The Tree of Swords and Jewels

EIGHT The Way to Donn

The wind blew warm on Ciaran's face and the horses moved in easy rhythm, a sleepy kind of progress up a road still well within Caer Wiell's lands, but the hills of An Beag's domains were at their left, across a rolling shagginess of hedges. There were freeholds here abouts, where staunch dale families had settled on border land and held it. Caer Wiell aided such folk, who were Caer Wiell's bulwark; and if the company had turned aside to left or right they would have found welcome and a cup of ale gladly given to each, ale and not unlikely a supper offered, had they come at sundown. They pros pered, these freeholds, and so the road proclaimed, barely fit for carts, but still traveled often enough that no grass grew in it, a fair fine road as roads went on the marches.

They wended up from the turning of it and met the Bainbourne again where it wandered, a reedy stream crossed here and there by fords and trampled by sheep, of which they saw several flocks in the distance; or by pigs, where Alhhard's steading set its back against the water, a rough cluster of buildings next old and twisted willows, and rough fences made of willow logs and stones the Bainbourne scoured. The place prospered. The boy who kept the pigs called out to the company as they came, and stood on the fence across Bainbourne to wave; others appeared, men and women, and dogs and children who pelted across the stream in a great splashing of water to run beside the horses.

"It be the lord," the children cried, jogging along beside the col umn, and there would be gossip from steading to steading by the fortnight; but Ciaran smiled to see them, and the horses tolerated the dogs and darting bodies. "Lord," the eldest shouted, a boy whose stride was longest and near that of a man, running along by his horse, outdistancing all the others. "Will you not come across to us? There be ale and cider."

"Thank your father," Ciaran said, "and wish all the house well from me. I cannot stay this time. Gods, Eada, your legs are longer, are they not?"

"Aye, lord." The boy panted along with all his kin outdistanced, and the last of the dogs about him. "That they be. And I know the bow, lord."

"Do you? But your father would have taught you."

"I have fifteen summers, lord."

The lad was falling behind now. He shouted the last. "So, well." Ciaran turned somewhat in the saddle. "When you have sixteen, then come to Caer Wiell a season."

The boy trotted to a halt among his dogs, waving his hand and grinning. The whole company waved back at the steading, and so the willows took it back again.

The horses protested, having caught a whiff of shed and shelter, and it took curb and heel to keep their minds to the road instead.

But the company moved with purpose, if safe among their own folk, in lands that knew them, and no man of the escort muttered or said anything of regret for the ale.

"The stars and sky tonight for all of us," Ciaran said. He looked beyond Beorc where Domhnull rode—silent, Domhnull, which he was not wont to be. He is a boy, thought Ciaran, Domhnull looked very young in that moment, affecting not to hear them—so young, so young Ciaran dared not half so much freedom as Beorc used with him; so young his pride was green and tender. I was wrong ever to have agreed to this. He thought of the boy Eada, running by the horses, eagerness for battle shining in young eyes which had seen no sight grimmer than autumn butchering, and he shuddered.

Moths and torches. The glory blinds them. O Domhnull, I never should have heard you.

"It is a long road," Ciaran said then quietly as they rode. "And there are places in it—Domhnull, the more I think on this—Listen," he said, having the youth's attention, marking the quickness of his eyes to imagined slight or praise. "The way by Lioslinn—I rode this when I was a boy and never since. But mind it lies near both Damn and Bradhaeth."

"I do mind it."

"It winds, between the hills once you have come up from the lake. There are rocks above you." For a space he tried to tell it, every stone and turn that he remembered, where they had hunted once, far afield from Donn, he and his brother and his cousins. Domhnull listened, frowning in his earnestness to remember all he could, and Ciaran felt again a narrowing despair. "I should remember," he said once, "if I saw it."

"I shall manage," said Domhnull and made light of it if only for his pleasing. "Lord, the sun will guide me; and I shall look for the spring. And for the rest, we will go quickly and stir up nothing; or outride it."

It did not comfort him, the more they rode within the sight of the hills where the way bent westerly. He rode silently and the men with him were quiet now for the most part, having fallen silent while he spoke and taking the contagion of stillness from him.

The mood had come on him gradually, and lay darker and darker, from the bright morning when they had left the keep, Meadhbh and Ceallach trotting along with them . . . because it is safe, he had said to Branwyn last; because there is no cause that they should not ride in the fair center of our own lands, with Rhys to watch them. And to watch Caer Wiell while I am gone. No farther than the Crossroads. Is so much to be made of this?

