The gates yielded, a groaning and splintering of wood as the
braces which held them were let go and the gates grated inward.
Ciaran felt the horse dance aside, light as thistledown, ears still
pricked toward the enemy: no need of harness, no need of holding.
Aodhan picked up his feet and began to move as effortlessly as the
wind which stirred about them, and his feet came down in the boom
of thunder. Lightnings cracked, making hair and mane fly. Arafel
rode beside him, as the white mare, tinted with the elven moon,
paced stride for stride with Aodhan.
And the enemy who had rushed against the gate saw them, mirrored
terror in lightning-lit faces, a soundless, horrid screaming. They
brandished weapons, and still came on, impelled by hordes
behind.
“Follow me!” said Arafel, and Fionnghuala flickered
into shadow as she drew the silver sword. Ciaran clung to Aodhan and
the horse strode into the shadow-ways.
Horror followed. A sickness passed him near: that was iron, a
blade which passed through his substance, harmless in shadow-shape.
Arafel thrust at that man; she flickered out of otherwhere in the
midst of that thrust and back again: the silver blade had killed.
The movements of Men and mortal horses were slow, and slowing
still, as the elven horses strode their gliding and fearsome way,
seeming to gallop but gaining less ground than speed. Ciaran had
the sword in hand, but skill failed him—he struck, and failed
his mark and struck again. The stone sang in his mind and something
far colder than himself seized his heart; Aodhan sprang forward
feeling it, and the thunder grew. There were other shapes with
them, low, loping shapes of hounds, the taller blackness of horse
and rider, which raced with them. Ciaran reached for his bow,
overcome with horror.
“No,” said Arafel. “Strike no blow at
those.”
Death drew away, parted from them in the course, and Ciaran
looked back—saw Scaga and the other riders in that same slow
movement of Men, cutting their way behind them. Cloaks and hair
flew in frozen swirlings, with lightning flashes. Arafel called to
him and the elven horses lengthened stride, began to move forward
as well as swifter. Men passed by them, faster and faster, shadows
through which they could move. Iron shivered past them with pain
and poison, and the horses shied farther into otherwhere, flickered
out again enough to see their way.
We are phantoms on the earth, Ciaran thought, and knew not which
heritage we meant—for between those flickerings of
otherwhere, like lightning-strokes, there was no army, only murky
day, a strange placid landscape void of farms and wars and Men.
Yet not deserted. A horn sounded, braying, and came small folk
scurrying from the hooves of the elven steeds—some fair and
some foul, some direly misshapen. A weapon glanced from
Ciaran’s mail, and there was no fleeing. The thunder cracked
and the horses leaped forward. Ciaran struck with the sword while
it profited, saw Arafel herself beset by a tide of shadows which
poured out of the thickening air. She vanished and he thought her
slain, but the shadows poured after her into that nothingness.
“Go,” he cried at Aodhan, and the horse leaped,
following Arafel into mortal daylight. The shadows had not come
through, or they hid, or transformed themselves. Arafel slew Men, a
dire dream in which Ciaran’s heart was chilled . . . I am of them, his heart cried; but
another mind rose up in him, flowing into his limbs and his
hands.
Give over, give over, the stone sang in his heart, showing him
his helplessness to wield these weapons.
He fought that voice, that one who strove to live, to come back.
Aodhan ceased to obey him, raced wildly, while the wind grew and
grew, while nightmares passed on either side. An anger rose in him
at these ill-shapen things, these shadows that twisted into vision,
the prickling of old hostility.
“Liosliath!” he heard them shout in rage; and the
anger grew in him, lifted his arm, swelled in his heart. He
shouted—he knew not what he cried. Aodhan leapt under him
willingly, bore him along while his hands strung the elvish bow and
he gathered up an arrow. The air swirled with storm: the arrow
flew, ice-tipped, feathered with light A horror shrieked and fled,
and others coursed the winds. There was a light by him, which
became Fionnghuala and her rider, and he saw Arafel’s face calm and
terrible as she sent shafts winging after his. Men ceased to
matter. They were nothing. This was the war, these the enemy, old
as earth, as they were old. Shapes fled before them, turning
sometimes to strike and suffer wounds.
Suddenly they were alone, in a place gone gray and full of
mists—They are fled, fled, the dream sang to him; and
elsewhere, wherever he looked, was an iron-poisoned hush.
“Come,” said Arafel, and shadow-shifted to a bloody
and littered field. Rain came down and failed to reach them, pocked
bloody puddles in the mire instead, drenched the broken human
bodies and the shattered spears. They were in the midst of the
field, with both sides drawn back for breath. Ciaran turned Aodhan
and beheld Caer Wiell, with its men ranged before it afoot, the
dozen riders still remaining to them standing huddled to the
fore.
It was pause, not victory. It was regrouping, while the sky
poured out its tears.
