They brought him as a prisoner into the torchlit hall, with the
sounds of battle dying. They had handled him ungently, but it was
their lord’s own ring upon his finger, and they had changed
their manner quickly enough when he insisted to show them that.
“Sit,” they told him now, showing him a bench, and he
was only too glad to do so, weary as he was.
Another came—Old wolf, Ciaran thought at that grim broad
face, besweated and flushed with battle-heat He straightened himself
at once when that man came in with more men-at-arms behind him. He
set himself most carefully on his feet. “Scaga?” he
ventured, for he was very like his son, a huge man and red-haired.
“I come from the King; and from your lord.”
“Let me see this ring,” Scaga said; and Ciaran
thrust out his hand, which the old warrior took roughly, turning
the ring to the firelight. Scaga let it go again, his scarred face
still scowling.
“I have a message,” Ciaran said, “for your
lady’s ears.” And became he could guess the
keep’s want of hope: “Good news,” be urged on
Scaga, though he was charged to take it higher.
“Then it comes welcome, if true.” Scaga turned his
face toward the open door, where sounds of battle had much faded, then looked back again,
looked him up and down. “How came you here?”
“My message,” he said, “is for lord
Evald’s lady.”
Scaga still frowned; it might be the nature of his face, or of
his heart: this was, Ciaran thought, a fell man to cross. But Evald
trusted him as steward, in a hold beset with enemies: he was then a
man of great worth and faithfulness.
“With neither armor,” said Scaga, “nor
weapon . . . How came you into the
courtyard?”
“Your lord’s ring,” Ciaran insisted. “I
speak only to your lady.” He felt the stone which lay hidden
within his collar, a presence, a warmth which seemed greater than
natural. It frightened him, with that against his heart and the
like of Scaga staring into his eyes, full of suspicions.
“You shall go to her,” Scaga said, and motioned to
the stairs. “Boy!” he called. “See my lady
roused.”
A lad scampered up the steps at a run. Ciaran shivered in
weariness and cold, for wind blew through the door. He wished
desperately for a cup of ale, for a place to lie down and rest
himself.
And there was none, for Scaga looked on him with narrowed eyes
and offered nothing of hospitality—motioned men-at-arms to go
before and behind him and led him up the steps to another hall
within Caer Wiell’s thick walls, which at least was warmer,
with a fire blazing in the hearth.
“Beware,” a voice seemed to whisper in his hearing,
and it startled him. He wondered could all the rest hear it; but
the others did not turn: it was for him alone. “Beware this
hall. They do not love elven-kind. And do not show them the
stone.”
A stone wolf’s-head was set above the fireplace. It seemed
he had seen it before; that he had sat here, a man, and that a harp
should hang so, upon the rightward wall—he looked, and was
dismayed to find a harp hanging there, just where he had thought it
should. He had then dreamed this place.
Or she had. There was a great scarred table once had sat a
chair, before the fire. He blinked it clear, went to it, leaned
there wearily against the table, while weary men guarded him.
And women came, so soon that he supposed they had not been
asleep. Surely they had not been, with the enemy hurling fire
against the hold. They came from the inner door which opened on
this hall, one woman older and somewhat grayed. This was
Meredydd, he surmised, Evald’s own lady; and
Meredydd the stone whispered in his heart, confirming it.
The other of the twain was young, bright of hair—and that
name came whispering through his heart as well: Branwyn.
Branwyn. Branwyn. He stared without meaning to, for so much of
anguish and of anger came whispering with that name. This Branwyn
stopped and stared at him, blue eyes seemed bewildered and innocent
of such pain.
“Your message,” Scaga’s harsh voice
insisted.
Ciaran looked at Lady Meredydd instead, took a step
toward her, but hands moved to weapons about him, and he did not go
nearer. He tugged the ring from off his finger and gave it over to
Scaga, who gave it to the lady. She took the ring as something
precious, looked on it closely, lifted anxious eyes. “My
husband,” she asked of him.
“Well, lady, he is well. I bring his love and my King’s
word: Hold, defend, and do not be deceived by any lies of the enemy
or accept any terms. The King has won a great battle at Dun na
h-Eoin, and the enemy hopes for this valley as their last holding
place. Only hold this tower, and the King and your lord will come
as soon as possible against their backs. They know this. Now you
do.”
“Now bless your news,” the lady wept, and even
Scaga’s frown was eased. Meredydd came and offered her hands
to him in welcome, but he felt Scaga’s heavy hand on his
shoulder, pulling him away.
“There is more to hear,” said Scaga. “This man came
over the walls somehow, with no armor, no arms—unmarked
through the lines outside. There are questions should still be
asked, my lady, however good and fair the counsel seems. I beg you,
ask him how he came.”
For a moment doubt shadowed the lady’s eyes.
“My name is Ciaran,” he said, “Lord Ciaran of
Caer Donn is my father. And as to how I came—lightly, as you
see; by stealth. While your enemies struck at the gates—I
came another way. I shall show you. But armed men could not take
it.”
