"Lord, I have not forgot it." A small smile played about Domhnull's mouth, a twinkle in his eye, so Ciaran smiled, reminded that somewhere, somehow this man had happened, instead of the boy he kept remembering, and that the man was strong and had his wits about him.
"Aye," he said, "speed you well, Domhnull."
So he had to send him, with little ado, making little of the uneasi ness that troubled him; and so Beorc sent his cousin off and friends of the escort parted.
So beyond Caer Damh and by the shores of Lioslinn Domhnull would bear westward, a long ride yet to go before they should rest; and Ciaran looked after the dwindling figures, his hand staying his horse by the cheekstrap of its bridle.
Mist lay about them. The others could not see it, but there was mist, all the same, and trees rose about them straight as pillars when he looked with that Sight he had. The trees lay between on that plane and he lost sight of Domhnull, of the way they rode, which did not exist here. There was only tangle, and cold mist, and comfortless forest. He stood staring into it, quieting his horse which stood with him; but the men with him seemed like shadows less substantial than the trees.
"Lord," said Beorc, and thrust something loose and heavy into his hands, a skin of wine. "Here."
He drank. The wine seemed rough and strange.
"We might rest at Alhhard's steading," said Beorc. "There's that ale, remember."
"No," he said. He offered no reasons. Beorc asked none, willing to humor him in his whims, so long as they did not involve following after Domhnull. He thrust the vision away, brought the sky back golden.
He could not see in this place. The stone could bring him no help against it. He doubted, suddenly, everything he had done, but it had seemed wise till now ... to defend Caer Wiell.
He thought of Donnchadh his brother, of Lioslinn in the sunlight, when they had climbed the hill above it; or again at Dun na h-Eoin, in the twilight; and then he realized with a strange shock of passing time that this was not the man he sent to. It would not be the boy, nor yet the man at Dun na h-Eoin, dark-bearded and slim, as he was not what he had been then. He will have gone gray, Ciaran thought with a shock, setting his foot into the stirrup and rising into the saddle. He had never reckoned with the years. He is older than I and darker; so the years will sit harder on him. He will have gone to leanness: he was always thin. He tried to build this man in his mind, cast away the image for the one he remembered, brother, companion. Longing came over him then, to be where Domhnull rode. The fair-haired boy he had been would have leapt to horse and ridden, defy ing all the hazards. He had ridden for the King once, and in that wildness he had gone, and parted from his brother.
So I would come back to him, he thought, remembering better times. He would leap from his horse by the gates. See, I have come home.
But it was the lord of Caer Wiell and the lord of Caer Donn now, and the gestures between them must agree with that, full of wariness and the weight of years and anger.
I have concern for you, he had wished Domhnull to say to Donnchadh in his name, but he could not even send that simple thing. I ask peace, he had said instead, humbly, caring nothing for his pride, in these times. This silence profits neither of us.
There was more, if Donnchadh should be disposed to listen.
Lioslinn lay black by starlight, reflecting nothing, not even shim mers on its surface. It stretched far and shallow, and for sound here there were only the creak of frogs and the soughing of the wind in the reeds.
"I have seen it fairer," said Boc, who was the oldest of the escort.
"More bog than lake," said Domhnull, "by the reek of it." He had set eyes on it, but only from a distance, and now riding close beside its midnight shore with the stench of decay going up from it dispelled any illusion he had still cherished of it as mirror of the hills. It lay beside them like a pit, darker than the reeds, and the chiefest concern in his mind was that some misstep of his horse might put him into a reaching arm of it, some hole unseen in the dark. The night was moonless, and the dark sky had seemed friendly until now, shielding them from Caer Damh as they passed it on the road.
They rested the horses as they could, and kept silent for the most part, leaving the conversation to the frogs and nightbirds. Voices seemed to carry all too clearly, and the night was listening.
They were good men lord Ciaran had sent with him, Domhnull knew; indeed, they daunted him with their knowing what ought to be done before he said it; or knowing before he knew it, for they were older than he, and Boc many years so. Sent to watch me, he thought, having less and less confidence that he led them at all; but they would never say as much. Only what little he had to tell them he said in brief and noted every breath of theirs, every shift of stance that seemed to say to him: yes, boy, yes, we were wondering when you would say so, or perhaps: well, boy, but we would not advise it
He had faced this journey with more confidence in the morning, by daylight, parting Caer Wiell and far from Lioslinn's boggy, reek ing shore. He had, he thought, taken a great deal on himself. He had seen that much in Beorc's eyes when they parted, a cool kind of reckoning he had gotten in the drillyard.
Well, lad, Beorc had told him more than once, get to it Do some thing or do nothing, and if you're truly one of the world's fools, then the world is sure to learn it
The frogs went silent at their splashing. Something started away with a splash of its own, and the horses did not like it. Somehow, by some persistence of his horse or that the others kept reining back, he would end up in the lead again though he reckoned that Boc knew this ground better—he must, for Boc had been here and he never had; but at last he took the foremost position for his own and held it, seeking with his eyes and senses and thinking perhaps that they should not try to ride this ground at all, but walk ahead of their horses.
It was old, this place. Legend said so, but more, he felt it in his bones, that the lake was no wholesome place. He thought of water-horses, of selkies and such like: if there ever was a place where a fuath might lurk it was Lioslinn, among the reeds and moss. There might be shellycoats and bogles, to come rattling out of the bog with reaching fingers.
A thing hissed at them and dove with a heavy splash. His horse went sideways, and trod afterward as if it were poised to spring; he curbed it, his heart clenched and trying to beat again.
"Gods know," said Boc, "what that was."
"Come," Domhnull said. A cold was down his back. His teeth wanted to chatter. "Stay together. This place is too boggish to have one of the horses bolting."
"I have them," said Brom, half a whisper from behind.
"To think," said Boc, "they named this a road once."
"The lake has risen," said Domhnull, "or I've led us amiss." His eyes strained into the dark, where the hills rose up in a blackness deeper than that beside them. "That must be our way yonder."
"Gods grant," muttered Boc.
The nearness tempted him, to urge the horses to speed. He resisted, plodding their slow and patient way, and now and again there were other splashes and the sound of something swimming.
No one spoke. The hooves sucked and slid in mud. The horses snorted, closer and closer to that cloven wall of rock that loomed before them. The ground grew more solid, the steps more firm, and once, indistinct in the dark, a cairn of stones bulked beside the way.
"We are out of it," said Boc.
"I would not be glad to camp here," Domhnull said, feeling his horse laboring with exhaustion. "Best, I think, to change horses and be out of here entirely."