Another rider came treading above the mire of the center of the
battlefield. He was a shape like a fragment of night, with his
robes blowing in a wind counter of the wind which blew in the
mortal realm. Lord Death stopped before them, leaned seemingly on
the withers of the shadow-horse, and Ciaran shuddered, for in that
shadow steed’s head there was a pale hint of naked bone when
the lightnings flashed.
“You are mad,” said Death. “Go back. Cease
this.”
“I am bound,” said Arafel. “They have invoked
my aid.”
Death straightened, and lifted a black sleeve toward the distant
lines of the enemy. “They are there, come from under
the hills to aid them. Do you not know? There are powers which have
come to align with them.”
“They would do so. But we are bound.”
“There are my brother gods,” said Death. “I
bear you word from them; Withdraw, before worse is
loosed.”
“Let them stay away,” said Arafel. “Enough is
amiss here.”
“Go back,” Death whispered. “If the Daoine
Sidhe had all left this land, these fell things would never have
come again.”
“Because I have never gone away, dear youth—they
have stayed to their hidings.” She laughed and the shadow
horse trembled. “Do you know now what watch I stand in
Eald?”
Death and his horse stood still, bereft of answers. Ciaran gazed
at the blackness, and Aodhan shifted and stamped, for things moved
underfoot, and forces gathered.
“I do not bid you,” Ciaran said to Arafel, although
it was effort. “I know what has to be. I bound you to this.
I release you. Give us over to Death, us and them, only so this
ends.”
Arafel gazed at him, and his skin prickled, for the lightnings
stirred. “It is Men who lend them power,” she said.
“And your sight is truer than it was.—We are held to
battle here on this field until the army yonder bids their own
allies go back.”
“And they who are winning—or losing—will
not.”
“That is so. When your mortal enemy has won, then their
new allies will only be the stronger. They will go on, those
powers; they will gather forces; they will sweep over all the world.
Do you comprehend now, Man my cousin?”
“Forgive me,” Ciaran whispered.
“It is heartsease you ask. I give you that. And I confess I
had hope of more strength than we have in Caer Wiell. If we might
rob the enemy of lives and human hands . . . but
we have not strength enough.”
“You have power unused,” said Death. “Use it!
Will you let them all break forth?”
“The cost of that too you know.”
“Our need is now.”
“That sacrifice will not kill them, only drive them for
now. And what then, Lord Death? What in a hundred lifetimes of
Men—when they go unwatched? Yon have no power over them, no
more than over me. There no hope that way. No, I will tell you
what you must do: stay your hand from Caer Wiell. Our forces are
too diminished as it is.”
“I cannot,” said Death, bowing his head. “I
too am bound to what I do.”
“My King,” said Ciaran, “will come here, if
only we can hold.”
“Your King delays overlong,” Arafel said quietly.
“Wiser had you bound me to his aid, not to doomed Caer
Wiell’s. As it is, we are bound to serve and fall. And the
cost of that fall you do not guess even yet.”
“There was a battle,” said Death, “a day ago.
Trust me, that I know. There are still skirmishes; and that force
is well-occupied in the hills, Man. Have no hope of them. This
enemy has engaged them too, at the pass of Caerdale; and all your
King’s strength cannot rout the enemy from those
heights.”
Ciaran listened. There seemed a gleam within that dark hood.
There began a beating that was his heart, or Arafel’s, or
both. He laid a hand upon the stone at his throat, heard a whisper
from it, felt an elvish presence that found courage to laugh at the
thought that came into his mind; and Aodhan shifted to move at
once.
“No,” Arafel forbade him, but a light was in her
eyes. “Wise you are, but that is no road for you, o Man.
Yours to hold here. Where it serves Caer Wiell, I am free to
ride.”
“His human allies will all fall and the enemy will take
him,” Death said. His darkness became a nimbus about him.
“I shall depart this field with all my forces. That much I
can do.”
“Go,” said Arafel.
Death faded. There was only the rain, and then that stopped.
Arafel spoke to Fionnghuala. The white mare began to run. Aodhan
whinnied after her, and pawed the ground, but stood fast.
And across the field the enemy began to gather their line.
Ciaran shivered. Beware, a voice in him whispered: you are only
seeing Men. Others are closer.
“Liosliath,” he said, holding up the stone, and
shuddered, surrendering. “I shall stop being. Wake. Wake, Liosliath. It is you they need now. Wake! your enemies are
here!”
Cold fire spread from the stone. It frightened him, the power
which spread through his limbs and the pride which drew breath and
laughed, despising Men.
Aodhan wheeled then, and sped with long strides toward the
battered lines of Caer Wiell, to pace delicately along before them.
