Fear filled him, a tumbling down of all truths he knew. Father, she thought, catching this from his mind. He said nothing. She felt a chill in him, self-aimed. She perceived memories of old stones near Caer Donn, recollections of childhood terrors, of ill legends and human hate, and shivered herself.
“I am sorry,” he said, sharing this. His mind was awash with fear, and with thoughts of his own duty, and of dying, and the black hounds. He touched the chain of the stone about his neck, making to draw it off, but she caught his hand and gently forbade that
“You will not die,” she promised him. “I will take you where you will go. Come, it is not far.”
The forest edge lay up the bright streamcourse, that place where sight stopped in mist, the edge of her world. She led him into that gray place, walking blind, but one hand she kept on the stone which remembered the world as it had been, and so she brought some substance out of nothingness, enough to find her way beyond the edge. She remembered Caer Wiell as it had once been, a fair green hill with a spring never failing; and so she came to it, and still held his hand fast. Half in the shadow-ways there was a dimming, a glare of fire, the shouts of war, ghosts of battle swirling about them.
Other things were there too. Death was one. “Pay him no mind,” she said to Ciaran, who turned and faced the shadow. “No. Hold to the stone and come with me.”
She set them more and more surely in mortal night, with the din of war about them, with Caer Wiell’s black walls above. She knew the gateway. It did not have wards against her. She set him through.
“Fare well,” she said. “And fare back again.”
So she stepped clear of Caer Wiell, back into the swirling shadow-din outside.
She felt a presence by her, a shadow which had drawn a moment out of the battle, a blackness sullen and cold.
“Hunt elsewhere,” she told him.
“You have had your will,” Lord Death said, making ironic homage.
“Hunt elsewhere.”
“You give this mortal uncommon gifts.”
“What if I do? Are they not mine to give?”
The shadow said nothing, and she walked away through the grayness, and into bright Eald, into her own. The phantom deer stared at her curiously in elven sunset; and she walked back to the grove of the circle, touched the stones which hung from the ancient oak, harked to precious memories which they sang as the wind blew among them. One voice was stilled now from the chorus, that which had been Liosliath’s.
“Forgive,” she whispered to him, who was far across the dividing sea, far from hearing her. “Forgive that it was you.”
But a strange companionship shivered through her still, after ages in solitude. She walked, and mingled with the eldritch harping which was the peculiar song of her stone of dreams, came the whisper of another heart, human-tainted, but true as earth. She was appalled somewhat at the nature of it, for he had known war; he had killed—but so had she, in the cruel, cold anger of elves. Human anger was different, all blood and blind rage, like wolves. He knew passions she felt strange; he knew strange fears; and self-doubts. It was all there, drowning Liosliath’s clear voice. He feared Liosliath; he denied, human-stubborn, the things his own eyes had seen in Eald.
But there was no hate in him.
She sank down at the base of the tree of memory, and drew her cloak about her, and dreamed his dream.
FOURTEEN
Caer Wiell
They brought him as a prisoner into the torchlit hall, with the sounds of battle dying. They had handled him ungently, but it was their lord’s own ring upon his finger, and they had changed their manner quickly enough when he insisted to show them that. “Sit,” they told him now, showing him a bench, and he was only too glad to do so, weary as he was.
Another came—Old wolf, Ciaran thought at that grim broad face, besweated and flushed with battle-heat He straightened himself at once when that man came in with more men-at-arms behind him. He set himself most carefully on his feet. “Scaga?” he ventured, for he was very like his son, a huge man and red-haired. “I come from the King; and from your lord.”
“Let me see this ring,” Scaga said; and Ciaran thrust out his hand, which the old warrior took roughly, turning the ring to the firelight. Scaga let it go again, his scarred face still scowling.
“I have a message,” Ciaran said, “for your lady’s ears.” And became he could guess the keep’s want of hope: “Good news,” be urged on Scaga, though he was charged to take it higher.
“Then it comes welcome, if true.” Scaga turned his face toward the open door, where sounds of battle had much faded, then looked back again, looked him up and down. “How came you here?”
“My message,” he said, “is for lord Evald’s lady.”
Scaga still frowned; it might be the nature of his face, or of his heart: this was, Ciaran thought, a fell man to cross. But Evald trusted him as steward, in a hold beset with enemies: he was then a man of great worth and faithfulness.
“With neither armor,” said Scaga, “nor weapon . . . How came you into the courtyard?”
“Your lord’s ring,” Ciaran insisted. “I speak only to your lady.” He felt the stone which lay hidden within his collar, a presence, a warmth which seemed greater than natural. It frightened him, with that against his heart and the like of Scaga staring into his eyes, full of suspicions.
“You shall go to her,” Scaga said, and motioned to the stairs. “Boy!” he called. “See my lady roused.”
A lad scampered up the steps at a run. Ciaran shivered in weariness and cold, for wind blew through the door. He wished desperately for a cup of ale, for a place to lie down and rest himself.
And there was none, for Scaga looked on him with narrowed eyes and offered nothing of hospitality—motioned men-at-arms to go before and behind him and led him up the steps to another hall within Caer Wiell’s thick walls, which at least was warmer, with a fire blazing in the hearth.
“Beware,” a voice seemed to whisper in his hearing, and it startled him. He wondered could all the rest hear it; but the others did not turn: it was for him alone. “Beware this hall. They do not love elven-kind. And do not show them the stone.”
A stone wolf’s-head was set above the fireplace. It seemed he had seen it before; that he had sat here, a man, and that a harp should hang so, upon the rightward wall—he looked, and was dismayed to find a harp hanging there, just where he had thought it should. He had then dreamed this place.
Or she had. There was a great scarred table once had sat a chair, before the fire. He blinked it clear, went to it, leaned there wearily against the table, while weary men guarded him.
And women came, so soon that he supposed they had not been asleep. Surely they had not been, with the enemy hurling fire against the hold. They came from the inner door which opened on this hall, one woman older and somewhat grayed. This was Meredydd, he surmised, Evald’s own lady; and Meredyddthe stone whispered in his heart, confirming it. The other of the twain was young, bright of hair—and that name came whispering through his heart as welclass="underline" Branwyn.Branwyn. Branwyn. He stared without meaning to, for so much of anguish and of anger came whispering with that name. This Branwyn stopped and stared at him, blue eyes seemed bewildered and innocent of such pain.
“Your message,” Scaga’s harsh voice insisted.
Ciaran looked at Lady Meredydd instead, took a step toward her, but hands moved to weapons about him, and he did not go nearer. He tugged the ring from off his finger and gave it over to Scaga, who gave it to the lady. She took the ring as something precious, looked on it closely, lifted anxious eyes. “My husband,” she asked of him.
“Well, lady, he is well. I bring his love and my King’s word: Hold, defend, and do not be deceived by any lies of the enemy or accept any terms. The King has won a great battle at Dun na h-Eoin, and the enemy hopes for this valley as their last holding place. Only hold this tower, and the King and your lord will come as soon as possible against their backs. They know this. Now you do.”