But he approached Dubhain carefully, warily, all the same, and was not at all surprised when Dubhain turned his head and he saw the balefire glimmering in those brown eyes, even by beginning daylight.
“The witch hath waked in a bad humor,” Caith said. “So will she do as she pleases with us? I think not, an’ me mortal-born.”
The fires burned no dimmer. Dubhain held his arms folded tight, and madness boded in that frown.
“She has made a grievous mistake,” Caith said, “when she spites us. A little more, and she may make us angry.”
Dubhain’s laugh was quick and merry as a wicked thought. His arms came free and he spun half about and scooped up another, larger stone from beside the rock.
Out it sailed, far, far off the mountain, until the eye could not find it in the gulf.
It was excessive, perhaps. But Dubhain was always that. Excess was his own besetting fault. Excess had led him to trouble before this, and his saying what he had said and Dubhain’s hurling the stone were two deeds that hung in the air with a finality he could not shake.
He saw it in the twins’ faces, distraught with what they had heard, or Seen with the eyes of the Sighted. They both seemed appalled, as if they knew not what to make of the allies they had gained against the witch.
“Come,” said Dubhain, skipping barefoot from the side of that rock down a series of flat stones that a mortal eye might not pick out as safe. But Dubhain found a rapid, reckless course along the edge of earth and sky, a quick, white-shirted wraith that a mortal man could not hope to keep up with.
But free! Free of the witch, free of spells— he had won that much for the wight. And now Dubhain had something to prove, and was showing out.
Well, so he must, being Dubhain.
And, coming down a different course of like stones, Firinne and Ceannann were quicker on Dubhain’s track than he was, and left him behind again, picking a slower, more careful way along the slope. He had the jug in one hand, the other hand for the mountain, where the way grew unreasonably steep.
“Break all our necks,” Caith muttered blackly.
But soon afterward, in the deep chasm between the hills, he saw the wheeling course of a gull, and then another one, a white, swift bandit streaking high above the slant. That gave him hope they were near the end of the mountains. Gulls came inland— but they were free creatures, and there had been none at all, he recalled, in the darkness of Gleann Fiain.
Yet they were here, and the mountains showed promise of opening before them.
He clambered over rocks and along perilous slants, slower always, until at last he saw the twins stop against a bright slice of sky. Dubhain had reached that place before them all and stopped, and Caith made what haste he dared, and arrived at last, out of breath and sweating.
It was all open sky ahead. They had crossed the mountain shoulder, and a low and rolling land spread below their feet.
At their right, the dreadsome loch poured out its waters into a river that went on and on into that lowlands, a winding above which gulls flew willingly and on which the sun shone with a fair, bright light.
He blinked at the vision, in that way a man did when faery played its tricks, and the grey haze was still on the horizon.
“The sea,” he said, between breaths.
“The sea,” Firinne whispered, too, and he had no doubt at all it was real. He felt it ... he had grown up hearing the gulls and smelling the salt water, and that memory pulled at him like a mother’s unheard voice. Oh, Macha, it was good to be near it again.
And Dubhain, standing in the wind, with a flat rock for his vantage: “He will be there, the sun-born will. In the salt sea he smells the blood. The gulls hear him coming. The land feels the thunder of his waves. The sun turns to brass and the gates of faery shiver—”
Dubhain turned about, with the red fire sun-dimmed in his eyes, with a frown on his face, with a word more on his lips that he did not speak: Caith saw him smother it, and saw the uneasy glance at the twins.
Then it came to him what uncertainty Dubhain held about the twins. And he recalled that they had never known what the selkie’s part in this was, or even whether the selkie was a bright or a dark force, for or against the Daoine Sidhe...
While, fool that he was, he might have the answer, himself, an answer banging about his chest and his neck for months. He was so accustomed he forgot most times that he carried it at all, the elfshot, the discerning of seeming from being.
The sight would blast you, Nuallan had said, picking it up and calling it to his attention.
And when they turned and resumed their downhill course toward that lowlands, he began to think of it constantly, and at last furtively laid his hand on it where it hung against his chest, wondering whether he should ask Dubhain about it.
But Dubhain had gone fey and strange at the moment, flitting down the rocks out of reach and impossible to ask— while there was as good a chance to look on the twins as ever he had had, with both of them below him, and unaware of him above.
Still he hesitated, little enough confident that he would like the truth he might see, little enough certain he knew enough to judge what he would see. If what he saw was too strange, how was he to know whether it was fair or foul? He had never yet dared look at a Sidhe, only at the things the Sidhe had touched, and he had never made sense of those at all.
Through the stone, true, blessed things looked brighter and cursed things had a kind of grime on them ... and the sword he carried was a black thing, with the print of his hand on its hilt. He had looked at it twice to be sure, and then no more.
But Nuallan had directly called it to his attention, when they met.
Nuallan had set the thought of it into the matter at hand— when Nuallan had seen it in his possession often enough before and done nothing. This time—
This time Nuallan had only warned him against looking at Dubhain— or at him. Had he not?
Perhaps it had been an honest warning— for once in his dealings with the bright Sidhe— in calling his attention to what he should remember he carried. Perhaps it was only a whim of the moment. The High Elves were like that.