He was not used to lies. He felt fouled, wounded when the lady
pressed his hands. “You will show us where,” Scaga
said, and gave him in his turn a bearish embrace, gazed at him with
emotion welling up—hope, it might be, where hope had been
scant for them before. Branwyn too came and kissed his cheek; and
weapons were done away as men came at last to clap him on the back
and to hug one another for joy. A cheer lifted in the hall, and
there was such desperate happiness—He felt a stirring through
the jewel too, a presence, a distressing realization that he had
said nothing on his own which ought to have convinced them and so
relieved their hearts, but that some strangeness overlay him and
his words, making them better than they were.
They gave him wine, and brought him upstairs to a princely
room—her lord’s when he was young, the Lady Meredydd
said; and true, everything there showed some woman’s love,
the fine-pricked stitchery of coverlet and tapestries, the hangings
of the bed. Branwyn herself brought a warm rug for the floor, and
maids brought water for washing, while Lady Meredydd with her own
hands brought him bread hot from the morning’s baking. He
took it gratefully, while the lady and her daughter lingered to ply
him with questions, how fared Evald and kinsmen, cousins, friends,
men of the hold, a hundred questions during which maids
eavesdropped and men-at-arms contrived to listen on pretext of
errands. Some few men he knew; sometimes the news was sad and
pained him; and most often he knew only a name, or less—but
it gave him joy when he could report some loved one safe and well.
Scaga’s son was one, for Scaga bent enough to ask. “He
is well,” Ciaran said. “He led a good portion of Caer
Wiell’s men at Dun na h-Eoin, first of those that broke the
shields of the Bradhaeth while lord Evald cut off their retreat. He
came out of the battle well enough; he was by lord Evald when we
parted, in the King’s own tent.” The old warrior did not
smile to hear it, but his eyes were bright.
“He must sleep,” Meredydd declared at last.
“Surely he has travelled hard.”
“I fare well enough,” Ciaran said, for he ached
after human company, for noise of voices, for all these sights and
sounds of humankind.
“Before he sleeps,” said Scaga, “he must show
us this weak place in our wall.”
The warmth drained from him. He nodded consent, not knowing what
he was to do, but compelled to go. He swallowed a bit of bread gone
dry in his throat, drank a last sip of the wine and set the cup
down. “Aye,” he said. “Of course. That will not
wait.”
Scaga rose, waiting at the door. Ciaran took his leave of the
ladies, walked with the old warrior through the hall, his heart
beating hard within his breast.
“I do not know if I can find it easily,” he said to
prepare his excuse, and hating the lie. “From all the
turnings of this place inside . . . I cannot be
sure.”
Scaga said nothing, which seemed Scaga’s way. It gave him
no comfort And when they had come up on the walls, Ciaran looked
about him in deep distress, seeking something to confirm his
lie.
“Look east,” the softest of whispers came to him,
like the touch of a breeze. “Turn east and look
down.”
He walked that way along the battlement, with Scaga treading
heavily beside him. He paused at a place and looked down, where the
stonework of the walls was oldest and roughest, where here and
there brush had rooted itself in the gaps between the stones and
man-made walls thrust crazily above the jagged stone of the
underlying rocks. Of a sudden his eye picked out a way, weaving
from one such foothold to another among brush rooted in the wall, a
peril to the hold. “There,” he said. “We are a
mountain hold, we of Caer Donn. And I climbed cliffs as a lad.
There, do you see, Scaga? There and there and there.”
Scaga nodded. “Aye. That does want clearing, and watching.
Our eyes must have been blind to it. A man sees things too often
and so not at all: I had not marked how the brush had
grown.”
“Rains, perhaps,” Ciaran said hoarsely, but in his
heart he knew differently. He shivered, for his wool shirt was not
enough against the wind, and felt Scaga’s friendly grip fall
upon his shoulder.
“Come. Our thanks, young sir. Come in.”
He walked, glad of the wind-breaking shelter of walls on the one
side of the battlements, gazed back as they walked, and suddenly
down at an opening out of the walk. The courtyard was below, jammed
with livestock and with village folk, a noise which welled up at
him thinly, the wail of children and the listless bleating of
goats. But it was a well-ordered place, Caer Wiell, and some of the
men on the walls were country folk, light-armed, but goodly looking
men, quick of eye and brisk about their business. Women were
climbing up the inside scaffoldings which gave access to the
battlements before the gates, bearing baskets of bread. There was
then no hunger here, nor would there ever be thirst, because of the
spring which named the hill, out of reach of the enemy. Ciaran felt
much cheered by what he saw of the defense, even with the ominous
smoke of enemy fires rising before the walls. He walked farther out
than Scaga would have had him go, walked the wall to the area of
the main gates and looked west.
