The Tree of Swords and Jewels

THIRTEEN The Bain Sidhe

Domhnull made the steps, leaning on his stick, for his legs would still betray him, and went out along the wall, seeking somewhat of refuge, some little solitude where no one else could come at him with questions—Ask my lady this, it was, and ask my lady that, and pray, sir, what of the grainstores? —and the riders be home, sir Domhnull, nothing found, no hope, no luck and less of substance.

He leaned his arms upon the wall, his stick resting by him and bowed his head, for it ached; but he thought again how that would seem and lifted it, looking outward on a sight that today seemed worse than yesterday—for sun shone on Caer Wiell's lands, on green pasture and growing fields and the gentle swells of it west and north and even on the trees about the river. But beyond that circle of sunlight the sky was darkened with walls of cloud, towering for tresses of cloud that had begun as wisps and mare's-tails.

It did not advance as storms did, on wind and claps of thunder. It built new outposts, a mare's-tail first, a gray, dull wisp, and then an outwelling of the stormcloud near it, all silent, proceeding no more swiftly than any growth of clouds on a summer's day. A man had to watch, not look, and then he would see it, this wall-building all about them. They had hardly noticed it beginning, first as a line of cloud in the far northwest, and then in the west, spreading over the forest to the south as the clouds built; and then one night it reached out an arm toward the north again, darkening the dawn with strands of murk that became another wall.

Daily, folk had begun to remark on it, and to cast anxious glances from the fields and the crests of the walls. Night and day it grew, until the first strands of it appeared in the north, completing the ring about them, and the cloud over the forest advanced until the line of sunlight could be seen plain on the treetops at noon, so that now shadow lay visibly along the tops of the trees that overhung the Caerbourne and off across the hills; and overhead now, above the gray walls of the keep a cloudy rampart towered, up and up into bright sun and blue sky, its gray surface knobbed and gnarled and changing and somehow not moving, as if it had pressed against some barrier that made this well of sunlight. Domhnull did not look at it, no more than a glance, but there was no escaping the sight of it outward, where its arm swept round across the hills, and the march ing line of shadow had now come all the way over the hills, so that that horizon too was dull and dark.

The circle had narrowed again in the night, from the north. No one talked about it. Only there was a traffic to the walls or out the gates, each looking for himself, from lady Branwyn to Cook in her apron, floured from morning baking—to himself, latest, not wanting to look at all, but drawn here. It was the sunlight he looked at, the impossibly brilliant sunlight shining off the fairness of the land, bar ricade against the shadow, which had now assumed a perfect round ness on its nearer edge, marking the size of the circle that yet would be.

Gods help us, Domhnull thought, but it was not gods he thought of, but rather Arafel. He still hoped. The sunlight was reason for hope even if it was narrowing, even if their lord was the seventh day missing.

"He has gone away," lady Branwyn had said, with such a look in her blue eyes that he dare not question it. Gone. Domhnull knew where lord Ciaran had gone, and watched the cloudwall veil that forest day by day.

But the circle remained about them, and the folk of Caer Wiell went about their business, knowing quite as well as he, he reckoned, that their lord had not ridden to this place where he had gone—since his horse was still in stable and no men had been called to go with him. Gossip would happen, but there was a strange calm about this gossip, a matter of factness like the confidence with which his own mother had set out bowls of milk for visitors in the night. This cloud was a sign, it was clearly a sign, and not a good one; but a steady hammering went up from Smith's forge, and smoke and sparks: and riders went to and fro on the road keeping up contact with the borders, while wagons groaned their way in from the steadings, and the storehouse filled day by day, preparing for siege.

So now a wagon came, lumbering from distance to nearness, and when it had come near enough, Domhnull came down and stood leaning on his stick while the wagon came through the gates. A farmwife drove it; a girl was on the seat beside her.

"Where from?" he asked, hoping for news from the borders.

"Raghallach's Steading," the farmwife said. "The boys be all at the border, and that cloud—yon's ugly, an't it?"

Domhnull cast an involuntary glance upward, shrugged, leaning on his stick and grinned. "Sun's fair, goodwife."

For a moment the stout face looked bothered, grayed hair sticking with the sweat, lips clamped. Then a spark came to dark eyes and a grin showed gapped teeth. She clapped the girl on the shoulder, smoothed her tangled hair and nodded. "Oh, aye, 'tis."

"Stay in hold," Domhnull said, "if you like."

"Brought the stores, I did, all's to spare. Left my mark on t'door so's my folk won't worry. It's my granddarter, see—" She looked down at the small face, and up again. "There be trouble about the steading. I be a fair shot wi' my man's old bow, but them things comes at nightfall, run off the cow, they did, and got the sheep, e'en Sobhrach's lamb, poor thing."

"Nothing here," said Domhnull, "to trouble you—Cein," he said, the man being among others who had come up. "Take them through."

So he let them pass and turned away, thinking most on his own kin and glad that his mother had already come in and stayed. Beorc was on the border still. He found himself, but for Branwyn and Siodhachan, chiefest in the hold now, a thing he had never looked for. He had become Sir Domhnull and respected; but it seemed to him that all it meant was standing still and not doing the things he would do: like riding with the searchers, like going where he knew how to look, like seeing for himself and not relying on messages days old.

