The Tree of Swords and Jewels

NINE Bearing Word

The sun began going down and Branwyn waited, in the hall, by the fireside; and Rhys hung about the hall, which was not his wont, but his brow had been dark since yesterday.

"I did not like this," Rhys had said when he had brought Meadhbh and Ceallach home. "I like it less now."

So he stayed and fretted, her cousin, and shared their dinner with them. "My lord will come when he will come," Branwyn had said, having made up her mind to it, resolved not to fret herself with expectations, for it was no small ride that Ciaran made. She knew it, having ridden here and there with him in their first years, as far as she ever had ridden in her life, which was to the sight of the Bradhaeth. She had reckoned already that there was no profit in standing all anxious on the walls, nor even in keeping supper wait ing. When it came the hour she had her supper with Meadhbh and Ceallach and Muirne, and Rhys as well, and Leannan, who played now softly as she spun, the fine wool making a thread in her fingers, so, so, so, by firelight; and Meadhbh doing likewise, and Muirne; and Ceallach at nothing in particular.

"You were at making something," Branwyn said to him, for Ceal lach often carved with his knife, and now his eyes seemed sad and his hands unnaturally idle. "Where have you put it?"

"I forgot," said Ceallach softly, with that same desperate look, and a small suspicion of ill crept into Branwyn's heart, the sense of something wrong with her son as Meadhbh's downcast obedience was unlike her, her uncommon attentiveness to the spinning she hated. Branwyn drew her lips to a taut line and kept the wool run ning, this way and that with the turning spindle. She wanted to ask, and did not—Iron, she thought wildly, iron, iron, iron in that little knife. Ciaran could not bear it, and now my son and daughter.

Rhys stirred abruptly and walked out, again to the wall, she reck oned, and never her fingers faltered. Something was amiss that Rhys knew and she could not ask it, not with Meadhbh and Ceallach to listen, and in no wise would they want to go to bed tonight until they had seen their father.

"Was it good, your riding yesterday?" She was light in her asking, as if she had never in the world objected to their going. Two bright heads nodded, catching glints of firelight, and there was not a glance from their eyes. "Well," she said, lips pursed, the spindle turning ceaselessly, "well, your father has his ways about him. I recall when we were younger we would ride out, when your grandmother was still alive, you can remember her? And you would stay with her and Muirne. And we would ride and ride, once as far as the border, your father and I. And do you know, he would chat with every farmer. Come along, I would say—sometimes we had cause to hurry. But they could always hold him, with ale to try or some complaint to give— Many a time he would go tramping off across some soggy orchard soiling his boots to see how the fruit set on, or off to see some steading's new plowed field up by the border."

"He would not delay now," Meadhbh said looking up, and her eyes were fierce. "He would be thinking of Domhnull."

There was such temper in her daughter. It dismayed her, how so small words offended. Branwyn was quiet after, only keeping to her spinning, taking her offering back. It was the Donn blood in her son and daughter, that made them wild, and sometimes, as now, that wildness wounded. One of them was enough, her husband breaking out in stubbornness, brushing aside all her counsel. She worked, flung all her attention at the thread. Her children wanted nothing of her comfort. Her son sat disconsolate, her daughter—O Meadhbh,

Meadhbh, Meadhbh! if I could hold you— But they were too old for holding. Nothing she said to her daughter was ever right And Ciaran would not uphold her.

His daughter. He was his son. Could I not have my daughter? Ami always to be wrong with her? Round and round, the spindle. A bright-haired girl a-horseback, riding in the meadow, red her hair and black the horse, like fire and deepest shadow.

The thread broke in her hands. She shook her head and bit her lip and mended it, mending the vision, the fat bay pony Meadhbh loved. No, she thought, afraid of the sight she had seen, Meadhbh and not Meadhbh, and not the bay white-stockinged pony. She saw leaves in her mind, and water and greenness, the child walking into the forest. His children, she thought, both his. She wanted to talk to them, to chatter idly, to talk of something to fill the silence, but Leannan played that song he had made, sweet and minding her of that night in hall, after which all Leannan's songs had changed, and his old eyes had taken to looking into distances while he played.

A Sidhe song, she thought, the wool flowing smoothly again, and the harpsong moved like water. A memory rose up in her, of that night before this fire, and the smell of the boughs she had brought and the candles; but for all her gifts the Sidhe had ignored her and touched all the rest. Feochadan. Thistle. So I called her. And now the children name her so. But it is Arafel. I know her name. I might call her. Where is my husband? I would say. Why does my son have such a look and my daughter spurn me?

