The Tree of Swords and Jewels

TWO Caer Wiell

Branwyn wept, in the upper hall of Caer Wiell, her hands against her eyes as she sat huddled in her chair before the hearth. To her credit she wept alone, her children in their tower room with Muirne, her husband with his men down by the gate; for they were tears compounded of rage, of helplessness, of years and years of dread.

She hated Eald. It was a hate not born of anger, and yet having anger in it, for she had been betrayed. She had loved it once desper ately, when she had been a child, and so she feared it for her chil dren, with more than instinct. It and she were enemies, but quietly, gently—for all that she loved was tangled in Eald: her husband, her home, her children latest of all. She saw a vision of green leaves and dancing light, touching all she had, and this light was without sub stance: she could not strike it or hold it in the hand, but no shutters or gates could stop it. It slipped through chinks and the wind that came from the woods breathed enchantments more potent than her mortality.

Something had touched her children, something of Eald had held them today, and so she clenched her fists and remembered herself as if she hovered in the air above the girl on a fat Caerdale pony, and that child was herself and that which hovered was herself grown and trying to warn the girl—-go back, go back, never trust them.

The vision always ended there, before the pony shied. It was more dreadful so, with every merry jogging step become horridly sinister, every stirring of the leaves a menace the child could not yet feel.

Go back, go back, go back.

It was strange, that she could never recall Arafel. In her mind she knew that there had been such a person, that this was the power that sat at the heart of the wood. She had spoken with her face to face, oh, many a time. But the face and the voice had left her mind, leaving only the memory of a memory, of something which had shaken her life and left a great gap about itself, making her doubt that it was ever true. She never admitted this to her husband, never spoke of it, but she knew that this was not so with him, that Eald was graven too deeply in his heart for him ever to forget. She hated Eald and embraced it, perceiving even in him, in Ciaran, in the father of her children, a green silence she could never breach, and thoughts she could never share, and a longing against which she worked all her mortal witchery—Stay, o stay, never think of her, never listen to the wind, never remember—whatever it is I cannot hold in my mind.

If she could shape this thing, she thought sometimes, she might gain power over it. Once she had walked into the heart of Eald, Ciaran's hand locked with hers, so that for a time she saw; but that memory too had fled like water through the sieve of her reason, and while she remembered that they had spoken with someone, that someone was lost to her. There had been a horse Ciaran had ridden; but she had not been able. In truth, she could not tell even looking at it whether it was a horse at all, whether something of surpassing beauty or surpassing horror, except that it was power, and it had carried her husband once to war, a thing of light and terror, and sometimes the memory of soft horselike breaths and sometimes the striking of a hoof, not horselike, but like the muttering of thunder in the distance.

She shivered, and gazed into the tiny fire they kept to warm this room in springtime. The memories faded, as faery things would, which was their camouflage in the world; faded from her, though once she had seen these things and touched the elvish horse and met Arafel face to face.

Stay away, she cried in her heart, never come back, never trouble us —for she knew that all the gifts she had and all her happiness came from that most untrustworthy source.

And faery gifts faded, like faery itself in the minds of its beholders, except for those of elvish blood.

She knew the rumors of her husband, that he was Sidhe and fey. He had never said so, but knew she had heard and did not gainsay. So the rumors were true, and that was indeed his heritage. She knew —knew things that troubled his deepest dreams, where Death pur sued him and gained a part of him, only biding for the rest. And whether this had truly happened, somewhere in Eald, or whether it was only a portending dream, she was not sure, in that way that all her memories shifted like quicksand. But it was real enough that a night of storm could send Ciaran into dark despair, when they were private, after he had put aside the cheerfulness he wore for others.

On such nights he scarcely slept, and started awake at cracks of thunder, relieved only when the dawn brought back the day. And then he would smile and laugh as if there had never been a cloud; but she had learned to dread these times, and something in her grew taut and miserable when such nights began.

Away, she mourned. Away, away.

