The stone had troubled him before, when he had carried it in his youth. But iron had not seemed so painful then. He had passed the armory bearing it and not felt it half so keenly then. It is the years, he thought. His old wounds ached. He limped some winter mornings. I could have slept on bare stone once, and never minded it
But his nerves were taut. He realized his fists were clenched and mindfully unclenched them. He thought that he might have a little peace if only he could take it off his neck. It tempted him, as once, his third battle, he had thought that he could run away; all that dawn he had waited for the ambush to break, hidden half-frozen in the autumn-red thicket as they fought in those years of the King's war, and it had occurred to him that he could stay there when the others burst forth, and that he need not go, because he had con tracted a sudden, gripping fear, and felt sure that he would die. But his body had leapt when the horn sounded; and he had gone, after lying to himself all the while that he had had a choice. After that he knew that things seemed choices which were not, and that men lied to themselves sometimes for comfort in the small dark hours. So he could think now of putting off the stone, but he knew that his hand would refuse the act, because he had said that he would bear it, and he could not do otherwise.
Liosliath! he cried in his mind, and suddenly there returned to him that sound he had all but forgotten: the sea, waves lapping at the shore, gulls crying like lost children.
Does the stone remember? Or was more than that always my imag ining; and was there ever a living voice?
She thought so, at least
Silence came. For a while it was all gray, and he waked fitfully, aware at least that he had slept, caught himself short of falling off his precarious rest. His eyes drifted shut again, fluttered, for it seemed some sound had come to him, but it was only someone stirring about below, some clatter in the kitchens.
He sighed, and was home again. He lay asleep in the loft of Caer Donn, in that closeness he shared with Donnchadh, and any moment now his mother would be calling them both downstairs to breakfast, to that great table they all shared. His sister was alive again. He heard her voice; he thought he heard it, the way he had never been able to remember it, and if he could wake and go downstairs she would be there, his sister and his mother and his father who were dead but alive again in this new and precious dream.
Father, he would say, you never let me explain; and his father would sit by the fire in the great hall in the tall carved chair with the huge old wolfhound he had loved lolling at his knee and listen to him without really seeming to listen, which was his manner when he was thinking about something. Listen to the boy, his mother would say, taking his part as she always would. He's your son.
His father looked up and frowned, disturbing the tenor of the dream. Ciaran retreated from that moment, choosing another.
How did you come here? his mother asked him; but the horse that stood outside she could not see, nor could anyone see who did not know how: Aodhan was its name and it had carried him home as it had carried him to battle.
I can't stay long, he said, feeling keenly the stone about his neck, but he stood in the upper hall of Caer Donn where every detail was precious to his memory, wooden walls, where those of Caer Wiell were gray stone; and fine carving on the benches, for the folk of Donn had always been fine craftsmen and carvers. O Mother, there was battle. The King has won. I've come home awhile.
(But he had met his father and his brother afterward, and they had walked away, having seen what he was, and what he had become. The hills about Donn held old stones, for the elves called it Caer Righ, and there was elvish blood in them all, fey and different from men.)
And your father? his mother asked; and your brother and your cousins?
Well, he said. Father and Donnchadh are very well But Odhran died at Dun na h-Eoin and Riagan at Caer Ban; and Ronan and Hagan too—
All dead?
Aye. Dead. He sat down in a chair he remembered. Is there ale?
She brought it for him; it had taken longer than this, with much stir about the hold, but in his dream it was instant, and she sat near him and asked him when they would come, his father and Donnchadh.
Soon, he said, soon. Cherishing the time that he had left. He would stay for supper. He would do that. He would stay all the days before he knew his father and his brother would come home and tell her that he was banished, fading only when he knew them passing the gates.
But he had not stayed the hour. The questions were unbearable, the reality of home insupportable when his mother persisted in her questions, when she grew angry and confused.
It happened now, and he fled outdoors, realizing only later that he had been mistaken, that he should never have come here.
He rode, and he was a boy again, with Donnchadh; they raced upon the heath and climbed irreverently on the ancient stones, their ponies tethered down the hillside.
It is a cursed place, said Donnchadh. He would become a lean, tall man, dark, for he was of their father's first wife; but as a boy he was gangling and his hair always fell so, into his eyes. Do you dare?
Of course he had dared. In those days he had no fear. They stood atop the world like kings, he and his brother, and looked from the hill to the mountains round about, shoulder to shoulder.
And stood eye to eye at Dun na h-Eoin, among the dead.
Take care, his brother said. And moths died in the torches outside the King's tent; and the dead lay in heaps.
Ciaran, take care.
The mist was back, among hills that he knew; and Caer Donn stood as it had always stood, high on its hill among the hills about, for its wealth was sheep, and the flocks grazed round about; but now the land was sere and brown like winter, and the treeless hills showed their bare bones of earth and ancient carved stones.
This was not the way it had been. He knew dismay, and entered into the hold, into the upper hall with the blinding swiftness of a dream, where the familiar chairs stood all unused, and only his brother slept before the fire as he had seen him sleep at a hundred campfires, his head at an angle, the fire leaping on his face.
Wake up, he said to Donnchadh.
But there was a sense of menace he had only felt in the wrong places of Eald, something in the stones.
They were boys again on the hill, and something wakened under their feet which resented their laughter and their youth.
It crept and circled in the dark places of the hold, and there was no kindred left. The servants had grown faithless. There was only his brother sleeping here alone, while menace gathered, and the shadow he had seen came nearer.
Donnchadh, wake up.
But the waking was his, and his hands clenched on the board of the bench, his balance for a moment deserting him.
Someone moved on the stairs outside. For a moment he thought himself truly in Donn, and blinked, his heart beating so hard it hurt. But he lay still, and the steps passed, with a clattering of the noise below.