The Last Light of the Sun

TWO

"Our trouble," muttered Dai, looking down through green-gold leaves at the farmyard, "is that we make good poems and bad siege weapons."

A siege, in fact, wasn't even remotely at issue. The comment was so inconsequential, and so typical of Dai, that Alun laughed aloud. Not the wisest thing to do, given where they were. Dai slapped a hand to his brother's mouth. After a moment, Alun signalled he was under control and Dai moved his hand away, grunting.

"Anyone in particular you'd like to besiege?" Alun asked, quietly enough. He shifted his elbows carefully. The bushes didn't move.

"One poet I can think of," Dai said, unwisely. He was prone to jests, his younger brother prone to laughing at them; they were moth prone under leaves, gazing at penned cattle below. They'd come north to steal cattle. The Cyngael did that to each other, frequently.

Dai moved a hand quickly, but Alun kept still this time. They couldn't afford to be seen. There were just twelve of them—eleven, with Gryffeth now captured—and they were a long way north into Arberth. No more than two or three days from the sea, Dai reckoned, though he wasn't sure exactly where they were, or what this very large farmhouse below them was.

Twelve had been a marginal number for a raiding party, but the brothers were confident in their abilities, not without some cause. Besides, in Cadyr it was said that any one of their own was worth two of the Arberthi, and at least three from Llywerth. They might do the arithmetic differently in the other two provinces, but that was just vanity and bluster.

Or it should have been. It was alarming that Gryffeth had been taken so easily, scouting ahead. The good news was that he'd prudently carried Alun's harp with him, to be taken for a bard on the road. The bad news was that Gryffeth—notoriously—couldn't sing or play to save his life. If they tested him down below, he was unmasked. And saving his life became an issue.

So the brothers had left nine men out of sight off the road and climbed this overlook to devise a rescue plan. If they went home without cattle it was bad but not humiliating. Not every raid succeeded; you could still do a few things to make a story worth telling. But if their royal father or uncle had to pay a ransom for a cousin taken on an unauthorized cattle raid into Arberth during a herald's truce, well, that was… going to be quite bad.

And if Owyn of Cadyr's nephew died in Arberth it could mean war.

"How many, do you think?" Dai murmured.

"Twenty, give or take a few? It's a big farmhouse. Who lives here? Where are we?" Alun was still watching the cows, Dai saw. "Forget the cattle," Dai snapped. "Everything's changed." "Maybe not. We let them out of the pen tonight, four of us scatter them north up the valley, the rest go in after Gryffeth while they're rounding them up?"

Dai looked thoughtfully at his younger brother. "That's unexpectedly clever," he said, finally.

Alun punched him on the shoulder, fairly hard. "Hump a goat," he added mildly. "This was your idea, I'm getting us out of it. Don't be superior. Which room's he in?"

Dai had been trying to sort that out. The farmhouse—whoever owned it was wealthy—was long and sprawling, running east to west. He saw the outline of a large hall beyond the double doors below them, wings bending back north at each end of that main building. A house that had expanded in stages, some parts stone, others wood. They hadn't seen Gryffeth taken in, had only come upon the signs of struggle on the path.

Two cowherds were watching the cattle from the far side of the fenced enclosure east of the house. Boys, their hands moving ceaselessly to wave at flies. None of the armed men had emerged since a cluster of them had gone in through the main doors, talking angrily, just as the brothers had arrived here in the thicket above the farm. Once or twice they'd heard raised, distant voices within, and a girl had come out for well water. Otherwise it was quiet and hot, a sleepy afternoon, late spring, butterflies, the drone of bees, a hawk circling. Dai watched it for a moment.

What neither brother said, though both of them knew it, was that it was extremely unlikely they could get a man out of a guarded room, even at night and with a diversion, without men dying on both sides. During a truce. This raid had gone wrong before it had even begun.

"Are we even certain he's in there?" Dai said.

"I am," said Alun. "Nowhere else likely. Could he be a guest? Um, could they have…?"

Dai looked at him. Gryffeth couldn't play the harp he carried, was wearing a sword and leather armour, had a helmet in his saddle gear, looked exactly the sort of young man—with a Cadyri accent, too—who'd be up to mischief, which he was.

The younger brother nodded, without Dai saying anything. It was too miserably obvious. Alun swore briefly, then murmured, "All right, he's a prisoner. We'll need to move fast, know exactly where we're going. Come on, Dai, figure it out. In Jad's name, where have they got him?"

"In Jad's holy name, Brynn ap Hywll tends to use the room at the eastern end of the main building for prisoners, when he has them here. If I remember rightly."

They whipped around. Dai's knife was already out, Alun saw.

The world was a complex place sometimes, saturated with the unexpected. Especially when you left home and the trappings of the known. Even so, there were reasonable explanations for why someone might be up here now, right behind them. One of their own men might have followed with news; one of the guards from below could have intuited the presence of other Cadyri besides the captured one and come looking; they might even have been observed on their way up.

What was implausible in the extreme was what they actually saw. The man who'd answered Alun's question was smallish, grey-haired, cheeks and chin smooth-shaven, smiling at the two of them. He was alone, hands out and open, weaponless… and he was wearing a faded, telltale yellow robe with a golden disk of Jad about his neck.

"I might not actually be remembering rightly," he went on affably. "It has been some time since I've been here, and memory slips as you get older, you know."

Dai blinked, and shook his head as if to clear it after a blow. They'd been completely surprised by an aging cleric.

Alun cleared his throat. One particular thing had registered, powerfully. "Did you, er, say… Brynn ap Hywll?"

Dai was still speechless.

The cleric nodded benignly. "Ah. You know of him, do you?" Alun swore again. He was fighting a rising panic.

The cleric made a reproving face, then chuckled. "You do know him."