He saw Scaga’s face, marred with a bloody slash; saw this
fearless man give ground from him, saw others flinch. He flickered
into otherwhere and saw the enemy gathered like a tide. He drew an
arrow from his quiver and fired, saw the icy point lodge deep in a
shadow which faded in torment
And with the stone he drew on Eald, cast a glamor over all the
force at his back, sheening them all in silver.
“Come,” he called to them, and not he: the elf
prince, who drew his sword and clapped his heels to Aodhan, the
prince who knew well how to fence with iron, nothing reckoning the
poisoned pain which whipped through his body when it must. Faster
and faster Aodhan sped, and slower and slower the Men, while he
brought the flickering elvish sword out of otherwhere, lodged in
human flesh—gone again before human weapon could strike.
Yet none died. Enemies weakened, and human weapons hewed them
ghastly wounds, and folk of Caer Wiell were spitted in turn, and
did not die, but kept hewing others, so long as they had limbs
which would move.
There was a wailing on the wind, a darkness. He gathered
strength against it and lightnings flashed on monstrous shapes.
Blows rained against the silver mail; in rage he swept against
them, wounded them, and time and time again Aodhan dropped into the
mortal world, until some of the dire things followed him there, and
undying Men stared in fear.
One of the Men was Scaga, whose anguished look Ciaran knew, who
still held his sword, standing unhorsed in the mud. Then
Ciaran’s heart was moved to pity, and he would have taken the
old warrior up, but Liosliath was stronger, and Aodhan swept him
on, skimming the ground with thunder. The Caerbourne down the hill
flowed with blood. Saplings on the banks were trampled. He used his
sword against Men wherever their ranks tried to stand, and herded
them and hurt them, though they would not die. The light about him
began to grow paler and brighter, for human sun was sinking into
twilight, and elven sun was rising.
Then the dark things drew power more than they had before,
thrusting maimed human folk forward to press against maimed Caer
Wiell.
And now he was pressed back and back, for the enemy was in all
places, and on all sides, converging on the ruined gate, and
rending those defenders who lagged in their retreat.
A Man stood by him, at Aodhan’s shoulder: Scaga. The old
warrior shouted orders to his men and from the walls of Caer Wiell
arrows flew, iron which the creatures hated as much as he. Some
writhed in pain. Others crept up against the walls of the hold, and
tore at the very stone.
And a wind grew in the east, and thunder.
“Arafel!” he cried.
She was there. He flickered into otherwhere and saw a light
among the mists of the faded lands, with shadows rearing up
between, caught and desperate. He held the gate against them,
though his arm grew tired and Aodhan trembled beneath him. There
was a thunder in the earth as well, and more and more human
attackers added force to those who had come before. But a cry of
dismay went up at the far side of that living tide, human
screams and battle cries.
“Liosliath!” the call came down the wind, and
he saw the flickering of the white mare and the gleam of Arafel’s
sword. Aodhan gathered himself and began to move, striding faster
and faster.
And suddenly a shadow was beside him, a void shaped like horse and
rider, and shapes like coursing hounds. Other dark riders had joined
them, blacknesses as great as Death; and some who ran afoot, some like Men and some horned
like stags.
Fionnghuala shone in the murk, and her rider no less than she: a
pale and terrible gleaming, her hair astream on the wind.
“Liosliath!” Arafel hailed him, and he reached out a
hand as bright, caught hers across the gap, a joy which burned and
died, because of the dire things about them.
Armies clashed in the dark and the storm, and that noise was far
from them. Dark things leapt and attacked, slaying and being slain,
and wounded shapes climbed the winds. Lord Death lifted the
likeness of a horn and sounded it, and the clouds increased as the
dark horse began to move; Aodhan paced the dark rider, and
Fionnghuala joined him. Side by side with Death they rode, and the
dogs bayed, coursing more and more rapidly through the air. They
strode above the ground, and mounted the skirling winds. Aodhan
threw his head and shook himself and Arafel circled Fionnghuala out
and back again, hastening something fell and fugitive toward the
dogs. Clouds tattered beneath the hooves, and the thunders rolled.
The horn sounded yet again, and more and more riders joined them,
bearing banners like black cloud. Armored Men, with darkened eyes
set ahead upon the quarry, and lances agleam in their hands, rode
on horses with eyes as dead as theirs. The slain had gathered to
hunt the newly dead. Ciaran looked, and the Man in him shuddered,
for he knew some of these faces, and he had loved no few of them.
He saw a cousin there; and a childhood friend, and another rider on
a horse with a white-tipped ear—“Scaga!” he
called, but the rider coursed past, eyes dark, unheeding; and many
a man of Caer Wiell followed after. The last turned and beckoned to
him.
“Liosliath!” Arafel rebuked him. She held out her
hand to him. Ciaran came, yielded to the elf prince, and Aodhan ran
his gliding pace across the clouds, while the shadows fled.
