The touch passed on, and the robes enfolded him. Very tenderly Lord Death embraced him, and as if it were his brother or his King he returned the embrace, his arms about a body less body than burn ing cold. Perhaps Lord Death meant to mock him; but there had touched him such peace, and peace parted from him as Death drew back from him, leaving him chilled and prey again to the wind.
"You are bold," said Death, and the voice seemed gently wistful. "Few would dare that, even the most eager. It's your pride, is it not? If I asked that too, would you give your pride, to ransom Caer Wiell?"
Ciaran sank to his knees, one and then the other, out of practice, having been ten years a Kingless lord. He felt a flush of shame, and lifted his face. "That too," he said.
But Death was gone, leaving only a swirling in the mist.
"Lord," he called after him, rising to his feet. He suspected Death of laughter at his expense; of cruelty passing his expectations. "Lord Death!"
But a third time he dared not call, and he waked in Branwyn's arms, in the dark of his own room.
The children crept down in the morning, late, but not that they looked to have slept well, only desperately, exhausted. They came hurrying silently down into the hall with Muirne behind them, Meadhbh's bright hair flying loose and both their faces ruddy cheeked from a violent scrubbing, but pale all the same, large-eyed and anxious and very unlike his children, so unlike it chilled him.
So Branwyn left her breakfast and hugged them and wanted to do Meadhbh's hair herself, but they tore themselves from her and came to Ciaran's arms, touching him only carefully, as if he could be bruised by their small hands. Laugh he wished them. Oh smile at me and never look that way. But they did not In a single day they had learned to fear and to doubt and to know their father and their mother were not omnipotent to save them; more, they suspected helplessness. It was in their eyes, the touch of their hands.
But he gathered Meadhbh's small hands in his large ones and kissed them, and smiled at her, trying to restore her courage, if not her innocence. He set his hands on Ceallach's shoulder, feeling how slight the bones were, how frail his shoulders were for any weight.
"What," he said, lancing straight to the center of their fears, "did you think I would vanish with the moon? There is nothing real about what happened; and there is—It was all very real. Do you under stand? There are Men and there is Eald and they are most real when they are farthest apart, but when dreams come into hall and sit at table and leave a gift in your hand, it confuses things. Your mother understands. Perhaps Beorc does, though maybe not. —Do you, Muirne? No. Not truly. One should wake from dreams. But this one left substance. Do you both have your gifts?"
"Upstairs," said Ceallach. But Meadhbh, having pockets, brought hers forth, unfolding her hand carefully as if she had trapped some moth. The leaf shone silver and incorrupt on her palm, which trem bled.
"So," he said, "you must always do as she said and keep it by you."
"It feels strange."
"So does mine, you see." He brought the stone into view and prevented her hand with his own cupped over it, a slow and desper ate move which left his heart pounding for dread, though he smiled gently at his daughter. "But one should not let another touch such things. Only keep it safe and secret. Did you dream last night?"
"There was a forest," said Ceallach after a moment.
"Was it a good place?"
"Mine seemed to be," said Meadhbh.
"So." He kissed her on the brow and folded her hand upon the leaf. An unpleasant thought came to him and he looked into her eyes. "But when you wander in your dreams, never let it go, this gift. Never let it go. Names called three times will bring a thing. Be careful what you call, that you can send it away again. Do you hear me? Do you understand? You must be able to send it away."
Their eyes were not so perplexed as he would have wished they were. They reached back into something they knew and agreed with him, silent understandings.
"My name you can always use," he said. "And I will come. I will be there. I promise it. Go have your breakfast. You can sit at table with us this morning, will you like that?"
They would. Their eyes were lighter. In a moment they looked like children, squirming into their seats. Ciaran looked past them to Branwyn, appealing for absolution, for all that had divided them; but she was seeing, mother-fashion, to Meadhbh's hair, to Ceallach's collar, and giving orders to Muirne, where they should be allowed to go this day and how Muirne should watch them.