Then he was less cheered, for the extent of the black ruin
before the walls. The grass and fields were burned and trampled
into mire. The enemy had carried away their dead and wounded; no
corpse was left but the carcasses of slain horses, to draw the
black birds; and beyond that trodden ground the hills were seared
with fire, villages and farms burned, surely, from here to Caer
Damh. The smoke rose in countless plumes from the hills, where a
vast host camped, a crescent of smokes from the
Caerbourne’s forested verge to the barren hills to the
right, that spread itself on the winds and darkened the sky.
The attack could not have been this far advanced when he was on
the road, riding from the King. He had passed one
night—surely one night—in Eald.
How much of time? he asked that sometime whisper in the stone,
feeling uncertainty all about him. How long did you hold
me? He was betrayed. He knew it in his worst fears.
The fires would soon grow more and more, as Dryw and the King
over the hills drove others into retreat. Or had it happened
already? And what more had happened, and what men he just had named
living might have died? And what stayed the King from coming?
Hold here. How old was the message, that Scaga was so
grim, that lady Meredydd and her daughter caught so desperately at
this hope he gave them? And how long had the King delayed to
come?
“It seemed the fires had grown in number,” said
Scaga out of his silence. “Now we know why.”
“Aye,” Ciaran said, wishing to say nothing at all.
He went back into the tower, and sat in the hall at the table by
the fire, victim again of questions from those humbler folk who had
not asked them before; and a few common folk who served there came
only to look at him with their hopes unspoken in their eyes, and to
steal quickly away. He sat there most of that long day, alone some
of the hours, and sitting with Scaga in the afternoon, who brought
some of his trusted men to question him at length—how great
the strength of the enemy, what condition their arms, what number
yet might come. He answered what questions he could as wisely as he
could, hinting nothing, and was glad when they had gone away.
No more of lies, he wished of Arafel. You have tangled me in
lies, more and more of them. They break my heart. What is truth?
What should I say to them? Should I make them doubt the very hope I
came to give them?
She had no answer for him, or did not hear.
But that evening after supper a young man came and took down the
harp from off the wall, and played songs for him and for the
ladies. Then he felt a warmth near his heart, a sweet, sad warmth.
Then was peace, for the first time in the day. From the enemy there
was no stirring, and the pure notes of the harp found another rapt
listener: a joy flooded back from the stone, and filled
Ciaran’s heart. He smiled.
And looked by chance into Branwyn’s eyes, who smiled too,
in her hope. The smile faded to gravity. The eyes stayed upon his,
flower-fair.
“No,” a whisper came to him from the depths of the
stone.
The blue eyes were nearer, and had a glamor of their own. He
gazed entranced while the harper sang.
“Cling to the stone,” the whisper came again, but he
had Branwyn’s fair hand within closer reach of his upon the
table. He touched her fingers and they clung to his. The harper
sang of love, and heroes. Ciaran held her hand for more tangled
reasons, that it was of this world, and that it too had power to
hold.
At length the harper ceased. Ciaran drew back his hand, lest
others remark it, for she was a great lord’s only daughter,
however dire the times.
And in time he went alone to his bed in the room which had been
Evald’s in his youth, the vast soft bed of broidered
hangings. He stripped off his clothing, shivered in the wind which
blew in out of the dark, through the slitted window—stripped
off all that he wore but the stone on its silver chain and lay down
quickly, drawing the heavy quilts over him, tucking up his limbs
until he could warm him a spot in the bed. He reached out again to
snuff the wick of the lamp on the table, drew the arm quickly back
beneath the covers, as dark settled strange shapes over the
unfamiliar objects of the borrowed room. There were creakings and
movings, from outside and in; a child cried somewhere in the dark,
from the courtyard on the other side, far, far away. His own slit
of a window faced the river. He heard a distant whisper of leaves
or water: wind, he thought; and somewhere hounds belled, a sound
greatly out of place in besieged Caer Wiell. He clutched the stone
in his hand, drew warmth from it, and no longer heard the dogs.
He dreamed of groves, vast trees; and of a hill. This was Caer
Wiell; but he called its name Caer Glas, and there was no well, but
a clear spring bubbling out over white stones, flowing unhindered
to Airgiod’s pure waters in the vale, and the view was clear
and bright toward the Brown Hills. He rode the plain, tall and
bearing the same pale stone on his breast—rode among others,
with the blowing of horns and flourishing of banners. Arrows came
down like silver sleet, and the sullen host before them fled,
seeking the mountains, the dark places at the roots of the hills.
The Daoine Sidhe warred, and in the sky glittered the jeweled wings
of dragons, serpent-shapes passing like storm in the blowing of
horns and the clash of arms.
Then were ages of peace, when the pale sun and green moon shone
down without change, and harpers sang songs beneath the pale,
straight trees.
There came the age of parting, when the world began to change,
when Men came, and Men’s gods, for the vile things were
driven deep within the hills, and Men found the way now easy. Came
bronze, and came iron, and some there were of the Sidhe who abided
the killing of trees, small wights who burrowed in the earth close
to Men; but the Daoine Sidhe hunted these, in bitter anger.
