The ladies were in the great hall to give him morning’s
hospitality, Meredydd and Branwyn and their maids; and two of the
pages had stayed to serve them. He walked among them with a hope of
a seat near the fire and a bit of bread crowded upon him; but there
were places laid at the table, and he heard the lady Meredydd send
a page for porridge. Scaga appeared in the door as the boy dodged
and scurried mouselike about his errand, and nodded a good morning.
“All’s quiet,” Scaga said. There was no great joy in
the report, and Ciaran frowned too, wondering how long till it came
down on them doubled. Perhaps the enemy had no liking for rain.
Perhaps—the thought came worrisome at his empty
stomach—there was something else astir. Perhaps something had
gone amiss with the King, some trick, some trap prepared. The King,
Dryw, his father—should come soon. They should make some
move.
Perhaps—the thought would not leave him—they had
tried and failed while he slept in Eald, unknowing. Some ambush in
the lower end of the dale could have prevented them. The desolation
before the walls of Caer Wiell was as wide as that at Dun na
h-Eoin—and he could not judge whether the enemy was greater
in the dale than they had reckoned in the first place or whether
the forces fled from Dun na h-Eoin had joined them.
He sat where the Lady Meredydd bade him, at her right; and
Branwyn sat at her left. Scaga sat down too, and others, but many
seats at the great table stayed vacant, the hall of a hold long at
war, its lord and young men absent. The harper sat with them, late
arrival; there was the Lady Bebhinn, elderly and dour; and Muirne,
all of twelve, who was a shy, pale-cheeked child, silent among her
elders. The hall at Caer Donn came to his mind unbidden, his
parents’ faces, the laughter of servants, joyous mornings,
full of noise, himself and dour Donnchadh always at some friendly
odds over trivial things. But it would be lonely there this morning
too.
“You did not rest well,” the demoiselle Branwyn
said, who sat facing him. Her face was troubled.
“I slept,” he said, straightening his shoulders; but
the stone seemed a weight against his heart. And because his answer
did not seem to satisfy those who stared at him: “I ran
far—in coming here. I think the weariness has settled on
me.”
“You must rest,” said Lady Meredydd. “Scaga,
no harrying of him today.”
“Let him rest,” Scaga replied, a deep rumbling.
“Only so they do.”
The porridge came. Ciaran ate, small familiar motions which gave
him excuse not to talk. In truth he felt numb, endured a
moment’s fear that he might have begun to fade into
elsewhere, so distant he was in his thoughts. He imagined their
dismay if he should do so.
And in this homelike place he thought a second time of home, and
meetings. Of facing his father and mother and Donnchadh, bearing an
elvish stone forever against his heart, with close knowledge of
that past which Caer Donn tried never to recall. He could never
again see the farmer’s wards against the fair folk without
feeling his own peace threatened; could not see the ruins on the
mountain above Caer Donn without seeing them as they had been
before any Man set foot there; could not walk the hillsides without
knowing there were other hills within his reach, and knowing what
fell things swarmed beneath them, never truly gone. Worst, to face
his father and Donnchadh, knowing what they must never know, that
he and they were closer to those things than ever they had
believed, these things which lurked and crept at the roots of the
hills; and to look on his father’s and his brother’s
faces and to wonder whether the taint always bred true.
Unsavory, Donnchadh had called the dale—but he must live
with an enemy always a breath away, Man’s shadow enemy, who
would take the rest of him—without the stone.
Then he looked about him at the faces of the folk of Caer Wiell,
whose war was the same as his, but without such protections as the
stone; it was the same Enemy. Death had been outside the walls
yesterday, hunting souls. Do we not, he wondered, all bear the
wound? And am I coward, because my eyes alone are cursed to see him
coming?
The stone seemed to burn him. “Be wise,” a whisper
reached him. “O be wise. He is my old enemy, before
he was yours. He wants one of elven-kind. Me he waits for . . . and
now you. Your fate is not theirs. Your danger is far
more.”
He touched the stone, wished the whisper away. I am
Man, he thought again and again, for the green vision was in his
eyes and the voices about him seemed far away.
“Are you well?” asked Lady Meredydd. “Sir
Ciaran, are you well?”
“A wound,” he said,
bedazed into almost truth, and added: “Healed.”
“The rain,” Scaga said. “I have something will
warm the aches.—Boy, fetch me the flask from the post
downstairs.”
“ ’Twill pass,” Ciaran murmured, ashamed; but the boy
had sped, and the ladies talked of herbs and wished to help him. He
swallowed sips of Scaga’s remedy then, and accepted salves of
Meredydd and the maids; and before they were done, warmer clothing
and a good cloak all done with Meredydd’s own fine stitching.
Their kindness touched his heart and plunged him the more deeply
into melancholy. He walked the walls alone after that, staring
toward the camp of the enemy and wishing that there were something
his hands might do. All the mood of the keep was grim, with the
drizzling rain and the unaccustomed silence. Women and children
came up onto the walls to look out; and some wept to see the
fields, while youngest children simply stared with bewildered eyes,
and sought warmer places again in the camp below.
Beyond the river he saw the tops of green trees, and shadowy
greater trees high upon the ridge beyond the Caerbourne, over which
the clouds were darkest. Those clouds cast a pall over his heart,
for it was Death’s presence, and the castle was indeed under
siege by more than human foes. The thought came to him that he
might bring danger on others, that Death who hunted him might take
others near him. This enemy of his might bring ruin on Caer Wiell,
on the very folk he came to aid. The thought began to obsess him
and cause him deeper and deeper despair.
“Come back,” a voice whispered to him, offering
peace, and dreams. “You’ve done your duty to Caer
Wiell. Come back.”
“Sir,” said a human, clear voice, and he turned and
looked on Branwyn, cloaked and hooded against the mist. He was
dismayed for the moment, and recovering, made a bow.
“You seemed distressed,” she said. “Is there
moving out there?”
