The Tree of Swords and Jewels

TWELVE Of Home and Hope

Nothing was the way it used to be, Meadhbh and Ceallach reck oned that. The men went armed back and forth out of the hold, and their father talked seriously to farmers who had come from the far thest steadings afoot or on hard-ridden ponies. They eavesdropped where they could, hearing news of skirmishes that made small cold discomforts in their stomachs, names like Lioslinn and the Bradhaeth, and a fight over by Raven Hill where Caer Wiell's farm ers had thrown stones at An Beag riders. Rhys had not come back; perhaps he would never come back, but no one seemed about to say so.

And there was Domhnull, not the same as he had been, but worn and pale and looking sometimes as if the world had gotten too heavy for him. At first they had thought that he might die: his mother had come in from her steading up by Gearr's to tend him. He had lain days abed and fevered, with her by him, and Muirne hovering over him no less. Now at least he was up and walking, but like someone far older. He was a hero, of course; everyone in Caer Wiell knew it, and whispered how every bone in his body had been broken but the Sidhe had healed him.

"But will he not get well, then?" Ceallach asked their father, one day that Domhnull was nowhere in their hearing, and they stood out on the wall near the gates. "Could not the Sidhe have done a little better while she was about it?"

"No," said their father sharply, and then more gently, looking down at them: "If there had been time, she would have. So I don't think there was." He ruffled Ceallach's hair, which the wind was doing too, blowing at all of them and making Meadhbh's skirts fly so she had to hold them knotted in her fist. Their father had that look of his that kept things from them. "He is still mending, Domhnull is.

Mostly he would be himself again if he could, and not know what he learned up there at Caer Donn—do you understand that, Meadhbh and Ceallach?"

"Yes," said Meadhbh, and Ceallach nodded soberly.

"Do you?" their father said, staring at them strangely sharp. "Then get him ahorse again."

"We?"

"Not in the wood or down the road; not beyond sight of the walls. Say that I gave you leave to ride and ordered him to watch you."

Meadhbh looked toward the high hall, thinking of their mother, not wanting to ask whether their mother knew about this riding, because she wanted it. Ceallach had her hand and tugged it; so they went racing back to find Domhnull and get their ponies and a horse.

That was the best day of any day since their father had come home, even riding a sedate pace along the hedges close about Caer Wiell; for Domhnull's eyes grew bright again and he talked of the crops and the new foals and calves, and laughed to see the lambs playing in the meadow. Then they felt like laughing too, feeling that they had done something good and that the world was right again, at long last and overdue: that they had been wrong to doubt it.

But when Domhnull had come to the farthest point they might ride, at the end of the fence, he drew his tall horse to a halt and sat staring out north and west. The border lay that way. Caer Donn did. He only sat and sat, his horse cropping the grass, while the silence grew long and painful.

Ceallach urged Flann a little closer and looked up at Domhnull. "When we were lost," Ceallach said carefully, "there was a water horse; but Thistle sent it away."

"Thistle."

"We're too young, she said, to know her real name. When you have a name you can do magic on it. But I think it would be a mistake to try with her. The river horse—she gave us its name."

Domhnull was looking at them now, both of them. He was a man and grown, having gotten lines on his face and a new scar on his brow (too quick a scar), but he was looking at them eye to eye and heart to heart, as if he wanted to talk and had something boiling up inside him.

"I saw her," Domhnull said; but the greater thing stayed unsaid.

Meadhbh took that pouch which hung about her neck and offered it, although it was like giving her pony to someone else to ride, or letting someone rummage among her treasures. "It's my gift," she said. "You could carry it awhile. For memory, Thistle said. For hope, when there isn't any."

"Hope of what?" he said. He scared her, so harsh his voice was. But she doggedly refused to be put off, and covered her confusion by taking her gift out of its pouch so he might see it, a silver leaf held carefully between her fingers because of the wind. She held it to her nose, then offered it again.

"See. Smell. It's still new, after all this time. It makes me think how the woods smell when it rains."

He took it; and then he slowly rode away from them, beyond the point where they were to follow. He stopped and only sat there in the center of the pasture with his back to them.

She decided then what it was, and she reckoned that Ceallach understood, because he said not a thing either, but simply sat his pony waiting.