Yet the world had changed. The fading began, and the heart left
them. One by one they fell to the affliction, departing beyond the
gray edge of the world. They took no weapons with them; took not
even the stones they had treasured—for it was the nature of
the fading, that they lost interest in memory, and in dreams, and
hung the stones to stay in rain and moonlight to console those
still bound to the world. Most parted sadly, some in indirection,
simply bewildered; and some in bitter renunciation, for wounded
pride.
He felt anger, a power which might have made the hills to
quake—Liosliath, the stone whispered in his mind, and he drew
breath as if he had not breathed in a long, long age, and looked up
and outward, forcing shapes to declare themselves in the mist which
had taken the world, trees and stones and the rush of wind and
water.
Ciaran waked, caught at the bed on which he lay, all sweating and
trembling, for his heart beat in him far too loud. He stared into
the shadowed beams above him, wiped the sweat from his face with
hands callused and coarser than the hands he had had in his dream,
rested them on a body rough with hair and sweating, with the pulse
jarring at his ribs—not at all the body he had worn in the
dream, slim and shining fair, with the stone aglow with life and
light, with bright armor and a slim silver sword which shadows
feared and no Sidhe enemy wished to face.
Liosliath, star-crowned, prince of the Daoine Sidhe, the tall
fair folk.
And himself, who was earthen, and coarse, and whose power was
only that in his arm and his wits.
He shivered, sweating as he was, and tears ran from the edges of
his eyes. He tried again to sleep, and dreamed of Arafel, of
sunlight and silver, and the phantom deer leaping in and out of
shadow, for it was her waking and his night. The pale elven sun
shone, blinding, and she walked the banks of Airgiod, up to the
point where it faded into mist and nothingness, as near to him as
it was easy for her to come. Kinsman, she hailed him. It was as if she had suddenly
turned her face toward him. He waked with a start in his own
darkness, and in trembling, put off the stone, laid it and its
chain on the table by the bedside, by the lamp. He wished no more
such dreams, which tormented him with what he was and was not and
could never be, which thrust an elflord into his heart with all the
melancholy doom of the fair folk, all their chill love and colder
pride. They were dread enemies when stirred: he knew so; and so, he
thought, might she be, who had been kind to him.
Kinsman she had hailed him; but it was Liosliath who was her
cousin, Liosliath whose cold pride wished to live again, Liosliath,
the terrible bright lord whose sword had slain Men.
“A terrible enemy,” a shadow whispered.
And far away, even waking, Arafel cried to him: “The
stone, Ciaran!”
He was dreaming then. He was naked and a part of him blew in
tatters. There was a forest like the Ealdwood where a wild thing
fled, and he was that creature. Limbs rustled, black branches, and
even the leaves were black as old sins; the sky was leaden, with a
moon like a baleful dead eye.
“Terrible,” it said again, and a wind blew through
the inky leaves.
Behind him. It hunted him and he must not look at it, for he was
in its land, and if he saw the enemy’s true face it would be
real.
“The stone!” a voice wailed on the wind.
He reached for it, straining all his heart into that reaching.
It met his fingers, and his hand glowed with that moonbright fire.
Shadows yielded, as he retreated out of that third and dreadful
Eald. He passed other creatures less fortunate, shadows which cried
and pleaded for aid he could not give. Elf prince, some wailed,
asking mercy; elf prince, some hissed, spitting venom. He dared not
shut his eyes, dared not look.
Then he lay again within walk of stone, and Arafel’s voice
was chiding him. He shivered in his borrowed bed, with the stone
safe in his fingers. He lay shivering, with sullen day breaking
through the windowslit. A chill breeze stirred his hair. Thunder
rumbled outside.
He took the cold silver chain in his hands and slipped it again
about his neck, lay still a time holding to the stone with both
hands, shivering at the flood of elvish memories . . . of old quarrels with this shadow-lord.
The courage seemed bled out of him, through the wounds the hounds
had made in his soul. He knew himself maimed—maimed forever,
in a way which others could not see and he could not forget. The
stone must be forever about his neck to shield him, and it was
more powerful than he. His hands were cold that clutched it, and
would not warm easily; they were mortal, and that jewel was elvish
memory—of one who had not loved Men.
He stirred at last, hearing others astir in the keep, the
calling of voices one to the other, ordinary voices, recalling him
to a world no longer fully his. He rose, his teeth chattering, and
pulled on his breeches and went to the windowslit, hugging his arms
about him. He saw the muddy hill, the forest verge, wet green
leaves and gray sky. Of attackers there was no sign but the marks
which had been there before. The rain was nothing but dreary mist.
He turned back and sought after his shirt and the rest of his
clothing. He tucked the stone within his collar, tied the laces
which concealed it at his throat. He dared not leave
it . . . ever.
