Siawn leaned over in his saddle and killed the wounded man with his sword. He'd needed to do that, Ceinion thought: Brynn's captain had come into the yard too late, after the fighting was done. The cleric said nothing. There were teachings against this, but this wood tonight was not the place for them.
By the light of their smoking torches they saw signs of passage through the far side of that small glade. They went straight through and out the other side, and so came to the wider clearing, the pool of water under stars. Stopped then, all of them, without words. It became very quiet, even the horses.
The man next to Ceinion made the sign of the sun disk. The cleric, a little belatedly, did the same. Pools in the wood, wells, oak groves, mounds… the half-world. The pagan places that had once been holy before the Cyngael had come to Jad, or the god had come to them in their valleys and hills.
These forest pools were his enemies, and Ceinion knew it. The first clerics, arriving from Batiara and Ferrieres, had chanted stern invocations, reading from the liturgy beside such waters as this, casting out all presence of false spirits and old magics. Or trying to. People might kneel today in stone chapels of the god and go straight from them to seek their future from a wise woman using mouse bones, or drop an offering in a well. Or into a pool by moonlight, or under stars.
"Let's go," Ceinion said. "This is just water, just a wood."
"No it isn't, my lord," said the man beside him, respectfully but firmly. The one who had made the sign. "He's here. Look." And only then did Ceinion see the boy on his horse, motionless in the water, and understand.
"Dear Jad!" said one of the others. "He went into the pool." "No moons," said another. "A moonless night—look at him." "Do you hear music?" said Siawn abruptly. "Listen!"
"We do not," said Ceinion of Llywerth, fiercely, his heart beating fast now.
"Look at him," Siawn repeated. "He's trapped. Can't even move!" The horses were restive now, agitated by their riders, or by something else, tossing their heads.
"Of course he can move," said the cleric, and swung down from his mount and went forward, striding hard, a man used to woods and nights and swift, decisive movement.
"No!" cried a voice from behind him. "My lord, do not—"
That he ignored. There were souls here, to save and defend. His entrusted task for so long. He heard an owl cry, hunting. A normal sound, proper in a night wood. Part of the order of things. Men feared the unknown, and so the dark. Jad was Light in his being, an answer to demons and spirits, shelter for his children.
He spoke a swift prayer and went straight into the pool, splashing through the shallows, calling the young prince's name. The boy didn't even turn his head. Ceinion came up beside him, and in the darkness he saw that Alun ab Owyn's mouth was wide open, as though he was trying to speak—or shout. He caught his breath.
And then, terribly, there was the sound of music. Very faint it seemed to Ceinion, ahead of them and to the right. Horns and flutes, stringed instruments, bells, moving across the unrippled stillness of the water. He looked, saw nothing there. Ceinion spoke Jad's holy name. He signed the disk, and seized the reins of the Erling horse. It wouldn't move.
He didn't want the others to see him struggling with the animal. Their souls, their belief, were in danger here. He reached up with both arms and pulled Owyn's son, unresisting, from the saddle. He threw the young man over one shoulder and carried him, splashing and staggering, almost falling, out of the pool, and he laid him down on the dark grass at the water's edge. Then he knelt beside him, touched the disk about his throat, and prayed.
After a moment, Alun ab Owyn blinked. He shook his head. Drew a breath and then closed his eyes, which was a curious relief, because what Ceinion saw in his face, even in the darkness, was harrowing.
Eyes still closed, voice low, utterly uninflected, the young Cadyri said, "I saw him. My brother. There were faeries, and he was there."
"You did not," Ceinion said firmly, clearly. "You are grieving, my child, and in a strange place, and you have just killed someone, I believe. Your mind was overswayed. It happens, son of Owyn. I know it happens. We long for those we have lost, we see them… everywhere. Believe me, sunrise and the god will set you right on this."
"I saw him," Alun repeated.
No emphasis, the quiet more unsettling than fervour or insistence would have been. He opened his eyes, looking up at Ceinion.
"You know that is heresy, lad. I do not want—"
"I saw him."
Ceinion looked over his shoulder. The others had remained where they were, watching. Too far away to hear. The pool was still as glass. No wind in the glade. Nothing that could be taken for music now. He must have imagined it himself; would never claim to be immune to the strangeness of a place like this. And he had a memory of his own, pushed hard away, always, of… another place like this. He was aware of the shapes of power, the weight of the past. He was a fallible man, always had been, struggling to be virtuous in times that made it hard.
He heard the owl again; far side of the water now. Ceinion looked up, stars overhead in the bowl of sky between trees.
The Erling horse shook its head, snorted loudly, and walked placidly out of the pond by itself. It lowered its head to crop the black grass beside them. Ceinion watched it for a moment, the utter ordinariness. He looked back at the boy, took a deep breath.
"Come, lad," he said. "Will you pray with me, at Brynn's chapel?"
"Of course," said Alun ab Owyn, almost too calmly. He sat up, and then stood, without aid. Then he walked straight back into the pool.
Ceinion half lifted a hand in protest, then saw the boy bend down and pick up a sword from the shallows. Alun walked back out.
"They've gone, you see," he said.
They returned to the others, leading the Erling horse. Two of Brynn's men made the sign of the disk as they came up, eyeing the Cadyri prince warily. Gryffeth ap Ludh dismounted and embraced his cousin. Alun returned the gesture, briefly. Ceinion watched him, his brow knit.
"The two Cadyri and I will go back to Brynnfell," he said. "Two of them escaped from me," Alun said, looking up at Siawn. "The one with the bow. Ivarr."
"We'll catch him," said Siawn, quietly.
"He went south, around the water," Owyn's son said, pointing. "Probably double back west." He seemed composed, grave even. Too much so, in fact. The cousin was weeping. Ceinion felt a needle of fear.
"We'll catch him," Siawn repeated, and cantered off, giving the pool a wide berth, his men following.
Certainty can be misplaced, even when there is fair cause for it. They didn't, in fact, catch him: a man on a good-enough horse, in darkness, which made tracking hard. Some days later, word would come to Brynnfell of two people killed, by arrows—a farm labourer and a young girl—in the thinly populated valley between them and the sea. Both the man and the girl had been blood-eagled, which was an abomination. Nor would anyone ever find the Erling ships moored, Jad alone knew where, along the wild and rocky coastline to the west. The god might indeed know, but he didn't always confide such things to his mortal children, doing what they could to serve him in a dark and savage world.
FOUR
Rhiannon had known since childhood (not yet so far behind her) that her father's importance did not emerge from court manners and courtly wit. Brynn ap Hywll had achieved power and renown by killing men: Anglcyn and Erling and, on more than one occasion, those from the provinces of Cadyr and Llywerth, in the (lengthy) intervals between (brief) truces among the Cyngael.