"I think we should ride back a ways," Meadhbh said finally, "and then maybe Domhnull will feel like coming home." "He might not, you know," Ceallach said. She thought of Donn then, of Domhnull riding that way alone. But she turned Floinn's head for home all the same, and Ceallach's Flann turned without his doing anything. "He has my gift with him," she said, though parting with it made her anxious, "and they have a magic on them, don't they? A virtue of finding. So he has to bring it back. Doesn't he?"

Ceallach simply shook his head, still looking worried, whether over the gift or for Domhnull or for both at once.

But in time they did hear him behind them, and turned to look when he came near, not riding fast, but fast enough for his long-legged horse to catch them.

"So, well," he said scowling. "You ought not to be off by your selves, didn't your father say that? Come on."

Their ponies took the pace of his long-legged horse, and they went briskly for a time—he would joke if he were men, or quarrel if we were his friends, Meadhbh thought, so he has to find some fault with us, that being all there is to do.

"Look," she said, finding welcome distraction, "the foal is lying down."

"Tired," said Domhnull after a moment, "and the sun is warm." He offered back her gift then. "It does smell sweet."

He pleased her by that last, that he thought her sensible enough to give a courtesy to, as if she were growing up all of a sudden. Then she spoiled it all by blushing. She felt the heat in her face and had to pretend to have all her mind on putting her gift away and hanging it about her neck.

She thought that she had made him feel better, all the same. He looked eased, could smile again—perhaps it was the Sidhe gift: she looked at Domhnull in a way she had never looked at any boy her age, and felt desolate and hopeless. He was a man already. Women from the smith's daughter to the scullery maids sighed after him; even Muirne, whose devotion they had had all their own—even Muirne had taken to doing small things for him; and somewhen she had gotten—happier, or younger, or at least different, for all that she was older than he was. So Meadhbh felt twice robbed; and once more —that it was the first thought in her life she was worried Ceallach might learn and laugh at her.

Then with a sigh she recovered all her sense and gave Domhnull up two breaths after she had first loved him, deciding to look him straight in the eye and to be his staunch friend, the way he was her father's; and Beorc was; and Rhys—o Rhys'.—and to go on riding out with him on summer days, as long as such days lasted.

Caer Wiell will not be here, she thought suddenly, having seen it the sudden way dreams unrolled at night between two blinks of the eye; and the leaf ached at her throat. She saw the land burned, changed, and smoke going up from blackened fields.

"Ceallach—"

He had got it too, the same awful dream. She saw it in the sudden pallor of his face, his glance toward her.

"What is it?" Domhnull asked, not the way someone might ask children, but anxiously.

"I had a dream just then," she said. "It seemed Caer Wiell was gone."

"There was a hill," said Ceallach while the horses plodded on, relentless, toward the walls. "It had bones under it."

"I never saw that," Meadhbh said.

"Caer Donn," said Domhnull, all hoarse. "It was Caer Donn you saw." He gathered the reins which he had let go slack. "Come." He put them to a quicker pace as if that could make them safe, to get them behind gates and walls.

"They had no business to be riding out in the first place," their mother said, over by the fire where she had gone to stand. Meadhbh looked at her distractedly, as if she had gone mad. With all that they had come panting up to the hall to say, that was what their mother settled on, with their father sitting still in his thoughts and Domhnull sweating and pale from their climb up the stairs. "The Bradhaeth loose and Caer Damh stirred up and they riding out as if there no trouble at all."

"I saw Caer Wiell burned," Meadhbh cried.

"Hush!" said their father. "Come here. How was it burned?"

Meadhbh shook her head and came to her knees by her father's chair. Ceallach hung on his other side.

"Perhaps," said Domhnull, "when she lent me her gift to hold, she confused things in it. Maybe it was some other place."

"And Caer Donn?" asked Ceallach. "I saw Donn, did I not?"

"Maybe," said Domhnull, "you caught it from me, something I had seen or imagined."

"Doubtless so," their mother declared and came back again, sweeping past Muirne who hovered near the fire with large, fright ened eyes. "I've held the stone. It was like that. One remembers things."

Their mother wanted it to be so. Meadhbh looked at her, under standing now and wishing for once the same thing her mother wished, that what she had seen could turn out to be something past, something of Domhnull's rememberings and nothing yet to come.

"Meadhbh," her father said, "give me your hand, and you, Ceal lach."

She did that, and for a moment thought he only meant to tell them something; but then he shut his eyes, and the world turned gray and full of mist.

"Ciaran!" their mother called.