They two turned back alone then, and rode the field in the human
world, but the battle was done. Dark shapes slunk aside where they
passed, sought refuge elsewhere, and vanished.
Men gathered at the gates of Caer Wiell, atop the hill. They
rode quietly now, covering ground, a rush of wind about them, and
had their weapons sheathed.
Then Arafel stopped, sat still on Fionnghuala, gazing toward the
gates. “I am free,” she said. “ ’Tis
done.”
“Let us ride nearer,” he begged her, for Donn had
come riding in with lord Evald and the King’s army; and there
were the folk inside Caer Wiell. He ached to know how those he
loved had fared.
“Would you see them?” Arafel asked him. “Aye,
I do understand the bonds of kinship. Go.”
She would not come inside the walls. He knew her pride, and
ached for that as well. But Aodhan felt his will to go, and
moved.
Men gave way before him, with fear on their faces. And when he
had come as far as the gate, he saw lord Evald’s banner, and
Evald of Caer Wiell himself standing near it, giving orders to his
men. Evald stopped and stared at him. And there kneeling by
Evald’s feet was Beorc, Scaga’s son, who held
Scaga’s maimed and muddy body in his arms and mourned.
“He fought more than well,” Ciaran said. Beorc
looked up, and grief in his eyes became dread at what he saw. The
look pained Ciaran like the iron, which ached more and more in the
air about him, a taint in which it grew hard to breathe. Aodhan
fretted to be away, and Ciaran rode farther, within the ruined
gates, sought his father and Donnchadh and the moon banner of his
own Caer Donn. Elf-sight found them quickly, and he stopped Aodhan
by them in the swirl of Men in the courtyard.
They looked up at a strange rider and did not know
him—surely they failed to recognize him, or they would never
have had such a look of dread at the sight of him. He rode away
from them, and Men shrank from his path in the crowded yard.
“Stay,” he bade Aodhan, slid down and walked among the
Men, among his own, past cousins of his, seeing everywhere that
look he dreaded.
He moved elsewhere, a reaching of the heart, a shifting, and
found himself in the stone hall of Caer Wiell, by the fireside,
where Lady Meredydd and Branwyn stood. Their eyes showed no less
fear than the others had.
“They are well,” he said, holding the stone at his
heart to ease the ache in it. “Your lord is home. You are
safe. But Scaga is dead.”
He wept in telling it, not having wished to weep, and began to
fade. But Branwyn called his name and held him by it. She tried to
come to him, a mortal yearning. He reached and took her hand to
help her, but she could not come the way he could. He kissed her
fingers, and kissed her brow, and stayed a time in the room with
them.
Lord Evald came, and the King with him. To the King, Ciaran
knelt, while Laochailan’s young eyes regarded him with that
dread others turned on him.
“Welcome sight,” the King he had loved said of him;
but with the lips, not with the heart. And Evald, lord Evald, who
was Eald’s near and knowing neighbor, gave him a look as
bleak and unwelcoming—then came and offered him an
embrace.
No other human dared, not his own father or brother, when they
had come up the stairs into the hall, all clattering with armor.
“Ciaran,” his father said, and gazed on him with a
bleak, hag-ridden stare. Donnchadh started a step toward him, but
his father held his arm and prevented him. Then Donnchadh’s
face became like a stranger’s to him, grim and mournful.
They have always known, Ciaran thought, both of them have always
known what is in our blood. He recalled the elvish moon which had
been Caer Donn’s banner for years out of memory, and was
heartstricken at such a look as Donnchadh gave him.
“We are going back,” his father told the King then
without looking at him, as if he had not been there. “We have
our own cares, too long neglected.”
“Go,” the King bade him; so his father and his
brother went their way from the hall, not to linger long near Eald,
and never looked back.
Ciaran stood wounded, looked last at Branwyn, who looked at him,
and in his pain he wished himself away, in the cold air, in the
mist, the deserted shadow-ways.
He came back into the mortal night in the courtyard after some
time had passed, where all was quieter than it had been.
He walked outside the riven gates, where the horror of the field
was honest and undiminished. “Aodhan,” he said quietly,
and a wind gusted as the horse moved out of the night toward him,
slow peals of thunder, a blazing like the noon of elvish sun. He
stroked the white neck and thought of his home in the hills, at
Caer Donn. He might go there, might—once—go there,
greet his mother and his kin, see the things he had known, bring
them word days before his father and Donnchadh and the men could
come and tell them—before that place was closed to him
forever, before—so many things. Aodhan could carry him.
He touched the stone at his throat. “Arafel,” he
said.
It was another presence which came to him instead, which touched
his heart far more gently than it had ever done, with elvish
brightness. There was pride—always that; but this time the
touch was warm. “Man,” it whispered; and there was the
roar of the sea and the cries of gulls.
“Man.”
Only that he said, the elven prince, and it sufficed.