She looked at Meadhbh and tried a smile, finding her daughter looking up. Meadhbh smiled back but it was hollow. "That looks very fine," Branwyn said. How often had she found fault? Too often?

Her daughter frowned and bent her head to the hated work again, then glanced up. "I hear a horse," she said.

The harpsound died upon the air.

"Meadhbh," said Branwyn, but Ceallach was already running to the stairs, and Meadhbh was on his heels, trailing yarn and wool together.

"Lady," said Muirne, who need not have said a thing: there were hooffalls, but of one horse, and the sound of the lesser gate. One rider.

Branwyn said nothing, but kept at her spinning. Muirne rescued the yarn that Meadhbh had trampled and sat down again in her place, started the spindle turning again.

"I will go out and see," said Leannan.

Branwyn nodded, never stopping the work of her fingers as if it worked a charm against calamity. I must not run, not I, Caer Wiell's lady. It will be some small thing, some one of the boys strayed late and far at hunting. O gods, but one rider, but only one—It is some mes sage, something amiss; he is not coming; he would not come alone, not he, not Ciaran; last to retreat, my husband, if there were trouble.

There were voices, calling this way and that. Muirne's hands and work fell into her lap. Branwyn never stopped, not though light steps sounded on the stair, Leannan's, returning.

"My lady," said the harper, "it's some lad come with a message. He's coming up."

"Well," she said, and let her work into the basket, "well—"

But more than one was coming up the stairs now: Rhys, and Ruadhan and a sweating farmer-lad with tousled dark hair; and Meadhbh and Ceallach hurrying after.

"Here is the lady," said Rhys. "Your message, lad."

"Lady." The boy was short of breath, seemed prone to stammer, an agony of waiting. "Lady, the lord he be going up by Lioslinn last night, his man he bid me tell you. Rode back last night, this man— Tuathal were his name. He said the lord had sent him, and word were I should ride here, but our old pony, lady, she were hard put to run much, and I did try, lady, but I could come no faster—"

"Was there more than that?"

"Aye, this Tuathal said the lord said half the men must come to Lioslinn and quick as may be. He said, he said, lady, the rest must stay by you."

"What token?" said Rhys. "Did Tuathal give a token?"

"No, lord, he said he had nothing, that the lord had sent him so quick—I be Eada, Alhhard's son, up by high Bainbourne; and they passed in the day, they did, and I saw this Tuathal with the lord, and after, in the mid of the night he come—lord, my father and grandfa ther and my brother be gone to him, and my sister run overland to fetch them from Haraleah and all—there be men there—best bow men in all the border."

"Well done," said Branwyn. "Well done in that—Ruadhan—"

"Half the men," Ruadhan said, "as quickly as they can arm, by your leave, lady."

"Go," she said, "go. Muirne: get this lad somewhat for his stom ach."

"Lady," said Eada, "I'd ride back again, where my folk be—"

"Where you choose," she said. She looked at Meadhbh and Ceallach, at their pale faces. "Doubtless some matter with Caer Damh," she said, for them, wishing to believe it. "And he has wished to keep the way open for Domhnull's riding back again." Ruadhan had left, taking the boy Eada with him; Rhys should have gone, but stayed, looking at her with that black-eyed stare of his.

"Branwyn, cousin, I am going south. Tonight."

"This is some small thing," she said, "some matter with Damh, and they have dwindled—"

"This is a small thing," said Rhys, "but it is on me I should go south, now, tonight. I should have gone long since; now I know it." He came and offered his hands; she took them, looked up at him.

"I can spare you ten of the men with me; none that are bound with Ruadhan."

"I shall go faster alone." His hands slipped from hers. Meadhbh and Ceallach stood aside for him as he strode for the door. He went out down the stairs into the dark, and Meadhbh and Ceallach stared after him, hands linked one with the other, so solemn, so unnaturally solemn—

"Meadhbh," said Branwyn. "Ceallach. The men will see to it."

They turned. They stared at her with the stillness of thoughts she did not fathom. Not amazed, not bewildered. Anxious.

She held out her arms to them, wanting them. They came, and she folded them in her arms, and they rested there against her skirts. She told them no lies. One could not lie to them. It was the Sight; she guessed it. She might have asked them questions, but feared the answers.

"Rhys is going home to Dryw," she whispered; but they would know that. "To your great-uncle Dryw in the mountains in the south; there are all our cousins, and if there is trouble your father will come riding back in a moment; and we will shelter behind our walls if it comes to that, but it will not. Once our kinsmen come from the south, then there will be a reckoning, whatever the matter is. And perhaps Domhnull will persuade your other uncle from Donn, perhaps he will listen: your father at least is trying. But however it is, we will be safe here."

