"When a ship needed stability at sea, it flung out a sea-anchor. Home-thoughts are like that. And this is a big ocean."

 

"I thought you might think-" you say, and give something up unasked.

 

Eventually I say: "You were about to ask me where I get my ideas. You haven't yet. Go on. I've been wondering when you'd get around to it."

 

"That wasn't what I was going to ask."

 

"What, then?"

 

"I thought-you might think-you know, somehow different."

 

"That's the idea-question, all right. I thought I heard it coming."

 

"You're laughing at me."

 

"No. I know exactly what you want to know. You want to know wherein I'm different, wherein a writer's mind is different. I've told you. It's because I'm here." I gesture at the windows. "It's a strange sensation- when the ship turns loose of space. You want a sea-anchor. It takes nerve to let go and fly with the wind. I confess I won't jump in parachutes. But I will sometimes think of alien worlds when I slide into hyperspace. Or of falling when I'm flying. I let go of homely things at uncertain moments-just to test my nerve. You want the terrible truth? You have that kind of mind too."

 

"Me?"

 

"You're here, aren't you? You came to look out the windows."

 

"I don't know why I came."

 

"Just the same as I don't know where I get my ideas. They just are."

 

"Any time you want them?"

 

"Once upon a time," I say, "I had twenty-four hours and a postcard, and a challenge to come up with a story that would fit it."

 

"Did you?"

 

"I sat down at supper and wrote the start. I wrote a snatch at a cocktail party, another at breakfast. And yes, twenty-four hours later I stood up to read to a convention full of people from a rather densely written postcard. Used a micropoint." I look out at changed stars and remember a smallish meeting hall, in Columbia, Missouri, and an audience the members of which had had about as much sleep as I had. "Two hours' sleep. Two thousand words."

 

"Did it work?"

 

"I read it the close way you have to read letters that small-never dared look at my audience; I just hoped to get through it without faltering, blind tired as I was. The time went in that kind of fog time gets to when you're in a story; and it was over, and I looked up. Nobody moved. I was kind of disappointed, I mean, when you write what you think is a nice little story and you don't get any reaction at all, you feel worse than if people walked out. I thought they were asleep.

 

"Then the audience stirred and some wiped eyes and others, I think, got to their feet and cheered, and I just stood there in one of those moments that come to a storyteller a few times in a lifetime-I don't know, maybe we all were tired." I smile, seeing those faces reflected out of nowhere in the glass. "But spare me that. I wrote it to read aloud. It was a special moment. That's all. It doesn't come twice."

 

---

 

The Last Tower

 

the old man climbed the stairs slowly, stopping sometimes to let his heart recover and the teapot settle on the tray, while the dormouse would pop out of his sleeve or his beard and steal a nibble at the teacakes he brought up from the kitchen. It was an old tower on the edge of faery, on the edge of the Empire of Man. Between. Uncertain who had built it-men or elves. It was long before the old man's time, at least, and before the empire in the east. There was magic in its making- so they used to say. Now there was only the old man and the dormouse and a sleepy hedgehog, and a bird or two or three, which came for the grain at the windows. That was his real talent, the wild things, the gentle things. A real magician now, would not be making tea himself, in the kitchen, and wasting his breath on stairs. A real magician would have been more- awesome. Kept some state. Inspired some fear.

 

He stopped at the halfway turning. Pushed his sliding spectacles up his nose and balanced tray, tea, cakes and dormouse against the window-ledge. The land was black in the east. Black all about the tower. Burned. On some days he could see the glitter of arms in the distance where men fought. He could see the flutter of banners on the horizon as they rode. Could hear the sound of the horses and the horns.

 

Now the dust and soot of a group of riders showed against the darkening east. He waited there, not to have the weary stairs again-waited while the dormouse nibbled a cake, and in his pocket the hedgehog squirmed about, comfortable in the stillness.

 

The riders came. The prince-it was he-sent the herald forward to ring at the gate. "Open in the king's name," the herald cried, and spying him in the window: "Old man-open your gates. Surrender the tower. No more warnings."

 

"Tell him no," the old man said. "Just tell him-no."

 

"Tomorrow," the herald said, "we come with siege."

 

The old man pushed his spectacles up again. Blinked sadly, his old heart beating hard. "Why?" he asked. "What importance, to have so much bother?"

 

"Old meddler." The prince himself rode forward, curvetted his black horse under the window. "Old fraud. Come down and live. Give us the tower intact-to use- and live. Tomorrow morning-we come with fire and iron. And the stones fall-old man."

 

The old man said nothing. The men rode away.

 

The old man climbed the stairs, the teasel clattering in his palsied hands. His heart hurt. When he looked out on the land, his heart hurt him terribly. The elves no longer came. The birds and the beasts had all fled the burning. There was only the mouse and the hedgehog and the few doves who had lived all their lives in the loft. And the few sparrows who came. Only them now.

 

He set the tray down, absent-mindedly took the hedgehog from his pocket and set it by the dormouse on the tray, took a cake and crumbled it on the window-ledge for the birds. A tear ran down into his beard.

 

Old fraud. He was. He had only little magics, forest magics. But they'd burned all his forest and scattered the elves, and he failed even these last few creatures. They would overthrow the tower. They would spread over all the land, and there would be no more magic in the world. He should have done something long ago-but he had never done a great magic. He should have raised whirlwinds and elementals-but he could not so much as summon the legged teapot up the stairs. And his heart hurt, and his courage failed. The birds failed to come-foreknowing, perhaps. The hedgehog and the dormouse looked at him with eyes small and solemn in the firelight, last of all.

 

No. He stirred himself, hastened to the musty books-his master's books, dusty and a thousand times failed. You've not the heart, his master would say. You've not the desire for the great magics. You'll call nothing- because you want nothing.

 

Now he tried. He drew his symbols on the floor- scattered his powders, blinking through the ever-shifting spectacles, panting with his exertions. He would do it this time-would hold the tower on the edge of faery, between the Empire of Man and the kingdom of the elves. He believed, this time. He conjured powers. He called on the great ones. The winds sighed and roared inside the tower.

 

And died.

 

His arms fell. He wept, great tears sliding down into his beard. He picked up the dormouse and the hedgehog and held them to his breast, having no more hope.

 

Then she came. The light grew, white and pure. The scent of lilies filled the air-and she was there, naked, and white, hands empty-beautiful.

 

"I've come," she said.

 

His heart hurt him all the more. "Forgive me," he said. "I was trying for something-fiercer."

 

"Oh," she said, dark eyes sad.

 

"I make only-small magics," he said. "I was trying for-a dragon, maybe. A basilisk. An elemental. To stop the king. But I do flowers best. And smokes and maybe a little fireworks. And it's not enough. Goodbye. Please go. Please do go. Whichever you are. You're the wrong kind. You're beautiful. And he's going to come tomorrow-the king-and the armies- it's not a place for a gentle spirit. Only-could you take them- please? Mouse and Hedgehog- they'd not be so much. I'd not like to bother you. But could you? And then you can go."

 

"Of course," she said. It was the whisper of wind, her voice. The moving of snow crystals on frozen crust. She took them to her breast. Kissed them in turn, and jewels clothed them in white. "Old man," she said, and on his brow too planted a kiss, and jewels followed, frosty white. White dusted all the room, all the books and the clutter and the cobwebs. She walked down the stairs and out the gate, and jeweled it all in her wake. She walked the land, and the snow fell, and fell, and the winds blew-till only the banners were left, here and there, stiffened with ice, above drifts and humps of snow which marked the tents. The land was all white, horizon to horizon. Nothing stirred-but the wolves that hunted the deer, and the birds that hunted the last summer's berries.

 

Death drifted back to the tower, and settled there, in the frost and the lasting snows, where the old man and magic slept their lasting sleep.

 

She breathed kisses on him, on the little ones, and kept watch-faithful to her calling, while the snows deepened, and even the wolves slept, their fur white and sparkling with the frost.

 

---

 

VI

 

we share the lounge with passengers now. A young couple holds hands under a table over to the corner. Some things never change.

 

There is crisis aboard. One of the passengers has locked himself in his cabin and the steward and a doctor have been back and forth down the hall trying to get the door open. Jump and transit does this to some people.

 

I don't think he ever went near a window. He would always sit with his back to them. He talked through all the status advisories.

 

"You wonder why some people come out here," you say.

 

"I suppose he has to. Business, maybe."

 

There is a certain amount of to-ing and fro-ing, up and down the halls. Some passengers delight in the drama. And sip their drinks and hug their own superiority in their boredom.

 

"It's a terrible thing for that man," I say. "Perceptions again. The first time you know you're not anywhere near where you were, not anywhere near where your whole world is-then you have to know that you're somewhere else. That man has just learned something. His safe world is shattered."

 

"Look at the rest of these people. They don't lock themselves in their rooms. And I don't think they ever think about the universe. They just have their drinks. And their canned music. And when they look out the windows they don't see the stars. They just see lights."

 

"That's the tragedy of the man in his room, isn't it? He can almost see the universe. He's so much closer to the truth than he ever was in all his life." I sip my own drink. "And he's locked his door."

 

"Couldn't they open it from the main board?"

 

"They could. Or just use the master key. They will if they have to."

 

More to-ing and fro-ing.

 

"Perceptions," you say.

 

"Perceptions. Taste, scent, touch, hearing, sense of balance, sight-of course, sight. And the systems we make and the systems others make for us. The orders and the logic. It's so easy to take what others give us. Gifts are so hard to say no to."

 

"We want so much to believe we know. That's the trouble."

 

"Even to believe we can't know is a system. Maybe we can know the universe. Maybe there is an answer. It's dangerous to assume there isn't."

 

"There. I thought you'd gotten sane."

 

"It's dangerous to assume anything and stop looking."

 

"You can't guarantee it isn't dangerous to look, either."

 

"No," I say. "I can't." We have gotten to that stage of renewed honesty. The potential for friendship, it may be. And we know nothing at all of each other.

 

It is so hard even to know ourselves.

 

---

 

The Brothers

 

I

 

the wind came from the west out of the rocky throat of the Sianail, even while the morning sun was shining in the glen, and there was something singing on it. Perhaps unGifted men could not hear it yet, that faint, far wail, but it echoed clearly off the mountain walls of Gleann Gleatharan, down to Dun Gorm, and it gave the king no peace.

 

There was storm in that wind as it came, scouring hills the stones of which were old and dread, hills which remembered darker things than storms and hid things at their hearts-the bones of warriors and kings, and even, men said, spirits older than the gods.

 

high within the hills was also bright green, even on this murky, misty day, grass green as life and peace; but whenever this mood came on the mountains that hove up northward, souls keened on the gray wind and black crows flew on it, and it was well to think of shelter.

 

The traveler never did. He came down from the rocky heights, taking chances with stones turned slick with mist. He went gray-cloaked in wool, his feet in scarred brown leather that had seen many a league and many a fording and many a soaking before the one that threatened. He had hanging about his neck, did this gray traveler, a flat stone that a stream had worn through in its center; if a man looked through this opening, then he would see things as they were and glamors had no power on him. But the traveler had limited faith in this magic, putting more trust in the iron of his plain sword, which he had gotten on Skean Eirran off a dead man, on that narrow spit of sand, when they raided up by Skye. This he carried and no other weapon but a dagger for his meat; and no armor but his gray oiled-wool cloak to keep the cold mist from his skin. His name he did not have. He had not been using that since he passed into the southland; and perhaps they were hunting him by now; perhaps they had sent men ahead of him so there would be men to meet him when he came. When he looked over his shoulder he saw nothing but bare old stones and lawless gorse besides the mist-damp green, but now and again from hillsides he heard dogs baying that might be shepherds' dogs disturbed by his passage or might not; they might be pursuit from his enemies and they might not, in this fey, foul day that wrapped itself in storm.

 

Then with the passing of a hill he found all of a broad glen dropping away at his feet, himself in storm-shadow and the most of the glen still in sunlight that speared down through gray-bottomed cloud and turned the dark green to dazzling emerald. It was a land of neat hedgerows and careful fields and pasturages well cared-for. The very hills surrounding this valley had a tamer look, as if here kinder powers blessed the hedges and fenced out the hazards of the wild hills.

 

Amid it all, surely the reason and center of this tranquility-a Dun sat on a hill above a pleasant stream, in the face of low hills where its cottages clung as faint dots against the green.

 

He knew where he had come. It was no great dun. It was built of the wreckage time had made of its hill, so that one melded with the other-Dun Gorm it was, the Blue Keep, and it took its name from those stones as well, that deep gray stone that mimicked the sky and turned strange colors, one thing in storm and another when the sun was shining as it did now in spears across the glen, between the clouds, while the mist on the hills sent freshets down.

 

It held peace, and luck, this land where he had come. He had known neither in his life, and seeing this before him, he went to it.

 

there was a window of Dun Gorm that looked out above the stableyard fences, up toward the hills, and dread brought the king to it constantly this day. Cinnfhail was this king's name; and he was feyer than all his line, all of whom had been on speaking terms with the Sidhe, the Fair Folk who had known and held this valley before men came.

 

There had been a time that men and Fair Folk had lived closer than they did now: the Sidhe, the dwellers under bough and the dwellers under stone, had lived close beside the hewers of both, at peace. From most places in the world nowadays the Sidhe had indeed gone, leaving the hills and the glens to man. But in Gleann Gleatharan the Sidhe still pursued their own furtive business in the hills and woods while men built of stone and wood in the valley. And so long as a man took his wood and stone from the lonely heights of Gleann Gleatharan northward and far from the forest at the south of the valley he got on with the Sidhe well enough-if he were born to Dun Gorm, whose first king had been their friend.

 

Sometimes even in these days, Cinnfhail had heard their singing, oftenest in the evenings, fair as dream and haunting his mind for days; or sometimes in his riding he had heard a whisper which gave him good advice, and he came back from his riding wiser than he had gone out to it. Cinnfhail King had always cherished such encounters and longed for more meetings than he had had in his long life.

 

But today-today he heard a song he did not wish to hear. It was the bain sidhe wailing, not the singing of the fair glas sidhe; it was the White Singer, the harbinger of death. She sang along the heights thus far, that sawtoothed, gorse-grown ridge that walled them from the world; or from down the glen where the brook vanished into woods the Sidhe-folk still owned.

 

Stay away, he wished her. Come no nearer to my land.

 

But the singing kept on, rising and falling on the wind.

 

"It will be a storm tonight," his wife said, queen Samhadh, finding king Cinnfhail watching there alone. He held her close a while and murmured agreement, glad that Samhadh was deaf to any worse things.

 

All the day, coming and going from that window, Cinnfhail could not help thinking on dangers to those he loved. He considered his son Raghallach, a youth handsome enough to break the heart of any maid in Eirran, him the bravest and fairest of all the youth of Gleann Gleatharan. The love Cinnfhail had for his fair-haired son, the pride he took in Raghallach, was such that he could never tell it, especially to Raghallach-but he went to Raghallach and tried, this day, and that attempt set a glow in Raghallach's eyes, and afterward, set a wondering in Raghallach's heart, just what strange mood was on his father.

 

In the same way Cinnfhail King looked on Deirdre his daughter, who was not yet fourteen: so small, so high-hearted, the very image of what his Samhadh had been in the glory of her youth, as if time turned back again and laughed through the halls in Deirdre's steps. He had so much in his family; in all this land; he had wife and children and faithful friends and he thought the Sidhe might be jealous of such luck as he had: there were Sidhe reputed for such spite. So while he listened to that singing on the wind he contrived excuses that would keep all he loved indoors.

 

"Lord," said Conn his shieldman, coming on him at this window-vigil, together with Tuathal his Harper, "some worry is on you."

 

"Nothing," Cinnhfail King said to Conn, and searched Conn's eyes too for any signs of ill-luck and death, this man so long his friend: his shieldman, who had stood with him in his youth and drunk with him at his board. There were no more wars for them. They had settled Gleann Gleatharan at peace, and now they grew old together, breeding fine horses and red cattle and laughing over their children's antics. His shieldman was clad farmer-wise, like any crofter that held the heights. Of treasures he held dear, this man was one of the chiefest, in his loyalty and courage; and hardly less, Tuathal the harper, the teacher of his children in riddlery and wit. "It's nothing," Cinnfhail said. "A little melancholy. Perhaps I'm growing old."

