The Tree of Swords and Jewels

FIVE The Sending

He slept, if fitfully, and Branwyn was by him, so that for most of the hours of the night he did not sleep at all, but lay with his hand closed about the stone, so that he was aware of it, but only dimly participant.

Dragons stirred in his vision, a glittering of lances, of elvish armor, ancient wars.

A face, elvish-fair, hovered near: elf-prince, the shadows whis pered, dreading this brightness. Liosliath, he addressed this appari tion, but it was only dream. The years were many as forest leaves, as raindrops in the storm. The earth had passed its youth since this one had set foot on it ... cousin to ageless Arafel.

But when he looked, truly looked with the stone, to see what lay about them, his vision went gray and strange, and he seemed lost among the trees which were not the trees he knew. He remembered the darkness which had coiled among the hills as he gazed outward, severing him from the sea, and still the disquiet crept through him, a sense of power that might do such a thing, silencing the stone.

Arafel's? he wondered. But the aspect of it had been dark, unlike her workings, and there was a dread about it different from the bright terror he knew of her. Has she a dark aspect? Or had Lios liath? Or can anything dim such a stone?

Arafel, what am I to do with it?

For your defense, she had said. I do not ask that you use it Only that you have the choice.

Has it come? Or do I only see what has been behind our peace for years?

Do not walk in Eald, she had said, and he believed this, and avoided thinking of it in these gray, weak hours when the veil seemed very thin. So I am not come to you. And again: Do I truly leave this place when I am there? Or do I dream? The thought of Branwyn's fright if she should wake and find him fading kept him struggling against it no less than Arafel's command.

When light came he feigned to wake and smiled at his wife, gave her a morning kiss, with the birds singing beyond the slitted window and the gentle-hued light coming to them, for it was spring and they piled on blankets against the chill, but liked the freshness of the air and had the shutters off that they used in winter.

"They know nothing amiss," he said of the birds. "Listen to them this morning."

"Did you rest?" she asked, searching his face.

"Oh, aye." He was not wont to lie, but he did so smiling.

He smiled through breakfast—"Will we ride today?" asked Ceal lach; and "Hush," said Branwyn sharply. "No, you will not. Let your father be."

Ceallach dropped the matter at once, so unlike his son: and Meadhbh tugged at her brother's sleeve and comported herself as if the question had not come up, very sober.

He grew desperate, even then, in the silence, but he roughed Ceallach’s hair and made nothing of it. "We shall see," he said. "Nothing is the matter, is it?"

"Oh no," said Meadhbh instantly, wide-eyed and all too quick

"No," said Ceallach.

So they all had learned to lie. That is not so, he started to say, and smothered it, not to break the peace, only wishing that they would do something amiss, or fidget in their seats, or quarrel over the but ter, or something like other mornings.

Instead he smiled, weary as he was, too weary and, too little in command of his heart to contest with anyone dear to him. He was alarmed by his ready angers, put them deep and smothered them all and ate the breakfast which sat ill at his stomach, worried by the tiny frown which sat on Branwyn's brow as she chattered at the children about this and that duty, to which they kept answering meekly and unlike themselves. O let me escape this, he thought, with no thought toward the days of bearing this gift he had been given or of their days to come. He was reduced to the moment, like some wounded thing. He set his cup down. "I have work to do," he said and rose, and suddenly had all their eyes focused on his, even Muirne's who was participant in the table, in this privacy. Her look was like the children's, her pale face all eyes, her hair combed taut about her face which had gone all smooth and strange to him. Was this Muirne, did even Muirne read him so well? And Branwyn and the children. "I have work," he said.

Silence pursued him. He went out onto the stairs and made noise going down them, through the warding room with its armor hung like the empty shells of beetles, with its smell of oil and war and its iron closeness that quivered through his limbs like Some noisome sickness.

He reached the open air, the walls, the sight of the sun and lifted his face to it, eyes squeezed shut until he had purged the moment's touch of iron.

Liosliath! he called, not daring to call Arafel. But still there was nothing. The stone hung insensate at his heart, giving him only the things the wind and sun gave.

He took his breath and opened his eyes, and drew another and walked along the wall and down again by the stone stairs to the yard.