The gates yielded, a groaning and splintering of wood as the
braces which held them were let go and the gates grated inward.
Ciaran felt the horse dance aside, light as thistledown, ears still
pricked toward the enemy: no need of harness, no need of holding.
Aodhan picked up his feet and began to move as effortlessly as the
wind which stirred about them, and his feet came down in the boom
of thunder. Lightnings cracked, making hair and mane fly. Arafel
rode beside him, as the white mare, tinted with the elven moon,
paced stride for stride with Aodhan.
And the enemy who had rushed against the gate saw them, mirrored
terror in lightning-lit faces, a soundless, horrid screaming. They
brandished weapons, and still came on, impelled by hordes
behind.
“Follow me!” said Arafel, and Fionnghuala flickered
into shadow as she drew the silver sword. Ciaran clung to Aodhan and
the horse strode into the shadow-ways.
Horror followed. A sickness passed him near: that was iron, a
blade which passed through his substance, harmless in shadow-shape.
Arafel thrust at that man; she flickered out of otherwhere in the
midst of that thrust and back again: the silver blade had killed.
The movements of Men and mortal horses were slow, and slowing
still, as the elven horses strode their gliding and fearsome way,
seeming to gallop but gaining less ground than speed. Ciaran had
the sword in hand, but skill failed him—he struck, and failed
his mark and struck again. The stone sang in his mind and something
far colder than himself seized his heart; Aodhan sprang forward
feeling it, and the thunder grew. There were other shapes with
them, low, loping shapes of hounds, the taller blackness of horse
and rider, which raced with them. Ciaran reached for his bow,
overcome with horror.
“No,” said Arafel. “Strike no blow at
those.”
Death drew away, parted from them in the course, and Ciaran
looked back—saw Scaga and the other riders in that same slow
movement of Men, cutting their way behind them. Cloaks and hair
flew in frozen swirlings, with lightning flashes. Arafel called to
him and the elven horses lengthened stride, began to move forward
as well as swifter. Men passed by them, faster and faster, shadows
through which they could move. Iron shivered past them with pain
and poison, and the horses shied farther into otherwhere, flickered
out again enough to see their way.
We are phantoms on the earth, Ciaran thought, and knew not which
heritage we meant—for between those flickerings of
otherwhere, like lightning-strokes, there was no army, only murky
day, a strange placid landscape void of farms and wars and Men.
Yet not deserted. A horn sounded, braying, and came small folk
scurrying from the hooves of the elven steeds—some fair and
some foul, some direly misshapen. A weapon glanced from
Ciaran’s mail, and there was no fleeing. The thunder cracked
and the horses leaped forward. Ciaran struck with the sword while
it profited, saw Arafel herself beset by a tide of shadows which
poured out of the thickening air. She vanished and he thought her
slain, but the shadows poured after her into that nothingness.
“Go,” he cried at Aodhan, and the horse leaped,
following Arafel into mortal daylight. The shadows had not come
through, or they hid, or transformed themselves. Arafel slew Men, a
dire dream in which Ciaran’s heart was chilled . . . I am of them, his heart cried; but
another mind rose up in him, flowing into his limbs and his
hands.
Give over, give over, the stone sang in his heart, showing him
his helplessness to wield these weapons.
He fought that voice, that one who strove to live, to come back.
Aodhan ceased to obey him, raced wildly, while the wind grew and
grew, while nightmares passed on either side. An anger rose in him
at these ill-shapen things, these shadows that twisted into vision,
the prickling of old hostility.
“Liosliath!” he heard them shout in rage; and the
anger grew in him, lifted his arm, swelled in his heart. He
shouted—he knew not what he cried. Aodhan leapt under him
willingly, bore him along while his hands strung the elvish bow and
he gathered up an arrow. The air swirled with storm: the arrow
flew, ice-tipped, feathered with light A horror shrieked and fled,
and others coursed the winds. There was a light by him, which
became Fionnghuala and her rider, and he saw Arafel’s face calm and
terrible as she sent shafts winging after his. Men ceased to
matter. They were nothing. This was the war, these the enemy, old
as earth, as they were old. Shapes fled before them, turning
sometimes to strike and suffer wounds.
Suddenly they were alone, in a place gone gray and full of
mists—They are fled, fled, the dream sang to him; and
elsewhere, wherever he looked, was an iron-poisoned hush.
“Come,” said Arafel, and shadow-shifted to a bloody
and littered field. Rain came down and failed to reach them, pocked
bloody puddles in the mire instead, drenched the broken human
bodies and the shattered spears. They were in the midst of the
field, with both sides drawn back for breath. Ciaran turned Aodhan
and beheld Caer Wiell, with its men ranged before it afoot, the
dozen riders still remaining to them standing huddled to the
fore.
It was pause, not victory. It was regrouping, while the sky
poured out its tears.