But that was not the bargain she had struck; and now and again in a far and shifting fashion like the recollection of a dream she remem bered a face she could not hold longer than a breath, and a bright ness that held something of green and something of the sun and moon at once. Children might stray after such baubles, after such bright promises. She had no children, did Arafel, none that Branwyn knew; and it was in Branwyn's heart that the elf might feel an envy and desire of children.

They told such tales of the Sidhe, that they could be so cruel, so thoughtlessly cruel.

Had not Arafel been so cruel with her, promising a small girl faery-sights, and luring her into the forest to the loss of her pony and almost of her life?

Come away, a voice still whispered in her dreams. Let go and see things as they are.

But it was only memory, a voice without distinction, like the face.

The things she cherished now were warm and solid like Caer Wiell, her husband's arms, her children's laughter. She had traded all of faery promises for these.

Come with me, the voice had said, and see how the years pass, so soon withered like the violets; but there is no fading where I go. Take my hand, come with me, never hear them calling.

"Branwyn."

She turned where she sat, startled by her husband's voice, so softly he had come up the stairs; but that was his way, this quiet. He offered his arms to her; she held out her own and he came and knelt down by her, holding her, patting her shoulders, making her look at him.

"Were you crying?" he asked, with the evidence of it on her lashes. "O Branwyn, love, my love, my heart, there's no need for crying now. They're safe, full of bread and honey, no worse than scratches and skinned knees—"

"What was it they found?"

"Something— She called it a silly nix, a thing—Oh, don't speak of it It's nothing; it's gone, not to trouble us more."

"They will not go back to the river."

"They will not. They understand." He smoothed her hair, held her with great tenderness.

"It comes of this gadding about the fields, this—"

"You cannot grow flowers in the shade: they want the sun and wind, Branwyn."

She shivered, sat back from him, he kneeling and holding her clenched fists in his. For a long moment she fought for self-posses sion. "They cannot," she said, "grow like weeds. They cannot be deceiving Muirne and running off."

"No, they cannot. But they have the luck on them, they do, and that was on them today, and more than luck. —She will come to night, Branwyn. Here."

She needed a moment to understand.

"No," she said.

"How can it be no?" He was utterly dismayed. His face was stricken. "Branwyn—"

It was in the open then, his distress, her distrust; and then because she had never fought open war with her enemy: "Forgive me, I am distraught. I only want my house in peace, in peace—"

He gathered up her hand and carried it to his lips. She hardly felt the warmth. "Branwyn. You fear too much."

"What does she want?"

He had no ready answer. Some worry sat within his eyes, confirm ing her own dread. "Perhaps to warn us. Or to explain. Nothing more than that. Perhaps to be courteous. She is that. The Daoine Sidhe are much on courtesy. Branwyn, she is our friend. She has always been. Look you, what land since the war is blessed like ours, what fields as green as ours—"

"Or children," she said harshly, "so many and so fair? —I waited. I waited fifteen long years with every house in the land more blessed than ours. I held the serving maid's daughters and I ached after daughters of my own—and watched children I had held become brides before I held my own daughter and my son. O, if this was blessing, Ciaran, it was slow to come to us, and forgive me, forgive me if I am too fond—"

"And are they only yours?" he asked.

She had no answer. His look robbed her, so that she shivered.

"They were long years," he said, "but we cannot lay them on Meadhbh's and Ceallach's shoulders and crush the spirit from them. And they were good years, Branwyn."

"They were good years," she admitted, "but o, Ciaran, if we were so blessed—if there was luck on us—why not that simple luck that farmwives had and I did not? So I hold them close. And today— today I feared perhaps—"

"She is our friend. Branwyn, they are safe thanks to her."

She thought about that a time, and her heart grew a little broader, and her memory a little clearer, that once there had come a light into Caer Wiell, and in that light a shape, and a voice. Almost she saw her, a ragged figure in faded clothes, but she could not see the face.

"I would like to make her welcome," Ciaran said. "For so many debts. For friendship. Branwyn, this hall was theirs once and long ago. Its name was Caer Glas, and I do not know if there is another place in all the world like this, where she might be here and still in Eald. I would be dead; and so might we all—but for Arafel."

