“Ceannann!” he shouted against the gale. “Firinne!” And angrily: “Dubhain, damn you!”
No one heeded. He knew beyond a doubt that he could not hope to close the gap with the pair ahead of him. They might realize he was gone, perhaps.
Perhaps Dubhain would deign to find him— or Dubhain was off cavorting in the rain the way Dubhain would, on such wild nights, witless lad, off through the storm and the rain like a very fool, dancing along the mountain in the lightnings— while he broke his neck in the dark. That was the reward of trusting the dark Sidhe.
But at this slower, saner pace he recovered both his breath and his wits, and made up his mind to go on up the mountain at a slant, rather than follow the track the twins had followed, and shelter alone wherever he could find a nook out of the wind. A stream-cut or a falls was the most likely such place; and that he had yet crossed no stream, upward bound, meant there was none such on the slopes directly above.
Within a fold in the hill further on he might be luckier. Taking his slantwise course around the rocky shoulder, he said to himself, he must cross one soon. Rainwater poured off a mountain in any fold it could find, and it was folly to climb straight up to the ridge— they had been going entirely wrong. He could not think now what had possessed them all, except exhaustion and blind panic, or a dark Power’s ill will.
So he shouted into the dark from time to time, trying to make Firinne and Ceannann hear him and come back. Inexperienced of the mountain heights, they might be, and by now in far direr trouble than he was, but it would be folly to go searching for them now. He could only call their names and do all he could for himself, to keep on his feet and to keep searching, in the lightnings, for some small place out of the wind and the icy rain.
He had left the exposed eastern face of the hill, and he was spending far less strength now that he was not driving himself like a fool straight up the height.
But a sudden, cruel gust came around the mountain shoulder. The rain blasted at him, and stole the little warmth he had won. He began to shiver thereafter, and the shivers made his knees unsteady and unsteadiness made his steps wander.
His ankle turned dangerously on a misstep. The damned sword banged about his left side, hampering him in his reach for a hand-hold. He found a grip, barely, and clung there, trembling.
He did not know now how far he had climbed. His legs were beyond burning with the climbing, and his feet and fingers were so numb now with the cold that he could not tell now what his hands were closing on for a grip or where his feet were, among the stones and the gnarled brush.
He took another step. His foot slid. He took a painful fall onto his hip and his elbow, skidded a distance and crawled up the flat rocks again, onto a steep, stony stretch. He sat there, having discovered at least a knee-high ridge and a growth of brush between him and the direct sweep of the wind.
It was less than he had hoped for. But it might be the best he would find— a breathing space, where the brush broke the force of the rain above him. The stone of the mountain felt warmer than the rain on his other side.
It must be goat-herding that had instilled such endurance into the pair of fools that had gone off up the mountain ahead of him— that, and no sleepless nights and no wounding with arrows and no beating by the lady’s servants and chasing after faithless Sidhe.
So he thought, lying under the driving rain, wrapped in his wool and trying to shiver up more warmth to his bones.
And if the beast of the loch should slither up this slope and seek him for its supper this very moment, he swore he could muster no great fear of it, not in this bitter wind. The cold was gaining on him.
“Hoosht, now,” Dubhain exclaimed, arriving with a skip and a hop down from the rock above him. “There ye are!”
“A small rest,” he said, tilting his head back onto the supporting rock. “A short sit.” He could not even muster delight to see the rascal, or imagine that Dubhain would help him up. He was no longer sure he even wanted to get up. It meant a further walk through the cold, against the battering wind, and that was a great deal to ask of a man who had already achieved a comforting numbness on one side. The bruises there had ceased hurting. All that side had ceased hurting at all, and Dubhain wanted him to get up and go on?
He did not think so. What was more, he ceased to care, or to fear, or to regret his mistakes. He was through with the Sidhe, with their games and their jokes and their ill-treatment of him.
Even Dubhain’s, geas-bound as they were.
“Go find Firinne,” he said hoarsely. “If the Sidhe have such a care for them, go find the fools. I’ll bide here a wee.”
