The Last Light of the Sun

SIXTEEN

Kendra had been keeping her eyes closed. The light entering the room was still too bright, making the pain in her head worse, and when she looked around, the sense of disorientation—of being in two different places—only grew. With eyes closed, the inner sight, vision, whatever it was, didn't have to fight against anything.

Except her, and all she'd thought she knew about the world. But now she made herself look up, and open her eyes. Her father and Ceinion with her, no one else. Gareth had come with the herbs, and had gone back out. She'd heard her father giving him another task to do.

They were really just sending him from the room, that he not be burdened, as they were, with the awareness that King Aeldred's younger daughter seemed to be having the sort of visions that had you condemned for trafficking with the half-world. The world the clerics said—by turns—either did not exist at all, or must be absolutely shunned by all who followed the rites and paths of holy Jad.

Well and good to say, but what did you do when you saw what you did see, within? Kendra said, her voice thin and difficult, "Someone has died. I think… I think it is over."

"Athelbert?" Her father had to ask that, couldn't help himself.

"I don't think so. There is distress but not… not fear or pain right now. In him."

"In Alun? Ab Owyn?" That was Ceinion. She had to close her eyes again. It really was difficult, seeing and… seeing.

"Yes. I think… I don't think either of them was fighting."

"Single combat, then," her father said. Shrewdest man in the world. All her life. A gift for her and Judit, a burden at times for his sons. She had no certain idea he was right, but he almost always was.

"If two men fought, someone has lost. There is… Alun is heavy with sorrow."

"Dearest Jad. It will be Brynn, then," said Ceinion. She heard him sit heavily at one of the other stools. Made herself look, squinting, in pain.

"I don't think so," she said. "This is not so… sharp a grief?"

They looked at her. The most frightening thing of all, in some ways, was that these two men believed every impossible thing she was telling them.

Then she had to close her eyes once more, for the images were in her again, imposed, pushing through her towards the other one, so far away. Same as before, stronger now: green, green, green, and something shining in the dark.

"I need this to stop," Kendra whispered, but knew it wasn't going to. Not yet.

Brynn was the first one down the hill, but not the first to reach the two of them, one standing with a red sword, the other lying in the grass. Brand Leofson, still caught in strangeness, not sure yet what had happened, saw—another mystery—his young shipmate come up to them and kneel on the grass beside the dead man.

Brand heard a sound from above, saw ap Hywll coming down.

"You will honour the fight?" he asked.

Heard Brynn ap Hywll say, bitter and blunt, "He let you win."

"He did not!" Brand said, not as forcefully as he wanted to.

The young one, Bern, looked up. "Why do you say that?" he asked, speaking to the Cyngael, not to his own leader, the hero who had saved them all.

Brynn was swearing, a stream of profanity, as he looked down at the dead man. "We were deceived," he said, in Anglcyn. "He took the fight on himself, intending to lose."

"He did not!" Leofson said again. Brynn's voice had been loud enough for others to hear.

"Don't be a fool! You know it," snapped the Cyngael. Men were coming over now, from below and above. "You show your backhand every time, he set you up for that."

Bern was still kneeling, for some reason, beside the dead man. "I saw that," he said, looking again at ap Hywll.

Brand swallowed hard. Watch the backhand. You're giving it away… What kind of a fool…?

He stared at the boy beside the fallen man. The late light fell on both of them.

"Why are you there?" he said. But he wasn't a stupid man, and he knew his answer before it came.

"My father," said Bern.

No more than that, but much came all too clear. Brynn ap Hywll gazed down at the two of them, the living one and the dead, and began to swear again, with a ferocity that was unsettling.

Brand One-eye, hearing him, and with duties here, said, again, loudly, "You will honour the fight?"

Within, he was badly shaken. What kind of a fool did something like this? Now he knew.

Brynn ignored him, insultingly. The force of his fury slowed. He was looking at Bern. "You understand that he prepared all of this?" Still speaking Anglcyn, the shared tongue.

Bern nodded. "I… think I do."

"He did." It was a new voice. "He came through the godwood with us to do this, I think. Or make it possible."

