"Run," Domhnull cried, seizing at them, his fair face drowned and stark in the flashes. "Run, get under cover."
Rhys dragged her up the long hill to the walls; she ran, ran, ran, after Beorc and Ceallach, till her side split and her senses swam, and the gate opened for them and closed after.
They came up the stairs, drenched and shivering; the men cast away their swords with hollow clashes, and got them up into the hall.
Their mother stood there. So they knew. Meadhbh stopped, too numb to think, except that they had lost. Someone pulled her to his embrace, touched her cheek, but she had no tears, had nothing.
"He—left," their mother said, in a still voice they had never heard her use, a whisper, like the rain upon the roof, all hollow and tone less. "Meadhbh, Ceallach, he just left, in that way he could. He couldn't die, you know. The stone wouldn't let him. Sidhe fade. It was like that, that all of a sudden I couldn't feel his hand, but I could see it. Aodhan, he said. That was a horse that was his once." She came to them, held out her arms. Meadhbh came and hugged her, wet as she was, and Ceallach came into her arms. She smoothed their hair; her hands trembled. "Did you see him?"
"No," Meadhbh said. Thunder cracked about the hold, shaking the stones. She remembered the cloud. Her mother was being very quiet, a restraint that was worse than thunderclaps; and there was this footing about the truth, of leavings and goings. Too late, the Gruagach had said. She lifted her head from her mother's shoulder and looked her in the eyes, hard and straight. "You mean he went away—like us? Like that?"
"Like that." Her mother's lips moved, forcing breath into the words. "He said good-bye. There's a place Sidhe go. He talked about the sea. He didn't die. He can't, now. Ever." For the first time her lips trembled into tears. She hugged them again, shook their heads back and looked at them. "Can't you cry?" their mother asked.
Meadhbh shivered. Her clothes were cold; it got into her bones, except where the Sidhe gift rested about her neck. She patted her mother's cheek, feeling it soft and warm and remembering the smell of lilacs and oil and metal.
They had lost him after all. They had not watched him well enough. She felt herself at fault; and touched the gift about her throat, remembering what it meant: but all Eald faltered, crashed in ruin overhead, around, about them. Her throat ached.
"My lady." It was Leannan's voice, from over by the corner, a-tremble and very soft. "Forgive me, lady— He's gone. Siodhachan's gone."
The old man looked asleep, nodding in his corner by the fire. His face was peaceful.
"O gods," Rhys whispered, and his voice broke. "The old man outran us."
FOURTEEN
Fugitives
They had a burial to do in the morning. It was not the burying Siodhachan would have wished, being quiet, in the black-clouded dawn, with no cups of ale or tale-telling through the night; they were in too much haste and the matter of their lord weighed too heavily on them. They built the old man a strong cairn of Caer Wiell's gray stone and vowed him a greater one in better days. Leannan for his part meant to make a song for him; but there was no singing it until things were worse or better. So the harper only sat awhile by the cairn after everyone had gone, bowed with his head on his arms; and came in finally, drank a cup and washed his face, and wandered among the tents and shelters, among the hapless who had come for refuge.
"Sing a song," the steader children asked, of the friend who had always cheered them; for the night had been dreadful and the day ahead looked ugly.
"Hush," said their elders sternly. "He is the lord's own harper; and he is sad today. Show respect."
So silence went about him.
But rumors flourished, in the harper's downcast silence; in the grim rebuilding of the cloudwall after last night's storm; in the whis pering of one nightwatch to another and them to others of the men ... for the Bain Sidhe was silent today: She wailed for the old man, folk said. Now the lord will live.
But down in the kitchens: No more orders come from hall to scul lery. Something is amiss up there.
And again: His men went out last night. And came back with his children, but they never passed the gates before that. The Sidhe magicked them.
The lord is dead: it's himself in that cairn, and the old man's just gone to hiding.
"Lord Ciaran left last night," said Beorc to the men he gathered, with Rhys and Madawc and Owein, his own folk and the southrons. He said it loudly, so there would be no doubt and no mangling of the news. He shouted it out; and country folk gathered beyond the knot of men at arms and southrons. "He is not dead, hear? And where he went and how is his business; but he took his leave of my lady before he left and had a good reason for going. The rest of it is not for our bandying about in the yard. Get to business. Mind your tongues and reckon the lord knows what he's about. Meanwhile we have the Bradhaeth to deal with; the lord's order—look to it!"
Domhnull watched the people. He saw the stricken looks, the bewilderment on faces that had seen too much of disarray in their lives. But no one disputed what Beorc said: no one met that scowl of his or argued with that voice. Folk listened; and Beorc told them what wanted doing and how quickly.
When Beorc let them go again, Domhnull climbed the stairs, past Rhys, who stood on the bottom step; and Madawc and Owein near him. He had no part in what was toward now—in the defense of the north. The orders now were for others. He went up into hall to watch over Meadhbh and Ceallach, that being what his lord had last charged him to do, and it seemed to have been left to him even now that their southron kinsmen were at hand.
Muirne was there, infallibly, Muirne—sitting on the bench and spinning by the light of the one torch they kept burning, beside the pallets where the children slept at hearthside. The room was in order again; blankets had been taken away—doubtless Muirne had seen to it, the way she saw to everything.
He settled on the hearthside bench in the warmth that remained of the fire, taking comfort in Muirne's presence, watching the deft work of her fingers that coaxed thread out of wool, a work he had watched hour upon hour of his long convalescence. This was Muirne's Sidhe —gift, he had thought then, to spin, spin, spin peace out of chaos, comfort out of hurt. He had been ashamed once, when he had come out of the muddled days and nights of his sickness, that anyone should have seen him as he was. But Muirne never flinched, more, she had looked up from her spinning from time to time with a glance he might have laughed at once, seeing it from Muirne, shy and girl ish and wishing, years older as she was. His mother had been there in his fever, when it was worst; but Muirne had been there when the memories came, and beguiled his moods with questions—of the land, of places he knew; he discovered she had never been beyond sight of Caer Wiell's walls, though she had seen war and siege beneath them. She knew little of the world. She had always had the spinning, the children, the duties of the hold, for lady Meredydd, for Branwyn, as isolate in her world of women as some soldier in his world of men— shy, suddenly, to be in such different company but treasuring the moments in their trade of what they had to trade—Can friends be so opposite? he began to think. O if she were younger—
She went on spinning. He watched her fingers, the firelight on her face. So, so tenderly she had soothed brows in this room and in that through all these dreadful days, and whispered that she was there, close by, between them and whatever they feared—as if she were protection. But she was, he thought, if love and steadfastness meant anything in the world.