The Tree of Swords and Jewels

ELEVEN Retreat

They were still there, the skulkers in the brush, and sometimes arrows flew: men of Damh and perhaps the wild men of the Bradhaeth with them, lurking round the margins of the lake, in reeds and willows. And in every hiding place of the hills sat the country men of Caer Wiell, farmers skilled with bow and spear, and sword if it came to that, grandfathers and striplings not a few, for the word was out and the archers came, not alone here, but all along the marches, bands of kinsmen and not a few bow-skilled daughters ready for any outbreaking along the border.

"Go south," Ciaran had said then to the folk of Alhhard's stead ing, who had come first and feathered a good many of the lurkers about Lioslinn. "You and all your neighbors, go up and down the Bainbourne, and keep a watch, in case An Beag should grow rest less."

So Alhhard's sons went and Ciaran watched them go, not without misgivings. "An Beag will carry tales," Ciaran said glumly, "and the King will hear how I make war and stir up the whole countryside. If there is some attack of An Beag they will say it was I who moved on them."

"Go back to Caer Wiell," said Beorc. "There is no more need for you to be here. Less talk if you are back where you belong, and what passes up here is my doing."

Ciaran gave that no answer. He was weary of Beorc's asking, and walked away, sheltered by the hill. He wore armor of a sort, that country folk had gotten him, of laced leather; and there was talk. There could hardly be otherwise, how their lord was faery-touched and could not bear sword or iron, how he bore an elvish stone next his heart and flinched from Damh's iron-tipped arrows. He saw their looks as he passed them in his wandering along the lines, and felt the silence they paid him as if they had seen some direr sight than a tired, graying man in motley leather. By day he had stopped and joked with them as he had talked sometimes over fences in his riding through the land, but there were always whispers in his wake: he knew it. Now he passed along the ridge without a word except some times to greet a man familiar to him, like Cuinn of his household troops or Graeg of Graeg's steading. But mostly there were whispers. Likeliest, he thought, the folk of Caer Wiell had done a good deal of free talking to their cousins and brothers of the steadings; and there was no stopping the tale-bearing.

He wearied of it, beyond all bearing, felt solitude heaped upon his shoulders, and even Beorc resisting him, Beorc, who spoke less and less of Domhnull and took wilder and fiercer chances, flinging him self toward any point of hazard he suspected his lord might take instead. An anger burned in Beorc; he felt it in the stone, a dark thing that looped and twisted all round their long comradeship, through blame and guilt and a rage that smothered itself like banked fire.

You never should have sent him, lord. He went to keep you from it And you were blind. But Beorc would never say it.

He went back to that post he had kept in the evening before, a stony knoll that gave view of the lake and hills. Here they had held when the riders from Caer Wiell had reached them—reached them in the midst of battle, and taught their attackers somewhat of re spect. That had been one of the good moments of their holding here —but less good for Boda who would not be riding home to his wife; and for other lives they lost. The sky threatened; a feeling of ill had grown in the air since morning, and now the darkness that lay over the northwest was deeper and direr, shot with lightning, though it seemed only a cloud to mortal sight, a bit of weather to the west . . . "Get firewood under cover," he had heard his captains order. "That'll be on us by nightfall."

There was no sunset; the west was bound in murk too thick for sun to color it; and if that sight was grim, the surface of Lioslinn took on a leaden gleam that made it even less wholesome than be fore, a well of mire and dread, rimmed in shadowy reeds. Wrong, it cried to any with eyes to see it. Elvish sights should be fair, of green trees and silver; and this was not. This was corrupted. The hills rose like iron walls beside it, and trees were fallen, burned, laid waste.

"I do not like this," Beorc had said a day ago, when they waited attack. "This place weighs on me as nowhere I have ever been."

That from Beorc, who was not one to start at shadows. And the house troops, newly arrived, went about with haunted looks, glanc ing much toward the lake and toward the west, but that was no more than the countrymen had been doing before them.

"Lord," said Beorc now from behind him; but he had heard the tread in his wake all the while he had come this way, and known Beorc was following, his relentless shadow. Beorc reached him and crouched nearby on another stone, his guard, his warder, not to be shaken from his heels.