Now it seemed mad to have done, and a light sweat lay on his limbs, for all that the sun was sinking. They must be safe by now, he thought. Rhys must be sitting in hold, they at the fire with Branwyn, Muirne too, and Leannan, and Rhys doubtless having a drink with Ruadhan. ... He built the ordinary things, a fragile structure, stone by familiar stone within his mind, while the sky turned golden and perilous about them and they came near to parting.

I wanted it so, he thought, recalling the peace of the morning. I wished to believe it, the way I want to believe Domhnull will meet no hazard.

But he will not And they have not He persuaded himself again, gathered up his courage in both his hands and tried to be cheerful. He smiled against the silences, rode with his hand attentive to the reins.

"Lord?" asked Domhnull.

"I was thinking how I am a prisoner, young friend, and how this great cousin of yours and I would be at swords-point if I were to go beyond Lioslinn. And yet—"

"Lord," said Beorc, "no."

"What, my guardian, not try you?"

"Lord," said Beorc, "I beg you."

"You are worried, old wolf." Ciaran heaved a sigh. "There would be no peace for me at home if I were to do that."

"I should be on my way," said Domhnull, glancing toward the distant hills where the sun was setting. "For my part, lord, I had as lief know you had the shorter ride on the morrow, and if you were home sooner than you had promised, you would make your lady wife the happier for it."

A while longer Ciaran rode in silence.

"Lord," said Domhnull.

"Aye," he said. "So you are right." He reined his horse aside off the road, as they had stopped to rest many a time this day, not to tire the horses beyond quick recovery. But this time Domhnull and the four who would go with him unsaddled the horses they had ridden and set the gear on the five remounts, which thought ill of the mat ter.

"So you must take care," Ciaran said, still afoot when Domhnull and the others sat ahorse.

"Lord, I shall."

"You carry that token I gave you."

"Lord, I have not forgot it." A small smile played about Domhnull's mouth, a twinkle in his eye, so Ciaran smiled, reminded that somewhere, somehow this man had happened, instead of the boy he kept remembering, and that the man was strong and had his wits about him.

"Aye," he said, "speed you well, Domhnull."

So he had to send him, with little ado, making little of the uneasi ness that troubled him; and so Beorc sent his cousin off and friends of the escort parted.

So beyond Caer Damh and by the shores of Lioslinn Domhnull would bear westward, a long ride yet to go before they should rest; and Ciaran looked after the dwindling figures, his hand staying his horse by the cheekstrap of its bridle.

Mist lay about them. The others could not see it, but there was mist, all the same, and trees rose about them straight as pillars when he looked with that Sight he had. The trees lay between on that plane and he lost sight of Domhnull, of the way they rode, which did not exist here. There was only tangle, and cold mist, and comfortless forest. He stood staring into it, quieting his horse which stood with him; but the men with him seemed like shadows less substantial than the trees.

"Lord," said Beorc, and thrust something loose and heavy into his hands, a skin of wine. "Here."

He drank. The wine seemed rough and strange.

"We might rest at Alhhard's steading," said Beorc. "There's that ale, remember."

"No," he said. He offered no reasons. Beorc asked none, willing to humor him in his whims, so long as they did not involve following after Domhnull. He thrust the vision away, brought the sky back golden.

He could not see in this place. The stone could bring him no help against it. He doubted, suddenly, everything he had done, but it had seemed wise till now ... to defend Caer Wiell.

He thought of Donnchadh his brother, of Lioslinn in the sunlight, when they had climbed the hill above it; or again at Dun na h-Eoin, in the twilight; and then he realized with a strange shock of passing time that this was not the man he sent to. It would not be the boy, nor yet the man at Dun na h-Eoin, dark-bearded and slim, as he was not what he had been then. He will have gone gray, Ciaran thought with a shock, setting his foot into the stirrup and rising into the saddle. He had never reckoned with the years. He is older than I and darker; so the years will sit harder on him. He will have gone to leanness: he was always thin. He tried to build this man in his mind, cast away the image for the one he remembered, brother, companion. Longing came over him then, to be where Domhnull rode. The fair-haired boy he had been would have leapt to horse and ridden, defy ing all the hazards. He had ridden for the King once, and in that wildness he had gone, and parted from his brother.

So I would come back to him, he thought, remembering better times. He would leap from his horse by the gates. See, I have come home.

But it was the lord of Caer Wiell and the lord of Caer Donn now, and the gestures between them must agree with that, full of wariness and the weight of years and anger.