Thunder muttered. He glanced up at the clouds and saw no dark ened source of thunder. About him in the hold no others seemed to have heard it. Folk were going about their business. That strange deafness disturbed him, the more as the thunder grew and no one noticed. He strode for the walls, his limp pronounced, his stick for gotten in his hand. Behind in the yard was the squeal of the oxcart wheels on pavings. Children played. A rooster crowed, long and loud, fit to break the morning.

Then thunder clapped, deafening, and horses whinnied and cattle lowed. There was a pause in voices, a sudden exclamation.

Lightning blazed in Domhnull's path, just within the gates, a thunder-rumbling, the shape of horse and rider burning like the sun and dimming then.

"Lord," Domhnull whispered. It was himself.

"Domhnull. Help." It was the ghost of a voice, and the shape reached out to him. He went, flinging his stick aside, offering his hands, and Ciaran came down to him, sliding into his arms. For a moment there was no weight, and then there was, as the white horse of the Sidhe retreated. He could not bear it and sank to the pavings on his knees, shielding his lord's head and shoulders at least. Ciaran's face was waxen-pale, his flesh seeming to glow inside with light beyond what fell on it, and the bones standing out. Arrows had pierced him, three in the chest and ribs, broken stubs of shafts that moved with his breathing, and yet there was no bleeding.

"Gods," Domhnull said, feeling tears damned up in him. "O gods." He trembled. He brushed dirt from Ciaran's cheek and the closed lids flickered. He stared about him, stunned, realizing he could not lift him, that he knelt in a ring of people in the gateway. "For the gods' sake do something. Help him. Arafel!"

"No," Ciaran whispered. His eyes opened and there was a mur mur from the folk. He moved. It was incredible that any man could breathe, his body so pierced, but breaths continued. His hand sought the pavement and pressed to raise himself. The stone glowed upon his breast, like a moon by daylight. "Don't call, don't use that name."

"Lord," Domhnull said, and then another arrived running, Branwyn racing breathless through the crowd. She stopped. One might have expected a cry, a wail—something. She only came quietly and knelt and took her lord's hand and brought it to her lips, bloody that it was.

"I have had dreams," she said. "The children saw you coming home—o Ciaran, Ciaran!"

"He is sleeping," Domhnull said when he came out to the chil dren, there waiting in the hall; he had rather face enemies than this, these young faces, these hearts hanging on every turn of word for hope or something hidden from them. They stood there like two waxen images, with vast bruised eyes, and so, so lost, not knowing how much folk lied at such times, or how much a man might want to tell two children, or what horror might have been up there, while the door was closed. They waited. He opened his arms to them both. They came and he hugged them tight, like comrades, like something more than the children they were treated, and felt his senses aswim with panic and with loss. Perhaps it was the talismans they wore. For a moment he could not get his own breath, and felt somewhere lost, in mist, as if they stood in some space without boundaries or safety, naked to evil and to good. "O gods," he murmured, "but he will heal. I did. And she loves him more."

They looked up at him then, two pairs of eyes staring into him; but it was only the hall about them, solid stone, and the light came from torches in this unwindowed room.

"Iron," said Ceallach, half-whispered, "Domhnull, they shot him with iron."

" 'Tis gone now. We drew it." The image was vivid in him, the waxen skin, Siodhachan's knives, but only a little loss of blood—He saw the young faces, their pale, pale faces, as if they were drained of tears as their father was of blood. They could not know such things, must not be privy to them, with the cloudwall building over them, their father so unnaturally pale and still beyond the door.

"Can we see him now?" Meadhbh asked.

They were not to do so. Their mother had forbidden it. But Branwyn had not seen their faces, heard their voices, so calm and reasoned they broke his heart. "Yes," he said, "but from the door. You would not want to wake him. Listen to me. From such great hurts—well, sleep is best."

He took them then to the door which Muirne was leaving. He took it from her hand, and cracked it wider, so that they could see where Ciaran lay abed, Branwyn kneeling at his side. His face was calm.

So was Branwyn's now. She gazed at him and them and motioned to them, laying a finger to her lips to sign them quiet, and noiselessly they came to their father's bedside.

Forgive me, Domhnull sent with his eyes, but Branwyn hugged her children, Meadhbh and then Ceallach, wiped with her thumb the tears that spilled silently down composed, pale faces. So silently she urged them to go after they had seen their father. Domhnull held out his hand again, not without a look at his lord lying there so still.

Ciaran's eyes had opened. "Hush," said Branwyn, "go back to sleep."

The faintest of smiles touched his face, the smile of a man looking on what he loved, and then it faded and his eyes closed. Sweat broke out upon his brow, and his face had again that waxen light, his brows and nostrils and the edges of his mouth so drawn that it seemed another man, the lines of age smoothed by pain into an illusion of youth and fierceness.

Like a King, Domhnull recalled the vision. Or the Sidhe.

"Father," Meadhbh whispered. "Father—"

"Go," Branwyn said distractedly, her arm about the pillow on which Ciaran's head rested. "Let him sleep."