He shrugged, looked across the wall and turned his gaze, back to
her, a pale face framed in the broidered mantle, eyes as changing
as the clouds, mirroring his own fears, unfearing while he was
brave, frightened when the least fear came to him. “They seem
to have no love of the rain,” he said. “And your father
and mine, and the King himself—will come soon and teach them
other things they will not be fond of.”
“It has been so long,” she said.
“It cannot be much longer,” he said in desperate
hope.
Branwyn looked on him, and on the field before them, and they
stood there a time, comforted in each other. Birds alit on the
stone . . . wet and draggled; she had brought a
crust of bread with her, and broke it and gave it to them,
provoking battle, damp wings and stabbing beaks.
“Enchantress,” Arafel breathed into his heart.
“They have stopped being honest; and it has always amused
her.”
But Ciaran paid the voice no heed, for his eyes were on Branwyn,
discovering how graceful her face, how pale on this gray day, how
bright her eyes which surprised him with a direct glance and jarred
all his senses.
A boy ran, scurried past them and stopped where they stood; he
pointed silently and hastened on. With dread Ciaran turned and
looked beyond the walls, for in that moment there was change. A
group of riders had come out from the enemy camp, advancing toward
the keep. There began to be a stirring in Caer Wiell as other
sentries saw it. He looked back at Branwyn, and so distraught was
her face that he reached out his hand to comfort her. Her chill
fingers closed about his. They tood and watched the enemy ride
closer.
“They wish to talk,” he said, seeing the fewness of
the riders. “It is no attack.”
Scaga came thumping up the steps to the crest of the wall,
leaned over the battlement and glared sourly at the advance.
“My lady,” he wished Branwyn, looking about at them
both, “I would have you back under cover. I do not trust you
to luck. I would not have you seen.”
“I shall stay,” Branwyn said. “I have my cloak
about me.”
“Stay away from the edge,” Scaga bade her, and
stalked along the wall, giving orders to his men.
The enemy came into clear view, a score of riders bearing
banners, most of them the red boar of An Beag, and the black stag
of Caer Damh. But they had another banner trailing crosswise of a
saddlebow, and this they lifted and showed. A cry of rage went up
from the walls of Caer Wiell, for it was the green banner of their
own lord.
“Surrender,” one rider of An Beag rode forth to
shout against their walls. “This keep is yielded; your lord
is dead, the King fallen, and his army scattered. Save your lives,
and those of your lord’s wife and daughter—no harm will
come to them. Scaga! Where is Scaga?”
“Here,” the old warrior roared, leaning out over the
stones. “Take that lie hence! We name you the liars you are,
in the one and in the other.”
A second rider spurred forward, and lifted a dark object on a
spear, a head with hair matted with blood, a ruined face. He slung
it at the gate.
“There is your lord! We offer you quarter, Scaga! When we
come again, we will not.”
The lady Branwyn stood fast, her hand limp in Ciaran’s;
but when he gathered her against him for pity, she failed a little
of falling, and hung against him.
“Ride off!” Scaga
roared. “Liars!”
A bow bent, among the riders.
“Ware!” Ciaran cried, but Scaga had seen it, and hurled
himself back from the edge as the shaft sped, a flight which hissed
past and spent itself. Arrows sped from the walls in reply, and the
party rode away not unscathed, leaving the green banner in the mud,
and a bloody head at Caer Wiell’s gates.
“These are lies!” Ciaran said, turning to shout it
over all the range his voice could reach, to walls and the
courtyard below. “Your lord sent me to forewarn you all of
tricks like these—a false banner and some poor wretch’s
ruined face—these are lies!”
He was desperate in his appeal, only half believing it himself.
The whole of the keep seemed frozen, none moving, none seeming
sure.
“When was there truth in An Beag?” Scaga roared at
them. “Trust rather the King’s own messenger than any
word from them. They know they have no other hope. The King has won
his battle. The King is coming here, with our own lord beside him,
with Dryw ap Dryw and the lord of Donn. Who says he will
not?”
“It was not my father!” Branwyn shouted out clear,
stood on her own feet and flung back her hood. “I saw, and I
say it was not!”
A handful cheered, and others followed. It became a tumult, a
waving of weapons, a hammering of shields by those who had
them.
“Come inside,” Ciaran urged Branwyn, and took her
arm. “Haste, your mother may have heard.”
“Bury it,” she said, shuddering and weeping, and
Ciaran looked at Scaga.
“I will see to it,” Scaga said, and with a word to
his men on the wall to keep sharp watch, he went down the steps to
the gate. Ciaran wrapped the corner of his cloak about Branwyn and
walked with her inside the tower, into torchlight and warmth, and
up into the hall, to bear the news themselves.
But he went down again when he had seen Branwyn to her mother
and given report, into the court where Scaga stood.
“Was it?” he asked Scaga when he could ask with none
overhearing.
“It was not,” Scaga said, his eyes dark and grim.
“By the way of an old scar my lord has I know it was not; but
no other feature did they leave him. We buried it. Our man or
theirs—we do not know. Likest theirs, but we take no
chances.”
Ciaran said nothing, but turned away unamazed, for he had fought
the ilk of An Beag for years, and still it sickened him. He yearned
for arms, for a weapon in hand, for an answer to make to such men.
It was not the hour for it. No attack was coming. Their enemy meant
they should brood upon what they had seen.
There was silence all the day. Ciaran sat in the hall and
drowsed somewhat, with moments of peace between visions of that
gory field and more terrible visions of silvered leaves, of all
Eald whispering in anger beyond the walls. He would wake with a
start and gaze long at something homely and real, at the gray of a
stone wall, or the leaping of flames in the hearth, or listen to
the folk who went about their ordinary business nearby. Branwyn
came to sit by him, and that peace too he cherished.
“Ciaran,” a faint voice whispered from time to time,
destroying that tranquility, but he refused to pay it heed.