He has no armor, she was thinking. O gods, at Lioslinn, in the passes up by Damh and him unshielded.

"The road goes through the forest," said Ceallach, of the way that Rhys took. "And over the Caerbourne."

"Hush," she said, "hush, Rhys knows that road, and will he not be safe there? The Sidhe would never harm him."

They said nothing, nothing at all to that, but no one was com forted.

Soon the noise of the horsemen sounded departing the yard, and the greater gate groaned open. Branwyn kissed her son and daughter each and looked at Muirne. "Go find Siodhachan. And Hugi. Tell them I set Siodhachan over the hold and bid Hugi take nine men with him, scatter and rouse the farms from Gearr's northward and west and east—but quietly, quietly, no watchfires must be lit, noth ing to rouse An Beag. Tell them—no, bid them both come to me, and I will tell them. Haste, Muirne."

Muirne sped.

"What shall we do?" asked Ceallach.

"Go down," she said, "Ceallach, tell Cein and Cobhan and the boys to bring in the horses at far pasture; Meadhbh—Yes, go with him. But neither of you without the walls: hear me."

"Yes," said Meadhbh, and dropped a kiss upon her cheek; Ceal lach pressed her hands and ran, and Meadhbh scurried after.

He will say it was all unneeded, she thought. I shall have alarmed the countryside. Perhaps An Beag will hear it and o gods, bear word of it to the King and do us hurt for it. Caer Wiell, they will say, is warlike. And Rhys, gods, Rhys will have roused Dryw, a moving of their forces northward. The King will know it beyond any doubt. And how then will we fare?

She almost wavered. But her messengers were gone, Rhys away from the gate, the riders sped for the marches. She clenched her hands and waited.

The hold loomed shapeless on its hill in the darkness, a mass which thrust up only one of its corners against the backdrop of starlight. The rest was hid against the higher hills about it; but it massed large, like some crouching giant above its stream-cut valley.

Perhaps, Domhnull thought, they should have stopped before this and not pressed on, but they had begun to come under sight of cottages set high on the flanks of the hills as they entered twilight— no great expanse of tillage, not like Caer Wiell, but pasturage throughout the hills; and dogs, most likely, and wart folk who might view strangers with suspicion. It seemed best to him to keep moving, quietly, and not to chance the country.

"No lights," said Boc. "Gods, how dark that pile is."

"I think it is the face we see," Domhnull said. "Its walls and not the keep itself." Rough, lord Ciaran had called his native hold; mostly shepherds, flocks scattered in every fold of the hills round about; a keep which had grown up as chance and invention built it, a wall here, a shed there, a hall of rough stone and timbers—it had never had to stand siege, Ciaran had said, except by wind and weather.

They rode closer, the lonely clop of the horses' hooves echoing off the cliff.

"Are we not reported?" Brom wondered, rearmost, who led the other horses. "Surely the shepherds saw us coming."

"Gods know," Domhnull said, and unslung his shield from his back where he had carried it. So did the others then, a rattle of wood and metal. With that thumping on his left arm he felt at least some cover about him, for they rode near brush and jagged stone as the road followed the streamcourse. It was a place apt for ambush. His weary horse picked up its head, skittish at the sound of the shield, snorted in the darkness. He touched his heels to it and it moved a little faster on the dark trail, past trees and up again, with the walls and gates rising now above them.

"Caer Donn," Domhnull called out, "ho the watch, Caer Donn!"

"Who is it?" a voice drifted back to them. "What purpose?"

He was relieved at that hailing, reined in his horse with his men about him. "I am Domhnull Gaelbhan mac Gaelbhan, Beorc Scaga's-son's cousin, of my lord of Caer Wiell the messenger, and four men my escort. Open your gate for us."

There was long delay. Domhnull sat his horse and kept his shield on his arm while his eyes scanned the rim of the wall. His heart was beating as hard as it had at the worst of their journey, dreading words this time, not arrows: go away, go back unheard, our lord will not admit you. No man behind him spoke, Boc, Caith, Dubhlaoch; and Brom who led the horses. Hooves shifted, clattered, restless: the horses saw a gate, thought of hay and straw and shelter, unwitting of all politics.

"You will come in by the lesser gate," the voice hailed them from the wall, "your shields at your backs, Domhnull mac Gaelbhan."

It was no more than reasonable, at this hour, with the dark behind them. "Do what they ask," Domhnull said, and slung his own shield to his back, tapped his horse in the ribs and rode forward as the lesser gate eased open outward, showing torchlight beyond it.

