"The Duine Sidhe says what she likes and the Gruagach has to listen."
"There was a time—" she began, nettled despite herself, but made a further effort, her hands clasped upon her knees. "Gruagach, I beg."
The hair shifted backward, the lifting of unseen brows, showing bewildered eyes. The Gruagach clasped hands about its own knees, straighter now. "Please, elf, nothing against my Men."
'There are two children across the hills—such bright children, they are, uncommonly bright and good. Polite too. You would like them. And a land—not so fine as yours, but for Men's doing, very neat. I have seen them put out milk and cakes of evenings. They are mannered folk, even if the gifts go unnoticed. The children—you would know them if you saw them. You would never mistake them."
"But I have my land, Duine Sidhe, my farm, my Men to take care of—"
"It would take so little notice, only now and then. I do not say you should do the work of their fields; but shadows have come close there. If there were now and again your eye turned that way, or your care— They are very mannerly folk. They would appreciate the at tention, I do think, small Sidhe. I have business to tend to. But the shadows do not trifle with you, I know that."
The Gruagach leaned forward. "What are they to you?"
"Something precious. Men that they are—precious to me. I ask, Gruagach. The Daoine Sidhe ask, and hope. I know it is no small thing."
"You made the hills to quake," the wight accused her. "You loosed them. Now you come asking help."
"I do."
It shivered then. Its eyes rolled up. It moaned. "The Gruagach sees. Oh, I see, I see, I see, the dark thing."
"Is it near, Gruagach?"
A convulsion trembled through its limbs. A murmur began in it, that became words.
Dark, dark and dark it lies and lost is he who finds it; Cold it burns and heartless lives and never heart can bind it
Arafel shivered and rose, laying a hand on Fionnghuala's neck. "I read your riddle. I would I did not."
For a moment the Gruagach seemed lost to sense. Then it recov ered itself, hugging itself, rocking to and fro. "Cold," it complained.
"Yes, cold. And my fault, among others. I own it. Will you grant my favor all the same, Gruagach?"
It stood, never tall, coming scantly to her waist, and having to look up at her, the more as she took Fionnghuala's mane and swung up astride. "The Gruagach will do what he can," it said. "I will try. I am very strong."
"Small cousin, I do not doubt it."
Its eyes went bright. "Cousin, am I?"
"Cousin," she said.
It laughed and capered by her as the elf horse began to move. But the thunder boomed now as the horse increased her stride, and the Gruagach had no such swiftness. Lightning flickered. The trees sighed with wind. The Gruagach fell behind, where soon a storm might break, light patter of rain and mutterings of thunder.
Arafel rode not fully in the shadow ways, not daring them. There was true shadow ahead, a darkness where no stars shone nor clouds rolled, an opacity and increasing cold not so far north.
They were old, these hills near Donn, older than Man. They were prisons, but their roots were shaken and what had been loosed had only gone back for shelter.
The greater things were slower to wake, for the greater binding was on them, but beyond this fair place the mists thickened, forebod ing ill. It was not in her mind to ride against it blindly; but to find it out, how far it reached, and into what, and how arrayed. She might have stayed safe in Eald, for a time, but it would have come there when it chose.
She came for it. Heartless, the Gruagach had named it, in its half-crazed way, but that was a very true name for what she suspected of it, as true a name as any.
FIVE
The Sending
He slept, if fitfully, and Branwyn was by him, so that for most of the hours of the night he did not sleep at all, but lay with his hand closed about the stone, so that he was aware of it, but only dimly participant.
Dragons stirred in his vision, a glittering of lances, of elvish armor, ancient wars.
A face, elvish-fair, hovered near: elf-prince, the shadows whis pered, dreading this brightness. Liosliath, he addressed this appari tion, but it was only dream. The years were many as forest leaves, as raindrops in the storm. The earth had passed its youth since this one had set foot on it ... cousin to ageless Arafel.
But when he looked, truly looked with the stone, to see what lay about them, his vision went gray and strange, and he seemed lost among the trees which were not the trees he knew. He remembered the darkness which had coiled among the hills as he gazed outward, severing him from the sea, and still the disquiet crept through him, a sense of power that might do such a thing, silencing the stone.
Arafel's? he wondered. But the aspect of it had been dark, unlike her workings, and there was a dread about it different from the bright terror he knew of her. Has she a dark aspect? Or had Lios liath? Or can anything dim such a stone?
Arafel, what am I to do with it?
For your defense, she had said. I do not ask that you use it Only that you have the choice.
Has it come? Or do I only see what has been behind our peace for years?
Do not walk in Eald, she had said, and he believed this, and avoided thinking of it in these gray, weak hours when the veil seemed very thin. So I am not come to you. And again: Do I truly leave this place when I am there? Or do I dream? The thought of Branwyn's fright if she should wake and find him fading kept him struggling against it no less than Arafel's command.
When light came he feigned to wake and smiled at his wife, gave her a morning kiss, with the birds singing beyond the slitted window and the gentle-hued light coming to them, for it was spring and they piled on blankets against the chill, but liked the freshness of the air and had the shutters off that they used in winter.
"They know nothing amiss," he said of the birds. "Listen to them this morning."
"Did you rest?" she asked, searching his face.
"Oh, aye." He was not wont to lie, but he did so smiling.
He smiled through breakfast—"Will we ride today?" asked Ceal lach; and "Hush," said Branwyn sharply. "No, you will not. Let your father be."
Ceallach dropped the matter at once, so unlike his son: and Meadhbh tugged at her brother's sleeve and comported herself as if the question had not come up, very sober.
He grew desperate, even then, in the silence, but he roughed Ceallach’s hair and made nothing of it. "We shall see," he said. "Nothing is the matter, is it?"
"Oh no," said Meadhbh instantly, wide-eyed and all too quick
"No," said Ceallach.
So they all had learned to lie. That is not so, he started to say, and smothered it, not to break the peace, only wishing that they would do something amiss, or fidget in their seats, or quarrel over the but ter, or something like other mornings.
Instead he smiled, weary as he was, too weary and, too little in command of his heart to contest with anyone dear to him. He was alarmed by his ready angers, put them deep and smothered them all and ate the breakfast which sat ill at his stomach, worried by the tiny frown which sat on Branwyn's brow as she chattered at the children about this and that duty, to which they kept answering meekly and unlike themselves. O let me escape this, he thought, with no thought toward the days of bearing this gift he had been given or of their days to come. He was reduced to the moment, like some wounded thing. He set his cup down. "I have work to do," he said and rose, and suddenly had all their eyes focused on his, even Muirne's who was participant in the table, in this privacy. Her look was like the children's, her pale face all eyes, her hair combed taut about her face which had gone all smooth and strange to him. Was this Muirne, did even Muirne read him so well? And Branwyn and the children. "I have work," he said.