They placed double guard that night, trusting nothing; but there
was firelight and comfort in the hall. Ciaran recovered his
appetite which had failed him all the day, and again the harper
played them brave songs, to give them courage: but the stone
plagued him—in his ears echoed other songs of slower measure,
of tenor never human, of allure which made the other songs seem
discordant and sour. Tears flowed down his face. The harper
misunderstood, and was complimented mightily. Ciaran did not
gainsay.
Then must be bed, and loneliness and the dark—worse, the
silence, in which there were only inner echoes and no stilling
them. He was ashamed to ask for more light, like a child, and yet
he wished he had done so when all were abed and he was alone. He
did not put out the light, having trimmed the wick to nurse it as
long as he might. The stone and he were at war in the silence,
memories which were not his nor even human, memories which grew
stronger and stronger in the long hours of solitude, so that even
waking was no true defense against the flood of images which poured
down upon his mind.
Liosliath. He felt more than memories. He took in the nature of
him who had worn these dreams so many ages, a pride which reckoned
nothing of things he counted fair—which flung against them
elvish beauties to turn them pale, and showed him the sadness in
his world. He tried taking off the stone with the light there to
comfort him, but that was worse still, for there was that aching
loss, that knowledge that a part of him was in that darker Eald.
Worst of all, he felt a sudden attention upon himself, so that the
night outside seemed more threatening and more real, and the light
of the lamp seemed weaker. He quickly placed the chain back about
his neck and let the stone rest against his chest, which warmed the
ache away . . . and brought back the tormenting
bright memories.
Then the light guttered out, and he sat in the dark. The room
was very still, and the memories grew harder and harder to push
away.
“Sleep,” Arafel whispered across the distance, with
pity in her voice. “Ah, Ciaran, sleep.”
“I am a Man,” he whispered back, holding to the
stone clenched in his fist. “And if I yield to this I shall
not be.”
Music came to him, soft singing, which soothed and filled him
with an unspeakable weariness, lulling his senses. He slept without
willing to, and dreams crept upon him, which were Liosliath’s
proud self, burning pride and sometime heartlessness. He longed for
the sun, which would make real the familiar, common things about
him; and when the sun came at last, he bowed his head into his arms
and did sleep a time, true sleep, and not a warfare for his
soul.
Someone cried out. He came awake with brazen alarm clanging in
his ears, with cries outside that attack was coming. “Arms!” echoed down the corridors of
Caer Wiell and up from the distant court. “Arm and
out!”
Fright brought him to his feet, and then a wild relief, that it
was come to this, that it was no more an enemy within him, but one
that yielded to weapons such as human hands could wield. He tugged
on his clothing, raced into the hall with others, and finding no
Scaga—down the stairs as far as the guard room. Scaga was
arming, and others were.
“Get me weapons,” Ciaran begged of them; and Scaga
ordered it. Boys hastened about measuring him with their hands,
seeking what armor might fit him. Outside the alarm had ceased. The
battle was preparing. The room had a busy traffic of boys running
with arrows and the air stank of warming oil. They began to lace
him into haqueton and leather, and one of the other pages came up
panting with an aged coat of mail. Ciaran bent and they thrust it
over his arms and head; he straightened and it jolted down over his
body with a touch like ice and poison. “No,” he heard
the whisper which had been urging at him, ignored.
“No,” he raged in his own mind, with the
poison seeping into his limbs and weakening them. Tears came to his
eyes, and a bitter taste to his mouth, the harsh sour tang of iron.
They did the laces, and he stood fast; they belted on the sword,
and by now Scaga, armed, was staring at him with bewilderment, for
his limbs had weakened and sweat poured on his face, cold in the
wind from the door. The pain grew, eating into his bones and
through his marrow, devouring his sense.
“No,” he cried aloud to Arafel; and
“no,” he murmured, and crashed to his knees. He bowed
over, nigh to fainting, consumed with the pain. “Take it off,
take if off me.”
“Tend him,” Scaga ordered, and hesitated this way
and that, then rushed off about his own business, for by now the
sound of the enemy was a roar like many waters, and out of it came
nearer shouts, and the angry whine of bows.
The pages loosed the belt and loosed the laces, pulled the iron
weight off him while he knelt, racked with pain. They brought him
wine and tended him among the wounded which began to be brought in
from the walls. “See to them,” Ciaran cried,
clamping his teeth against the poisoned anguish in his belly. Tears
of shame stung his eyes, that they delayed with him, while others
died. He gained his feet and held to the stones of the wall,
sweating and trembling. He made his way out into the open air to
use a bow, that much at least. But when a boy gave him a case of
arrows, the iron sickness came on him again: the case spilled from
his hand and the arrows scattered on the walk. “He
cannot,” someone said. “Boy, get him hence, get him up
to the hall.”
He went, steadied by a page on the stairs, staggering because of
the pain in his bones. The boy and the maids together laid him down
by the fire, and pillowed his head.
“He is hurt,” came Branwyn’s voice, all
anguish for him, and gentle hands touched him. A halo of bright
hair rimmed the face which bent above him, against the fire. Tears
blurred his eyes, pain and shame commingled.
“No hurt touched him,” said a boy. “I think,
lady, he must be ill.”
They brought him wine and herbs, covered him and kept him warm,
while he hovered half-sensible. Outside he heard the clash of iron,
heard battle shouts and heard the reports of boys and maids as they
would scurry out and back again, how the battle leaned, this way
and that. For a time the tower echoed to a crashing against the
gates, and there was a dread splintering which brought him off his
pallet and to his feet. The words were in his mouth to beg a weapon
of them, but the pain in his bones urged otherwise. He hung there
against the wardroom door and listened to reports more and more
dire shouted up the stairs, for one of the great hinges of the gate
had given way beneath the ram, and they braced it as they could,
with timbers, and hailed arrows from the wall.