The hold was burned and the land was waste, with smoke over all the hills, that spread to the forest; and there was a hill of bones, and a shallow lake with something coiled at the depth of it, and deep places under the hills that had cracked open like eggs, empty in their darkness.

"No!" It was their father's voice. He let go of their hands, a fierce shove, and for a moment Meadhbh was lost and breathless in the mist.

But it was her mother's arms she felt, smelled the lilacs and herbs of her skirts against her face, and her mother was shouting at her father.

"It's going to be true," Meadhbh said, "it's all going to be true."

"They are children," their mother cried.

"Yes," their father said. Meadhbh blinked him clear, and there were tears on his face. That won her silence. She wanted not to look at him but there was no other place she could, not now. Her father reached out quite calmly and ruffled her hair as he had not done since she was very small, and tousled Ceallach's after. "Domhnull."

"Lord," Domhnull answered quietly.

"The Sight can mislead. Sometimes it is not quite what it seems. But all the same, with the Bradhaeth roused, with all our enemies combined—and Rhys not here—well, I have no kinsman, Domhnull; and where I go, Beorc is like to go. My lady's kin—something unto ward has delayed them, or Rhys would be back by now. Be in a kinsman's stead to her and Meadhbh and Ceallach—if need should be, stand by them."

"On my life, lord," Domhnull whispered. Meadhbh felt her mother's arms tighten about her as she rose. Her mother smoothed the hair her father had ruffled. Let me go, she wished, wanting to shout it, and turned instead and hugged her mother, thinking that someone ought to.

"Caer Wiell will never fall," her mother said without a doubt in her voice. "This nonsense comes of meddling with the Sidhe gifts, that's what it is. Or listening at doors where they shouldn't."

No one said anything. Their father only sat still and gazed at all of them with that look he had when he was far away, and then he got up from his chair.

"Domhnull, go rest. Muirne, see he gets a pot of cool ale—I dare say it would come welcome. Maybe a bit for Meadhbh and Ceallach too if they would like."

"A very little," said their mother, measuring with pinched fingers and frowning at Muirne. She combed Meadhbh's hair then with her fingers and held her face steady, looking in her eyes. "You are too old to be riding about the country, do you hear? You will not be doing such things again."

It would have galled Meadhbh even if she thought it would come to no more than the other threats, but now it had the sound of doom, louder than any intent in the words. Not again, not again, not again.

She pretended she had not heard; saying anything to it might seal it like the magic of true names. "May I go?" she asked instead.

"Go. Comb your hair." Her mother was distracted. The hair was something she said without thinking. Meadhbh went with Muirne, beside Ceallach, and Domhnull came after, but Meadhbh cast a backward glance where her mother and her father were, her mother standing with her arms hugged about herself, her father standing staring off toward nothing at all and with a grimness about his mouth that tokened words to come.

Not be doing such things again, Meadhbh thought, and her hands were cold. It was not the riding, but the country that would change, no more sun, no more green fields, no more of foals playing and them laughing with Domhnull outside Caer Wiell. She held to her gift and tried the while she went down the stairs after Muirne, to foretell where she would ride and to what, but even Floinn was lost to her, and there was darkness, everywhere darkness and mist and only the stone of present Caer Wiell under her fingers to remind her where and when she was.

Ceallach, she thought, o Ceallach.

"I shall be gone awhile," Ciaran said quietly to Branwyn. "Don't fret for it."

"Ciaran."

"Hush. I know." He pressed a kiss on her brow and held her a moment. "Forgive me."

"What did they see?"

"Desolation. Give them comfort. They have need of it."

Her hands caught at him and clenched. "Ciaran, Ciaran, if Rhys would come—He will come. He's too clever for anyone to have stopped him—"

"Things may happen; he may have had to give up his horse and go afoot after all, if the road was watched, and that would have taken a great deal more time."

"If anything were amiss, if what they saw—Ciaran, we were de stroyed before and burned and here we are. If we had had the Sight before the King came to Caer Wiell, we would have lost all our hope. Those were dark days. But they were not the end of us."

"Tell them so. They need hope."

"I need hope. Ciaran, do not you leave me! Do not you go any where, not unless you leave that thing behind and take your sword, hear me? What can the men think, that you go empty-handed and moon-eyed with that stone—Forgive me, listen to me now. What good has it ever done? None. Love, love, you should have had all the men about you up at Lioslinn, o gods, and gone up there armed in the first place and taught that brother of yours how to treat his guests."

"So would your father have done?"

"So would I do if I could wield a sword."

