The Dreamstone

“What costs?” Scaga said again.

“I am not of the small folk,” Arafel said in measured words and cold. “I am not paid in a saucer of milk or a handful of grain. My reasons are my reasons. I speak of balances, Man, but it is late for that. My aid has been commanded, and I must give it.”

“Then we will take it,” said Scaga, with an anguished motion toward the door. “Out there, today.”

“Give me time,” said Arafel. “Hold against them in your own strength, and wait.” She turned, looked on Branwyn and looked last on him, without anger, without passion at all. “Do not go out onto the walk,” she said. “Stay within. Wait.”

Her voice dimmed, and she did, so that there was only the stonework and a chair, and the silence after her.

“Arm!” Scaga shouted at the men, for still the alarm was sounding, and they had not answered it. “Come and arm!”

They ran. Ciaran stood still in the hall, feeling naked and alone. He realized the stone was in plain sight about his neck, and touched it, but it gave him nothing.

He looked back, into Branwyn’s eyes. There was terror there.

“I knew her,” Branwyn said “We were friends.”

“What happened?” he asked, disturbed to realize how meshed this place had been, forever, in the doings of Eald. “What happened, Branwyn?”

“I went into the forest,” she said. “And I was afraid.”

He nodded, knowing. There were then the two of them in the circle of fearing eyes. Lady Meredydd looked on them with a terror greater than all the rest, as if it were a nightmare she had shared. A daughter—who had walked in the forest, that they had gotten back again from Eald. Scaga knew, he too—who had seen a flinching from iron, and known clearly the name of the ill. It was terror come among them; but it had been there always, next their hearts.

“I am Ciaran,” he said slowly, to hear the words himself, “Ciaran’s second son, of Caer Do

No one spoke, not the ladies, not the harper. Ciaran went to the bench by the fire and sat down there to warm himself.

“Branwyn,” Meredydd said sharply.

But Branwyn came and sat down by him, and when he gave his hand, took it, not looking at him, but knowing, perhaps, what it was to have walked the paths he took.

Arafel would come back. He trusted in this; and he remembered what Arafel had said that the others had not been willing to hear, except only Scaga, who might not have understood what she had answered.

Eald had dreamed in long silence; and Men asked that silence broken. Hehad done so, seeing only the power, and not the cost. He held tightly to Branwyn’s hand, which was flesh, and warm, and he wondered if his hand had that solidness in hers.

War was coming, not of iron and blood. They were mistaken if they expected iron and fire of Arafel; and he had been blind.

He was not, now.

SEVENTEEN

The Summoning of the Sidhe

She walked quickly, and that was swiftly indeed, through the mists which rimmed her world, into the soft green moonlight on the silver trees. The deer and other creatures stared at her and came no nearer.

And when she had come to the heart of Eald, that grassy mound starred with flowers, and the circle of aged trees, then all of Eald hushed, even to the warm breeze which sported there. Moonlight glistened and glowed in the hearts of stones which hung on the tree of memory, and on the silver swords which hung nearby, and the armor and the treasures which held the magics of Eald. The magics slept, but for what sustenance they gave. Sleeping too, were the memories of all the faded Daoine Sidhe, which were the life of Eald.

She cast off the aspect she wore for Men, stood still a moment listening for the faintest of sounds, and then for no sound at all, but the whispering of elven voices. From one to the other stone she walked, touched them gently and drew their memories into life, so that none slept, not the least or the greatest.

And in the world of Men, Ciaran shuddered, and stared at the fire before them, feeling a stirring which shivered through the very earth. All that Men stood upon seemed like gossamer, threatening to tear.

“What is wrong?” asked Branwyn. “What do you feel?”

“The world is shaken,” he said.

“I feel nothing,” she said, as if to reassure him; but it did not.

Eald stirred. Arafel stood amid the grove and looked about her and listened; and at last went among the treasures of Eald and gathered up armor ages untouched, which had been hers. She put it on, mail shining like the moon itself, and took up her bow, and shafts tipped with ice-clear stone and silver. She took up her sword, and gathered the sword of Liosliath, his bow and all his arms. She climbed the knoll, laid down her burden, and sat down with her sword across her knees. She shut her eyes to Eald as it was, and listened to the stones.

“Eachthighearn,” she whispered to the air, and the silence trembled. A breeze began, which whispered down the green grass of the knoll and set the leaves to stirring and the stones to singing.

It moved farther, coursing narrowly through the trees, across the meadows, making flowers nod, and the hares which moved by moonlight looked up and froze.

It touched the waters of Airgiod, and skimmed them with a little shiver.

It blew among the trees the other side of Airgiod, and branches stirred.

“Eachthighearn: lend me your children.”

The breeze blew along the distant flanks of hills, making them shiver, a nodding of grasses; and it traveled farther still.

Then it began to blow back again, through hills and forest, recrossing Airgiod’s quiet waters, into meadows and into the grove, stirring the grasses of the knoll, with sighings of the swaying stones and a faint tang of sea breeze, recalling mist, and partings, and the cries of gulls.

Arafel shuddered in that wind, and the grayness beckoned. A taint of melancholy came over her, but she held fast to her stone, and opened her eyes and saw the grove as it was.

“Fio

The breeze fled back again, laden with the green glamor of Eald, with sweet grass and shade, with summer warmth. It fled away, and the air grew still.

Then a wind began to blow returning, softly at first; and with greater and greater force in its coming, rattling the branches and making Airgiod’s waters shiver, flattening the grasses and sweeping like storm into the grove, where the stones blazed with sudden light. The sky was clear, the stars pure, the moon undimmed, but storm crackled in the air, whipped the leaves, and Arafel sprang to her feet, holding the sword in her two hands. The force of lightnings stood about, shivered in her blowing hair and played about the swords in the trees. Thunder began, far away and growing in the wind, stirring like deepest song to the lighter chiming of the stones and the rush of leaves.

And with the wind came brightness in the night, one and the other, like moons coursing close to earth, with thunder in their hooves and moonlight for their manes . . . above the earth they ran, together, as they had always coursed side by side.

“ Fio