There were ebbs in the battle. Ciaran sat by the fire and
pressed his hand against the stone which lay unseen against his
breast, but it was silent, giving back only pain. She is
wounded too, he thought, with only slight remorse. He was alone in
the hall but for Branwyn and the Lady Meredydd, who stared at him
with bewildered eyes when they did not go down to tend men more
bloodily wounded.
All that day the battle raged about the gate. Men died. At times
Ciaran rose and walked down as far as the edge of the wall, but
men-at-arms urged him to go back again to safety, and the sight he
saw gave him no comfort. The battered gate still held, though
tilted on its hinges. Arrows sleeted both up and down the wall, and
there was desperate talk of a sortie, to get the enemy from before
the gate before it should fall entire.
“Do not,” he wished Scaga in his mind, but he could
not pass that arrow storm to reach the place where Scaga stood
above the gate. Scaga was wise and ordered defense and not attack;
oil rained down and discouraged those below, but then the enemy set
fires before the gate and the oil made them burn the more fiercely.
Another hinge had yielded by afternoon, and more and more the enemy
came. Wounded men, exhausted men, passed Ciaran empty-handed in his
vantage place, some looking on him with bruised and accusing eyes.
Women came up the scaffolding to carry arrows, stayed to tend
wounds, to take bows, some of them, behind wickerwork defense, and
sent shafts winging into the thick press of attackers. Ciaran came
out at last, took a bow from a wounded archer, tried yet again; one
and a second shaft he launched . . . but the
sickness came on him, and his third went far amiss, fell without
force, while the bow dropped from his hand across the crenel. A boy
took up the bow, while Ciaran rested there overcome by shame, until
he found the strength to carry himself back to shelter.
They brought the boy back later, dead, for a shaft had struck
him in the throat, and another, younger boy had taken his post.
Ciaran wept, seeing it, and stood in the corner in the shadow,
wishing to be seen by no one.
He heard at twilight the battle din diminished; and at long last
it faded entirely. He went back to the hall, to stand near the
warmth of the fire and hear the servants talk. The women came,
weary and shadow-eyed, and there was talk of a cold supper from
which no one had heart. Men were down in the courtyard trying to
brace up the gate, and the sound of hammers resounded through the
hall.
Scaga came up, pale and sick from an arrow which had pierced his
arm and drawn a great deal of blood. From him Ciaran turned his
face, and stared into the embers as he leaned against the stones of
the fireplace. The ladies sat; servants brought bread and wine and
cold meat.
Ciaran came to table and sat down, staring at what was before
him and not at the women, nor at the harper, who had fought that
day; nor at Scaga, at him least of all. The servants served them,
but no one touched the food.
“It is his wound,” Branwyn said suddenly, out of the
silence. “He is ill.”
“He claims to have run through enemies and scaled our
wall,” Scaga said. “He gives us fair advice. But who is
he, truly? How far did he run? And what manner of man have we taken
among us, when our lives rely on a gate staying shut?”
Ciaran looked up and met Scaga’s eyes. “I am of Caer
Donn,” he said. “We serve the same King.”
Scaga stared at him, and no one moved.
“It is his wound,” Branwyn said again. He was
grateful for it.
“We have seen no wound,” said Scaga.
“Would you?” Ciaran asked, for he had no lack of
scars. He put on a face of anger, but it was shame that gnawed at
him. “We can go into the guardroom, if you like. We can speak
of it there, if you like.”
“Scaga,” Branwyn reproved the old warrior, but Lady
Meredydd put a hand upon her daughter’s, silencing her. And
Scaga put himself on his feet. Ciaran stood, prepared to go down
with him, but Scaga beckoned a page.
“Sword,” Scaga said. The boy brought it from the
doorway. Ciaran stood still, not to be made a coward in their eyes.
Branwyn had risen to her feet, and Lady Meredydd and the others,
one after the other.
“I would see you hold a sword,” Scaga said.
“Mine will do. ’Tis good true iron.”
Ciaran said nothing. His heart shrank within him and the stone
already pained him. He looked into the old warrior’s eyes,
knowing the man had seen more than the others had. Scaga unsheathed
the sword and offered it toward his hands; he reached for it, took
the naked blade in his palms, and tried to keep the anguish from
his face. He could not. He offered it back, not to dishonor the
blade by flinging it, and Scaga took it gravely. There was a
profound silence in the room.
“We are deceived,” Scaga said, his deep voice slow
and sad. “You brought us fair words. But gifts of your sort
do not come without cost.”
There was weeping. He saw the source of it, which was Branwyn,
who suddenly tore herself from her mother’s arms and rushed
from the hall. That wounded as much as the iron.
“I told you truth,” Ciaran said.
There was silence.
“The King,” Ciaran said, “will come here. I am
not your enemy.”
“We have lived too long next the old forest,” said
the Lady Meredydd. “I charge you tell me truth. Is my lord
still alive?”
“I swear to you, lady, I had his ring from his own hand,
and he was alive and well.”
“By what do the fair folk swear?”
He had no answer.
“What shall we do with him?” Scaga asked.
“Lady? Iron would hold him. But it would be cruel.”
Meredydd shook her head. “Perhaps he has told the truth.
It is all the hope we have, it it not? And we need no more enemies
than we have. Let him do as he wills, but guard him.”
Ciaran bowed his head, grateful at least for this. He did not
look at Scaga, nor at the others, only at the lady Meredydd. Since
she had nothing more to say to him, he walked quietly from the hall
and upstairs, to imprison himself in the room they had given him,
where he was spared the accusation of their eyes.
Dark had fallen. There was no lamp burning in the room, nor did
he reckon that any servant would come to him tonight. He closed the
door behind him, gazed at the window through a haze of tears. The
night was bright, framed in stone.
Branwyn wept somewhere, betrayed. The joy he had brought them
all was gone. They expected now to die. He shut his eyes, seeing
his own family, the pain he was sure to bring them. Shame, and
grief more piercing than shame, that they would forever know what
they were and distrust their own natures.
He sat down on the bed in the dark, and unlaced his collar, drew
forth the stone and held it in his hands.
