"A thing has happened," said Beorc gazing at them all. Aelfraeda rose and took his hand. The wind increased. Leaves began to fly from the tree above them as if autumn had come in an instant. They fell onto the table, among the dishes. Meadhbh's heart was beating hard with a fear she could put no name to, but some spell had been on them all the while Beorc was speaking. And now the Gruagach was staring at them with round dark eyes, and her mother's hand sought hers on one side, and Ceallach's on the other. "Lady," Beorc said, "you brought your folk for refuge. But no one can claim it who does not wish, for whom it is not the last of hopes. And you cherish others. So good night to you. Farewell. A horn has blown in Eald; and that summons we may not deny."
Their mother rose; and they stood, dismayed to see the tall steader walk away from them, and all their folk withdrawing. He turned again toward them, lifted his hand as if he would bid them farewell.
Then everything ceased to be—the house, the fences—all the tu mult of people. They stood alone, they, their mother, Domhnull— beneath a dead and leafless tree, on a hillside whispering with grass.
"Domhnull!" their mother cried. "O Muirne—!"
Meadhbh shivered. The elfgift burned and dazed her. There was ill all about them, except in one direction.
A horn sounded across the hills. Yet again the air thickened about them and they stood in twilight, on a riverside littered with the dead, where a rider on a white horse stood amid a knot of Caer Wiell and southron riders—
That one slid down from the horse and came to them as others dismounted there in this dreadful place. Their mother stood still, by them and Domhnull—not our father, Meadhbh thought, with a new and more terrible ache within her heart. She felt Ceallach's hand clench hers.
He came to their mother, this tall elf with so much like their father and so smooth-faced young: he took her hand and knelt and kissed it as if she were some queen. Then he rose again, and their mother's hand left his slowly, with such sorrow as she drew away. Domhnull moved at once to take her arm; Beorc was there glowering, and Rhys—but Meadhbh could never stir from where she stood, gone cold inside as the stranger turned to her.
"Meadhbh, Ceallach," said the elf prince—only that; but when he bent a look on them it felt—there was no word for what it was: the elf-gifts ached with it, with all the world was not and she wanted it to be again.
He walked away; the elf horse came to him. He swung up to its back and it leapt away with him, so swiftly only the heart could see it, away from them, across the river where there were things she never wanted to see. He is in danger, Meadhbh thought. Nothing was what it ought to be; there were men lying dead, blood everywhere and such a poison of iron—She wanted to run, run, run, where none of this was true; she wanted to strike and make things what they were again, wanted, wanted, wanted—
Lost, a voice wailed from the river. O lost, lost—the kind children. I follow, follow through the waters—I hear; o come! come! o help—"
She went; it was so easy. Her brother came with her—or perhaps he had gone before. They were there on the banks deep within the trees. They heard their mother calling. "Meadhbh! Ceallach!—o gods —Beorc—"
"Caolaidhe!" Meadhbh called.
A horse snorted, close by their feet. They looked and it was a young man clad in nothing but the shadow, with red and dreadful eyes.
"Seaghda am I," said that one. "Caolaidhe is afraid. Camhanach has sounded and the world is in danger of it Come! I will carry you. I have no master. But I will take you up."
The water stirred and sang: a fair face drifted in muddy water, in flood and rapid current. "Where river runs, run I. O children, trust me, trust Seaghda—where river runs, run I. Seaghda is frightened too, but he will never say it. Come with us, kind children; come, o come—keep us free, no slave to Sidhe or dragon."
"Help us," Ceallach said. "Help us if you can."
Water splashed; a branch snapped. The each-uisge was coming up, trailing weed and water; the pooka came to Ceallach, moving through the brush. "Meadhbh!" came their mother's voice. "O Ceal lach—"
Meadhbh seized the each-uisge's mane. Here was help and power, if she could only tame it. She climbed and it was easy: all at once she was up and the each-uisge was moving, not like a horse, but like the river itself, smooth and dreadful; and Ceallach raced beside her.
They ran along the river south, so swiftly—"No!" Meadhbh cried; "Wait, turn back!" cried Ceallach; but the fuaths never heeded. Black and dreadful they ran the rivercourse, turning into another; and now toward the sea, where other horses came, white horses out of the foam, in the breaking of thunder.
Then ships came from nowhere, from the sunlight, wide-sailed, gliding swift as gulls before the wind; and light was all about them.
"They're the Sidhe!" Ceallach cried; and it was as sure in them as their own names. "O Meadhbh, the Sidhe have come to help us!"
A stormwind swept the weary men that held a hill at Aescbourne. It scoured their faces, cracked in the tattered banners, brought the smell of green things where was the stench of blood and death. Men swore. "Hush," said Domhnull, getting to his feet. And Branwyn lifted her head, hearing something—feeling it, who had lost too much to feel any hope at alclass="underline" her heart beat faster—it was the wind, and thunder, and something passed them, skirled about them, raced off eastward, like storm. The sound of horns came pealing, pealing off the hills; and it set a faint cold tingling in her veins, like nothing else she had ever felt. It was Eald; it was brightness, and something of her own, sped safely—O run, she wished them, O run, run, my children!
"My lady—" Domhnull was by her, gathering her cloak about her. He had armed himself: there was no dearth of weapons on this littered ground. They stood in stormlight now, in thickening murk as sunset faded; perhaps he had seen what had passed him—there was that look within his eyes. "The Sidhe," she said. "Domhnull, did you hear them?"
"I heard it," said Beorc, who came up from the shoulder of the rise. "Something went past, at least. They know it out there too, and they'll move." He pointed into the dark, by the trees along the river. "They're gathering. It's getting dark fast, and that wind on whatever side won't help our archers. I'd advise the horses loosed. They'll only be confusion. And gods know we've nowhere to be riding to."
She looked at him. If there was any fear in Beorc, if there was grief or weariness or any other thing, he showed none of it. When they had not found the children he had set about ordering this and that calmly, choosing this place, this sandy hill halfway to the sea. He and Rhys and Domhnull—Hold here, he claimed his orders were; and none of them gave any hint in voice or look that they could not hold this place forever.
"Do that then," she said. She wrapped her cloak about her. She felt the earth tremble, heard the baying of hounds.
SEVENTEEN
Nathair Sgiathach
The earth trembled beneath a darkened sky in this edge where magic met desolation. The chill air shook to the peal of a distant horn, and in that moment Arafel's heart leapt in startlement, in joy turned swiftly bittersweet—for this hope came at cost, and she knew that cost. It came at direst risk, wide and wild and shaking the world in its path. Liosliath! A friend had reached the sea and brought hope with the leaving of his life. That was Camhanach sounding, to the peril of the earth.
Eald waked from slumber. Every pact and vow the Sidhe had shaped in their parting from the world unsealed itself, for that was the undoing of it, that horn, sounding Daybreak after dark. An elf had crossed all the barriers with Camhanach in his hand and now the ships themselves might come, the great silver ships, and the herds from behind the wind. She might have wept for terror; she shouted instead for joy, at the threatening hills. "Ceud Failte!" she cried as the elf horse danced beneath her. "O Welcome! Welcome home!"