 

"Never, lord," Conn said.

 

"Not by my will, at least. But an old wound aches, that's all."

 

"Cursed weather," Conn said.

 

One should never curse the Sidhe. The impiety chilled the king. But Conn was deaf to what he cursed. "Go," Cinnfhail said, "have cook put on something to warm the bones; there'll be cold men coming from the fields early today; and have the fire lit in hall; and have the lads give the horses extra and one of them to sleep there in the stable tonight. Athas will be kicking the stall down again."

 

"Aye, lord," said Conn, and went.

 

"Lord," said the harper Tuathal then, lingering after Conn had gone, "there's something in this wind."

 

Of course his harper heard it. A harper would, and Tuathal was a good one, whose songs sometimes echoed Sidhe dreams that Cinnfhail King had had. Tuathal had indeed heard. There was worry in the harper's gray eyes.

 

"It comes no nearer," said Cinnfhail. "Perhaps it will not." He was suddenly wishing the bain sidhe to go along the ridge, among his people, to any other house in the glen, and he felt a stinging guilt for this moment's selfishness. So he was not altogether virtuous as a king, not selfless. He knew this in himself. It was his weakness, that he desired a little peace in his fading years; and time, time, the one thing his life had less and less of.

 

Is it myself it sings for? he wondered. O gods.

 

cinnfhail was by the window again as the clouds came down, as the last few rays of westering sun walked the green of his valley within its mountain walls. The sun touched a moment on the heights and for a while the song seemed fainter, overwhelmed by this last green brilliance.

 

In the fields nearby the horses raced, tails lifting, as horses will who play tag with ghosts before such storms; the boys had the gate open and the horses knew where they should go, but horses and young folk both loving to make chaos of any scheme, it was all being done with as much disorder as either side could muster. Sheep were tending home on their own like small rainclouds across the earth: their fleeces would be wet and scattering the mist in waterdrops- the old ewe was wise as a sheep was ever likely to be, selfishly thinking of her own comfort, and she brought the others by example, her bell ringing across the meadows. From their own pastures came the cattle, not hurrying unseemly, but not lingering either, home for byre and straw, needing no herdboy to tell them. This was the way of the beasts in Gleann Gleatharan, that they would not stray (excepting the horses, and them not far); it was the nature of the crops that few weeds would grow in them and of the folk that they grew up straight and tall and laughing much. And Cinnfhail King had a moment's ease thinking on his luck; but the clouds took back the sky then, and the mist came down.

 

The hills were everywhere laced with skeins of sky-white streams that only existed when the mist and the rain were on the mountaintops. They joined in waterfalls that merged with the tumbling Gley and ran right beneath their walls, in their green pastures.

 

And down beside the Gley-brook a red-haired man came walking.

 

He might have been one of their own, wrapped in an oiled-wool mantle, in dull brown clothes else, his head bowed against the wind. But the singing was louder, filling the very air. And this man walked like none of theirs returning, but with the weight of miles on him and a shadow of ill about him that the king's Sight knew. Knowledge closed like ice about Cinnfhail's heart.

 

This is what I have feared all day, Cinnfhail thought. It is in this man.

 

"lord," said Conn, meeting Cinnfhail soon after on the stairs, "there is a traveler at the gate."

 

A mean thought touched Cinnfhail in that moment, that he should simply order this traveler away. But fate could not be turned. And never had any traveler been turned from Dun Gorm's gate, not in Cinnfhail's reign, and not in all the reigns of the Sidhe-blessed kings before him. It was part of the luck of the place and he dared not break it. "Bid him to table," said Cinnfhail.

 

"Lord," said Conn, doubtfully, "I don't like the look of him."

 

"Bid him," said Cinnfhail.

 

Why? he should have asked Conn, why do you not like his look? Conn was a wise judge of men. But it seemed pointless, something there was no helping, as if this man had to be here tonight and they had to let him in. Cinnfhail had felt it all the day. The singer had fallen silent now. She was content, perhaps. The wind brought them only rain, and this stranger at their door, toward suppertime, as the sun went down in murk.

 

cinnfhail's wife Samhadh came and kissed him as he went down to the hall; Deirdre came, with her hair dewed with mist as she had crossed the yard, her green and blue Gleann Gleatharan plaid wrapped about her still and all dewed on its fibers in the lamplight; Raghallach came in all wet-haired and ruddy-cheeked from putting the horses to stable, and Conn came and Tuathal joined them, with others of the hold. The common-hall echoed with steps on stone and wood, with the busy scrape of benches, the rattle of plates: there was the smell of mutton stew in the pot, of hot bread, of good ale queen Samhadh brewed herself, none better in the land.

 

Cinnfhail saw the stranger then, who had come into the warm hall still all muffled with his oiled-wool cloak; a page tried to take it, but the man refused and sat down at the end of the table in the place of least honor.

 

"My lord," said Samhadh, slipping her arm within Cinnhfail's, "is something still amiss?"

 

He saw blood within his vision, a bright sword. The dark Sight passed with a shiver. He thought of bundling his family elsewhere, of contriving some excuse to take them out of hall tonight, but it all seemed futile. He did not sense danger to them; it was something far more vague.

 

So he sat down, his family about him. The harper Tuathal leaned near Conn the shieldman and whispered something. Conn looked sharp and frowning down the table, toward their guest, then got up and went here and there to men about the hall and to some of the women. Cinnfhail did not miss this, and caught the harper's fey, Sighted eye as the servants poured the ale. So Tuathal had also Seen, and Conn had seen, after his own fashion, as he judged men; and quietly these two faithful men took their own precautions.

 

"Look to it," said Cinnfhail to the servant nearest, "that the visitor's cup is never dry a moment,"-for it seemed prudent to ply this visitor with strong ale, to muddle him, to keep him well-pleased, propitiation, perhaps, or at least, should swords be drawn-to make him drunk. Cinnfhail's own men would not be.

 

Conn had surely seen to that. Cinnfhail's own shield was on the wall, his sword hung beside it years unused; a door was nearby. All these things were not by chance, in the years he and his fathers before him had ruled in Dun Gorm, in years when other folk had coveted this fair green land. The danger seemed quiet for the moment, biding; he determined he would be wary with this guest about what he said, and send his family as early as possible from the hall.

 

The thunder broke above the hold, and rain pattered on the straw above, but the thatch was tight and snug; and below was warmth and good food and plenty of it. It was a rowdy hall; it had always been, with hounds that came and went and children who ate at the hearthside or filled and carried their bowls to some favored corner to laugh and giggle together; and a few youngsters old enough to take their places at the long table with men and women. About them all were the implements mostly not of war at all, but of their craft-old plowshares, a horseshoe or two, a great deal of rope and bits of harness and poles and such; it might have been any farmer's cottage, Dun Gorm, but for its sprawling size. It smelled of peace and plenty and the earth beneath its floors.

 

When bellies were full, Tuathal the harper took up his harp and sang the sort of song that set the children clapping; and then he sang a quiet song, after which the young ones must to bed in their lofts and nooks and some few must take them. Afterward the place was quieter while the harper meddled with his strings, a bright soft rippling of notes.

 

"Deirdre," said the king, taking the chance that he had planned, "be off to your own bed. Samhadh-"

 

"But there's the traveler," said Deirdre. "He hasn't told his tale."

 

Her young voice carried. There was stillness in the hall. It was truth. There was something owed Dun Gorm for the meal, news to share, purposes to tell. It was the custom in any civil hall-that gates were open and hearts ought to be, to honest folk; and honest folk returned something, be it news or a tale, for their supper.

 

And when the eyes of everyone in hall turned in anticipation to the traveler, their visitor lifted his head. He was a young man, with pale red hair and beard, the hair straggling about his shoulders and his eyes hard and bleak and colorless. "I come from over hills and by streams," he said in a hoarse dull voice. "And I have no harper's skill. I came here to ask the way ahead-how the road goes and how things sit up ahead."

 

It was rudely said; a countryman's bluntness, perhaps, lacking courtesy, but there was just enough grace to the voice to remind one it was rude. And that discourtesy slid like ice over Cinnfhail's skin, advisement this man was dangerous.

 

"As to that," said Cinnfhail, "ahead lies Gleann Fiach."

 

"What sort of place is this Gleann Fiach?"

 

"Not a happy place, visitor."

 

"Perhaps you will tell me."

 

Conn stirred in his place like a watchful dog, a dangerous one himself in his youth. His hall was a place of peace. Its own folk took merry liberties with their king; but this stranger took too much and had no grace in his taking, no courteous word, no tale, no peace. ù

 

"Dun Mhor is the name," Cinnfhail began, "of the dun that holds Gleann Fiach." He lifted two fingers of his right hand, a motion for Conn's sake, and others saw it who knew him well, that he was wary. "Fill my cup," Cinnfhail said, as if that had been the nature of the signal. A servant came and poured. Cinnfhail drank, and looked at the stranger in his hall. "And between here and Dun Mhor, traveler, lies a woods that has gotten wider through my reign. For its sake I counsel you to go some other way. Sidhe own it. But if you do go that way, walk softly; bruise no leaf. Speak nothing lightly to anyone you meet.

 

"Beyond that wood-" Cinnfhail drew another breath and the ale and old habit and Sidhe-gift cast his voice into the rhythm of the tale-teller, so that his heart grew quieter and the power of it came on him. It was the teller's spell, and while it lasted no harm could come. It brought peace again on the hall, and calmed hearts and quieted angers, being itself one of the greater magics: even the anger of the teller himself fell under its spell, and he saw good sense and quiet come to the eyes of the stranger who listened. "Beyond that wood lies Gleann Fiach; and there is no luck there. Gaelan was its king. His brother set on him and killed him. Have you not heard before now of Dun Mhor?"

 

"Tell me," said the stranger softly, and finding his manners, for it was a ritual question, "if you would, lord king."

 

"Fratricide." Cinnfhail drew a deeper breath. "And more general murder. Here in Gleann Gleatharan we hear the rumors that come over the hills-but there is the Sidhe-wood between us, and we will not trespass that, nor will they of Gleann Fiach from their side. To spill blood there has no luck in it, be you right or wrong. So we cannot mend affairs in that sorrowing land, even if we would break our own peace for it. Gleann Fiach has had no end of miseries, and today they are worse. My tale is two brothers; and the Sidhe-they are part of it: two brothers, Gaelan and Sliabhin-Gaelan the elder and Sliabhin the younger. Gaelan was a good man, traveler, proper heir to Dun Mhor after his father Brian; he was fair-spoken and fair in judgment and respecting the gods and the Sidhe-lands though Brian his father had not always done it. Once king Brian chased a deer and killed it, and it ran into the Sidhe-wood and bled there. That was the ill luck on him. And Brian's queen lay in childbed that very hour: she gave him Sliabhin, as foul a boy in his youth as Gaelan was fair, poaching to the very edge of the Sidhe-forest when he had the chance, fouling everything that was good-this was Sliabhin, a man eaten up with spite that he was not firstborn, that he had not been given Dun Mhor. There was no luck in such a man, and after king Brian died and Gaelan had the kingdom, Sliabhin was greatly afraid, imagining that his brother Gaelan would do him hurt. So Sliabhin rode away to the hills in fear. This is the kind of man Sliabhin was: it never occurred to him that Gaelan would not think immediately of his harm, because that is what he would have done to Gaelan himself if he had gotten the kingship.

 

"Now kindred-love can be blind and perhaps it was fey as well. Gaelan entreated his brother home and they fell on one another's neck and reconciled themselves; this oath was good in Gaelan's mouth but never in Sliabhin's. For a little time there was peace, but after that little time Sliabhin began to think how he could cause mischief. And he found men like himself and he hunted the land for his amusement, taking every chance to be apart from the dun and to plan and plot with these greedy men. They took delight in hunting near the forest edge, and though they would not go into it they mocked the Sidhe, trampling its edge and harrying the game up to it. They ranged the hills and one day they grew weary of the sport they had had and caught a poor herdboy, making him their quarry, and made it seem wolves had torn him, and not their dogs. But the boy's sister had seen. Her brother had hidden her in the rocks when he saw the men come, and the poor maid ran with all her might, all through the night she ran. Drucht was her name, and she was a wise young girl, knowing her brother beyond help and her father like to be killed if she should go first to him and tell him what was done: she went to the dun and poured out her tale to king Gaelan himself.

 

"Then Gaelan believed what he should have believed before; and he was hot after his brother to bring his justice on him. But one of Sliabhin's ilk was at hand, who took horse and rode ahead to warn Sliabhin not to go back to the dun that day.

 

"That was the parting of the ways finally between the brothers, Sliabhin banished, but late, far too late. The Sidhe set misfortune on the land. Crops failed.

 

Gaelan's queen, Moralach, was with child; and it came stillborn. She lost others after; until one she had alive, and that one stole her health.

 

"Now from the day Sliabhin was cast out, he had been laying plans. Twenty years he bided, causing trouble where he could, and in a land with no luck on it there will always be discontent, and among young folk there will always be those who do not believe the truth of things that their elders were alive to witness.

 

"Now this next that I tell you is no long-ago tale. It came about a year ago, when Gaelan rode out of Dun Mhor to tend to his land, after the damages of a flooding of the Gley. There was murder done at home. Every servant that was loyal was killed; every man who could not be corrupted. So we in Gleann Gleatharan surmise. No one knows. Gaelan rode back within his own gates that day and never out again, nor any loyal man with him. Sliabhin is king in Dun Mhor now, over all Gleann Fiach. He took Gaelan's queen Moralach to his bed, holding her young son to hostage against her willingness to please him; his brother's corpse was not cold yet in the hall below. He spared the boy, that one grants; but the queen died after. They say she hanged herself from the roof tree. Whatever passes in Dun Mhor these days, it is no hall I would guest in. A man walking down the glen and through the Sidhe-wood should know that, and go some other way if he could."

 

There was silence for a space. It was a tale everyone in Dun Gorm knew, if not all parts of it. And all of a sudden Cinnfhail was thinking of that grim hold beyond the woods, how such a wicked king as Sliabhin might well draw others of his ilk to come and live at his board. The thunder cracked and shook the very posts of the hall. The wind wailed and set the hairs to lifting at the back of Cinnfhail's neck as he stared at the traveler.

 

"So you have no love for Sliabhin," the stranger said.

 

"None," said Cinnfhail.

 

The traveler stood up, hurled a sword clattering onto the table to the dismay of those nearest. Conn's sword ripped from its sheath in his startlement; benches were overset as swords came out and men and women came to their feet all around the room. But the stranger did no more than let fall his mantle.

 

"Gods help us," said Samhadh, pulling Deirdre to shelter behind her, and Raghallach was on his feet with a naked sword as Conn moved between the stranger and Cinnfhail, for about his shoulders was the red tartan of Dun Mhor.

 

"It is a ghost," said someone.

 

"No," said Cinnfhail, and waved the swords away, feeling a weakness in his knees and a tightness in his chest, for the price of the Sight was sometimes blindness to fated things; and now that badge of Dun Mhor made him see, at the same time that Conn saw, and the rest. Others remained on their feet, but Cinnfhail sought his chair again, feeling suddenly the years of his life upon him. "Man, what is your name?"

 

"Caith is my name," the traveler said, "mac Gaelan. First born. Gaelan's true heir and Moralach's own son."

 

There was silence for a space in which Cinnfhail's heart beat very hard. Raghallach moved close to him; Conn stood between this intruder and all the family.

 

"My father fostered me north," said mac Gaelan, never stirring from where he stood. "To Dun na nGall for safety. And he gave out his first son was stillborn. He knew that Sliabhin would strike at him. He wished me safe. And we got the news up there not three months gone, that I had delayed my homecoming-overlong."