Meadhbh fled. Ceallach hesitated a moment, his face anguished, and Domhnull took his hand and led him.

They wept afterward, like children. Muirne came and brought them sweet cakes and a bit of ale and this at last tempted them; Domhnull won smiles from them, the sort without laughter or happi ness, but brave, their father's kind of smile when he had looked on them. There was the smell of rain in the air, reminding them of clouds, even in this room, and sometimes thunder muttered.

"That's the white horse outside," said Meadhbh, her eyes wide, her hand upon the talisman at her throat. A chill ran over Domhnull's skin, and comfort at once, that there was still something of the Sidhe near them.

"Perhaps," he said, "its owner is not far."

"It is lost," said Ceallach in that same distant tone, as if he were listening to something else at the same time. "It grieves for someone. O Domhnull—something is wrong down by the river."

"Hush," he said, "hush. Be still. Come back and drink your ale. Get them more, Muirne. I think they could well stand it."

"No," said Meadhbh.

A strange sound was growing on the air, so that Domhnull stirred, thinking of thunder, of the clouds, of the creature that he had seen— but it was a different, earthy sound, of hooves, of echoes off the wall that had nothing to do with thunder.

"There are riders coming," Muirne whispered. "Domhnull, do you hear?"

"Aye," he said, and thrust himself to his feet in haste, in dread, for they were coming hard and they were almost at the gates. "Where is the watch, that we get no word? Gods help us." He started down the stairs. He had followers, Muirne, Meadhbh and Ceallach, but he did not delay to stop them.

So they came out onto the walls where others had gathered, as the gates groaned open and the riders thundered into the yard on lathered horses, riders whose colors and whose metal brightness had been obscured with dust until even their faces were masks. They were Caer Wiell folk; and no dust could hide the foremost, for his size and fiery hair and beard.

"Beorc," Domhnull breathed, and headed down the last stairs to meet his cousin.

There was yet another visitor in the room, perched on his bedside. Ciaran saw him without opening his eyes, saw him best that way, a lump of darkness sitting there staring at him, but Branwyn had not seen him: her golden head was bowed, the light coming to her so that it picked out the silver amid her braids, dancing on the stones of the wall, but never, never touching the darkness. The pain was deep in him, a gnawing pain of iron where the poison had spread. He felt an ache as if he had gotten a hailstone for a heart, pain of wounds, of loss, of seeing Branwyn sitting there so lost and helpless. He could not move. The world seemed too still for that, or too fragile. I shall slip away, he thought; I shall never see her again, and the children, and my fields and all the rest, the table set for dinner, Meadhbh laughing, Branwyn in the sunlight, none of these things. It will tear like spiderweb, this world.

"Take off the stone," Lord Death said. "You have that much strength."

"Is that what you have come for?"

Death stirred, came closer, leaning over him while Branwyn drowsed. "For you—yes, my friend. Give up the stone. Turn it loose and give me your hand—o Man, there is little hope enough; but at least you will be spared the worse things." There seemed others beyond him, mother, cousins, friends; a tall brooding figure hung back from the rest, and that was his father, still frowning.

"Ciaran," his father said, "I was wrong."

"I have seen your son and daughter," his mother said. "They are very fair. Will you not bring them? And Branwyn too?"

"My daughter," said another, shadow-wrapped, with a golden-haired woman by his side.

There were others, shadows, crowned with gold. One face was brighter. It was Laochailan's, and tears ran on his gaunt face. "Ciaran, Ciaran of Donn," his King said. "They have murdered me."

"Lord," said others, a shadow-host, folk of his hold. Blood and dust marked them. Arrows pierced them, men he had left at the border, farmer-folk who had rallied there. "They never cease to come. What shall we do?"

"There is no luck in Donn," his father said. "Nor hope now."

"Murdered," said his King.

"No!" He opened his eyes then, caught a breath that pained him. Branwyn caught his hand.

"Beorc is here. Beorc has come back safe from the border."

He said nothing to this. He was not surprised at this passage of familiar faces, not then nor later when Beorc came with Domhnull to stand beside his bed.

"He is sleeping again," Branwyn said. "Domhnull says that he will mend. He will."

He smiled to hear that, wishing to believe that and not the dreams.

"Come back," said Lord Death, but the sound of waves was in his ears, and a white horse came running toward him in the dark.

Man, said another voice, cling to the stone. There is no other hope. There is none in all the world. You must help me.

"It hurts," he said.

Ciaran, that voice cried, at the margin of the world, for the world's sake, hold on!

The white horse waited. Thunder rumbled from its hooves.

A black one waited too. Death was there, with other riders. "There is battle coming," said Lord Death, "in which you cannot share. How long will you lie there suffering? They suffer too, who love you. Free them. There is no more hope. But you at least might be safe in my hands. I shall gather as many of them as I can. Old friends, kinsmen, family. Be free of this world. There will be other heroes. Make way. Make room. Call one you trust and pass on the stone. Domhnull might bear it."