They brought him as a prisoner into the torchlit hall, with the
sounds of battle dying. They had handled him ungently, but it was
their lord’s own ring upon his finger, and they had changed
their manner quickly enough when he insisted to show them that.
“Sit,” they told him now, showing him a bench, and he
was only too glad to do so, weary as he was.
Another came—Old wolf, Ciaran thought at that grim broad
face, besweated and flushed with battle-heat He straightened himself
at once when that man came in with more men-at-arms behind him. He
set himself most carefully on his feet. “Scaga?” he
ventured, for he was very like his son, a huge man and red-haired.
“I come from the King; and from your lord.”
“Let me see this ring,” Scaga said; and Ciaran
thrust out his hand, which the old warrior took roughly, turning
the ring to the firelight. Scaga let it go again, his scarred face
still scowling.
“I have a message,” Ciaran said, “for your
lady’s ears.” And became he could guess the
keep’s want of hope: “Good news,” be urged on
Scaga, though he was charged to take it higher.
“Then it comes welcome, if true.” Scaga turned his
face toward the open door, where sounds of battle had much faded, then looked back again,
looked him up and down. “How came you here?”
“My message,” he said, “is for lord
Evald’s lady.”
Scaga still frowned; it might be the nature of his face, or of
his heart: this was, Ciaran thought, a fell man to cross. But Evald
trusted him as steward, in a hold beset with enemies: he was then a
man of great worth and faithfulness.
“With neither armor,” said Scaga, “nor
weapon . . . How came you into the
courtyard?”
“Your lord’s ring,” Ciaran insisted. “I
speak only to your lady.” He felt the stone which lay hidden
within his collar, a presence, a warmth which seemed greater than
natural. It frightened him, with that against his heart and the
like of Scaga staring into his eyes, full of suspicions.
“You shall go to her,” Scaga said, and motioned to
the stairs. “Boy!” he called. “See my lady
roused.”
A lad scampered up the steps at a run. Ciaran shivered in
weariness and cold, for wind blew through the door. He wished
desperately for a cup of ale, for a place to lie down and rest
himself.
And there was none, for Scaga looked on him with narrowed eyes
and offered nothing of hospitality—motioned men-at-arms to go
before and behind him and led him up the steps to another hall
within Caer Wiell’s thick walls, which at least was warmer,
with a fire blazing in the hearth.
“Beware,” a voice seemed to whisper in his hearing,
and it startled him. He wondered could all the rest hear it; but
the others did not turn: it was for him alone. “Beware this
hall. They do not love elven-kind. And do not show them the
stone.”
A stone wolf’s-head was set above the fireplace. It seemed
he had seen it before; that he had sat here, a man, and that a harp
should hang so, upon the rightward wall—he looked, and was
dismayed to find a harp hanging there, just where he had thought it
should. He had then dreamed this place.
Or she had. There was a great scarred table once had sat a
chair, before the fire. He blinked it clear, went to it, leaned
there wearily against the table, while weary men guarded him.
And women came, so soon that he supposed they had not been
asleep. Surely they had not been, with the enemy hurling fire
against the hold. They came from the inner door which opened on
this hall, one woman older and somewhat grayed. This was
Meredydd, he surmised, Evald’s own lady; and
Meredydd the stone whispered in his heart, confirming it.
The other of the twain was young, bright of hair—and that
name came whispering through his heart as well: Branwyn.
Branwyn. Branwyn. He stared without meaning to, for so much of
anguish and of anger came whispering with that name. This Branwyn
stopped and stared at him, blue eyes seemed bewildered and innocent
of such pain.
“Your message,” Scaga’s harsh voice
insisted.
Ciaran looked at Lady Meredydd instead, took a step
toward her, but hands moved to weapons about him, and he did not go
nearer. He tugged the ring from off his finger and gave it over to
Scaga, who gave it to the lady. She took the ring as something
precious, looked on it closely, lifted anxious eyes. “My
husband,” she asked of him.
“Well, lady, he is well. I bring his love and my King’s
word: Hold, defend, and do not be deceived by any lies of the enemy
or accept any terms. The King has won a great battle at Dun na
h-Eoin, and the enemy hopes for this valley as their last holding
place. Only hold this tower, and the King and your lord will come
as soon as possible against their backs. They know this. Now you
do.”
“Now bless your news,” the lady wept, and even
Scaga’s frown was eased. Meredydd came and offered her hands
to him in welcome, but he felt Scaga’s heavy hand on his
shoulder, pulling him away.
“There is more to hear,” said Scaga. “This man came
over the walls somehow, with no armor, no arms—unmarked
through the lines outside. There are questions should still be
asked, my lady, however good and fair the counsel seems. I beg you,
ask him how he came.”
For a moment doubt shadowed the lady’s eyes.
“My name is Ciaran,” he said, “Lord Ciaran of
Caer Donn is my father. And as to how I came—lightly, as you
see; by stealth. While your enemies struck at the gates—I
came another way. I shall show you. But armed men could not take
it.”