 

"We have things to speak of," said Cinnfhail. He moved aside and touched Samhadh's hand, wishing her to be prudent and to take Deirdre away from this, out of danger of this man and the things that he could say. "Go," he said softly, "go up, go upstairs, now, Samhadh."

 

"There is no need," said the traveler, coming forward of the table's end, heedless of hands on swords all about him. There was a weariness about him, but he moved with grace all the same. He was a man that could walk soft-footed through a hall of enemies and bemaze them all, as he ensorcelled them.

 

"My sword is back there. I left it, did I not? And you were my father king Gaelan's friend. And never were you Sliabhin's."

 

"Father," said Raghallach. "Can it be truth?"

 

"It might be," Cinnfhail said heavily. "I did hear more to the story. I heard it long ago. So tell me- Caith mac Gaelan. Why have you come here?"

 

"To hunt out my father's killers. To take Dun Mhor. You were his neighbor, lord. His friend. I'd think you would be weary of Sliabhin by now."

 

"We'll speak of it."

 

"Speak of it. Lord, I have a young brother in that man's hands. I did not come here to speak of it."

 

There was a stillness then, in which the stranger stood among them with the ring of anguish dying in the air. And with justice on his side.

 

"What are you asking?" asked Raghallach. "That we go to war for your sake?"

 

"No," said Caith mac Gaelan. "That would do my brother no good. Sliabhin would kill him at the end of any siege, and do other things before. I want my brother safe before I take Dun Mhor, whatever the cost."

 

So there was honor in this young man; it touched that honor that was in Raghallach, like a fire to straw, in their valley that had had its peace, and Cinnfhail felt a chill raise gooseflesh on his neck.

 

"We will talk of it," Cinnfhail said again. "A night for sleep. A night for thinking. Then we will talk."

 

"Father," said Raghallach. "We have suffered Sliabhin far too long, the way I reckon it."

 

"We will take time to think about it, I said." The cold was about Cinnfhail's heart, a sense of doom, of change. And he remembered the singer on the wind. "To bed! We've said all tonight that wants saying. Morning and sober heads are what's needed, not ale-thoughts and ale-talk."

 

"Lord," Raghallach said. There was fire in his glance. He longed for honor, did Raghallach, here in this glen Cinnfhail had made quiet and at peace with all his deeds and all his striving. Raghallach heard Tuathal harp the ballads; Raghallach dreamed, in his innocence, of undoing it all and doing it over again. Cinnfhail knew.

 

"Off with you." Cinnfhail kissed Samhadh, and Deirdre, who looked past him at the stranger with wonder in her eyes. She had also heard the hero-songs, the sad, fair ballads; and Deirdre dreamed her own dreams of adventures. Both Cinnfhail's children then were snared; and Cinnfhail turned to his son smiling gently, though his heart hurt him; he clapped a hand to Raghallach's shoulder. "In the morning, hear? Quietly, as such things should be thought out. Obey me. To bed, all, to beds! And no rumor-mongering, no speaking of this beyond the gates. I have said it. Hear?"

 

He rarely spoke as king. It was not his way. When he did so now, folk moved, and bowed their heads and scurried in haste.

 

"Leave it!" he bade the servants, to have them gone; and to Conn, catching him by the arm, he spoke certain words which grieved and shamed him to speak.

 

But he had the Sight, and what he Saw now gave him no peace.

 

caith gathered his sword from the table and sheathed it, having no desire in his mind now but rest, being well-fed and easier in the finding of friends than he had been in the long weeks since leaving Dun na nGall.

 

But: "Come with me," the king's harper said now, plucking at his sleeve. "The king will speak with you privately. He has more to tell to you. You'll want your cloak."

 

Caith considered it and weighed the risks of treachery; but he had eaten this man's bread and judged him as he sat, that the lord of Dun Gorm was what he had heard, a king worth listening to and a man to be trusted.

 

So he gathered his cloak about him and went where the harper led him, nothing questioning, down the stairs and, as the harper took up a torch from the bracket there, out a lower door into the dark and the retreating thunder. They stood beneath the smithy shed, with the rain dripping off the wooden roof and standing in puddles in the yard beyond. Cattle lowed; horses were restless in their pen nearby, a solitary dog barked in the dying of the storm, but it knew the harper and it was silent at his word.

 

"What is this?" Caith said. "What is this skulking about?" He suddenly doubted everything in this lonely place, and his hand was on his sword in the concealment of his cloak.

 

"My lord will speak to you," the harper repeated. And truth, from around the side of the yard came the king of Gleatharan with his shieldman by him, all muffled up in cloaks themselves.

 

Caith waited, his hand still on his sword, scowling at the two coming toward him and still uneasy. He had trusted few men in his life. Nameless, nothing, he had no teaching in things he needed to become what he was born to be. Stay here in Dun na nGall, his foster-father had said. Don't meddle. There's nothing in Gleann Fiach for you. And again: If you go there, then plan to keep going. You defy me, boy-you'll not be coming back here.

 

That was well enough. There was nothing that man who fostered him had ever given him but whipmarks on his back, and worse within his soul: You take what's given you, this man had said, Hagan, his father's cousin. And: Keep your mouth shut, boy, whose son you are. Mind my words. So they name you foundling bastard. Maybe that's what you really are.

 

A girl-child had looked up at him, flower-fair tonight; a man he wished had been his father had smiled at him; a man he would had been his brother had offered him help; a grave-eyed queen had looked on him with amazement- It was the way he would have seen Dun Mhor at his homecoming if he could have dreamed that dun clean and fair again. In this place he had had at least one homecoming such as an exile might dream of.

 

But the king of Gleatharan asked him out into the rain, into the dark to speak with him; and this was not part of his dream, this was not the welcome he had expected. Rather it held something of connivances and tricks-and this kind of thing he had dealt in often enough in his life.

 

The king came to him, squelching up in the mud, in the falling mist, till he passed beneath the roof of the shed and into the torchlight the harper held. The shieldman stood behind his king, his hands both out of sight beneath his oiled-wool cloak.

 

"Mac Gaelan," said Cinnfhail King, "forgive me. I ask that first."

 

"For what, then? Can we get to that?"

 

"Go back to Dun na nGall. Tonight. There's no gain here for you."

 

Caith drew in his breath. It wanted a moment to know what to say to such a warning from a king so two-faced. "Well, lord," he said, "gods requite you for it."

 

"I'll give you provisions," the king said, "and a horse-the pick of all I have."

 

Keep your gifts, Caith would have said then. But he was too much in need for pride. "We may be neighbors yet," he said in his anger. "I will return the horse."

 

"Mac Gaelan."

 

"You were my father's friend. So the price of your friendship is a meal and a horse. That's well. A man should know his friends."

 

"Mind your tongue," the shieldman muttered.

 

"He has cause," the king said. "Mac Gaelan-" He stayed Caith with a hand against his shoulder. "Go back to Dun na nGall. I have the Sight, mac Gaelan. And there is no luck for you. For the gods' own sake go home."

 

"In Dun Mhor is my home. My brother is still in their hands. I will tell you something, lord of Dun Gorm: I had something of that kind from my foster father. I know what a whip feels like, my lord. No, I'll not leave my brother to Sliabhin. And for my father's murder-where on the gods' own earth should I go, tell me that, until I have killed that man?"

 

"A kinslayer has no rest in the world. Whatever his cause."

 

"Sliabhin's no kin of mine. I'll not own him mine. He murdered my father, lord! His own brother. If any man could have come and set matters right, it might have been my father's friend, but I see how things sit here at Dun Gorm, how eager you are to set things right. You leave me no choice. No. I'll kill Sliabhin myself, without a qualm."

 

There was terror in the old king's eyes and something hard at the same time. "Stay," Cinnfhail said, stopping him a second time, this time with a biting grip of a hand still powerful. "I cannot let you go- mac Gaelan! stop and listen to me."

 

Caith turned, then, flinched from under the king's hard hand, his own upon his sword. "I'll need the horse," Caith said.

 

"You'll have the horse. And whatever else you need. Go back to Dun na nGall; or go ahead to Gleann Fiach and rue it, rue it all your life. I don't think you know; you don't want to know more than I said in hall. Listen to me: I have a selfish cause. If you take my son with you, he'll die there. I see it. I see it in the moon. There'll be blood, blood-no hope for you-For the gods' sake, lad, listen. You don't know who you are!"

 

The cold went to Caith's bones. Bastard, his foster father had hurled at him. "Old man," he said, "it was no grand place my father sent me to be fostered. Maybe he had little choice in his relatives. Sure enough he had little luck in his brother. And maybe a lord would send his son to the likes of Hagan mac Dealbhan if he had no choice of other kin-Or is it another kind of tale? Whose bastard am I? Yours?"

 

"Sliabhin's."

 

Caith whirled and lashed out with his bare right hand, but the king's man brought his arm in the way and seized him about the neck. The breath stifled in him, not alone from the strangling hold on him. "Liar," he said. "O gods, you whoreson liar-"

 

"Stay!" the king said to his man. "Let him go."

 

"Lord," the shieldman protested.

 

"Let him go, I say." And to Caith: "Lad, Sliabhin had his way with Gaelan's wife, with Moralach, the queen. That Gaelan discovered when the herder-girl came to the hall and told her tale: Moralach confessed to him Sliabhin's other betrayal and her own shame. And that was the second cause of Sliabhin's exile. Gaelan forgave queen Moralach: she claimed it was rape and her fearing to tell him because of his blind love of Sliabhin and hoping the child in her was her husband's after all. But the child grew in her like guilt; and she feared it; and now that she heard the herder-girl tell her tale, she believed it might be a murderer's child in her belly. So she confessed. Four days Gaelan shut her away and she lived in dread of him; but on the fifth he wept and forgave her and this was a thing few knew, but Moralach confessed it to my queen when she rode there to be with her in the birthing. And at the last, lad, my lady was not in the room; they said Moralach commanded it, wanting only her nurse and the midwife with her; but it was a living child they carried from that room that night: my lady was there, close by, and saw it moving in the blanket. With her own eyes she saw it. And afterward when my lady came to Moralach, Moralach wept and clung to her and raved until they gave her a potion to make her sleep. Of the babe they gave out that it was stillborn. And my queen came home and carried that in her heart for two days before she told it me. After that I went no more to Gaelan's hold and my queen did not: it was worse than fostering we feared, for in queen Moralach's raving she told still another tale." From harsh the king's voice had become pitying, from anger had gone to shame, and still Caith stood there, shivering in the rain. Somewhere nearby a horse snorted and stamped, splashing a puddle. "Do you understand, lad? Need I say it? It was never rape. She let Sliabhin in, this vain woman, and paid for it all her life. When her other babes died she was crazed and thought it her punishment; when she bore the last alive she was no more mother to it-she gave it to a nurse to care for. Perhaps she let her old lover in; perhaps they had met before. Whispers said as much. To do her mercy, likeliest it was some other hand let Sliabhin's men into Dun Mhor. And it is true Moralach hanged herself; so surely she repented. That is the tale they tell, of servants who were there to see and fled to the high hills when they had the chance. There is more to it: before she was with child the last time, Moralach went out riding. And she rode often that season, and always toward the hills. Do you understand me? The younger boy- may be Sliabhin's son. Hence the whispers who it was let those gates open. And Gaelan either fey or fool, he refused to credit rumors. So they say. Perhaps Gaelan knew and counted it all one with the curse on his land, the curse on his bed. Maybe he only wanted peace in his life. He was a sick man and his heart was broken and he became a fool. So he died. And by what they whisper, the younger boy is safe in Sliabhin's hands if anyone is."

 

Caith no more than stood there. It all fitted then, all the pieces of his life. He set them all in order, his hand upon his sword.

 

"Is that the truth?" he asked, because the silence waited to be filled.

 

"I will give you the best help that I can give. Only go from here, back to Dun na nGall. You are Sliabhin's true son. The Sidhe have set a curse on him, on all his line, and I have the Sight: I tell you whose son you are. Go back. This is not a place for you; and gods know a patricide is damned."

 

"My foster father said that I should not come back to him," Caith said in a voice that failed him. "So he believed it too. All these years. And you've known. How many others?"

 

"Does it matter? Nothing can mend what is."

 

"You forget. I have a brother in Dun Mhor."

 

"A brother you've never seen. Sliabhin's son."

 

"Why, then, my true brother still, would he not be?"

 

"Don't be a fool! Sliabhin's likely son and in Sliabhin's keeping. You can do nothing to him but harm."

 

"I can get him out of there."

 

"For the gods' sake, lad-"

 

"You promised me a horse."

 

The old king considered him sadly. "O lad, and what good do you bring? See, brother, will you say, I've killed our father to set you free? It goes on. It won't stop. It will never stop."

 

"The horse. That's all I want."

 

King Cinnfhail nodded toward the pen. Caith walked that way, in the dying rain, with the mist against his face. The horses, let from their stable in the dying of the storm, stared back at him, with the torchlight in their eyes and shining on their coats, more wealth of fine horses than any king had in Eirran, horses to heal the heart with the looking on them and the touching of them. On such horses a man could ride and ride, leaving everything behind. Men would envy such horses, would fight a war over any one such horse as he saw to choose from.

 

But a man who wanted to go quietly, who wanted no attention on himself when he came into Dun Mhor- "That one," Caith said, choosing a shaggy white horse which stood within the shadow near the stable, raw-boned and ungainly beside the rest.

 

"Not that one," said the king. "Choose another. That one is mine."

 

"It is the one I will have," Caith said harshly. "Everything else of your hospitality turned false. So I will take that one or walk. No other will serve me."

 

"Be it as you will," the old king said, and stayed his shieldman with a shake of his head. "Be kind to my horse then. Dathuil is his name. And he will serve you."

 

Fair, it meant. It was an ugly horse. The king leaned against the fence and held out his hands to him and he trotted over like a child's pet. "Get his bridle," king Cinnfhail said to his shieldman, "and his saddle."

 

And when the shieldman had gone in and come out with the stable lad and the gear, the king would none of their help, but stepped under the rail and took the bridle and saddle, and saddled the raw-boned horse himself, all with such touches that said the old man loved this beast, he who had so many stronger and finer.

 

"I will not use him ill," Caith said sullenly when he saw that it was not all a lie, that he had chosen a horse which the old man truly loved above the others, "and I will send him home again if I can. But truth, no other would serve me. I'll come into Dun Mhor as I came here, a wanderer-unless you intend to betray me, unless you have already sent a messenger out tonight. And then, my lord-" He looked king Cinnfhail full in the eyes. "-I'll trust you and Sliabhin have your own compacts: in that case he'll return your horse himself to you, I'm sure, and keep as much of me as pleases him."

 

"Take Dathuil," said the king. "I will not wish you anything."

 

Caith climbed up to the horse's back, and took the sack of provisions that the shieldman gave him. Need compelled, and rankled in Caith's soul. Quietly he began to ride away, then drove in his heels and sped off through the open gate, a white ghost flying into the dark and mist.

 

"Dathuil," said Conn. "O gods, my lord-"

 

"There is a doom on him," said Cinnfhail, staring after the retreating rider. Tears spilled down his cheeks though his face remained composed. "He chose Dathuil. It was his fate to choose; and not mine to stop him. I know it. Gods help us. Gods save us from Dun Mhor."

 

The harper Tuathal was there, somber in the rain, holding aloft his torch. "Come inside, my lord."

 

Cinnfhail walked over the trampled yard. A horse whinnied long and forlornly; others did, distressed. And a cold was in Cinnfhail's bones that not all the warmth of his hall and cheer of his friends and house could assuage.

 

the ugly horse ran on, down the glen, beside the Gley, never checking his pace and never breaking stride. Smooth as the wind Dathuil ran, and the cold mist stung Caith's cheeks, stung his eyes which pain had already stung. There was power in this horse, as in no horse he had ever ridden; its ugliness masked both strength and unlikely speed. So the king had had reason in his affection for this beast; Caith laid no heel to it and hardly used the reins at all, finding something true-hearted at least, this brute that bore him on its back and gave him its strength, when it was beyond his own power to have traveled far this night.

