There was silence, profound silence, in which no wind stirred, nor leaf moved.
"What am I supposed to do?" he cried, forcing his voice amid such stillness. "If there is any help at all you can give—or even give me some advice. Sending Domhnull up there—I know that was a mistake. I'm afraid I have made all too many mistakes. I could go to the King at Dun na h-Eoin—but that would leave Caer Wiell with too little strength for safety, or send me out with too little on the road. What should I do, stay here and do nothing? Was that what you wanted? What was I supposed to do?"
Still there was silence. He walked forward, carefully, remembering the way, believing it in spite of the mist and the black and ghostly trees; but then he thought of what he was doing, like a man looking down when he ought not, and then doubt began to grow at his shoulder, and shadows began to deepen on this side and on the other, and things to gibber and rattle in them. He doubted the power of the Sidhe which supported his own—doubted she existed, doubted all the wisdom that she had given him and all the way he knew.
"Help me," he cried in the thickening mist. "Help me if you can! I need you! Help!"
He heard hoofbeats then far away and from the west of the world; and something familiar touched his heart. A wind blew over him, lessening the mist, a wind from the sea. He heard the cries of gulls and shivered in a melancholy that leached away all life and love and purpose.
Then he heard the hoofbeats closer, and the stone remembered a whiteness, swiftness, fierceness.
Aodhan, leaped into his mind like some answer to a question long forgotten, implicit in the thunder and the storm.
"Aodhan!" The horse was his, had always been, if ever he had thought to call him, if he had ever thought of journeying those ways through Eald where Aodhan might go.
"Aodhan!" he cried. "O Aodhan!"
The wind blew stronger from the sea, and there came a flickering of memory from the stone.
Man ... it whispered, full of anguish. Man, is it you? What have they done?
"Liosliath! Help me—"
I cannot come. The shadow—Man, the shadow—
The wind fell suddenly as if someone had shut an open door. Then it rose from another quarter, miasmic, heavy, wafting from some place of water and corruption.
"Liosliath! I am still here! Liosliath!"
But there was only mist, and the voice faded in his mind as faery things would, leaving him robbed and bewildered, whether anyone had spoken at all; or whether he had imagined the salt wind or the sound of hooves.
Something chuckled at his despair, and brush stirred by him. He had slipped somehow. He did not know this place. The mist wove through it in threads, so that one moment he had a clear view of trees and more mist beyond, and then he passed into that mist and lost all bearings, all certainties. He was looking for Airgiod, but the stream he found instead was fouled, choked with leaves and stag nant. A reek went up from it that assailed the soul.
Then his heart failed him, for strange pale eyes stared up at him from beneath that murky water, and blinked when leaves drifted down, silver tarnished black. The eyes rose closer to the surface, glowing like some double reflection of the moon.
He backed away, met the corpse of a tree whose branches clawed at him like fingers. He felt past it, retreated step by step.
"Man," a voice said.
He stopped, looked toward that darkness darker than the skies. "Lord Death," he said, his heart beating as if he had been running. His arm ached with his old wound. "Where is she, do you know? Or where have I gotten to?"
"She is fled," Death said, and his voice came thin and strained. "Man, I had thought to follow you."
"To her?" Wariness came on him. "To her, is that your meaning?"
"She sent me out, Man, to learn a name; but she would not stay for it." The darkness drifted near, loomed, shutting out the little light that sifted through the branches, and the air was bitter cold. "If you can reach her, do. I have more messages for her."
"She met something at Caer Donn. But you would know that. You were there."
"She met something, yes. Use that stone of yours and call her."
"I tried. The stone gives me nothing but the sea. Trees are where they should not be ... and Airgiod, if that marsh yonder is Airgiod—"
"The sea," Lord Death whispered. "And Eald deserted. Man, Man, if that urge has fallen on her, we are all lost. Call her. Call her name. You have that power. You proved it once before."
"I can't."
"You will not." The shadow swept closer. A hand gripped his arm with strength like bone. "Man, listen to me. The drow are roused. Do you know that name? Whatever this stone of yours may be to a Sidhe, they are without. They have lost it, cast it away—a drow is what a Sidhe becomes, when he has lost whatever that stone is."
A cold settled into his marrow, and the stone stung his heart like a lump of ice. He remembered then a tree shining like the moon, like a thousand moons, agleam with jewels and elvish work. "No," he said, "not always." Warmth came then, reassurance, and he shrugged off Lord Death's hand as if it were spiderweb. The stone grew warmer. "I am sure of that. It is what a Sidhe does to the stone himself, of his own will; that makes the difference. I remember, Lord Death." The strength in the stone grew poignant as tears, as a shout going through the forest, then faded, leaving the cold. He turned about, sought that retreating touch with all his heart, as if that door had opened again and let out warmth and kindness and all the things this place had long forgotten. But Death laid his hand on his shoulder and came before him again, cutting off all his vision.
"Fool and servant of a fool! Use the power you have. If there are weapons, take them up. You will need them all. No, do not turn from me. This is all your doing, the loosing of this plague. A thousand or so human lives you bought with it, and your own. Caer Wiell might have fallen, yes, would have fallen that day; but suppose—no, hear me, never turn your back to me—suppose you had not roused all Eald to help you and Caer Wiell had fallen. The King was on his way; he would have come there sooner or later, if you had only sold your lives for enough of An Beag's. He would have come on an enemy in their looting, disorderly, in a hold with gates broken. Then Laochailan King would be king in his own right, by his own hand and never reigned in fear—fear of you, haming, married to his kin. But no, you refused to die there; saved your life and a paltry thou sand more and waked all of this evil and cost every life you saved. You doomed the world, Man, and all that might ever be, to save your life!"
Ciaran tore himself away, but brambles snagged his cloak, his clothes, his hands, and Death was still before him.
"You waked power, Man, and would not use it—destroyed the peace, destroyed the King, destroyed your mother with grief and your father and your brother with fear of you and it. You were lord of Donn if you had reached out your hand. You could have taken that sheepcot and compelled your father and your brother instead of moping about waiting for them to send to you. You could have gone to Dun na h-Eoin and faced Laochailan: who could have prevented you if you had had the stone then and used it? Your king feared you. The whisperers at his side would have scattered like deer. You would have had him in your hand for good or ill, and then was time for compassion. You could have made him great, shaped him however you would have him, made him a name to remember, gained him a kingdom greater than any king before him. Fear of you broke what little there was of him and made him clay for moulding; but you would not. You cast him away, cast it all away. You stayed at home, breeding your horses and raising cabbages. This small realm of yours, have you not made it fair? But at what cost?"