I have concern for you, he had wished Domhnull to say to Donnchadh in his name, but he could not even send that simple thing. I ask peace, he had said instead, humbly, caring nothing for his pride, in these times. This silence profits neither of us.

There was more, if Donnchadh should be disposed to listen.

Lioslinn lay black by starlight, reflecting nothing, not even shim mers on its surface. It stretched far and shallow, and for sound here there were only the creak of frogs and the soughing of the wind in the reeds.

"I have seen it fairer," said Boc, who was the oldest of the escort.

"More bog than lake," said Domhnull, "by the reek of it." He had set eyes on it, but only from a distance, and now riding close beside its midnight shore with the stench of decay going up from it dispelled any illusion he had still cherished of it as mirror of the hills. It lay beside them like a pit, darker than the reeds, and the chiefest concern in his mind was that some misstep of his horse might put him into a reaching arm of it, some hole unseen in the dark. The night was moonless, and the dark sky had seemed friendly until now, shielding them from Caer Damh as they passed it on the road.

They rested the horses as they could, and kept silent for the most part, leaving the conversation to the frogs and nightbirds. Voices seemed to carry all too clearly, and the night was listening.

They were good men lord Ciaran had sent with him, Domhnull knew; indeed, they daunted him with their knowing what ought to be done before he said it; or knowing before he knew it, for they were older than he, and Boc many years so. Sent to watch me, he thought, having less and less confidence that he led them at all; but they would never say as much. Only what little he had to tell them he said in brief and noted every breath of theirs, every shift of stance that seemed to say to him: yes, boy, yes, we were wondering when you would say so, or perhaps: well, boy, but we would not advise it

He had faced this journey with more confidence in the morning, by daylight, parting Caer Wiell and far from Lioslinn's boggy, reek ing shore. He had, he thought, taken a great deal on himself. He had seen that much in Beorc's eyes when they parted, a cool kind of reckoning he had gotten in the drillyard.

Well, lad, Beorc had told him more than once, get to it Do some thing or do nothing, and if you're truly one of the world's fools, then the world is sure to learn it

The frogs went silent at their splashing. Something started away with a splash of its own, and the horses did not like it. Somehow, by some persistence of his horse or that the others kept reining back, he would end up in the lead again though he reckoned that Boc knew this ground better—he must, for Boc had been here and he never had; but at last he took the foremost position for his own and held it, seeking with his eyes and senses and thinking perhaps that they should not try to ride this ground at all, but walk ahead of their horses.

It was old, this place. Legend said so, but more, he felt it in his bones, that the lake was no wholesome place. He thought of water-horses, of selkies and such like: if there ever was a place where a fuath might lurk it was Lioslinn, among the reeds and moss. There might be shellycoats and bogles, to come rattling out of the bog with reaching fingers.

A thing hissed at them and dove with a heavy splash. His horse went sideways, and trod afterward as if it were poised to spring; he curbed it, his heart clenched and trying to beat again.

"Gods know," said Boc, "what that was."

"Come," Domhnull said. A cold was down his back. His teeth wanted to chatter. "Stay together. This place is too boggish to have one of the horses bolting."

"I have them," said Brom, half a whisper from behind.

"To think," said Boc, "they named this a road once."

"The lake has risen," said Domhnull, "or I've led us amiss." His eyes strained into the dark, where the hills rose up in a blackness deeper than that beside them. "That must be our way yonder."

"Gods grant," muttered Boc.

The nearness tempted him, to urge the horses to speed. He resisted, plodding their slow and patient way, and now and again there were other splashes and the sound of something swimming.

No one spoke. The hooves sucked and slid in mud. The horses snorted, closer and closer to that cloven wall of rock that loomed before them. The ground grew more solid, the steps more firm, and once, indistinct in the dark, a cairn of stones bulked beside the way.

"We are out of it," said Boc.

"I would not be glad to camp here," Domhnull said, feeling his horse laboring with exhaustion. "Best, I think, to change horses and be out of here entirely."

"Aye," said Boc, full earnestly.

They did so, and Domhnull passed round the wine he had from Branwyn: "This should go first," he said, and felt their spirits lighten for it before they took to the saddle again, riding into the narrows.

"Lord," said Beorc, and Ciaran looked up at him in the dark, from his seat beside the spring. The others lay asleep, or feigning it, even the youth on watch.

"I sent the lad to sleep," Ciaran said. "Go to sleep yourself; I will wake Boda when I feel the need."