Of course they did. "We don't know you," Dai said, finally recovering the capacity for speech. He'd lowered the knife. "How did you get up here?"

"Same way you did, I imagine."

"We didn't hear you."

"Evidently. I do apologize. I was quiet. I've learned how to be. Not quite sure what I'd find, you know."

The long yellow robes of a cleric were ill suited to silent climbing, and this man was not young. Whoever he was, he was no ordinary religious.

"Brynn!" Alun muttered grimly to his brother. The name—and what it meant—reverberated inside him. His heart was pounding.

"I heard."

"What evil, Jad-cursed luck!"

"Yes, well," said Dai. He was concentrating on the stranger for the moment. "I did ask who you were. I'd count it a great courtesy if you favoured us with your name."

The cleric smiled, pleased. "Good manners," he said, "were always a mark of your father's family, whatever their other sins might have been. How is Owyn? And your lady mother? Both well, I dare hope? It has been many years."

Dai blinked again. You are a prince of Cadyr, he reminded himself. Your royal father's heir. Born to lead men, to control situ.:ions. It became a necessary reminder, suddenly.

"You have entirely the advantage of us," said his brother, "in all ways I can imagine." Alun's mouth quirked. He found too many things amusing, Dai thought. A younger brother's trait. Less responsibility.

"All ways? Well, one of you does have a knife," said the cleric, but he was smiling as he said it. He lowered his hands. "I'm Ceinion of Llywerth, servant of Jad."

Alun dropped to his knees.

Dai's jaw seemed to be hanging open. He snapped it shut, felt himself going red as a boy caught idling by his tutor. He sheathed the knife hurriedly and sank down beside his brother, head lowered, hands together in submission. He felt overwhelmed. A saturation of the unexpected. The unprepossessing yellow-robed man on this wooded slope was the high cleric of the three fractious provinces of the Cyngael.

He calmly made the sign of Jad's disk in blessing over both of them.

"Come down with me," he said, "the way we came. Unless you have an objection, you are now my personal escorts. We're stopping here at Brynnfell on our way north to Amren's court at Beda." He paused. "Or did you really want to try attacking Brynn's own house? I shouldn't advise it, you know."

I shouldn't advise it. Alun didn't know whether to laugh or curse again. Brynn ap Hywll was only the subject of twenty-five years' worth of songs and stories. Erling's Bane they'd named him, here in the west. He'd spent his youth battling the raiders from overseas with his cousin Amren, now ruling in Arberth, of whom there were stories too. With them in those days had been Dai and Alun's own father and uncle—and this man, Ceinion of Llywerth. The generation that had beaten back Siggur Volganson—the Volgan-and his longships. And Brynn was the one who'd killed him.

Alun drew a steadying breath. Their father, who liked to hold forth with a flask at his elbow, had told tales of all of these men. Had fought with—and then sometimes against—them. He and Dai and their friends were, Alun thought, as they walked down and out of the wood behind the anointed high cleric of the Cyngael, in waters far over their heads. Brynnfell. This was Brynnfell below them.

They had been about to attack it. With eleven men.

"This is his stronghold?" he heard Dai asking. "I thought—"

"Edrys was? His castle? It is, of course, north-east by Rheden and the Wall. And there are other farms. This is the largest one. He's here now, as it happens."

"What? Here? Himself? Brynn?"

Alun worked to breathe normally. Dai sounded stunned. His brother, who was always so composed. This, too, could almost be funny, Alun thought. Almost.

Ceinion of Llywerth was nodding his head, still leading the way downwards. "He's here to receive me, actually. Good of him, I must say. I sent word that I would be passing through." He glanced back. "How many men do you have? I saw you two climbing, but not the others."

The cleric's tone was precise, suddenly. Dai answered him. "And how many were taken?"

"Just the one," Dai said. Alun kept quiet. Younger brother. "His name is Gryffeth? That's Ludh's son?"

Dai nodded.

He'd simply overheard them, Alun told himself. This wasn't Jad's gift of sight, or anything frightening.

"Very well," said the cleric crisply, turning to them as they came out of the trees and onto the path. "I'd account it a waste to have good men killed today. I will do penance for a deception in the name of Jad's peace. Hear me. You and your fellows joined me by arrangement at a ford of the Llyfarch River three days ago. You are escorting me north as a courtesy, and so that you might visit Amren's court at Beda and offer prayers with him in his new-built sanctuary during this time of truce. Do you understand all that?"

They nodded, two heads bobbing up and down.

"Tell me, is your cousin Gryffeth ap Ludh a clever man?" "No," said Dai, truthfully.

The cleric made a face. "What will he have told them?" "I have no idea," Dai said.

"Nothing," Alun said. "He isn't quick, but he can keep silent."

The cleric shook his head. "But why would he keep silent when all he had to say was that he was riding in advance to tell them I had arrived?"

Dai thought a moment, then he grinned. "If the Arberthi took him harshly, he'll have been quiet just to embarrass them when you do show up, my lord."

The cleric thought it through, then smiled back. "Owyn's sons would be clever," he murmured. He seemed pleased. "One of you will explain this to Ludh's boy when we are inside. Where are your other men?"

"South of here, hidden off the road," Dai said. "And yours, my lord?"

"Have none," said the high cleric of the Cyngael. "Or I didn't until now. You are my men, remember."

"You rode alone from Llywerth?"

"Walked. But yes, alone. Some things to think about, and there's a truce in the land, after all."

"With outlaws in half the forests."

"Outlaws who know a cleric has nothing worth the taking. I've said the dawn prayers with many of them." He started walking.

Dai blinked again, and followed.