 

He reined it back at last, having fear for it breaking its heart in this running, but it threw its head and settled easily into a tireless rack. Its power hammered at him, kept him on his way, and while he rode, while its hooves struck the wet earth in tireless rhythm he had no need to think, no need to reckon what he was or where he went.

 

Bastard. Far more than that, he was. He recalled the rage in his foster-father's face when he knew where he would go. Kinslayer. Patricide.

 

He had a brother he had never seen. Brian was his name. He had built a fantasy around the boy, this innocence, this one kinsman he might recover who would be grateful to an elder, wiser brother, a quasi-son who should be the staying point of his pivotless life. He needed someone. He had loyalty to give and none would have it. He had made himself by ceaseless work and striving-everything a father could respect and love, in hopes his father would come to him at Dun na nGall and claim him.

 

Now he was going home, world-scarred and bereft of all innocent dreams but one. He had fought at Skye, a pirate no less than the man he was fostered to.

 

O father, come and get me. I am better than this man. Better than these pirates- When I am a man I will come to you instead and you will be glad that I am your son. Do you know where I am, or what we did at Skye? I have had my first battle, father.

 

Done my first murder-

 

I have got a sword. I took it off this dead man-

 

O father!

 

"gone?" asked Raghallach.

 

The narrow stairs flowed with shadows in the torchlight. Samhadh was waiting there as he came in from the cold, Samhadh and Deirdre in their shifts, wrapped in blankets from their chambers; and Raghallach was there, still dressed, while servants put their heads about the corner and ducked back again, sensing no welcome for themselves.

 

"He left," said Cinnfhail, uneasy in his half-truths. He was cold. He was drenched from the rain. He had thought only to come upstairs and warm himself in his bed at Samhadh's side, but sounds and steps carried in Dun Gorm, in its wooden halls, and so there was this ambush of him at the upper stairs. "We talked a time. He asked a horse and provisions. Stealth is best for what he plans. He's going on to Dun Mhor against all my advice."

 

"Gods, they'll butcher him."

 

"And where would you be going?" Cinnfhail cried, for Raghallach went past him, downward bound on the stairs. "No! You'll not be helping him, young lad; you'll be putting both your heads under Sliabhin's bloody axe. No. I'll not have it. Let be."

 

Raghallach stopped. There was a terrible look in his eyes as he stood on the steps below Cinnfhail and looked up at him in the torchlight. "It's raining," Raghallach said. "For the gods' sake, it's raining out; what sane man goes riding off on such a night with choice of a bed- 'Talk in the morning,' you said, father. In the morning. But he's to be gone by then, isn't he?"

 

"Watch your tongue, boy!"

 

"You've shamed me," Raghallach said all quietly. "In the hall tonight. This man told the truth. We've let Dun Mhor alone all these years for fear of that truth. And now you've sent him off. You've sent him out of here to add another to Sliabhin's crimes."

 

"Raghallach-"

 

"It's been on you all the day, hasn't it, this dread, this fear of yours? This blackguard in Dun Mhor- gods, father, how did we seem tonight? Talk in the morning,' you said. 'Take counsel in the morning.'"

 

"Be still," said Samhadh. Deirdre only stared, her young face struck with shock and shame.

 

"I love you," said Raghallach. There were tears on his face. "I love you too much, father, to let you do a thing like this. You have the Sight; and having it you wrap me in and keep me close and what am I to think? We were fronted in our own hall by a man who wanted justice. Gaelan was your friend; but if he was your friend, father-then where were we in those days?"

 

"Sliabhin's son," said Cinnfhail, going down to catch him on the steps, for Raghallach turned to go. He seized Raghallach by the arm and turned him by force to face him. "Raghallach, that is Sliabhin's own son. You know what they whisper about Moralach. It's true."

 

His son's face grew pale in the torchlight. "O gods."

 

"It's patricide will be done at Dun Mhor," said Cinnfhail. "And by the gods this house will not aid it."

 

Raghallach gnawed his lip. "And do we sit with our hands in our laps? All the hall heard. All the house will know you sent this man away. And all Dun Mhor will know he guested here-and take revenge if he fails. Or this Caith may be our enemy for long years if he rules Gleann Fiach instead. No. This house is going to do something, father. I'm taking twenty men as far as the border. And if need or trouble falls back to threaten the Sidhe-wood, at least we will have some chance to tell Dun Mhor where our border is, and that we won't have trespassers. If he fails-if he fails, father, we have a stake in it, do we not? Sliabhin will be sending us his threats again. He'll be finding his excuse. And if so happen this Caith comes back in haste with Sliabhin's throat uncut, and we be there the other side of the Sidhe-wood, well, there is help we can give then and have our hands clean. It's no kinslaying we intend."

 

Cinnfhail thought a moment. His face burned with shame and his heart widened with pride in Raghallach, for his goodheartedness and wit. "I will go myself," he said. "It's a good plan."

 

"No," said Raghallach. His eyes glittered damply in the light. His jaw was set in that way he had that nothing would dissuade. And suddenly, passionately, he embraced Cinnfhail and thrust him back at arm's length, his young face earnest and keen. "All my life you have kept me from any hazard, wrapped me in wool. No mother, father. I'm not a boy and you're not a young man to be dealing with Sliabhin's hired bandits. This one, this time, is mine."

 

there was a time Caith had no remembrance of, how he had gotten into the woods, for he was weary and the shaggy horse's tireless gait had never varied. He might have slept, might have been dreaming when he first passed beneath the trees that were all about him now, whispering in the wind.

 

He rode slowly, the horse treading lightly on the leaves, and Caith rubbed at his eyes and wondered had he slept a second time, for he remembered the horse running and could not remember stopping, nor account for where he was. And rubbing his eyes and blinking them clear again he saw a light before him in the dark, a fitful light like a candlegleam, jogging with the course the shaggy horse followed on this winding track among the trees. The wind blew and scattered droplets from the leaves; made the light wink and vanish and reappear with the shifting of branches and limbs between him and the source. The pitch of the land was generally downward, and there was a noise of moving water nearby, so he knew they were coming to a stream, perhaps the wandering Gley itself, or one of the countless other brooks that lived and died with the rains. Someone must be camped on this streamside up ahead, and Caith gathered his wits and rode with care, fully awake and searching the trees and the brush on this side and that for some way to avoid this meeting.

 

But the ugly horse kept on, patient and steady. Sooner than Caith had looked for (had he somehow drowsed again?) he was passing the last curtain of black branches that screened him from that light.

 

It was one man camped on the trailside, a ragged-looking fellow the like of which one might find along the roads and between the hills, a wanderer, an outlaw, more than likely. Such men Caith knew. He had met them and sometimes shared a fire and sometimes come to blows with such wolves; and he was alive and some of them were not. This much he had learned of his foster-father and the king of Dun na nGall: the use of that sword he wore. He had no overwhelming fear in the meeting, but he had far rather have avoided it altogether.

 

"Good night to you," Caith said perforce, reining in. The man no more than looked up at him over the fire, a mature man and lean and haggard. Then with the wave of a thin hand the man beckoned him to the fireside.

 

"Here is courtesy," Caith muttered, still ahorse, and considering how Dun Gorm had cast him out into the night and the rain. There was a pannikin by the fireside. Caith smelled meat cooking; he had provisions on him he was willing to trade a bit of in turn. By now he ached with traveling, he longed for rest in all his bones, and more, he saw a harpcase on a limb near the man, the instrument protected against the weather.

 

So it was a wandering harper he had met, which was another kind of man altogether than bandits. Such a man might walk through bandit lairs untouched and stand equally secure in the halls of kings. That harp was his passage, wherever he wished to go; his person was more sacred than a king's, and his fireside, wherever set, was safer than any hall.

 

A second time the harper beckoned. Caith stepped down from the shaggy horse though he did not pause to slip its bit or loosen its girth. He was not that trusting in any new meeting. He crouched warily before the fire, warming his numb hands and studying the harper close at hand.

 

"Looking for some hall?" he asked the man.

 

"Not I," the harper said. "I prefer the road."

 

"Where bound?" Caith felt still uneasy, wishing still in a vague way he had no need to have stopped and yet too proud to leap up and run from a harper. "Gleann Fiach?"

 

"I might go that way," said the harper.

 

"I might keep you company on the way," said Caith, with devious thoughts of passing Dun Mhor's gates in such company.

 

But suddenly he became aware of another watcher in the bushes, a man-a youth, all in dark. Between seeing him and springing to his feet with his hand on his sword was only the intake of a breath; but the youth stepped out into the open, holding his hands wide and empty, and grinning in mockery.

 

"My apprentice," said the harper. "Is there some dread on you, man? Something on your mind? Sit and share the fire. Peace."

 

"I've thought again," said Caith. "My business takes me on."

 

"But I think," said the square-jawed youth, whose eyes peered from a wild tangle of black bangs, "I think it is the horse-O aye, it would be that fine horse, wouldn't it? He has got something doesn't belong to him."

 

"The horse was lent," Caith said shortly. Harper or no, he had made up his mind and retreated a pace: when he drew his sword he had the habit of using it at once and never threatening, but it was part of its length drawn. "Teach your apprentice manners, harper. He will bring you grief."

 

"But that horse is stolen," said the harper. "His name is Dathuil. And he is mine." The harper unfolded upward, tall and slim and not so ragged as before. Beside him the youth took on another aspect, with mad and ruby eyes, and the harper was fair now, pale and terrible to see.

 

Caith drew the sword, for all that it could do. They were Sidhe, that was clear to him now. And he was in their woods. He stood there with only iron between himself and them and all their ancient power.

 

"I will be going," he said, "and I'll be taking the horse. He was lent to me. He's not mine to give, one way or the other." He backed farther, and saw the horse not ugly but fair, a white steed so beautiful it touched the heart and numbed it, and Caith knew then what blessing he had taken from Dun Gorm.

 

"He is Dathuil," said the Sidhe again. "We gave him to a friend. You must give him back to us."

 

"Must I?" Caith said, turning from his bedazzlement, discovering them nearer than before. He had his sword in his hand and remembered it. "And what if not?"

 

"That horse is not for anyone's taking. He must be freely given. And better if you should do that now, man, and give him to me-far better for you."

 

A Sidhe horse could not be for his keeping. Caith knew that. But he kept the blade up, reckoning that his life was the prize now, and them needing only a single mistake from him to gain it. "If you have to have it given," Caith said, "then keep your hands from me."

 

"That horse was lent to the kings of Dun Gorm," said the youth. "Cinnfhail has cast him away, giving him to you-with whom we have no peace. So we will take him back again."

 

Caith backed still farther, seeking Dathuil's reins with his left hand behind him; but the horse eluded his reaching hand once and again, and the two Sidhe stalked him, the tall one to his left now, the dark youth going to his right.

 

"So," Caith said, seeing how things stood. "But if I give you what you want, you have everything and I have nothing. That seems hardly fair. They say the Sidhe will bargain."

 

"What do you ask?"

 

"Help me take Dun Mhor."

 

The dark one laughed. The bright one shone cold as ice.

 

"Why, let us do that!" the dark one said.

 

"Be still," said the taller; and to Caith, with chill amusement: "Phookas love such jokes. And those who bargain with the Sidhe come off always to the worse. You have not said the manner of the help, leaving that to us; and leaving the outcome of it to us too. Things are far more tangled than you think they are. So I shall take your bargain and choose the manner of my help to you, which is to tell you your futures and the three ways you have before you. First: you might go back over the hills the way you came. Second: you might go back to Dun Gorm; Raghallach would help you. He would be your friend. Third: you might enter Dun Mhor alone. All of these have consequence."

 

"What consequence?"

 

"A second bargain. What will you give to know that, of things that you have left?"

 

"My forbearance, Sidhe."

 

"For that I trade only my own. What more have you left?"

 

Caith hurled the amulet from his neck. It vanished as it hit the ground.

 

"A fair trade then. You have made yourself blind to our workings, and in return I shall show you truth. This is the consequence if you go back where you came from: that you will die obscure, knifed in a quarrel not of your making in a land not of your choosing. Second: if you go back now to to Dun Gorm: that Cinnfhail's son will die in your cause; you will win Dun Mhor; you will take Cinnfhail's daughter to your wife and rule both Dun Gorm and Dun Mhor, king over both within three years."

 

"And if I go alone to Dun Mhor?"

 

"Sliabhin will kill you. It will take seven days for you to die."

 

Caith let the swordpoint waver. He thought of Dun Gorm, that he had wanted, the faces, Deirdre's young face. But there were traps in every Sidhe prophecy; this he sensed. "And gaining Dun Gorm," he said, "what would I have there but sorrow and women's hate?"

 

"For a son of Sliabhin," said the Sidhe, stepping closer to him, "you are marvelous quick of wit. And now I must have the horse you have given me."

 

"Curse you!" he cried. He struck, not to kill, but to gain himself space to run. The Sidhe's blade-he had not seen it drawn-rang instant against his own; and back and back he staggered, fighting for his life.

 

A black body hurtled against him, trampling him beneath its hooves, flinging his sword from his hand; Caith staggered up to one knee and lunged after the fallen sword.

 

"Rash," said the Sidhe, and light struck him in the face and a blow flung him back short of it. "The horse is mine. For the rest-"

 

"Sidhe!" Caith cried, for he was blinded in the light, as if the moon had burned out his eyes. All the world swam in tears and pain. He groped still after his sword among the leaves and as the hilt met his fingers, he seized it and staggered to his feet. "Sidhe!" he shouted, and swung the blade about him in his blindness.

 

He heard the beat of hooves. A horse's shoulder struck him and flung him down again; this time he held to the sword and rolled to his feet.

 

But blind, blind-there was only the shadow of branches before a blur of light in a world gone gray at the mid of the night, a taunting, moving shape like a will-o'-the-wisp before his eyes.

 

"Sidhe!" he cried in his anger and his helplessness.

 

It drifted on. Laughter pealed like silver bells, faint and far and mocking.

 

THERE WAS NO sight but that fey light, no sound but that chill laughter, pure as winter bells. Caith followed it, sobbing after breath, followed it for hours because it was all the light he had in his gray blindness and if he turned from it he was lost indeed. He tore himself on brush and thorns, slipped down a streambank and sprawled in water, clawed his way up the other side. "Sidhe!" he cried again and again. But the light was always there, just beyond his reach in a world of gray mist, until he went down to his bruised knees and on his face in the leaves and lost all sense of direction.

 

He got up again in terror, turning this way and that.

 

"Sidhe!" His voice was a hoarse, wild sound, unlike himself. "Sidhe!"

 

A horse sneezed before him. The will-'o-the-wisp hovered in his sight, near at hand. It became Dathuil and on his back the tall fair Sidhe, against a haze of trees, of moon-silvered trunks.

 

"Will you ride?" the phooka asked, at his other side, and Caith turned, staggering, and caught his breath in. Red eyes gleamed in the shadow. "Will you ride?" the phooka asked again. "I will bear you on my back."

 

Caith's eyes cleared. It was a black horse that stood there. Its eyes shone with fire. Suddenly it swept close by him, too quick for his sword, too quick for the thought of a sword.

 

"If you had kept the white horse," said the will-o'-the-wisp on his other side, "even the phooka could not have caught you. Now any creature can."

 

"Sliabhin hunted in these woods," said the phooka-voice, from somewhere in the trees. "Now we hunt them too."

 

"Go back," said the will-o'-the-wisp, and horse and rider shimmered away before him without a sound. Caith caught after breath and stumbled after, exhausted, wincing at the thorns that caught his cloak back and tore his skin.

 

"Go back," said the voice. "Go back."

 

But Caith followed through thicker and thicker brush, no longer knowing any other way. His sight had cleared, but in all this woods there was no path, no hope but to lay hands on the Sidhe and compel them or to wander here till he was mad. A pain had begun in his side. It grew and grew, until he walked bent, and sprawled at last on the slick, wet leaves.

 

"You cannot take us," said the Sidhe, and was there astride Dathuil, paler and brighter than the newborn day. A frown was on the Sidhe's face. "I have given you your answers. Are you so anxious then to die? Or are you looking for another bargain?"