The ladies were in the great hall to give him morning’s
hospitality, Meredydd and Branwyn and their maids; and two of the
pages had stayed to serve them. He walked among them with a hope of
a seat near the fire and a bit of bread crowded upon him; but there
were places laid at the table, and he heard the lady Meredydd send
a page for porridge. Scaga appeared in the door as the boy dodged
and scurried mouselike about his errand, and nodded a good morning.
“All’s quiet,” Scaga said. There was no great joy in
the report, and Ciaran frowned too, wondering how long till it came
down on them doubled. Perhaps the enemy had no liking for rain.
Perhaps—the thought came worrisome at his empty
stomach—there was something else astir. Perhaps something had
gone amiss with the King, some trick, some trap prepared. The King,
Dryw, his father—should come soon. They should make some
move.
Perhaps—the thought would not leave him—they had
tried and failed while he slept in Eald, unknowing. Some ambush in
the lower end of the dale could have prevented them. The desolation
before the walls of Caer Wiell was as wide as that at Dun na
h-Eoin—and he could not judge whether the enemy was greater
in the dale than they had reckoned in the first place or whether
the forces fled from Dun na h-Eoin had joined them.
He sat where the Lady Meredydd bade him, at her right; and
Branwyn sat at her left. Scaga sat down too, and others, but many
seats at the great table stayed vacant, the hall of a hold long at
war, its lord and young men absent. The harper sat with them, late
arrival; there was the Lady Bebhinn, elderly and dour; and Muirne,
all of twelve, who was a shy, pale-cheeked child, silent among her
elders. The hall at Caer Donn came to his mind unbidden, his
parents’ faces, the laughter of servants, joyous mornings,
full of noise, himself and dour Donnchadh always at some friendly
odds over trivial things. But it would be lonely there this morning
too.
“You did not rest well,” the demoiselle Branwyn
said, who sat facing him. Her face was troubled.
“I slept,” he said, straightening his shoulders; but
the stone seemed a weight against his heart. And because his answer
did not seem to satisfy those who stared at him: “I ran
far—in coming here. I think the weariness has settled on
me.”
“You must rest,” said Lady Meredydd. “Scaga,
no harrying of him today.”
“Let him rest,” Scaga replied, a deep rumbling.
“Only so they do.”
The porridge came. Ciaran ate, small familiar motions which gave
him excuse not to talk. In truth he felt numb, endured a
moment’s fear that he might have begun to fade into
elsewhere, so distant he was in his thoughts. He imagined their
dismay if he should do so.
And in this homelike place he thought a second time of home, and
meetings. Of facing his father and mother and Donnchadh, bearing an
elvish stone forever against his heart, with close knowledge of
that past which Caer Donn tried never to recall. He could never
again see the farmer’s wards against the fair folk without
feeling his own peace threatened; could not see the ruins on the
mountain above Caer Donn without seeing them as they had been
before any Man set foot there; could not walk the hillsides without
knowing there were other hills within his reach, and knowing what
fell things swarmed beneath them, never truly gone. Worst, to face
his father and Donnchadh, knowing what they must never know, that
he and they were closer to those things than ever they had
believed, these things which lurked and crept at the roots of the
hills; and to look on his father’s and his brother’s
faces and to wonder whether the taint always bred true.
Unsavory, Donnchadh had called the dale—but he must live
with an enemy always a breath away, Man’s shadow enemy, who
would take the rest of him—without the stone.
Then he looked about him at the faces of the folk of Caer Wiell,
whose war was the same as his, but without such protections as the
stone; it was the same Enemy. Death had been outside the walls
yesterday, hunting souls. Do we not, he wondered, all bear the
wound? And am I coward, because my eyes alone are cursed to see him
coming?
The stone seemed to burn him. “Be wise,” a whisper
reached him. “O be wise. He is my old enemy, before
he was yours. He wants one of elven-kind. Me he waits for . . . and
now you. Your fate is not theirs. Your danger is far
more.”
He touched the stone, wished the whisper away. I am
Man, he thought again and again, for the green vision was in his
eyes and the voices about him seemed far away.
“Are you well?” asked Lady Meredydd. “Sir
Ciaran, are you well?”
“A wound,” he said,
bedazed into almost truth, and added: “Healed.”
“The rain,” Scaga said. “I have something will
warm the aches.—Boy, fetch me the flask from the post
downstairs.”
“ ’Twill pass,” Ciaran murmured, ashamed; but the boy
had sped, and the ladies talked of herbs and wished to help him. He
swallowed sips of Scaga’s remedy then, and accepted salves of
Meredydd and the maids; and before they were done, warmer clothing
and a good cloak all done with Meredydd’s own fine stitching.
Their kindness touched his heart and plunged him the more deeply
into melancholy. He walked the walls alone after that, staring
toward the camp of the enemy and wishing that there were something
his hands might do. All the mood of the keep was grim, with the
drizzling rain and the unaccustomed silence. Women and children
came up onto the walls to look out; and some wept to see the
fields, while youngest children simply stared with bewildered eyes,
and sought warmer places again in the camp below.
Beyond the river he saw the tops of green trees, and shadowy
greater trees high upon the ridge beyond the Caerbourne, over which
the clouds were darkest. Those clouds cast a pall over his heart,
for it was Death’s presence, and the castle was indeed under
siege by more than human foes. The thought came to him that he
might bring danger on others, that Death who hunted him might take
others near him. This enemy of his might bring ruin on Caer Wiell,
on the very folk he came to aid. The thought began to obsess him
and cause him deeper and deeper despair.
“Come back,” a voice whispered to him, offering
peace, and dreams. “You’ve done your duty to Caer
Wiell. Come back.”
“Sir,” said a human, clear voice, and he turned and
looked on Branwyn, cloaked and hooded against the mist. He was
dismayed for the moment, and recovering, made a bow.
“You seemed distressed,” she said. “Is there
moving out there?”