A woman stark naked could not have lured him onto his feet now— that Firinne was alive he did hope, in what little he cared.
He hoped with a little less concern that Ceannann was alive. The boy was not that much the fool, and what could he plead for his own good sense, following the pair straight up a mountain as if they were going somewhere?
He could not remember what they hoped to do, not for the life left in him, and he did not greatly care about his failing reason, either. There was only Dubhain’s dark shape squatting by him, a shadow in which the eyes shimmered the faintest of red, and there was Dubhain’s hand, shaking his shoulder and calling him to life.
Chapter Six
Thunder clapped and lit the mountainside, a stark play of rocks, driving rain, and midnight shadows. “Man,” Dubhain said somberly, squatting by him, arms on knees, “ye puir, drookit man. Hist! Wake! Here I maun say to ye what I dared nae say wi’ the twain tae hear.”
“Say on,” Caith said wearily. His head was against the stone, a heather twig was sticking his neck and brush was gouging his back as he sat, hurt and weary to the bone. Either of these miseries mattered to him more at the moment than another of Dubhain’s tangled confidences, while the rain pounded him in cold gusts and sheets.
“Hear me, Man. Lift your head. We maun rescue Himself frae that place—”
”Oh, aye. We will, that.”
“For our ain sakes, man!”
“Aye. Bid the rain stop. Find my cloak. I think I left it in the castle.”
“The young man said: ‘Worse than her having us.’ Us, it is, and: ‘Gae to our feither,’ the lassie says, and off we gae wi’ these shepherd folk, like twa good fools. Hae ye nae sma’ curiosity why Himself flung us out o’ the castle?”
“Or she did. The witch did.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps neither.”
“Neither?”
“There is the Sidhe about our pretty pair, hae ye nae kent it, me brave Caith?”
Tricked, had they been? Led this way and that and left in the cold? Another damnable Sidhe trick on them? “Of what sort?”
“I can nae tell. The watery folk, I do think.”
Now Caith made shift to get an arm under him and lift his head. “What, that you cannot tell? Did we not sleep under their roof? Did you see nothing then?”
Dubhain stood up and set his hands on his hips, towering dark and wind-blown against the lightnings. “Oh, aye, my fault, it is!”
“I mean no fault in you, ye fractious wight, I but ask: are they the same now as then?”
Dubhain glanced at him sidelong, the corner of a red-glowing eye. “I cannae say.”
“Art held from saying?”
“I am nae oracle, man, I only came back in the dark t’ find a fool an’ warn him.”
Dubhain did not know, or some magic constrained him from saying— and Dubhain so hated to be in error, or constrained in any particular.
“Warn me about them? Or the Sidhe?”
“We hae lost what help we had, man, we hae lost Nuallan, and d’ ye yet see the Daoine Sidhe coming wi’ the horns of faery and the bright banners flying to his rescue?” A pass of Dubhain’s hand about the windy dark. “I see nae such help about this loch or these hills. That is nae simple witch, man, that is a thing sae powerful a’ready a Sidhe lord hae mista’en her, and set himself and all his magic in
her keep. D’ ye nae understand the Daoine Sidhe themselves could nae breach her defense? Ye had t’ ask me in; and after me rattlin’ the wards, why, the lord Nuallan had nae trouble at all— maybe far too little a trouble. The lady was sudden and subtle. The wards went shut. She trapped him, while we sailed through an’ out like minnows in a sieve, did ye nae feel it? The fair folk cannae breach her walls, no more than before, and Himself is in nae comfortable circumstance tonight.”
“Why did he fling us outside?”
“Ye were nae listenin’, man. Pay attention!”
“I understand about the wards, damn you! Why send us outside? Was ’t Nuallan or the lady cast us out? That’s one question. But did neither wish to hold us?”
“Why, ye were nae great help, my Caith, stumbling and witless as ye were.” Dubhain squatted down again and gazed at him, with the fire in his eyes gone dim again. “And she hae let fly all the pretty sparrows— being occupied wi’ the greater gift in her nets. Or perhaps not. Wi’ such a power ye cannae trust. And wi’ the watery sort also in ’t ... ’t is me own ilk, pretty Caith, and ever so wise and wonderful as we are, we are a wee sma’ bit an impulsive kind.”