He felt after the stone and held it clenched tightly in his hand, ignoring the voice. The pain came in little waves, like the rocking of the sea, and greater ones, like the blowing of the wind. He held fast, feeling at times the coolness of sweat on his face when the world's wind would stir through the window. Now and again someone touched him and wiped his brow, now and again raised his head to give him drink; at times he looked and Branwyn was there, and he slipped his other hand in hers.

Thunder cracked.

"Is it raining?" he asked.

"No," she said, "not yet."

He drifted back again, having gathered up the scattered threads. "Liosliath," he said, "Liosliath, Liosliath." It was a misty way, out among the trees. The white horse ghosted among them, and lifted his head toward the sea. "Hear me," he said, "Liosliath. I have lost her. She has gone somewhere into the wood, and something has gotten loose in the world. I dare not call its name, but I think you would know it."

There was no clear answer, but a touch at the stone, a flooding of strength into it.

"Come," a voice said then, a whisper hollow as the sea. "Hear the gulls?"

"Beware," said another voice, "to hear only true voices. Some will doom you. A mistake will doom the world . . . and some seem very fair."

"I hear something singing," he said, and fair it seemed, wailing on the wind.

He was asleep again, his face so drawn and thin: Branwyn never let the candles die, seldom quit his side, though Muirne came and gave her drink and others came, like Beorc, big man that he was, so soft-footed in his tread, to look in and then depart again.

Now Beorc knelt, bending to one knee, to take her hand in his huge one, to press her fingers.

"Lady," he whispered, "go to hall awhile, go to bed, and let me watch—Do you think some harm could come to him with me beside him? Nothing in this world or the other would I let pass. You have children, lady. They need you. They need you to sleep a bit and eat a bit, and wash your face and smile."

She understood. She gazed at him from that distance of long pa tience, having wept all she meant to weep while her lord was living, but Beorc's loyalty touched her to the quick. "They're not my chil dren," she said, "but his. Do you think I dare have them near him, Sighted as they are? They saw him fall; they saw him coming home. What more should they see, Beorc? I'm blind to such things. I can only watch him, not—not suffer the other things. And my children know. They know where I have to be."

"They are children," said Beorc, "and see their own hurts too well."

"Do they?" She thought back on breakfast tables, on childish tears, on baby faces, and first steps, and skinned knees; and the forest when they were lost; and the gateway, when they were found. But she gazed on Ciaran's sleeping face and that had more power than all these things. "No."

A singing had grown again, some old tree wailing in the wind, some thing of nature, for the wind was strong outside tonight and thunder muttered. For a while that was the only sound. The wind came into the chamber, and Branwyn tugged the covers higher.

"No," she said, when Beorc got up and went to the shutters. "He refuses to have them closed."

He stopped, his mouth set, his eyes troubled. "Curse that thing."

"It's some old tree down by the river; a limb must have broken." She smoothed Ciaran's hair, used her kerchief to wipe his brow. "Hush, hush, go on sleeping."

"Tree," Beorc said. "Lady, do you not hear it?"

She looked at him with a sudden stricture of the heart. "I hear the wind," she said. "Give me none of your imaginings."

"It must be." His shoulders fell. His eyes settled beyond her, on Ciaran, with vast sorrow. She knew the tale. She had heard it, outside the door, the border in disarray, steadings burned. The last refugees were coming. They did not say such things within this room, in Ciaran's hearing. Here the talk was all of peace, of calm, of home and will you take a little soup, love? but he would not. And the borders were afire, the clouds above them narrowing day by day. There were creakings and groanings they could not disguise. What is that? he would say. Oh, supplies brought in, she would answer: he seemed easy to deceive, forgetting that she had said that before; and meanwhile the yard filled, and tents were set, and Caer Wiell pre pared for siege.

"Not the wind," Ciaran whispered, and his eyes had opened some what. "Love, don't you hear it?"

"Out on it," Branwyn said lightly. "Listening after all." She smiled then for him, and dabbed his brow. "Look you, should we not close the shutters?"

"Is that Beorc? Gods, who's in command up there? Ruadhan?"

"Lord." Beorc came anxiously and held his hand. "It's well enough."

"Well." Ciaran's eyes drifted shut again. "Old wolf, to lie to me. I know. I can see, better than either of you. And hear." The voice came faintly, at great effort. "I can't stay longer. I have a ride to make. Aodhan is waiting. Branwyn, Branwyn—"

"O gods, Ciaran." She put her arms about his neck, held him so, her head against his. "I will not let you, No."

The sights afflicted her if she let them, a place of mist, where dark shapes twined amid ghostly trees, where a white figure washed bloody rags in Caerbourne's waters, wailing as she worked. She ban ished the visions, keeping her eyes open, fixing them on the familiar solid stones; and Beorc, Beorc was there. She heard the wailing clearer now, a hungry thing and nearer.

So Rhys came riding in, all unexpected. There were cheers from the walls where anxious folk had gathered to see what this dustcloud meant in the waning of the sun—waning, not setting, for the sun died daily into murk, choked by the cloudy ramparts in the west. In this greenish twilight the folk of the south came riding with their black and silver banners, three companies bristling with spears.

"Dryw's folk!" the cry went out—"Rhys is coming!" from place to place along the walls, from those who had vantages to those who did not.