It was better in the light. He smiled at the pages, at the smith who was setting to his day's work, in his smithy over against the inner wall, with its tangles and knots of iron. This he avoided, making small deviations in the pattern of his day.

Youths gave him their silent respect as he wandered within his walls. They were farmers' sons, come at his asking: Ruadhan had their training at arms, which saw them drilling with sword and shield and bow. The skill with the bow was against beasts; that with sword and shield—against the sometimes bandits that strayed down from the Bradhaeth above Lioslinn and the forest to the east . . . for there were still bandits. It had been the Cearbhallain's way to guard the land; and Evald's after him; and it was his, that he kept no great number of men-at-arms lounging about the hold—less than a hundred, hardly outnumbering his craftsmen, and them mostly sons and brothers of freeholders, as much of Caer Wiell's land was given in freehold, save the fields and pasturage closest about the walls; but even from the farthest steadings the boys came eagerly to learn arms. It was Caer Wiell's way. The King looked askance on it. But the land was sown with swords, since the war; every farmer's cottage boasted some weapon gleaned from the fields; and bows were kept against wolves and such (though no wolves were seen). Caer Wiell had not gone to the winning of Dun na h-Eoin as some holds had, a-hedge with spears in untrained hands; but briskly, shielded, glittering with well-honed swords, a thousand blades sprung up from the land at Evald's summons, invisible the day before. This was Caer Wiell. An Beag sat in its hills like some bandit lair, fed by its serfs who had each some cruel lordling to support, each worse than the other. Caer Damh was much the same; so also they distrusted everything, partic ularly their own. Such lands bred nothing good, not those who ruled them, not even the occasional farmer lad who left his sheep and ran. Caer Wiell had taken in a few such, forlorn attempt at rescue, of folk who had grown up in knavery and expected nothing else. Most of them came to nothing. Some came to worse. Like Coille there, sulk ing at the scullery work, with no grace to recommend him. There was suspicion that Coille stole. Cook thought so. Coille knew noth ing of arms; and that was, perhaps, as well. He was forever surly.

Send him off, was Beorc's advice. But Ciaran had not found any cogent reason for it, except Coille's unpopularity. Coille did his work. He had asked for land, but complained of danger in what Ciaran offered him, which was to go north and east, to clear land bordering the New Forest as others had done. So he did the work of the hold; and he sulked about that, cruel with the cattle and with every living thing, so that it was Coille got the work of killing chick ens for the pot: he does that well, Cook had said, if nothing else. And there was no one in the hold but loathed him.

"Good morning, lord," said Coille, with a smile of the sort of all of Coille's smiles, and speaking up when the country lads were content to nod and pass. Coille was drawing water from the well in the shade of the scullery roof, and heaved a bucket up, wiped his brow, being very sure his work was seen. Ciaran paused, stared distractedly at the man, with the clatter of the scullery beyond, the kitchen, the maids already at their washing and water sluicing everywhere on the stones, before it got to the channel and headed downslope and under the walls. There was the granary, the pen beyond, though they kept most all the animals outside; there were the stables and the sheds of harness, and the Old Hall, that had been the first and oldest part of Caer Wiell, with part of the wall still standing, which was the wall of the scullery now, and had once enclosed the well; but the Old Hall they used for storage, mostly old harness and oddments of this and that; and the Old Granary, that was the barracks, lodging for his men-at-arms; and the older Barracks, that was below the Cearbhal lain's tower, which came up by the gate—that was all lodgings now, for those who served the hold; and the Cearbhallain's tower, which added its mass to the gates and enclosed the wardroom stairs in its depths, that was Beorc's domain, where he maintained what little luxury he wanted. No wife, not in these years, no child, but a young widow off by Hlowebourne that he supported with gifts of more than small substance, and visited from time to time, but generally he courted Cook, a stout and dour-faced woman who managed the understairs as Beorc managed a troop of horse, with ringing orders and a precision of expectations.

"Coille," Cook shouted now, "Coille!"

The outlander moved, hunch-shouldered, carrying his bucket.

"Lord," said Ruadhan coming up beside—a cheerful man who looked always a little simple, but men mistook that to their misfor tune. "There's some of the lads will hunt, by your leave."