He took the reproach he had not looked for and stared at her a moment, then let fall his hands and turned toward the door, patient because there was nothing else to be.

"Ciaran." Heartbreak was in Branwyn's voice. He stopped and looked back with hope of her.

"So would I do," he said quietly, "if I could wield a sword."

"Put off the stone. Will you kill us all, and the children too?"

He brought a hand to the stone and felt it cold as it had been cold for days, like ice against his heart. He had nothing to say, nothing that would not give Branwyn more to fear than already she had; anger was better than anguish.

"Answer me."

"No, Branwyn."

"O gods!"

His cloak was on the peg. He gathered it up. "I shall not be going far. No riding off."

"Take me with you."

He shook his head. "No."

"Into Eald. Into Eald, is it?"

He put the cloak on, pretending he had not heard. "It may be cold."

"O gods, Ciaran, don't go."

He managed a little smile, not an easy one. "Back by supper," he said, as if he were only going out to the fences.

And then he stepped away, not a little parting, but a great one, so that he caught at the stone and held it clenched in his hand, lost for a moment in the chill gray mist.

"Arafel!" he cried, "Arafel!" but he did not call the third time, not daring that. He listened a long time, hoping for any small sound, searching with his heart for any trace or hope of her. "I am here," he shouted into the gray mist, in the green of the forest with the mois ture dripping off the bracken and glistening on black bark. "You said I should not call your name—but that you would always know what I was doing. You said that I shouldn't walk here—but the world isn't as safe as it was either. And I do need you."

There was silence, profound silence, in which no wind stirred, nor leaf moved.

"What am I supposed to do?" he cried, forcing his voice amid such stillness. "If there is any help at all you can give—or even give me some advice. Sending Domhnull up there—I know that was a mistake. I'm afraid I have made all too many mistakes. I could go to the King at Dun na h-Eoin—but that would leave Caer Wiell with too little strength for safety, or send me out with too little on the road. What should I do, stay here and do nothing? Was that what you wanted? What was I supposed to do?"

Still there was silence. He walked forward, carefully, remembering the way, believing it in spite of the mist and the black and ghostly trees; but then he thought of what he was doing, like a man looking down when he ought not, and then doubt began to grow at his shoulder, and shadows began to deepen on this side and on the other, and things to gibber and rattle in them. He doubted the power of the Sidhe which supported his own—doubted she existed, doubted all the wisdom that she had given him and all the way he knew.

"Help me," he cried in the thickening mist. "Help me if you can! I need you! Help!"

He heard hoofbeats then far away and from the west of the world; and something familiar touched his heart. A wind blew over him, lessening the mist, a wind from the sea. He heard the cries of gulls and shivered in a melancholy that leached away all life and love and purpose.

Then he heard the hoofbeats closer, and the stone remembered a whiteness, swiftness, fierceness.

Aodhan, leaped into his mind like some answer to a question long forgotten, implicit in the thunder and the storm.

"Aodhan!" The horse was his, had always been, if ever he had thought to call him, if he had ever thought of journeying those ways through Eald where Aodhan might go.

"Aodhan!" he cried. "O Aodhan!"

The wind blew stronger from the sea, and there came a flickering of memory from the stone.

Man ... it whispered, full of anguish. Man, is it you? What have they done?

"Liosliath! Help me—"

I cannot come. The shadow—Man, the shadow—

The wind fell suddenly as if someone had shut an open door. Then it rose from another quarter, miasmic, heavy, wafting from some place of water and corruption.

"Liosliath! I am still here! Liosliath!"

But there was only mist, and the voice faded in his mind as faery things would, leaving him robbed and bewildered, whether anyone had spoken at all; or whether he had imagined the salt wind or the sound of hooves.

Something chuckled at his despair, and brush stirred by him. He had slipped somehow. He did not know this place. The mist wove through it in threads, so that one moment he had a clear view of trees and more mist beyond, and then he passed into that mist and lost all bearings, all certainties. He was looking for Airgiod, but the stream he found instead was fouled, choked with leaves and stag nant. A reek went up from it that assailed the soul.

Then his heart failed him, for strange pale eyes stared up at him from beneath that murky water, and blinked when leaves drifted down, silver tarnished black. The eyes rose closer to the surface, glowing like some double reflection of the moon.

He backed away, met the corpse of a tree whose branches clawed at him like fingers. He felt past it, retreated step by step.

"Man," a voice said.