"Mother," Ceallach said, downcast and shamed.
"Well, what would you?" Ciaran said. "I think you went far enough and saw enough for two young folk in a day. Let us have some little rest, your mother is due that, is she not? Is she not? And the next time I ride the west road you can come part of the way. Rhys will ride escort for you."
"When?" asked Meadhbh, twisting in her seat, her eyes childish again.
"Oh, in a day or so. If I find you have kept your mother happy."
"Meadhbh is my daughter," Branwyn muttered, "not your son, to be out with armored men."
It wounded. Meadhbh's face went blank and hurt at once. It was that sort of wound only friends and kin could deal, so strong he felt it in the stone. But Branwyn never saw, or if she knew, wrapped her common sense about her like a cloak, and poured cider to give to them, golden liquid spilling down into silver cups, smelling of apples and age. She was quite intent upon it. Of such tiny details was the hurt elaborated.
"I have promised," Ciaran said with finality.
Branwyn shrugged, hurting him as well, but this much he allowed. They deserved their wounds, he, his children, being what they were. He dealt none in return, except by being what he was. Neither did Meadhbh, being dutiful. In that moment he saw he had become then-father in a protective way, for they had come out of him and only sojourned in Branwyn. He recalled Caer Donn, his own folk, his brother, parted from him—Donnchadh; and his father, dying without his being there, because of his exile. Only Caer Wiell would take such a man as himself to its heart, being itself close to Eald and accustomed to it over long centuries; only Caer Wiell could smile over such children as these two and give them stones to climb and walls to shelter them. He could not send his daughter off to marry, to be what she was in some strange hold, to wither or to smother what she was . . . if there were any one who would court her, the daugh ter of Ciaran Cuilean. Nor would any lord or King ever trust his son in alliance. The orderly, ordinary hopes collapsed about him, had never stood secure. He reached across the table and laid his hand near Meadhbh's.
Branwyn pretended ignorance of this, of all her injuries. But he loved her and knew that he was loved. When she was harmed, she struck and thought that she was right. When the world threatened to harm one of them, there was iron in Branwyn. He knew this and even Branwyn did not, who seemed to lean on him; but it was the other way around. It was so now, or the gulf would have taken him. She had been there, in the dark, when no one else knew how.
"Eat your breakfast," Branwyn said.
Beorc was looking askance at him when he went out along the wall into the daylight, on that narrow walk; but he was content to walk, to feel the sun's warmth on his back, to hear the sounds of voices in the yard, the laughter of children playing tag among the supports of the walk. He inhaled the smells of straw, of stables, of leather and oil and woodsmoke and someone's baking, all the scents of Caer Wiell and home. These things were good on this morning, after the night, doubly and trebly precious. The colors, the green and brown, the broad swell of lands he tended, the sky, were all dazzlingly bright. The banner over the gate snapped and cracked in the wind. The gray stone was spotted green and white with lichens. Flowers spread themselves in yellow dust like treasure on the hills. There was a delirium in such sights. They had been there all his life, spread wide, stretched thin. He cast back through his memory for the darkest mortal things, but every dark thing in all the world had left some color in his mind, like Dun na h-Eoin in the morning, with the mist lying near the trees all pearled and strange in the first light; and the bristling of spears that morning orderly as a woods on the move against them, by twilight scattered like jackstraws among the dark, humped bodies of the dead—lumps like sacks across the trampled ground, like the spillage from some cart, but a wreckage so vast it covered all the plain as far as the eye could see—while close at hand life glowed like pools of ruby wine in footprints driven deep into the mire. And in twilight moths came to the torches in small frantic sputterings, their wings trailing sparks in the flames. Dun na h-Eoin was the midst of horrors, but these small details were there among the rest; like the silence, the vast, vast silence after so much clamor, the simple taste of air. The moths came back, even on the last of their wings, for love of the golden light. Even death had colors. He had been in worse places, where there was no comfort, no refuge for eyes or mind. The moths flew like prophecies, blind with their desires.