"It is worse," Ciaran said at last, for with his Sight he saw no difference now in day or night toward the west.

"I would you were away," said Beorc.

He had no more to say to that than before, and for a long time Beorc was silent.

"I feel it," Beorc said at last, "this storm. Others do. I'm sure of it."

"Was it not her gift," Ciaran murmured, "to see such things?" He thought of Domhnull, as he reckoned Beorc was thinking—the boy, loyal to him, going ahead in spite of all his Seeing.

Then it seemed to him that he heard hoof beats in the dark, and the stone began to burn against his breast.

Beorc had spoken. He could not get it clear. He rose. "Be still," he said. "O my friend, get your distance from me—"

It was coming from the pass, he thought. All the world seemed stretched and distorted, like iron under fire and hammer. He saw fires in the murk, and twisted trees and a darkness coiled and mon strous within the lake, stirring in its sleep.

The hoofbeats grew louder, and hounds bayed, voices mingled with the wind.

"Lord Death," he whispered, and struggling to see the Man beside him: "Beorc, Beorc, run, get away from here."

Iron shuddered in the air, the rasping of blade from sheath, and poisoned the wind. "Not I," said Beorc, there by him, if dimly through the pervading murk. "Lord, what is it?"

"The hounds, hear you?" The baying filled heaven and earth, and the brush and grass whispered about them like a gathering of many voices. There were clouds, and dark shapes coursing among them. His arm, once torn, turned cold and painful as the stone upon his breast. Fleeting things shredded on the wind, and voices shrieked in it like voices of lost children, of wounded animals, of dying men and the clangor of battle.

A moving shape appeared in the distance, like a shape cut out of night, and that shape became two riders, one tending northward and one coming straight toward them, smaller than the other and less dire—it seemed no more than a pony, running silently amid the wind and the lightning, its shaggy coat and mane aprick with points of light as if marsh-fire had settled there, and light glowed on the bright, bowed head of the rider slumped across his shoulders.

"Domhnull," Ciaran murmured, and louder: "Domhnull, Domhnull!" —with his hand upon the stone and running now, half in faery, to reach the pony. The hounds of lord Death coursed about it, a tide of darkness: the pony threw its head and shied, and for a moment there was mist about them, and whirling shapes wind-car ried.

"My lord!" Beorc cried, and reached him, as the winds turned watery, sluicing them with rain. The world had shadowed, the clouds had gone to greenish murk shot through with lightning and rumbling with thunderclaps that shook the ground. "Lord, stay—the men of Damh—"

He shook off Beorc's hand, running and wiping the water from his eyes, sodden with it, searched among the gorse and brambles and found a body lying, bright hair darkened with rain and twilight, in soaked clothing better suited to some hall; and that torn and stained with blood the water sought to purge. "Domhnull," Ciaran said, sinking to his knees. "O Domhnull."

Beorc likewise knelt and turned Domhnull over, his face to the rain, white and stark in the lightning; but breath stirred and one hand moved as if he would fend the flashes off him.

"Domhnull," Beorc said above the rush of water. The lightning flashed again. Pale flesh shone through the shreds of his garments, and Beorc rested his hand on Domhnull's side, on pale new scars. "A month or more healed—o gods, what could have done this?"

"The Sidhe," Ciaran murmured, shivering in the rain. "He has been with the Sidhe." He took Domhnull's cold face between his hands and wished upon the stone. "Domhnull, Domhnull, Domhnull, hear me."

The eyes opened, bruised and vague, blinking in the rain. "Lord," he murmured, "cousin, I fell—the dogs, the dogs—"

"Hush, be still. You fell from the pony. But the dogs are gone."

"Lord," said Beorc, "let us get him behind our lines."

"They are dead," Domhnull murmured, "the others,"—but Ciaran took this without question, and worked with Beorc to gather him up between them, his chilled arms locked with theirs. Domhnull tried to walk, limping as he did, and kept talking as he went, of treachery and dark and shadow, of murder and the lord of Donn, but this Ciaran had already begun to know—long since, that all his hopes were fallen, and he had sent good men to their deaths.

"At least I have you back," he said to Domhnull when they had lain him in warm dry blankets in such shelter as they had. "You must rest now." But he had seen the scars, the dreadful marks on him in the lightning.

