And again: I could call her name, she thought. But something turned in her heart, forbidding it. I am no small matter, the Sidhe had said of herself compared to the fuath, no, not like that one. Their father could surely call the Sidhe if anyone could, and did not, for his own reasons.
So at length they came to the crest of that hill below which the road divided, one branch going toward the dark wooded side of the Caerbourne; and that way was unkept and unridden, because it led west to An Beag. The other branch, well-traveled, went northerly, through their own lands, the way farmers took, and their own pa trols.
Here their father stopped them all, so that it was clear this was the parting-place. He beckoned to them; they rode forward, not jogging, but with that deliberation taller riders on greater horses used. "Well," he said to them, "this is as far as you go."
"Yes, sir," said Ceallach very quietly.
"Yes," said Meadhbh as soberly, looking up at him.
"Come, come." He drew his tall horse close to Ceallach and leaned from the saddle to hug him, passed close by Meadhbh as well and leaned down to kiss her brow. For a moment he lingered, frown ing. "Be good," he said.
"Yes, sir," Ceallach said. Meadhbh only stared. They had broken off the trail here before when their father went on his journeys, and always complained when they had to do it, and had more to say to each other. This had an ill-omened feel, this brevity. Of a sudden she kicked Floinn up close to her father's horse and offered a two-armed hug. He hugged her back, leaning down. Then: "Back by tomorrow eve," he said, and gathered up the rest of them and rode away, leaving them with Rhys to guard them. There was a knot in her throat. Her pony tried to follow the horses and she reined back.
"Come on," said Rhys after a moment. "Come on." She looked at Ceallach, who also looked afraid, and turned Floinn's head for home.
The familiar fields unfolded, brown and green. The once-traveled road lay dusty and safe, ever so safe, and Rhys had never ceased to frown. He was dark, their cousin once removed, with brooding, heavy-lidded eyes, and frowns came natural to him, natural as the weapons about him. He was smallest of the men about their father, and hardly seemed likely for a lord's son, but he was. And patiently impatient of them, of which they were acutely aware in his long silence, his sullen carriage, his gaze which wandered everywhere—to the riverside, to the fields, anywhere but to two children who had become his unwanted burden.
It only added to her misery. Tears threatened Meadhbh, an irritat ing swelling in her throat. She kept her eyes open and let the wind dry them. She did not say anything. She did not feel equal to Rhys' wit, not weary as she was; neither, it seemed, did Ceallach.
"Uncommon quiet," Rhys muttered at last.
"Yes, sir," Meadhbh said in half a voice, and they went a further several hills in silence.
"Gods," Rhys said suddenly, "quit moping. The hazard is Domhnull's, no other's. Your father will turn back, long before the border. He has said."
"Yes, sir," Ceallach said.
It was a while more in silence. Rhys scowled for a while, and looked only worried then. "Aye," Rhys said, "aye, I know."
"You could leave us here," Ceallach said, more brightly, "and we could get back home ourselves. We would. Then you could catch up with father and be with him."
"Your father's orders," said Rhys.
"Yes, sir."
After a while longer riding they had come to the ford again at the Bainbourne, which ran down to meet the river, a shallow spot sur rounded in reeds, well trampled mud on either side where they had crossed not so long ago. Rhys drew rein and let his horse drink before they crossed, at a spot less mired, and the ponies had their fill too, then behind Rhys' tall disdainful horse, plodded across the stream, up to their fat bellies before they had come out again, all muddy-hoofed and sorry-looking. "It's hot," Rhys complained, look ing at the sun. He had stopped on the level bank where there was grass, and there stepped down from the saddle. "Rest a few mo ments," he said with a look at the ponies.
They had not brought food for themselves, and Rhys was not the sort who would think of stopping to eat the way their father might. But he looked to his girths and theirs and then wandered off his silent way to the grassy margin of the brook, where he squatted down and drank upstream from the crossing, dousing his face and neck with both his hands, for it must be warm in all that padded leather and metal.
Since Rhys took his ease Meadhbh and Ceallach slid down off their ponies and let them crop the grass, bits and all, since Rhys let his gelding do it. Rhys still crouched there, his hands upon his knees, staring off across the stream as if he were lost in his own thoughts and paying them no mind, so Meadhbh went down to the stream a little up from him where a tree hung over the water and the shade was cool, and Ceallach followed her. It was a place they knew, from the first time their father let them ride out with him; and they had played at being on campaign like the heroes Leannan sang of, and had mock battles among the reeds, with sticks for swords, which made their father laugh, he and his escort; or they had shared food from a basket on the streamside. They had taken cover under this old tree once when a shower caught them, their father and they and Beorc all snugged up under a tent of cloaks listening to Beorc telling them how it had been to live in tents, the years of the King's cam paign. Reeds grew on the sandy shallows opposite, which had been mysterious hedges of hostile fields; and tiny flying things still swarmed there and made patterns on the dark and gentle currents.
"I think Rhys is going to rest a while," Ceallach said, squatting down on the bank and gesturing with a glance, where Rhys had lain down in the sunlight, letting the horse and ponies graze.
It was not like Rhys, to be so easy: he was all scowls and moods by habit, and while they liked him well enough they did not expect patience of him, or easiness, or anything but business. When Rhys laughed it had a hard sound, and his laughter was at hidden things and things men laughed at with each other. But perhaps he was weary after being up too late; or perhaps in his silent way he was meaning to be kind, not knowing much of what they wanted, but reckoning not to push them hard on their return. Meadhbh heaved a sigh and sat down on the bank herself, liking the coolness of the shade, the water, the nodding reeds and humming bees. Ceallach took leaves and launched them one by one, faery barks asail on the smooth miniature flood, as they had done before at this place, the first time their father had let them ride with him, when Flann and Floinn had seemed as tall as mountains. Ceallach was not playing now, but thinking. So was she. She plucked a leaf and launched it beside one of his, not playing either, watched it race Ceallach's down the dark swirls, past towering forests of reeds. They had grown too old. There was only memory in it. Her eyes followed the boat, but her mind was on her father, on Domhnull, wishing her uncle in Donn might prove better than they suspected.
"Rhys is in the sun," Ceallach said finally with a second look that way. "I think he's gone to sleep."
It disturbed her too, that Rhys had been sweating so, and lay down in the sun in all his armor, which was not the kind of sense she expected of Rhys ap Dryw. She wrinkled her nose, reckoning indeed Rhys might have been at too much ale last night, but it simply was not like him, and he had not seemed so tired on the way, simply out of sorts and wishing, she thought, that he were going on with the rest of the men and were not left to guard his two young cousins.
The strangeness of it worried at her. She got up and went toward him very quietly, with the sun beating down on her back. "Meadhbh," Ceallach objected, a faint whisper; he had gotten up to follow her, leaving his faery-boats, but she paid no heed to that. Often if Beorc were sleeping he would wake at the least sound and come out of it suddenly: never play pranks, her father had said once sternly—a man who had slept where Beorc had slept was dangerous waked that way, like many who had spent years at war. She remem bered Beorc and others of the men, dozing with sometime slitted eyes, looking up foxlike from time to time and napping in the sun, never quite abandoned. Her father napped like that. But Rhys was sleeping with his limbs loose, face-up to the sun and with his eyes shut, his lips parted like a child's. "Rhys," she said aloud, from a safe distance. "Rhys?" She went closer then and squatted down by him ready to spring away if he should wake angry. "Rhys." Her heart was beating hard. She put her hand on his ribs and shook at him. "Rhys, wake up."