"Give me up," Ciaran breathed, and pain rode the breath. "Go away. And take the Bain Sidhe with you."
"Over the Sidhe I have no power. Least of all that one. It gives me gifts. It goes before me. I do not rule it. It will have its due. And your friends have gone to hunt it."
"O gods, gods, stop it! Prevent them!"
"I have only one power over Men. Which shall I choose, lord Ciaran?"
"Ciaran," Branwyn said. The visions shattered, became pain, be came the room, hard to keep. Her hand enclosed the stone. For a moment he felt her grief, her love. She slipped her fingers beneath the chain.
"No," he said, "no, Branwyn. Let it be. If you take that I shall die."
She wept. Her hand trembled. He felt her desolation in the thing she had resolved to do.
"No," he said, loving her for that. "O no."
She took her hand away. She held his. She looked into his eyes, hers all astream with tears, but she composed her face and smiled a desperately false smile. "Well, awake?" she said. She began to talk, softly, to weave a spell of words; and he knew what she purposed, that she would keep him while she could, but that when there was no hope left she would cast the stone away, to steal him back from Eald.
"You mustn't," he said.
"She loves you," Death said. "She means to do this. And so I have to be here, until the Sidhe is sated."
Branwyn washed his brow, whispered on, of Meadhbh and Ceallach; Rhys had come—he blinked, wondering when he had ever gone, or where; she talked of siege, fiercely, telling him things he could not remember even while he was hearing them.
"The King is dead," he said. "Had I said that?"
She carried his hand to her lips. "Hold on," she said. "Would you ever give up Caer Wiell? Hold fast. Hold on while you can. You have to defend the hold. Stay here, beside me."
That much he understood, that little thing she asked, who had right to ask so much. He hovered there bewildered, remembering their youth, such as they had had together, in the long ago.
Then:
"Man." It was Liosliath. He knew the voice. It had been part of himself once. He heard it speaking to him. A white thing rose up between, wailing and bloody-handed.
"Hold on," cried Branwyn.
"No," Meadhbh said, thrusting off Muirne's hands. She ran, raced to the corner where Ceallach had fled, themselves against Muirne, Leannan, everyone who guarded them; she clutched Ceallach's hands in hers, cast a wild look on familiar faces, anxious faces. "We know where it is. Let us go and tell them. It wants him, that thing." The sound was everywhere the wind blew now, everywhere, in blood and bone and stone and timber of the hold.
"Let us go!" cried Ceallach.
And then they went, so suddenly, into such a blast of cold it took the breath, a passage into the place of mist and trees.
"Where are we?" Meadhbh said, shivering. "Ceallach, where are we?"
"There," he said in a voice fainter than the wind and the singer. "O Meadhbh—I think we're there, on the riverside."
"Find the men, O Ceallach, we have to find them."
"We're lost, Meadhbh!"
"Not we." She clenched her hand about the gift she wore. "We can't be! We can't be lost, remember? It's the men who've lost them selves." She heard the river mingled with the singer and the trees the wind was tossing. She trod now on wet grass. There was moonlight from above, lightning from the cloudwall, a curious and dreadful luminescence. She gathered up a stone. Ceallach took another, si lently.
They saw it then, a small white thing that perched among the trees —so small a thing, like a withered woman all gauze and rags, wash ing, washing something in the stream.
"Ciaran," Branwyn said. "Ciaran."
Lord Death only sat there, head bowed, the sword within his hands.
"Branwyn," Ciaran said. His eyes were shut or open: he could not tell. The visions crowded close. The singing grew. A horse whinnied desperately. "Listen to me, Branwyn."
"Woe," the Singer wailed, "woe and worse to come. Woe and desolation—"
"Get it," Meadhbh sobbed. She drew back her arm, cast a futile stone.
"No," piped a reedy voice. "O no, do not touch it, never touch it, throw no stones."
They started at that crashing through the brush, at the small and hairy thing that peered up at them.
"You," said Meadhbh.
The Gruagach hugged itself, it rolled its eyes, it shivered in the lightning. "Let be, go back, go back, you do no good."
"No!" She took another stone and cast it at the singer; Ceallach's hurtled after, splashing in the water, two sets of rings in the lightning where the Sidhe had been.
"Woe," wailed down the winds.
"Get it," Ceallach cried, gathering another stone; the Bain Sidhe drifted on the water beneath the wind-whipped trees, clutching bloody rags against its whiteness. He cast.
"Ceallach," Meadhbh cried, for it had grown again by half. It grew straighter, brighter, striding on the river.
"There it is," someone cried, and: "Gods!"
It wailed. It towered above the trees, a shape more and more terrible and swift.
"It grows!" Meadhbh cried. "O no—no—no—."
"Beorc!" Ceallach shouted, and started to run, but brambles held them, tore their hands and faces, and threads of white went every where in the brush, the wailing grew and grew, everywhere about them.
"Stop it!" Meadhbh cried, struggling in the thorns. "Thistle, help! Thistle, Thistle—stop it, help!" But nothing came. The tendrils wrapped them round, cold as ice and ghostly. A name, she wished, o gods, a Name, anyone. "Gruagach!" But it was small and weak. "Caolaidhe, Caolaidhe!" she cried. "Caolaidhe! Come help us!"
The white tendrils drew back from them. The wailing went away down the river, to the other side. The water surged, a large body coming up.
It was there, the river horse, black and shining wet. It waited for them. It threw its head. Its eyes shone like gold lamps in darkness.
"Get it," Ceallach said. "Follow it—keep that thing far from here."
It threw its head; it whuffed the winds and trumpeted its chal lenge.
"Branwyn," Ciaran whispered. He thought he did. He heard the hoofbeats coming. She bent close and kissed him. He could hardly feel the touch. The world was dimmed.
"Gods help me," he said.
"We have lost you," said Lord Death.
"Meadhbh!" It was Beorc's voice, cracking in the wind, obscured in thunder.
"Go," she cried. "Never let it near him!" The each-uisge sped, a flowing of water toward water, that scattered them with drops. She flinched from it and turned, grasping at Ceallach's shoulder. The men came, Beorc and Rhys and Domhnull, Domhnull last and Rhys swiftest to reach them, running down the hill.
"O," a small voice piped from among the rocks, "too late, too late, o run, shelter, o haste, haste, haste! He is gone, gone, sped!"
Meadhbh ran with Ceallach, each dragging the other, into Rhys' arms, and Beorc's; and Domhnull coming last.
"We drove it off," Ceallach wept. "We sent it away. O Beorc—it mustn't have him."
"Too late," the small voice wailed, "late, late, late."
Hoofbeats confounded themselves with thunder. The hillside burst in fire, a shock of lightning; a tree blazed up and scattered fire and fragments into the river.
Then the rain, pelting down on them, drenching them to the skin. Meadhbh held her gift and thought of home, now, at once, but the men bore iron, poisoning the air, and the lightning played over them, flickering through the rain.