Things of faery slipped the mind and changed on a man. He could not remember now whether Nuallan’s prohibition had extended to anything else.
Macha, it was enough to drive aman mad— like swimming through dark water, it was, trying to remember the most necessary things of faery.
But Nuallan had intended he remember, and to do something with it— he became certain of that.
Yet Nuallan had not bespelled him to remember what exactly he had said.
Perhaps with his own fate on him, Nuallan had feared the witch would see it and take it from him, and it was somehow important that she not do that.
So perhaps Nuallan had bespelled it, only to be forgotten when one saw it— in case it was something the witch would want for herself.
Or why else had the witch not taken it from about his neck?
He should look. He should see. He had no ties to the twins, at least, and if they were foul beyond belief, he did not believe the sight would blast him, as Nuallan had warned him. He had seen horrors aplenty and gone unblasted yet.
It was only his peace of mind it might work on, if he were fool enough to try it on Dubhain. That had been Nuallan’s meaning— had it not been?
He thought about it, and thought about it, and finally, at a breathing-space in his descent, and while Firinne and Ceannann were occupied climbing down a steep slope below him, he lifted the stone on its cord and stole a single glance.
Sun-glare flared through at him, so blinding that he dropped the stone and rubbed his eye, leaning against the mountain with his other elbow, of the hand that held the cursed jug.
A dark spot was branded on his vision, in which drifted a red shape with different layers, one on the other, changing red to black and back again, none of it making mortal sense.
That was a Sidhe? That was what they were?
Dazzle an
d dance, Dubhain had said of the sun-born kind.
And, in the same way the twins professed they could not tell which of them was which, the stone both blinded him, and showed him one single creature between them, that kept changing even the shape branded on his eyes.
So much for carrying the stone all this way, with it banging nuisancefully about his chin, and making him look the fool, perhaps even to Dubhain. Certainly he must have to Nuallan. It offered only further mysteries, solved not a damned thing, and for a moment, light-blinded and leaning helpless against the mountain, he wanted to rip the cord from his neck and pitch it off the mountainside, he was so wroth with it, and in such blind, stinging misery from the use of it, and so angry at the Sidhe’s deceptions. He all but despaired, for a moment, of finding any help below, not from the twins, not even from the selkie.
Ghosts haunted their sleep and kept them walking all night, the witch’s men were on the hunt— the corpse on the floor of the keep attested to that, if they had had any doubts. No mortal horses might cross the slopes they had crossed, well and true, Dubhain knew that better than any, but the riders of Gleann Fiain surely knew their own land— might come afoot or might know some pass further back along the loch, once they knew where they were tending.
And knowing the nature of the twins, how much guesswork did it take to know where they were going, even better than they did?
Macha, it had all the smell of the witch’s ambush on Guagach’s banks, the one he had walked into, feckless as Ceannann, and how many times did it need for them to learn that these men were no fools?
And who ever had promised them that the witch’s resources were all bound to the loch itself?
Food they had none, except what Dubhain brought, and they had no sure promise of help where they were going, sleepless and with so much effort.
But in the blinding vision of the stone, at least, he had seen a truth to give him sober thought: there was power in the twins.
And on the wind came a gull’s cry and he remembered the sea, which put strength into his limbs. Eyes still streaming, he could see enough to take a careful course downward, not so quick as the others, not nearly so sure-footed, but steady and stubborn.
Well, but Dubhain would set his pace and he, his.
That was how he always kept up with Dubhain on better days, knowing he would get there, himself, the cursed man, and the sword he carried. Even the stone gods had their mortal followers, and if they wanted something done they called on them, and it happened at their pace.
He was the help the Sidhe had called on. He could do no better than he was doing, nor guess more than he did, if they left him with no better counsel than they had given him.
But geassi bound the Powers, too, to silence, precisely on the things mortals had to work out for themselves. That was how the magic worked, when it worked, if it worked.
Even the Sidhe could make mistakes.
Think of m’lord silver-hands in his cage.
And, oh, now the twins slanted their downward course towards the river itself, unasking, unadvised—
Anxious to be out of the hard climbing, they might be. Or drawn by the fey blood one of them had. But he could not overtake them to argue the point, while Dubhain—
Dubhain, seeming to consent to this course, skipped effortlessly down the stones and among the heather-clumps, apart from them all on the mountain, hands folded behind him, head bowed in thought. Brooding on something, or scheming, or thinking of mischief, he might be. At least the witch and the powers under earth had not got him— he might be touchy and sullen, no unusual thing, but this skipping about, this brooding on devilment, that was Dubhain’s very self, and Caith took heart in that much, however dark it were.
For all he could know, too, the twins’ course toward the river was advised and ordained.
And the selkie— had heard their calling. Dubhain had said it. Was he there?
A thing of the sea he was, but could he find his way up the river?
To what meeting were they going? And was the twins’ second father there?
* * *
By afternoon, the land was scattered hills, the skirts of the mountain, that spread down onto the whin and rock and heather and finally the grass of the flat lands beyond. The hazy difference between the sky and the land ahead grew stranger as the sun sank low, a place edged with pale uncertainty.
