"Lord," said Beorc, "you must not."
"Come with me," he said, and Beorc hesitated half a breath, then went after him. He had not doubted it, as he did not doubt now which way he was going, and that he was beyond advice.
They followed, muttering questions and doubts among themselves, but Tuathal was off as soon as he could fling a saddle on his horse, and for the rest of them it was northward.
Amiss, he kept thinking as they rode, and perhaps his face was grim, for Beorc fell in beside him asking nothing at all until they were well on the road again.
"Lord," Beorc objected, "we are nine men, and Domhnull too far ahead of us to recall him."
He said nothing to this. There was nothing to say, but perhaps Beorc had hoped there was an answer.
"You are not armored," Beorc said. "And against some things no Sidhe luck is proof."
There was iron. It made his bones ache, even such as the men about him wore. He argued nothing in return, only rode, and Beorc fell silent.
So they came beyond Caer Damh, in that strange fell hour when the sun was only promise; and far away on either side the land seemed wild and empty. The light had caught Lioslinn, which spread itself before them, a glimmering only, to show that it was water; but the day would make it mirrorlike, turning sky and earth upside down. The pass showed beyond, cloven between the hills. The horses shuddered under them for weariness.
Ciaran drew rein, seeking outward with the stone, but the mist was thick, making all his sight gray.
Then he felt the stirring of the land, the poison of iron. It was ambush.
"Men are there," he said.
"What men?" Beorc asked, implicit in his faith. "Can you tell that?"
"No. But about the lake: Caer Damh, perhaps, or the Bradhaeth folk." He shivered, and possessed himself again, in cold clear sight, with the dawning on the water. "Here we stay, Beorc."
"Nine men."
"Well," he said, "Tuathal will find us."
Beorc looked on him, ill-pleased by humor, then gave it the short reaction it deserved and gazed off toward the pass. "Gods grant Domhnull got through."
"So," said Ciaran, and stood in his stirrup, stepping down from the saddle. His horse was lathered. He patted its neck, and it stood three-footed. "Well, if things have gone wrong, we are soon to learn it. I think he has gotten through; I might feel it else. But when he comes back again this way—I think that we should be here."
"I should be here," said Beorc, sliding heavily from his horse, a weight of man and metal. "You—"
"I can see somewhat, and know them coming. What man of you else can do that?"
"One Bradhaeth arrow. That is all it needs, lord, and then how do I face your lady?"
"Ah," he said softly. "Well, but you will save me. You have done it before, old wolf. I have trust in you."
"Gods help us," Beorc muttered.
NINE
Bearing Word
The sun began going down and Branwyn waited, in the hall, by the fireside; and Rhys hung about the hall, which was not his wont, but his brow had been dark since yesterday.
"I did not like this," Rhys had said when he had brought Meadhbh and Ceallach home. "I like it less now."
So he stayed and fretted, her cousin, and shared their dinner with them. "My lord will come when he will come," Branwyn had said, having made up her mind to it, resolved not to fret herself with expectations, for it was no small ride that Ciaran made. She knew it, having ridden here and there with him in their first years, as far as she ever had ridden in her life, which was to the sight of the Bradhaeth. She had reckoned already that there was no profit in standing all anxious on the walls, nor even in keeping supper wait ing. When it came the hour she had her supper with Meadhbh and Ceallach and Muirne, and Rhys as well, and Leannan, who played now softly as she spun, the fine wool making a thread in her fingers, so, so, so, by firelight; and Meadhbh doing likewise, and Muirne; and Ceallach at nothing in particular.
"You were at making something," Branwyn said to him, for Ceal lach often carved with his knife, and now his eyes seemed sad and his hands unnaturally idle. "Where have you put it?"
"I forgot," said Ceallach softly, with that same desperate look, and a small suspicion of ill crept into Branwyn's heart, the sense of something wrong with her son as Meadhbh's downcast obedience was unlike her, her uncommon attentiveness to the spinning she hated. Branwyn drew her lips to a taut line and kept the wool run ning, this way and that with the turning spindle. She wanted to ask, and did not—Iron, she thought wildly, iron, iron, iron in that little knife. Ciaran could not bear it, and now my son and daughter.
Rhys stirred abruptly and walked out, again to the wall, she reck oned, and never her fingers faltered. Something was amiss that Rhys knew and she could not ask it, not with Meadhbh and Ceallach to listen, and in no wise would they want to go to bed tonight until they had seen their father.
"Was it good, your riding yesterday?" She was light in her asking, as if she had never in the world objected to their going. Two bright heads nodded, catching glints of firelight, and there was not a glance from their eyes. "Well," she said, lips pursed, the spindle turning ceaselessly, "well, your father has his ways about him. I recall when we were younger we would ride out, when your grandmother was still alive, you can remember her? And you would stay with her and Muirne. And we would ride and ride, once as far as the border, your father and I. And do you know, he would chat with every farmer. Come along, I would say—sometimes we had cause to hurry. But they could always hold him, with ale to try or some complaint to give— Many a time he would go tramping off across some soggy orchard soiling his boots to see how the fruit set on, or off to see some steading's new plowed field up by the border."
"He would not delay now," Meadhbh said looking up, and her eyes were fierce. "He would be thinking of Domhnull."
There was such temper in her daughter. It dismayed her, how so small words offended. Branwyn was quiet after, only keeping to her spinning, taking her offering back. It was the Donn blood in her son and daughter, that made them wild, and sometimes, as now, that wildness wounded. One of them was enough, her husband breaking out in stubbornness, brushing aside all her counsel. She worked, flung all her attention at the thread. Her children wanted nothing of her comfort. Her son sat disconsolate, her daughter—O Meadhbh,
Meadhbh, Meadhbh! if I could hold you— But they were too old for holding. Nothing she said to her daughter was ever right And Ciaran would not uphold her.
His daughter. He was his son. Could I not have my daughter? Ami always to be wrong with her? Round and round, the spindle. A bright-haired girl a-horseback, riding in the meadow, red her hair and black the horse, like fire and deepest shadow.
The thread broke in her hands. She shook her head and bit her lip and mended it, mending the vision, the fat bay pony Meadhbh loved. No, she thought, afraid of the sight she had seen, Meadhbh and not Meadhbh, and not the bay white-stockinged pony. She saw leaves in her mind, and water and greenness, the child walking into the forest. His children, she thought, both his. She wanted to talk to them, to chatter idly, to talk of something to fill the silence, but Leannan played that song he had made, sweet and minding her of that night in hall, after which all Leannan's songs had changed, and his old eyes had taken to looking into distances while he played.