"Go home," Beorc said gripping his arm, making him listen. "You would see them return, you said. Now you have got back all. There are no more. What more is there to do—what hope here?"

"None. None here. I shall go home." Ciaran stared into the dark with the rain trickling down his neck. "I shall withdraw all the forces but what can keep the Bradhaeth in its place. And Damh. We shall more watch than fight. My brother has answered me, I understand that well enough." Breath was short in him. He caught another, that pained him like the stone, and his eyes burned in the rain. "I shall go home."

A moment's silence. Then Beorc left him.

He shivered, flinching at the thunder. The rain in the puddles gave back the lightning where horses had churned the ground and rain smoothed it again in pock-marked sheets. Arafel, was I wise? I think that I was not. O gods, answer me. Arafel!

Domhnull slept, sometimes, clinging to the neck of the pony they had gotten for him, a farmer's elderly beast with a placid, rolling gait. Sometimes he dreamed that it strode the winds or trod on mist, swift-footed and magical, but in the intervals of his waking he found an ordinary pony and plain dalelands mire squelching about its muddy hooves, so that he grew confused, whether the other had ever been, or whether the horror that had happened to him had ever happened at all.

But now and again Ciaran rode by him, and then he would speak disjointedly the things that he recalled, knowing that he was making a muddle of them and trying to pull them into order—of Caer Donn, of Donnchadh, of Boc and the others.

"Did Donnchadh do this to you?" Ciaran asked, and there was anger in his voice. And at last: "Domhnull, give me your hand, give it me."

He gave it or yielded it, one, across the gap between them; and then a kind of strength flowed into him, surcease of misery. They had gone somewhere together, he and his lord, and it was gray and full of mist. He was sitting—somewhere, on the grass, it seemed; and his lord was sitting by him on some higher place gazing down at him— but a Ciaran strangely changed, whose brow was smooth, whose fairness burned like the sun in this shadow, whose eyes compelled the truth as he questioned him, this, this, and this, and he answered as he must.

He is like a king, thought Domhnull, surprised to think it. And if the land had had him for King and not Laochailan, then none of this grief would have happened.

He remembered other things, the Sidhe, the darkness: he told it, remembering now.

"Stay," his lord told him, and rose up from where he sat and tried to go further into the mist. It seemed he sought something, but the mist was everywhere concealing it.

"Lord," Domhnull cried, getting up from where he sat, fearing to be left behind. He tried to follow after him, but he had not the strength, and small twisted things writhed out of the mist to draw him down into the depths with them.

Of a sudden his cheek was against the pony's rough neck, his wounds paining him with a dull ache, and when he struggled to sit his lord was riding safely knee to knee beside him.

"You will fall," Ciaran said quietly. "Don't try to sit up."

He paid no heed to this, riding for a time with his hands on the pony's withers. Beorc came to his other side.

"He has come back to us” Beorc said.

"Aye," said Ciaran. "Domhnull—don't fret yourself. We are bound for home now, well inside our lands. Rest."

There were armed men about them, more troops than they had begun with; but he let that confusion pass. He felt of his wounds and found scars instead, and bone well knit, if aching. The wounds had stopped bleeding and hurting while the Sidhe had held him in her arms. He had come home, revenant among the living. He had gath ered things instead of his youth—wariness and toughness. But he had been outside the safe world and came back meshed in Eald so thoroughly he drew shreds of it with him into daylight, to haunt his waking. He had the memory when he shut his eyes of that hurtling fall past rocks and branches, that long, long tumbling in the air and the shock of landing that was no bodily pain, but a shattering slip page between life and dream.

Arafel, the voice had called her name. He recalled her bleeding light and strength into the gale like a candle that must soon fail. Arafel. The Gruagach, and the Horseman.

The wind blew cold on his face, on the tracks of tears. Something bumped his knee persistently and someone drew a cloak about him and touched his shoulder after. A face lingered in his vision, hair and beard like blowing fire.

"Beorc. I fare well enough."

"That you do, cousin. But let me take you up. Old Blaze can carry double."

"Boc is dead," Domhnull said. "Caith and Dubhlaoch and Brom —all dead; I hope that they are dead. There is an evil in that place—" Panic beckoned. He refused it, speaking calmly, his eyes fixed on the pony's ears and the riders in front of him. "I let them part us. I never should have done that."

