“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.
Then the light guttered out, and he sat in the dark. The room was very still, and the memories grew harder and harder to push away.
“Sleep,” Arafel whispered across the distance, with pity in her voice. “Ah, Ciaran, sleep.”
“I am a Man,” he whispered back, holding to the stone clenched in his fist. “And if I yield to this I shall not be.”
Music came to him, soft singing, which soothed and filled him with an unspeakable weariness, lulling his senses. He slept without willing to, and dreams crept upon him, which were Liosliath’s proud self, burning pride and sometime heartlessness. He longed for the sun, which would make real the familiar, common things about him; and when the sun came at last, he bowed his head into his arms and did sleep a time, true sleep, and not a warfare for his soul.
Someone cried out. He came awake with brazen alarm clanging in his ears, with cries outside that attack was coming. “Arms!” echoed down the corridors of Caer Wiell and up from the distant court. “Arm and out!”
Fright brought him to his feet, and then a wild relief, that it was come to this, that it was no more an enemy within him, but one that yielded to weapons such as human hands could wield. He tugged on his clothing, raced into the hall with others, and finding no Scaga—down the stairs as far as the guard room. Scaga was arming, and others were.
“Get me weapons,” Ciaran begged of them; and Scaga ordered it. Boys hastened about measuring him with their hands, seeking what armor might fit him. Outside the alarm had ceased. The battle was preparing. The room had a busy traffic of boys running with arrows and the air stank of warming oil. They began to lace him into haqueton and leather, and one of the other pages came up panting with an aged coat of mail. Ciaran bent and they thrust it over his arms and head; he straightened and it jolted down over his body with a touch like ice and poison. “No,” he heard the whisper which had been urging at him, ignored. “No,” he raged in his own mind, with the poison seeping into his limbs and weakening them. Tears came to his eyes, and a bitter taste to his mouth, the harsh sour tang of iron. They did the laces, and he stood fast; they belted on the sword, and by now Scaga, armed, was staring at him with bewilderment, for his limbs had weakened and sweat poured on his face, cold in the wind from the door. The pain grew, eating into his bones and through his marrow, devouring his sense.
“No,” he cried aloud to Arafel; and “no,” he murmured, and crashed to his knees. He bowed over, nigh to fainting, consumed with the pain. “Take it off, take if off me.”
“Tend him,” Scaga ordered, and hesitated this way and that, then rushed off about his own business, for by now the sound of the enemy was a roar like many waters, and out of it came nearer shouts, and the angry whine of bows.
The pages loosed the belt and loosed the laces, pulled the iron weight off him while he knelt, racked with pain. They brought him wine and tended him among the wounded which began to be brought in from the walls. “See to them,” Ciaran cried, clamping his teeth against the poisoned anguish in his belly. Tears of shame stung his eyes, that they delayed with him, while others died. He gained his feet and held to the stones of the wall, sweating and trembling. He made his way out into the open air to use a bow, that much at least. But when a boy gave him a case of arrows, the iron sickness came on him again: the case spilled from his hand and the arrows scattered on the walk. “He cannot,” someone said. “Boy, get him hence, get him up to the hall.”