Ciaran blinked and thrust his hands within his belt behind, with an inward flinching. Ruadhan stood there, having come up on him from the yard where the barracks stood, whence came the rhythmic thumps and noise of practice. "Is there need?" he asked.

"Naught but bones left. If my lord would go himself—"

"No. Not I. Rhys might go. He's chafed for exercise. Domhnull. Ask Domhnull."

"Aye, my lord." There was the lightest of frowns on Ruadhan's face. "Is something wrong, lord?"

"Nothing," he said. "Nothing." He walked away, up the stairs by the scullery, along the wall again into the storage, where a few un used rooms offered privacy, and sank down in a smallish windowed closet, finding a bench only half-loaded with dusty oddments of pot tery. He set the pots in the floor and stretched himself out, tucked up on the bench, having found a safe place.

So he had done as a child, finding some nook of Caer Donn to make his own. He clenched the stone within his hand and brought it to his lips as he lay there, then sought the sleep the night had denied him, in this quiet darkness far from the iron and the noise outside. Here he need not fear, he thought. Here what befell when he slept was without witness, and if he should dream, he need not fear for Branwyn.

So he abandoned himself.

"Man," said Lord Death, settling closely in the room, on a stack of crockery which failed to break beneath his weight, "is this the lord of Caer Wiell, sleeping like a scullery lad above the kitchens?"

"Give me peace," he replied.

"Ah, that I cannot. I have lost that power over you."

"My friend," Ciaran said softly, never stirring from where he lay, his head against his arms, one toe resting against the floor, for the bench was narrow. "Why have you come here?"

There was no answer. The walls gave way to mist, and he was disquieted. This was what he had feared, the realm of dream, in which elvish trees grew like white pillars of some hall, in which the landscape was chill and gray. He drew back from it, recovering his little room again, alone, his body stretched on the unyielding bench, which was uncompromising in its discomfort.

The stone had troubled him before, when he had carried it in his youth. But iron had not seemed so painful then. He had passed the armory bearing it and not felt it half so keenly then. It is the years, he thought. His old wounds ached. He limped some winter mornings. I could have slept on bare stone once, and never minded it

But his nerves were taut. He realized his fists were clenched and mindfully unclenched them. He thought that he might have a little peace if only he could take it off his neck. It tempted him, as once, his third battle, he had thought that he could run away; all that dawn he had waited for the ambush to break, hidden half-frozen in the autumn-red thicket as they fought in those years of the King's war, and it had occurred to him that he could stay there when the others burst forth, and that he need not go, because he had con tracted a sudden, gripping fear, and felt sure that he would die. But his body had leapt when the horn sounded; and he had gone, after lying to himself all the while that he had had a choice. After that he knew that things seemed choices which were not, and that men lied to themselves sometimes for comfort in the small dark hours. So he could think now of putting off the stone, but he knew that his hand would refuse the act, because he had said that he would bear it, and he could not do otherwise.

Liosliath! he cried in his mind, and suddenly there returned to him that sound he had all but forgotten: the sea, waves lapping at the shore, gulls crying like lost children.

Does the stone remember? Or was more than that always my imag ining; and was there ever a living voice?

She thought so, at least

Silence came. For a while it was all gray, and he waked fitfully, aware at least that he had slept, caught himself short of falling off his precarious rest. His eyes drifted shut again, fluttered, for it seemed some sound had come to him, but it was only someone stirring about below, some clatter in the kitchens.

He sighed, and was home again. He lay asleep in the loft of Caer Donn, in that closeness he shared with Donnchadh, and any moment now his mother would be calling them both downstairs to breakfast, to that great table they all shared. His sister was alive again. He heard her voice; he thought he heard it, the way he had never been able to remember it, and if he could wake and go downstairs she would be there, his sister and his mother and his father who were dead but alive again in this new and precious dream.

Father, he would say, you never let me explain; and his father would sit by the fire in the great hall in the tall carved chair with the huge old wolfhound he had loved lolling at his knee and listen to him without really seeming to listen, which was his manner when he was thinking about something. Listen to the boy, his mother would say, taking his part as she always would. He's your son.

His father looked up and frowned, disturbing the tenor of the dream. Ciaran retreated from that moment, choosing another.