"No more of it," said Ciaran, close by him on the other side. "Boc at least was a wily old wolf and so were Caith and Dubhlaoch, and Brom was a borderer; don't suffer so for their sakes. They were not children to need your guidance; and living past a battle where friends were lost is no shame, gods help us else. They had many battles, themselves left friends behind, at Dun na h-Eoin, Caer Lun, Aescbourne, and Caer Wiell."

"A plague on leaving friends."

"Oh aye, but that is life and death, my friend." And with that came so bleak a look on Ciaran's face that his own grief seemed dim and cold. They rode side by side, he with Beorc and Ciaran; and in time the dimness came on his eyes again. Hands steadied him; he went forward gently, lay his head against the pony's neck, lost but homeward tending.

Fionnghuala went slowly now, among the silver trees, and so the Gruagach slipped from her back, leaving Arafel to ride while he walked before the mare.

Here was home, and peace, but the elf horse trod on leaves, fallen leaves upon the grass, where seldom a leaf had fallen, under the elvish moon. Ruin had touched here too, if more softly.

There was a stream. Men called it the Caerbourne; in Death's realm it had a name. But here it was Airgiod the Silver, and its waters were clear and healing. Fionnghuala waded it and the Grua gach went across like an otter, shaking the water afterward from his shabby pelt as the elf horse tended on her way with her quiet, droop ing rider. But the Gruagach delayed, cupped up water in his ample palms and hurried after, his wrinkled face all anxious and earnest.

"Here, Duine Sidhe, here, o drink, the good bright water, will not the Duine Sidhe?"

Fionnghuala stopped very gently. Arafel leaned from her back and bent to the brown, uplifted hands and drank, then rested so, her arm about Fionnghuala's white neck, her eyes gazing into the earthen brown of the Gruagach's.

"Go," she said. "Have you not your farm, Gruagach? Have you not your Men? You have stayed long from them. Who will weed their gardens, little cousin, small brave Sidhe? Weeds will grow there, and brambles. Be free and go tend them."

"You must not die," wailed the Gruagach. "You must not leave us."

"See the leaves. Go. You cannot help me more. And your land will need you. I do not know the issue, but of that one thing I am most sure. This is Eald's heart, and if I am not safe here I am nowhere safe. Go. Go home, the third time I command you."

"Duine Sidhe!" it cried, but Fionnghuala began to move again, gently, leaving it behind.

So Arafel rode deeper into the wood, where trees rose like silver pillars, and the leaves shone with light. A gentle chiming sounded here, in concert with the breezes that wafted sweetness. She passed into the heart of this grove, where rose that grassy mound spangled with flowers, and shading it was the greatest of the trees: Cinniuint was its name. Upon it hung thousands of such jewels as that moon-green stone about her neck; and elvish swords and arms such as her folk had carried once in their wars, hung here and upon Cinniuint's fellows, so that all the air in the grove seemed alive with light and sang with memories as the winds would stir the stones.

Here she found strength at least to slip from Fionnghuala's back, and she sank down full length on the grass, where the coolness of the earth touched the fever in her. For a time she rested so, from time to time feeling Fionnghuala's breath upon her.

"Go," she bade the elf horse. "Go back to Aodhan."

There was a clap of thunder, a breath of wind. So she lay alone, upon the mound in the moonlight, and for a long time she was still in her pain.

Then a leaf settled to the earth before her open eyes, and others. She lifted her head, seeing a rain of leaves, the trees all dimmed.

Horror touched her, a shivering of weakness. She gathered herself up and laid her hand upon a bough of Cinniuint, so that his light brightened and greened somewhat, but that healing cost her dear. An ancient, irreplaceable tree perished then from her Eald, at its far margins, faded into mist and into Duilliath's domain forever.

From Cinniuint to others she passed, and to the youngest, precious to her. Miadhail was his name, the only tree to be born in Eald in long ages; and he was slim and new, scarcely of her own stature. Here too were fallen leaves, silver and shining in the moonlight. To him most of all she gave strength; and touched the leaves and the stones of Cinniuint, calling forth memory—but all the stones recalled was war, the dread age of conflicts past, and despair that followed.