Bern looked over. Aeldred's son, the Anglcyn prince. There was a smaller young man, Cyngael, beside him. "He… almost told us that," Prince Athelbert went on. "I said I was in the wood because of my father, and Alun was for his brother, and… Thorkell said he was a fit with us and would explain later how. He never did."

"Yes, he did," said Brynn ap Hywll. "Just now."

Leofson cleared his throat. This was all blowing much too far in a bad direction. You had to be careful when the rocks got close. "I killed this man in fair combat," he said. "He was old, he grew tired. If you want to try to—"

"Be silent," said ap Hywll, not loudly, but with no respect in his voice, none of what should come to a man who'd just saved his entire company. "We will honour your fight, because I would be shamed not to, but the world will know what happened here. Would you really have gone home and claimed glory for this?"

And to that, Brand Leofson had no reply.

"Leave now," Brynn continued bluntly. "Siawn, we do this properly. There is a dead man to be honoured. Send two riders to the coast to bring word to those of Cadyr who might be looking for the ships. Here's my ring, for them. No one is to attack. Tell them why. And take an Erling, their best rider, to explain to the ones left there."

He looked at Brand again, the way one looked at a low-ranking member of his household. "Which of your men can handle a horse?"

"I can," said the one kneeling beside the dead man, looking up. "I've the best horse. I'll go." He hadn't stood up yet.

"Are you certain? We will bury your father with all proper rites. If you wish to stay for…"

"No. Give him to us," Brand said, assertive for the first time. "He entrusted his soul to Ingavin, before we fought. This is truth."

Brynn's mood seemed to change again. Sorrow in his face, anger spent. The Cyngael, it was said, were never far from sadness. Rain and mist, dark valleys, music in their voices.

Ap Hywll nodded his head. "That seems fitting, I have to say. Very well. Take him with you. You will do him honour?"

"We will do him honour," Brand said, with dignity. "He was the Volgan's shipmate once."

Her own anger, Rhiannon realized, had also gone. It was more than a little unsettling: how one could be consumed, defined by rage, the desire—the need—to kill, and then have it simply disappear, drift away, leaving such a different feeling behind. She hadn't cried earlier; she was weeping now for a treacherous Erling servant of her mother's. She shouldn't be doing this, she thought. She shouldn't.

Her mother put an arm about her shoulders. Enid was calm again, thoughtful, holding her child.

It is over, Rhiannon told herself. At least it is over now.

In the sagas, Bern thought, when the hero died, to the monster's claws and teeth or the assembled might of deceitful foes, he always lay alive for some last moments so those who loved him could come and say that, and hear the last words he would speak, and carry them away.

Siferth had died that way, years after killing Ingeld on the ice, and so had Hargest in his brother's arms, speaking the words at the heart of all the sagas:

Cattle die kinsmen die.

Every man born must die. Fierce hearth fires end in ash.

Fame once won endures ever.

It made for good verse. It might even be true. But not all of us are granted final words with those we are losing, not all of us are equal to the task of the last, memorable thing to say, or allowed it even if we are.

You were supposed to have that moment, Bern thought bitterly. In the Jaddite songs, too, there were such exchanges. The king speaking to his servant words to be remembered, to echo down the ages. The dying high cleric telling a wavering acolyte that which confirms him in faith and mission and changes his life—and the lives of others, after.

It wasn't right that there was nothing here but this… kneeling beside a death among so many strangers, enemies, in a distant land far from the sea. It wasn't right that your own last encounter had been so harsh. His father had saved him there, too, carrying him out of Esferth to his horse, sending him away, with instructions not to come to Brynnfell.

If they'd listened, if they'd gone home, this wouldn't have…

It wasn't his fault. Not his doing. He'd taken heed. A good son. Ivarr Ragnarson was dead because Bern had exposed him, as his father had wanted. He'd done what he'd been told. He'd… he'd honoured his father's words.

His father had killed two men, been exiled, cost his family home and freedom, the shape and pattern of their lives.

Had given one life back, here, bought with his own.

They were speaking above him of needing an Erling to ride to the ships with the Cyngael. Bern looked up, hoping they couldn't see how blurred and unmoored he felt, and said he'd go.