He was not used to lies. He felt fouled, wounded when the lady
pressed his hands. “You will show us where,” Scaga
said, and gave him in his turn a bearish embrace, gazed at him with
emotion welling up—hope, it might be, where hope had been
scant for them before. Branwyn too came and kissed his cheek; and
weapons were done away as men came at last to clap him on the back
and to hug one another for joy. A cheer lifted in the hall, and
there was such desperate happiness—He felt a stirring through
the jewel too, a presence, a distressing realization that he had
said nothing on his own which ought to have convinced them and so
relieved their hearts, but that some strangeness overlay him and
his words, making them better than they were.
They gave him wine, and brought him upstairs to a princely
room—her lord’s when he was young, the Lady Meredydd
said; and true, everything there showed some woman’s love,
the fine-pricked stitchery of coverlet and tapestries, the hangings
of the bed. Branwyn herself brought a warm rug for the floor, and
maids brought water for washing, while Lady Meredydd with her own
hands brought him bread hot from the morning’s baking. He
took it gratefully, while the lady and her daughter lingered to ply
him with questions, how fared Evald and kinsmen, cousins, friends,
men of the hold, a hundred questions during which maids
eavesdropped and men-at-arms contrived to listen on pretext of
errands. Some few men he knew; sometimes the news was sad and
pained him; and most often he knew only a name, or less—but
it gave him joy when he could report some loved one safe and well.
Scaga’s son was one, for Scaga bent enough to ask. “He
is well,” Ciaran said. “He led a good portion of Caer
Wiell’s men at Dun na h-Eoin, first of those that broke the
shields of the Bradhaeth while lord Evald cut off their retreat. He
came out of the battle well enough; he was by lord Evald when we
parted, in the King’s own tent.” The old warrior did not
smile to hear it, but his eyes were bright.
“He must sleep,” Meredydd declared at last.
“Surely he has travelled hard.”
“I fare well enough,” Ciaran said, for he ached
after human company, for noise of voices, for all these sights and
sounds of humankind.
“Before he sleeps,” said Scaga, “he must show
us this weak place in our wall.”
The warmth drained from him. He nodded consent, not knowing what
he was to do, but compelled to go. He swallowed a bit of bread gone
dry in his throat, drank a last sip of the wine and set the cup
down. “Aye,” he said. “Of course. That will not
wait.”
Scaga rose, waiting at the door. Ciaran took his leave of the
ladies, walked with the old warrior through the hall, his heart
beating hard within his breast.
“I do not know if I can find it easily,” he said to
prepare his excuse, and hating the lie. “From all the
turnings of this place inside . . . I cannot be
sure.”
Scaga said nothing, which seemed Scaga’s way. It gave him
no comfort And when they had come up on the walls, Ciaran looked
about him in deep distress, seeking something to confirm his
lie.
“Look east,” the softest of whispers came to him,
like the touch of a breeze. “Turn east and look
down.”
He walked that way along the battlement, with Scaga treading
heavily beside him. He paused at a place and looked down, where the
stonework of the walls was oldest and roughest, where here and
there brush had rooted itself in the gaps between the stones and
man-made walls thrust crazily above the jagged stone of the
underlying rocks. Of a sudden his eye picked out a way, weaving
from one such foothold to another among brush rooted in the wall, a
peril to the hold. “There,” he said. “We are a
mountain hold, we of Caer Donn. And I climbed cliffs as a lad.
There, do you see, Scaga? There and there and there.”
Scaga nodded. “Aye. That does want clearing, and watching.
Our eyes must have been blind to it. A man sees things too often
and so not at all: I had not marked how the brush had
grown.”
“Rains, perhaps,” Ciaran said hoarsely, but in his
heart he knew differently. He shivered, for his wool shirt was not
enough against the wind, and felt Scaga’s friendly grip fall
upon his shoulder.
“Come. Our thanks, young sir. Come in.”
He walked, glad of the wind-breaking shelter of walls on the one
side of the battlements, gazed back as they walked, and suddenly
down at an opening out of the walk. The courtyard was below, jammed
with livestock and with village folk, a noise which welled up at
him thinly, the wail of children and the listless bleating of
goats. But it was a well-ordered place, Caer Wiell, and some of the
men on the walls were country folk, light-armed, but goodly looking
men, quick of eye and brisk about their business. Women were
climbing up the inside scaffoldings which gave access to the
battlements before the gates, bearing baskets of bread. There was
then no hunger here, nor would there ever be thirst, because of the
spring which named the hill, out of reach of the enemy. Ciaran felt
much cheered by what he saw of the defense, even with the ominous
smoke of enemy fires rising before the walls. He walked farther out
than Scaga would have had him go, walked the wall to the area of
the main gates and looked west.
