The Dreamstone

Arafel drew away; and stayed away very long. It was shame perhaps, for intended theft. And pain . . . that, perhaps, most of all. Midsummers passed, and beltains, while mortal Eald grew rank and Death did as he would there, failing her presence.

But come she did when her heart was healed. She expected the child where she would always be, at the forest’s edge; and when she did not find her there . . . at least, she thought, Branwyn would be playing on the hillside on so bright a midsummer day; and finally, seeking with persistence, she went even to the stones of Caer Wiell, man-hewn with painful iron.

So she found Branwyn at last, on the tower’s crest, in that sheltered nook where the wind could not reach.

The child’s shape had changed. It was a budding woman in a woman’s gown, who stared at her in alarm and did not truly remember her, forgetting childish dreams.

Branwyn had brought bread there for the birds, and stopped in the very motion of her hand, the cornflower eyes greatly amazed, not seeing howher visitor had come, but only that she was there, which was the way most mortals looked at Arafel when they saw her at all.

“Do you remember me?” Arafel asked, saddened at the change she saw.

“No,” said Branwyn, wrinkling her nose and tilting her head back to stare at her visitor, from soles of her feet to a crown of her head. “You are poor.”

“So some see me.”

“Did you beg of me on the road? You should not have come inside.”

“No,” said Arafel patiently, “Perhaps you once saw me differently.”

“At our gate?”

“Never. I gave you a flower.”

The blue eyes blinked, and did not remember.

“I offered you magic. I did you daisy chains, and found you in the woods.”

“You never did,” Branwyn breathed, cupping the crumbs in both her hands. “ I stopped believing in you.”

“So easily?” asked Arafel.

“My pony died.”

It was hate. It wounded. Arafel stood and stared.

“My father and Scaga brought me home. And I never went back.”

“You might . . . if you would.”

“I am a woman now.”

“You still remember my name.”

“Thistle.” Branwyn drew back, out of her shadow. “But little-girl playmates go away when girls are grown.”

“So I must,” said Arafel.

And she began to. But she stopped on a last forlorn hope and cast a glamor as once she had done, on the birds which hovered round about, silvering their wings. Branwyn quickly cast crumbs, and the birds alit and fought for them, so that the gleaming faded in a knot of wings and thieving. She threw more. Such were Branwyn’s magics, to tame wild things, by their desires. The cornflower eyes lifted, dark and ill-wishing, conscious of their own power and disdaining forever what was wild.

“Good-bye,” said Arafel, and yielded up the effort which held her so far out of Eald.

She faded back then, out of heart to linger there.

“Did I not warn you?” Death made bold to ask her, when next their paths crossed. Then in anger Arafel banished him from her presence, but not from the wood, for she was out of sorts with Men. The dream she had dreamed of humankind had proved more than vain, it was turned altogether against her, like the child who had grown as the saplings had grown in Death’s new forest, taking root in this world, and not in hers.

She slipped within the safer, kindlier light of her moon, and into the forest of Eald as her eyes saw it, a forest which had never faded since the begi

It was her consolation then, to dream, to walk the woods she loved, and to keep that which remained as it had always been, forgetting Men. Of midsummer nights, sometimes she came, and saw mortal Eald grown wilder and more deserted still. How Death fared, she had no knowledge, nor cared, though it seemed that he fared well, and hunted souls.

ELEVEN

Dun na h-Eoin

The ba

Evald had come, of course. He was among the first, riding out of Caerdale to forestall the King’s worst enemies in the days before the King declared himself. He came with Beorc Scaga’s son, and armed men and no few stout farmers’ sons out of the dale, with all the strength that he could muster. And Dryw the son of the Dryw of Niall’s day, rode from the southern mountains with the largest rising of that folk since Aescford. So Luel rose; and Ban; they were expected. Latest came the folk of Caer Do

And the war was long, long and bitter, and Evald felt little of glory in it: they named him in songs, but more and more he understood the Cearbhallain, for what they sang as brave he remembered most as mud and fear and being cold and hungry. But all the same he fought, and when he had time to think at all, he spent it missing Meredydd and his daughter and his fireside. He had pains in his joints and his scars when it rained. A great deal of the war seemed to be marching and riding, moving bands of men here and there and forestalling the enemy at one point to have them break out in another burning and looting of what they had lately made safe, so that they had had great pains to make a border and to hold it, for the marshes could never be trusted and the hills were full of warfare.

But at Dun na h-Eoin all that had changed, where campfires gathered and the enemy massed so many they looked like a blight upon the land, their backs against the hills.

Then was a battle, fierce and long, fought from the breaking of one day to the evening of the next, and the dark birds gathered thick as the smoke had been before. But the King prevailed.

“Your leave,” Dryw ap Dryw asked of the King that day on the field: “They’ll have no rest of me.”

“Go,” said the King. Dryw was himself pale and spattered with blood, straining at the recall like some hound called back from the hunt. “Keep them on the move.”

So Dryw leapt onto his horse and gathered his men about him, afoot, many of them, accustomed to move like shadows among the hills.

“By your leave,” said Evald, “I would go with Dryw. An Beag and Damh are old enemies of my hold—and they have force left. The most of my men are here with me; if they should come at Caer Wiell now—”

“We will come at their backs,” said the King. “At all possible speed. Let Dryw harry them as he can.”

“But Caer Wiell—” said Evald. His heart was leaden in him looking around at the desolation, the clouds of birds vying with the smokes of fires to darken the sky. It was not well to dispute with Laochailan King; he was a man of middling height, Laochailan, fair with eyes of a pale cold blue that never took fire. He had outlived his counselors. They had held him on the leash most of his life, and he was cold, seldom roused. Even in battle his killing was cold; in policy he was deliberate and immovable. And Evald turned his shoulder and strode away with a turmoil in his thoughts. It was treason in his mind, but the will of the Cearbhallain still held him, so that it was would and would not with Evald. He was on the verge of gathering his folk and riding away despite the King; Beorc Scaga’s son hurried to his side seeing stormclouds in his eyes, seeing wrack and ruin in the offing, on the bloody field.