Another rider came treading above the mire of the center of the
battlefield. He was a shape like a fragment of night, with his
robes blowing in a wind counter of the wind which blew in the
mortal realm. Lord Death stopped before them, leaned seemingly on
the withers of the shadow-horse, and Ciaran shuddered, for in that
shadow steed’s head there was a pale hint of naked bone when
the lightnings flashed.
“You are mad,” said Death. “Go back. Cease
this.”
“I am bound,” said Arafel. “They have invoked
my aid.”
Death straightened, and lifted a black sleeve toward the distant
lines of the enemy. “They are there, come from under
the hills to aid them. Do you not know? There are powers which have
come to align with them.”
“They would do so. But we are bound.”
“There are my brother gods,” said Death. “I
bear you word from them; Withdraw, before worse is
loosed.”
“Let them stay away,” said Arafel. “Enough is
amiss here.”
“Go back,” Death whispered. “If the Daoine
Sidhe had all left this land, these fell things would never have
come again.”
“Because I have never gone away, dear youth—they
have stayed to their hidings.” She laughed and the shadow
horse trembled. “Do you know now what watch I stand in
Eald?”
Death and his horse stood still, bereft of answers. Ciaran gazed
at the blackness, and Aodhan shifted and stamped, for things moved
underfoot, and forces gathered.
“I do not bid you,” Ciaran said to Arafel, although
it was effort. “I know what has to be. I bound you to this.
I release you. Give us over to Death, us and them, only so this
ends.”
Arafel gazed at him, and his skin prickled, for the lightnings
stirred. “It is Men who lend them power,” she said.
“And your sight is truer than it was.—We are held to
battle here on this field until the army yonder bids their own
allies go back.”
“And they who are winning—or losing—will
not.”
“That is so. When your mortal enemy has won, then their
new allies will only be the stronger. They will go on, those
powers; they will gather forces; they will sweep over all the world.
Do you comprehend now, Man my cousin?”
“Forgive me,” Ciaran whispered.
“It is heartsease you ask. I give you that. And I confess I
had hope of more strength than we have in Caer Wiell. If we might
rob the enemy of lives and human hands . . . but
we have not strength enough.”
“You have power unused,” said Death. “Use it!
Will you let them all break forth?”
“The cost of that too you know.”
“Our need is now.”
“That sacrifice will not kill them, only drive them for
now. And what then, Lord Death? What in a hundred lifetimes of
Men—when they go unwatched? Yon have no power over them, no
more than over me. There no hope that way. No, I will tell you
what you must do: stay your hand from Caer Wiell. Our forces are
too diminished as it is.”
“I cannot,” said Death, bowing his head. “I
too am bound to what I do.”
“My King,” said Ciaran, “will come here, if
only we can hold.”
“Your King delays overlong,” Arafel said quietly.
“Wiser had you bound me to his aid, not to doomed Caer
Wiell’s. As it is, we are bound to serve and fall. And the
cost of that fall you do not guess even yet.”
“There was a battle,” said Death, “a day ago.
Trust me, that I know. There are still skirmishes; and that force
is well-occupied in the hills, Man. Have no hope of them. This
enemy has engaged them too, at the pass of Caerdale; and all your
King’s strength cannot rout the enemy from those
heights.”
Ciaran listened. There seemed a gleam within that dark hood.
There began a beating that was his heart, or Arafel’s, or
both. He laid a hand upon the stone at his throat, heard a whisper
from it, felt an elvish presence that found courage to laugh at the
thought that came into his mind; and Aodhan shifted to move at
once.
“No,” Arafel forbade him, but a light was in her
eyes. “Wise you are, but that is no road for you, o Man.
Yours to hold here. Where it serves Caer Wiell, I am free to
ride.”
“His human allies will all fall and the enemy will take
him,” Death said. His darkness became a nimbus about him.
“I shall depart this field with all my forces. That much I
can do.”
“Go,” said Arafel.
Death faded. There was only the rain, and then that stopped.
Arafel spoke to Fionnghuala. The white mare began to run. Aodhan
whinnied after her, and pawed the ground, but stood fast.
And across the field the enemy began to gather their line.
Ciaran shivered. Beware, a voice in him whispered: you are only
seeing Men. Others are closer.
“Liosliath,” he said, holding up the stone, and
shuddered, surrendering. “I shall stop being. Wake. Wake, Liosliath. It is you they need now. Wake! your enemies are
here!”
Cold fire spread from the stone. It frightened him, the power
which spread through his limbs and the pride which drew breath and
laughed, despising Men.
Aodhan wheeled then, and sped with long strides toward the
battered lines of Caer Wiell, to pace delicately along before them.
