He sat up and leaned his face into his hands, passed the hands over his head to the back of his neck.
More steps outside. The door crashed open. A shadowy man stood there glittering with iron.
"Lord? Lord Ciaran, is it you?"
"Rhys. Gods." For a blinded moment he had feared some attack and known better in the next heartbeat; it was his own hold, after all and only Rhys, whose lean figure and dark hair minded him strangely of his brother's in his dream. He stood up. "Has a man no peace?"
"Lord Ciaran, the hold's upside down with looking for you. Shall I—tell Beorc you're here?"
Ciaran laughed half of despair and took in all that Rhys had said. "Branwyn looking too?"
"She had asked; and one man thought you were here, and another thought there, and when the hunt returned and you were neither— Lord Ciaran, are you well?"
"Don't tell her where I slept," he said. "I didn't rest last night." He went toward the door, passed Rhys into the hall and shut the door after him, so that they were in dark unrelieved except for the slit window some steps up. "She was not alarmed."
"No, not except that she thought you with the hunt and wished you had not gone."
"So did you go?"
"No. Only Ruadhan."
"Was there luck?"
"Luck enough till they came back and questions started. Lord, you might have had my bed."
Ciaran said nothing, but surrendered himself to the daylight, rub bing at his eyes as he went down into the sunlight and trying not to look at the men who, one by one, realized he had been found and gathered solemnly to stare at him and Rhys walking across the yard.
Beorc came, meeting them halfway.
"There was no cause for this alarm," Ciaran said, and then, his eyes lighting on Branwyn atop the wall, who stood waiting for him: "Are you all my warders?"
That was short and undeserved. He went up the steps and gave his hand to Branwyn, already ashamed of what he had said, with no way to recall it.
"I was in the storage and fell asleep," he said to her, reckoning that the most of the truth was due and wishing he had said less below.
"Ah," she said, so easily it seemed casual, and wound her arm in his as they walked, taking him inside.
But someone carried tales, or Branwyn read more in his heart than he had thought, for that night there was a posset mixed at bedside.
"You must drink it," she said. "T'will make you sleep."
He was loath. This also was abandonment; he more trusted his own mind. And a dire thought came to him.
"If you took the stone from me," he said, "if you were to do such a thing, you might do me harm."
"I don't believe it."
A great weariness came on him, so great that tears came into his eyes. "But you must not do it, Branwyn. Give me the cup."
She offered it, and he drank: she had made it sweet with honey. Then he lay down to rest and she blew out the light, and came to bed beside him, listening long for the evenness of his breathing.
"Do you sleep?" she whispered, ever so softly.
It seemed then that he did, that the stone had no power to resist the cup that she had given.
But she lay long awake, as she had waked much of the night before, feigning that she slept, and anger gnawed at her, that he had cheated her, forestalling her as he had, with a word and his trust of her.
He had always had that way with her, that he was so simple and so knowing of her heart.
The elvish sun was near, but there was a murkiness which hung late, for here there shone no stars, and uncertain trees which were and were not by turns made the landscape harder and harder to recall, as if the land itself could not decide true from false, now from then. The nightwind that stirred the grass brought forth a hissing sound of dryness and the hillsides were patched with dust, and now and again with stone.
There was ill hereabouts, couched within the hills. Arafel sought it warily, with more caution than she was wont to use in this land that was her own.
There were Men. She saw the houses, but they were nothing like the cleanly houses and neat fields of Caer Wiell, but hovels of rough stone nestled on stony heights, unkept and many untenanted as if even Men had been disgusted with them. There were sheep now and again, and dogs, which little interested her.
She came to a brook in the strange last edge of dark, but Fionnghuala spurned it with a snort, and brought down a hoof like thunder in the night, that echoed among the hills. Something splashed and swam away. "Fuathas," she said, and heard the swim ming stop. "I have no quarrel with you, fuathas," she whispered to the air. "Where are your brothers?"
"Duine Sidhe," the whisper came back from the black water, bub bling, "gone this way and that through the web of waters. Let us go. We do no harm."
"Your name is Hate."
There was soft laughter. "So do you go called the People of Peace by Men, and that name has no power on you. Hate are we; and Spite to Men, but that name will never bind us."
"Come out. I see your name. Shall I speak it to the wind and water, for anyone to hear?"
There was a stirring in the green leaves above the water, a loud rude breath. A black horse stood there, and Fionnghuala shifted her weight and bared her teeth, laying back her ears.
"No," said Arafel. "Give us man-shape, pooka."
The horse faded and it was a dark-haired youth who stood there, clothed in shadow. He had a sullen face, and wrapped his arms about him as if he had taken a chill.
"The Duine Sidhe has come calling names," he said. "But give me my river back, Duine Sidhe." His heavy jaw made his frown the more intense; his thick black hair hung about his shoulders and all but covered his eyes which stared back at her like coals of fire in the shadow. "The wind is cold."
"The water is colder still, pooka. But truth I ask: what stirs here abouts, and what is its name?"
"If I knew it I would bind it," the pooka said and shivered, for all his pride. "It knows mine, Duine Sidhe. O let me go. The sun is coming and I do not love the daylight."
"What is its kind, pooka?"
"It's kind is yours," the pooka said and shivered yet again. "Let me go now."
"No, pooka." She held it still, having had the answer she dreaded. "Where does it lodge?"
It pointed north, behind the hills, and its arm shook as with ague. It began to fade.
"Seaghda," she called its name.
The face grew clear again, distraught and woeful. "I have given what you asked, Duine Sidhe. But you were always cruel."
"Not I. I only ask you guide me. I do not command."
The youth threw his head and his burning eyes peered madly through the hair that settled. His nostrils flared, pale in the strange ness of the light. "I am bound here. So wise a Sidhe should know that."
"Ah," she said quietly, "where is your soul, o Seaghda?"
Now the eyes were wild, the dusky arms hugged more tightly.
"Show me," she said: "Seaghda, Seaghda, Seaghda."
It vanished. The waters swirled, the reeds whispered in the dawn ing. It was back again, a dark-haired youth holding a small smooth pebble on his palm. The mad eyes stared.
She slid from Fionnghuala's back and came to him and took it in her hand, so small and plain a thing and unlike hers which hung like the summer moon about her neck, but very precious to him. If the eyes were not fire they might have wept or pleaded, but they had no such power.
It warmed within her hand. It took fire from her, becoming and becoming, and so she gave it into his hand. "Be free," she said, "Seaghda. The binding is broken."
The shadow leaped up like a shout, a darkness, a wild flood of mane and eyes like embers. It whuffed wildness into the air and leaped the stream at a bound.
Fionnghuala bared her teeth and sidled close to Arafel.
"Come," Arafel whispered, taking Fionnghuala's mane. "It is Seaghda, a prince among its kind; and it will find the way for us."