Alun wasn't sure how he felt. Curiously elated, in part. For one thing, this was the figure of whom so many stories were told, some of them by his father and uncle, though he knew there had been a falling-out, and a little part of why. For another, the high cleric had just saved them from trying a mad attack on another legend in his own house.

A man of Cadyr might be worth two Arberthi, but that did not—harp-boasting and ale-born songs aside—apply to the warband of Brynn ap Hywll.

These were the men who had been fighting the Erlings before Dai and Alun were born, when the Cyngael lived in terror of slavery and savage death three seasons of every year, taking flight into the hills at the least rumour of the dragon-prows. It was clear now why Gryffeth had been captured so easily. They'd have had no chance trying to attack this farm tonight. They'd have been humiliated, or dead. A truth to run back and forth through the mind like the shuttling of a loom.

Alun ab Owyn was very young that day, a prince of Cadyr, and it was greenest springtime in the provinces of the Cyngael, in the world. He'd no wish to die. Something occurred to him.

"My cousin was only carrying the harp for me, by the way. If anyone asks, my lord."

The cleric glanced back over his shoulder.

"Gryffeth can't sing," Dai explained. "Not that Alun's much good."

A joke, Alun thought. Good. Dai was feeling himself again, or starting to.

"There will be a feast, I expect," Ceinion of Llywerth said. "We'll find out soon enough."

"I'm actually better with siege weapons," Alun said, not helpfully. He was rewarded by hearing his older brother laugh, and quickly smother it.

"Your royal father I knew very well. Fought against him, and beside him. A disgraceful youth, if I may be blunt, and a brave man."

"It would be too much to hope that we might one day receive such a judgement from you, my lord, but to that we will aspire." Dai bowed after he spoke.

They were in the great hall of Brynnfell, beyond the central doors. A long corridor behind them ran east and west towards the wings. It was a very large house. Gryffeth had already been released—from a room at the end of the eastern corridor, as the cleric had guessed. Alun had had a whispered word with him, and reclaimed his harp.

Dai straightened and smiled. "You will permit me to add, my lord, that disgrace among the Arberthi is sometimes honour in Cadyr. We have not always been favoured with the truce that brings us here, as you know."

Alun smiled inwardly, kept his expression sincere. Dai had had a lifetime shaping this sort of speech, he thought. Words mattered among the Cyngael, nuance and subtlety. So did cattle-raiding, mind you, but the day's game had changed.

The scarred older warrior—a head taller than the two brothers—beamed happily down on them. Brynn ap Hywll was big in every way—hands, face, shoulders, girth. Even his greying moustache was thick and full. He was red and fleshy and balding. He wore no weapon in his own home, had rings on several thick fingers and a massive golden torc around his throat. Erling work: the hammer of the thunder god replaced by a suspended sun disk. Something he'd captured or been offered as ransom, Alun guessed.

If Ceinion of Llywerth felt displeasure at seeing something made to hold pagan symbols of Ingavin, he didn't show it. The high cleric was not at all what Alun had expected him to be, though he couldn't have said what he had expected. Certainly not the man who had been kissed so enthusiastically by the Lady Enid, as her husband smiled approval.

Alun had a recollection that the cleric's own wife had died long ago, but he was murky about the details. You couldn't remember everything a tutor dictated, or a tale-spinning father by the fireside.

"Well spoken, young prince," Brynn boomed, bringing Alun back to the present. Their host looked genuinely pleased with Dai's answer. He'd a voice for the battlefield, Brynn, one that would carry.

Their arrival at Brynnfell had gone easily, after all. Alun had a sense that things tended to go that way when Ceinion of Llywerth was involved. If there had been something odd about the cleric arriving with a Cadyri escort when he usually walked alone to his destinations, and was widely known not to have spoken to Prince Owyn for a decade and more… well, sometimes odd things happened, and this was the high cleric.

Brynn was prepared to play along, it seemed, whatever he might privately think. Alun saw the big man's gaze slide to where Ceinion stood, smooth face benign and attentive, slender hands folded in the sleeves of his robe. "Indeed, it would seem you have set your feet on the path of virtue already, serving as escorts to our beloved cleric, avoiding the scandalous conduct of your sire in his own youth."

Dai kept a level expression. "His lordship the high cleric is persuasive in his holiness. We are honoured and grateful to be with him."

"I've no doubt," said Brynn ap Hywll, just a little too dryly.

Dai was afraid Alun would laugh, but he didn't. Dai was fighting to control exhilaration himself… this was the dance, the thrust and twist of words, of meanings half-shown and then hidden, that underlay all the great songs and deeds of courts.

The Erlings might choose to loot and burn their way to some glorious afterlife of… more looting and burning, but the Cyngael saw the glory of the world Jad's holy gift of it—as embodied in more than just swords and raiding.

Though that, perhaps, might explain why they were so often raided and looted—from Vinmark overseas, and under pressure from the Anglcyn now, across the Rheden Wall. He'd said it himself today: poems over siege engines. Words above weapons, too often.

He wasn't dwelling upon that now. He was exulting in the presence of two of the very great men of the west, as a springtime raid conjured out of boredom and their father's absence, hunting without them (Owyn was meeting a mistress), had turned into something quite otherwise.

Young Dai ab Owyn was, in other words, in that elevated state of mind and spirit where what occurred that evening could almost have been anticipated. He was alert, receptive, highly attuned… vulnerable. At such times, one can be hammered hard by a variety of things, and the effect can last forever—though it should be said that this did happen more often in tales, bard-spun in meadhalls, than on an impulsive cattle raid gone strange.

Just before the meal began Alun had taken the musician's stool at the Lady Enid's request. Brynn's wife was tall, dark-haired, dark-eyed, younger than her husband. A handsome woman with no shyness among the men in the hall. None of the women here seemed shy, come to think of it.