And from blackest despair in the morning, Caith found himself arguing with a rising, giddy hope, that there might indeed be a Power nearing them that was everything they needed. Gleann Fiain and all that darkness and mountain steep seemed another world from what they saw before them now, and rest and help and sleep seemed all possible tonight. The setting sun danced merrily on a lazy westward bend of the river as they descended to its very shore. Peat-straw had washed up as a golden margin along the river edge, where reeds were few and the banks were autumn grass. A brightness was on the river water, too, so different from the dark glen it might have been a passage into faery itself.
They might yet win free of Gleann Fiain and be quit of their obligations to fey fools, Caith told himself. They might find the selkie, send him off to quarrel with the witch and rescue Lord Nuallan, letting the great fay battle among themselves, and themselves, wee folk and unimportant, could linger near the sea, walk the shore and smell the salt air. They could be free of hurt and want for a while. There would be fishermen, there would be crofters about these hills— rich as the land was, one expected flocks and fields, fat cattle and sheep and, like a stone net spread across the land, the web of drystane walls that farmers would make.
But such walls as he saw were tumbled down in places, uncared for, and gorse and broom were the only crops.That was a troubling sight.
Perhaps the farms lay farther from the river. Perhaps it was only cattle rich lords pastured here on the grassy seaside, although one would expect to see some sign of the herds, even on resting pastures.
And it was the fading season of the year. The land-holders might have driven the herds down to winter byres already ... it was toward the cold end of the year.
But there was not a living presence of Men. It made the land feel vacant, and chancy.
And it came to Caith’s mind that they had seen no falls, no barrier between the loch and the river.
A swimmer could follow them.
In that thought, safety seemed none so sure. He grew a little uneasy as they walked along the shore, and more so as the rolling hills before them obscured the sea from his view, and the shadows grew longer on the land.
The twins kept on walking, while Dubhain skipped up to the crest of a nearby hill that Caith had no strength or will to climb, not even for a view of the sea.
How long did they purpose to walk tonight, and to what end? One place was like another.
And where were Dubhain’s thoughts, in his gazing off like that? Was the selkie near?
He was almost willing, now, to beg ease of his aching legs and his scrapes and bruises, whatever the unpleasantness of Dubhain’s healing magic when it touched him....
He was all but willing, but not yet, and increasingly out of sorts with Dubhain’s solitary bent today. He thought of shouting at him, and bidding Dubhain come walk with him, since walking was what the twins seemed inclined to do forever, but in truth, he wanted no dealings with Dubhain when he was in this fey and dark a mood— no comfort could come of it. The aches he had sufficed, and he continued in his own glum mood.
Then, past another small knowe, and where the river shore widened out to a gravelly stretch of sand, he saw the sea again in the distance, he saw nets drying on the river shore, and what must be a fisherman’s bothy, a hut of fieldstone built up against the hill and almost into it.
He drew larger breaths and doubled his pace to overtake the twins, limping as he was, hoping for welcome and a driftwood fire and, if the fisherman was truly charitable to strangers, a supper that was not rabbit.
Except that the nets when he overtook the twins among them pr
oved frayed and rotten. The thatch of the hut from a distance had looked sound as the stonework, but when they came near, it turned out as weathered grey as the fieldstone.
Worse, when they reached the door of the bothy, that door hung aslant on two leather hinges, the third rotted away, along with the lower quarter of the door itself, making it scant protection for the night.
“Abandoned,” Caith said bitterly, and, with a second glance about the river shore, wondered how long it took of hanging in the sun and the wind before well-made nets rotted on their drying-frames. A year or so, he reckoned. Less than ten, he was sure. The nets were enough to span all the river— once a prosperous fisherman, surely, or a whole clan of them. The hanging nets, like veils, stretched on and on in rows.
“There might be food in jars inside,” said Firinne, a wan hope; and then Ceannann added: “or fishing hooks.”
There might be; and that would be a prize, if they could also find line that had not rotted.
But finding out needed opening that rotted door and poking about inside a ruin as dead as the keep on the hill.
And, as their luck had been running, he had far rather have Dubhain do all the opening of such doors— if no wards prevented him, or if Dubhain at all liked the smell of it.
But when he looked around, Dubhain was not with him or anywhere in sight.
Damn the wretch, he thought. Probably Dubhain had found something else to distract him down by the shore. Or he might be hiding just around the other corner of the shanty— but there was not a sign of the rascal.
And it was rapidly getting dark.
He began to grow anxious, and looked around for any trace or track among the nets.
“Where has the Sidhe gone?” Ceannann asked, coming up behind him.
He had no patience to answer the boy civilly— or to look the fool in one of Dubhain’s pranks. Dubhain was playing games, now that they had reached some sort of shelter for the night— if one could call a dusty, abandoned shanty a destination at all. They would find him squatting down by the river, poking at something he had found— a dangerous place, with the water flowing out of the loch not a few miles away, but never expect Dubhain to stay the narrow course, and never try to explain him to anyone.
Faery Moon Page 28