“You seemed distressed,” she said. “Is there moving out there?”
He shrugged, looked across the wall and turned his gaze, back to her, a pale face framed in the broidered mantle, eyes as changing as the clouds, mirroring his own fears, unfearing while he was brave, frightened when the least fear came to him. “They seem to have no love of the rain,” he said. “And your father and mine, and the King himself—will come soon and teach them other things they will not be fond of.”
“It has been so long,” she said.
“It cannot be much longer,” he said in desperate hope.
Branwyn looked on him, and on the field before them, and they stood there a time, comforted in each other. Birds alit on the stone . . . wet and draggled; she had brought a crust of bread with her, and broke it and gave it to them, provoking battle, damp wings and stabbing beaks.
“Enchantress,” Arafel breathed into his heart. “They have stopped being honest; and it has always amused her.”
But Ciaran paid the voice no heed, for his eyes were on Branwyn, discovering how graceful her face, how pale on this gray day, how bright her eyes which surprised him with a direct glance and jarred all his senses.
A boy ran, scurried past them and stopped where they stood; he pointed silently and hastened on. With dread Ciaran turned and looked beyond the walls, for in that moment there was change. A group of riders had come out from the enemy camp, advancing toward the keep. There began to be a stirring in Caer Wiell as other sentries saw it. He looked back at Branwyn, and so distraught was her face that he reached out his hand to comfort her. Her chill fingers closed about his. They tood and watched the enemy ride closer.
“They wish to talk,” he said, seeing the fewness of the riders. “It is no attack.”
Scaga came thumping up the steps to the crest of the wall, leaned over the battlement and glared sourly at the advance. “My lady,” he wished Branwyn, looking about at them both, “I would have you back under cover. I do not trust you to luck. I would not have you seen.”
“I shall stay,” Branwyn said. “I have my cloak about me.”
“Stay away from the edge,” Scaga bade her, and stalked along the wall, giving orders to his men.
The enemy came into clear view, a score of riders bearing banners, most of them the red boar of An Beag, and the black stag of Caer Damh. But they had another banner trailing crosswise of a saddlebow, and this they lifted and showed. A cry of rage went up from the walls of Caer Wiell, for it was the green banner of their own lord.
“Surrender,” one rider of An Beag rode forth to shout against their walls. “This keep is yielded; your lord is dead, the King fallen, and his army scattered. Save your lives, and those of your lord’s wife and daughter—no harm will come to them. Scaga! Where is Scaga?”
“Here,” the old warrior roared, leaning out over the stones. “Take that lie hence! We name you the liars you are, in the one and in the other.”
A second rider spurred forward, and lifted a dark object on a spear, a head with hair matted with blood, a ruined face. He slung it at the gate.
“There is your lord! We offer you quarter, Scaga! When we come again, we will not.”
The lady Branwyn stood fast, her hand limp in Ciaran’s; but when he gathered her against him for pity, she failed a little of falling, and hung against him.
“Ride off!” Scaga roared. “Liars!”
A bow bent, among the riders. “Ware!” Ciaran cried, but Scaga had seen it, and hurled himself back from the edge as the shaft sped, a flight which hissed past and spent itself. Arrows sped from the walls in reply, and the party rode away not unscathed, leaving the green banner in the mud, and a bloody head at Caer Wiell’s gates.
“These are lies!” Ciaran said, turning to shout it over all the range his voice could reach, to walls and the courtyard below. “Your lord sent me to forewarn you all of tricks like these—a false banner and some poor wretch’s ruined face—these are lies!”
He was desperate in his appeal, only half believing it himself. The whole of the keep seemed frozen, none moving, none seeming sure.
“When was there truth in An Beag?” Scaga roared at them. “Trust rather the King’s own messenger than any word from them. They know they have no other hope. The King has won his battle. The King is coming here, with our own lord beside him, with Dryw ap Dryw and the lord of Donn. Who says he will not?”
“It was not my father!” Branwyn shouted out clear, stood on her own feet and flung back her hood. “I saw, and I say it was not!”
A handful cheered, and others followed. It became a tumult, a waving of weapons, a hammering of shields by those who had them.
“Come inside,” Ciaran urged Branwyn, and took her arm. “Haste, your mother may have heard.”
“Bury it,” she said, shuddering and weeping, and Ciaran looked at Scaga.
“I will see to it,” Scaga said, and with a word to his men on the wall to keep sharp watch, he went down the steps to the gate. Ciaran wrapped the corner of his cloak about Branwyn and walked with her inside the tower, into torchlight and warmth, and up into the hall, to bear the news themselves.
But he went down again when he had seen Branwyn to her mother and given report, into the court where Scaga stood.
“Was it?” he asked Scaga when he could ask with none overhearing.
“It was not,” Scaga said, his eyes dark and grim. “By the way of an old scar my lord has I know it was not; but no other feature did they leave him. We buried it. Our man or theirs—we do not know. Likest theirs, but we take no chances.”
Ciaran said nothing, but turned away unamazed, for he had fought the ilk of An Beag for years, and still it sickened him. He yearned for arms, for a weapon in hand, for an answer to make to such men. It was not the hour for it. No attack was coming. Their enemy meant they should brood upon what they had seen.
There was silence all the day. Ciaran sat in the hall and drowsed somewhat, with moments of peace between visions of that gory field and more terrible visions of silvered leaves, of all Eald whispering in anger beyond the walls. He would wake with a start and gaze long at something homely and real, at the gray of a stone wall, or the leaping of flames in the hearth, or listen to the folk who went about their ordinary business nearby. Branwyn came to sit by him, and that peace too he cherished.
“Ciaran,” a faint voice whispered from time to time, destroying that tranquility, but he refused to pay it heed.
They placed double guard that night, trusting nothing; but there was firelight and comfort in the hall. Ciaran recovered his appetite which had failed him all the day, and again the harper played them brave songs, to give them courage: but the stone plagued him—in his ears echoed other songs of slower measure, of tenor never human, of allure which made the other songs seem discordant and sour. Tears flowed down his face. The harper misunderstood, and was complimented mightily. Ciaran did not gainsay.
Then must be bed, and loneliness and the dark—worse, the silence, in which there were only inner echoes and no stilling them. He was ashamed to ask for more light, like a child, and yet he wished he had done so when all were abed and he was alone. He did not put out the light, having trimmed the wick to nurse it as long as he might. The stone and he were at war in the silence, memories which were not his nor even human, memories which grew stronger and stronger in the long hours of solitude, so that even waking was no true defense against the flood of images which poured down upon his mind.
Liosliath. He felt more than memories. He took in the nature of him who had worn these dreams so many ages, a pride which reckoned nothing of things he counted fair—which flung against them elvish beauties to turn them pale, and showed him the sadness in his world. He tried taking off the stone with the light there to comfort him, but that was worse still, for there was that aching loss, that knowledge that a part of him was in that darker Eald. Worst of all, he felt a sudden attention upon himself, so that the night outside seemed more threatening and more real, and the light of the lamp seemed weaker. He quickly placed the chain back about his neck and let the stone rest against his chest, which warmed the ache away . . . and brought back the tormenting bright memories.