"Open the gates," Domhnull cried, for once the great gates were shut, someone in authority had to open them; and he sent a page running to bear word to the hah¹, to Beorc and to the lady, who might whisper it in their lord's hearing and so give him cheer.

And: "Rhys," he said, embracing the smallish man who dis mounted and met him on the stairs, the while the folk still cheered. "Rhys." Domhnull limped. His face was scarred. There was haunt ing in Rhys' dark eyes and a gauntness about the cheekbones, new lines about the mouth. They held each other at arm's length and tried to read each other, but Domhnull simply hugged the southron a second time with all he had to tell dammed up in his throat, and looked at him again. Others had come up to the foot of the steps, smallish men, two of them, much like Rhys in their dark cloth and darkened metal. "My brothers," Rhys said, "Owein and Madawc ap Dryw."

"Our lord cannot be here to greet you," Domhnull said, "or he would. But welcome to his hall, in his name and in his lady's your cousin. Gods reward you for this, all. Ale and supper for your men— we are not scanted of that." He spied a captain on the wall; he shouted orders. "Come," he said then to Rhys and his brothers. "Come upstairs. I would ask you which you would, rest or news, but this much first: lord Ciaran is hurt—" The truth stuck in his throat. "My lady is there. Come see her."

"Sore hurt?"

He nodded, lips clamped on words he would not say. "Will you come there first? My lady will not leave him."

"Aye," Rhys said. His tired face took on a resolution for still worse than he had seen.

Branwyn wept, quietly, at their coming to the room; and hugged them one and all, Rhys and Owein and Madawc, though talk went in whispers: "He will mend," she said as she had insisted a hundred times. "He sleeps a great deal, and that is to the good. I will tell him you've come. He'll want to see you."

But Ciaran lay very still, his breathing hardly stirring the coverlet, so pale that his flesh and the moonstone on his breast seemed little different. "Yes," Rhys whispered back. "Tell him we have come."

And afterward in hall Rhys hugged his youngest cousins and sat down to ale and meat, he and his brothers, trail-worn and haggard, while the dark fell outside and the wailing began again from the riverside.

"You had no easy ride coming here," Domhnull said. They were all at hand, Beorc, Muirne, Meadhbh and Ceallach by the fire they laid of evenings; Leannan with his harp encased and songless; Siodhachan whose wrinkled face was a map of years and present sor rows.

"No," said Rhys, "it was not. But An Beag has men to bury, by the ford.

"Well done," Beorc said. His eyes burned. His huge hands knotted up in fists.

"There were other things," said Rhys. He did not look up, but the thought was there, the ring of cloud, the darkness through which they had ridden. "There were men we could not bury. Gods help them." His mouth was drawn at the comers. He took a drink of wine and Domhnull looking on him caught a glance of his eyes when the cup had lowered. A chill came on Domhnull then, a keen ache in all his wounds, kinship with all those who had fared outside of daylight, in fell places and old.

"What happened here?" Rhys asked.

"Misjudgment," Domhnull said. His muscles all were hard, and ached on mended bones. "How did you get through?"

There was darkness enough in Owein's and Madawc's eyes, of proud men not used to fear; but Rhys' was more. "With small things in the bushes and arrows in the dark; and two horses gnawed to bone and men we never found. Nor could delay for." Rhys shivered, and leaned on his knees, the cup clenched between his knees; a fury was on his face. "Mist. A lot of that. An unnatural lot of that. We hoped for better here. Some of my folk went home: Gwernach and his folk —I sent them for my father's defence. We saw the sunlight; we had hoped beyond Caerbourne Ford. Easier An Beag arrows than the forest road by night; but something went with us—whether a fair thing or foul I know not, but at the last it led us fair. There have been such things. I saw a pooka once."

"And followed it?" Domhnull asked.

"O, friend, it followed me. That was on my way. This was smaller, a noise in the leaves—it loved the trees too well to leave them, and hung about the streams. And we none of us liked it, but there was no parting from it. And we saw it scampering through the brush, small and quick it was, and always ahead of us till the ford, till the cursed singer—" He fell silent. There was the wind outside, and always, the singing. "We have heard that wailing at night. Two nights upon the road."

"It can sing all it likes," said Muirne. "It's not coming in, that thing."

"It's Sidhe," said Meadhbh, a small voice. She sat by her brother, by the fire. "It wants our father."

"Be still," said Muirne, "hush, Meadhbh, don't speak of it."

There was silence then. There were a great many things not fit for speaking tonight. Domhnull's heart went out to the children. He moved close by them and sat down on the hearthside, his arms about them both.

"You'll want your beds," said Beorc to Rhys and the others. "I'll have bedding brought."

Rhys looked about him, at the hall where bedding was scattered in corners, pillows tucked in chairs, that told its own tale of how they rested. "I'll wash," he said. "I'll watch here."

Beorc nodded, gazing steadily at him. " 'Tis hard to think of rid ing, Rhys, but those men of yours would be a welcome sight north ward: Ruadhan is hard pressed on the border. Gods know I should be up there, but—"

"We will take the beds," said Madawc in a voice like Rhys', quiet. "Owein and I will take our men north. That is why we came. Or west. Or where you like."