"I promised—"

"—Branwyn. Aye. To hover by me." He frowned, for Beorc squat ted down before him, solid as a boulder. "I need no nurse, old wolf."

"Then go to sleep, my lord."

"You harry me, Beorc. If—" A shudder took him, which he tried to prevent. The land rose about him gray with daylight mist, with ill woven in it. "The sun has risen."

"Lord?" Beorc settled there, arms locked, patient of any madness.

"The sun in Eald, Beorc. When things have most power. But it is cold. Cold. This land has come back; she said it. It was lost to Eald and somehow it has come back again."

"How—come back?"

"Would that I knew how." He felt the chill again and touched the stone within his collar. He shut his eyes, seeking with that second sight, through all the maze that pent his vision. The stone seemed like ice in his hand. "I am cut off on all sides. It frightens me, Beorc. She was afraid. Trees, she said, as if one of the Sidhe could be alarmed at trees. But these are ghosts. And I cannot see past them. Neither could she, I think."

"Lord, let it alone."

"And sleep?"

"Let me rouse the men. We will set out now, and get you home again."

"I have sent Domhnull out there. I do not think I should have done it. The longer I am out here the less I find this place comfort able."

"He's a clever lad, and Boc is with him; and Caith besides. And Caer Damh has lost its yen for mischief, look you, not a stir from them all winter."

"They have been quiet," he agreed. "But, Beorc, the woods go around An Beag as they do us. I am not so sure of Damh. And I can no longer find the sea."

"What woods?" Beorc asked patiently, questioning a madman. "What sea?"

"Give me your hand, Beorc."

Beorc settled to his knees and gave it, and so Ciaran drew it to the stone.

Ogods, Beorc said, or tried to say; and there was all of Beorc's self with him, far too close, and the trees were about them both. The earth began to sink beneath them.

No, Ciaran said, and took the stone in his own hand, trembling. The open land was about them again. The nightwind blew gently on his sweating face, and Beorc still knelt before him. It had been close, that third Eald which was Death's own. The wind from it still whis pered.

"O gods," Beorc said, "how do you bear it?"

"Did you see the trees, old wolf, how they grow here?"

"I saw something. Like shadows. I'm not sure what shape they had."

"You have iron about you," said Ciaran. "I should not have done that. Beorc, I should not have sent him. There is something amiss I took no account of. This is not the Eald I knew. It bunds me. I think it would blind her. And I have less and less trust of it now that I'm out here near it." He looked into Beorc's face, finding fear where fear was not accustomed to be, and doubt, where doubt had never been. It occurred to him that he might lose this man, that he might already have lost him, his loyalty, his love, whatever it was that a man gave who had served him as Beorc had. The man that Beorc followed had never faltered, never erred, not to this degree, not with the lives of all else he loved. Small wonder Beorc hearkened now to Branwyn, born to this land as she was, heir of the Cearbhallain, as she was. Like Rhys. Like all he had inherited. He came as interloper, and led them all amiss. "I don't know what to do, Beorc. I don't know."

"Lord, who does, in this? You have done the best thing. And if it were wrong, then Domhnull will make the best of it if it can be made: you sent those who can bend what can be bent."

"Bund."

"With the Sidhe's blessing on him. Do you not recall it? On all of us who serve you."

"Can you remember, then? Do you remember?"

"Not with clear sight, maybe, but I remember something. That I have seen the Sidhe. I remember—someone at the table; and there was silver, and she was dressed in white and gray—"

"No gray. She had no cloak about her."

"Or something like. But she spoke to me. I remember. My weak ness and my strength she said. And about dark and morning. I re member that."

"There was a time," he said, "that the stone let me see. I have seen dragons, Beorc. Once. I have seen the Sidhe ride to war. They are memories, or something like, pent in the stone, but I can't find them now. Only the mist and the ghosts, and I have led us deeper into them, and sent Domhnull and Boc even farther. But the King . . . the King, if he stood with us and not against, if I could win my brother back to reason—" He shook his head. "O gods, this mist surrounds him. Maybe I was to do nothing. But they forget, the Sidhe; or they have their own concerns and Men are small and brief among them. Maybe if Men are to be helped—that is for me to do."

"Lord, let us get you back to the hold. Tonight."

"No," he said, just that. No. "Let me be."

Beorc nodded slowly, gathered himself up and retreated to his blanket, spread on the ground beneath the oak, where the earth was bare: The others slept. The horses were still. The wind stirred, in this world. The others were bound in leaden stillness.

