The elf horse threw her head, shook it, rattling thunders from her neck, but lightly Arafel sprang to her back and she began to follow the darkness which paced ahead of them, in the delaying dawn.
The light began among the shifting maze, an uncertain gleam that lost itself among the trunks of trees which did not stand there in the mortal realm: she might have sped quicker as mortals went, but less sure, and come blind toward the hazard.
Now the pooka trotted, now walked a space, now moved again, shaking his mane: it was his doom that he could not speak, having no place but his mouth to keep his soul when he was in his true shape, and always fearful of losing it. But when the light had gotten to a murk that gave suspicion of color, when the sun was with them and they had come to the end of the trees, Seaghda stopped and took his other form, spitting his soul into his hand.
"There," he said doubtfully, pointing with his left hand beyond the wood, where strange carven stones rose up on the hillsides like a line of broken teeth.
"Dun Gol," she said, shaken in spite of herself, for that aspect should have passed from the world. She cast Seaghda a dire look. "Have you manifested this?"
"Not I," said the pooka. "I could not." He shivered in spite of the sun, or because of it. "But the waters are bitter that flow from this place, and taste of hate. Go back, go back now. Find your forests again. This one is not kind, and the stones are worse."
"It is a drow," she said. "That is what has waked."
"Do not say that here," Seaghda hissed, and his eyes glowed but dimly in the day. He hugged himself and shivered. "Enough, enough, let us be away."
She patted Fionnghuala's neck and felt the tremor. "She will stay with me, pooka. Go. I have freed you. Go where you like; I have no more need of you."
He was proud, but the terror in him was more. He turned away and slipped his soul within his mouth: the black horse stood there an instant lifting its head toward the height of Dun Gol, nostrils quiver ing with dislike.
Then it fled, the slipping of a shadow into the murk.
Fionnghuala moved forward, softly now, treading lightly above the polluted soil.
Elves had perished here, on this side and on that of war. It had left the world, this hill, with its memories and its stones, so close to what Men named Caer Donn. Something had brought it back again, more, it was the place from which the strangeness came. This was why the trees returned, which had been lost to Eald: that this place remem bered them.
And it remembered loss. It was Dun Gol, the hill of weeping, and it was reared above the armies which had met and perished here, to the ruin of the world.
SIX
Of Fences and Fugitives
Ciaran slept, past breakfast, and waked with the sun streaming in the windows and Branwyn's place vacant. He lay there a time, his hand finding the quiescent stone where it ought to be, his eyes shut on the day because the quiet was so good to him. But he gathered himself up at last and dressed and went out with a night's rest behind him and a brighter countenance to the days ahead.
He was quite deserted: the hold stirred about its day's business without him, but the maid went scurrying when she saw him in the hall, and Branwyn came in on the return, smelling of sunshine, with hope in her eyes and dust on her hands that she wiped upon her gown.
"Did you sleep soundly?" she asked, as if it were any morning of their lives, and kissed him by the mouth; he hugged her, finding the smell of her sunbathed hair the fairest thing about the morning he had met.
"Oh, aye, I did."
She drew back to look at him.
"My oath. I did." He smiled a weary small smile, not the false one he could use. "You see, there is peace of it. I knew it would come." He gathered her back to his heart. "The Sight was too quick and keen for a time; perhaps that it had gone unused so long, and knew me—but it has settled now. It has quite settled. There's no more pain."
There were other things she might have said. He waited for them, but she judged the peace still fragile, perhaps, for she only found that she had gotten dust on him and brushed at it and straightened his collar as if he were a child to be cared for. "Meadhbh and Ceallach are out weeding the garden; I thought they should have the sun. Muirne is with them. I will have cook send your breakfast. Cein was here: the notch-eared ewe dropped her lamb this morning and the children went to see it. Beorc is somewhere about: the horses took down the north fence last night and got into the turnip field; but they have got most of them in by now."
He frowned. "I will go," he said.
"You will have your breakfast first."
He smiled and kissed her on the brow, on his way out breakfast-less; he was vexed about the turnips, and halfway glad that there was something ordinary to set his hand to, that needed neither arms nor wit, except to reckon where the rowdier mares had gotten to, if they had not gone straight to bickering with the stallion in his stalclass="underline" and if that had happened, there would be planks splintered and carpentry to do.
He had a gelding saddled from the stables and rode out from the gates, along the gardened north; and along that stout fence and hedgerow that kept the pasturage. He saw a rider on the horizon, close to the end of the row, and rode for him.
"All in but Whitenose," Beorc said. "I have lads combing the riverside."
"That mare was never a wanderer," Ciaran said. Of Slue he would have expected it, who was often leader of the trouble.
"Probably she became confused," Beorc judged, "having more conscience than the rest, and ran off."
"Where was the breach?"
Now Beorc frowned, pointing north. "Up by and trees yonder."
Ciaran frowned as well. Not by the new fields then, but facing open land. That was less like the mares. "Slue got the wanderlust again," he judged, "it being spring, and led the rest to mischief. Let us ride up there and see it."
So they went, the little way that remained, and there was nothing to be seen but some of the lads putting the fence to rights, stacking up the stones again and setting the rails. The ground was much trampled with the horses wandering this way and that.
Ciaran shook his head. There was no chance of tracking any single horse here. They rode back again, down along the road where it came near the river. "I think," he said, "that the watch might have seen them from the gate if any had wandered this way."
"I think that in the end we will find our Whitenose off by Gearr's steading," Beorc said, "if she went off north instead. Either the watch missed her in the dark or she went farther than the others. We might have a lad ride up that way. But the rough ground makes her hard to track."
Ciaran shut his eyes as they rode, a brief casting of his wishes: if I am gifted with the Sight, he thought, cannot I find one straying mare? But there was only mist as there had been; and suddenly a chill that made him draw in the gelding's reins sharply.
"Lord?" Beorc asked.
The horse had faced about under the pressure of his hand, backing still, it was curbed so hard: he felt its discomfort and yielded with a shiver. "Donnchadh," he said, for that darkness was back which he had felt the day before, when he had dreamed of his brother.
"My lord, is something there?"
Beorc's voice came to him through the mists, and trees faded which should not stand there, and the land he knew returned. He felt the sun again.
"Is it some ill?"
"Something ill," he said, and there was a presentiment on him still, so that the matter of the mare diminished in his mind and he recalled the dream that he had dreamed in the night, that was the hill near Caer Donn.