 

Caith caught his breath, holding his side. It was all that he could do to gain his feet, but stand he did, with his sword in his hand.

 

"Ah," said the Sidhe. "Proud like your father."

 

"Which father? I've had three."

 

"You have but one, mac Sliabhin. The house at Dun Mhor has but one lord. And a curse rests on it and all beneath that roof. Hunters in our woods, slayers of our deer-for your line there is neither luck nor hope. But for the gift of Dathuil and for my own pleasure, I will give you once what you ask of me. And pitying mortal wits I will tell you what you should ask-if you ask me that advice."

 

"That would use up the one request, would it not?"

 

The Sidhe smiled then as a cat might smile. "Well," he said, "if you are that quick with your wits you may know what you should ask."

 

"Take the curse off Dun Mhor."

 

The smile vanished. The Sidhe went cold and dreadful. "It is done. And now it is to bestow again. I give it to you."

 

Caith stared at the Sidhe in bleak defeat, and then took a deeper breath. "Sidhe! One more bargain!"

 

"And what would that be, mac Sliabhin, and what have you left to trade?"

 

"It's Dun Mhor you hate. I'll work this out with you. There's a young boy, my brother, inside Dun Mhor. Brian is his name."

 

"We know this."

 

"I want to take him out and free of Sliabhin. Help me get him out and safe away and I will kill Sliabhin for you; and take Dun Mhor; and so you can have it all. Me. Dun Mhor. My brother is the price of my killing your enemy."

 

The Sidhe considered him slowly, from toe to head. "Shall I tell you what you have left out?"

 

"Have I left something out?"

 

"Nothing that would matter." The Sidhe reined Oathuil aside. "I take your bargain."

 

Caith had his sword still in hand. He rammed it into his sheath and felt all his aches and hurts. He looked up again at the Sidhe, cold at heart. "What did I leave out, curse you? What did I forget?"

 

"You are not apt to such bargaining," said the phooka, there in young man's shape, leaning naked against a tree at his right hand. "I will tell you, mac Sliabhin. You forgot to ask your life."

 

"Oh," Caith said. "But I didn't forget."

 

"How is that?" said the fair Sidhe.

 

"If you want some use out of your curse, you can't kill me too soon, now can you? It would rob you of your revenge."

 

The phooka laughed, wild laughter, a mirth that stirred the leaves. "O mac Sliabhin, Caith, fosterling of murderers and thieves, I love thee. Come, come with me. I will bear you on my back. We will see this Dun Mhor."

 

"And drown me, would you? Not I. I know what you are."

 

But the black horse took shape between blinks of his eyes and stood pawing the ground before him. Its red eyes glowed like balefire beneath its mane.

 

"Trust the phooka," said the tall Sidhe with the least gleam of mirth in his eyes. "What have you left to risk?"

 

Caith glowered at the Sidhe and then, shifting his sword from the way, roughly grasped the phooka's mane and swung up to his bare back.

 

It was the wind he mounted, a dark and baneful wind. It was power, the night itself in horse-shape; and beside them raced the day, that was Dathuil with the Sidhe upon his back.

 

Caith heard laughter. Whence it came he guessed.

 

the forest road stretched before the men from Dun Gorm in the dawning, and the sun searched the trees with fingers of light. It was the green shade before them, the green deep heart of the Sidhe-wood.

 

"No farther," Conn said, "young lord, no farther."

 

Raghallach thought on Conn's advice as he rode beside the man. His father had given him into Conn's hands when he was small, and never yet had he put his own judgment ahead of Conn's and profited by it.

 

But the years turned. It was after all Conn, his father's watchdog, who had tutored him, cracked his head, bruised his bones, taught him what he knew, and Conn, he reckoned, who had orders from his father to protect him now, against all hazard.

 

"There is one captain over a band," Raghallach said to this man he loved next to his own father. "And it is not lessons today, now, is it, master Conn?"

 

"Life is lessons," Conn muttered to the moving of the horses. They went not at a gallop; they kept their strength for need. "Some masters are rougher than others, lad, and experience is a very bitch."

 

"That man you sent to scout ahead of us; Feargal. We're of an age, he and I-do you always call him lad, Conn?"

 

"Ah," said Conn, and cast a wary look back, to see whether the men were in earshot of it all. The sound of the hooves covered low voices at such distance. "Ah, but, me lad, you are young. Yet. And will not get older by risking honest men who put their lives into your hand. Do not be a fool, son of my old friend; I did not teach a fool."

 

Anger smouldered in Raghallach. He drove his heels into his horse's sides and then recalled good sense. Raghallach grew a great deal, in that moment; he reined back, confusing the horse which threw its head and jumped.

 

Arrows flew from ambush. A man cried out; a horse screamed.

 

Raghallach flung his shield up in thunderstruck alarm. Arrows thumped and shocked against it; he reined aside, knowing nothing now to do but run into the teeth of ambush, not turn his shieldless back to the arrows or delay while some shot found his horse or legs. The good horse leapt beneath his heels, surefooted in the undergrowth, heedless of the breast-high thicket: "Ware," Conn yelled, as the horse's hindquarters sank under a sudden impact: Conn hewed a man from off Raghallach's back that had flung himself down from the trees.

 

Next was a confusion of blows, of curses howled, of blades and blood, the scream of horses and the crack of brush.

 

Then came silence, deep silence, after so much din, horses crashing slowly back through brush, blowing and snorting as riders sought the clear road and regrouped, a man fewer than before.

 

"Feargal," Raghallach said of the body they found there on the trail. A red-fletched arrow had taken him in the throat. Gleann Fiach marking.

 

"Think," said Conn, fierce at his side. Conn's brow ran blood. "Think and do it, boy! They have come into the Sidhe-wood. They are forewarned, they've made ambush against us and this Caith mac Sliabhin. Hagan mac Dealbhan has warned them!"

 

"He's dead," said Feargal's brother Faolan, who had gotten down to see and knelt by his brother. Faolan hovered somewhere lost in the horror, not touching the arrow that had felled his brother, only frozen there.

 

"Boy," Conn said; the word cursed them all. "What will you do?"

 

"Get him home," Raghallach said gently to Faolan, and jerked his horse's head about in the direction opposite to home, using his heels to send him down the road after the fleeing enemy. Others followed. Conn was one, drawing close beside him.

 

Raghallach looked at Conn as they rode.

 

"Not I, boy," said Conn. "I have not a word."

 

The road opened out before them, obscured in leaves and green.

 

"It wants answer," said Raghallach. "This death of ours wants an answer."

 

"On whom," asked Conn. "Gleann Fiach cattle? Where will we stop? We know they hold the woods. Those that ran will regroup; meanwhile they'll have a man sent to Sliabhin to get help up here. It's war, lad; it begins. Blood is on the Sidhe-wood and our own hands have shed it too."

 

A hollow lay before them, a small clearing in the wood, which was one of their own Gley's fords. It was a place for ambushes; the air here all was wrong, sang with unease, in the leaves, the water-song.

 

They thundered into it. The newborn light grew strange, the beats of the hooves dimmer and dimmer.

 

The peace, a voice said, the peace is broken, son of Dun Gorm. No farther, come no farther.

 

Panic took Raghallach suddenly, a fear not of arrows. He was Cinnfhail's son: he Saw, for the first time in his life, he Saw. "Conn!" he cried. "Stop!" He reined in his horse. His face was hot with shame and self-reproach, that even to this moment he had led from fear and pride, not sense. He had ridden on for pride's sake, blown this way and that by what everyone would think instead of regarding what was wise. Fool, Conn had said. A shadow came on them, and about them, and into them, horse and rider, all, darkening their sight.

 

It was the forest, managing its own defense.

 

the phooka stopped, having leapt the stream, and Caith went sprawling over his neck, rolling in the leaves, bruised and battered.

 

The phooka stood in man-form on the bank, naked and laughing at him, grinning from ear to ear and leaning on his knees.

 

"You bastard," Caith said, gathering himself up.

 

"I thought," said the phooka, "that it was yourself were the bastard, Caith mac Sliabhin."

 

Caigh caught up his sheathed sword and all but hurled it; mastered his temper instead. "Of course it is," he said, at which the phooka laughed the more, and overtook him as he went stamping up the bank. The phooka clapped him on the shoulder and hooted with laughter. Caith hurled off the hand, whirled and looked at the Sidhe, the sword still in his hand.

 

"O come," said the phooka, grinning. His teeth were white and the frontmost were uncommon square and sturdy, in a long beardless jaw. His eyes were black and merry, and red lights danced in them even by daylight. "Do you not like a joke?"

 

"It will be a great joke when you drown me. Of that I'm sure."

 

The phooka grinned. "O I like you well, mac Sliabhin. I missed the water with you, did I not?"

 

Caith said nothing. He limped onward, flung off the hand again as they walked along the streamside, picking up the road. The phooka walked by him as if he had only started out a moment ago, fresh and easy as youth itself.

 

"Where is the other?" Caith asked, after some little walking. "Where has he gotten to?" For the bright Sidhe had been with them until that leap across the stream.

 

"Oh, well, that one. He's not far. Never far."

 

"Watching us."

 

"He might be." The phooka kicked a stone. "He has no liking for roads, that one. Nuallan is his name. He's one of the Fair Folk." An engaging, square-toothed grin. "I'm the other kind."

 

"What do you call yourself?"

 

The phooka laughed again. "Call myself indeed. Now you know we'd not hand you all our names. Dubhain. Dubhain am I. Would you ride again?"

 

"Not yet, phooka."

 

"Dubhain," the phooka reminded him. It was the wickedest laugh ever Caith had heard. There were dark nights in it, and cold depths where phookas lived, deep in rivers, haunting fords and luring travelers to die beneath the waters. Darkness, his name was. "So we walk together." The phooka looked up. His eyes gleamed like live coals beneath the mop of black hair. "We are in Gleann Fiach now, mac Sliabhin. Do you not find it fair?"

 

The road took them farther and farther from the woods. The deep glen showed itself bright with sun, its hilly walls different from Gleann Gleatharan, un-tilled, unhedged. Gorse grew wild up the hillsides, from what had once been hedges, and grass grew uncropped. It was a fair land, but there was something wrong in that fairness, for it was empty. Un-tenanted. Waste, even in its green pastures.

 

And coming over a gentle rise, Caith could see the dun itself at this great distance, a towered mass, a threat lowering amid its few tilled fields. Now indeed Caith saw pasturages up on the hillsides; but they were few for so great a place, and all near the dun. The most of the tillage closely surrounded the dun itself, gathered to its skirts like some pathwork order struggling to exist in the chaos of the land. Gleann Fiach was wide. There was promise in the land, but it was all blighted promise.

 

Caith had stopped walking. "Come on," the phooka said with a sidelong glance that mocked all Caith's fears and doubts. Caith set out again with Dubhain at his side, the two of them no more than a pair of dusty travelers, himself fair, his companion dark.

 

Caith was weary of the miles, the flight, the restless night; his companion had strength to spare. Like some lawless bare-skinned boy Dubhain gathered stones as he came on them and skipped them down the road.

 

"There," he would say, "did you see that one, man?"

 

"Oh, aye," Caith would answer, angry at the first, and then bemazed, that a thing so wicked could be so blithe, whether it was utterest evil or blindest innocence, like storm, like destroying flood. The phooka grinned up at him, less than his stature, and for a moment the eyes were like coals again, reminding him of death.

 

"A wager, man?"

 

"Not with you," he said.'

 

"What have you to lose?" And the phooka laughed, all wickedness.

 

"You would find something," he said.

 

The grin widened. The phooka hurled another stone. No man could match that cast, that sped and sped far beyond any natural limit.

 

"I thought so," said Caith, and the phooka looked smug and pleased.

 

"Cannot match it."

 

"No."

 

The phooka shape-shifted, became again the horse, again the youth, and broke a stem of grass, sucking on it as he went, like any country lad. Dubhain winked. He was more disreputable than he had been, a ragged wayfarer. A moment ago he had been bare as he was born, dusky-skinned. Now he went in clothes, ragged and dusty, ruined finery with a bordering of tinsel gold.

 

"It is a glamor," the phooka said. "Can you see through it?"

 

"No."

 

"If you had the amulet you might."

 

"I don't."

 

Another grin.

 

"You will help me," asked Caith, "inside the walls-or just stand by?"

 

"Oh, assuredly I shall help."

 

"-me."

 

"O Caith, o merry friend, of course, how could you doubt?"

 

Caith looked askance at Dubhain, uneasy in all his thoughts now. The Sidhe would both trick him if they could, if he gave them the least chance. He thought through the compact he had made a hundred times as they walked the sunlit dust, as they came down farther and farther into the glen. Of what lay before him in Dun Mhor he wished not to think at all, but his thoughts drifted that way constantly, darker and more terrible, and the phooka beside him was constant in his gibes.

 

Sliabhin's son. And Moralach's. All his life seemed lived beneath some deceiving glamor. He had conjured loyalty to Gaelan, to a dream that never was. He came to avenge Gaelan, and his own father was the murderer.

 

But the stones before them were real and no illusion. There was truth about to happen. It must be truth, finally, after a life of lies and falseness.

 

...

 

the day and distance dwindled in the crossing of the glen. Caith rested little, except at the last, taking the chance to sleep a bit, in the cover of a thicket, at the edge of the dun's few tilled fields and scant pastures, before he should commit himself to all that he had come to do.

 

And quickly there was a nightmare, a dream of murder, of Moralach the queen hanging from the rooftree of Dun Mhor.

 

"You," Caith said to the phooka when he waked sweating and trembling to find him crouching near. "Is it some prank of yours, to give me bad dreams?"

 

"Conscience," said the phooka. "I'm told you mortals have it. It seems nuisanceful to me."

 

And then Dubhain reached out and touched Caith's face with callused fingertips, and there came to him a strength running up from the earth like summer heat, something dark and healing at once, that took his breath.

 

"Keep your hands from me!" Caith cried, striking the Sidhe-touch away.

 

"Ah," said Dubhain, "scruples even yet. There is that left to trade."

 

"That I will not." Caith scrambled to his feet, shuddering at the wellness and the unhuman strength in himself.

 

"You've dropped your sword," the phooka said, handing it up to him with a grin on his face and the least hint of red glow within his eyes.

 

Caith snatched it, hooked the sheath to his belt and caught his oiled-wool cloak about him and his tartan as he hit out upon the road.

 

Dubhain was quickly with him, striding lightly at his side.

 

And Dun Mhor rose ever nearer as they came past the wild hedges onto the road. The dun lowered as a dark mass of stone in the evening that had fallen while Caith slept in his thicket.

 

No lights showed from Dun Mhor in this twilight time, not from this side, though some gleamed about the hills. Cattle were home; sheep in their folds; the folk behind the walls of their cottages and of the great keep that was many times the size of rustic Dun Gorm.

 

I am mad, Caith thought, having seen the size of the place. As well walk into Dun na nGall and try to take it.

 

But he kept walking with Dubhain beside him. The phooka whistled, as if he had not a care in all the world, and a wind skirled a tiny cloud up in the sky right over Dun Mhor, a blackness in the twilight.

 

"I think," said the phooka, "it looks like rain. Doesn't it to you?"

 

"You might do this all," Caith said in anger. "If you can do all these things, why could you not come at this man you hate?"

 

"Not our way," said Dubhain.

 

"What is your way-to torment all the land, the innocent with the guilty?"

 

The eyes glowed in the darkness. "Men seem best at that."

 

"A curse on you too, my friend."

 

The phooka laughed. Dun Mhor loomed above them now, and the cloud had grown apace as they walked. Dubhain's hand was on Caith's shoulder, like some old acquaintance as they passed down the last hedgerow on the road, as they left the last field and came up the hill of the dun to the gate. Lightning flashed. The cloud widened still.

 

"Hello," Caith shouted, "hello the gatekeep. Travelers want in!"

 

There was a long silence. "Who are you?" a man shouted from up in the darkened tower to the left of the gate. "What business in Dun Mhor?"

 

"Business with your lord!" Caith shouted back. "Word from Dun na nGall!"