There is Bonn, the thought leapt into her mind unbidden, where you were born. That also was theirs once. But she brushed that thought aside, as she did every unpleasant thing, keeping her own nest pure for those she loved. "We will set a table," she said, finding comfort in the proprieties of things, to tame the wild with bonds of courtesies, as if this were a charm to assure its civility. If she could once set it within her hall, she thought, and once fix it in her mind, if she could believe and once remember it, then she would feel safer; then she could get sureties of it, and learn to call its name.

Arafel she was, and Feochadan, which was Thistle; and other names besides. But the sound was not enough. She had to learn it with the heart, as Ciaran had, and she meant to do so, for the best of reasons, that Caer Wiell was her home, and she was born to it, of southron blood and of the line of kings and of an enemy Arafel had slain. The stones were hers, her home, the magic that she knew; and what entered here trod her ground. Here she might learn a thing, and remember this time, not letting it fade as it faded for others.

She still had power. It was herself her husband chose, to age in ordinary years, beside her; it was herself who held his children; and these were the things she dwelt on in her mind, that in Caer Wiell she was secure.

"There's my love," her husband said, and rising, touched his lips to her brow. "You'll see." He turned wistful and very grave. "At moonrise," he said.

It was long before Beorc rode in, for the searchers he had ridden farthest and deepest into the woods, and because of things he had seen or thought that he might have seen he would have no easy sleep for nights to come.

"Safe," he echoed when his lord himself had come down to the gate to meet him. "Gods be thanked." And then he turned his face again toward seeing to his horse, for shame that he went so weak and his eyes stung, perhaps with sweat, but perhaps not. He drew his bow and quiver from the saddle and slung both over his shoulder before delivering his good bay gelding to the grooms who waited.

"Get him a cup of ale," Ciaran said. "Come to hall when you have had your ease. I want to speak with you."

"Aye," Beorc muttered, turning about again, nodding a courtesy to his departing lord. Others had come down—Domhnull one, his cousin on his mother's side; and Rhys ap Dryw, a lord's son himself, but youngest of seven sons; and others who had been among the searchers. A boy took Beorc's bow and quiver, another his muddy cloak. "Who found them?" he asked concerning the children. "Where found?"

There was strange silence among the men. "The lord himself," one said, but seemed to hold something back.

"Come," said Domhnull, taking his arm. "Come upstairs."

Beorc followed up the stairs to the wardroom, and there sank down on a bench, working himself free of his buckles, his armor and his sweat-drenched clothes. Domhnull and Rhys stayed with him, and a flurry of pages ran in and out with a succession of basins and towels and the promised stoup of ale.

"Oh, that's good," Beorc murmured, his hair and beard plastered with cooling water and his lips wet with the frothy ale. He drew a quieter breath and looked up at his comrades who leaned nearby, Rhys with one foot on the bench and his arms on his knee, Domhnull braced against the wall, hands tucked in his belt. They were not of a kind, those two—his young cousin's an uncommon fairness, hair brighter than new straw, eyes blue and clear as a babe's; and Rhys must have looked sullen from his cradle, a dark, lean man with a brooding stare: his mountains bred grim folk as they bred kites and hawks. "No harm to them?" Beorc asked again, for something in the answers he had gotten and not gotten nagged at him with the sense of something amiss. "Where were they, asleep under some hedgerow?"

"No one knows," said Rhys.

" 'Her,' my lady said," Domhnull answered. "And 'not with her,' my lord answered back."

"How far did you ride?" asked Rhys of Beorc. "Myself, as far as the old wood, and then up the road and back; and I did not like the feel."

"Farther," said Beorc, and frowned for memory of the dark thick ets, the haunted silences. "It was not An Beag I feared. Not in this."

"So thought I," Domhnull murmured. "And so I think it was. They simply strayed."

"They are fey," said Rhys. "How should they not be? And I did not like the feel."

"Hist," said Beorc, "say no such thing, ap Dryw. Say no such thing of them."