He stopped, looked toward that darkness darker than the skies. "Lord Death," he said, his heart beating as if he had been running. His arm ached with his old wound. "Where is she, do you know? Or where have I gotten to?"

"She is fled," Death said, and his voice came thin and strained. "Man, I had thought to follow you."

"To her?" Wariness came on him. "To her, is that your meaning?"

"She sent me out, Man, to learn a name; but she would not stay for it." The darkness drifted near, loomed, shutting out the little light that sifted through the branches, and the air was bitter cold. "If you can reach her, do. I have more messages for her."

"She met something at Caer Donn. But you would know that. You were there."

"She met something, yes. Use that stone of yours and call her."

"I tried. The stone gives me nothing but the sea. Trees are where they should not be ... and Airgiod, if that marsh yonder is Airgiod—"

"The sea," Lord Death whispered. "And Eald deserted. Man, Man, if that urge has fallen on her, we are all lost. Call her. Call her name. You have that power. You proved it once before."

"I can't."

"You will not." The shadow swept closer. A hand gripped his arm with strength like bone. "Man, listen to me. The drow are roused. Do you know that name? Whatever this stone of yours may be to a Sidhe, they are without. They have lost it, cast it away—a drow is what a Sidhe becomes, when he has lost whatever that stone is."

A cold settled into his marrow, and the stone stung his heart like a lump of ice. He remembered then a tree shining like the moon, like a thousand moons, agleam with jewels and elvish work. "No," he said, "not always." Warmth came then, reassurance, and he shrugged off Lord Death's hand as if it were spiderweb. The stone grew warmer. "I am sure of that. It is what a Sidhe does to the stone himself, of his own will; that makes the difference. I remember, Lord Death." The strength in the stone grew poignant as tears, as a shout going through the forest, then faded, leaving the cold. He turned about, sought that retreating touch with all his heart, as if that door had opened again and let out warmth and kindness and all the things this place had long forgotten. But Death laid his hand on his shoulder and came before him again, cutting off all his vision.

"Fool and servant of a fool! Use the power you have. If there are weapons, take them up. You will need them all. No, do not turn from me. This is all your doing, the loosing of this plague. A thousand or so human lives you bought with it, and your own. Caer Wiell might have fallen, yes, would have fallen that day; but suppose—no, hear me, never turn your back to me—suppose you had not roused all Eald to help you and Caer Wiell had fallen. The King was on his way; he would have come there sooner or later, if you had only sold your lives for enough of An Beag's. He would have come on an enemy in their looting, disorderly, in a hold with gates broken. Then Laochailan King would be king in his own right, by his own hand and never reigned in fear—fear of you, haming, married to his kin. But no, you refused to die there; saved your life and a paltry thou sand more and waked all of this evil and cost every life you saved. You doomed the world, Man, and all that might ever be, to save your life!"

Ciaran tore himself away, but brambles snagged his cloak, his clothes, his hands, and Death was still before him.

"You waked power, Man, and would not use it—destroyed the peace, destroyed the King, destroyed your mother with grief and your father and your brother with fear of you and it. You were lord of Donn if you had reached out your hand. You could have taken that sheepcot and compelled your father and your brother instead of moping about waiting for them to send to you. You could have gone to Dun na h-Eoin and faced Laochailan: who could have prevented you if you had had the stone then and used it? Your king feared you. The whisperers at his side would have scattered like deer. You would have had him in your hand for good or ill, and then was time for compassion. You could have made him great, shaped him however you would have him, made him a name to remember, gained him a kingdom greater than any king before him. Fear of you broke what little there was of him and made him clay for moulding; but you would not. You cast him away, cast it all away. You stayed at home, breeding your horses and raising cabbages. This small realm of yours, have you not made it fair? But at what cost?"

"The kingdom has had peace of me."

"Are you virtuous? But you could have murdered father, brother, King, host, and done far more good in the world after all this murder than you have done with your peace. You could have piled corpse on corpse and burned holds and tortured and plundered and done more good than this."

"Then where were you? Why did you stay your hand from me?" The taste of ashes and tears was in his mouth. The thorns held him impaled. "There were years I had nothing. I was so slight a matter. I expected you—in the forest, in fighting with An Beag, somewhere on the stairs—Where were you, that you could not do so slight a thing, if all the world hung on it?"

There was silence. The shadow drew back and seemed to shrink. "You are not the only fools there be. I bound myself by a promise in your case, old comrade. She asked. And I promised."