“A damnable weathercock.” The wind whipped behind him and under him as he shoved himself up and tried to get a leg under him. Just that much he managed, and looked uphill where the siblilngs had gone. “Are they waiting or have they gone on’”
“Och, nay, they’re sittin’ this moment in better comfort than you, sweet Caith. There are walls up above, a ruin o’ sorts, which I think ye may find more pleasant than here.”
He was half frozen, so stiff he could scarcely climb, and now Dubhain told him there was shelter?
He swallowed a curse, shoved his other leg under him, and stumbled a step and two uphill, using his hands on the cold, streaming rocks to steady him.
Dubhain shoved him from behind, hand on his rump, and such was his weakness he would have fallen and failed the climb, without that help. He climbed and he panted and he climbed and he panted and gasped, halfway to the wind-scoured clouds:
“Did they know this was a place to go? Is this a place they knew?”
“Och, aye, they did seem to.” Another shove heaved Caith up a step as his legs tried and failed, and he caught himself and struggled further. “Their feither’s castle, they said. And a deal else, by now, but I could nae rescue a fool and hear their private talk all at once, now, could I, me darlin’ Caith? And I did think ye might want a wee bit of help doon here.”
The crest of the hill loomed up against the lightnings, jagged and strangely shaped, a work of masonry and not nature, clearly so. Caith had to pause for breath, Dubhain shoving at him as he was— he slipped to one knee to rest, but Dubhain seized him by the arm and dragged him up the next distance, with him trying all the while to use his legs or get his breath, at the least.
He mistrusted Dubhain now, he mistrusted where he was going. It was a sudden helpful mood Dubhain was in, and his reason went scattered a moment as Dubhain carried him along— Dubhain’s reason was balanced on a knife’s edge of geas and the allure of wickedness from moment to moment on a night like this, and with wicked and ancient influences on the wind from out of that darksome loch.
“Ye would not like the lady of the loch half so well,” he panted next Dubhain’s ear. “Mind, I do bear with your pranks and your jests, ye wretched wight. Would she? I do fear the lady is humorless.”
“A great failin’,” Dubhain agreed, and with a blithe strength no mortal could match, hauled him roughly up a last crumbling slope toward a shadowed wall, then through a doorless gate, into deeper darkness.
“A man could break his neck,” Caith protested. His eyes strained to see and found nothing at all to tell him he had not gone blind. His feet were on a level stone floor, and the icy wind was dead here, not warmer, just dead, except a faint, dank breeze that smelled of age and rot.
He feared going further, he feared Dubhain might have left his kinder mood outside this ruin, but he dared not lose his grip on Dubhain’s sleeve— Dubhain was having his small joke with him. Oh, Dubhain with a chance to discomfit him could not forego that, no more than down on the hillside. Surely that was all Dubhain was up to, and here was no worse purpose than he had had below.
But why had Lord Nuallan come to help them? The Daoine Sidhe had no charity.
Was it breaching the witch’s defense that had been their task? Was it a seige of the fay against the witch, and themselves to be the way in? But it had gone amiss, with the Lord Nuallan now on the wrong side of the walls, and alone. And that was a foul, foul business, no good to them, for whom Nuallan was their only patron.
Dubhain drew him on in the dark inside, will he, nil he, and of a sudden they were facing a second stonework stairs going upward, the lightning from outside showing them the way.
“Up, up,” Dubhain said, tugging at him, and they climbed up the few dark steps to that crumbling doorway, out under the sky and the rain again. It had been a hall, perhaps, now roofless hall, where the rain and the storm had free rein, and the wind skirled madly about in attempts to escape the jagged walls.
Huddled together in the shelter of a half-ruined arch across that stone terrace, he saw Firinne and Ceannann, who leapt up to meet them.
“I hae found him,” Dubhain called out to them, “half-frozen that he is.”
Wherewith Dubhain let him go without warning. Caith’s legs went and his knee and then his elbow met the unforgiving paving-stones.