"No," said Rhys, "but 'tis true—Mark you, Skaga's-son, this is true. And those two will find their way to it, to the Sidhe, being whose get they are—O Man, do not you bridle at me; I am their mother's cousin and their own, and friend, and his, no less than you. Fey father, fey offspring; and I didn't like the feel of it today, not so far as I rode."

"I feared them lost for good," Beorc said hollowly, the cup be tween his knees. "When the recall sounded, I feared the worst. There was a day I would not have—It was all a childish prank, then."

"Our lord was close about it," said Domhnull frowning. "And I don't think he feared An Beag either. He—"

"Hist!" Rhys straightened suddenly, his hand on his knife, and strode to the stairway. "Up here! You!"

A head appeared down below where a shadow had flitted, round the corner of the landing of the stairs, a balding pate and hangdog look and a general slouching of the whole man round the corner.

"Coille!" Domhnull muttered in disgust. "Who else?"

"Out," Rhys ordered, "—skulk."

Coille held out a pail. "Bringing water up, lord Rhys, only bring ing water, they told me to."

"Out!" Beorc shouted at him fit to wake echoes from the stairwell, and Coille fled, sloshing the steps as he went.

"Cursed gossip," Domhnull said.

"Bide here," said Rhys. "I'll put the fear in him."

"Stay," said Beorc. "Stay,"—for the southron was a fell man and wild. "Keep that knife of yours in sheath."

"Did I say I would mark him? Not I."

"No, but make much ado over his hearing and we'll not need Coille to gossip it. There's talk enough flying as it is."

"And will be," Rhys muttered. "Will be. That's the nature of you folk, to bandy everything about in market. You've no instinct for secrets, you valley-dwellers."

"There's nothing will make them love lord Ciaran less," said Domhnull. "Fey he may be, but tell them that in the steadings or gossip it in the barracks and they'll ask you fresher news." He laughed and settled the more easily, one foot on the windowledge. "Myself, I confess to have walked in the woods now and again. Wishful thinking, mine. I'd give a great deal for the sight of one of the fair folk; and if there's harm in that, why, Beorc, your own mother and mine would put out saucers of milk at evening. And you who were in the war—"

"You are too innocent," Beorc said.

"You never will speak of it," Domhnull said, frowning now. He seldom pounced on this, but did so with greatest concentration in this moment. "It's nature to tell tales, isn't it? Like Coille, chattering everything he hears, sparrow-like. It's nature that when wars have been people talk about them, and make songs of them—like the old songs. Even the Aescford has its song, with the King dying, and the Cearbhallain—But no one sings songs now. Those that fought there are getting old, and we that weren't there can't make them, and even the harper won't sing any—because no one who was there will talk."

"The harper was there," Beorc recalled shortly.

"But you won't say. The Sidhe was there. Wasn't it so? Everyone who was out there must have seen—and no one says. I was in the forest today. Across the river. I felt nothing ill."

'Then you are numb and deaf and blind," said Beorc, "cousin."

"Perhaps I am." Domhnull looked at Rhys and sighed after things unseen. "But you see things."

"My grandsire had the Sight," the southron said wryly, "but alas, you valley-dwellers called him mad."

"Do they talk about the war there?" asked Domhnull. "Or are they all like Beorc, gone dumb?"

"No whit more," said Rhys with a sober stare, "and I was at the keeping of our borders, so I saw nothing. But things of the fair folk fade and take strange shapes, and there is luck on this land. Why question? If we were all Coilles we would have no peace of chatter."

"You make less sense than usual," Domhnull said. "And maybe where the young ones hid has faded, quite, and all of it was moon beams. So they say the Sidhe rode inside Caer Wiell. Myself, I would only like to see one."

"Well, I have seen," said Beorc in a faint, difficult voice.

"What was it?" asked Domhnull.

"A light," Beorc said. "Like light." He shrugged and remembered his ale and drank it. "But that is why Caer Wiell sits so much to itself, young cousin, that others saw it too. And no one sings songs, because I for one wouldn't know how to make one; and maybe it's not a thing to gossip, because, well, there was nothing to liken it to, like sun, like moon, but not. It was more a feeling, was what it was. A man doesn't forget that. I know I won't. It wasn't the same today. It was darker-like. It wasn't good. —They're all right, are they? Did they seem—afraid?"

