to wake, for the greater binding was on them, but beyond this fair place the mists thickened, forebod ing ill. It was not in her mind to ride against it blindly; but to find it out, how far it reached, and into what, and how arrayed. She might have stayed safe in Eald, for a time, but it would have come there when it chose.

She came for it. Heartless, the Gruagach had named it, in its half-crazed way, but that was a very true name for what she suspected of it, as true a name as any.