He could not even muster a curse for the creature, or hate him for dumping him like a sack of meal before these two— Dubhain had done someone a kindness, so of course Dubhain had to make up for it, in Dubhain’s own perverse set of balances.
“The poor man,” Firinne cried, and knelt down on the rain-slick stones, this fair-haired, Sidhe-touched creature, to try to persuade him of her good intentions. Ceannann hovered by, too, offering to help him up, but Caith flinched away from their ministrations, would not have either of them touch him, them with their deceptions and their lies and their misleading him about their nature— not even that he blamed them, Sidhe having a necessity to do that sort of thing, deceiving and misleading and tricking the mortal world. But he wanted no more of it in his pain and his misery, and he wanted most of all not to be some Sidhe’s plaything tonight, or to deal with their ilk in any fashion— he had no wit to match with their stinging cleverness, not now.
So he eluded their doubtless good intentions, said not a word of complaint, and edged over into the nearest of several arches that had rimmed the hall, a shallow, rubbled nook next the threshold and the downward stairs.
There he hugged his arms about himself, tucked himself up small and shivering in this refuge where few drops reached, and hoped that the wind would not shift and get inside his nook tonight. The stone floor was cold under him and the stonework cold against his shoulder, but would he die?
Oh, never. Dubhain would not have that, no matter the cold that had his teeth chattering and his knees knocking together.
No, Dubhain would get him through until the dawn... never ask in what comfort.
Never ask why they were up here in the wet, while there was close, dry stone in that vault that supported this cold stone floor, below. Dubhain preferred the wind and the rain.
And Dubhain settled down next to him, snuggled close against him. “Here, here,” said Dubhain, and caught him in his arms, constrained his shivers in a hard, fever-warm embrace, and breathed against his ear: “Pretty Caith.”
The shivers would not stop. “Be damned to you.”
“Our twa hosts were sae worrit about ye. They would hae gone themselves.”
“They lost me in the storm.”
“Ye lost yourself, ye fool. Ye turned off the trail.”
“What trail? What cursed trail? I fell off the damned mountain!”
“Hush. Hush, while they settle to sleep, our pretty ones.” Dubhain’s embrace half smothered him. “Wi’ nae mistrust of us, ’
t would seem, or they are sae desperate for rest as yourself, my bluidy prince—”
”Trust is not the habit of the Sidhe.”
“Nay, but sometimes we sleep.”
“Should ever they trust us?” he asked, foggy-witted, and asking before he thought.
Dubhain laughed, a touch of blithe wickedness, and hugged him close, while the shivers diminished.
“Nay, ne’er. But they are nae creatures of the changing moon, I judge, nae e’en as much as the bright Sidhe. Watery folk though they be, ’t is the bright sun they favor. And that is a verra peculiar kind.”
The warmth had reached his other side, it seemed, and Caith could at last draw a small, sane breath, thinking that he should move, now that he was not in imminent danger of freezing. Dubhain would soon play some malicious joke on him; but he could not bring himself to relinquish the rest or the warmth while it lasted.
“I’ve no experience of their kind,” he said, only half awake.
“The sun folk? Strong they are, but some sae silly a man can trick them. Some mad as goats in spring. Most hae the Sight in great measure— but it comes and it goes for them. Dark ones of that ilk—”
”Of the sun folk?” It seemed to him he was losing pieces of what Dubhain was saying, and he was sorry: when Dubhain would talk on such matters, one could learn things.
“Oh, aye. There are. And watery ones and dark ones, every sort that ye could imagine.”
“I never saw any such, not in faery. Did I?”
“Of their will ye ne’er do. Ye’re a man, ye silly. And the sun is full of lies, dazzle and dance— did I say they were honest? Or fair-tempered? The moon for changes and the sun for hard-handed trickery...”
Dubhain’s voice was fading from him. A new spate of rain had started, and the wind carried a few cold drops into their shelter, but not enough to matter. Caith said, “I’d have taken the sun for bright—” And he was slipping away, he knew it, uttering foolishness.
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