He heard Brand say, quietly, that Thorkell had chosen Ingavin for his soul at the end. He wasn't surprised. How could that be a surprise? But it did give him a thought. He slipped the hammer from about his neck and lifted his father's head, still warm in the late-day sunlight, and he gave Thorkell back his gift to carry up to the god's halls, where mead was surely (surely) being poured for him now, with Siggur Volganson there to lead the cries of welcome after waiting for so long.

He stood up carefully. Looked down at his father. It had been dark in the river the last time, nothing clearly to be discerned. It was bright here now. Some grey in the hair and beard, but really very little for a man of his years. Red Thorkell, still, at the end.

He looked over, met the gaze of Brynn ap Hywll. Hadn't expected what he saw there. They'd come to kill this man. Neither of them spoke. It crossed Bern's mind to say that he was sorry, but an Erling didn't say that to a Cyngael. He just nodded his head. The other man did the same. Bern turned away and went down the slope, to get Gyllir and ride. It was over.

In the great stories there were last words from the dying, and for them from those left behind. In life, it seemed, you galloped away, and the dead were borne after you towards a burning by the sea.

It is over, Bern thought, riding away, and Rhiannon mer Brynn had told herself the same thing, a little higher up the hill. Both were wrong, though young enough to be forgiven for it.

It does not end. A story finishes—or does for some, not for others—and there are other tales, intersecting, parallel, or sharing nothing but the time. There is always something more.

Alun ab Owyn, so pale that it was noted by all who looked at him, walked over towards Brynn. He was breathing carefully, holding himself very still.

"Lad. What is it?" Brynn's gaze narrowed.

"I need… I must ask something of you."

"After coming through that wood for us? Jad's blood, there is nothing you could ask that—"

"Don't say it. This is large."

The older man stared at him. "Let us walk away, then, and you will ask me, and I will say if I can do what you need."

They walked away, and Alun asked. Only the dog, Cafall, whom both of them had called theirs, was near to them, following.

There was a breeze from the north, sliding the clouds away. A clear night coming, late-summer stars soon, no moons.

"It is very large," Brynn agreed, when Alun had done. He, too, was pale now. "And this is from…"

"This is from the half-world. The one that we… both know." "Are you certain you understand…?"

"No. No, I'm not. But I think… I have been caused to see something. And I am being… besought to do this."

"From when you were in the godwood?"

"Before. It began here."

Brynn looked at him. He wished Ceinion were with them. He wished he were a wiser, better, holier man. The sun was low. The Erlings, he saw, glancing down the slope, had taken the body of the dead man. Siawn had detailed men to go with them, escorts. Brynn didn't think there would be trouble. Something had changed with Einarson's death. He was still trying to sort that through, if he'd have done the same thing to save his own son, or daughters.

He thought so, but didn't know. He honestly didn't know.

Owyn's son was waiting, staring at him, his mouth pinched, clearly in great distress. He was the musician, Brynn remembered. Had sung for them the night the Erlings came. His brother had died here. This one had come through the spirit wood to warn them, and sent a faerie ahead to Brynn. Three nights she had waited above the yard for him to come to her. Failing that, the farm would have burned tonight. And Enid, Rhiannon…

He nodded his head. "I'll take you to Siggur Volganson's sword, where I buried it. Jad defend us both from whatever may befall." It does not end. There is always more.

She is watching. Of course she is watching. How could she not have followed here? She is trying, from a distance, away from all the iron, to understand movements, gestures. She is not skilled at this (how could she be?). She sees him walk away with the other one, with whom she'd spoken on the slope, who is afraid of her, of what she is.

They do not see her. She is in the trees, muted, trying to understand, but distracted by the aura of other presences gathering as sundown nears: the Ride is close by, of course, and spruaugh, many of them, whom she has always disliked. One of those, she thinks, will have flitted to tell the queen already: about what she's done, what she is doing now.

There was one dead man, taken up by the others now. Only one. She has seen this before, years ago and years ago. It is… a game men play at war, though something more than that, perhaps. They die so swiftly.