Beorc clamped his lips together, still staring, moist-eyed. "Gods reward it, Madawc."

"Gods send us enemies," said Owein darkly. "Our folk have need of them after such a ride, with things no arrow troubles. We have arrows saved for the Bradhaeth, or Damh, and gladly for An Beag."

"We are Dryw's sons," said Rhys. "And there is blood between us and these northrons. Much of it."

Beorc rose up and led them down the stairs. Domhnull sat watch ing, but his heart was not eased. He held Meadhbh and Ceallach against him, frail-seeming, watching much, they were. He felt them shiver. Oftentimes they gazed off into nothing at all, or watched the fire, or drowsed and picked at the food Muirne kept offering them. They are in danger, he thought, perceiving war of a different kind than spears. He held them tightly.

Be kinsman to them, Ciaran had said. He thought of his own mother, busy among her neighbors down below with this and that matter, the baking of bread, the ordering of shelters, meddling even in Caer Wiell's kitchens on the strength of her connections—nothing daunted her. She always had an answer; and these waifs, the children of a lord and a lady too wrapped in grief, he wished he could bring them to her; but he could not. They would not be comforted. Go to bed, Muirne had told them, had sternly ordered; but Meadhbh had sat down, plump upon the hearth three nights ago, and Ceallach had folded his arms and lifted his chin with a look that was Ciaran's own, which few had seen but his men when things were at their worst; and Meadhbh had one of his looks too, that quieter one, which measured distances and battlefields. So there had been pallets laid down, and both of them like weeds did as they liked, when they liked, where they liked; only sometimes they turned anguished looks toward the stairs when there was some sound, not often asking with more than silence; or their shoulders would droop or their heads fall, when, as now, they were willing to be held, to lay their heads against him, being not all grown. In his mind he railed on Branwyn, to desert them; and in his heart he knew why, as Ciaran had known—that they were strangers to Branwyn and grew more so. He bent his head, overburdened with knowings, brushed Meadhbh's brow with a kiss for comfort, as if she were his sister. She never stirred, nor did Ceallach. A stone of the fireplace bore into his back, but he did not move.

Rhys came back upstairs quietly and settled to sleep, the quick hard sleep of a man long without, in the dimmed hall; others settled; the fire burned down to embers and Muirne drowsed in her chair, her head on pillows.

And still the voice wailed, outside.

Go away, he wished it fiercely. Bain Sidhe, go away: he cannot die, our lord. Give up and go away.

Meadhbh lifted her head suddenly, violent and lost; Ceallach stirred. "Hush," Domhnull said, "it's just the same noise."

"My father!" Ceallach cried, thrusting him away.

And from the hall: "Beorc!" Branwyn cried. "Beorc—o help me!"

"He's abed again," Beorc said, closing the door at his back, facing them in the hall; stood for a moment as if he were set to keep that door, but then his shoulders fell and he looked more shaken than Domhnull had ever seen him. "He is weaker," Beorc said. "He is growing weaker now."

The children stood there. Muirne set her hands on Meadhbh's shoulders. Domhnull locked his arms about Ceallach's as if that could protect them.

"Curse that thing," Rhys said suddenly. "Curse it. It's that howl ing, it's no luck to the house, that thing."

"It is Sidhe," said Siodhachan from his corner by the fire. The old man's lips trembled. "And there is no fighting it. Speak no curses. Speak no curses, ap Dryw."

"Bain Sidhe," said Leannan. "It wants a life. It could have mine. Gods know it could. I would give it." And the harper wept, wiping at his eyes. "O gods."

"Or mine," said Ceallach. "It could have mine instead."

"By the gods, no!" Beorc cried. His face twisted. "Talk of appeasing that thing—by the gods, no giving that cursed thing any life of ours. It'll have to take me first, by the gods it will." His eyes were wild as battle. It was contagion. Rhys was on his feet, his dark face flushed, his hands clenched.

"We won past it once," Rhys said. "It's at the river. Do you dare, Scaga's-son?"

"For the gods' sake," Muirne cried. "No."

"And you, mac Gaelbhan?"

Domhnull shivered. It was mad. To attack a Sidhe—it was a thing hopeless from the start. But its price for leaving was a life. He dropped his hands from Ceallach's shoulders. "Tracking a Sidhe— aye, let's be at it. At that I have some advantage."

"No," Muirne whispered, "no, o gods, no."

Beorc headed for the door to the downstairs; Rhys went; Domhnull did, mortally afraid. But Beorc got his cloak from beside the stairs and Rhys borrowed one, and they headed down the stairs. "Wait," Domhnull said snatching his, less agile. The madness grew in him, after so long waiting, so much fear. He hastened on the stairs, using his hand to steady him, gathered his sword where they left such things nowadays, at the bottom on their pegs, far from their lord and his hall. They did not run; they went with purpose, opened the door outward to the wall and went out where lightning flickered and wind battered at them.

They bore iron. It was sure at least the Sidhe had no love for it. Domhnull belted on his sword and came after Beorc and Rhys. "Open the lesser gate," Beorc bade the watch as they went down the steps, and such was his voice that the man did it, and let out the three of them afoot, hunters of the Sidhe who wailed death into the winds—afoot, for it could not now be far and no horses could be trusted.