 

"Wait here," the gatekeep said, and after was silence.

 

"Perchance they'll let you in," the phooka said.

 

"Oh, aye, like the raincloud is chance." Caith did not look at Dubhain. He knew how Dubhain would seem-quite common to the eye, whatever shape suited the moment and Dubhain's dark whims. The cloud still built above them. Thunder muttered. "I will tell you, phooka. Hagan-the man who fostered me-might have sent word south when I left him. He knew where I might go and what I might do. He hated me; I know that. Gods know what side of this he serves, but it was never my side. He might well betray me to curry favor with Sliabhin, since Sliabhin is king. I reckon that he might." He had begun to say it only to bait the phooka and diminish Dubhain's arrogance. But the pieces settled in his mind, in sudden jagged array of further questions. "I know nothing. Who fostered me out, how I was gotten from here-the king of Gleatharan never told me. Was it Gaelan or was it Sliabhin, phooka?"

 

The mad eyes looked up at him, for once seeming sober. "Would you pity Sliabhin if you knew that?"

 

"Gods, phooka-"

 

"Perhaps it was." The red gleam was back. "Perhaps was not. They are coming, mac Sliabhin, to open the gates."

 

"Why have you done this? Why do you need my hands to wield the knife?"

 

"Why, mac Sliabthin-should we take on our own curse?"

 

The lesser gate groaned on its hinge. Torchlight fluttered in the wind, in the first cold spats of rain. "Gods, this weather," the gatekeeper cried against the skirling gusts as he led them through a courtyard and to a second door. "Come in, there. What would be your name?"

 

"Foul, foul," Dubhain chortled, pulling Caith along, beside, beyond, "Huusht, hey!" The lightning cracked. The sky opened in torrents. "O gods, we're soaked."

 

"A plague on you!" cried Caith, but Dubhain's hand gripped his arm, stronger than any grip ever he had felt. The creature of rivers fled the rain, called on gods younger than himself, jested with the guards. "Curse you, let me go!"

 

"Never that," the phooka said as they came within the doors of the dun itself. Dubhain stamped his booted feet, shed water in a circle in the torchlight in the hall, as the guards did, Dubhain did and Caith did, made fellows by the storm.

 

They were in. The stones about them, warm-colored in the light, were the nature, the solidity of his home, the very color and texture that he had imagined them; or the reality drove out the dream in the blink of an eye and deceived him as reality will do with imaginings. Here was the house he had longed for, dreamed of, in the grim walls of his fostering; but here also were rough, scarred men, the smell of oil and stale straw as womenless men had managed things in Hagan's hold up by Dun na nGall. There seemed no happiness in this dim place either, only foreboding, the noise of shouts, of heavyfooted guards, the dull flash of metal in the light and the surety these men would kill and lose no sleep over it.

 

O father, Sliabthin!-are we not a house that deserves its death?

 

"One will tell the lord you are in," a guard said. "Bide here, whether he will see you. You are not the first to come tonight."

 

Caith looked sharply at the guard, whose brute broad face held nothing but raw power and the habit of connivance in the eyes. No, not dull, this one. Huge, and not dull. "Some other messenger?" Caith asked with a sinking of his heart, thinking on Dun na nGall, on his foster-father Hagan, and treachery. "From where?"

 

"Messenger. Aye." The voice was low, the guard's face kept its secrets. Caith looked round on Dubhain with a touch of fey desperation in the move, even defiance. Save me now, he challenged the Sidhe, meeting Dubhain's eyes, and had the joy of seeing a phooka worried. The thought elated him in a wild, hopeless abandon. He looked upward at the stairs that would lead up, he reckoned, to the king's hall: a man had gone stumping up the steps to a doorway above. / am the Sidhe's own difficulty, Caith thought again, sorry for himself and at the same time sure that his revenge was at hand, whether he would kill or be killed and likely both. Time stretched out like a spill of honey, cloying sweet and golden with light and promising him satiety.

 

Enough of living. For this I was born, my father's son.

 

And my mother's.

 

the guard who had gone up came out again from a room near the head of the stair and beckoned to them.

 

"Come," said the guard by Caith's side.

 

Caith was very meek going up the steps. He made no protest as they began to prevent Dubhain from going up with him. In truth, he had no great desire of the company, trusting more to his sword. But he heard a commotion behind him, and the phooka joined him at the mid of the stairs, eluding the guards below. Caith heard the grate of drawn steel above and below them at once as Dubhain clutched his arm. "Master," Dubhain said, "I'll not leave ye here."

 

"Fall to heel," Caith said in humor the match of the phooka's own. "Mind your manners, lad." He looked up at the guard above them. "My servant is frightened of you," he said, holding out his hand in appeal till the guard, satisfied of his own dreadful-ness and well-pleased with it, made a show of threat and waved them both on with his sword drawn.

 

It might have been a boy outright terrified, this old and evil thing that clutched Caith's arm, that went with him miming terror and staring round-eyed as they passed the guard and his naked blade. But the phooka's fingers numbed Caith's hand, reminding him as they went. You cannot shake me, never be rid of me. The touch felt like ice, as if something had set its talons into his heart as well as into the flesh of his arm, so that Caith recovered his good sense, remembering that he was going deeper into this mesh of his own will, and that he still understood less of it than he ought. Doors closed somewhere below, echoing in the depths under the stairs. There were a man's shouts from that direction, sharp and short.

 

"What's that?" Caith asked, delaying at the door of the corridor, and looking back down the stairs.

 

It was not his business to know, only the anxious-ness of a man entering where there was no retreat, hearing things amiss behind him. The faces of the guards below stared up at him-distant kin of his, perhaps; or Sliabhin's hirelings: they were nothing he wanted for family: wolf-sharp, both of them, cruel as weasels. "Never you mind," one of them called up, and that one was uglier than all the rest. "There's those will care for that. Keep going."

 

"Lord," Dubhain said, a shiver in his voice, "lord-"

 

"Be still," Caith said. There was humor in it all, a fine Sidhe joke in this frightened phooka by his side, grand comedy. Caith played it too, with his life, with the phooka's grip numbing him, owning him and making mock of all Dun Mhor. Caith turned toward the door as they wished him to and came into the hall where they wished him to go, into warmth and firelight and a gathering of men the likeness of the rest, as likely a den of bandits as he had seen anywhere along the road he had traveled to come here.

 

And one sat among them, on a carven chair over by the fire; the light was on his face, and it was a face without the roughness of the others, a mouth much like Caith's own if bitter years had touched it; and this man's hair and beard were his own pale red, faded with years; and the tartan was Dun Mhor.

 

This man looked at him, thinking, measuring, so that Caith felt himself stripped naked. The resemblance-in this hall-would surely not elude Sliabhin mac Brian. Or riders from Dun na nGall might have outpaced him down the coast, on a longer road but a swifter. Quite likely his murder was in preparation even now; and his only chance was to move before the man believed he would. But he had got inside. He still had his sword. This much of his plan he had worked, feigning simplicity within deviousness: this was all his plan, to stand this close.

 

Sliabhin will kill you, he suddenly heard the Sidhe promise him. But never that he might kill Sliabhin. Sliabhin will kill you. It will take seven days for you to die.

 

"King Sliabhin?" Caith asked, all still and quiet. He weighed all his life in this moment, reckoning how long he had, whether the nearest man would draw and cut at him with steel or simply fall on him barehanded to overpower him: worse for him, if they got him alive. Before that happened he must spring and kill Sliabhin at once, face the others down with their king dead and give these bandits time to think how things had changed. There was Dubhain to reckon with, at his back-if they turned swords on him-

 

If I come alone- That was how he had made his question to the Sidhe. If I come alone to Dun Mhor. It was as if his hearing and his memory had been dulled in that hour as his eyes had been, glamored and spellbound. He was not alone. He had brought Dubhain. The question was altered; at least one thing in his futures would have changed.

 

But this man, this man who looked at him with a kinsman's face, in this bandit hall-

 

"Who are you?" Sliabhin asked.

 

"Hagan sends," Caith said, "for Caith's sake: he wants the other boy."

 

Sliabhin got to his feet and stared at him. Caith's heart was pounding in his chest, the cloak about him weighing like a great burden, covering the red tartan that would kill him and the sword that would kill Sliabhin, both beneath its gray roughness. There was no way out. Not from the moment he had passed the door. He felt the phooka's presence against his arm, biding like a curse.

 

Dubhain. Darkness.

 

He is one of the Fair Folk. I am the other kind.

 

"So," said Sliabhin, and walked aside, a halfstep out of reach; looked back at Caith-My father, Caith thought, seeing that resemblance to himself at every angle; and his throat felt tighter, the sweat gathering on his palms. This is what I am heir to, this bandit den, these companions. Beside him the phooka. There would be no gleam in Dubhain's eyes at this moment, nothing to betray what he was.

 

Sliabhin moved farther to his side. Caith turned to keep him in view as he stood before the door, and an object came into his sight, nailed there above the doorway, dried sprigs of herb; elfshot on a thong; a horseshoe, all wards against the Sidhe.

 

To make them powerless.

 

"Hagan wants the boy sent?" Sliabhin said, and Caith set his gaze on Sliabhin and tried to gather his wits back. "I find that passing strange."

 

"Will you hear the rest," Caith asked, with a motion of his eyes about the room, toward the guards, "-here?"

 

"Speak on."

 

"It's the elder son, lord; Caith. So Hagan said to me. Caith has heard rumors-" He let his voice trail off in intimidated silence, playing the messenger of ill news. "Lord-they've had to lock him away for fear he'll break for the south, or do himself some harm. He mourns his brother. He's set some strange idea into his head that he has to see the boy or die. I'm to bring the lad, by your leave, lord, to bring his brother out of his fey mood and set reason in him."

 

A long time Sliabhin stood staring at him, this elder image of himself, gazing at the truth.

 

He knows me, he knows me, he knows me, now what will he do? Can he kill his own son?

 

And if he will not-have I all the truth I think I have?

 

There was a silence in the room so great the crash of a log in the fireplace was like the crumbling of some wall. Sparks showered and snapped. Caith stood still.

 

"How does he fare?" Sliabhin asked, in a tone Caith had not expected could come from a mouth so hard and bitter. A soft question. Tender. As if it mattered; and it became like some evil dream-this man, this his true father asking the question he had wanted for all his days to hear a father ask. "Who?" Caith returned, "Hagan?"-missing the point deliberately.

 

"Caith."

 

"Sorrowing. I hear." There was a knot in Caith's throat; he fought it. He went on in this oblique argument. "If Caith could see the lad, lord, that he's well-I think it would mend much. It might bring him around to a better way of thinking."

 

"Would it?" Sliabhin walked away from him. Caith let him go, his wits sorting this way and that, between hope and grief. Then he felt the phooka's hand clench on his arm through the cloak, reminding him of oaths, and he was blinder than he had been when the Sidhe-light dazed him.

 

This place, this hall, this villainous crew-Was I lied to? Was it Gaelan the villain from the beginning, and this my father-innocent? Confession hovered on his lips, not to strike, to betray the Sidhe beside him for very spite and see what Dubhain would do. But-father-

 

"It's a long journey," said Sliabhin, "and dangerous, to send a young lad off in the dark with a man I don't know. You'll pardon me-" Sliabhin walked farther still, safe again among his men. "Tell me-messenger. What color Hagan's beard?"

 

"Bright red, lord. A scar grays it."

 

Sliabhin nodded slowly. "And how fares my neighbor?"

 

"Lord?"

 

"Cinnfhail." Sliabhin's brow darkened. His voice roughened. "You'll have passed through Gleann Gleatharan. How fares Cinnfliail?"

 

"Well, enough, lord."

 

Sliabhin snapped his fingers. "Fetch the other," Sliabhin said.

 

Men left, but not all. Caith and Sliabhin waited there, frozen in their places, and Dubhain waited. Other, other-Caith's mind raced on that refrain. The meshes drew about him and he saw the cords moving, but he did not know the truth yet, not the most basic truth of himself, and his hand would not move to the sword.

 

There was noise of the guards going down the steps outside; there was shouting that echoed up from the depths; and then the noise began to come louder and nearer-Someone cursed from the echoing lower hall, kept cursing as that someone was brought with loud resistance up the stairs. Caith slid his eyes to a point between Sliabhin and that doorway, most to Sliabhin, to the men that stood with him, all confessions stayed upon his lips, his heart beating hard. Dubhain was at his back, laughing inwardly, he thought, at mortal men; at father and son so meshed in must and would not.

 

Resistance carried into the room, a fair-haired man in a tartan green and blue, a red-blond youth who flung back his head and stared madly at Sliabhin, all bloody that he was.

 

It was Raghallach in their hands.

 

...

 

"if." said Sliabhin, "you had denied being with Cinnfhail I would have take it ill. You know this boy-do you not?"

 

"Yes," said Caith. The warmth had left his hands, the blood had surely left his face. Raghallach strove to look his way and twisted helplessly in the grip of two well-grown and armored men. "Cinnfhail's son. I guested there last night. They sent me on my way in the rain, but they gave me provisions and a horse. He broke his leg in the forest. Lord, let this man go-"

 

"He rode right up to our doors, messenger. He tells a pretty tale-do you not, boy?"

 

They had hurt Raghallach already. They hurt him more, the wrench of a wounded arm; Raghallach fought, such as he could, and cried out, half-fainting then, for the sweat broke out and runneled down his waxen face; and Caith thrust himself half a pace forward, Dubhain catching at his arm. "No, lord," Dubhain said, "no, be not rash."

 

"How you guested there with Cinnfhail, how you were received, what tale you told," said Sliabhin, "all of this he's sung for us."

 

Raghallach lifted his head. His weeping eyes spoke worlds, denying what Sliabhin said with a desperate move. No. Only that. No.

 

"There was nothing to tell," said Caith, "but I see that I was followed. Lord, this man-"

 

"-offends me. What do you say to that?"

 

The air seemed close. He felt pinned between will and dare not-Sliabhin out of reach behind a hedge of swords. He needed caution, wit, something of answers in this place, and the Sidhe was still holding his arm. Be not rash, be not rash, he heard Dubhain's wicked voice in his mind. And Raghallach bleeding and tortured before him-He will die, Cinnfhail had prophesied of his son; so the Sidhe had said also, that Raghallach would die if he came with him to Dun Mhor. 0 gods. Raghallach-who spoke for me to Cinnfliail-

 

"Why did you come?" Caith asked in a thin, hoarse voice. "Why did you follow me, Raghallach?"

 

"Revenge," said Raghallach, and gave another heave in the hands of those that held him. Tears ran down his face and mingled with the sweat and the streaks of blood and dirt. "For my sister, man-"

 

Caith's heart turned over in him. Well played, O gods, man-brave and well played.

 

Caith turned his shoulder as a man accused of villainy might do, walked a space frowning as the phooka let him go. He looked back at wider vantage, Dubhain in the tail of his eye as he glared at Raghallach mac Cinnfhail.

 

"He's mad."

 

"He calls you thief as well," Sliabhin said. "He says you stole a horse."

 

"So, well." Caith turned away, disdaining all accusation.

 

"Caith he calls you."

 

Caith drew his sword, flinging back his cloak; and all about him men moved-but Sliabhin stopped everything with a move of his hand.

 

"You never learned that from him," Caith said. "You've known me from the moment I walked in here."

 

"I've waited for you." Sliabhin's voice was soft. "I was sure you would come. Someday, somehow."

 

"I came to kill you-for Gaelan's sake. But I heard another tale, there in Dun Gorm. And which is true- father? Who sent me to that whoreson Hagan? Was it Gaelan-or yourself?"

 

"Who is your companion?" Sliabhin asked, turning his shoulder from the menace of his sword. There were guards; they never moved. "Some other of Gleatharan's fine young lads?"