He passed beneath the arch, among boys who came to take his horse, no different than at Caer Wiell. He stepped from the saddle, looked about him, not missing the men who stood above the gate: archers, if they were needed. Caith came through, and Boc and Dub hlaoch, Brom last of all, with the string of horses. The gate slammed shut. The yard passed into the confusion ordinary with lads and half a score of horses.

"My lord will see you," a man came to say, a graying, square-faced man wearing a gold chain that glinted in the torchlight, wealthier than the look of this place.

Everywhere was timber. Not a hold for war, lord Ciaran had said: it was far too much of wood, a mass of wood and stone before them, like some shepherd's cottage turned fortress, as if some giant had tumbled a hundred such cottages together: here was a wall, there a corner, a second story of wood and stone overhanging, and some of the roof timbers jutting out from all of it. Steps went up to the doors, thundering and creaking under their heavy tread, and so they came into a smoky, timbered hall, a great long table in the midst of it, a fireplace burning, torches lit, so that light chased the shadows; and a great carved chair where a man sat with others standing by him.

Donnchadh, Domhnull thought, finding uncomfortable this place, this sitting in chairs like some minor king, when his own lord would have come down to the yard to meet a guest, or at least stood up to meet him.

"Domhnull mac Gaelbhan," said Donnchadh—there was no brother—likeness, none. This man was lean and gray as a wolf, where Ciaran was fair and golden. Half-brothers, they were. "My brother has some word for me, does he?"

"Lord, he sent a ring to you." Domhnull slid it from his hand— easily it slipped, when Ciaran had worn it on his smallest finger. He offered it, and gave it when Donnchadh held out his palm.

"Yes," said Donnchadh, "I gave it to him."

"My lord sent it for a token." He looked into Donnchadh's eyes and for a moment lost all its thread of thought, everything unrav eling—I cannot, he thought, I cannot do this.

"And wishes?"

"Peace," he said. "Peace and other things ... He said—" His wits rallied; he gathered his forces, embarrassed. "Lord, his word was that he wished peace. That foremost. He says that silence profits neither. He spoke with me—" Ogods, this is not easy. This man hates him. "I am close to him. I know his heart. He thinks often of Donn, has thought, through the years, and wants to see you. Go to him, he said to me, and answer his questions, whatever he might want to ask —and bring back news again, and perhaps—"

"Perhaps?"

Shame flooded his face with heat. The word tangled on his tongue, echoed in this hostile hall. "Forgiveness."

Long silence afterward. Donnchadh stared at him, looked down at the ring, looked up again and his eyes were less fierce. "That is strange to hear from my brother."

"His word, lord."

"I have waited many years," said Donnchadh. His lips clamped taut. He looked down and slipped the ring to his own hand. "Well," he said then, "well, Domhnull of Caer Wiell. I know your cousin."

"Yes," he said, "lord." That little seemed safest.

"News. Is it news my brother wants? Well. You have had a long road and a dangerous, and I am bound to listen. I have long thought he might have sent to me; and tomorrow you will tell me what is in his mind. In the meanwhile—in the meanwhile, there is rest and food, whatever you have need of." He beckoned to the man who stood nearest at his shoulder. "Geannan, see you to it."

"Lord," said Domhnull, "thank you."

"Tomorrow we shall talk at some length," said Donnchadh, "and I shall have thought, and you will. Go with Geannan."

Domhnull made his respects and his escort with him, and followed after the slight man in rich clothing who led them from the hall.

My lord, he thought, would call for food and drink in hall would be frank and open-handed He dismissed such carping thoughts. It was another hall, another custom, a sterner lord. He felt young be fore this man, young and simple, and felt the eyes of Boc and the others on his shoulders, expecting him to uphold Caer Wiell's honor, while bowing and giving courtesies in this place, before this wolf-eyed lord who sat high in the councils of the King in Dun na h-Eoin.

Pages came, meeting them in the hallway beyond the great hall. "I shall show you where you will lodge," said Geannan, "and the lads will see your men well fed and comfortable."

"I will go with my men," Domhnull said, but Geannan soberly caught his arm and drew him on.

"We would not have you say in Caer Wiell that we lodged you meanly, sir Domhnull; you will not report my lord in that way. Come, come, no mean lodging for your men; plenty of ale and per haps cook will find some of that lamb we had for dinner. For your self, perhaps some wine, and I know some of that lamb is left, and perhaps a slice or two of that good ham we had. I shall entreat the cook myself, and hot water, yes, and a fine feather bed, I'll warrant will be far better than the saddle. Did you ride straight on, then?"

"We had come into your lands. We thought it best to come and give an account of ourselves straightway."

"Wise, yes; the shepherds have the dogs out by night throughout the hills. There's little stirs but what they set to it. Ho, page, where are you going? Go straight ahead with that light: open up the west chamber."