He shrugged, looked across the wall and turned his gaze, back to
her, a pale face framed in the broidered mantle, eyes as changing
as the clouds, mirroring his own fears, unfearing while he was
brave, frightened when the least fear came to him. “They seem
to have no love of the rain,” he said. “And your father
and mine, and the King himself—will come soon and teach them
other things they will not be fond of.”
“It has been so long,” she said.
“It cannot be much longer,” he said in desperate
hope.
Branwyn looked on him, and on the field before them, and they
stood there a time, comforted in each other. Birds alit on the
stone . . . wet and draggled; she had brought a
crust of bread with her, and broke it and gave it to them,
provoking battle, damp wings and stabbing beaks.
“Enchantress,” Arafel breathed into his heart.
“They have stopped being honest; and it has always amused
her.”
But Ciaran paid the voice no heed, for his eyes were on Branwyn,
discovering how graceful her face, how pale on this gray day, how
bright her eyes which surprised him with a direct glance and jarred
all his senses.
A boy ran, scurried past them and stopped where they stood; he
pointed silently and hastened on. With dread Ciaran turned and
looked beyond the walls, for in that moment there was change. A
group of riders had come out from the enemy camp, advancing toward
the keep. There began to be a stirring in Caer Wiell as other
sentries saw it. He looked back at Branwyn, and so distraught was
her face that he reached out his hand to comfort her. Her chill
fingers closed about his. They tood and watched the enemy ride
closer.
“They wish to talk,” he said, seeing the fewness of
the riders. “It is no attack.”
Scaga came thumping up the steps to the crest of the wall,
leaned over the battlement and glared sourly at the advance.
“My lady,” he wished Branwyn, looking about at them
both, “I would have you back under cover. I do not trust you
to luck. I would not have you seen.”
“I shall stay,” Branwyn said. “I have my cloak
about me.”
“Stay away from the edge,” Scaga bade her, and
stalked along the wall, giving orders to his men.
The enemy came into clear view, a score of riders bearing
banners, most of them the red boar of An Beag, and the black stag
of Caer Damh. But they had another banner trailing crosswise of a
saddlebow, and this they lifted and showed. A cry of rage went up
from the walls of Caer Wiell, for it was the green banner of their
own lord.
“Surrender,” one rider of An Beag rode forth to
shout against their walls. “This keep is yielded; your lord
is dead, the King fallen, and his army scattered. Save your lives,
and those of your lord’s wife and daughter—no harm will
come to them. Scaga! Where is Scaga?”
“Here,” the old warrior roared, leaning out over the
stones. “Take that lie hence! We name you the liars you are,
in the one and in the other.”
A second rider spurred forward, and lifted a dark object on a
spear, a head with hair matted with blood, a ruined face. He slung
it at the gate.
“There is your lord! We offer you quarter, Scaga! When we
come again, we will not.”
The lady Branwyn stood fast, her hand limp in Ciaran’s;
but when he gathered her against him for pity, she failed a little
of falling, and hung against him.
“Ride off!” Scaga
roared. “Liars!”
A bow bent, among the riders.
“Ware!” Ciaran cried, but Scaga had seen it, and hurled
himself back from the edge as the shaft sped, a flight which hissed
past and spent itself. Arrows sped from the walls in reply, and the
party rode away not unscathed, leaving the green banner in the mud,
and a bloody head at Caer Wiell’s gates.
“These are lies!” Ciaran said, turning to shout it
over all the range his voice could reach, to walls and the
courtyard below. “Your lord sent me to forewarn you all of
tricks like these—a false banner and some poor wretch’s
ruined face—these are lies!”
He was desperate in his appeal, only half believing it himself.
The whole of the keep seemed frozen, none moving, none seeming
sure.
“When was there truth in An Beag?” Scaga roared at
them. “Trust rather the King’s own messenger than any
word from them. They know they have no other hope. The King has won
his battle. The King is coming here, with our own lord beside him,
with Dryw ap Dryw and the lord of Donn. Who says he will
not?”
“It was not my father!” Branwyn shouted out clear,
stood on her own feet and flung back her hood. “I saw, and I
say it was not!”
A handful cheered, and others followed. It became a tumult, a
waving of weapons, a hammering of shields by those who had
them.
“Come inside,” Ciaran urged Branwyn, and took her
arm. “Haste, your mother may have heard.”
“Bury it,” she said, shuddering and weeping, and
Ciaran looked at Scaga.
“I will see to it,” Scaga said, and with a word to
his men on the wall to keep sharp watch, he went down the steps to
the gate. Ciaran wrapped the corner of his cloak about Branwyn and
walked with her inside the tower, into torchlight and warmth, and
up into the hall, to bear the news themselves.
But he went down again when he had seen Branwyn to her mother
and given report, into the court where Scaga stood.
“Was it?” he asked Scaga when he could ask with none
overhearing.
“It was not,” Scaga said, his eyes dark and grim.
“By the way of an old scar my lord has I know it was not; but
no other feature did they leave him. We buried it. Our man or
theirs—we do not know. Likest theirs, but we take no
chances.”
Ciaran said nothing, but turned away unamazed, for he had fought
the ilk of An Beag for years, and still it sickened him. He yearned
for arms, for a weapon in hand, for an answer to make to such men.
It was not the hour for it. No attack was coming. Their enemy meant
they should brood upon what they had seen.
There was silence all the day. Ciaran sat in the hall and
drowsed somewhat, with moments of peace between visions of that
gory field and more terrible visions of silvered leaves, of all
Eald whispering in anger beyond the walls. He would wake with a
start and gaze long at something homely and real, at the gray of a
stone wall, or the leaping of flames in the hearth, or listen to
the folk who went about their ordinary business nearby. Branwyn
came to sit by him, and that peace too he cherished.
“Ciaran,” a faint voice whispered from time to time,
destroying that tranquility, but he refused to pay it heed.