She sees the two of them turn and go to their horses and start back east, alone. She follows. Of course she follows, among the trees. But just then, watching the two of them, she feels—inexplicably strange, at first, then not so—something she has never felt before, in all the years since wakening. And then she realizes what it is. She is feeling sorrow, seeing him take horse and ride. A gift. Never before.

She enters the small wood above Brynnfell with the two of them and the grey dog. The Ride is waiting by the pool. She feels the queen's summons and goes to her, as she must.

It grew darker as they rode, both carrying torches now. The first stars out, clouds chased south by the wind. Cafall loped beside the horses. No one else was with them. Alun looked at the sky.

"No moons tonight?"

Brynn simply shook his head. The big man had been silent on the ride. Alun was aware that this particular journey would be laden with memory for him, like a weight. This is very large, he had said. It was.

No moons. That, Alun thought, but did not say—for Brynn was carrying enough—was the other reason time had altered for the three of them in the spirit wood, coming here.

Allowed to come here. He was remembering Thorkell's hammer, laid upon the grass where they'd heard the creature roaring. An offering, and perhaps not the only thing offered. He, too, had ended up lying on grass.

This was a different wood. The insistent images, painfully imposed, coming from an Anglcyn princess in Esferth, were green and shining still, as they entered among the trees carrying their flames.

He'd chased Ivarr Ragnarson here, and his Erling horse had entered the pool and been frozen there, and he'd seen faeries, heard their music, seen Dai with the queen.

Never found Ivarr. That one was dead, it seemed. Not by Alun's hand. Not his revenge. Something else, a larger thing, to be done now. He was afraid.

The images in his mind had stopped. They were gone, as if the girl had been worn out sending them—or wasn't needed any more, now that he was here. He was supposed to know, by now, why he was in this wood. He was almost certain he did. That sense of something pushing into awareness was replaced by something else, more difficult to name.

He dismounted when Brynn did, and he followed him through the darkness; a twisting path through high summer trees (a small wood, this, but an old one, surely so, with faeries here). They were cautious with the torches. A forest could burn.

He saw the pool. His heart was beating fast. He glanced at Brynn, who had stopped, saw that the other man's face was rigid with strain. Brynn looked around, aligning himself. The sky was clear above the pool, they could see stars. The water was still, a mirror. No wind here. No sound in the leaves.

Brynn turned to him. "Hold this," he said, handing Alun his torch.

He set off around the edge of the pool, towards the south. Long-striding, almost hurrying, now that they were here. He would be tangled in memories, Alun thought. He followed, carrying light. Again Brynn stopped, again took his bearings. Then he turned his back on the water and walked over to a tree, a large ash. He touched it and went past. Three more trees, then he turned to his left.

There was a boulder, moss-covered (green), massive. Here, too, Brynn rested his hand a moment. He looked back at Alun. It was too hard to read his thoughts by torchlight. Alun could guess, though.

"Why didn't you destroy it?" he asked softly, his first words in the wood.

"I don't know," the other man said. "I felt as if it should stay with us. Lie here. It was… very beautiful."

He stayed that way a moment, then he turned his back on Alun, drew a breath, put a shoulder to that huge rock, and pushed, an enormously strong man. Nothing happened. Brynn straightened, wiped at his face with one hand.

"I can—" Alun began.

"No," said the other. "I did it myself, then."

Twenty-five years ago. A young man in his glory, a life ahead of him, the greatest deed of his days already done. What he'd be remembered for. He'd taken that fight for his own, over those whose rank should have made it theirs. Today, he had let a man take another combat, for him.

This was a proud man. Alun stood with the torches, Cafall beside him, and watched as Brynn turned back to the rock, spat on both his hands, and put them and his shoulder to it again, driving with body and legs, churning, grunting with exertion, then crying aloud Jad's name, the god, even here.

And the boulder rolled with that cry, just enough to reveal, by the light of Alun's torches, a hollow beneath where it had been, and something wrapped in cloth, lying there.

Brynn straightened, wiped at his dripping face again with one sleeve then the other. He swore, though softly, without force. Alun remained where he was, waiting. His heart was still pounding. The other man knelt, claimed the cloth, and what lay inside it. He stood up and carried it back before him the few steps out of those trees, past the ash to the grassy space by the starlit pool.

