He was not wrong in any of this, but there was a great deal more to what Ceinwen had done, though not even the most subtle of mortal minds could have apprehended it. Which was as it should be, as, indeed, it had always been. Macha knew, however, and Red Nemain, and Dana, the Mother, most surely of all. The gods might guess, and some of the andain, but the goddesses would know.
The sun rose. Dave stood up and looked around him under a brightening sky. No clouds. It was a beautiful morning. About a mile north of him the Adein sparkled, and there were men and horses stirring along its bank. East, somewhat farther off, he could make out the standing stones that surrounded and defined Celidon, the mid-Plain, home of the first tribe of the Dalrei and gathering place of all the tribes. There were signs of motion, of life, there as well.
Who, though, and how many?
Not all need die, Ceinwen had said to him a year ago, and again last night. Not all, perhaps, but the battle had been brutal, and very bad, and a great many had died.
He had been changed by the events of the evening and night before, but in most ways Dave was exactly what he had always been, and so there was a sick knot of fear in his stomach as he strode off the mound and began walking swiftly toward the activity by the riverbank.
Who? And how many? There had been such chaos, such muddy, blood-bespattered confusion: the wolves, the lios arriving, Avaia’s brood in the darkening sky, and then, after he’d blown the horn, something else in the sky, something wild. Owein and the kings. And the child. Carrying death, manifesting it. He quickened his pace almost to a run. Who?
Then he had part of an answer, and he stopped abruptly, a little weak with relief. From the cluster of men by the Adein two horses, one dark grey, the other brown, almost golden, had suddenly wheeled free, racing toward him, and he recognized them both.
Their riders, too. The horses thundered up to him, the two riders leaping off, almost before stopping, with the unconscious, inbred ease of the Dalrei. And Dave stood facing the men who’d become his brothers on a night in Pendaran Wood.
There was joy, and relief, and all three showed it in their own ways, but they did not embrace.
“Ivor?” Dave asked. Only the name.
“He is all right,” Levon said quietly. “Some wounds, none serious.” Levon himself, Dave saw, had a short deep scar on his temple, running up into the line of his yellow hair.
“We found your axe,” Levon explained. “By the riverbank. But no one had seen you after… after you blew the horn, Davor.”
“And this morning,” Tore continued, “all the dead were gone, and we could not find you…” He left the thought unfinished.
Dave drew a breath and let it out slowly. “Ceinwen?” he said. “Did you hear her voice?”
The two Dalrei nodded, without speaking.
“She stopped the Hunt,” Dave said, “and then she… took me away. When I awoke she was with me, and she said that she had… gathered the dead.” He said nothing more. The rest was his own, not for the telling.
He saw Levon, quick as ever, glance past him at the mound, and then Tore did the same. There was a long silence. Dave could feel the freshness of the morning breeze, could see it moving the tall grass of the Plain. Then, with a twist of his heart he saw that Tore, always so self-contained, was weeping soundlessly as he gazed at the mound of the dead.
“So many,” Tore murmured. “They killed so many of us, of the lios…”
“Mabon of Rhoden took a bad shoulder wound,” Levon said. “One of the swans came down on him.”
Mabon, Dave remembered, had saved his life only two days before, when Avaia herself had descended in a blur of death from a clear sky. He swallowed and said, with difficulty, “Tore, I saw Barth and Navon, both of them. They were—”
Tore nodded stiffly. “I know. I saw it too. Both of them.”
The babies in the wood, Dave was thinking. Barth and Navon, barely fourteen when they died, had been the ones that he and Tore had guarded in Faelinn Grove on Dave’s first night in Fionavar. Guarded and saved from an urgach, only to have them…
“It was the urgach in white,” Dave said, bitterness like gall in his mouth. “The really big one. He killed them both. With the same stroke.”
“Uathach.” Levon almost spat the name. “I heard the others calling him. I tried to go after him, but I couldn’t get—”
“No! Not that one, Levon,” Tore interrupted, his voice fiercely intense. “Not alone. We will defeat them because we must, but promise me now that you will not go after him alone, ever. He is more than an urgach.”
Levon was silent.
“Promise me!” Tore repeated, turning to stand squarely before the Aven’s son, disregarded tears still bright in his eyes. “He is too big, Levon, and too quick, and something more than both of those. Promise me!”
Another moment passed before Levon spoke. “Only to the two of you would I say this. Understand that. But you have my word.” His yellow hair was very bright in the sun. He tossed it back with a stiff twist of his head and spun sharply to return to the horses. Over his shoulder, not breaking stride, he snapped, “Come. There is a Council of the tribes in Celidon this morning.” Without waiting for them, he mounted and rode.
Dave and Tore exchanged a glance, then mounted up themselves, double, on the grey, and set out after him. Halfway to the standing stones they caught up, because Levon had stopped and was waiting. They halted beside him.
“Forgive me,” he said. “I am a fool and a fool and a fool.”
“At least two of those,” Tore agreed gravely.
Dave laughed. After a moment, so did Levon. Ivor’s son held out his hand. Tore clasped it. They looked at Dave. Wordlessly, he placed his own right hand over both of theirs.
They rode the rest of the way together.
“Weaver be praised, and the bright threads of the Loom!” venerable Dhira, Chieftain of the first tribe, said for the third time.
He was beginning to get on Dave’s nerves.
They were in a gathering hall at Celidon. Not the largest hall, for it was not a very large assembly: the Aven, looking alert and controlled despite a bandaged arm and a cut, much like Levon’s, above one eye; the Chieftains of the other eight tribes with their advisers; Mabon, Duke of Rhoden, lying on a pallet, obviously in pain, as obviously determined to be present; and Ra-Tenniel, the Lord of the lios alfar, to whom all eyes continually returned, in wonder and awe.
There were people absent, Dave knew, people sorely missed. Two of the Chieftains, Damach of the second tribe and Berlan of the fifth, were new to their titles, the son and brother, respectively, of men who had died by the river.
Ivor had, to Dave’s surprise, left control of the gathering to Dhira. Tore whispered a terse explanation: the first tribe was the only one that never traveled the Plain; Celidon was their permanent home. They remained here at the mid-Plain, receiving and relaying messages through the auberei of all the tribes, preserving the records of the Dalrei, providing the tribes with their shamans, and always taking command of the gatherings here at Celidon. Always—even in the presence of an Aven. So it had been in Revor’s time, and so it was now.
Checks and balances, Dave thought. It made some sense in the abstract but did little to reconcile him now, in the aftermath of battle, to Dhira’s quavering voice and laggard pace.
He had made a rambling, discursive speech, half mournful, half in praise, before finally calling upon Ivor. Levon’s father had then risen to tell, for the benefit of Ra-Tenniel, the story of their wild, improbable ride—a night and a day across half the length of the Plain—to just beat the forces of Maugrim to the river.