He saw Scaga’s face, marred with a bloody slash; saw this
fearless man give ground from him, saw others flinch. He flickered
into otherwhere and saw the enemy gathered like a tide. He drew an
arrow from his quiver and fired, saw the icy point lodge deep in a
shadow which faded in torment
And with the stone he drew on Eald, cast a glamor over all the
force at his back, sheening them all in silver.
“Come,” he called to them, and not he: the elf
prince, who drew his sword and clapped his heels to Aodhan, the
prince who knew well how to fence with iron, nothing reckoning the
poisoned pain which whipped through his body when it must. Faster
and faster Aodhan sped, and slower and slower the Men, while he
brought the flickering elvish sword out of otherwhere, lodged in
human flesh—gone again before human weapon could strike.
Yet none died. Enemies weakened, and human weapons hewed them
ghastly wounds, and folk of Caer Wiell were spitted in turn, and
did not die, but kept hewing others, so long as they had limbs
which would move.
There was a wailing on the wind, a darkness. He gathered
strength against it and lightnings flashed on monstrous shapes.
Blows rained against the silver mail; in rage he swept against
them, wounded them, and time and time again Aodhan dropped into the
mortal world, until some of the dire things followed him there, and
undying Men stared in fear.
One of the Men was Scaga, whose anguished look Ciaran knew, who
still held his sword, standing unhorsed in the mud. Then
Ciaran’s heart was moved to pity, and he would have taken the
old warrior up, but Liosliath was stronger, and Aodhan swept him
on, skimming the ground with thunder. The Caerbourne down the hill
flowed with blood. Saplings on the banks were trampled. He used his
sword against Men wherever their ranks tried to stand, and herded
them and hurt them, though they would not die. The light about him
began to grow paler and brighter, for human sun was sinking into
twilight, and elven sun was rising.
Then the dark things drew power more than they had before,
thrusting maimed human folk forward to press against maimed Caer
Wiell.
And now he was pressed back and back, for the enemy was in all
places, and on all sides, converging on the ruined gate, and
rending those defenders who lagged in their retreat.
A Man stood by him, at Aodhan’s shoulder: Scaga. The old
warrior shouted orders to his men and from the walls of Caer Wiell
arrows flew, iron which the creatures hated as much as he. Some
writhed in pain. Others crept up against the walls of the hold, and
tore at the very stone.
And a wind grew in the east, and thunder.
“Arafel!” he cried.
She was there. He flickered into otherwhere and saw a light
among the mists of the faded lands, with shadows rearing up
between, caught and desperate. He held the gate against them,
though his arm grew tired and Aodhan trembled beneath him. There
was a thunder in the earth as well, and more and more human
attackers added force to those who had come before. But a cry of
dismay went up at the far side of that living tide, human
screams and battle cries.
“Liosliath!” the call came down the wind, and
he saw the flickering of the white mare and the gleam of Arafel’s
sword. Aodhan gathered himself and began to move, striding faster
and faster.
And suddenly a shadow was beside him, a void shaped like horse and
rider, and shapes like coursing hounds. Other dark riders had joined
them, blacknesses as great as Death; and some who ran afoot, some like Men and some horned
like stags.
Fionnghuala shone in the murk, and her rider no less than she: a
pale and terrible gleaming, her hair astream on the wind.
“Liosliath!” Arafel hailed him, and he reached out a
hand as bright, caught hers across the gap, a joy which burned and
died, because of the dire things about them.
Armies clashed in the dark and the storm, and that noise was far
from them. Dark things leapt and attacked, slaying and being slain,
and wounded shapes climbed the winds. Lord Death lifted the
likeness of a horn and sounded it, and the clouds increased as the
dark horse began to move; Aodhan paced the dark rider, and
Fionnghuala joined him. Side by side with Death they rode, and the
dogs bayed, coursing more and more rapidly through the air. They
strode above the ground, and mounted the skirling winds. Aodhan
threw his head and shook himself and Arafel circled Fionnghuala out
and back again, hastening something fell and fugitive toward the
dogs. Clouds tattered beneath the hooves, and the thunders rolled.
The horn sounded yet again, and more and more riders joined them,
bearing banners like black cloud. Armored Men, with darkened eyes
set ahead upon the quarry, and lances agleam in their hands, rode
on horses with eyes as dead as theirs. The slain had gathered to
hunt the newly dead. Ciaran looked, and the Man in him shuddered,
for he knew some of these faces, and he had loved no few of them.
He saw a cousin there; and a childhood friend, and another rider on
a horse with a white-tipped ear—“Scaga!” he
called, but the rider coursed past, eyes dark, unheeding; and many
a man of Caer Wiell followed after. The last turned and beckoned to
him.
“Liosliath!” Arafel rebuked him. She held out her
hand to him. Ciaran came, yielded to the elf prince, and Aodhan ran
his gliding pace across the clouds, while the shadows fled.
