The Dreamstone

The rider came closer, and a chill came on his flesh, on all but the hand which held the blade. He lost the brightness, could not hold even his vision of this grim place. The black began to come over him, but he slashed at it and the hounds yelped aside from him, bristling and trembling.

“Come,” a voice whispered to him, very softly.

He must, for he could not hold his arm up any longer. The blade wavered, and sank, and yet a warmth broke like a breath of spring at his back. “Stand firm,” someone said.

“He is mine,” said the shadow, a voice like shards of winter ice.

“Be off,” said the other, soft and without doubt

“He has stolen from you. Do you encourage thefts?” And for a moment the world was bright, and the shadow was a blight upon it, a robed darkness which stood in an attitude of amazement. “Ah,” the cold voice breathed, wonder-struck. “Ah. Thisyou have kept from me.”

Light blazed. Ciaran staggered in it, and his knees hit the ground, a shock which wrung a sob of pain from him, and he could no longer tell earth from sky or day from night. Wet leaves lay against his cheek or cheek against the leaves, and the rain beat down into bis face, chilling his torn soul.

But the shadow was gone, and the thunder stilled. It seemed the moon shone down. A face confused itself with it, and with the sun in a strange, fair sky.

He still clutched the sword. Slim cool fingers pried his hand from it, eased his limbs, covered him with a downy peace in which the only pain was to his heart, an ache and a memory of loss.

THIRTEEN

The Tree of Stones and Swords

She knelt with the rain still dripping off the leaves, a dew upon them both, and very still and pale the intruder lay beneath the mortal moon. Iron tainted him, and yet he had torn through into her forest—if only for a moment; had brought iron there, and Death. She was stirred to anger, and to fear, and to a longing which had not been in her heart since the child had broken it. To have entered her Eald, to have found that very heart of it and to have stolen an elvish sword . . . it was no common thief, this Man, and no common need could have forced him. Perhaps his mortal eyes had been affected by that terrible wound he bore, so that he fled with truer sight than most; but never in many a hunt had Lord Death failed.

Eald had stretched far once, before the coming of Men; and once, before her folk knew much of Men, there had been a few of halfling kind, for elvish loves and dalliances among these fatal strangers. Still, she thought, there might be elvish blood drawn very thin in some, halflings who had never felt the call across the dividing sea, who had never faded. In hope she tried to draw this stranger with her, but the iron weighted him and he could not stay.

She endured the anguish of handling it, undoing buckles, putting it off him, every bit and piece. So she uncovered a terrible wound in his side, and drew on her power to begin its mending, healed the little scratches with a single touch. And when she had rested a moment, it was not hard to bear him away with her, simply a holding of his head in her lap, and a thinking on elvish things. Then the trees became what they truly were, straight and beautiful, and the sun of her day shone down with kindly warmth in that grove.

He slept long, while the wound healed itself, while the lines of mortality faded from his face and left it beautiful, with that beauty which might be elven heritage. She did not leave him in all this time, waiting for his waking with all her heart.

And at last he did stir, and looked about him, and looked into her eyes, seeming much confused. He began at once to fade into the mortal world, into darkness, being in his own mind again, but she took his hand and drew him back before he could slip away. “Beware of going back,” she said. “Death has a part of you. Too, too easy for him to call you into his shadow as you are. You are much safer here.”

He tried to rise, still holding to her hand, maintaining that deleciate hold on here.She lent him strength, the green force which sustained the trees themselves, and after a moment he was able to stand and to look about him. Wind whispered through the leaves and the sun cast its own glamor, while deer stared at them both wise-eyed from the green shadow, in the grove of swords and jewels.

“I was dead,” he said.

“Never,” she assured him.

“My heart hurts.”

“So it may,” she said, “for it was torn. And that healing is beyond me—What is your name, Man?”

Dread touched his eyes. “Ciaran,” he said then quietly, as a guest ought. “Ciaran’s second son of Caer Do

“Caer Do

He feared, but he looked her in the face. “And what is your name?” he asked.

“I shall tell you my true one, that I do not give to mortals; for you are my guest. It is Arafel.”

“Then I must thank you with all my heart,” he said earnestly, “and then beg you set me on the road from here.”

In so many words he healed her heart and wounded it . . . and a regret came into his eyes as if he had seen the wounding. He held up before her his right hand, on which he bore a golden ring, worked with a seal.

“I have a duty,” be said. “On my honor, I have to go and do it, if there is still time.”

“Where is this duty?”

He lifted a hand as if he would give a direction, and nothing was the same. “There are armies,” he said in his confusion, pointing where he might mean the Brown Hills. “There is war on the plain; and my King has won.But the enemy has drawn off this way, which is a valley where they might hold long in a siege if they could take it. And lord Evald of Caer Wiell is riding with the King. Do you understand, lady Arafel? War is coming up the dale. Caer Wiell must not be deceived. They must hold firm, whatever the false reports and fair offers from the enemy, must hold only a little time, until the King’s army comes this way. Lord Evald’s hold—must hear the message I bear.”

“Wars,” she said faintly. “They will not be wise, who set foot in Ealdwood.”

“And I must go, lady Arafel. I must I beg you,” Already he began to fade, discovering the power of will within himself.

“Ciaran,” she said, a summoning, and held him by his name, still within the light of her sun. “You are determined. But you do not count the cost. The Huntsman will seek you out again. Once in the mortal world, you are a prey to him; he has never lost a hunt, do you see? And it is not finished.”

“That may be,” he said, pale-faced. “But I have sworn.”

“Pride,” she said. “It is empty pride. What arms have you, what means to pass through all of Eald against such enemies?”

He looked down at himself, armorless and empty-handed. But he wavered toward a parting, all the same.

“Wait,” she said, and went to the old oak, took from its branches one of the jewels which hung among the others, pale green like the one which hung at her own throat, though dimmed, for its master was ages gone. It sang to her, the dreams of an elf named Liosliath, a part of his soul, such souls as her kind had. “Take it. You borrowed his sword in your need, but this will serve you better. Wear it always about your neck.”

“What are these things?” he asked without taking, and looked about at all the trees which held such treasures, jewels and swords glimmering silver and light among the leaves. “What place is this?”

“You might liken it to a tomb; this you robbed . . . my brothers and my sisters, my fathers and mothers. It is elvish memory.”

“Forgive me,” he whispered, stricken.

“We do not die. We go . . . away; and when we are gone, what use are these things to us? Yet they hold memories. That is their use now. The sword, you could not fully use. But take this stone. Liosliath would not grudge it to a friend of mine. He was my cousin: he was young as our kind go, and so it may be safest for you. The shadows feared him.”