"Because he desires nothing—recalls nothing." Malice leapt and crackled like fire in the voice from among Duilliath's black trees. "But for you to use him he must keep something of himself—and by that something we can hold him, by that something bind him, in pain and torment, o Aoibheil, as long as yours will be— Revenge, Aoibheil—revenge and patience—these we know. We will give you to the dragon."
"Begone!"
"To this Man of yours?"
It vanished. But the voice was slow to fade.
Something touched him, faint and far away. He remembered, . then: sometimes he wandered, and even Aodhan lost the way, in the woods that were everywhere across the face of the world, in the maze of his thoughts, the tangle of his desires. Going anywhere was diffi cult; going the way that he must made his heart ache. But that voice spoke now in a tremor of the ground, in small shudderings as if the earth itself knew pain.
He looked over his shoulder, toward the darker trees, and there were elves.
"Brother," they hailed him kindly, "what do you here, astray?"
He had seen them before. They had never come so close. He gazed on them, on faces fair and perilous, into the eyes of Sidhe. They were not Sidhe of the kind he knew. He read cold power there and lust for a thousand things to which elves might be tempted.
"Let go the stone," they whispered. "It hinders you."
Aodhan shied, breaking the spell. Then he could look away, des perately toward the west.
"Let it go, Ciaran Cuilean!"
He clutched the stone within his hands; they held his Name in theirs, and it was hard, hard, not to hear them. There had been a place, a hall, faces that he loved. They wished to show him these things, to bind him to the name that once had been enough for him; they offered these things, and his heart ached, somewhere in the stone.
"Ciaran," they called behind him. "Ciaran!"
Aodhan ran, ran toward the west, spurning the earth beneath him. Small darknesses leapt at him. The dark elves pursued. On and on he fled in his despair, seeming at last to gain a little.
But there was worse ahead. He felt it, like a rift in the world itself, a blight on all that was.
He broke from the woods on a hillcrest, and it was there, in the plain that stretched before him, a darkness the like of which he had never seen, not in the world and not in Death's domain. It lay from hill to hill, and reached toward the sea, casting a pall everywhere, from Caerbourne to the north. The likeness of horses moved in it; it glittered with spears and arms.
He had never felt so naked as on that hillside, where distance meant nothing and that darkness might see as well as be seen. The stone burned with icy cold, and Aodhan faltered, shivering, coming to a standstill. Love, duty, all these things seemed small and far and fleeting against such a thing. The hills lay broken, having given up the secrets at their roots; every tree was slain; every blade of grass had perished in that darkness.
"No, go on," he urged Aodhan, though all the fear that was gath ered in him counseled otherwise. "They are at our heels—go on!"
You will perish, the doubts assailed him.
And an attention which he had felt but slightly until now turned full upon him.
There, it said, he is there, and the hills themselves quaked with it. He was shaken; his bones ached; he looked behind him for retreat, and Aodhan broke stride and turned.
But: "No!" he cried then; and the elf horse veered back to west ward. He kept going, into the darkening wind. His substance blew in tatters. He heard his name called behind him and before, but it was not all his Name. They thrust at him with weapons, but those nearest him were shadows to him: iron pained but could not touch him. Drow sought him with their cold power: they named Aodhan, and Arafel; and at every naming the stone burned, until there seemed nothing more desirable in that maelstrom than to cast it away, to have relief of pain.
There was another voice. He could not hear what it said, but it reminded him of life.
But, Ciaran, the wind sang, Ciaran Cuilean—what do you here, astray?
He went forward. Over all that distance, he heard the gulls.
"It is your brother coming," the Dark Man whispered calmly; and Donnchadh, the body that was Donnchadh's, lifted its face from the plain before them. There was little left that answered to that name. That which did remain remembered kinship, and a shiver passed through the flesh, a remnant of fear for vanished reasons, a remnant of jealousy and regret.
She still drives him, said Duilliath. She moves other things, in other realms. But these are thin shields, King-of-Men, unlike ours. I speak of dragons. Come, let us deal with him.
My nephew, Donnchadh remembered the reason of his fear, recall ing that this was not the direction that they had begun, not the thing the Dark Man had offered him when first he let him in. Ogods, what have you done?
O, sweet self, it is late to ask, is it not? You must meet him. Think, think, how to name him—think of him, and show me that.
The host advanced. They moved slowly, being great in number, being in this world and others. They shed small groups which sped as things could which traveled one realm only, one band toward the south, to the siege of Dry w in his mountain fastness; another by An Beag toward Caer Wiell, but these were nothing to the numbers that remained. They had crossed the Caerbourne, and some had drowned in that flood, but advanced the more swiftly in Death's dark realm, yet another front, a portion of the whole.
A pair of youths climbed a hill outside Caer Donn, one fair, one dark, but the hill was hollow and full of promises.
You are not afraid now, the voice told him. You are Sidhe the same as he, no, more—old as the world and direr than Death.
A pair of brothers embraced outside the King's tent at Dun na h-Eoin. But he was the King now; and his brother—out there beyond the lines.
An Beag has served you well, the dark Sidhe whispered, even by being there. Caer Wiell has come to us; we have no need to seek it.
They have found a place: Men could never take it—but we shall. Your brother's elvish ally . . . her name is Arafel. Remember it. She has favored this haven. But we shall have it And the last of her will fade.
Donnchadh's visions faded; he remembered such a valley as he began to remember darker things, prison beneath the hills, elvish dead . . . cold and heartless hate, smothered under bindings and hatred of Men and all their doings.
That which had been Donnchadh winked out, lost in that gale of wrath. Those about him had another aspect than they had had, hav ing gone pale and strange; and the horses that bore them had brought their other aspect into this world. Some of his followers had sought to flee, but these were hunted, and no more tried after them. Most had ambition only to be the hunters, which was all they had ever wanted, to give pain and not to feel it. Breandan, one had been, seneschal of Donn; Geannan another; Wulf, new lord of Ban, mur derer of the last. They had acquired the calm, cold grace of elves; they had become beautiful, but no Man met their eyes.
Duilliath looked out on the world unhindered now; he smiled with Donnchadh's lips as the black horse leapt forward, a fuath of shifting shape, speeding with speed no horse could match. He drew his tainted sword.
"I know why you have come," said Beorc, the stranger who was so like their own, as they shared his table in the yard beneath the tree, "and I know where you hope to go, lady. You will ask have I seen him; I will tell you no. And all of that is too simple. I will tell you you must not go, and I know you will never heed. You cannot. Your luck is on you. And on all your house. Against that I have no power. I fare as you do. No more will I say than that."