"The kingdom has had peace of me."
"Are you virtuous? But you could have murdered father, brother, King, host, and done far more good in the world after all this murder than you have done with your peace. You could have piled corpse on corpse and burned holds and tortured and plundered and done more good than this."
"Then where were you? Why did you stay your hand from me?" The taste of ashes and tears was in his mouth. The thorns held him impaled. "There were years I had nothing. I was so slight a matter. I expected you—in the forest, in fighting with An Beag, somewhere on the stairs—Where were you, that you could not do so slight a thing, if all the world hung on it?"
There was silence. The shadow drew back and seemed to shrink. "You are not the only fools there be. I bound myself by a promise in your case, old comrade. She asked. And I promised."
"And my brother? Was he beyond you too? Or the King? Any of us would have sufficed, would we not?"
"But on them I had no claim. And she would not. I begged her!— I! slay this Donnchadh. One stroke and the world is saved. She would not. The Sidhe are fey and mad. This abdication of yours—it must run in the blood." Lord Death drifted closer. "Listen. A night ago your brother quitted Caer Donn, bound for Dun na h-Eoin where the King lies dying—a long dying, believe me. It amazes them that one Man could survive so much and so deadly poisons. But they are out of patience with such methods. Do you not understand, Man? Laochailan has been no King. They divided him from you, from the one who might have saved him, and murdered the lord of Ban, who was the best of them. And not they. Donnchadh. From the beginning, your father and Donnchadh."
He shook his head vehemently. "My father—no. I will believe it of my brother, but my father, no, no man was truer to his King."
"Your father was halfling like yourself, and the curse was wakened at Donn. You wakened it. It was waiting for him when he came home, lurking in the stones, the earth, the foundations of Caer Donn. I will tell you the name of it; I will whisper it: Duilliath. And doubt less the drow came whispering to him: half-Sidhe, half-Sidhe, kins man, where is your younger son? More powerful than his King, more than his father—what would stay him from coming here? Power must fight power, and there is power in this place. Dig deep, search it out, master it. —But it mastered Donn. Of course it could. It whispered, it grew—without scruples. Your King already feared you; and when they came whispering in their turn, kinsmen against kinsman, why, conspiracy was a thing Laochailan King could well believe, when he would not have believed in virtue. Power against power, they said. Magic to oppose the Sidhe that sits in Caer Wiell How else can we survive? You wed your King's cousin, begot an heir while your King has failed. Evald died to your advantage—Now he has Caer Wiell, they whispered, and was not Evald's death untimely young?"
"O gods."
"Oh, but you are beyond gods, halfling. I cannot hear your prayers. You have the stone. Your brother is on the road. You might be there, suddenly, beside him. Against Sidhe I have no power, and his life is guarded now, I know so. It was him. The drow will have Donnchadh on the throne in a fortnight; and armies at his command. If you have power, use it! Call her name, not mine."
He doubted. Doubt crushed him. He shook his head. "No. Call her into this place—no. I will try something else—to go to her." He held the stone still in his hand, and it remained cold and lifeless. "And if I find her I shall give her your message."
"Do so, then," said Death. The darkness drew aside. "If that is all that I can win, do so. And be wise. The border is not the greatest danger. I have sent a dream to Beorc Scaga's-son: his father. Come home, I have bidden him. Your lord has need of you. And mark my words, you will."
"Keep your hands from my folk! They are not yours to be sending here and there."
"They are mine when I call them—when their hour is come. One of them I found wandering and escorted to your hands. Was I thanked for that?" The voice faded on the wind that rattled dry branches and stank of stagnant water. "No. But our interests are liker than you know. Farewell and fare better, Man, than you have fared before."
He shivered. Somehow he had gotten to his own woods again, less dire than the place he had quitted, and the sun shone through tan gled limbs and summer leaves. He was not held. The brambles did not grow here and it was Caerbourne that flowed at his feet.
Then with a jolt of his heart he knew where he was, a place where he and Lord Death had met before: it was Caerbourne Ford near Raven Hill. He had strayed half a day from home.
At least he knew his way from here, a path Rhys must have taken, a path which once he had run with the hounds of the Hunt at his heels. A spur of it led from here to the heart of all Eald, to that grove where he had first met the Sidhe, beneath that tree which grew rooted in his woods and hers at once.
That was the place she would be, he told himself; there lay hope if hope there was, if he dared come there now, with Arafel unwilling. But things were changed. It was his own safety she had thought of. Now he was concerned for hers, for all that depended on her. He made haste going down the bank, fevered haste, trusting this Caerbourne far more than the stream he had just quitted, though his shoulders itched between with the memory of arrows and An Beag so near to this crossing-place.
Danger. He felt it suddenly near him as he waded the dark stream, a shivering in air and water, a poison in the winds. He struggled the harder, panting, sought the far bank and gained it, soaked and heavy in that climbing and already reaching elsewhere with his mind.
An Beag, he thought. Watchers at the ford. He fled into Eald as if it were a dream, recalling another day that he had met evil in this place. The grove, he thought, but he could not find the way. The mist thickened. Brambles caught at him. Iron shivered through his sub stance like poison, so that he staggered, almost losing Eald.
A darkness loomed up before him in chill and fetid wind. It rattled and gibbered and mud clung to his feet, holding him like nightmare. Other things leapt and clawed at his boots, strove to reach his hands, and the cold was terrible. He lurched aside in defeat, tried another way, but dead wood crumbled beneath his weight, and another of the greater horrors lay that way. The air was presentient with ill and malice, so that it stung his chest and sped his heart. It came toward him. More and more the lesser ones had power: one sat on a dead branch and plummeted suddenly upside down, laughing and clinging with hands and feet, its face still rightwise up.
He plunged on, thrusting it and its branch away, but something drifted before him now, black and unwholesome, with long white hair, and dodge as he would, he was overtaking it.
It turned suddenly and looked at him with a white elvish face. Arafel he thought in sudden relief, because they were so like; but this face was cold and not what it had seemed a moment ago. It reached out its hand, more terrible in its beauty than all the rest in their ugliness.
"Duilliath," he guessed.
It laughed. "You are wrong, Man, and powerless to name me." It came closer. "Yield up the stone. You are hopeless else."
"No."
"Lost, then." Other creatures had come, and iron shivered in the air. "Ciaran, Ciaran, Ciaran—back to your beginnings!"