"My lord?" Beorc had come up behind him; or had been there for some time. He turned to face this huge man with hair like a burning fire, a violence at rest—broad shoulders, strong back, hands capable of everything—and nothing, this morning; they hung empty and of fering, the honest face bemused. The massive head held wit in a cup of bone; sense and love peered out at him through a skull's eyes. Ciaran blinked and shuddered, seeing it; or perhaps Beorc saw him that way.
"Lord?"
"I am well enough this morning." He drew a great breath and looked toward the light, the fields, the hills. "The sun is bright, is it not? A good day."
"Aye." Beorc moved up beside him, leaned his arms against a crenel of the wall, likewise gazing outward. The sun glanced off his golden bracelet, whitened scars which crossed and recrossed Beorc's strong hands, glistened among red-gold hairs on his arms. The bearded face still frowned in its web of blowing hair. "Did you sleep, lord?"
"Somewhat. More than you, perhaps. No more watching at my door. Go to your own bed tonight."
Beorc looked at him, a sideways motion of the eyes.
"Your own bed," Ciaran said again.
Beorc nodded once, not moving otherwise.
"It was a strange company," Ciaran said, "last night. Did it trouble you—that?"
There was a long silence, in which Beorc stared outward over the wall. "So I have seen one of the fair folk," Beorc said. "That was something."
"Not for the first time," Ciaran said.
"They say." A deeper frown settled on Beorc's face. "What I saw last night—I'm not sure. Like the war. The young men ask and those that were out there on the field will never say what they saw. Or we try, sometimes, and it never comes twice the same. Like men that meet bogles and the like in the dark—they tell the best they can and never agree, even in their own remembering." Beorc looked about at him. "It was like that, lord—last night. Like that."
"But you will remember. From time to time—nights are easiest. It comes back then."
"In the war—that faded."
"When Eald comes out in sunlight nothing seems reasonable. Ex cept in the woods, in shadow."
"Whenever I have been there," Beorc said, "anything might hap pen."
"You followed her once."
Again was silence. "So you tell me that I did. Lord, how did my father die?"
"After all these years?"
Beorc shrugged uncomfortably. "I never doubted him; don't now. But you were there. I wasn't."
"He was at my back—I never saw just how it happened. But now and again I saw him in the battle. He was foremost, that day, of all that rode for Caer Wiell."
"But behind you."
"Where I rode—it would have been difficult to follow. More than difficult. But you know. You followed her."
"They say," Beorc said, and let his voice fade away. "We fought at the narrows of the river—the King led; and the battle spilled to Caer Wiell—twenty miles. We could never have ridden so far, spent as we were. But a kind of dark came down, or the morning never came. There was a light—or a banner; I took it for a banner. The lights they name that shine in the wood, and a lost man has to follow: he takes it for someone else walking in the dark, and follows, and it leads. It was something like that, but blazing in the dark—I thought it was the King—or his banner—or it might have been a rider; but it was a light, so clear in that murk, and not a man but saw it and went after it, with all the others, as if it was the only right thing in the dark, man and beast, but never sound of hooves—or sounds were far, and if anyone shouted, it was somewhere far away —Then the light broke, and battle was round us no different than before —But it was not where we had been, or we had fought our way there, over twenty miles."
"She brought you through the shadow ways. Iron can never pass her realm—gods know what path she used." But he knew, was cold with thinking of that trespass, in Death's own domain, where neither Sidhe nor living Man belonged.
"There was light in front of us. That was all I saw."
"Be glad." Ciaran felt the stone cold at his throat, like ice, like a weight too much to bear. The world was mist again. He heard a horse sneeze, heard the thump of hooves close at hand, then blinked and found himself atop the wall, in light, in human color, the stones rough and warm beneath his hands. "What was I? What did you see —of me that day?"
"Like light. Only there was shadow too, or like something wrong with my eyes, like a shadow on your face. But, lord, it was a feeling much as anything. There was this quiet, this awful quiet, like stop ping in the woods, or in some dark place too old, where nothing moves or has moved—" Gooseflesh stood on Beorc's arms. He was not wont to talk like this. He shivered in half a shrug and covered it with a laugh, turning with his elbow on the stone. The laugh died. "Lord, it was like that last night. Even through the wine."
"Beorc, what do they say of me? Now. Across the countryside. Tell me the truth, even the worst of it. How do they see me, our farmers, our weavers, the men who guard my doors? What kind of lord am I?"
Beorc leaned there as if something had pinned him to the stone, as if that silence he had named had wrapped them both in too much intimacy. "Lord, I am your man. They know that. What would they say to me? But I have kin in the country, my mother's folk. Domhnull's too. And in the guardroom they curse you sometimes, the way men will curse hard duty, but, lord, they are your men. They say you have the Sight. They say in the country that the land never fared so well, that there is some luck on it since the war. In the country they set out pannikins of milk, that they never used to do, so the old women say, but they say now—to keep the fair folk on their side. That they fight for us."
"Pannikins of milk." Ciaran gave a frightened, bemused laugh, walked a step away and looked back again. "Aye, I have seen the like."
"There are the small things," Beorc said with a set of his lip that was not to be argued with.
"In them, I have no trust." Ciaran laughed, for he had dismayed Beorc. "Aye. In some things I do not believe."
"Believe you may, lord. My father knew the like."
"Then he was in danger of them. I trust none of the small fair folk. There are such about. The each-uisge. The fuathas. Their saucers may catch more than flies. They are dangerous, that sort."
"All the same, lord, the fields have the luck on them. Burned even to the trees, and no planting fails since, not a seed falls but it grows, and apple trees shoot up like weeds. Trees bear before their time, the rain misses the haying and falls at seedtime, all these years. Where the blackest burning was, the cattle and the horses were kneedeep in grass inside a year. Shall I say what country folk say, lord? That you are too easy in judgment, but always true; that there be no hiding a thing to your face, that one look of you on them and a man thinks of all the wrong he might ever have thought to do, so there were two neighbors up by high Bainbourne settled among themselves rather than have it come to court: the neighbors say for shame of all their doings for years. So they say. They say a horse will not go lame crossing your lands and a cow will drop twins; that the lightning turns in the sky and hits An Beag, missing anything of yours . . . they say. In short—aye, you are loved, lord. Have you never seen that?"