“You must rest,” said Lady Meredydd. “Scaga, no harrying of him today.”
“Let him rest,” Scaga replied, a deep rumbling. “Only so they do.”
The porridge came. Ciaran ate, small familiar motions which gave him excuse not to talk. In truth he felt numb, endured a moment’s fear that he might have begun to fade into elsewhere, so distant he was in his thoughts. He imagined their dismay if he should do so.
And in this homelike place he thought a second time of home, and meetings. Of facing his father and mother and Donnchadh, bearing an elvish stone forever against his heart, with close knowledge of that past which Caer Donn tried never to recall. He could never again see the farmer’s wards against the fair folk without feeling his own peace threatened; could not see the ruins on the mountain above Caer Donn without seeing them as they had been before any Man set foot there; could not walk the hillsides without knowing there were other hills within his reach, and knowing what fell things swarmed beneath them, never truly gone. Worst, to face his father and Donnchadh, knowing what they must never know, that he and they were closer to those things than ever they had believed, these things which lurked and crept at the roots of the hills; and to look on his father’s and his brother’s faces and to wonder whether the taint always bred true.
Unsavory, Donnchadh had called the dale—but he must live with an enemy always a breath away, Man’s shadow enemy, who would take the rest of him—without the stone.
Then he looked about him at the faces of the folk of Caer Wiell, whose war was the same as his, but without such protections as the stone; it was the same Enemy. Death had been outside the walls yesterday, hunting souls. Do we not, he wondered, all bear the wound? And am I coward, because my eyes alone are cursed to see him coming?
The stone seemed to burn him. “Be wise,” a whisper reached him. “O be wise. He is my old enemy, before he was yours. He wants one of elven-kind. Me he waits for . . . and now you. Your fate is not theirs. Your danger is far more.”
He touched the stone, wished the whisper away. I am Man, he thought again and again, for the green vision was in his eyes and the voices about him seemed far away.
“Are you well?” asked Lady Meredydd. “Sir Ciaran, are you well?”
“A wound,” he said, bedazed into almost truth, and added: “Healed.”
“The rain,” Scaga said. “I have something will warm the aches.—Boy, fetch me the flask from the post downstairs.”
“ ’Twill pass,” Ciaran murmured, ashamed; but the boy had sped, and the ladies talked of herbs and wished to help him. He swallowed sips of Scaga’s remedy then, and accepted salves of Meredydd and the maids; and before they were done, warmer clothing and a good cloak all done with Meredydd’s own fine stitching. Their kindness touched his heart and plunged him the more deeply into melancholy. He walked the walls alone after that, staring toward the camp of the enemy and wishing that there were something his hands might do. All the mood of the keep was grim, with the drizzling rain and the unaccustomed silence. Women and children came up onto the walls to look out; and some wept to see the fields, while youngest children simply stared with bewildered eyes, and sought warmer places again in the camp below.
Beyond the river he saw the tops of green trees, and shadowy greater trees high upon the ridge beyond the Caerbourne, over which the clouds were darkest. Those clouds cast a pall over his heart, for it was Death’s presence, and the castle was indeed under siege by more than human foes. The thought came to him that he might bring danger on others, that Death who hunted him might take others near him. This enemy of his might bring ruin on Caer Wiell, on the very folk he came to aid. The thought began to obsess him and cause him deeper and deeper despair.
“Come back,” a voice whispered to him, offering peace, and dreams. “You’ve done your duty to Caer Wiell. Come back.”
“Sir,” said a human, clear voice, and he turned and looked on Branwyn, cloaked and hooded against the mist. He was dismayed for the moment, and recovering, made a bow.
“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.