They two turned back alone then, and rode the field in the human
world, but the battle was done. Dark shapes slunk aside where they
passed, sought refuge elsewhere, and vanished.
Men gathered at the gates of Caer Wiell, atop the hill. They
rode quietly now, covering ground, a rush of wind about them, and
had their weapons sheathed.
Then Arafel stopped, sat still on Fionnghuala, gazing toward the
gates. “I am free,” she said. “ ’Tis
done.”
“Let us ride nearer,” he begged her, for Donn had
come riding in with lord Evald and the King’s army; and there
were the folk inside Caer Wiell. He ached to know how those he
loved had fared.
“Would you see them?” Arafel asked him. “Aye,
I do understand the bonds of kinship. Go.”
She would not come inside the walls. He knew her pride, and
ached for that as well. But Aodhan felt his will to go, and
moved.
Men gave way before him, with fear on their faces. And when he
had come as far as the gate, he saw lord Evald’s banner, and
Evald of Caer Wiell himself standing near it, giving orders to his
men. Evald stopped and stared at him. And there kneeling by
Evald’s feet was Beorc, Scaga’s son, who held
Scaga’s maimed and muddy body in his arms and mourned.
“He fought more than well,” Ciaran said. Beorc
looked up, and grief in his eyes became dread at what he saw. The
look pained Ciaran like the iron, which ached more and more in the
air about him, a taint in which it grew hard to breathe. Aodhan
fretted to be away, and Ciaran rode farther, within the ruined
gates, sought his father and Donnchadh and the moon banner of his
own Caer Donn. Elf-sight found them quickly, and he stopped Aodhan
by them in the swirl of Men in the courtyard.
They looked up at a strange rider and did not know
him—surely they failed to recognize him, or they would never
have had such a look of dread at the sight of him. He rode away
from them, and Men shrank from his path in the crowded yard.
“Stay,” he bade Aodhan, slid down and walked among the
Men, among his own, past cousins of his, seeing everywhere that
look he dreaded.
He moved elsewhere, a reaching of the heart, a shifting, and
found himself in the stone hall of Caer Wiell, by the fireside,
where Lady Meredydd and Branwyn stood. Their eyes showed no less
fear than the others had.
“They are well,” he said, holding the stone at his
heart to ease the ache in it. “Your lord is home. You are
safe. But Scaga is dead.”
He wept in telling it, not having wished to weep, and began to
fade. But Branwyn called his name and held him by it. She tried to
come to him, a mortal yearning. He reached and took her hand to
help her, but she could not come the way he could. He kissed her
fingers, and kissed her brow, and stayed a time in the room with
them.
Lord Evald came, and the King with him. To the King, Ciaran
knelt, while Laochailan’s young eyes regarded him with that
dread others turned on him.
“Welcome sight,” the King he had loved said of him;
but with the lips, not with the heart. And Evald, lord Evald, who
was Eald’s near and knowing neighbor, gave him a look as
bleak and unwelcoming—then came and offered him an
embrace.
No other human dared, not his own father or brother, when they
had come up the stairs into the hall, all clattering with armor.
“Ciaran,” his father said, and gazed on him with a
bleak, hag-ridden stare. Donnchadh started a step toward him, but
his father held his arm and prevented him. Then Donnchadh’s
face became like a stranger’s to him, grim and mournful.
They have always known, Ciaran thought, both of them have always
known what is in our blood. He recalled the elvish moon which had
been Caer Donn’s banner for years out of memory, and was
heartstricken at such a look as Donnchadh gave him.
“We are going back,” his father told the King then
without looking at him, as if he had not been there. “We have
our own cares, too long neglected.”
“Go,” the King bade him; so his father and his
brother went their way from the hall, not to linger long near Eald,
and never looked back.
Ciaran stood wounded, looked last at Branwyn, who looked at him,
and in his pain he wished himself away, in the cold air, in the
mist, the deserted shadow-ways.
He came back into the mortal night in the courtyard after some
time had passed, where all was quieter than it had been.
He walked outside the riven gates, where the horror of the field
was honest and undiminished. “Aodhan,” he said quietly,
and a wind gusted as the horse moved out of the night toward him,
slow peals of thunder, a blazing like the noon of elvish sun. He
stroked the white neck and thought of his home in the hills, at
Caer Donn. He might go there, might—once—go there,
greet his mother and his kin, see the things he had known, bring
them word days before his father and Donnchadh and the men could
come and tell them—before that place was closed to him
forever, before—so many things. Aodhan could carry him.
He touched the stone at his throat. “Arafel,” he
said.
It was another presence which came to him instead, which touched
his heart far more gently than it had ever done, with elvish
brightness. There was pride—always that; but this time the
touch was warm. “Man,” it whispered; and there was the
roar of the sea and the cries of gulls.
“Man.”
Only that he said, the elven prince, and it sufficed.