Then he was less cheered, for the extent of the black ruin
before the walls. The grass and fields were burned and trampled
into mire. The enemy had carried away their dead and wounded; no
corpse was left but the carcasses of slain horses, to draw the
black birds; and beyond that trodden ground the hills were seared
with fire, villages and farms burned, surely, from here to Caer
Damh. The smoke rose in countless plumes from the hills, where a
vast host camped, a crescent of smokes from the
Caerbourne’s forested verge to the barren hills to the
right, that spread itself on the winds and darkened the sky.
The attack could not have been this far advanced when he was on
the road, riding from the King. He had passed one
night—surely one night—in Eald.
How much of time? he asked that sometime whisper in the stone,
feeling uncertainty all about him. How long did you hold
me? He was betrayed. He knew it in his worst fears.
The fires would soon grow more and more, as Dryw and the King
over the hills drove others into retreat. Or had it happened
already? And what more had happened, and what men he just had named
living might have died? And what stayed the King from coming? Hold here. How old was the message, that Scaga was so
grim, that lady Meredydd and her daughter caught so desperately at
this hope he gave them? And how long had the King delayed to
come?
“It seemed the fires had grown in number,” said
Scaga out of his silence. “Now we know why.”
“Aye,” Ciaran said, wishing to say nothing at all.
He went back into the tower, and sat in the hall at the table by
the fire, victim again of questions from those humbler folk who had
not asked them before; and a few common folk who served there came
only to look at him with their hopes unspoken in their eyes, and to
steal quickly away. He sat there most of that long day, alone some
of the hours, and sitting with Scaga in the afternoon, who brought
some of his trusted men to question him at length—how great
the strength of the enemy, what condition their arms, what number
yet might come. He answered what questions he could as wisely as he
could, hinting nothing, and was glad when they had gone away.
No more of lies, he wished of Arafel. You have tangled me in
lies, more and more of them. They break my heart. What is truth?
What should I say to them? Should I make them doubt the very hope I
came to give them?
She had no answer for him, or did not hear.
But that evening after supper a young man came and took down the
harp from off the wall, and played songs for him and for the
ladies. Then he felt a warmth near his heart, a sweet, sad warmth.
Then was peace, for the first time in the day. From the enemy there
was no stirring, and the pure notes of the harp found another rapt
listener: a joy flooded back from the stone, and filled
Ciaran’s heart. He smiled.
And looked by chance into Branwyn’s eyes, who smiled too,
in her hope. The smile faded to gravity. The eyes stayed upon his,
flower-fair.
“No,” a whisper came to him from the depths of the
stone.
The blue eyes were nearer, and had a glamor of their own. He
gazed entranced while the harper sang.
“Cling to the stone,” the whisper came again, but he
had Branwyn’s fair hand within closer reach of his upon the
table. He touched her fingers and they clung to his. The harper
sang of love, and heroes. Ciaran held her hand for more tangled
reasons, that it was of this world, and that it too had power to
hold.
At length the harper ceased. Ciaran drew back his hand, lest
others remark it, for she was a great lord’s only daughter,
however dire the times.
And in time he went alone to his bed in the room which had been
Evald’s in his youth, the vast soft bed of broidered
hangings. He stripped off his clothing, shivered in the wind which
blew in out of the dark, through the slitted window—stripped
off all that he wore but the stone on its silver chain and lay down
quickly, drawing the heavy quilts over him, tucking up his limbs
until he could warm him a spot in the bed. He reached out again to
snuff the wick of the lamp on the table, drew the arm quickly back
beneath the covers, as dark settled strange shapes over the
unfamiliar objects of the borrowed room. There were creakings and
movings, from outside and in; a child cried somewhere in the dark,
from the courtyard on the other side, far, far away. His own slit
of a window faced the river. He heard a distant whisper of leaves
or water: wind, he thought; and somewhere hounds belled, a sound
greatly out of place in besieged Caer Wiell. He clutched the stone
in his hand, drew warmth from it, and no longer heard the dogs.
He dreamed of groves, vast trees; and of a hill. This was Caer
Wiell; but he called its name Caer Glas, and there was no well, but
a clear spring bubbling out over white stones, flowing unhindered
to Airgiod’s pure waters in the vale, and the view was clear
and bright toward the Brown Hills. He rode the plain, tall and
bearing the same pale stone on his breast—rode among others,
with the blowing of horns and flourishing of banners. Arrows came
down like silver sleet, and the sullen host before them fled,
seeking the mountains, the dark places at the roots of the hills.
The Daoine Sidhe warred, and in the sky glittered the jeweled wings
of dragons, serpent-shapes passing like storm in the blowing of
horns and the clash of arms.
Then were ages of peace, when the pale sun and green moon shone
down without change, and harpers sang songs beneath the pale,
straight trees.
There came the age of parting, when the world began to change,
when Men came, and Men’s gods, for the vile things were
driven deep within the hills, and Men found the way now easy. Came
bronze, and came iron, and some there were of the Sidhe who abided
the killing of trees, small wights who burrowed in the earth close
to Men; but the Daoine Sidhe hunted these, in bitter anger.