Sir Domhnull he had become. This man Donnchadh had sent beside him spoke him fairly, delivered him to a room of wooden walls and fine appointments, sent the page scurrying with orders for fire, water, servants. Donnchadh from close-handed began then to seem generous beyond all expectation. He was dazed by this, and yet afraid.

Where am I in this great place? he wondered. And where are Boc and the rest of us in this rambling warren? He shivered, and looked anxiously in Geannan's direction as the man left him with promises of food and wine to follow, with a flurry of servants seeing to the fire, the fine soft bed, the warming of water for his washing. He was afraid. He did not know why this was so, only that it was in the air, the walls, a silence in which the soft sounds the servants made were all too loud. He remembered the shores of Lioslinn, the silences of the passes, the uncanny stillness of the rocks.

I have done a foolish thing, he thought, wishing he and his escort had never been parted; and then he shook off the feeling as too much caution. I start at shadows, he decided, suspecting the lord of Donn of some vague and tangled irony, to house him like a lord, exagger ated courtesy. I should have been sharp with him, he thought, wish ing he were older or wiser in statecraft, or somehow more subtle in the ways of lords other than his own; or at least that he knew how to treat such courtesies as they offered.

The shadows were deep by the river, where the road ran, and the water whispered louder than the leaves. Rhys went warily in this place, marking how desolate it had become, how in want of tending —the King's road that linked all Caerdale with the plain, and all unused by honest folk, or by Caer Wiell in these years. He rode with all his weapons, with his saddlebags full of Cook's gifts, and now with his shield upon his arm, for he came to that point which ran between the river and An Beag.

Now, now, he asked speed of his horse, knowing silence would not serve him. It was less than likely that An Beag would watch the road, that any of those bandits would be devoted enough to duty to sit out on the riverbank in ambush in the rare hope of a man of Caer Wiell to murder—but anything was possible with trouble abroad in the land.

Brush loomed close on either side. Grass had grown in the road way, and here and there a bush had taken hold, or brambles flung their spite out where they might rake the horse. The black gelding disliked this nighttime running, this uncertain ground: he used the spurs he seldom gave it and kept it going, reckless of such hazards.

It spent its strength, began to labor under his armed weight when they had come well toward the hills. He let it slow its pace at last, still beside the river, and now tending to Caerbourne Ford, the place he liked least of all.

The trees took him then in their embrace of willow fronds, trailing like a curtain darker than the starlit skies, caressing, cutting him and the beast off from sight—whisper of leaves and water. The horse danced and shied suddenly, finding something to alarm it. He touched it with the spurs, fended the willow leaves with his shield.

Now came Eald. He felt it, the haunted quality of the shore before him.

Now lend me luck, he wished, remembering that one had shed a blessing on him. He kept her memory in his eyes, in the dark before him—o Sidhe, you promised.

He found the ford, itself more perilous in the dark, in length of time untried: the river might have carved new ways, made pits to trap horse and rider, brought down uncertain sands instead of solid bottom. He slid down and led the horse for prudence, waist deep in the Caerbourne's sluggish water.

The horse plunged. A thing slid past his thighs, large and live and horrid. He kept the reins and stumbled on, struggling in the water, and now the whisper of the river had the sound of laughter. The shore wavered before him. A second time the touch came at his legs, his waist, soft hands reached upward, clinging to his armor.

He flung himself toward the shallow water, fell to his knees and made the horse stumble by the pull on the reins, then regained his feet and hastened through the reeds, on soft and yielding mud, past dead and breaking branches.

He set his foot in the stirrup, heavy with his weight of metal, with the horse shifting this way and that and starting to move at once. It threw its head as he hit the saddle, and leapt forward, catching panic; he reined it hard, for branches whipped at them: they went blind and at hazard.

He held it; it walked, shivering. He shivered likewise, soaked to the skin and remembering what had touched him.

Each-uisge, Ciaran had said. Water horse. River nix. A thing to frighten children. He feared as he had never feared in battle, in this path that he had taken, and ever and again he heard the sound of hooves, like a horse running where no horse could run, like the thunder of a gallop that grew loud and soft by turns, now on this side of the path and now on that, where the way to his own lands bor dered Eald.

"Grant you mercy," he whispered to it. "We were quiet neigh bors."

He did not give way to panic, not even when eyes like coals stared at him from out the thicket. It might do him harm, he knew it; but it went beside him, and his horse shuddered and shivered and snorted at its presence, that moved on hooves.

"Pooka," he said, "you do not frighten me. I have leave to pass here, and you cannot stop me."

The eyes never came again. The beat of hooves stayed with him.