He was tuning his harp (his favourite crwth, made for him), trying not to be distracted. They were playing the triad game in the hall, drinking the cup of welcome after the invocation by Brynn's own cleric, before the food was brought. Ceinion had predicted a feast and had been proven right. They were drinking wine, not ale. Brynn ap Hywll was a wealthy man.

Some of the company were still standing, others had taken their seats; it was a relaxed gathering, this was a farmhouse not a castle, large and handsome as it might be. The room smelled of new rushes, freshly strewn herbs and flowers—and hunting dogs. There were at least ten wolfhounds, grey, black, brindled. Brynn's warband, those with him here, were not men to put great weight on ceremony, it seemed.

"Cold as…?" called out a woman near the head of the table. Alun hadn't sorted the names yet. She was a family cousin, he guessed. Round-faced, light brown hair.

"Cold as a winter lake," answered a man leaning against the wall halfway down the room.

Cold was an easy start. They all knew the jokes: women's hearts, or the space between the legs of some of them. Those phrases wouldn't be offered now, before the drinking had properly begun, and with the ladies present.

"Cold as a loveless hearth," said another. Worn phrases, too often heard. One more to complete the triad. Alun kept silent, listening to his strings as he tuned. There was always one song before the meal; he was being honoured with it, wasn't sure what he wanted to sing.

"Cold as a world without Jad," said Gryffeth suddenly, which wasn't brilliant but wasn't bad either, with the high cleric at the head table. It got him a murmur of approval and a smile from Ceinion. Alun saw his brother, next to the cleric, wink at their cousin. Mark one for Cadyr.

"Sorrowful as…?" said another of the ladies, an older one.

Trust the Cyngael, Alun thought wryly, to conjure with sorrow at a spring banquet's beginning. We are a strange, wonderful people, he thought.

"Sorrowful as a swan alone." A thin, satisfied-looking man sitting close to the high table. The ap Hywll bard, his own crwth beside him. An important figure. Accredited harpists always were. There was a rustle of approbation. Alun smiled at the man, received no response. Bards could be prickly, jealous of privilege, dangerous to offend. More than one prince had been humiliated by satires written against him. And Alun had been asked to take the stool first tonight. A guest indeed, but not a formally trained or licensed bard. Best to be cautious, he thought. He wished he knew a song about siege engines. Dai would have laughed.

"Sorrowful as a sword unused," said Brynn himself, leaning back in his chair, the big voice. Predictable pounding of tables as the lord of the manor spoke.

"Sorrowful," said Alun, surprising himself, since he'd just decided to be discreet, "as a singer without a song."

A small silence as they considered it, then Brynn ap Hywll banged a meaty hand down on the board in front of him, and the Lady Enid clapped her palms in pleasure and then—of course—so did everyone else. Dai winked again quickly, and then contrived to look indifferent, leaning back as well, fingering his wine cup, as if they were always offering such original phrasings in the triad game back home. Alun felt like laughing: in truth, the phrase had come to him because he had no song yet and would be called upon in a moment.

"Needful as…?" suggested the Lady Enid, looking along the table.

A new phrase this time. Alun looked at Brynn's wife. More than handsome, he corrected himself: there was beauty there still, glittering with the jewellery of rank upon her arms and about her throat. More people were seated now. Servants stood by, awaiting a signal to bring the food.

"Needful as warmed wine in winter," someone Alun couldn't see offered from down the room. Approval for that, a nicely phrased offering. Winter memory in midsummer, the phrase near to poetry. Their hostess turned to Dai, politely, beyond her husband and the cleric, to let the other Cadyri prince have a turn.

"Needful as night's end," Dai said gravely, without a pause, which was very good, actually. An image of darkness, the fear of it, a dream of dawn, when the god returned from his journey under the world.

As the real applause for this faded, as they waited for someone to throw the third leg of the triad, a young woman entered the room.

She moved quietly, clad in green, belted in gold, with gold in the brooch at her shoulder and on her fingers, to the empty place beside Enid at the high table—which would have told Alun who this was, if the look and manner of her hadn't immediately done so. He stared, knew he was doing so, didn't stop.

As she seated herself, aware—very obviously aware—that all eyes were upon her, including those of an indulgent father, she looked down the table, taking in the company, and Alun was made intensely conscious of dark eyes (like her mother's), very black hair under the soft green cap, and skin whiter than… any easy phrase that came to mind.

And then he heard her murmur, voice rich, husky for one so young, unsettling: "Needful as night, I think many women would rather say."

And because this was Rhiannon mer Brynn, through that crowded hall men felt that they knew exactly what she was saying, and wished that the words had been for their ears alone, whispered close at candle-time, not in company at table. And they thought that they could kill or do great deeds that it might be made so.

Alun could see his brother's face as this green-gold woman-girl turned to Dai, whose phrase she had just echoed and challenged. And because he knew his brother better than he knew anyone on the god's earth, Alun saw the world change for Dai in that crossing of glances. A moment with a name to it, as the bards said.

He had an instant to feel sorrow, the awareness of something ending as something else began, and then they asked him for a song, that the night might begin with music, which was the way of the Cyngael.

+

Brynnfell was a spacious property, well run by a competent steward, showing the touch of a mistress with taste, access to artisans, and a good deal of money. Still, it was only a farm, and there were a dozen young men from Cadyr now staying with them, over and above the thirty warriors and four women who'd accompanied ap Hywll and his wife and oldest daughter here.

Space was at a premium.

The Lady Enid had worked with efficiency informed by experience, meeting with the steward before the meal to arrange for the disposition of bodies at night. The hall would hold fighting men on pallets and rushes; it had done so before. The main barn was pressed into use, along with two outbuildings and the bake-house. The brewhouse remained locked. Best not to put such temptation in men's way. And there was another reason.

