Fire, she thought. She imagined the small safe hearthfire licking out at the floor, running the stones, down the stairs, cutting them off from safety. Her gift prickled at her throat like nettles and when she shut her eyes there was the mist. Her brother wandered there; and they were afraid, both of them, of something nameless.
Their father would have warned them back; but he was not with him; and they did not know this place.
"Meadhbh." That was Domhnull. A callused hand took hers and held it, ever so gently. "Ceallach."
So they were back in hall, within gray stone walls. Muirne and Domhnull were by them. Their mother slept in her chair, and Leannan nodded, while the rain came down against the roof above them. It was like that night, the last night, the rain, the dreadful rain, their father lying abed.
"Leannan," Muirne said. "Play. Play, will you?"
The harper lifted his head, weary that he was, settled his harp on which he had been leaning, sent his fingers wandering over the strings, and the lightest music came, the gentlest, saddest beneath the rain-sounds.
It is a Sidhe song, Meadhbh thought; and so long as the harper's fingers moved it made a magic in the hall.
But when the song was done the silence seemed the grayer and the thicker for it.
Sometimes she heard horses; heard sounds she had only heard in the practice yard, the hiss and strike of arrows: but harsh cries fol lowed. She heard the clash of metal, smelled iron like poison in the air. She rested her face in her hands, and could not escape it.
She slept true sleep but little. Domhnull held her and Ceallach, each in an arm; and so she had a little rest, her head against his heart, with Muirne close beside her.
The light failed, no longer than a mortal day now: the nights grew longer and this one would be longest of all. The sun was rising in the mortal world. Armies moved. On Airgiod's banks darkness returned.
But Fionnghuala strode in and out of this world and the other, searching.
And in Caerbourne's waters she found it, a quiet creature, hiding, baleful in its shadows.
"Come out," Arafel said, in mortal dawn; it fled to Eald, a quick shifting; but Fionnghuala was quicker. It shifted back again: and now it shivered, white and shriveled in the rocks where it had hid den.
"Despair is your name," Arafel said. "Andochas." Her sword whispered from its sheath and the water shivered. "You have tres passed, hear me."
It shrank farther. Two pale eyes shone like moons beneath the water.
"Where is he, fuath?"
The moons rose. The white face broke the surface. The air shivered to its wailing. "I warn, I only warn, Duine Sidhe."
"Baneful, spiteful creature! Lord Death is patient! I am not, not today—Andochas. Tell me!"
"He fled, fled, fled. Another life went out." The Bain Sidhe shifted into elvish night; but Fionnghuala did not lose her.
"Where?" Arafel asked.
"Dark to me, dark his path. Death lost him." The Bain Sidhe shrank farther, became a pale strange fish, that dived deep into Death's dark realm, leaving only a ripple on Caerbourne's surface. And into that place Fionnghuala would not venture unbidden.
"Men," a far voice whispered. "Men have failed you, Arafel Aoibheil, whose name is Joy. Aoibheil, Aogail—joy and death . . . o Arafel Arafel, Arafel ..."
"No," she said ever so softly. "No. You do not have him. Here, Duilliath—come here to me here, Duilliath, my cousin."
Her whisper sped, winding through mists and among the ghostly branches of that other Eald. She clenched the moongreen stone she wore and willed a harping from it, an elvish sound, of a harp now broken. It had power in it. It was heard in all three realms of Eald. It was heard forever; if that harp had been whole she might have changed that song, but it was not and that was beyond her power. It bound and drew, having magic in it; it had Men in it, for a Man had made it.
It reached to the halls of Caer Wiell, where that harp had hung; it reached to Dun na h-Eoin, where Kings had had it; it reached even to the plain before the gates of the King, where in the dawning Donnchadh rode on a black, powerful horse. The eyes of that horse were green and sometimes it seemed other than what it ought. And Donnchadh seemed other to his men than he had been the day before —or perhaps they had never seen him so fired with purpose: he was lean and fair and strange and sat straight as a younger man; no one looked him in the eyes, no more than they looked at the horse more directly than they must.
The standards moved. The points of countless spears glittered wanly in the greenish, stormy dawn; these were the contingents of the plain. There were archers: and these were the Boglach folks and their lords. They had gathered to Laochailan's deathbed, to seize what could be seized; to have power; but power had seized them instead, and they had no doubt now who of them was most perilous.
"Hail," the shout went up against the murky sky, "hail, Donnchadh King!" The hills rang with it like the sighing of the sea.
"King," the voice whispered which had become Donnchadh's own. "O sweet self, I shall make you more than this. What you dreamed of is dross beside my dreams, long and long inside Dun Gol King is only the beginning of it. Caer Wiell was ours once, like Caer Donn; but those were not the names. I shall teach you to call them. Of all Mankind only you will be left, my self, my very soul You wanted Eald thrust aside; I shall cast it down, and make the world again what it was. And you will see, self, what wonders there are to see—of jewels like the sun and moon, of elegance and pleasure, of things so rare no Man has seen them. We shall scour the world and own it."
He had no fear now, of his brother, of armies, of any shadow. Least of all of the Sidhe. He gazed about him and Men flinched. He moved to the fore, the black horse at a canter.
That harpsound reached one other, far lost in gray and cold. Aodhan had slowed his pace, wandered in the woods, in the maze of darksome branches. But that sound came like light through the murk the world had become, like springtime through the winter, like a friend's hand offered among a world of enemies.
For a moment he knew the way. He made himself remember. There was very little of him left. He looked at his hand that clung to Aodhan's bright mane, and he could hardly see it;
"Come," he said to Aodhan. "This is the way."
The elf horse began to move again, running uncertainly, shaking the lightning from his mane.
FIFTEEN
Of Fire and Sword
The rain had stopped. Branwyn sat listening to the silence in the hall. About her, her children slept, and Muirne, Leannan, Domhnull —all, all finding a moment's peace at the end of night. She sat staring at nothing, feeling tears dammed up in her throat. She had laid all her plans; and now they lay in ruins, the roads a quagmire, Caerbourne rushing high for days, an obstacle for her poor folk, less for a determined army, none at all when An Beag should rise to cut them off from the ford. She had had dreams in the night, and they were all of ruin. She imagined other desperate things, of sending Domhnull and Cein and Cobhan with Meadhbh and Ceallach, to cross the flood alone near Caer Wiell somehow, and to go afoot through the heart of Eald, seeking Dryw, seeking—whatever refuge there was for a King the world rejected.
Perhaps her life had been all a mad hope. She had believed too little in luck at the beginning and believed in it too much at the end —but she had hoped all the same, not even understanding Eald, with the last hope in all her world.
"Arafel," she whispered to the silence. "Arafel. Arafel. Do you hear me—Feochadan, Thistle, whatever name you use nowadays? Ciaran, do you hear, can you hear?"