How did you come here? his mother asked him; but the horse that stood outside she could not see, nor could anyone see who did not know how: Aodhan was its name and it had carried him home as it had carried him to battle.

I can't stay long, he said, feeling keenly the stone about his neck, but he stood in the upper hall of Caer Donn where every detail was precious to his memory, wooden walls, where those of Caer Wiell were gray stone; and fine carving on the benches, for the folk of Donn had always been fine craftsmen and carvers. O Mother, there was battle. The King has won. I've come home awhile.

(But he had met his father and his brother afterward, and they had walked away, having seen what he was, and what he had become. The hills about Donn held old stones, for the elves called it Caer Righ, and there was elvish blood in them all, fey and different from men.)

And your father? his mother asked; and your brother and your cousins?

Well, he said. Father and Donnchadh are very well But Odhran died at Dun na h-Eoin and Riagan at Caer Ban; and Ronan and Hagan too—

All dead?

Aye. Dead. He sat down in a chair he remembered. Is there ale?

She brought it for him; it had taken longer than this, with much stir about the hold, but in his dream it was instant, and she sat near him and asked him when they would come, his father and Donnchadh.

Soon, he said, soon. Cherishing the time that he had left. He would stay for supper. He would do that. He would stay all the days before he knew his father and his brother would come home and tell her that he was banished, fading only when he knew them passing the gates.

But he had not stayed the hour. The questions were unbearable, the reality of home insupportable when his mother persisted in her questions, when she grew angry and confused.

It happened now, and he fled outdoors, realizing only later that he had been mistaken, that he should never have come here.

He rode, and he was a boy again, with Donnchadh; they raced upon the heath and climbed irreverently on the ancient stones, their ponies tethered down the hillside.

It is a cursed place, said Donnchadh. He would become a lean, tall man, dark, for he was of their father's first wife; but as a boy he was gangling and his hair always fell so, into his eyes. Do you dare?

Of course he had dared. In those days he had no fear. They stood atop the world like kings, he and his brother, and looked from the hill to the mountains round about, shoulder to shoulder.

And stood eye to eye at Dun na h-Eoin, among the dead.

Take care, his brother said. And moths died in the torches outside the King's tent; and the dead lay in heaps.

Ciaran, take care.

The mist was back, among hills that he knew; and Caer Donn stood as it had always stood, high on its hill among the hills about, for its wealth was sheep, and the flocks grazed round about; but now the land was sere and brown like winter, and the treeless hills showed their bare bones of earth and ancient carved stones.

This was not the way it had been. He knew dismay, and entered into the hold, into the upper hall with the blinding swiftness of a dream, where the familiar chairs stood all unused, and only his brother slept before the fire as he had seen him sleep at a hundred campfires, his head at an angle, the fire leaping on his face.

Wake up, he said to Donnchadh.

But there was a sense of menace he had only felt in the wrong places of Eald, something in the stones.

They were boys again on the hill, and something wakened under their feet which resented their laughter and their youth.

It crept and circled in the dark places of the hold, and there was no kindred left. The servants had grown faithless. There was only his brother sleeping here alone, while menace gathered, and the shadow he had seen came nearer.

Donnchadh, wake up.

But the waking was his, and his hands clenched on the board of the bench, his balance for a moment deserting him.

Someone moved on the stairs outside. For a moment he thought himself truly in Donn, and blinked, his heart beating so hard it hurt. But he lay still, and the steps passed, with a clattering of the noise below.

He sat up and leaned his face into his hands, passed the hands over his head to the back of his neck.

More steps outside. The door crashed open. A shadowy man stood there glittering with iron.

"Lord? Lord Ciaran, is it you?"

"Rhys. Gods." For a blinded moment he had feared some attack and known better in the next heartbeat; it was his own hold, after all and only Rhys, whose lean figure and dark hair minded him strangely of his brother's in his dream. He stood up. "Has a man no peace?"

"Lord Ciaran, the hold's upside down with looking for you. Shall I—tell Beorc you're here?"

Ciaran laughed half of despair and took in all that Rhys had said. "Branwyn looking too?"

"She had asked; and one man thought you were here, and another thought there, and when the hunt returned and you were neither— Lord Ciaran, are you well?"