"They looked pert enough," said Rhys. "No, by the looks in their faces. There was no fear."

"I think you make too much of it," Domhnull said. "They strayed into the woods, is all; and maybe they did see something, but they hadn't any effect of it. I think you and this Sighted southron make too much of shadows."

"You see," said Beorc, "why no one who was on that field will speak of it? There is too much unbelief nowadays. You set out sau cers, aye, your mother does, each and every night. I know. But what I saw would take no such offering, no."

"What did you see?" asked Domhnull, not for the first time that he had brought Beorc this close. Beorc, not for the first time, shook his head and refused to say.

But there began to be a coming and going, late as it was, and Muirne rushing outside the walls by twilight, her arms laden with branches. (My lady will have fresh boughs, she said, making nothing of the fact that no guest was expected, nor had been since lord Dryw had called with his retinue a year and more ago.) And there was a stir in the kitchen, a coming and going of chatty pages who could no more keep secrets than they could walk on errands and not run. (For my lord's table, they said; and for those who searched, a fine good meal—which lifted hearts and expectations all through Caer Wiell, and set mouths to watering and stomachs to longing, for the smells went out from the kitchen of bread baked fresh, even at evening time, and there was honey called for and good butter, and cakes and no few of the best hams and sausages, and a side of venison that had served my lord's table went into roasts and pastries. And there were casks of ale and cider. Faces went blissful contemplating it.)

But amid all this Beorc took himself upstairs and Domhnull and Rhys with him, for Ciaran's word to them all was the same, that they should come up to speak to him in hall; and if there was little now in their minds but supper, and if they eyed the great table in hall with some longing, thinking of the greater tables set in the yard of the keep, they did not look that way with unseemly attention, but assem bled there with great sobriety, well-scrubbed and combed and in their best, before their lord and lady in the hall, with the children abed or at least nowhere to be seen.

But there was nothing but anxiousness on Ciaran's face.

"My friends," he said, "my dear friends—there will be a guest tonight and you must serve in hall. No others would I trust. Would you do me this service?"

"Aye," said Beorc, but he knit his brows in puzzlement, and from anticipation settled his mind at once to business, setting his hands within his belt. It was quite mad, of course, but strange things had happened within these walls. It was not his to ask, though his mind was racing, whether some messenger was expected from the King, to deserve such a plethora of lights and fresh boughs and such a feast as that prepared both below and here above; or whether there was to be any guest at all. This might be some odd figure of speech, or pretense, or something Ciaran had made up for some purpose, perhaps —perhaps, Beorc thought, that he would have his small household to table together to celebrate the children's safe return, and ask his trusted men to serve them in lieu of pages, which would be strange, but no more reasonable thing could he think.

"She will come. The Sidhe," Ciaran said then. "Will you serve?"

"Aye," Beorc said after a moment's dismay. "My lord knows I would."

"And you others?"

"Aye," said Rhys, "without question."

"Shall we see one?" Domhnull asked, with all his heart. His eyes were blue and wide. "Here? Tonight? In hall?"

"Perhaps," said Ciaran, adding, "If she wills it you will see her. But if she will not, then not. You must not tell it—if you do."

"No, lord," Domhnull said, but his desire was in his eyes, wide as his heart was wide.

"Carry no iron," said Ciaran. "My guest will not bear that."

"No," said Beorc, "that we understand."

"She is not to fear," lady Branwyn said in a soft thin voice. "It is not that you should need it, or that we should not be safe."

"No," said Ciaran, "there is no question of that."

For Beorc's part he was not sure; and Rhys' look was the usual, which was unreadable; but Domhnull's face was full of color, his eyes bright with hope, as if there were no ill thing in all the world, and this from a youth who had ridden borders since his sixteenth year.

Perhaps Ciaran saw it, for he looked longest at Domhnull, and a faint smile touched his face. "Don't count on it overmuch. She may not stay. But perhaps she will."