Yet the world had changed. The fading began, and the heart left
them. One by one they fell to the affliction, departing beyond the
gray edge of the world. They took no weapons with them; took not
even the stones they had treasured—for it was the nature of
the fading, that they lost interest in memory, and in dreams, and
hung the stones to stay in rain and moonlight to console those
still bound to the world. Most parted sadly, some in indirection,
simply bewildered; and some in bitter renunciation, for wounded
pride.
He felt anger, a power which might have made the hills to
quake—Liosliath, the stone whispered in his mind, and he drew
breath as if he had not breathed in a long, long age, and looked up
and outward, forcing shapes to declare themselves in the mist which
had taken the world, trees and stones and the rush of wind and
water.
Ciaran waked, caught at the bed on which he lay, all sweating and
trembling, for his heart beat in him far too loud. He stared into
the shadowed beams above him, wiped the sweat from his face with
hands callused and coarser than the hands he had had in his dream,
rested them on a body rough with hair and sweating, with the pulse
jarring at his ribs—not at all the body he had worn in the
dream, slim and shining fair, with the stone aglow with life and
light, with bright armor and a slim silver sword which shadows
feared and no Sidhe enemy wished to face.
Liosliath, star-crowned, prince of the Daoine Sidhe, the tall
fair folk.
And himself, who was earthen, and coarse, and whose power was
only that in his arm and his wits.
He shivered, sweating as he was, and tears ran from the edges of
his eyes. He tried again to sleep, and dreamed of Arafel, of
sunlight and silver, and the phantom deer leaping in and out of
shadow, for it was her waking and his night. The pale elven sun
shone, blinding, and she walked the banks of Airgiod, up to the
point where it faded into mist and nothingness, as near to him as
it was easy for her to come. Kinsman, she hailed him. It was as if she had suddenly
turned her face toward him. He waked with a start in his own
darkness, and in trembling, put off the stone, laid it and its
chain on the table by the bedside, by the lamp. He wished no more
such dreams, which tormented him with what he was and was not and
could never be, which thrust an elflord into his heart with all the
melancholy doom of the fair folk, all their chill love and colder
pride. They were dread enemies when stirred: he knew so; and so, he
thought, might she be, who had been kind to him.
Kinsman she had hailed him; but it was Liosliath who was her
cousin, Liosliath whose cold pride wished to live again, Liosliath,
the terrible bright lord whose sword had slain Men.
“A terrible enemy,” a shadow whispered.
And far away, even waking, Arafel cried to him: “The
stone, Ciaran!”
He was dreaming then. He was naked and a part of him blew in
tatters. There was a forest like the Ealdwood where a wild thing
fled, and he was that creature. Limbs rustled, black branches, and
even the leaves were black as old sins; the sky was leaden, with a
moon like a baleful dead eye.
“Terrible,” it said again, and a wind blew through
the inky leaves.
Behind him. It hunted him and he must not look at it, for he was
in its land, and if he saw the enemy’s true face it would be
real.
“The stone!” a voice wailed on the wind.
He reached for it, straining all his heart into that reaching.
It met his fingers, and his hand glowed with that moonbright fire.
Shadows yielded, as he retreated out of that third and dreadful
Eald. He passed other creatures less fortunate, shadows which cried
and pleaded for aid he could not give. Elf prince, some wailed,
asking mercy; elf prince, some hissed, spitting venom. He dared not
shut his eyes, dared not look.
Then he lay again within walk of stone, and Arafel’s voice
was chiding him. He shivered in his borrowed bed, with the stone
safe in his fingers. He lay shivering, with sullen day breaking
through the windowslit. A chill breeze stirred his hair. Thunder
rumbled outside.
He took the cold silver chain in his hands and slipped it again
about his neck, lay still a time holding to the stone with both
hands, shivering at the flood of elvish memories . . . of old quarrels with this shadow-lord.
The courage seemed bled out of him, through the wounds the hounds
had made in his soul. He knew himself maimed—maimed forever,
in a way which others could not see and he could not forget. The
stone must be forever about his neck to shield him, and it was
more powerful than he. His hands were cold that clutched it, and
would not warm easily; they were mortal, and that jewel was elvish
memory—of one who had not loved Men.
He stirred at last, hearing others astir in the keep, the
calling of voices one to the other, ordinary voices, recalling him
to a world no longer fully his. He rose, his teeth chattering, and
pulled on his breeches and went to the windowslit, hugging his arms
about him. He saw the muddy hill, the forest verge, wet green
leaves and gray sky. Of attackers there was no sign but the marks
which had been there before. The rain was nothing but dreary mist.
He turned back and sought after his shirt and the rest of his
clothing. He tucked the stone within his collar, tied the laces
which concealed it at his throat. He dared not leave
it . . . ever.