The two Cadyri princes and their cousin shared a room in the main house with a good bed for the three of them—honour demanded the host offer as much to royal guests.

The steward surrendered his own chamber to the high cleric. He himself would join the cook and kitchen hands in the kitchen for the night. He was grimly prepared to be as stoic as an eastern zealot on his crag, if not as serenely alone. The cook was notorious for the magnificence of his snoring, and had once been found walking about the kitchen, waving a blade and talking to himself, entirely asleep. He'd ended up chopping vegetables in the middle of the night without ever waking, as his helpers and a number of gathered household members watched in rapt silence, peering through the darkness.

The steward had already determined to place all the knives out of reach before closing his eyes.

In the pleasant chamber thus yielded to him, Ceinion of Llywerth finished the last words of the day's office, offering at the end his customary silent prayer for the sheltering in light of those he had lost, some of them long ago, and also his gratitude, intensely felt, to holy Jad for all blessings given. The god had purposes not to be clearly seen. What had happened today—the lives he had likely saved, arriving when he did—was deserving of the humblest acknowledgement.

He rose, showing no signs of a strenuous day, or his years, and formally blessed the man kneeling beside him in prayer. He reclaimed his wine cup, subsiding happily onto the stool nearest the window. It was generally believed that the night air was noxious, carrying poisons and unholy spirits, but Ceinion had spent too many years sleeping out of doors, on walks across the three provinces and beyond. He found that he slept better by an open window, even in winter. It was springtime now, the air fragrant, night flowers under his window.

"I feel badly for the man who yielded me his bed."

His companion shifted his considerable bulk up from the floor and grasped his own cup, refilling it to the brim, without water. He took the other, sturdier chair, keeping the flask close by. "And well you should," Brynn ap Hywll said, smiling through his moustache. "Brynnfell's bursting. Since when do you travel with an escort?"

Ceinion eyed him a moment, then sighed. "Since I found a Cadyri raiding party looking at your farm."

Brynn laughed aloud. His laugh, like his voice, could overflow a room. "Well, thank you for deciding I'd sort out that much." He drank thirstily, refilled his cup again. "They seem good lads, mind you. Jad knows, I did my share of raiding when young."

"And their father."

"Jad curse his eyes and hands," Brynn said, though without force. "My royal cousin in Beda wants to know what to do about Owyn, you know."

"I know. I'll tell him when I get to Beda. With Owyn's two sons beside me." The cleric's turn to grin this time.

He leaned back against the cool stone wall beside the window. Earthly pleasures: an old friend, food and wine, a day with some good unexpectedly done. There were learned men who taught withdrawal from the traps and tangles of the world. There was even a doctrinal movement afoot in Rhodias to deny marriage to clerics now, following the eastern, Sarantine rule, making them ascetics, detached from distractions of the flesh—and the complexities of having heirs to provide for.

Ceinion of Llywerth had always thought—and had written the High Patriarch in Rhodias, and others—that this was wrong thinking and even heresy, an outright denial of Jad's full gift of life. Better to turn your love of the world into an honouring of the god, and if a wife died, or children, your own knowledge of sorrow might make you better able to counsel others, and comfort them. You lived with loss as they did. And shared their pleasures, too.

His words, written and spoken, mattered to others, by Jad's holy grace. He was skilled at this sort of argument but didn't know if he would be on the winning side of this one. The three provinces of the Cyngael were a long way from Rhodias, at the edge of the world, the misty borders of pagan belief. North of the north wind, the phrase went.

He sipped his wine, looking at his friend. Brynn's expression was sly at the moment, amusingly so. "Happen to see the way Dai ab Owyn looked at my Rhiannon, did you?"

Ceinion took care that his own manner did not change. He had, in fact, seen it—and something else. "She's a remarkable young woman," he murmured.

"Her mother's daughter. Same spirit to her. I'm an entirely beaten man, I tell you." Brynn was smiling as he said this. "We solve a problem that way? Owyn's heir handled by my girl?"

Ceinion kept his look noncommittal. "Certainly a useful match."

"The lad's already lost his head, I'd wager." He chuckled. "Not the first to do so, with Rhiannon."

"And your daughter?" Ceinion asked, perhaps unwisely.

Some fathers would have been startled, or offered an oath—what mattered the girl's wishes in these things? But Brynn ap Hywll didn't do that. Ceinion watched, and by the lamplight saw the big man, his old friend, grow thoughtful. Too much so. The cleric offered an inward, mildly blasphemous curse, and immediately sought—also silently—the god's forgiveness for that.

"Interesting song the younger one sang before the meal, wasn't it?"

There it was. A shrewd man, Ceinion thought ruefully. Much more than a warrior with a two-handed sword.

"It was," he said, still keeping his own counsel. This was all too soon. He temporized. "Your bard was out of countenance." "Amund? It was too good, you mean? The song?"

"Not that. Though it was impressive. No, Alun ab Owyn breached the laws for such things. Only licensed bards are allowed to improvise in company. Your harper will need appeasing." "Spiky man, Amund. Not easily softened, if you are right." "I am right. Call it a word offered the wise."

Brynn looked at him. "And your other question? About Rhiannon? What sort of word was that?"

Ceinion sighed. It had been a mistake. "I wish you weren't clever, sometimes."

"Have to be. T o keep up in this family. She liked the… song, you think?"

"I think everyone liked the song." He left it at that. Both men were still awhile.

"Well," Brynn said finally, "she's of age, but there's no great rush. Though Amren wants to know what to do about Owyn and Cadyr, and this…"

"Owyn ap Glynn isn't the problem. Neither's Amren, or Ielan in Llywerth. Except if they cling to these feuds that will end us." He'd spoken with more fire than he'd intended.