 

"Oh, that." Caith kept the blade point between them at their distance, but he took a lighter tone, an easier stance. "Dubhain is his name. One of Hagan's whores' sons. I've gotten used to such comrades-I get on well with them, father. Any sort of cutthroat. That's a skill they taught me well-your cousin Hagan and his crew. Why not? We breed such merry sorts- father." He gained a step on Sliabhin, but sideways, as a man moved to block him; it all stopped again. "Pirates. Brigands. Are these my brothers? How many did you beget-and on what, when you tired of my mother?"

 

"Enough!" Sliabhin's face congested. He lifted a shaking hand, empty. "It was Gaelan-Gaelan tormented her. She and I loved, boy-loved-you'd not know that. Oh, yes, whelp, I saved your life. I rode-myself-and bestowed you where I could or Gaelan'd have given you up for wolfbait that night. He gave out you were stillborn. He beat her-hear me?"

 

Caith faltered. More of truths and half-truths shuttled back and forth in this tapestry of lies. His mind chased after them, sorting one and the other, and he darted a glance from Sliabhin to Raghallach, to Sliabhin again. Raghallach lied for him, risked his own sister's name in his defense and tried nothing for himself. But Sliabhin's voice had the ring of true outrage. And the Sidhe was there beside him, doubtless laughing at his plight.

 

The sword sank in Caith's hand, extended again to Raghallach. "What of him?"

 

"What of him?"

 

"I don't know. Someone's lied. I don't know who. Where's Brian? Where's my brother?"

 

"You'll not be taking your brother anywhere tonight, my lad," Sliabhin said.

 

"I want to see him."

 

"What's he to you?"

 

"A whim. Father. Like you."

 

"Put up the sword. Put it up."

 

Caith laughed, a faint, strained laugh, and his own fey mind surprised him. The look in Sliabhin's eyes surprised him, that they were lost together in this sea and clinging desperately one to the other still un-murdered.

 

"Put it up."

 

Caith thought on it a long moment, with another look at Raghallach, at Dubhain; then there were only Sliabhin's eyes, bewitching as the Sidhe's, to cast a glamor on things. There was Sliabhin's voice, promising nothing at all. There was death here; the room was full of it.

 

I am the curse, Caith thought. The Sidhe send their curse back to Dun Mhor-in me. And I cannot be rid of it. He slid the sword back into its sheath, a neat quick move, never quite taking his eyes from the guards, who kept their swords drawn. But if it is in me I can delay it, I can take it away again-if I will. If Sliabhin wills it.

 

And what if I am wrong?

 

"You'll rest here," said Sliabhin, "as my guest."

 

"And this one?" He meant Raghallach. He gestured that way, where Raghallach hung in the guard's cruel grip. 0 gods, he accused me-how can I defend him, how save him, what can I do to save his life but win my father and turn his mind from killing him-

 

"He'll tell us tales. By morning-he'll have a many of them. You'll hear them all."

 

"My brother-where is he?"

 

"Oh, the boy's well. Quite well enough. Go. They'll take you to chambers, these men of mine. Leave this other to me."

 

Shame burned Caith's face, betraying shame; he looked at Raghallach, and for a moment then his heart stopped, for Raghallach smiled unexpectedly in a way only he could see, a cat's smile, that chilled him through.

 

Dubhain tugged at him. "Come, lord, come-do what he says."

 

Caith cast a wild glance at Dubhain and covered it. The phooka took his arm in a grip fit to break it as Sliabhin's men closed in about them.

 

"Trust," said Sliabhin, "or have no safety here." Caith looked back at him. Not yet had Sliabhin's men tried to disarm him-and this omission and their likeness, their crying likeness to each other, together with that which hung in the hands of the guards- robbed him of volition, of any last hope of understanding what happened around him.

 

It was not Raghallach they had taken, but the Sidhe Nuallan-Nuallan they dragged struggling away in the other direction, past the door with its wards, its diminishments of Sidhe power.

 

They passed the door with Nuallan-Raghallach. Directly a shout rang out, a blow, a cry of pain that jarred his nerves as it echoed in the hall.

 

Then one man took Caith by the arm and drew him aside to another door. A guard opened it on more stairs, a dark and musty ascent higher into the hold.

 

"Sliabhin!" Caith jerked about to turn back again, halfway, but no one was prepared to listen. Dubhain came perforce, at sword-point. Caith tried to break from them; and there in the doorway they held a sword to his throat and disarmed him of sword and dagger both.

 

"Sliabhin! Damn you!" He fought once they took the sword away from his throat, and he hoped for the phooka's help, but three men got Caith's arms behind him and began to force him up the stairs. He braced his feet against the steps and struggled. "Sliabhin!" His voice echoed in the halls, in the heights and depths of the place. "Sliabhin!" And despairing: "Brian!"

 

One struck him, bringing him stunned to his knees on the stone steps.

 

And no one listened.

 

there was a hall beyond the stairs, a room at the side of it; a dank darkness, masonry built into Dun Mhor's very hill, dirt floored in stone. Rough hands hurled them both in, and quickly slammed the door.

 

The phooka's eyes glowed, company in the dark, and a light grew about them both, until Caith could see Dubhain plainly. The phooka sat on the floor of this stonewalled chamber-he was the country lad again, all dusty. And Dubhain brushed himself off as if he had taken some easy spill, as merry as before, and got to his feet.

 

Caith sat, bruised and sullen, winded. He bowed his aching head against his hands.

 

"Welcome home," the phooka said.

 

Caith looked up and glowered. For a long time there was silence.

 

A scream shuddered through the thick door, a man's voice and not yet a man's-Caith flinched at hearing it and then he hardened his heart to it, thinking on the Sidhe Nuallan. "You knew," he said to Dubhain, shuddering when it came again, more horrid than before. "It's all a sham. Isn't it?"

 

"Of course it is." Yet another cry rang through the halls at some distance, a man in deepest agony. Dubhain looked that way, uncommon sobriety on his face.

 

"Dubhain. Dubhain-for the gods' sake, what's in Nuallan's mind, to come here like this?"

 

Silence.

 

"He's in trouble, isn't he? Dubhain?"

 

"Oh, never." Dubhain dusted his hands and, blithe as he had begun, his voice quavered as the cry rang out again.

 

"Can you do something?" It was not love that made Caith ask. It was humanity, all unwise and simple-minded; he knew it, and yet the sound- It came again, and they both winced. "For the gods's ake, phooka, can you do something?"

 

"The wards-" The phooka fretted and paced back and forth, dark within the light he himself cast. He was naked now, dusky-skinned, his hair falling black and thick about his shoulders, his eyes glowing murky red. "Oh, Nuallan loves a joke, he does, and this one is quite rich, is it not? He's come to see the revenge. To keep his word to you."

 

"Get us out of this."

 

Dubhain stopped his pacing. Another scream shuddered through the air and Dubhain wrung his hands. "The wards-the wards-they-muddle things."

 

"You mean they work? Nuallan can't get out?"

 

The phooka said nothing.

 

"He's testing me, Sliabhin is." Caith got to his feet, staggering as he did. "Using Raghallach-Nuallan. It's for my benefit, all this-O gods." There was another scream. Caith tried the door again and again, at last turned his shoulders against the rough wood and stared at the twin red gleams that glared at him. Still another cry echoed beyond their dark. "Maybe he's laughing at them all the while. But I don't care for your jokes, phooka. Do something. I've got a brother in this place, remember? Where is he? Listening to that?' He laughed, a brief, strained laughter. "O gods, you do love a joke. But this is enough, phooka, enough!"

 

"Be still, man," Dubhain hissed, sinking down on his haunches and hugging his arms about himself. The red eyes gleamed, feral and terrible, glowing alternately brighter and dimmer as scream after scream echoed up the dark. "Be still. He'll give up soon, Nuallan will. Even his humor doesn't carry to this."

 

It went on, all the same, and on, and on.

 

"The wards-" Caith said.

 

"Fair Folk," said Dubhain.

 

"What does that mean?"

 

"Nuallan's of the Fair Folk. He says wards aren't that much against him."

 

Caith crouched down in like position, facing the boy-shape in the dark. "He says."

 

The phooka said nothing. Dubhain's face was not good to look on, nor his eyes good to look into.

 

"My brother, phooka. You bargained. Do something. Find him. Where is he?"

 

"Patience," the phooka whispered at last, a voice so still it seemed to chill the air. "Patience, mac Sliabhin."

 

It was long that Caith waited, crouched there with his arms clasped about his knees and shivering. The wailing died and began again. "Phooka," Caith said.

 

"Hssst." The look that fixed on him was dire and distraught. "What will you pay for it?"

 

"Pay for it? It's your friend down there!"

 

"There's the boy," the whisper came back; the red eyes looked into his with sudden keenness as if Dubhain had been somewhere and now came back to him. "I know where your brother is. What will you pay?"

 

"Curse you, you've already bargained for that answer, for all I've got!"

 

"Your scruples, man. I told you you had that left to trade."

 

"What do you want?"

 

"I'll tell you. If we survive this. When I go, hold to me." Dubhain shut his eyes till only the merest slits gleamed fire.

 

Suddenly it was the black horse rising to its feet, a scrape of hooves on the stone, the surge of a large equine body. Caith scrambled to his feet and in the scattering and gathering of his wits seized it by the mane and swung up to mount it in that low-ceilinged room.

 

The door was like mist about them as they passed, like nothing at all; and abruptly it was not the horse-shape, but the boy, and himself tumbling to land on his feet with his hand on Dubhain's naked shoulder, fingers still tangled in Dubhain's hair. "Let go," the phooka said. "Follow me."

 

They padded along the hall, down the dark stairs, quiet and quick. Quietly and quickly they pushed open the door on the hall and the guards there turned suddenly to see what had broken among them, a desperate man and an improbable black horse that swept to the far door scattering men like leaves before its rush of wind and storm-sound.

 

A sword fell loose. Caith seized it up and hewed his way in Dubhain's wake, turned with his back to the doorway and the phooka and at once found himself beset by five of Sliabhin's guards.

 

He swept a furious stroke in the doorway, taking one in return, beating blades aside-ducked under one and thrust for a belly. A sword came down at him while his was bound and he sprawled aside against the door frame, in worse and worse trouble, but he got that man's knees as he fell in the doorway and stabbed up at the next guard as the rest of him fell in reach, expecting a blade down on him in the next moment.

 

A black sudden shape swept him over, as the phooka sent the surviving pair screaming in retreat up the inside stairs.

 

Then the horse-shape turned and changed as it twisted like black smoke into the boy-shape, into Dubhain who reached for him and drew him to his feet.

 

Caith caught his balance against the wall and turned for the door and the second, downward stairs. There was no time for thought, no time for anything. He ran the stairs down into the hold as a black shape drifted past him straight down the drop off the landing, a dire thing with burning eyes and the rush of wind and cold about it. Down and down it went, showing him the way as it coursed the hall below.

 

Other guards came at them in the lower hall. Thunder cracked outside, shaking the stones. The phooka laughed like a damned soul and flickered out of man-shape and in again about one luckless guard; and that man wailed and gibbered and fell down, eyes open and staring. Caith battered down the guard in his own path, not troubling to know whether that one or the other lived or no. He broke clear. Dubhain was by him, running now, having settled on human shape after all.

 

"Take us there," Caith breathed, seizing Dubhain by the hair.

 

"You're heavy," Dubhain complained. "Heavy-" The phooka was panting now, even running on bare human feet. "This way-" It was Dubhain that faltered, the red light in his eyes dimmed as he caught his balance against the wall. "The wards, man-I cannot-much farther, much oftener. Haste-be quick."

 

Stairs gaped ahead of them, going downward yet again. Caith turned then, with a wild suspicion of betrayal. "My brother" he said. "Not Nuallan-hang Nuallan: he can save himself."

 

"Go on," said Dubhain. "We keep our bargains."

 

Caith spun about and went, trusting the phooka to guard his back. Light showed below as he made a second turning of the narrow stone stairs, and yet no one barred his way. He descended in haste, turned suddenly, feeling his back naked.

 

Dubhain was gone. Caith cursed and wiped his face, shaking; then taking a fresh grip on the bloody sword, drew a whole breath and kept going the only way he knew now to go.

 

The tumult above had died. There were no more screams from below. He heard thunder rumble, distant from these cellars, above him. A torch at a landing was the only light, and that was scant and guttering in a sough of wind down the stairwell.

 

But beyond that lighted corner the stairs took another bend, onto a wider scene, onto a hell of torchlight and torment in the cellars of Dun Mhor.

 

they saw him as he saw them-a dozen men, Sliabhin- Swords were out, waiting for what should come on them from the commotion above.

 

Motion stopped then-all frozen. There was a wooden cage, and in that a smallish, half-starved dark-haired boy; there were chains, and in those chains Nuallan hung in Raghallach's red-haired likeness, next a reeking brazier and its irons. Nuallan had burns on his naked body, burns and bleeding wounds and no sense within his eyes.

 

"Sliabhin," Caith said ever so quietly, with everything in ruins-his last and furtive hope of home, of wholeness for himself. He felt sick and fouled, forever fouled, from his origins to this hour, this bloody, dreadful truth beneath the floors of Dun Mhor. "Father mine- You know I'd have believed you? You should have spoken me fair, you know. Is this my brother? Brian-is it you?"

 

There was silence from the boy in the cage. Whether the waif heard at all he could not tell from the tail of his eye. Swords were poised all about the room, his, theirs, every sword but Sliabhin's own, that stayed within its sheath. An oil pot bubbled softly and sent up its acrid, stinging reek. An ember snapped. The air stank of burned flesh and dust and sweat.

 

"I've killed your men upstairs," Caith said, baiting them all. Such a crime as he had come to do wanted anger, not horror, not blood as cold as his ran now. "I've killed every one I could reach and I've driven off the rest. There are no women here. None I've seen. No small ones. Nothing. It's a fortress of bandits, father, this house of ours- How did my mother die? A suicide, I've heard."

 

Sliabhin's face twisted. "Shut your mouth."

 

"After she found out what she let in. After she saw what you did. She had some scruples left. Even I had scruples left. But you have none, and I've given mine away. Why didn't you call me home long ago-to your loving care? Hagan-was nothing to what you've done here. Nothing."

 

"Listen to me, Caith." Sliabhin took on a tone of reason. He moved closer, among the swords. "This whelp's no son of mine-not this one. Hers and his-not mine. I'd still have taken him in, for her sake. But young Brian-lad wouldn't have it. Gaelan taught him to hate me-his son. Hers. He hates like Gaelan. He has Gaelan's look about him-"

 

"Take your sword. I'm no murderer by choice. Not like you. But I'll kill you one way or the other. I swear I will."

 

"He's not my son." You are."

 

"Are you sure? Could we ever be sure?"

 

That touched home in Sliabhin. Caith saw it, the long, long hate, the madness. "Boy," said Sliabhin, "I kept you up there-safe in Dun na nGall. Safe, all these years. Gaelan would have killed you, do you know that?"

 

"The way you're killing his son? No. I don't know that. I don't know anything you say. Ever. -Boy. Brian-" Caith moved near the cage, shifting ever so carefully. "I'm your brother, Brian, hear me? I've come for you. I'll try to get you out of here."

 

There was no response. Perhaps the boy had passed beyond all wit. Caith reached with his left hand through the bars without looking, the sword in his right hand, his eyes upon Sliabhin and his men. He felt a hand grip his then, a small hand all thin and weak and desperate. In the same moment Sliabhin's men shifted like so many wolves in a pack.

 

"You face me," Caith said softly, looking Sliabhin in the eyes. "Come on, man, draw your sword. What's one killing more?"

 

A small shake of the head. "I'd not kill you."

 

"Why not? I'll wager you were never sure-never sure which of us was yours; or if either was. Or ever will be. Isn't that what eats at you? Oh, aye, you loved my mother. You wanted her to yourself, even more than you loved her-and still you'll never know."

 

Steel hissed its way to light. Sliabhin drew, quietly.

 

"That's what I wanted," Caith said. He disengaged his left hand with a gentle tug. The boy clutched at it a second time, hampering him. But beyond Sliabhin the Sidhe Nuallan had lifted his head, and watched it all unfold with a gaze bright and perilous as fire.