He cried aloud, raised a quick, warding hand. Alun, following, looked past him. They were here. Waiting. Not the faeries. The green, hovering figures he'd seen with the others in the spirit wood.

They were here, and they were the reason he was here. He knew what these were now, finally, and what they needed from him.

Besought. He was being pleaded with. To intervene. A mortal who could see the half-world, who had been in the Ride's pool here, had lain with a faerie in the northern reaches of the spirit wood. They would know this. When he'd entered the wood again with Thorkell and then Athelbert, they had come for him.

His heart was twisted, entangled, holding a weight that felt like centuries. He didn't know how the girl in Esferth was part of this (didn't know she'd been in the wood that same night) but she had given him the images they needed him to see. She had… a different kind of access to this.

And had brought him here, a second time.

"They will not harm us," he said quietly to Brynn.

"You know what these are?"

"Yes," said Alun. "I do now."

Brynn didn't ask the next question. Either he didn't want to know or, more probably, he was leaving this, in courtesy, to Alun.

Alun said, "If you will give me the sword, I think you should take Cafall and go. You do not need to stay with me."

"Yes I do," said the other man.

Hugely proud, all his days. A man had died, taking his fight this afternoon. Brynn unwrapped the cloth from around what it had held for so many years and Alun, coming nearer with both torches, saw the Volgan's small, jewel-hiked sword, taken from the raid on Champieres, and carried as a talisman until the day he died in Llywerth, by the sea.

The man who'd killed him held it out towards Alun. Alun handed him a torch, took the sword, gave Brynn the other flame. He unsheathed the blade, to look upon it. It was silver, Siggur Volganson's sword. Not iron. He'd known it would be, from the girl.

There came a sound from the green shapes gathered there—twenty of them, or nearly so, he judged. A keening noise, wind in leaves but higher. Sorrow was in him. The way of the Cyngael.

"You are… certain you wish to stay?"

Brynn nodded. "You don't want to be alone here."

He didn't. It was true. But still. "I don't think I have… permission to do this. I don't expect to live. Your wife asked you—"

"I know what she said. I will not leave you alone. Do what you must. We will bear witness, Cafall and I."

Alun looked beyond him. One of the green shapes had come nearer. They were almost human, as if twisted by time and circumstance a little away. He knew what they were, now. What they had been.

Brynn stepped away, back towards the encircling trees, carrying the torches. The dog was silent when it might have growled. It had done so in the spirit wood, Alun remembered. Something had changed. He set the scabbard down.

"You wish this, truly?" he said. Not to the other man this time. Brynn was behind him now. He was holding a silver sword and speaking to the green creatures that had come. They were in a clearing by the faerie queen's pool under stars on a night when neither moon would rise. Souls walked on such nights, so the old tales told.

No reply, or none spoken aloud. He had no idea if they could speak any tongue he might know. But the figure before him came nearer yet (slowly, so as not to startle him or cause fear, was the thought that came) and it knelt upon the dark grass before him.

He heard Brynn make a sound (the beginning of a prayer) and then stop himself. The other man had just realized, Alun thought, what was about to happen, though he wouldn't know why. Alun knew why.

He had not asked for this. He'd only ridden north from home one bright morning at the end of spring with his brother and favourite cousin and their friends on a cattle raid, as young men of the Cyngael had done since all songs began. He had ridden into a different, older story, it seemed.

Much older. These green things, and he still didn't know what they were called, had been human once. Like Brynn, like Alun himself, like Dai.

Entirely like Dai. These, he understood, heart aching, were the souls of the faerie queen's mortal lovers after she tired of them and sent them from her side. This is what became of them, after who could know how many years. And he was here (in a tale he had never known he was in) to set them free with silver, under stars.

His eyes were dry, his hand steady, holding the small sword. He touched the point and still-sharp edges. Not a warrior's blade this one, a slender, ceremonial sword. This was a ceremony, as much as anything else.

He drew a breath. There was no reason to wait, or linger. He'd been brought here for this. He stepped forward.

"Let there be light for you," he said. And thrust the Volgan's blade into the kneeling, shimmering creature, below what would have been its collarbone, long ago.