"And my brother? Was he beyond you too? Or the King? Any of us would have sufficed, would we not?"

"But on them I had no claim. And she would not. I begged her!— I! slay this Donnchadh. One stroke and the world is saved. She would not. The Sidhe are fey and mad. This abdication of yours—it must run in the blood." Lord Death drifted closer. "Listen. A night ago your brother quitted Caer Donn, bound for Dun na h-Eoin where the King lies dying—a long dying, believe me. It amazes them that one Man could survive so much and so deadly poisons. But they are out of patience with such methods. Do you not understand, Man? Laochailan has been no King. They divided him from you, from the one who might have saved him, and murdered the lord of Ban, who was the best of them. And not they. Donnchadh. From the beginning, your father and Donnchadh."

He shook his head vehemently. "My father—no. I will believe it of my brother, but my father, no, no man was truer to his King."

"Your father was halfling like yourself, and the curse was wakened at Donn. You wakened it. It was waiting for him when he came home, lurking in the stones, the earth, the foundations of Caer Donn. I will tell you the name of it; I will whisper it: Duilliath. And doubt less the drow came whispering to him: half-Sidhe, half-Sidhe, kins man, where is your younger son? More powerful than his King, more than his father—what would stay him from coming here? Power must fight power, and there is power in this place. Dig deep, search it out, master it. —But it mastered Donn. Of course it could. It whispered, it grew—without scruples. Your King already feared you; and when they came whispering in their turn, kinsmen against kinsman, why, conspiracy was a thing Laochailan King could well believe, when he would not have believed in virtue. Power against power, they said. Magic to oppose the Sidhe that sits in Caer Wiell How else can we survive? You wed your King's cousin, begot an heir while your King has failed. Evald died to your advantage—Now he has Caer Wiell, they whispered, and was not Evald's death untimely young?"

"O gods."

"Oh, but you are beyond gods, halfling. I cannot hear your prayers. You have the stone. Your brother is on the road. You might be there, suddenly, beside him. Against Sidhe I have no power, and his life is guarded now, I know so. It was him. The drow will have Donnchadh on the throne in a fortnight; and armies at his command. If you have power, use it! Call her name, not mine."

He doubted. Doubt crushed him. He shook his head. "No. Call her into this place—no. I will try something else—to go to her." He held the stone still in his hand, and it remained cold and lifeless. "And if I find her I shall give her your message."

"Do so, then," said Death. The darkness drew aside. "If that is all that I can win, do so. And be wise. The border is not the greatest danger. I have sent a dream to Beorc Scaga's-son: his father. Come home, I have bidden him. Your lord has need of you. And mark my words, you will."

"Keep your hands from my folk! They are not yours to be sending here and there."

"They are mine when I call them—when their hour is come. One of them I found wandering and escorted to your hands. Was I thanked for that?" The voice faded on the wind that rattled dry branches and stank of stagnant water. "No. But our interests are liker than you know. Farewell and fare better, Man, than you have fared before."

He shivered. Somehow he had gotten to his own woods again, less dire than the place he had quitted, and the sun shone through tan gled limbs and summer leaves. He was not held. The brambles did not grow here and it was Caerbourne that flowed at his feet.

Then with a jolt of his heart he knew where he was, a place where he and Lord Death had met before: it was Caerbourne Ford near Raven Hill. He had strayed half a day from home.

At least he knew his way from here, a path Rhys must have taken, a path which once he had run with the hounds of the Hunt at his heels. A spur of it led from here to the heart of all Eald, to that grove where he had first met the Sidhe, beneath that tree which grew rooted in his woods and hers at once.

That was the place she would be, he told himself; there lay hope if hope there was, if he dared come there now, with Arafel unwilling. But things were changed. It was his own safety she had thought of. Now he was concerned for hers, for all that depended on her. He made haste going down the bank, fevered haste, trusting this Caerbourne far more than the stream he had just quitted, though his shoulders itched between with the memory of arrows and An Beag so near to this crossing-place.

Danger. He felt it suddenly near him as he waded the dark stream, a shivering in air and water, a poison in the winds. He struggled the harder, panting, sought the far bank and gained it, soaked and heavy in that climbing and already reaching elsewhere with his mind.

An Beag, he thought. Watchers at the ford. He fled into Eald as if it were a dream, recalling another day that he had met evil in this place. The grove, he thought, but he could not find the way. The mist thickened. Brambles caught at him. Iron shivered through his sub stance like poison, so that he staggered, almost losing Eald.