 

Nuallan's chains suddenly fell, still locked, and clinked against the stone as Nuallan-Raghallach stood free and unfettered, as he burned like daylight in the murk of the cellar. Panic broke among the men.

 

Some turned toward one of them, some toward the other, in utter confusion; but Caith stood his ground, whirled when he had won a scant moment and slashed and kicked at the cage the bars of which had begun to bud and leaf inexplicably and to swell and burst their bindings. "Come out!" Caith shouted at Brian, turning to hold the rest at dubious swords' point, having now to circle to keep stalkers from his flank and from the boy. What the boy did then he could not know. His eyes were all for Sliabhin, for his purpose, for what he had come to do.

 

"Nuallan," Caith said hoarsely, desperately, "the boy. Dubhain promised."

 

Light burst. The Sidhe was not where or what he had been; Nuallan was beside him like a glare of light while men flinched and shielded their eyes. There came a boy's faint sob. "I have him," Nuallan said. "I leave you-to solve it all-mac Sliabhin."

 

Then was darkness, or the parting of the light, as if light had gone out in his soul as well and left him only the horror, the men, his father closing on him, having one hate now and one focus of their malice.

 

Caith seized the brazier one-handed, overturned it across their path, hurling red coals and irons across the planks. He kicked a bubbling oilpot and its tripod after it and fled, up the stairs.

 

"Dubhain!" Caith cried, desperate, half-prayer, half-curse. Steps rang close behind him-he whirled, spitted the man that came at him in the torchlight, and gazed on Sliabhin's dying face.

 

"Patricide," said Sliabhin, holding to Caith, clutching at his clothes, at the tartan of Dun Mhor, "patricide, twice as damned as I."

 

Caith freed himself, hearing the shrieks of burning men below, seeing the whole stairwell flared up from beneath, aleap with flame and horror. A burning man raced up toward him, mad with pain: that man he killed over Sliabhin's corpse, and turned, gasping for breath, to race stumbling up the stairs, sword in hand.

 

Other guards were coming down. Caith met them in the hellish light, hewed past them, one and the other, while they were still amazed at what came at them, dark amid the glare of fire. He trod on their bodies and ran, up into the hall, toward the door, where two more guards made their rush at him.

 

One he killed, and rushed past the other out into the drizzle and the glare of shielded torches. All about him the alarm dinned-help, fire, assault!

 

"Kill him," someone shouted. "Watch the gate!" another.

 

Caith ran; that was all he knew to do. He ran splashing through the rain-soaked yard with his side aching and blood binding his hand to the hilt of his sword. Before him he saw the gates were sealed; and in front of those gates a shining rider sat a horse whose mane itself was light. The boy Brian was a shadow in that rider's arms.

 

"Nuallan!" Caith cried.

 

He did not expect help. He stumbled forward and caught himself as the horse leapt into motion away from him and passed through the sealed gates as if they had been no more than air.

 

"Brian! Brother!" It was all his hope fleeing him, in Sidhe hands-in their hands, who could bargain a man's soul out of his body. The Sidhe had no pity in them.

 

"There he is!" someone shouted behind him. Caith gave only half a look and ran along the wall, trapped, whirling to kill a man as he went, still dealing murder with the tears mingling with the rain on his face and blinding him. He loathed all that he had done, loathed all that he was, all his bargains with fate and the Sidhe; and still he went on killing those who wished to end him. He ran, and they hunted him along the wall by the stables.

 

"Alive!" someone screamed, full of hate. "Take him alive!" That put a last burst of speed into him, rawest desperation to evade the corner they drove him for.

 

The beat of hooves sounded at his right as if it were coming from somewhere far, and a cold wind blew on him, and a black horse crossed his path, moving slowly like a dream, its eyes gleaming red within the darkness. It offered him its back; it wanted him.

 

That was the bargain, then. It was better than Dun Mhor offered, the phooka-ride, that should end in numbing cold water, some lightless riverbottom, to drift among the reeds. Caith clenched the black thick mane in his fists and flung himself astride the phooka, felt it stretch itself to run in earnest and saw the wall coming up before them-but it was only mist about them when they met it.

 

They were away then, with the wind rushing past them. He heard the phooka hoofbeats like the beating of his heart, felt the spatter of the mist like ice against his face and his neck and his arms. On and on they ran, and the cold went to his bones. When he looked over his shoulder he saw an orange glow, a jagged ruin, that was Dun Mhor, which was all his hope and his hate and every reason that had ever driven him. It sank in ashes now.

 

He laid his head against the phooka's neck, buried his face in the darkness of Dubhain's mane and let the black Sidhe bear him where he would, having had enough of blood, of fire, and of life. The rain washed him, soaked him through till he was numb; leaves and branches began at last to sweep over him, passing like the touch of hands and the memory of rain as wet leaves brushed his hands and head.

 

Abruptly he was falling, falling; but as before it was not a stream that met him, but solid ground, an impact that drove the wind from him.

 

Caith sprawled, dazed, and it was a moment before he could get his arms beneath him and lever himself to his knees, expecting phooka-laughter and phooka-humor and all the wickedness they could do.

 

Sidhe-light broke about him, a pale glow. Sidhe stood all about him, bright and terrible Fair Folk. One was Nuallan; and there were a score of others. Their horses waited beyond the circle, themselves an unbearable light in the darkness.

 

A small boy lay among them, sprawled unconscious on the grass at their feet and, seeing that, Caith found his strength again and tried to get up and go to Brian; but he could not. Nuallan moved between and a chill came on Caith's limbs that took the strength from his legs. He got to the Sidhe all the same, and grasped at his shining cloak: but it passed through his fingers and he fell to his knees.

 

"I'd not do that," Dubhain said, squatting nearby, his eyes aglow and wicked.

 

"Let him go," Caith shouted at the chill and mocking faces above, about him. "Let my brother go. I never rescued him to give him to you."

 

"But you didn't save him," Nuallan said. "Safe and sound, you said. Was that not the bargain, mac Sliabhin? Would you ask more now?"

 

Dubhain drew back his lips in a half-grin, half-grimace. "Listen," the phooka said, "don't be reckless. You have the curse on you. It's all yours now. Didn't we help you? We've more than kept our bargain. What else have you to give up, beyond your scruples? Think, man."

 

Caith managed a laugh, despairing as it was; then the laugh died in his throat, for the Sidhe glow brightened, showing him where he was, in a small clearing at a ford, where a sleeping company sat sleeping horses, heads bowed, bodies slumped, and the rain on them like jewels, as if time had stopped here and all the world were wrapped in nightmares.

 

"They should not have come here," said one of the Sidhe.

 

"No man should," said another.

 

"Now, mac Sliabhan, what will you pay," asked Nuallan, "to free the boy from us?"

 

Caith turned a bleak look on him, blinking in the rain. "Why, whatever I have, curse you. Take me. Let the rest go. All of them. I'm worth it. Isn't that what you've most wanted-to have one of Sliabhin's blood in your reach? And I'm far more guilty than the boy."

 

"You've not asked what the curse is," said Nuallan.

 

"You'll tell me when it suits you."

 

"Torment," said Nuallan, "to suffer torment all your days, mac Sliabhin-the boy, oh, aye, he's free. We accept your offering; he's no matter to us. The curse is yours alone."

 

"Then let him go!"

 

"I shall do more than that," Nuallan said; and bent, the tallest and fairest of all his fellows, and gathered the boy into his arms ever so gently, as if he had been no weight at all. He bore him to the sleeping riders; and the light about him fell on their faces. It was Raghallach foremost among them; and Cinnfhail's shieldman; and others of Gleatharan. And Nuallan set Brian in Raghallach's arms on the saddlebow, sleeping child in the keeping of the sleeping rider, whose face was bruised and battered with wounds from Dun Mhor's cellars.

 

"What have you done?" Caith asked in horror. "Sidhe, what have you done?"

 

"Ah," said Nuallan, looking at him, "but they will get on well, don't you think?-Raghallach will remember a thing he never did; but it will seem to him he was a great hero. And so the boy will remember the brave warrior who bore him away and took him safe to Gleatharan. Oh, aye, they'll wake at dawn, and think themselves all heroes; and so men will say of them forever. Is that not generous of me?"

 

Caith let out a breath, having gotten to his feet. He clenched his fists. But it looked apt, the tired small boy, asleep in safety, the honest man who sheltered him. "You could make him forget the rest," he said. "You've nothing left to trade."

 

"For your own kindness' sake-if it exists."

 

"I've done that-already." The Sidhe all were fading, leaving dark about, and the gleam of phooka eyes. But Nuallan took Caith's arm. "Come with me," he said.

 

caith was alone then, left utterly alone in a place where the sun blinded him, and when his eyes had forgotten the dark the light seemed soft. There were fields and hills-fair and green, spangled with gold flowers. Herds of horses, each the equal of Dathuil, ran free, and trees grew straight and fair on the hillsides.

 

No one hindered him. Caith wandered this beautiful place waiting to die; and then taking comfort in it, for it seemed no heart could grieve here long except for greater causes than he possessed. He felt thirst; he slaked it at a stream over which trees bent under the weight of their fruit.

 

The water washed the pain from him. It healed his heart and when he washed his face in it he felt stronger than he had ever been.

 

He considered the fruit and risked it, growing reckless and fey and calm all at once, as if no death could touch him here, nor any grievous thing. Only then he felt afraid, for he felt a presence before he saw it, and looked up.

 

"It gives the Sight," said Nuallan- for Nuallan was suddenly there, astride Dathuil, bright as the setting sun. Dathuil dipped his head to drink, and the Sidhe slid lightly down to stand on the grassy margin.

 

"And what will you ask for that, Sidhe?"

 

"Nothing here has price."

 

Caith thought on that, taking what leisure he had to think. Every saying of the Sidhe seemed tangled, full of riddles, and he felt unequal to them, and small. "I've been waiting for you," he said.

 

"For the curse. Oh, aye, that matter. But it is settled. Or will be." The Sidhe looked less terrible than before. There was pity in his eyes. "I like you well, man. You bargain well-for a man. Would you know the truth-whose son you are?"

 

"Sliabhin's."

 

"The boy is Gaelan's. Half brother to you. And innocent. Come." The tall Sidhe knelt beside the brook. "Look. Look into the stream."

 

Caith looked, kneeling cautiously on the margin- and his heart turned in him, so that he almost fell, for it was the night sky he was looking into with the day still above him. "Ah!" he said and lost his balance.

 

Nuallan caught his arm and drew him back safe on the margin. "Nay, nay, that were a death neither man nor Sidhe should wish. An endless one. Look. Is there a thing you would wish to see? These waters show you anything dear to your heart. Would you see your brother?"

 

"Aye," Caith murmured, foreknowing a wounding. The Fair Folk were terrible even in their kindness.

 

The stars gave way to green hills, to Dun Gorm in the sunlight. A boy raced on a fine white horse, the wind in his hair, untrammeled joy in his eyes-

 

"Is that Brian? But he's older-"

 

"He's fourteen-Ah, you're thinking of others now-oh, aye, Raghallach-Brian follows him about; and Deirdre-she's grown very fair, has she not? Like Cinnfhail's own son, Brian is; and his queen's, the darling of their fading years, he is. The lad remembers very little of that year, only that it was terrible; he remembers fire and the long ride, and Raghallach bringing him away-it's thorough hero-worship. He doesn't remember you at all, save as one of Raghallach's men."

 

Caith bit his lip. "Good."

 

"Would you have it? Would you have what Brian has?"

 

"There's cost."

 

"In their world, always."

 

"His cost."

 

"Aye."

 

"No. I won't." Caith kept looking, until the image faded, until the abyss was back. He stood up as Nuallan did, there upon the brink. The gulf was below him again, the fall so easy from this place. He turned his back to it, there on the very edge, waiting as Nuallan set his hand lightly on his arm.

 

"Go your way," said Nuallan.

 

"Go?"

 

"Just go. You're free."

 

Nuallan let fall his hand. Caith turned away from the void, walked a little distance in disbelief, and then the rage got through. He turned back again, shaking with his anger. "Curse you, curse you to play games with me! You're no different than his sort, Sliabhin's, Hagan's. I've known that sort all my life. Is it your revenge-to laugh at me?"

 

"Oh, not to laugh, mac Sliabhin. Not to laugh." Nuallan's voice was full of pity and vast sorrow. "Torment is your curse; and I know none worse nor gentler than to have drunk and eaten here-and to know it forever irrecoverable. I have spared you what I could, my friend-"

 

"Nuallan-" Caith began.

 

But the dark of the Sidhe-woods of Gleann Gleatharan was about him again, and the cold, and mortality, in which he shivered. He had the ache of his wounds back; and the gnawing of hunger and remorse in his belly.

 

"A curse on you!" he cried in the night of his own stained world.

 

He heard only a moving in the brush, and saw there the gleam of two eyes like coals. Dubhain was there, in boy's shape, a naked ruffian again.

 

"I am still with you," the phooka said. "This is my place."

 

Caith turned his shoulder to Dubhain and walked on, lost in this mortal woods and knowing it. He walked, until he knew that he was alone.

 

THE VISIONS crowded in on him, too vivid for a while: the vision of Dun Gorm that he had seen; and his brother growing up-but never must he go there, nor to the ruins of Dun Mhor, where he was a murderer and worse. His new Sight told him this, not acute, but dull, like a wound that hurt when he touched it, when he thought of the things he wanted and knew them lost.

 

There was no life for him but banditry, and regret, and remembering forever, remembering a land where everything was fair and clean.

 

"I'll give you a ride," the phooka offered in his dreams, on the next dark night when Caith slept fitfully, his belly gnawed with hunger. "O man, you need not be stubborn about it. I like you well. So does Nuallan. He did let you go-"

 

-the phooka took more solid shape, seated on a stump as Caith dreamed he waked. "-O man, don't you know Nuallan could have done far worse? He repented the curse. He wished it unsaid. But a Sidhe's word binds him. Especially his kind."

 

But there was no comfort in Caith's dreams, when he dreamed of the beauty he had seen, and of ease of pain; and when he rose up in the morning and had the miles always before him.

 

"I'll bear ye," the phooka offered wistfully.

 

"No," Caith said, and walked on, stubborn in his loss. Where he was going next he had no idea. He looked down from the height of the green hills and saw Gleann Gleatharan, and Dun Gorm with its herds fair and its fields wide; but he came no nearer to it than this, to stand on its hills and want it as he wanted that land he saw only in his dreams.

 

"I am your friend," the phooka said, whispering from behind him.

 

It was well a man should have one friend. Caith held his cloak about him against the wind and kept walking, passing by Dun Gorm and all it had of peace.

 

"Come," he whispered to the wind. "Come with me, phooka, if you like."

 

---

 

VII

 

the ship approaches dock. The star glows in the window, red and so dim they do not need the visual shielding. We can look on its spotted face directly, if not for long. Its light momentarily dyes the table, the ice in our glasses, the crystal liquid, the bubbles that rise and burst. Then the ship's gentle rotation carries the view away.

 

There are no planets in this system. Only ice and iron. And a starstation.

 

Bags are packed. Most of the passengers are leaving. Soon the take-hold will sound.

 

"Packed?" I ask.

 

"Yes," you say. And gaze at the unfamiliar stars, thinking what thoughts I do not guess. "They're going to have to ship that poor fellow home. Next ship back. He just can't take it out here."

 

"His world always traveled the universe," I say. "He thinks it's abandoned him. Maybe it has. He thinks he'd be safe there. I'm not sure he'll ever feel quite so safe again."

 

"You're immune?"

 

I think about it. I see miniature worlds in the bubbles amid the ice in my glass. Microcosm in crystal. "I haven't left home," I say. "I don't know what it is to leave home. And I'm as safe here as most places."

 

"You mean the universe."

 

"That, yes."

 

The alarm sounds then. I down my drink quickly, we both do. I rise and toss glass and ice into the disposal. Yours goes after it.

 

We stare at each other then, at the point of farewells.

 

There is no choice, of course. This is a transfer-point. Our separate ships are already waiting at the station.

 

And they keep their own schedules.

 

The End