He was ready this time for the sound that came, and so did not flinch or startle when he heard that cry of release, or the deeper sound that came from the others gathered here. No wind, the water utterly still. Stars would be reflected in it.

There was nothing kneeling before him now, where the blade (too smoothly, almost no resistance) had gone. Alun understood.

It was a soul, not a mortal body. It had died long ago. He was stabbing hearth smoke and memory.

He told himself that, again and again, as he besought light (besought) for each of them, one by one, as they came and knelt and he did what they had drawn him here to do for them. He became aware of how grateful he was that Brynn had stayed, after all, that he wasn't here alone to do this in the dark, wrapped in sorrow, hearing that aching joy in each of them at their release, the sound they made.

His hand was steady, each time, over and again. He owed them that, having been chosen for this. Exchanges in spirit woods, he was thinking. A hammer laid down in one forest that a sword might be lifted from under a boulder in another. Thorkell's life for his and Athelbert's, and so many others on that slope today (mortals, all).

He had no idea how much time had passed or if, indeed, it had.

He looked down upon the last of these kneeling souls taken once, and discarded, by the faerie queen. He offered his prayer for it and plunged the sword and heard the cry, and saw this last one flicker and drift from sight as the others had done. Nothing green left glimmering in the glade. And so this, Alun thought, was the last exchange, final balancing, an ending.

He, too, was young. To be forgiven this error, as the others were.

He heard music. Looked up. Behind him, Brynn began, quietly, to pray.

Light upon the water, pale, as if moonlight were falling. And then the light (which was not moonlight) took shape, attained form, and Alun saw, for a second time, faeries coming across the surface of the pool, to the sound of flutes and bells and instruments he did not know. He saw the queen (again), borne in her open litter, very tall, slim, clothed in what would be silk or something finer, silver-hued (like his sword). Faeries, passing by.

Or not, in fact, passing. Not this time. The music stopped. He heard Brynn behind him, ceaselessly speaking the invocation of light, the first, the simplest prayer. The dog was silent, still. Alun looked at the queen, and then made himself look beside her.

Dai was there, as he had been before (so little time would have passed for them, he thought). He was riding a white mare with ribbons in her mane, and the queen was reaching out and holding him by the hand.

Silence upon the water. Brynn's murmuring the only sound in the glade. Alun looked at that shining company, and at his brother (his brother's taken soul). Without having intended to, he knelt then on the grass. His turn to kneel. They were so far inside the half-world; only with mercy would they ever come out, and faeries were never known for mercy, in the tales.

They did make bargains, though, with mortals they favoured, and there can be a final balancing, though we might not expect it or know when it has come.

Kneeling, looking upon that tall, pale, exquisite queen in her silvered light upon water, he saw her gesture, a movement of one hand, and he saw who came forward, obedient, dutiful, from among those in her train, to her side. No sound. Brynn, he realized, had fallen silent.

Grave, unsmiling, achingly beautiful, the faerie queen gestured again, twice, looking straight at Alun, and so he understood—finally-that there could be indulgence, mercy, a blessing, even, entangled with all sorrows (the cup from which we drink). She reached out one arm and laid it like a barrier before the small, slim figure of the one who had come forward. The one he knew, had spoken to, had lain with in a forest, on the grass.

Will you come back into the wood?

Will you sorrow if I do not? he had asked.

Her hair was changing hues, as he watched, golden to dark violet, to silver, like the queen's. He knew these changes, knew this about her. From behind the barrier of that arm, that banning, she looked at him, and then she turned her head away and gazed at the figure on the other side of the queen, and Alun followed her glance, and began, now, to weep.

Final balancing. The queen of the faeries released his brother's hand. And with those fingers, a gesture smooth as water falling, she motioned for Dai to go forward, if he wished.

If he wished. He was still wrapped (like a raiment) in his mortal shape, not green and twisted away from it as the others had been. He was too new, still her favoured one, riding the white mare at her side, holding her hand amid their music, upon water, in the night woods, within the faerie mounds.

If he wished. How did one leave this? Go from that shining? Alun wanted (so much) to call to him, but tears were pouring down his face and his throat was blocked with grief, so he could only watch as his brother (his brother's soul) turned to look at the queen in her litter beside him. He was too far away for Alun to see what expression was on his face: sorrow, anger, fear, yearning, puzzlement? Release?