A darkness loomed up before him in chill and fetid wind. It rattled and gibbered and mud clung to his feet, holding him like nightmare. Other things leapt and clawed at his boots, strove to reach his hands, and the cold was terrible. He lurched aside in defeat, tried another way, but dead wood crumbled beneath his weight, and another of the greater horrors lay that way. The air was presentient with ill and malice, so that it stung his chest and sped his heart. It came toward him. More and more the lesser ones had power: one sat on a dead branch and plummeted suddenly upside down, laughing and clinging with hands and feet, its face still rightwise up.

He plunged on, thrusting it and its branch away, but something drifted before him now, black and unwholesome, with long white hair, and dodge as he would, he was overtaking it.

It turned suddenly and looked at him with a white elvish face. Arafel he thought in sudden relief, because they were so like; but this face was cold and not what it had seemed a moment ago. It reached out its hand, more terrible in its beauty than all the rest in their ugliness.

"Duilliath," he guessed.

It laughed. "You are wrong, Man, and powerless to name me." It came closer. "Yield up the stone. You are hopeless else."

"No."

"Lost, then." Other creatures had come, and iron shivered in the air. "Ciaran, Ciaran, Ciaran—back to your beginnings!"

It hurled him. The black limbs spun, the earth came up at him and he struck it, brown wet earth, slick leaves, clinging to his hands.

He heard dogs. He leapt up, in the sunlight, in the dappling of the leaves of Caerbourne Ford; he heard horses and movement and the cleaving of the air, the shivering passage of iron from the bowmen beyond the trees.

Arrows struck him in quick succession. His heart burst in dazing pain. He fell a second time, shattering the shafts and numb after the first hurt—rising then because his limbs still moved: he saw the An Beag bandits, saw bows bent again to add more arrows to those that pierced him.

He ran. He turned and plunged into mist, where the pain began in earnest, robbing him of breath.

M "Ciaran," Liosliath cried, fair and far and desperate. "Cling to the stone—o run, run, run!"

The wind came then, tearing at the mist, and he heard thunder, the howling of the gale that yet smelled of sea and wrack. A glim mering shone like a star amid the murk, and grew, steadily oncom ing, while the thunder swelled.

"Aodhan!" he cried, remembering. He had called three times. The elf horse had come, from the ends of the earth it might be: Aodhan had come.

Thunder came down on him, and wind battered him as Aodhan came near, a shining pallor in the dark, a shoulder offered to his need. He caught the mane amid which lightnings flickered, harmless to him; strength burned from the stone toward his hands, needing nothing of his heart, and he flung himself astride, or somehow he had gotten to Aodhan's back. The elf horse began to run above the ground, carrying him with shockless steps and racing not through distances but faster and deeper into Eald.

"O Aodhan," he whispered, "take me to her, take me there now."

The elf horse snorted, shifted in his stride, almost losing him from his back, and whinnied in dismay, shifting this way and that. They ran; a wall of bright mist loomed before them, poured about them. Ciaran cried aloud, so fierce the pain of iron that split his heart, cried a second time in dismay to find them in retreat.

"Again," he cried, "Aodhan, take me through!"

The elf horse turned and tried the chill mist again, laboring. The cold pain shot through him, but he clung to the mane and held, feeling the horse fighting and veering beneath him. Trial after trial the elf horse made, shying back to lunge forward again, and now small things chittered and leapt at them in growing shadow; he cried aloud, and Aodhan whinnied and veered aside.

There was a darkness then, and Aodhan was running to the baying of hounds, away from the barrier, for the pain had ebbed. Thunder muttered. There were other hooves, and leaping shapes of dogs, and swift-flying shadows.

A rider drew even with them, moving with them, on a horse like night, in which there was the pale glimmering of bone where Aodhan's lightning flickered; the rider was Lord Death.

"No," Ciaran whispered. "Let me go on trying. Let me try, Lord Death."

"Turn then," the answer came; and he called out to Aodhan, to no avail. The elf horse ran on, a swift striding that lost not a pace. He sank on Aodhan's neck in defeat, unable to do more, clinging as the sunny road stretched suddenly beneath them.

Death stayed with him, a shadow in the day. They had left Eald and ran now on the river road, that which led home. The elf horse had failed as he had, ran now with a stretching and gathering of sinew, a flutter of mane, a blur of sunlit dust.