She was there. He flickered into otherwhere and saw a light among the mists of the faded lands, with shadows rearing up between, caught and desperate. He held the gate against them, though his arm grew tired and Aodhan trembled beneath him. There was a thunder in the earth as well, and more and more human attackers added force to those who had come before. But a cry of dismay went up at the far side of that living tide, human screams and battle cries.
“Liosliath!” the call came down the wind, and he saw the flickering of the white mare and the gleam of Arafel’s sword. Aodhan gathered himself and began to move, striding faster and faster.
And suddenly a shadow was beside him, a void shaped like horse and rider, and shapes like coursing hounds. Other dark riders had joined them, blacknesses as great as Death; and some who ran afoot, some like Men and some horned like stags.
Fionnghuala shone in the murk, and her rider no less than she: a pale and terrible gleaming, her hair astream on the wind. “Liosliath!” Arafel hailed him, and he reached out a hand as bright, caught hers across the gap, a joy which burned and died, because of the dire things about them.
Armies clashed in the dark and the storm, and that noise was far from them. Dark things leapt and attacked, slaying and being slain, and wounded shapes climbed the winds. Lord Death lifted the likeness of a horn and sounded it, and the clouds increased as the dark horse began to move; Aodhan paced the dark rider, and Fionnghuala joined him. Side by side with Death they rode, and the dogs bayed, coursing more and more rapidly through the air. They strode above the ground, and mounted the skirling winds. Aodhan threw his head and shook himself and Arafel circled Fionnghuala out and back again, hastening something fell and fugitive toward the dogs. Clouds tattered beneath the hooves, and the thunders rolled. The horn sounded yet again, and more and more riders joined them, bearing banners like black cloud. Armored Men, with darkened eyes set ahead upon the quarry, and lances agleam in their hands, rode on horses with eyes as dead as theirs. The slain had gathered to hunt the newly dead. Ciaran looked, and the Man in him shuddered, for he knew some of these faces, and he had loved no few of them. He saw a cousin there; and a childhood friend, and another rider on a horse with a white-tipped ear—“Scaga!” he called, but the rider coursed past, eyes dark, unheeding; and many a man of Caer Wiell followed after. The last turned and beckoned to him.
“Liosliath!” Arafel rebuked him. She held out her hand to him. Ciaran came, yielded to the elf prince, and Aodhan ran his gliding pace across the clouds, while the shadows fled.
They two turned back alone then, and rode the field in the human world, but the battle was done. Dark shapes slunk aside where they passed, sought refuge elsewhere, and vanished.
Men gathered at the gates of Caer Wiell, atop the hill. They rode quietly now, covering ground, a rush of wind about them, and had their weapons sheathed.
Then Arafel stopped, sat still on Fionnghuala, gazing toward the gates. “I am free,” she said. “ ’Tis done.”
“Let us ride nearer,” he begged her, for Donn had come riding in with lord Evald and the King’s army; and there were the folk inside Caer Wiell. He ached to know how those he loved had fared.
“Would you see them?” Arafel asked him. “Aye, I do understand the bonds of kinship. Go.”
She would not come inside the walls. He knew her pride, and ached for that as well. But Aodhan felt his will to go, and moved.
Men gave way before him, with fear on their faces. And when he had come as far as the gate, he saw lord Evald’s banner, and Evald of Caer Wiell himself standing near it, giving orders to his men. Evald stopped and stared at him. And there kneeling by Evald’s feet was Beorc, Scaga’s son, who held Scaga’s maimed and muddy body in his arms and mourned.
“He fought more than well,” Ciaran said. Beorc looked up, and grief in his eyes became dread at what he saw. The look pained Ciaran like the iron, which ached more and more in the air about him, a taint in which it grew hard to breathe. Aodhan fretted to be away, and Ciaran rode farther, within the ruined gates, sought his father and Donnchadh and the moon banner of his own Caer Donn. Elf-sight found them quickly, and he stopped Aodhan by them in the swirl of Men in the courtyard.
They looked up at a strange rider and did not know him—surely they failed to recognize him, or they would never have had such a look of dread at the sight of him. He rode away from them, and Men shrank from his path in the crowded yard. “Stay,” he bade Aodhan, slid down and walked among the Men, among his own, past cousins of his, seeing everywhere that look he dreaded.
He moved elsewhere, a reaching of the heart, a shifting, and found himself in the stone hall of Caer Wiell, by the fireside, where Lady Meredydd and Branwyn stood. Their eyes showed no less fear than the others had.
“They are well,” he said, holding the stone at his heart to ease the ache in it. “Your lord is home. You are safe. But Scaga is dead.”
He wept in telling it, not having wished to weep, and began to fade. But Branwyn called his name and held him by it. She tried to come to him, a mortal yearning. He reached and took her hand to help her, but she could not come the way he could. He kissed her fingers, and kissed her brow, and stayed a time in the room with them.
Lord Evald came, and the King with him. To the King, Ciaran knelt, while Laochailan’s young eyes regarded him with that dread others turned on him.
“Welcome sight,” the King he had loved said of him; but with the lips, not with the heart. And Evald, lord Evald, who was Eald’s near and knowing neighbor, gave him a look as bleak and unwelcoming—then came and offered him an embrace.
No other human dared, not his own father or brother, when they had come up the stairs into the hall, all clattering with armor. “Ciaran,” his father said, and gazed on him with a bleak, hag-ridden stare. Donnchadh started a step toward him, but his father held his arm and prevented him. Then Donnchadh’s face became like a stranger’s to him, grim and mournful.
They have always known, Ciaran thought, both of them have always known what is in our blood. He recalled the elvish moon which had been Caer Donn’s banner for years out of memory, and was heartstricken at such a look as Donnchadh gave him.
“We are going back,” his father told the King then without looking at him, as if he had not been there. “We have our own cares, too long neglected.”
“Go,” the King bade him; so his father and his brother went their way from the hall, not to linger long near Eald, and never looked back.
Ciaran stood wounded, looked last at Branwyn, who looked at him, and in his pain he wished himself away, in the cold air, in the mist, the deserted shadow-ways.
He came back into the mortal night in the courtyard after some time had passed, where all was quieter than it had been.
He walked outside the riven gates, where the horror of the field was honest and undiminished. “Aodhan,” he said quietly, and a wind gusted as the horse moved out of the night toward him, slow peals of thunder, a blazing like the noon of elvish sun. He stroked the white neck and thought of his home in the hills, at Caer Donn. He might go there, might—once—go there, greet his mother and his kin, see the things he had known, bring them word days before his father and Donnchadh and the men could come and tell them—before that place was closed to him forever, before—so many things. Aodhan could carry him.
He touched the stone at his throat. “Arafel,” he said.
It was another presence which came to him instead, which touched his heart far more gently than it had ever done, with elvish brightness. There was pride—always that; but this time the touch was warm. “Man,” it whispered; and there was the roar of the sea and the cries of gulls. “ Man.”
Only that he said, the elven prince, and it sufficed.