The other man stretched out his legs and leaned back, unruffled. Brynn drank, wiped his moustache with a sleeve, and grinned. "Still riding that horse?"

"And I will all my life." Ceinion didn't smile this time. He hesitated, then shrugged. Wanted to change the subject, in any case. "I'll tell you something before I tell it to Amren in Beda. But keep it close. Aeldred's invited me to Esferth, to join his court."

Brynn sat up abruptly, scraping the chair along the floor. He swore, without apologizing, then banged his cup down, spilling wine. "How dare he? Our high cleric he wants to steal now?"

"I said he'd invited me. Not an abduction, Brynn."

"Even so, doesn't he have his own Jad-cursed holy men among the Anglcyn? Rot the man!"

"He has a great many, and seeks more… not cursed, I hope." Ceinion left a pointed little pause. "From here, from Ferrieres. Even from Rhodias. He is… a different sort of king, my friend. I think he feels his lands are on the way to being safe now, which means new ambitions, ways of thinking. He's arranging to marry a daughter north, to Rheden." He looked steadily at the other man.

Brynn sighed. "I'd heard that."

"And if so, there goes that rivalry on the other side of the Wall, which we've relied upon. Our danger is if we remain… the old sort of princes."

There were three oil lamps burning in the room, one set in the wall, two brought in for a guest: extravagance and respect.

In the mingling of yellow lamplight, Brynn's gaze was direct now. Ceinion, accepting it, felt a wave of memory crash over him from a terrible, glorious summer long ago. This happened more and more as he grew older. Past and present colliding, simultaneous visions, the present seen with the past. This same man, a quarter-century ago, on a battlefield by the sea, the Volgan himself and the Erling force they'd met by their boats. There had been three princes among the Cyngael that day but Brynn had led the centre. A full head of dark hair on him then, far less bulk, less of this easy humour. The same man, though. You changed, and you did not change.

"You said he's after clerics from Ferrieres?" Picking up the other thing that mattered.

"So he wrote me."

"It starts with clerics, doesn't it?"

Ceinion gazed affectionately at his old friend. "Sometimes. They are notoriously aloof, my colleagues across the water."

"But if not? If it works, opens channels? If the Anglcyn and Ferrieres join to push away the Erling raiders on both sides of the Strait? And mayhap a marriage that way, too…?"

"Then the Erlings come here again, I would think." Ceinion finished the thought. "If we remain outside whatever is happening. That's my message to Beda, when I get there." He paused, then added the thought he'd been travelling with: "There are times when the world changes, Brynn."

A silence in the room. No noises from the corridor either, now; the household abed, or most of them. Some of the warband likely dicing in the hall still, perhaps with the young Cadyri, money changing hands by lantern light. He didn't think there would be trouble; Brynn's men were extremely well trained, and they were hosts tonight. The night breeze came through the window, sweetened with the scent of flowers. Gifts of the god's offered world. Not to be spurned.

"I hate them, you know. The Erlings and the Anglcyn, both."

Ceinion nodded, said nothing. What was there to say? A homily about Jad, and love? The big man sighed again. Drained his cup one more time. He showed no effects from the unwatered wine.

"Will you go to him? To Aeldred?" he asked, as Ceinion had expected.

"I don't know," he said, which had the virtue of being honest.

Brynn left, not down the corridor to his own bedchamber, but for one of the outbuildings. A young serving lass waiting for him, no doubt, ready to slip out wrapped in a cloak as soon as she saw him go through the door. Ceinion knew it was his duty to chastise the other man for this. He didn't even consider it; had known ap Hywll and his wife for too long. One of the things about living in and of the world: you learned how complex it could be.

He doused two of the lamps, disliking the waste. A habit of frugality. He left the door a little ajar, as a courtesy. With Brynn outside, the lord of the manor would not be his own last visitor of the night. He'd been here, and in ap Hywll's other homes, before.

Somewhat as an afterthought, while he waited, he went to his pack and drew from it the letter he was carrying with him northwest to Beda on the sea. He took the same seat as before, by the window. No moons tonight. The young Cadyri princes would have had a good, black night for a cattle raid… and they'd have been slaughtered. Bad luck for them that Brynn and his men would have been here, but you could die of bad luck.

Jad of the Sun had allowed him to save lives today, a different sort of gift, one that might have meaning that went beyond what a man was permitted to see. His own prayer, every morning, was that the god see fit to make use of him. There was something—there had to be something—in his arriving when he did, looking up the slope, seeing movement in the bushes. And following, for no very good reason besides a knowing that sometimes came to him. More than he deserved, that gift, flawed as he knew he was. Things he had done, in grief, and otherwise. He turned his head and looked out, saw stars through rents in moving clouds, caught the scent of the flowers again, just outside in the night.

Needful as night's end. Needful as night.

Two subtle offerings in the triad game, then a song, improvised as they listened. Three young people here, on the cusp of their real existence, the possible importance of their lives. And two of them would very likely have been lying dead tonight, if he'd been a day later on the road, or even a few moments.

He ought to kneel and give thanks again, feel a sense of blessing and hope. And those things were there, truly, but they lay underneath something else, more undefined, a heaviness. He felt tired suddenly. The years could creep up on you, if a day lasted too long. He opened the letter again, the red, broken seal crumbling a little.

"Whereas it has for some time been our belief that it is the proper duty of an anointed king under jad to pursue wisdom and teach virtue by example, as much as it is our task to strengthen and defend…"

With the lamps doused, there wasn't enough light to read by, particularly for a man no longer young, but he had this committed to memory and was communing with it more than actually considering the contents again, the way one might kneel before a familiar image of the god on one's own stone chapel wall. Or, the thought came to him, the way one might contemplate the name and stone-carved sun disk over a grave visited so many times it wasn't really seen, only apprehended, as one lingered one more time until twilight fell, and then the dark.

