previous | Table of Contents | next

## NINETEEN

### The End of It All

He came, but not alone, and that surprised her—in plain good clothes, and with Branwyn tramping along with him through the brambles, her golden hair tangled with twigs. He wore the sword and carried the bow and a pack which clearly burdened him. She watched them, and would have reached out to help them, but she sensed the fear in Branwyn, and could not have helped, no more than he could: Branwyn was doomed to the thorns.

They reached the dancing-ring. He called her in his mind, and she came, smiling sadly at the pain in his eyes, and looked then at Branwyn, who managed to look back at her.

“I have brought Aodhan back,” Ciaran said.

“Swiftest to have ridden,” said Arafel.

“Branwyn tried.”

“Ah,” she said in pity, and again met Branwyn’s blue eyes, “You might have.”

Fear looked back at her, but something like the child struggled behind it. “I wanted to.”

“That is much,” said Arafel.

A wind had risen. She sensed Aodhan near, but it was Ciaran who had the summoning of him. Ciaran held out a hand, and the horse stepped into mortal sunlight, aglow with the elvish moon. Small thunders rumbled in the glade, and lightnings flickered. Ciaran stroked Aodhan’s neck, and whispered his name and bade him go. The thunder clapped and the horse was gone, that swiftly, and perhaps something of Ciaran’s heart went with him; he had that look.

Then Ciaran knelt down and unbound the pack which he had brought, and took the sword and bow and laid them atop it all the shining armor at her feet.

“Thank you,” Arafel said, and the gifts faded.

“I thank you,” Ciaran said. “I must thank you. But—do you understand?—I have carried them as far as I can. I have seen things—I shall always see them. They are enough.”

“I know,” she said.

He rose, and reached last for the chain about his neck.

“No,”’she said. “That, you must keep.”

“I cannot,” he said. He drew it off, and offered it to her hands, his own hands trembling.

“It is your protection.”

“Take it.”

“And Branwyn’s too. Do you even hope to get from out this forest without it? Would you see her hunted too?”

That struck deep. Ciaran’s hands fell; but Branwyn took his arm.

“I knew that too,” said Branwyn, and there was more of sense in her blue eyes than there had ever been. “But I am here. And we will walk out again.”

“Please,” Ciaran said, offering the stone yet again. “I am a Man, and when he comes, that is the way of Men, is it not? But if I keep this, there is no hope for me.”

Arafel took it then, unwilling, and her lips parted in shock at the strength that had come to it, and the presence in it which was indeed almost beyond bearing.

“Ah,” she said, folding it to her heart. She looked on him with tears. “You have given me a gift, o Man. And now there is nothing you have left me to give you.”

“A blessing,” he said, “for us. That I will take.”

“Few Men have ever asked it of the Daoine Sidhe.”

“I ask.”

She kissed him then, and kissed Branwyn. “Go,” she said.

They went, hand in hand, and she walked behind them, the shadow-ways, unseen. They had trouble in the going, took scratches of the thorns, and climbed high places and limped on unexpected stones; shadows hissed at them, but fled quickly when she bade them gone.

And at last it was New Forest, and Arafel stood upon the flat rock and watched them down the slope, toward the Caerbourne, and Caer Wiell.

A blackness settled near her. She frowned at it.

“Give them a little,” she asked. “Only a little time.”

“We were allies,” Death said. “Should I have so short a memory? I shall wait. As for Branwyn—she was always mine.”

Again she frowned.

“I have another face,” he said.

She drew herself up and laid a hand on her sword. “Beware of me, Lord Death; I know your name; and the day I see you as you are, you are yourself in peril. Do not tempt me.”

“You have asked a favor,” he said.

“Aye,” she said more softly, anger fallen. “That I have.”

“He may come here if he wills; and she may. He will die abed, years hence. That, I give to him.”

“Then I forgive you,” she said, “other things.”

She left him then, and walked her own way, from Airgiod’s quiet rim, to the moonlit grove.

Fionnghuala was there, and Aodhan. “Go,” she bade them. “You are free.”

They did not go; and they were free to choose that too. They stayed near, and the grove breathed with wind and memories.

“Liosliath,” she said, holding the stone near her heart.

He was aware. There was another place but this. She held it close and walked amid the silver trees.

Eald was smaller. But it had held. She found that place at the edge of Eald, hers and not quite hers, and the Gruagach scampered into hiding, remembering ancient quarrels—but he fared well, and so did all he cared for. The fields were safe. She preferred the earth no iron had delved, the lands shadowed with her trees—but she took care now of lands far wider than Eald, so that the lands of Men had rarely seen such a year, in which no planting failed. It cost her. She did all she could to mend what war had done, and stretched her care as far as it could go. Long ago she had chosen this woods and kept it—but now it had neighbors she valued, with special poignancy, that they were brief and brave and given to doing as they would. She had never known why she watched, except for pride, not to yield forever what once the Sidhe had been; but now it was for love.

Yet one day, one day she almost despaired, so much of Eald she had given away. She came for comfort to that heart of her wood and walked there listening to the stones, her head bowed in a weariness almost too much to bear.

So she found it, a tiny thing unlooked for at her feet. A branch, she thought, had fallen from the silver trees, which had never happened in any wind that blew—so, she thought as she bent down by it, Eald had at last begun to die, from the heart outward.

Then she cast herself to her knees in wonder—for the sprig was rooted in the ground, thrusting up from the earth with silver leaves all delicately veined, the first new life in Eald since the dimming of the world.

previous | Table of Contents | next