"Don't tell her where I slept," he said. "I didn't rest last night." He went toward the door, passed Rhys into the hall and shut the door after him, so that they were in dark unrelieved except for the slit window some steps up. "She was not alarmed."

"No, not except that she thought you with the hunt and wished you had not gone."

"So did you go?"

"No. Only Ruadhan."

"Was there luck?"

"Luck enough till they came back and questions started. Lord, you might have had my bed."

Ciaran said nothing, but surrendered himself to the daylight, rub bing at his eyes as he went down into the sunlight and trying not to look at the men who, one by one, realized he had been found and gathered solemnly to stare at him and Rhys walking across the yard.

Beorc came, meeting them halfway.

"There was no cause for this alarm," Ciaran said, and then, his eyes lighting on Branwyn atop the wall, who stood waiting for him: "Are you all my warders?"

That was short and undeserved. He went up the steps and gave his hand to Branwyn, already ashamed of what he had said, with no way to recall it.

"I was in the storage and fell asleep," he said to her, reckoning that the most of the truth was due and wishing he had said less below.

"Ah," she said, so easily it seemed casual, and wound her arm in his as they walked, taking him inside.

But someone carried tales, or Branwyn read more in his heart than he had thought, for that night there was a posset mixed at bedside.

"You must drink it," she said. "T'will make you sleep."

He was loath. This also was abandonment; he more trusted his own mind. And a dire thought came to him.

"If you took the stone from me," he said, "if you were to do such a thing, you might do me harm."

"I don't believe it."

A great weariness came on him, so great that tears came into his eyes. "But you must not do it, Branwyn. Give me the cup."

She offered it, and he drank: she had made it sweet with honey. Then he lay down to rest and she blew out the light, and came to bed beside him, listening long for the evenness of his breathing.

"Do you sleep?" she whispered, ever so softly.

It seemed then that he did, that the stone had no power to resist the cup that she had given.

But she lay long awake, as she had waked much of the night before, feigning that she slept, and anger gnawed at her, that he had cheated her, forestalling her as he had, with a word and his trust of her.

He had always had that way with her, that he was so simple and so knowing of her heart.

The elvish sun was near, but there was a murkiness which hung late, for here there shone no stars, and uncertain trees which were and were not by turns made the landscape harder and harder to recall, as if the land itself could not decide true from false, now from then. The nightwind that stirred the grass brought forth a hissing sound of dryness and the hillsides were patched with dust, and now and again with stone.

There was ill hereabouts, couched within the hills. Arafel sought it warily, with more caution than she was wont to use in this land that was her own.

There were Men. She saw the houses, but they were nothing like the cleanly houses and neat fields of Caer Wiell, but hovels of rough stone nestled on stony heights, unkept and many untenanted as if even Men had been disgusted with them. There were sheep now and again, and dogs, which little interested her.

She came to a brook in the strange last edge of dark, but Fionnghuala spurned it with a snort, and brought down a hoof like thunder in the night, that echoed among the hills. Something splashed and swam away. "Fuathas," she said, and heard the swim ming stop. "I have no quarrel with you, fuathas," she whispered to the air. "Where are your brothers?"

"Duine Sidhe," the whisper came back from the black water, bub bling, "gone this way and that through the web of waters. Let us go. We do no harm."

"Your name is Hate."

There was soft laughter. "So do you go called the People of Peace by Men, and that name has no power on you. Hate are we; and Spite to Men, but that name will never bind us."

"Come out. I see your name. Shall I speak it to the wind and water, for anyone to hear?"

There was a stirring in the green leaves above the water, a loud rude breath. A black horse stood there, and Fionnghuala shifted her weight and bared her teeth, laying back her ears.

"No," said Arafel. "Give us man-shape, pooka."

The horse faded and it was a dark-haired youth who stood there, clothed in shadow. He had a sullen face, and wrapped his arms about him as if he had taken a chill.

"The Duine Sidhe has come calling names," he said. "But give me my river back, Duine Sidhe." His heavy jaw made his frown the more intense; his thick black hair hung about his shoulders and all but covered his eyes which stared back at her like coals of fire in the shadow. "The wind is cold."