In the dark, from the corridor, she knocked softly then entered, taking the partially open door for the invitation it was.

"What?" said Enid, setting down the tall candle she carried. "Still dressed and not in the bed? I'd hoped you'd be waiting for me there."

He stood up, smiling. She came forward and they kissed, though she was kind enough to let it be a kiss of peace on each cheek, and not more than that. She wore some sort of perfume. He wasn't good at naming these woman-scents but it was immediately distracting. He was suddenly aware of the bed. She'd intended that, he knew. He knew her very well.

Enid looked at the wine cups and the wide-necked flask. "Did he leave any for me?"

"Not much, I fear. There may be some, and water to mix." Enid shook her head. "I don't really need."

She took the seat her husband had so recently vacated to go out with whichever girl had been waiting for him. In the softer light she was a presence sitting near to him, a scent, a memory of other nights—and other kisses of peace when peace had not been what she'd left behind when she went away. His restraint, not hers, or even Brynn's, for these two had their own rules in this long marriage and Ceinion had, years ago, been made to under-stand that. His restraint. A woman very dear.

"You are tired," she said after a moment's scrutiny. "He gets the best of you, coming first, and then I arrive—always hoping—and find…"

"A man not worthy of you?"

"A man not susceptible to my diminishing charms. I'm getting old, Ceinion. I think my daughter fell in love tonight."

He took a breath. "I'll say, in sequence, no, and no, and… perhaps."

"Let me work that out." He could see she was amused. "You are finally yielding to me, I am not yet old in your sight, Rhiannon might be in love?"

There was something about Enid that always made him want to smile. "No, alas, and yes, indeed, and perhaps she is, but the young always are."

"And those of us not young? Ceinion, will you not kiss me? It has been a year and more."

He did hesitate a moment, for all the old reasons, but then he stood up and came forward to where she sat and kissed her full upon the lips as she lifted her head, and despite his genuine fatigue he was aware of the beating of his heart and the swift presence of desire. He stepped back. Read her mischievous expression an instant before she moved a hand and touched his sex through the robe.

He gasped, heard her laugh as she withdrew her touch.

"Only exploring, Ceinion. Fear me not. No matter what you say to be kind, there will come a night when I can't excite you any longer. One of these visits…"

"The night I die," he said, and meant it.

She stopped laughing, made the sign of the sun disk, averting evil.

Or trying to. They heard a cry from outdoors. Through the window, as he quickly turned, Ceinion saw the arc of a thrown and burning brand.

Then he saw horsemen in the farmyard and screaming began.

Alun thought he'd seen his brother this way before, if not quite like this. Dai was restless, irritable, and afraid. Gryffeth, staking out the left side of the just-wide-enough bed, made the mistake of complaining about Dai's pacing in the dark and received a blister-inducing torrent of profanity in return.

"That wasn't called for," Alun said.

Dai wheeled on him, and Alun, in the middle of the bed (having drawn the short straw), stared back at his brother's straining, rigid outline through the darkness. "Come to bed, get some sleep. She'll still be here in the morning."

"What are you talking about?" Dai demanded.

Gryffeth, unwisely, snorted with laughter. Dai took a step towards him. Alun actually thought his brother might strike their cousin. This anger was the part that wasn't quite as it had been before, whenever Dai had been preoccupied with a girl. That, and the fear.

"Doesn't matter," Alun said quickly. "Listen, if you can't sleep, there's sure to be dicing in the hall. Just don't take all the money and don't drink too much."

"Why are you telling me what to do?"

"So we can get some rest," Alun said mildly. "Go with Jad. Win something."

Dai hesitated, a taut form across the room. Then, with another flung, distracted curse, he jerked the door open and went out.

"Wait," Alun said quietly to Gryffeth. They waited, side by side in the bed.

The door swung open again.

Dai strode back in, crossed to his pack, grabbed his purse, and went back out.

"Now," said Alun, "you can call him an idiot."

"He's an idiot," Gryffeth said, with feeling, and turned over in bed.

Alun turned the other way, determined to try to sleep. It didn't happen. The tapping at their door—and the woman's voice from the corridor—came only moments later.

It was obvious from Helda's expression, and her darting glances at Rhiannon, that she was concerned. Their young cousin had thrown herself on her bed as soon as the four of them had returned from the hall to her chambers. She lay there, still in the green, belted gown, an extravagance of light blazing in the two rooms (with Meredd away, forever now, among the Daughters of Jad, Rhiannon had claimed the adjoining chamber for the other three women). She looked, if truth were told, genuinely unwell: feverish, bright-eyed.

Without a word spoken the three had resolved to humour her, and so nothing had been said in opposition to her immediately voiced demand for all the lights to be lit, or the next request, either.

Rania had the purest voice, in chapel and banquet hall, and Eirin the best memory. They'd gone off to the other room together, murmuring, and now returned through the connecting doorway, Eirin smiling, Rania biting her lip, as she always did before singing.

"I won't do very well," she said. "We only heard it once."

"I know," Rhiannon said, unusually mild, her voice at odds with her look. "But try."

They had no harp here with them. Rania sang unaccompanied. It was well done, in truth, a different tone given by a woman's voice in a quiet (too-bright) room, late at night, as compared to the same song heard in the hall as the sun was going down, when the younger son of Owyn ap Glynn had given it to them:

The halls of Arberth are dark tonight,

No moons ride above.

I will sing a while and be done.

The night is a hidden stranger,

An enemy with a sword,

Beasts in field and wood.

The stars look down on owl and wolf,

All manner of living creature,

While men sleep safe behind their walls.

The halls of Arberth are dark tonight,

No moons ride above.