It is, as has long been said, the nature of the Cyngael that in the midst of brightest, shining joy, they carry an awareness of sorrows to come, an ending that waits, the curving of the arc. It is their way, the source of music in their voices, and-perhaps—what allows them to leave the shining behind, in due time, when others cannot do so. Gifts are treasured, known not to be forever.

Dai twitched the reins of his mare and moved forward, alone, across the water. Alun heard Brynn again, praying behind him. He looked, for one brief moment (that could be made to last a lifetime if held clearly enough in memory) upon the faerie that had come to him, his own gift, a shining left behind, and saw her raise a hand to him from behind the arm of the queen. Final balancing.

Dai reached the water's edge, dismounted. Walked across the grass. Not hovering as the others had, not yet, still clothed in the form his brother had known. Alun made himself stand still. He held the Volgan's sword.

Dai stopped in front of him. He did not smile, or speak (no words spoken, across that divide). Nor did he kneel, Owyn of Cadyr's older, slain son. Not before a younger brother. One could even smile at that perhaps, later. Dai spread his feet a little, as if to steady himself. Alun was remembering the morning they had ridden north from home, coming here. Other memories followed, in waves. How could they not, here? He looked into his brother's eyes and saw that they had changed (were still changing). It seemed to him there were stars to be seen there, a strangeness so great.

"Let there be light for you," he murmured, scarcely able to speak.

"Let it be done with love," said Brynn behind him, soft as a benison, words that seemed to be from some ancient liturgy Alun didn't know.

"How not?" he said. To Brynn, to Dai, to the bright queen and all her faeries (and the one he was losing now), to the dark night and the stars. He drew back the sword a last time and drove it into his brother's chest, to accept the queen's gift of his soul, the balancing, and set it free to find its harbour, after all.

When he looked up again, Dai was gone (was gone) and the faeries had disappeared, all that shining. It was dark upon the water and in the glade. He drew a ragged breath, felt himself shivering.

There was a sound. The dog, come up to nuzzle him at the hip. Alun put a trembling hand down, touched its fur between the ears. Another sound. He turned towards it wordlessly, and he let Brynn ap Hywll gather him in his arms as a father would, with his own father so far away.

They stood so for a long time before they moved. Brynn claimed the scabbard, wrapped the sword in its cloth again, as before, and they walked over and he laid it in the hollow where it had been. Then he looked up. It was dark. The torches had burned out.

"Will you help me, lad?" he asked. "This accursed boulder has grown. It is heavier than it used to be, I swear."

"I've heard they do that," said Alun quietly. He knew what the other man was doing. A different kind of gift. Together, shoulders to the great rock, they rolled it back and covered the Volgan's sword again. Then they left the wood, Cafall beside them, and came out under stars, above Brynnfell. Lanterns were burning down there, to guide them back.

There was another torch, as well, nearer to them.

She had waited by the gate the last time, when her father went up. This time Rhiannon slipped out of the yard amidst the chaos of returning. Her mother was arranging for a meal to be served to all those who had come to their aid, invited, and unexpectedly from the farms west, where someone—a girl, it seemed—had seen the Erlings passing and run a warning home.

You honoured such people. Rhiannon knew she was needed, ought to be with her mother, but she also knew that her father and Alun ab Owyn were in the wood again. Brynn had told his wife where he was going, though not why. Rhiannon was unable to attend to whatever duties were hers until they came out from the trees.

Standing on the slope above their farmyard, she listened to the bustling sounds below and thought about what it was a woman could do, and could not. Waiting, she thought, was so much a part of their lives. Her mother, giving swift, incisive orders down below, might call that nonsense, but Rhiannon didn't think it was. There was no anger in her any more, or any real feeling of defiance, though she knew she shouldn't be up here.

Needful as night she had said in the hall at the end of spring, entirely aware of the effect it would have. She'd been younger then, Rhiannon thought. Here she was, after nightfall, and she couldn't have said what it was she needed. An ending, she'd decided, to whatever had begun that other night.