"Miochair," she named her lost comrades, "Gliadrachan." From those two stones came no help, but sorrow. She named others, yearn ing. "You have left me," she cried at last, "and where have you gone across the sea? Is there hope there?"

There was silence, only silence, except the wind striking stone on stone, a hollow chiming.

"Liosliath," she whispered; but the lord of Caer Wiell had that stone, and those memories were lost to her, dearest of all. All about that name slipped away into the mist, leaving only the sorrow, the memory of the gulls she could no longer hear.

Fear was on her. Poison ate at what strength she had. Once the deepest despair fallen on her had been that sound of waves which sometimes whispered from the stones, the promise of the sea: Dreary, they said, is all the world that Men have touched. The Sea is wide: who knows what we shall find?

But now the darkness lay between, and there was no hope of such retreat. The trees went one by one into Duilliath's Eald, and ghosts rose up to haunt her.

Duilliath, the leaves whispered, shivering. The spring is past, our summer passing; there is only autumn and then the winter. Liosliath is lost, lost, lost.

War was all about them now. The Bradhaeth stirred; there was the ring of steel in An Beag and in the south, where one she had touched had come to his own; there was ill in Dun na h-Eoin, and worse to follow.

She sank down, shut her eyes, her arms folded about her, shiver ing. She had no more refuge but this, and somewhere the Gruagach scampered and hid, for evil had gotten to the edges of the Caerbourne, and swam within its waters, not the water-horse, but some more baneful thing.

Fear touched her; it was the poison in her veins. And when the elvish sun had risen she cried aloud to see the trees, for there was the touch of golden autumn about their silver green.

Fool, lord Death had called her. Men had spun this thing, an outlaw in her forest, a harper, a throneless king she had never seen; An Beag, Caer Damh; and latest of portents came Ciaran Cuilean, son of Eald and Men, who had called her name three times and bound her to his aid.

The most innocent had done her greatest harm. It was the way, between elves and Men, that they were fatal to each other. And now the leaves fell, edged with gold, and the wind from Dun Gol came skirling among them.

A resolution settled on her. She lifted her head. "Aodhan," she called. "Aodhan." And without the third calling of his name Aodhan came racing down the winds, with Fionnghuala close beside him. His ears were pricked, his fireshot nostrils drank the breeze for all that it could tell him, his coat gave back the elvish sun in light; for a mo ment he had joy in all his bearing, then sinking sorrow.

"No," Arafel said softly, touched to the heart, for each time that he was summoned there was so clearly one thought in Aodhan's heart, one hope. Of all the great horses who had served the Sidhe, all had gone beyond the winds but these two, Fionnghuala because she served and Aodhan because he waited, hoping still for one special voice, one remembered touch, that had been Liosliath's, last of elves but herself. "He is not here, Aodhan. Go. Seek for him as far as the sea if you must. Be wise, be wary; call to him there and maybe he will hear."

It was scant hope, when all others failed, when the stones went silent, that Aodhan could link her to the sea. But Aodhan flung up his head and was gone upon the instant, the both of them sped in a clap of thunder. Then the thunder came back again in little mutterings, for Fionnghuala had stayed, stamping and pacing and shaking tiny lightnings from her mane. The elf horse gazed at her in seeming sorrow, walked closer and nosed at her where she had sunk down upon the grass, giving her soft breath upon her offered hand.

"No," Arafel said softly, "not for me the sea, dear friend, not now. You do not understand, do you? I would you would follow Aodhan. It is almost without hope, his going; but let him try; and when the darkness comes, then run free, run far, be wiser than Aodhan."

Fionnghuala nosed her cheek gently, breathed in her ear and went away, head dropping, disdaining the tender grass. A few leaves drifted down, sliding off her white back, and she vanished within the silver wood like a ghost of a horse.

Then Arafel drew her sword and strove with trembling hands to clean it of the tarnish of the blood that was on it, while constantly the wound on her hand burned, healed but not healing, painful as iron. Constantly she must give what strength she recovered to keep her Eald from fading. The sun itself seemed dim—chimerical as elv ish suns might be, yet this day seemed dim and strange, and now and again tendrils of cloud drifted across its face when it was high. She did not trouble to banish them; she had not the strength now to spare. But when the sun had passed toward the west a premature darkness took it, and elvish night came early.

