"We had come into your lands. We thought it best to come and give an account of ourselves straightway."
"Wise, yes; the shepherds have the dogs out by night throughout the hills. There's little stirs but what they set to it. Ho, page, where are you going? Go straight ahead with that light: open up the west chamber."
Sir Domhnull he had become. This man Donnchadh had sent beside him spoke him fairly, delivered him to a room of wooden walls and fine appointments, sent the page scurrying with orders for fire, water, servants. Donnchadh from close-handed began then to seem generous beyond all expectation. He was dazed by this, and yet afraid.
Where am I in this great place? he wondered. And where are Boc and the rest of us in this rambling warren? He shivered, and looked anxiously in Geannan's direction as the man left him with promises of food and wine to follow, with a flurry of servants seeing to the fire, the fine soft bed, the warming of water for his washing. He was afraid. He did not know why this was so, only that it was in the air, the walls, a silence in which the soft sounds the servants made were all too loud. He remembered the shores of Lioslinn, the silences of the passes, the uncanny stillness of the rocks.
I have done a foolish thing, he thought, wishing he and his escort had never been parted; and then he shook off the feeling as too much caution. I start at shadows, he decided, suspecting the lord of Donn of some vague and tangled irony, to house him like a lord, exagger ated courtesy. I should have been sharp with him, he thought, wish ing he were older or wiser in statecraft, or somehow more subtle in the ways of lords other than his own; or at least that he knew how to treat such courtesies as they offered.
The shadows were deep by the river, where the road ran, and the water whispered louder than the leaves. Rhys went warily in this place, marking how desolate it had become, how in want of tending —the King's road that linked all Caerdale with the plain, and all unused by honest folk, or by Caer Wiell in these years. He rode with all his weapons, with his saddlebags full of Cook's gifts, and now with his shield upon his arm, for he came to that point which ran between the river and An Beag.
Now, now, he asked speed of his horse, knowing silence would not serve him. It was less than likely that An Beag would watch the road, that any of those bandits would be devoted enough to duty to sit out on the riverbank in ambush in the rare hope of a man of Caer Wiell to murder—but anything was possible with trouble abroad in the land.
Brush loomed close on either side. Grass had grown in the road way, and here and there a bush had taken hold, or brambles flung their spite out where they might rake the horse. The black gelding disliked this nighttime running, this uncertain ground: he used the spurs he seldom gave it and kept it going, reckless of such hazards.
It spent its strength, began to labor under his armed weight when they had come well toward the hills. He let it slow its pace at last, still beside the river, and now tending to Caerbourne Ford, the place he liked least of all.
The trees took him then in their embrace of willow fronds, trailing like a curtain darker than the starlit skies, caressing, cutting him and the beast off from sight—whisper of leaves and water. The horse danced and shied suddenly, finding something to alarm it. He touched it with the spurs, fended the willow leaves with his shield.
Now came Eald. He felt it, the haunted quality of the shore before him.
Now lend me luck, he wished, remembering that one had shed a blessing on him. He kept her memory in his eyes, in the dark before him—o Sidhe, you promised.
He found the ford, itself more perilous in the dark, in length of time untried: the river might have carved new ways, made pits to trap horse and rider, brought down uncertain sands instead of solid bottom. He slid down and led the horse for prudence, waist deep in the Caerbourne's sluggish water.
The horse plunged. A thing slid past his thighs, large and live and horrid. He kept the reins and stumbled on, struggling in the water, and now the whisper of the river had the sound of laughter. The shore wavered before him. A second time the touch came at his legs, his waist, soft hands reached upward, clinging to his armor.
He flung himself toward the shallow water, fell to his knees and made the horse stumble by the pull on the reins, then regained his feet and hastened through the reeds, on soft and yielding mud, past dead and breaking branches.
He set his foot in the stirrup, heavy with his weight of metal, with the horse shifting this way and that and starting to move at once. It threw its head as he hit the saddle, and leapt forward, catching panic; he reined it hard, for branches whipped at them: they went blind and at hazard.
He held it; it walked, shivering. He shivered likewise, soaked to the skin and remembering what had touched him.
Each-uisge, Ciaran had said. Water horse. River nix. A thing to frighten children. He feared as he had never feared in battle, in this path that he had taken, and ever and again he heard the sound of hooves, like a horse running where no horse could run, like the thunder of a gallop that grew loud and soft by turns, now on this side of the path and now on that, where the way to his own lands bor dered Eald.
"Grant you mercy," he whispered to it. "We were quiet neigh bors."
He did not give way to panic, not even when eyes like coals stared at him from out the thicket. It might do him harm, he knew it; but it went beside him, and his horse shuddered and shivered and snorted at its presence, that moved on hooves.
"Pooka," he said, "you do not frighten me. I have leave to pass here, and you cannot stop me."
The eyes never came again. The beat of hooves stayed with him.
TEN
Caer Donn
The morning came quietly in Caer Donn, a hush so deep and wide Domhnull waked slowly, eyes searching the place a moment, finding wooden walls and not the stone of his own room in Caer Wiell about him nor the swaying of a horse under him, but the steadiness of a bed softer than his at home, the breaking of full sun through the slitted window.
Daylight, he thought, ashamed, recalling that he had finally, far, far toward the dawning settled into sleep; and waked at first light and found his limbs still heavy, the place so quiet he was sure he had waked even before the servants were stirring. A moment more, he had thought then and shut his eyes, cherishing the warm spot he had made on the feather mattress, beneath the covers, and he had slept again, after all his restlessness, his night of listening to sounds where no sounds were, of nightmares of riding endlessly through the nar row passes so that the bed seemed to move under him, or again, his imaginings that there was no safety, that he had become lost in the windings of this place and that it had closed its gates on him to swallow him down.
If they wished, he had thought in the loneliness of the night, I might vanish from the earth, I and all those with me.
What men did you send? lord Donnchadh might say to his lord. None ever reached me.
Or Donnchadh might say nothing at all, since Donnchadh had said nothing in lo these many years. Silence could drink them up, and walls entomb them.
These are fancies, he had thought at last, with the light come to the window. Now they will know by my eyes I have not slept, and what a figure I shall cut with them this morning. So his eyes had closed. So they wanted to close now as if all the due of days before had fallen on him.