Ciaran sat, and leaned his eyes upon his hand, for they stung with weariness, though there was no sleep in them. The mist gathered about him again when he looked outward with his heart.

Then a small lumpish thing hopped out of it and perched before him in elvish day. For a moment his heart froze in fear, but there was no ill in this creature.

"Man," it said, hugging its arms about its knees, "Man, o Man, this is a lost place. Fair, she said, a fair land, but Eald is strange here."

"What are you, wight?"

It sniffed and wrinkled its nose. "Wight, wight he names me. O why do you sit, Man? Things are amiss, amiss here. I have met the children and seen them home to the Cearbhallain's walls; and the dark man with them."

"What have you to do with them?" he asked. His heart was pounding. "What cause had you to meet them?"

A lank shaggy hand touched a shaggy throat. "Eald is about them. She sent me. O there is much amiss, Man."

"With them?"

"They are safer than you, far safer. O Man, Man, Man, there is dark, dark about your path. The Gruagach has seen it. Dark and bright together."

"She has sent you."

"To guard the children. She said there were saucers of milk for me. And the Gruagach has had them. He has seen your people, fine, polite folk they are, but o Man, there is trouble near them."

"Where?"

A shaggy arm reached out, long fingers waggled.

"The Gruagach. Is that yourself?"

It bobbed, still crouching, and its eyes glinted in their darkness. It seemed to shiver. Whites showed as its eyes rolled. Its voice grew thin.

"Dark, dark and dark it lies— O Man, there is ill, ill, ill."

It was gone. Vanished. He sat on the cold earth and a chill had come on him.

He leapt to his feet. "Beorc!" he shouted. "Wake!"

Men reached for weapons, scrambling to stand, sleep-mazed and frightened.

"Ride back," he said, "Tuathal, get to horse; ride back to Alhhard's steading and send the boy to Caer Wiell: they have a pony, bid him go, and tell my lady we have need of half the men up here. The rest must stay with her. The rest of you, we are going north a ways."

"Lord," said Beorc, "you must not."

"Come with me," he said, and Beorc hesitated half a breath, then went after him. He had not doubted it, as he did not doubt now which way he was going, and that he was beyond advice.

They followed, muttering questions and doubts among themselves, but Tuathal was off as soon as he could fling a saddle on his horse, and for the rest of them it was northward.

Amiss, he kept thinking as they rode, and perhaps his face was grim, for Beorc fell in beside him asking nothing at all until they were well on the road again.

"Lord," Beorc objected, "we are nine men, and Domhnull too far ahead of us to recall him."

He said nothing to this. There was nothing to say, but perhaps Beorc had hoped there was an answer.

"You are not armored," Beorc said. "And against some things no Sidhe luck is proof."

There was iron. It made his bones ache, even such as the men about him wore. He argued nothing in return, only rode, and Beorc fell silent.

So they came beyond Caer Damh, in that strange fell hour when the sun was only promise; and far away on either side the land seemed wild and empty. The light had caught Lioslinn, which spread itself before them, a glimmering only, to show that it was water; but the day would make it mirrorlike, turning sky and earth upside down. The pass showed beyond, cloven between the hills. The horses shuddered under them for weariness.

Ciaran drew rein, seeking outward with the stone, but the mist was thick, making all his sight gray.

Then he felt the stirring of the land, the poison of iron. It was ambush.

"Men are there," he said.

"What men?" Beorc asked, implicit in his faith. "Can you tell that?"

"No. But about the lake: Caer Damh, perhaps, or the Bradhaeth folk." He shivered, and possessed himself again, in cold clear sight, with the dawning on the water. "Here we stay, Beorc."

"Nine men."

"Well," he said, "Tuathal will find us."

Beorc looked on him, ill-pleased by humor, then gave it the short reaction it deserved and gazed off toward the pass. "Gods grant Domhnull got through."

"So," said Ciaran, and stood in his stirrup, stepping down from the saddle. His horse was lathered. He patted its neck, and it stood three-footed. "Well, if things have gone wrong, we are soon to learn it. I think he has gotten through; I might feel it else. But when he comes back again this way—I think that we should be here."

"I should be here," said Beorc, sliding heavily from his horse, a weight of man and metal. "You—"

"I can see somewhat, and know them coming. What man of you else can do that?"

"One Bradhaeth arrow. That is all it needs, lord, and then how do I face your lady?"

"Ah," he said softly. "Well, but you will save me. You have done it before, old wolf. I have trust in you."

"Gods help us," Beorc muttered.