I will sing a while and be done.

The first star is a longed-for promise,

The deep night a waking dream,

Darkness is a net for the heart's desire.

The stars look down on lover and loved,

All manner of delight,

For some do not sleep in the night.

The riddle of the darkest hours

Has ever and always been thus,

And so it is we can say:

Needful as night's end,

Needful as night,

By the holy blessed god, they are both true.

The halls of Arberth are dark tonight,

No moons ride above.

I have sung a while and I am done.

Rania looked down shyly when she finished. Eirin clapped her hands, beaming. Helda, older than the other three, sat quietly, a faraway look on her face. Rhiannon said, after a moment, "By the holy blessed god."

It was unclear whether she was echoing the song, or speaking from the heart… or whether both of these were true. They looked at her.

"What is happening to me?" Rhiannon said, in a small voice.

The others turned to Helda, who had been married and widowed. She said, gently, "You want a man, and it is consuming you. It passes, my dear. It really does."

"Do you think?" said Rhiannon.

And none of them would ever have matched this voice to the tones of the one who normally controlled them all—the three of them, her sisters, all the young women of household and kin—the way her father commanded his warband.

It might have been amusing, it should have been, but the change cut too deeply, and she looked disturbingly unwell. "I'm going to get you wine." Eirin rose.

Rhiannon shook her head. Her green cap slipped off. "I don't need wine."

"Yes, you do," said Helda. "Go, Eirin."

"No," said the girl on the bed, again. "That isn't what I need."

"You can't have what you need," Helda said, walking over to the bed, amusement in her voice, after all. "Eirin, a better thought. Go to the kitchen and have them make an infusion, the one for when we can't sleep. We'll all have some." She smiled at the other three, ten years younger than she was. "Too many men in the house tonight."

"Is it too late? Could we have him come here?"

"What? The singer?" Helda lifted her eyebrows.

Rhiannon nodded, her eyes beseeching. It was astonishing. She was pleading, not giving a command.

Helda considered it. She wasn't sleepy at all, herself. "Not alone," she said finally. "With his brother and the other Cadyri."

"But I don't need the other two," Rhiannon said, a hint of herself again.

"You can't have what you need," Helda said again.

Rania took a candle and went for the infusion; Eirin, bolder, was sent to bring the three men. Rhiannon sat up in the bed, felt her own cheeks with the backs of her hands, then rose and went to the window and opened it—against all the best counsel—to let the breeze cool her, if only a little.

"Do I look all right?" she asked.

"It doesn't matter," said Helda, maddeningly.

"I feel faint."

"I know."

"I never feel this way."

"I know," said Helda. "It passes."

"Will they be here soon?"

Alun dressed at speed and went to find Dai in the banquet hall, leaving Gryffeth in the corridor with the girl and the candle. Neither of them seemed to mind. They could have gone to the women's rooms around the corner and waited there, but they didn't seem inclined to do that.

He carried his harp in its leather case. The woman had specifically said that the daughter of Brynn ap Hywll wanted the singer. The brown-haired girl, telling him this at the door, before Gryffeth got out of bed, had smiled, her eyes catching the candle-light she carried.

So Alun went to get Dai. Found him dicing at a table with two of their own friends and three of the ap Hywll men. He was relieved to see that Dai had a pile of coins in front of him already. His older brother was good at dice, decisive in betting and calculating, and with a wrist flick that let him land the bones—anyone's bones—on the short side more often than one might expect. If he was winning, as usual, it meant he might not be too badly disturbed after all.

Perhaps. One of the others noticed Alun in the doorway, nudged Dai. His brother glanced up, and Alun motioned him over. Dai hesitated, then saw the harp. He got up and came across the room. It was dark except for lamps on the two tables where men were awake and gaming. Most of those bedding down here were asleep by now, on pallets along the walls, the dogs among them.

"What is it?" Dai said. His tone was curt.

Alun kept his own voice light. "Hate to take you from winning money from Arberthi, but we've been invited to the Lady Rhiannon's rooms."

"What?"

"I wouldn't make that up."

Dai had gone rigid, Alun could see it even in the shadows. "We? All of…?"

"All three of us." He hesitated. Told truth, better here than there. "She, um, asked for the harp, I gather."

"Who said that?"

"The girl who fetched us."

A short silence. Someone laughed loudly at the dicing table. someone else swore, one of the sleepers along the wall.

"Oh, Jad. Oh, holy Jad. Alun, why did you sing that song?" Dai asked, almost whispering.

"What?" said Alun, genuinely taken aback.

"If you hadn't…" Dai closed his eyes. "I don't suppose you could say you were sleepy, didn't want to get out of bed?"

Alun cleared his throat. "I could." He was finding this difficult.

Dai shook his head. Opened his eyes again. "No, you're already out of bed, carrying the harp. The girl saw you." He swore then, to himself, more like a prayer than an oath, not at Alun or anyone else, really.

Dai lifted both his hands and laid his fists on Alun's shoulders, the way he sometimes did. Lifted them up and brought them down, halfway between a blow and an embrace. He left them there a moment, then he took his hands away.

"You go," he said. "I don't think I am equal to this. I'm going outside."

"Dai?"

"Go," said his brother, at some limit of control, and turned away.

Alun watched him walk across the room, unbar the heavy front doors of Brynn ap Hywll's house, open one of them, and go out alone into the night.

Someone got up from the gaming table and barred the doors behind him. Alun saw one of their own band look over at him; he gestured, and their friend swept up Dai's purse and winnings for him. Alun turned away.

And in that moment he heard his older brother scream an urgent, desperate warning from the yard outside. The last word he ever heard him speak.

Then the hoofbeats of horses were out there, drumming the hard earth, and the war cries of the Erlings, and fire, as the night went wild.