They placed double guard that night, trusting nothing; but there
was firelight and comfort in the hall. Ciaran recovered his
appetite which had failed him all the day, and again the harper
played them brave songs, to give them courage: but the stone
plagued him—in his ears echoed other songs of slower measure,
of tenor never human, of allure which made the other songs seem
discordant and sour. Tears flowed down his face. The harper
misunderstood, and was complimented mightily. Ciaran did not
gainsay.
Then must be bed, and loneliness and the dark—worse, the
silence, in which there were only inner echoes and no stilling
them. He was ashamed to ask for more light, like a child, and yet
he wished he had done so when all were abed and he was alone. He
did not put out the light, having trimmed the wick to nurse it as
long as he might. The stone and he were at war in the silence,
memories which were not his nor even human, memories which grew
stronger and stronger in the long hours of solitude, so that even
waking was no true defense against the flood of images which poured
down upon his mind.
Liosliath. He felt more than memories. He took in the nature of
him who had worn these dreams so many ages, a pride which reckoned
nothing of things he counted fair—which flung against them
elvish beauties to turn them pale, and showed him the sadness in
his world. He tried taking off the stone with the light there to
comfort him, but that was worse still, for there was that aching
loss, that knowledge that a part of him was in that darker Eald.
Worst of all, he felt a sudden attention upon himself, so that the
night outside seemed more threatening and more real, and the light
of the lamp seemed weaker. He quickly placed the chain back about
his neck and let the stone rest against his chest, which warmed the
ache away . . . and brought back the tormenting
bright memories.
Then the light guttered out, and he sat in the dark. The room
was very still, and the memories grew harder and harder to push
away.
“Sleep,” Arafel whispered across the distance, with
pity in her voice. “Ah, Ciaran, sleep.”
“I am a Man,” he whispered back, holding to the
stone clenched in his fist. “And if I yield to this I shall
not be.”
Music came to him, soft singing, which soothed and filled him
with an unspeakable weariness, lulling his senses. He slept without
willing to, and dreams crept upon him, which were Liosliath’s
proud self, burning pride and sometime heartlessness. He longed for
the sun, which would make real the familiar, common things about
him; and when the sun came at last, he bowed his head into his arms
and did sleep a time, true sleep, and not a warfare for his
soul.
Someone cried out. He came awake with brazen alarm clanging in
his ears, with cries outside that attack was coming. “Arms!” echoed down the corridors of
Caer Wiell and up from the distant court. “Arm and
out!”
Fright brought him to his feet, and then a wild relief, that it
was come to this, that it was no more an enemy within him, but one
that yielded to weapons such as human hands could wield. He tugged
on his clothing, raced into the hall with others, and finding no
Scaga—down the stairs as far as the guard room. Scaga was
arming, and others were.
“Get me weapons,” Ciaran begged of them; and Scaga
ordered it. Boys hastened about measuring him with their hands,
seeking what armor might fit him. Outside the alarm had ceased. The
battle was preparing. The room had a busy traffic of boys running
with arrows and the air stank of warming oil. They began to lace
him into haqueton and leather, and one of the other pages came up
panting with an aged coat of mail. Ciaran bent and they thrust it
over his arms and head; he straightened and it jolted down over his
body with a touch like ice and poison. “No,” he heard
the whisper which had been urging at him, ignored.
“No,” he raged in his own mind, with the
poison seeping into his limbs and weakening them. Tears came to his
eyes, and a bitter taste to his mouth, the harsh sour tang of iron.
They did the laces, and he stood fast; they belted on the sword,
and by now Scaga, armed, was staring at him with bewilderment, for
his limbs had weakened and sweat poured on his face, cold in the
wind from the door. The pain grew, eating into his bones and
through his marrow, devouring his sense.
“No,” he cried aloud to Arafel; and
“no,” he murmured, and crashed to his knees. He bowed
over, nigh to fainting, consumed with the pain. “Take it off,
take if off me.”
“Tend him,” Scaga ordered, and hesitated this way
and that, then rushed off about his own business, for by now the
sound of the enemy was a roar like many waters, and out of it came
nearer shouts, and the angry whine of bows.
The pages loosed the belt and loosed the laces, pulled the iron
weight off him while he knelt, racked with pain. They brought him
wine and tended him among the wounded which began to be brought in
from the walls. “See to them,” Ciaran cried,
clamping his teeth against the poisoned anguish in his belly. Tears
of shame stung his eyes, that they delayed with him, while others
died. He gained his feet and held to the stones of the wall,
sweating and trembling. He made his way out into the open air to
use a bow, that much at least. But when a boy gave him a case of
arrows, the iron sickness came on him again: the case spilled from
his hand and the arrows scattered on the walk. “He
cannot,” someone said. “Boy, get him hence, get him up
to the hall.”
He went, steadied by a page on the stairs, staggering because of
the pain in his bones. The boy and the maids together laid him down
by the fire, and pillowed his head.
“He is hurt,” came Branwyn’s voice, all
anguish for him, and gentle hands touched him. A halo of bright
hair rimmed the face which bent above him, against the fire. Tears
blurred his eyes, pain and shame commingled.
“No hurt touched him,” said a boy. “I think,
lady, he must be ill.”
They brought him wine and herbs, covered him and kept him warm,
while he hovered half-sensible. Outside he heard the clash of iron,
heard battle shouts and heard the reports of boys and maids as they
would scurry out and back again, how the battle leaned, this way
and that. For a time the tower echoed to a crashing against the
gates, and there was a dread splintering which brought him off his
pallet and to his feet. The words were in his mouth to beg a weapon
of them, but the pain in his bones urged otherwise. He hung there
against the wardroom door and listened to reports more and more
dire shouted up the stairs, for one of the great hinges of the gate
had given way beneath the ram, and they braced it as they could,
with timbers, and hailed arrows from the wall.