Then she shivered and wrapped her gray cloak about her, for the wind out of the north was cold, and the clouds took more and more of the sky to themselves, cutting off the stars.

Something snorted, horselike, and hooves trod the earth. She leapt up, startled by a darkness greater than the night, and twin gleams of red within it; but it took a twofooted shape then, betraying itself.

"Pooka! When had you leave to come here? You are too bold by half."

"The Daoine Sidhe were never hospitable." Seaghda tossed his head and blew a snort hardly less horselike. "Men have entered Eald. Do you not feel them?"

She folded her arms the tighter about herself. The world seemed shrunken and cold. "Go away," she said.

"You are dimmed," the pooka said. "Something has befallen you, Duine Sidhe." His nostrils flared; his eyes were wild, his hair blowing in the wind. "You would go further, in spite of all my warnings; and now the shadow comes, it is loose upon us. The Daoine Sidhe have betrayed us as they did once before—faithless, faithless."

"Not all." Her voice trembled. "I tell you so. Flee for some safer river, pooka, safer than the Caerbourne. And be not forward with me. This is no place for you. Nor any place of safety."

"Where will safety be? Where is refuge? Or do you know one? They wake, Duine Sidhe, they wake. And you are fading. See—" He held out the simple brown stone that was his soul, cupped in his dusky hands. "I have not forgot. Run with me. I am strong to carry you. I shall never tire. No master have I ever served, but favors I remember."

Anger fell from her. She smiled somewhat, despite all the pain and dread, so simple he was, so earnest in his offering. "O pooka, I wish it were so easy. No. I cannot. I was rash, and bitterly I paid for it. I shall try to mend it."

His shoulders fell; his hands dropped. A third time he snorted, seeming to laugh. "A Duine Sidhe is wrong."

"O cousin, all of us have been wrong at one time or another; perhaps the Daoine Sidhe more often than most."

"There was a Man," the pooka said after a moment, perplexedly, and tossed his head as if to mark the way, "dark like me, Sidhe-blessed. He walked in Eald and I did not frighten this one."

"Ah," she said, "yes. I know him."

"Others I might have harmed." His head lifted. His red eyes glowed like coals in the murk. He took the stone into his mouth and the black horse whirled and fled, mad as all its kind, and wild.

She gazed after him, seeing only darkness about Eald, Duilliath's advance. The pooka would, she thought, fare well in the coming storm. Mirth and lawlessness were in his blood, and he was short of memory. No drow could ever tame him.

The night wrapped the more deeply about Eald. Small creatures, the fey, strange deer, hares, a timid hedgehog, foxes and a moon-eyed owl—these had crept to the grove and now returned, the latter with a flapping of wings. Here was a little safety in the dark, in the glimmer of the trees.

But the leaves flew, dying, on the wind, and the stones jangled discordant, dimmed and all but lightless.

"Listen to me," a voice breathed through that wind, like hoarse, resounding brass, "failed you are, but the task was hopeless. Come to me, come to me, and I shall give you Caer Righ again, the trees, the smell of them on the air. Come, Aoibheil."

She shivered. "Begone!" she cried. "Go to sleep, seducer! My kin you won, but never me, never shall, old worm, deceiver—go back! Go back!"

In the depths of Lioslinn was laughter.

She banished it, gathered her strength, wove silence about the heart of Eald, a web of light and quiet. The stones shone again. She forgot the voice. But her heart had weakened. She lay still then, on the mound, amid a drift of golden leaves, and slept in the dreams of vanished Sidhe.

A dragon rose in them; he whispered, and Sidhe cast away what made them Sidhe—Duilliath, she mourned, remembering. My cousin.

"Come," it said. "Enough of Men. It is too tame a thing, that the Sidhe should pass like this, unresisting. You have power. Use it to save the land, to keep the world what it is. What has pity won you? Think of pride and anger."

"You wish to live, old worm," she whispered back, still dreaming.

"Do not you?"

It was the poison in her, the pain that flowed like ice. It filled her dreams. Vengeance, it whispered.

But even in her dream she wove the web, and the wind died into silence.