"By the river," Domhnull said. A sense had settled into him for days now, that he knew where it laired. He shivered in the wind, in the dark; and drew his sword, keeping up with the others with diffi culty. He remembered the stones about Caer Donn, and wind and mist. It seemed he could hear the hoofbeats of a horse, racing this way and that in distress, like something pent and desperate.

The shore was far, far, and there were dangers on the way, a maze, barriers forbidding and dark. "I am still here," said Death. "Still here if you want me."

"My friend," said Ciaran. His heart ached. "Give me up."

Death settled on the windowledge. His sword was in his hands, and the hands were darkness, but bone was in them too. His hooded head was bowed. His face was still concealed. Outside, the wailing grew shrill, and hoof beats circled, circled, wilder and wilder, like the beating of a heart.

"Give me up," Ciaran breathed, and pain rode the breath. "Go away. And take the Bain Sidhe with you."

"Over the Sidhe I have no power. Least of all that one. It gives me gifts. It goes before me. I do not rule it. It will have its due. And your friends have gone to hunt it."

"O gods, gods, stop it! Prevent them!"

"I have only one power over Men. Which shall I choose, lord Ciaran?"

"Ciaran," Branwyn said. The visions shattered, became pain, be came the room, hard to keep. Her hand enclosed the stone. For a moment he felt her grief, her love. She slipped her fingers beneath the chain.

"No," he said, "no, Branwyn. Let it be. If you take that I shall die."

She wept. Her hand trembled. He felt her desolation in the thing she had resolved to do.

"No," he said, loving her for that. "O no."

She took her hand away. She held his. She looked into his eyes, hers all astream with tears, but she composed her face and smiled a desperately false smile. "Well, awake?" she said. She began to talk, softly, to weave a spell of words; and he knew what she purposed, that she would keep him while she could, but that when there was no hope left she would cast the stone away, to steal him back from Eald.

"You mustn't," he said.

"She loves you," Death said. "She means to do this. And so I have to be here, until the Sidhe is sated."

Branwyn washed his brow, whispered on, of Meadhbh and Ceallach; Rhys had come—he blinked, wondering when he had ever gone, or where; she talked of siege, fiercely, telling him things he could not remember even while he was hearing them.

"The King is dead," he said. "Had I said that?"

She carried his hand to her lips. "Hold on," she said. "Would you ever give up Caer Wiell? Hold fast. Hold on while you can. You have to defend the hold. Stay here, beside me."

That much he understood, that little thing she asked, who had right to ask so much. He hovered there bewildered, remembering their youth, such as they had had together, in the long ago.

Then:

"Man." It was Liosliath. He knew the voice. It had been part of himself once. He heard it speaking to him. A white thing rose up between, wailing and bloody-handed.

"Hold on," cried Branwyn.

"No," Meadhbh said, thrusting off Muirne's hands. She ran, raced to the corner where Ceallach had fled, themselves against Muirne, Leannan, everyone who guarded them; she clutched Ceallach's hands in hers, cast a wild look on familiar faces, anxious faces. "We know where it is. Let us go and tell them. It wants him, that thing." The sound was everywhere the wind blew now, everywhere, in blood and bone and stone and timber of the hold.

"Let us go!" cried Ceallach.

And then they went, so suddenly, into such a blast of cold it took the breath, a passage into the place of mist and trees.

"Where are we?" Meadhbh said, shivering. "Ceallach, where are we?"

"There," he said in a voice fainter than the wind and the singer. "O Meadhbh—I think we're there, on the riverside."

"Find the men, O Ceallach, we have to find them."

"We're lost, Meadhbh!"

"Not we." She clenched her hand about the gift she wore. "We can't be! We can't be lost, remember? It's the men who've lost them selves." She heard the river mingled with the singer and the trees the wind was tossing. She trod now on wet grass. There was moonlight from above, lightning from the cloudwall, a curious and dreadful luminescence. She gathered up a stone. Ceallach took another, si lently.

They saw it then, a small white thing that perched among the trees —so small a thing, like a withered woman all gauze and rags, wash ing, washing something in the stream.

"Ciaran," Branwyn said. "Ciaran."

Lord Death only sat there, head bowed, the sword within his hands.

"Branwyn," Ciaran said. His eyes were shut or open: he could not tell. The visions crowded close. The singing grew. A horse whinnied desperately. "Listen to me, Branwyn."

"Woe," the Singer wailed, "woe and worse to come. Woe and desolation—"

"Get it," Meadhbh sobbed. She drew back her arm, cast a futile stone.

"No," piped a reedy voice. "O no, do not touch it, never touch it, throw no stones."

They started at that crashing through the brush, at the small and hairy thing that peered up at them.

"You," said Meadhbh.

The Gruagach hugged itself, it rolled its eyes, it shivered in the lightning. "Let be, go back, go back, you do no good."

"No!" She took another stone and cast it at the singer; Ceallach's hurtled after, splashing in the water, two sets of rings in the lightning where the Sidhe had been.

"Woe," wailed down the winds.

