“What I take,” he said, “most oft I return. What comes into the cauldron comes out again. I have a fairer face, Arafel, which you do not know how to see, having no experience of me. You judge me amiss.”
“You have done me service,” she said, “in defending Eald from Men. Why?”
And now Death was still, giving her no answer.
“Perhaps,” she said, “I shall misjudge my time. Perhaps I shall delay in this woods too long. Only that must you hope for. I give you no hope of my consent.”
“I have no hope,” said Lord Death. Wind tugged at her, drew her farther. “But come, if not to the one place, to the other. I am anxious that you think well of me. See . . . that I can heal.”
His voice was gentle, promising no ill, and in truth there was none that he could do her. Because she had committed herself the once, she yielded, and walked where he would, as mortals walked, their common ground.
And then she wavered, because she knew where he would lead.
“Trust,” he begged of her, and the wind tugged more strongly, insistent and cold.
They walked slowly through the brambles and the thickets, mortal-wise and sometimes painfully; and at the last edge of night they came to that grove he sought, a part of the New Forest, that verge of Eald grown up on the edge of the old, nearest Men. Great trees had died, scarred with axes that she had not forgot The wanton destruction oppressed her heart, for an edge of her own Eald had died that day these trees had perished, truly died, into that gray haze which bordered all her world and bound her sight.
“See,” said Lord Death, and the shadow rippled toward a bank of bracken, lush ferns beneath the dimming stars. Man-tall saplings were springing up through it, straight and new. “See my handiwork. Can we be enemies?”
She saw, and shivered, remembering the place as it had been, when the fallen trees had stood tall and beautiful; and their counterparts in her own Eald had bloomed with stars and sheltered her with their white branches. “It is only more New Forest,” she said, “and mine is the smaller for it. They have no roots in Eald.”
“You do not see beauty here?”
“There is beauty,” she admitted, walking farther, and knelt with a pang of memory, for there were bones and shattered wood beneath the bracken, and she touched a long-broken skull. “The trees, you restored. Canst mend this, Lord Death?”
“In time, even that,” he said, twisting yet again at her heart. “Do you care for them?”
“I have my own cares,” she said; but when she had risen, an old curiosity tugged at her heart, and she walked farther with him, to the flat rock which overlooked the dale, upon a dark sea of trees. She recalled the stone keep the other side of the dale—oh, far too well, among villages and fields and tame beasts and all such business as Men cared for. It was all beyond their sight. Below them the Caerbourne rolled its dark flood seaward, a black snake dividing the wood; and that flow toward the sea made her think of endings, and partings from her kindred, and made her sad.
“Men fare as always,” said Death. “Borning and birthing and dying. There is no ending of it.”
“Yet they end.”
“Not forever. That is the nature of them. You will not look on my new woods; it does not please you.”
“Not while mine dies.”
“Dies and does not fade?”
She looked at him with cold in her heart. “Go away,” she wished him. “I am weary of your company.”
“You wound me.”
“You, spoiler of all you touch? You are beyond wounding. Begone from me.”
“You are wrong,” said Lord Death. “Wrong about my wounding. There is loneliness, Arafel; and heartlessness; I am never heartless. Beware of pride, Arafel.”
“Go hence,” she said. “I weary of you.”
There was a snuffling in the shadows at her back, a breathing, a chuckling. She frowned and laid her hand on the jewel that she wore at her throat. The sounds diminished. “You do not fright me, godling. You never did and never shall. Begone!”
The shadow fled, not without a touch, a chill which achieved wistfulness. She waved it away, and knew him truly fled. There was only the hillside, and the spoiled night, and the wind.
She walked along the ridge, having come this far. All the dale was dark before her, mortals still asleep in this their night and her day. She remembered what of hurt and of fairness Men had brought her . . . how many of their years ago she did not know. She lingered a time, and a curious longing possessed her, to know what passed there, what manner of thing their lives had become.
TEN
Branwyn
She walked that other way, that slipped with speed no mortal limbs could pace, along paths where brambles did not trouble her. She paused, in the gray glimmering of dawn down the dale, in the pleasant green of new growth, a riverside where she had not come . . . in very, very long. She was beyond the present limits of Eald, and yet not, for Eald was where she willed it, and followed her, stretched thin, so that there was effort in this going.
Morning brought mortal beauty, soft touch of sun in golden haze above the black waters of the Caerbourne, beauty of contrasts which her world did not possess, for there was no ugliness there, no dead branch, no fallen tree or unshapely limb.. She glanced aside as a shadowy deer followed her out of otherwhere, black nose atwitch and large eyes full of daybreak. “Go back,” she bade it, for it did not know its way hereabouts, and it vanished with a breaking of brush and a flash of dappled rump, which flickered into that shadow world and safety.
She walked farther, across the water, where now she could see the grim walls of Caer Wiell on its hill, with fields spread beyond it like skirts of gold and green. Evil had lived here once, surrounding itself with harsh men and edged weapons. The keep had a new tower, greater defenses. But today the gates stood open. New Forest had urged its saplings close upon this side of the hill, with grass beyond, and flowers twined upon the grim black stones. She saw Men coming and going on a path, but these Men had no hardness about them. They laughed, and her heart was eased, her interest pricked as it had not been in long years of Men . . . for Death’s taunting had cast gloom over her and this sight of life and liveliness was heart-healing.
A few women sat on the green grass, between the forest edge of saplings and the flower-twined walls, and a golden-haired child ran with baby steps with the hillside, laughing. A strange feeling tugged at Arafel’s elvish heart to hear it, like the echo of such childish laughter in the long ago. She walked out, into mortal sunlight, saw that the child at least saw her, if others did not. The child’s eyes were cornflower blue and round with wonder.
Arafel knelt then and touched a flower, drew a glamour over it, a tiny magic, a gift. The child plucked it and the glamour died, leaving only a primrose clutched in a fat human fist, and dismay in the blue eyes.
Arafel spread the glamour across the whole hillside of primroses, shedding elven beauty on them, and the childish eyes danced for joy.
“Come,” whispered Arafel, holding out her hand. The child walked with her into the forest shade, forgetful of flowers.
“Branwyn,” a woman called. “Branwyn, don’t stray too far.”
The child stopped, turned eyes that way. Arafel dropped her hand and the child toddled away, ran at last to the outstretched arms of the woman who had risen to look fearfully into the morning haze amid the bracken.
Human fear. It was chill as Death himself, and Arafel had no love of it. She cast a last longing look at the child and walked away into the shadow of the woods.
“Beware of them,” said a whisper at her shoulder. “They die.”