She heard a noise. The two men came out from the trees and stood there, the grey dog beside Alun. She saw them both look down upon the farmhouse and the lights. Then her father turned to her.

"Jad be thanked," Rhiannon said.

"Truly," he replied.

He came over and brushed her forehead with his lips, as was his habit. He hesitated, looked over his shoulder. Alun ab Owyn had stayed where he was, just clear of the last trees. "I need to drink and drink," Brynn said. "Both at once. I'll see you below." He went over and took both horses' reins and led them down.

She was unexpectedly calm. The springtime seemed so long ago. The wind had died down, the smoke from her torch rose up nearly straight.

"Did you—?"

"I have so much—"

They both stopped. Rhiannon laughed a little. He did not. She waited. He cleared his throat. "I have so much need of your forgiveness," he said.

"After what you did?" she said. "Coming here again?" He shook his head. "What I said to you—"

This, she could address. "You said some things in grief and loss, on the night your brother died."

He shook his head. "It was… more than that."

She had stood by the gate, seen her father go up. The two of them had just come out of the wood. She knew something of this. She said, "Then it was more. And you are the more to be forgiven."

"You are gracious too. I have no right…"

"None of us has a right to grace," Rhiannon said. "It comes sometimes. That night… I asked you to come to me. To sing." "I know. I remember. Of course."

"Will you sing for me tonight?"

He hesitated. "I… I am not certain that I…"

"For all of us," she amended carefully. "In the hall. We are honouring those who came to help us."

He rubbed at his chin. He was very tired, she saw. "That would be better," he said quietly.

That would be better. Some paths, some doorways, some people were not to be yours, though the slightest difference in the rippling of time might have made them so. A tossed pebble landing a little sooner, a little later. She looked at him, standing this near, the two of them alone in darkness, and she knew she would never entirely move beyond what had happened to her that night at the end of spring, but it was all right. It would have to be all right. You could live with this, with much worse.

"Will you come down, my lord?" she said.

"I will follow you, my lady, if I may. I am not… entirely ready. I will do better after some moments alone."

"I can understand that," Rhiannon said. She could. He'd been in the half-world, would have a long way back to travel. She turned away from him and started down.

Just outside the gate to the yard, a shadow moved away from the fence.

"My lady," said the shadow. "Your mother said you would be up that slope and unlikely to welcome someone following. I thought I would risk coming this far." Her torchlight fell upon Athelbert as he bowed.

He had come through the spirit wood to bring them a warning. They were not even allies of his people. He was the king's heir of the Anglcyn. He had come out to wait for her.

Rhiannon had a vision then of her life to come, the burdens and the opportunities of it, and it was not unacceptable to her. There would be joys and sorrows, as there always were, the taste of the latter present in the wine of such happiness as mortals were allowed. She could do much for her people, she thought, and life was not without its duties.

"My mother," she said, looking up at him by the light of his lifted torch, "is generally right, but not always so."

"It is," said Athelbert, smiling, "a terrible thing when a parent is always right. You'd have to meet my father to see what I mean."

They walked into the yard together. Rhiannon closed and latched the gate behind her, the way they had all been taught to do, against what might be out there in the night.

He wasn't alone. He had said that he needed to be, but it was a dissembling.

Sitting on the grass above Brynnfell, not far from where he'd first walked up to the faerie (he could see the sapling to his left), Alun set about shaping and sending a thought, again and again in his mind.

It is over. It begins. It is over. It begins.

He had no idea what the boundary markers of this might be, if she could sense anything from him, the way he'd been so painfully open to the images she'd sent. But he stayed there, his dog beside him, and he shaped those words, wondering.

Then wonder ceased and a greater wonder began, for he felt her presence again, and caught (soundlessly, within) a note of laughter. It is over. If you are very fortunate, and I am feeling generous, it begins.

Alun laughed aloud in the darkness. He would never be entirely alone again, he realized. It might not have been a blessing, but it was, because of what she was, and he knew it from the beginning, that same night, looking down upon the farm.

He stood up, and so did the dog. There were lights below, food and wine, companionship against the night, people waiting for him, with their needs. He could make music for them.

Come back to me, he heard.

Joy. The other taste in sorrow's cup.