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## SIXTEEN

### The Paths of Eald

“Arafel,” he whispered, “help us.” But no answer came, and Ciaran had hoped for none. It was doubt, perhaps, which robbed him. He felt a pain in his heart, pain in all his joints, as if the poison of the iron he had touched had gone inward. Perhaps it had more than driven Arafel away; perhaps it had wounded her more than he had known. There was silence, where once her voice would have come whispering to him, and he was afraid.

The stone was power. She had promised so. To cast it off, seek a death in battle . . . he thought of this, foreknowing that he would see before his death what others could not see, and know it when it came. It seemed a small-hearted thing now, though lonely; a selfish thing, to perish to no avail, and to take the hope of Caer Wiell with him once for all. Power was for using in such straits as he had set them in, if he but knew how.

And what had the stone ever done, but link him to Eald? Fare back, Arafel had wished him.

He began, holding the stone between his hands. He rose and slipped his mind toward the green fair world . . . saw gray brightness, and moved into it.

There was nothing here. He tried to recall the way he had come with Arafel’s leading. He thought that it lay before him in the mist. A certain sense of his heart said so, and he trusted that sense, which he had denied before.

Liosliath, he thought, wishing now for the memories of that grim elf, but nothing came to him. It was, perhaps, the taint of iron. Panic swept on him like a flood of water. He wavered out of the mist and blinked in dismay, for he stood on the dark slope of the hill, outside the walls of Caer Wiell.

In panic he reached for the mist again, and ran into it, ran, with all his strength, but very quickly he was lost indeed, and he was not sure that he had taken the right course in the beginning. He thought that he could see trees in the grayness, but they were not straight and fair, but twisted shapes, and the mist darkened.

Shadows were with him, loping along in dreamlike slowness. He could not see them well, but he heard the crash of brush, the beat of hooves, slow and strange. A stag coursed the mist, but it was black, and lost itself in the grayness. A bird flew past, baleful-eyed, and black as the stag. It called at him and flew on. He ran the more, panting, and at times his feet seemed to lose their purchase and to stride lower than he wished. Hounds bayed, striking terror into his flesh, and his wound grew into an ache, and to agony. He heard the beat of heavier hooves, and the winding of a horn.

Something tattered swept by him, wailing. He stumbled away from it and shuddered against another shadow, saw trees taking tortured shape. The way was darker and darker, agreeing with mortal night, as the elven-wood never had. He was possessed of sudden terror, that he had fled the wrong way altogether, that he was driven and harried where the enemy would be, toward a place where the stone had no power to save him. A wind blew which did not scatter the mist, but chilled him to the bone.

“Arafel!” he cried, having no hope in silence. “Arafel!”

A shadow loomed ahead of him. He flung himself aside, but it caught at him, and the stone warmed at his heart.

“Names are power,” she said. “But you must use commands three times.”

He caught her hand and held it, shut his eyes, for a rush of shadows passed, and the Huntsman was among them. He thought that sight would scar him forever.

And the chill left him. He opened his eyes and they were walking through the mist into brightness, into sunlight, of green forest and meadows with pale flowers. He sank down on the grass, out of strength, and Arafel sat by him, gravely watching until he should have caught his breath.

“You are braver than wise,” she said.

“I need your help,” he said. “They need you.”

“They.” She flung herself to her feet, and indignation trembled in her voice. “Their wars are their own. You have seen. You have seen your choices. You have come back of your own will. Do you not know now how much we have to do with Men?”

He found no arguments. There was a grayness upon him like the grief of the fair folk themselves, when the world no longer suited them, nor they the world.

Her anger stilled. He felt it die from the stone. She knelt down by him and touched his face, touched him heart, which was still cold with the memory of the dogs.

“This,” she said, touching the stone, “and iron—cannot bear one another. You know that now. You are wiser than you were. And when you are wiser still, you will know that they—have no part or peace with you.”

“I have dreamed,” he said, “and I know what once you were. And I ask your help.—Arafel, Arafel—Arafel, I ask your help for Caer Wiell.”

Her face grew cold, and still. “Too wise,” she said. “Beware such invocations.”

“Then take back your gift,” he said. “There is no heart in it.”

“It is our heart,” she said, and walked away.

He rose, looked about him, at hares which sat solemnly beneath a white tree. He despaired, and shook his head, and would have cast off the stone, but it was all his hope of return to his own night. He had walked it once; he began to walk it again, beyond the silver trees, farther and farther into the mist, for he sighted the direction true, and for whatever reason, the fear had gone.

His step never faltered, not in the direst and strangest of the mist. Trees came clear to him, and the very way to the room showed itself. He saw it, a black cell before him in the grayness. He entered it, and found walls about him once more.

He sat still through the night. There were no dreams. He slept a time and found the sun coming up, washed himself and dressed and came out into the hall, strangely numb of terrors, even when he saw Scaga’s man guarding the hall, having watched him. He came down into the hall where others gathered, and silence fell.

“Is there place for me?” a voice asked softly. He looked. It was Arafel.

Others had risen from the table, a scraping of chairs and benches. Branwyn stared, her hands to her cheeks. Scaga laid hand to his sword, but no one drew. Arafel stood still, in forester’s garments much mended and much faded. A sword hung at her side. Her pale hair was drawn back. She looked like a tall, slim boy.

“Long since I was here,” she said in their silence. Somewhere on the walls alarms were sounding, summoning them to the attack. No one yet moved. “I am bidden aid you,” she said. “I ask—do you wish that aid? Bid me aid you; or bid me go.”

“We dare not take such help,” said Meredydd.

“It is dangerous,” said the harper.

“It is,” said Arafel.

“Arafel,” Ciaran said. “What danger?”

She turned her pale eyes on him. “The Daoine Sidhe had other enemies. There are things more than you see. Long and long it is since wars have reached into Eald.”

“We die without your help,” said Meredydd. “If help it is.”

“Aye,” said Arafel, “that might be true.”

“Then help us,” said Meredydd.

“Ask cost,” said Scaga.

“ ’Tis late for that,” Arafel said softly. “Hist, do you not hear the alarms?”

“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 Donn. I lost myself in the forest, and I had her help to come here. But of the King, of your lord—I never lied. No.”

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. He had 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.

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