The hall seemed strangely silent now, empty of the orders and instructions that had always flowed from it. My lady slept, ex hausted; my lord—gods knew. And out in the courtyard, Beorc pre pared revenge, a gust of red-haired violence, ordering weapons and supplies and wagons and whatever horses they could gather.
And above them all, the clouds—for he had looked at the sky this morning—the cloudwall was taking shape again, after the wreckage of the night. Rampart-building moved apace in heaven, so that the forest was all dark and dawn winked out as the sun rose into the wall of cloud. The daylit space narrowed; and there were ominous mare's-tails to northward, many of them, advance from that border Ruadhan was holding.
A chill had fallen on him when he had seen that, not a sharp fear, but one that mingled with all the others of the day, so that the shouts Beorc gave to the wagoners, the noise hi the yard, the whisperings and the movements and the colors, all seemed perilously thin, like some last outpouring of vitality.
Before death, he thought. Before the world goes dark. He finally named what he had feared out there in the yard, that Caer Wiell's strength was ebbing, that everything they were preparing was wrong, while the clouds narrowed like advancing armies. Lord Ciaran was gone. Not dead, he insisted to himself but he remembered Ciaran tumbling from his horse, the black arrows, the waxen flesh that sus tained itself only by the stone—To go back into Eald, to enter it foredone as he was, to seek the elvish horse and fare outward on the last of his fading strength. . . .
O ride quickly, he wished his lord, go where they go, find peace, whatever this fading is. When he shut his eyes he saw the hill outside Caer Donn, a black and terrible wind that blew the Sidhe's white fire in tatters.
He shuddered, a quick convulsion of his limbs. The air seemed thick and foul.
Something touched him; but it was only Muirne when he blinked, laying her hand on his shoulder.
"Hush, it's all right."
"They can't do it," he murmured, having a sudden clear vision of the yard, the wagons readying, Beorc amid it all, going north to the defense of the steadings. "They mustn't. The north is already falling. O gods—"
"Domhnull!" Muirne whispered. She was on her knees, clenching his hands in hers. He felt her grip at last when she shook at him. He was still cold, and what had been in his mind slipped from him like a passing dream.
"Forgive," he said, confused, forgetting it all like some fading glimpse of faery.
"Hush, you mustn't vex yourself. You were sleeping sitting up just then. You were dreaming. Go down to your own bed and rest. It's time you did."
He remembered then, distantly and coldly, how futile everything had seemed to him. He had had such nightmares often since Donn. He feared he might have cried out just then in his sleep, and heat touched his face. He glanced aside, where the children slept undis turbed on their pallets. He felt aches in his shoulders, in all his bones. "If Eald should fall," he said, a scattered thought as all his thoughts were scattered now, like doves before some hawk, "maybe I would go to moonbeams and cobweb. Or be what I was, where I was, on the rocks below Caer Donn."
"Hush." Muirne's fingers stopped his lips. Her eyes were anguished.
He caught the hand, touched it a second time with his lips and held it. She remained distraught, seeming so weary, so very weary.
Her eyes were full of tears and fright. "Muirne," he said, "if there are heroes in Caer Wiell, you are one. Did you know that?"
"Why?" she asked, as confused by this as by the other.
"Because you are." He let go her hand, for her cheeks burned red. Perhaps she suspected idle flatteries, herself unarmed and unarmored against the only man she knew. He sensed so. He rose, aching from the stones, awkward. There were few he let see him in pain, but Muirne knew, and so he indulged himself, too weary to hide it. A restlessness gnawed at him. The fears that had made sense a moment ago were vague, and he had the urge to see the clouds again, to do something toward the hold's defense, even to stand idle and watch those who were going to it. I still might go myself, he thought in the scattering of his thoughts. With a horse under me I might be well enough. The shield-arm . . . I can bind it
Then he recalled the children, and in that same instant he felt relief that he had an excuse not to be faring north, for he sensed something wrong.
"Domhnull?" Muirne asked. "Whatever is the matter?"
He blinked, gathering his mind back from that gray place where was such loneliness, so little formed and certain; where something flitted lost in the winds.
"Meadhbh!" he shouted. "Ceallach!"
"Domhnull—" Muirne cried; but he had gone to them, gathered them in his arms all limp as they were, holding them as tightly as he could, on his knees beside the hearth.
"Wake," he whispered to them, in that place where they had gone. "Come back. Meadhbh. Ceallach. Your mother needs you, do you hear?"
So they came back to him, obedient.
"Domhnull," Meadhbh said, and he laid his face against her chill one. "We're here," Ceallach murmured, and began to wake, stirring in his arms.
"O gods," Muirne said.
"Watch them, my lord said." Domhnull's heart was beating against his ribs. "Watch them. He had this danger in his mind all along. And I thought of leaving them. O wake up, wake up, hear? I know where you are and that's no road for you. Come. Come back now."
"It was dark," Meadhbh said. "The light was blowing away. Domhnull!"
"Wake their mother," Domhnull said fiercely. "Muirne, wake her, go!"
Muirne sped, flying on the stairs.
Then Ceallach shuddered in his arms and drew a great breath, and both of them were there.
He let them go when he was sure. Meadhbh rubbed her eyes. They sat looking at him with a sadness dawning on them, that it was only Domhnull holding them, he thought, and not the one they loved.
"If I could have gone in his place," Domhnull told them, "o gods, I would have."
Meadhbh wept, sitting there amid her blankets, tears rolling down her face. She wiped at them. She ran her hands back over her sleep— tangled hair. Ceallach sat as if lightning-struck. Domhnull gathered them both again, rocking them, though his bad leg ached on the stone.
"Morning's come," he said, "and the world is what it is, and you have to stay in it."
They said nothing, nothing at all.
"Your father said I must watch you," he said, "and so I will."
Steps came hurrying from the door. So their mother arrived with Muirne, herself all dishevelled, in a plain white gown, with her hair flying about her shoulders.
Then Domhnull worked himself painfully to his feet, leaning on the stones of the fireplace and on Muirne's offered arm. He saw the children go to Branwyn's embrace, saw tears shed, which ought to be —but then he watched Branwyn fuss at Muirne for their hair, and at them for sleeping here instead of upstairs in their beds. She rubbed at Ceallach's face with the tail of her sleeve and in all delivered as much roughness as of love.
She does not know what happened to them, or what danger they are in, he thought with a chill to his heart. And knows she doesn't Branwyn had waked from sleep, only sleep, a sleep heavy or light, but nothing more, never more. She is only clay, he thought, ay he was half of air—and knows it. Mortality was on Branwyn. Her shoulders stooped. There were lines about her eyes this morning. She turned from fretting over her children and looked at him.