"Get it," Ceallach cried, gathering another stone; the Bain Sidhe drifted on the water beneath the wind-whipped trees, clutching bloody rags against its whiteness. He cast.

"Ceallach," Meadhbh cried, for it had grown again by half. It grew straighter, brighter, striding on the river.

"There it is," someone cried, and: "Gods!"

It wailed. It towered above the trees, a shape more and more terrible and swift.

"It grows!" Meadhbh cried. "O no—no—no—."

"Beorc!" Ceallach shouted, and started to run, but brambles held them, tore their hands and faces, and threads of white went every where in the brush, the wailing grew and grew, everywhere about them.

"Stop it!" Meadhbh cried, struggling in the thorns. "Thistle, help! Thistle, Thistle—stop it, help!" But nothing came. The tendrils wrapped them round, cold as ice and ghostly. A name, she wished, o gods, a Name, anyone. "Gruagach!" But it was small and weak. "Caolaidhe, Caolaidhe!" she cried. "Caolaidhe! Come help us!"

The white tendrils drew back from them. The wailing went away down the river, to the other side. The water surged, a large body coming up.

It was there, the river horse, black and shining wet. It waited for them. It threw its head. Its eyes shone like gold lamps in darkness.

"Get it," Ceallach said. "Follow it—keep that thing far from here."

It threw its head; it whuffed the winds and trumpeted its chal lenge.

"Branwyn," Ciaran whispered. He thought he did. He heard the hoofbeats coming. She bent close and kissed him. He could hardly feel the touch. The world was dimmed.

"Gods help me," he said.

"We have lost you," said Lord Death.

"Meadhbh!" It was Beorc's voice, cracking in the wind, obscured in thunder.

"Go," she cried. "Never let it near him!" The each-uisge sped, a flowing of water toward water, that scattered them with drops. She flinched from it and turned, grasping at Ceallach's shoulder. The men came, Beorc and Rhys and Domhnull, Domhnull last and Rhys swiftest to reach them, running down the hill.

"O," a small voice piped from among the rocks, "too late, too late, o run, shelter, o haste, haste, haste! He is gone, gone, sped!"

Meadhbh ran with Ceallach, each dragging the other, into Rhys' arms, and Beorc's; and Domhnull coming last.

"We drove it off," Ceallach wept. "We sent it away. O Beorc—it mustn't have him."

"Too late," the small voice wailed, "late, late, late."

Hoofbeats confounded themselves with thunder. The hillside burst in fire, a shock of lightning; a tree blazed up and scattered fire and fragments into the river.

Then the rain, pelting down on them, drenching them to the skin. Meadhbh held her gift and thought of home, now, at once, but the men bore iron, poisoning the air, and the lightning played over them, flickering through the rain.

"Run," Domhnull cried, seizing at them, his fair face drowned and stark in the flashes. "Run, get under cover."

Rhys dragged her up the long hill to the walls; she ran, ran, ran, after Beorc and Ceallach, till her side split and her senses swam, and the gate opened for them and closed after.

They came up the stairs, drenched and shivering; the men cast away their swords with hollow clashes, and got them up into the hall.

Their mother stood there. So they knew. Meadhbh stopped, too numb to think, except that they had lost. Someone pulled her to his embrace, touched her cheek, but she had no tears, had nothing.

"He—left," their mother said, in a still voice they had never heard her use, a whisper, like the rain upon the roof, all hollow and tone less. "Meadhbh, Ceallach, he just left, in that way he could. He couldn't die, you know. The stone wouldn't let him. Sidhe fade. It was like that, that all of a sudden I couldn't feel his hand, but I could see it. Aodhan, he said. That was a horse that was his once." She came to them, held out her arms. Meadhbh came and hugged her, wet as she was, and Ceallach came into her arms. She smoothed their hair; her hands trembled. "Did you see him?"

"No," Meadhbh said. Thunder cracked about the hold, shaking the stones. She remembered the cloud. Her mother was being very quiet, a restraint that was worse than thunderclaps; and there was this footing about the truth, of leavings and goings. Too late, the Gruagach had said. She lifted her head from her mother's shoulder and looked her in the eyes, hard and straight. "You mean he went away—like us? Like that?"

"Like that." Her mother's lips moved, forcing breath into the words. "He said good-bye. There's a place Sidhe go. He talked about the sea. He didn't die. He can't, now. Ever." For the first time her lips trembled into tears. She hugged them again, shook their heads back and looked at them. "Can't you cry?" their mother asked.

Meadhbh shivered. Her clothes were cold; it got into her bones, except where the Sidhe gift rested about her neck. She patted her mother's cheek, feeling it soft and warm and remembering the smell of lilacs and oil and metal.

They had lost him after all. They had not watched him well enough. She felt herself at fault; and touched the gift about her throat, remembering what it meant: but all Eald faltered, crashed in ruin overhead, around, about them. Her throat ached.

"My lady." It was Leannan's voice, from over by the corner, a-tremble and very soft. "Forgive me, lady— He's gone. Siodhachan's gone."

The old man looked asleep, nodding in his corner by the fire. His face was peaceful.

"O gods," Rhys whispered, and his voice broke. "The old man outran us."