"The water is colder still, pooka. But truth I ask: what stirs here abouts, and what is its name?"

"If I knew it I would bind it," the pooka said and shivered, for all his pride. "It knows mine, Duine Sidhe. O let me go. The sun is coming and I do not love the daylight."

"What is its kind, pooka?"

"It's kind is yours," the pooka said and shivered yet again. "Let me go now."

"No, pooka." She held it still, having had the answer she dreaded. "Where does it lodge?"

It pointed north, behind the hills, and its arm shook as with ague. It began to fade.

"Seaghda," she called its name.

The face grew clear again, distraught and woeful. "I have given what you asked, Duine Sidhe. But you were always cruel."

"Not I. I only ask you guide me. I do not command."

The youth threw his head and his burning eyes peered madly through the hair that settled. His nostrils flared, pale in the strange ness of the light. "I am bound here. So wise a Sidhe should know that."

"Ah," she said quietly, "where is your soul, o Seaghda?"

Now the eyes were wild, the dusky arms hugged more tightly.

"Show me," she said: "Seaghda, Seaghda, Seaghda."

It vanished. The waters swirled, the reeds whispered in the dawn ing. It was back again, a dark-haired youth holding a small smooth pebble on his palm. The mad eyes stared.

She slid from Fionnghuala's back and came to him and took it in her hand, so small and plain a thing and unlike hers which hung like the summer moon about her neck, but very precious to him. If the eyes were not fire they might have wept or pleaded, but they had no such power.

It warmed within her hand. It took fire from her, becoming and becoming, and so she gave it into his hand. "Be free," she said, "Seaghda. The binding is broken."

The shadow leaped up like a shout, a darkness, a wild flood of mane and eyes like embers. It whuffed wildness into the air and leaped the stream at a bound.

Fionnghuala bared her teeth and sidled close to Arafel.

"Come," Arafel whispered, taking Fionnghuala's mane. "It is Seaghda, a prince among its kind; and it will find the way for us."

The elf horse threw her head, shook it, rattling thunders from her neck, but lightly Arafel sprang to her back and she began to follow the darkness which paced ahead of them, in the delaying dawn.

The light began among the shifting maze, an uncertain gleam that lost itself among the trunks of trees which did not stand there in the mortal realm: she might have sped quicker as mortals went, but less sure, and come blind toward the hazard.

Now the pooka trotted, now walked a space, now moved again, shaking his mane: it was his doom that he could not speak, having no place but his mouth to keep his soul when he was in his true shape, and always fearful of losing it. But when the light had gotten to a murk that gave suspicion of color, when the sun was with them and they had come to the end of the trees, Seaghda stopped and took his other form, spitting his soul into his hand.

"There," he said doubtfully, pointing with his left hand beyond the wood, where strange carven stones rose up on the hillsides like a line of broken teeth.

"Dun Gol," she said, shaken in spite of herself, for that aspect should have passed from the world. She cast Seaghda a dire look. "Have you manifested this?"

"Not I," said the pooka. "I could not." He shivered in spite of the sun, or because of it. "But the waters are bitter that flow from this place, and taste of hate. Go back, go back now. Find your forests again. This one is not kind, and the stones are worse."

"It is a drow," she said. "That is what has waked."

"Do not say that here," Seaghda hissed, and his eyes glowed but dimly in the day. He hugged himself and shivered. "Enough, enough, let us be away."

She patted Fionnghuala's neck and felt the tremor. "She will stay with me, pooka. Go. I have freed you. Go where you like; I have no more need of you."

He was proud, but the terror in him was more. He turned away and slipped his soul within his mouth: the black horse stood there an instant lifting its head toward the height of Dun Gol, nostrils quiver ing with dislike.

Then it fled, the slipping of a shadow into the murk.

Fionnghuala moved forward, softly now, treading lightly above the polluted soil.

Elves had perished here, on this side and on that of war. It had left the world, this hill, with its memories and its stones, so close to what Men named Caer Donn. Something had brought it back again, more, it was the place from which the strangeness came. This was why the trees returned, which had been lost to Eald: that this place remem bered them.

And it remembered loss. It was Dun Gol, the hill of weeping, and it was reared above the armies which had met and perished here, to the ruin of the world.