There were ebbs in the battle. Ciaran sat by the fire and
pressed his hand against the stone which lay unseen against his
breast, but it was silent, giving back only pain. She is
wounded too, he thought, with only slight remorse. He was alone in
the hall but for Branwyn and the Lady Meredydd, who stared at him
with bewildered eyes when they did not go down to tend men more
bloodily wounded.
All that day the battle raged about the gate. Men died. At times
Ciaran rose and walked down as far as the edge of the wall, but
men-at-arms urged him to go back again to safety, and the sight he
saw gave him no comfort. The battered gate still held, though
tilted on its hinges. Arrows sleeted both up and down the wall, and
there was desperate talk of a sortie, to get the enemy from before
the gate before it should fall entire.
“Do not,” he wished Scaga in his mind, but he could
not pass that arrow storm to reach the place where Scaga stood
above the gate. Scaga was wise and ordered defense and not attack;
oil rained down and discouraged those below, but then the enemy set
fires before the gate and the oil made them burn the more fiercely.
Another hinge had yielded by afternoon, and more and more the enemy
came. Wounded men, exhausted men, passed Ciaran empty-handed in his
vantage place, some looking on him with bruised and accusing eyes.
Women came up the scaffolding to carry arrows, stayed to tend
wounds, to take bows, some of them, behind wickerwork defense, and
sent shafts winging into the thick press of attackers. Ciaran came
out at last, took a bow from a wounded archer, tried yet again; one
and a second shaft he launched . . . but the
sickness came on him, and his third went far amiss, fell without
force, while the bow dropped from his hand across the crenel. A boy
took up the bow, while Ciaran rested there overcome by shame, until
he found the strength to carry himself back to shelter.
They brought the boy back later, dead, for a shaft had struck
him in the throat, and another, younger boy had taken his post.
Ciaran wept, seeing it, and stood in the corner in the shadow,
wishing to be seen by no one.
He heard at twilight the battle din diminished; and at long last
it faded entirely. He went back to the hall, to stand near the
warmth of the fire and hear the servants talk. The women came,
weary and shadow-eyed, and there was talk of a cold supper from
which no one had heart. Men were down in the courtyard trying to
brace up the gate, and the sound of hammers resounded through the
hall.
Scaga came up, pale and sick from an arrow which had pierced his
arm and drawn a great deal of blood. From him Ciaran turned his
face, and stared into the embers as he leaned against the stones of
the fireplace. The ladies sat; servants brought bread and wine and
cold meat.
Ciaran came to table and sat down, staring at what was before
him and not at the women, nor at the harper, who had fought that
day; nor at Scaga, at him least of all. The servants served them,
but no one touched the food.
“It is his wound,” Branwyn said suddenly, out of the
silence. “He is ill.”
“He claims to have run through enemies and scaled our
wall,” Scaga said. “He gives us fair advice. But who is
he, truly? How far did he run? And what manner of man have we taken
among us, when our lives rely on a gate staying shut?”
Ciaran looked up and met Scaga’s eyes. “I am of Caer
Donn,” he said. “We serve the same King.”
Scaga stared at him, and no one moved.
“It is his wound,” Branwyn said again. He was
grateful for it.
“We have seen no wound,” said Scaga.
“Would you?” Ciaran asked, for he had no lack of
scars. He put on a face of anger, but it was shame that gnawed at
him. “We can go into the guardroom, if you like. We can speak
of it there, if you like.”
“Scaga,” Branwyn reproved the old warrior, but Lady
Meredydd put a hand upon her daughter’s, silencing her. And
Scaga put himself on his feet. Ciaran stood, prepared to go down
with him, but Scaga beckoned a page.
“Sword,” Scaga said. The boy brought it from the
doorway. Ciaran stood still, not to be made a coward in their eyes.
Branwyn had risen to her feet, and Lady Meredydd and the others,
one after the other.
“I would see you hold a sword,” Scaga said.
“Mine will do. ’Tis good true iron.”
Ciaran said nothing. His heart shrank within him and the stone
already pained him. He looked into the old warrior’s eyes,
knowing the man had seen more than the others had. Scaga unsheathed
the sword and offered it toward his hands; he reached for it, took
the naked blade in his palms, and tried to keep the anguish from
his face. He could not. He offered it back, not to dishonor the
blade by flinging it, and Scaga took it gravely. There was a
profound silence in the room.
“We are deceived,” Scaga said, his deep voice slow
and sad. “You brought us fair words. But gifts of your sort
do not come without cost.”
There was weeping. He saw the source of it, which was Branwyn,
who suddenly tore herself from her mother’s arms and rushed
from the hall. That wounded as much as the iron.
“I told you truth,” Ciaran said.
There was silence.
“The King,” Ciaran said, “will come here. I am
not your enemy.”
“We have lived too long next the old forest,” said
the Lady Meredydd. “I charge you tell me truth. Is my lord
still alive?”
“I swear to you, lady, I had his ring from his own hand,
and he was alive and well.”
“By what do the fair folk swear?”
He had no answer.
“What shall we do with him?” Scaga asked.
“Lady? Iron would hold him. But it would be cruel.”
Meredydd shook her head. “Perhaps he has told the truth.
It is all the hope we have, it it not? And we need no more enemies
than we have. Let him do as he wills, but guard him.”
Ciaran bowed his head, grateful at least for this. He did not
look at Scaga, nor at the others, only at the lady Meredydd. Since
she had nothing more to say to him, he walked quietly from the hall
and upstairs, to imprison himself in the room they had given him,
where he was spared the accusation of their eyes.
Dark had fallen. There was no lamp burning in the room, nor did
he reckon that any servant would come to him tonight. He closed the
door behind him, gazed at the window through a haze of tears. The
night was bright, framed in stone.
Branwyn wept somewhere, betrayed. The joy he had brought them
all was gone. They expected now to die. He shut his eyes, seeing
his own family, the pain he was sure to bring them. Shame, and
grief more piercing than shame, that they would forever know what
they were and distrust their own natures.
He sat down on the bed in the dark, and unlaced his collar, drew
forth the stone and held it in his hands.