Faery Moon

by C. J. Cherryh

  And despairing: “Brian!”

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

  And no one listened.

  Eight

  There was a hall beyond the stairs, a room at the side of it, up short steps— a dank darkness, masonry built into Dun Mhor’s very hill, a stone room, dirt-floored.

  Rough hands hurled them both in, and quickly slammed the door.

  The pooka’s eyes glowed, company in the dark, and a light grew about them both, until Caith could see Dubhain plainly. The pooka 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 pooka 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. “’T is all a sham. Isn’t it?”

  “Of course ’t 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 can be in Nuallan’s mind, to come here like this?”

  Silence.

  “He’s in trouble, is he? Dubhain?”

  “Och, never he.” Dubhain dusted his hands and, blithe as he had begun, but his voice quavered as the cry rang out again.

  “Can ye nae 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’ sake, pooka, can you do something?”

  “The wards—” The pooka 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 ’t 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 cannot get out?”

  The pooka said nothing.

  “He’s testing me, Sliabhin is.” Caith got to his feet, staggering as he did. “Using Raghallach— Nuallan. ’T is 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’ve no love for your jokes, pooka. Do something. I have a brother in this place, remember? Where is he, now? Listenin’ to that?” He laughed, a brief, strained laughter. “O gods, you Sidhe do love a joke. But this is enough, pooka, 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. E’en his humor does nae carry to this.”

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

  “The wards—” Caith said.

  “The Fair Folk,” said Dubhain.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Nuallan’s o’ the High Fair Folk. He says wards are nae that much against him.”

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

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

  “My brother, pooka. You bargained. Do something. Find him. Where is he?”

  “Patience, noo,” the pooka 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. “Pooka,” Caith said.

  “Hssst.” The look that fixed on him was dire and distraught. “What will ye pay for it?”

  “Pay for it? ’T is 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 for ’t?”

  “Curse you, you’ve already bargained for that answer, for all I’ve got!”

  “Your scruples, man. I told ye ye had that left to trade.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I’ll tell ye if we survive this. When I gae out, hold t’ 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 wild-haired youth, 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 pooka said. “Follow me.”

  They padded down the dark stairs, quiet and quick. Quietly and quickly they pushed open the door on the great 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 pooka, 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 at that man’s knees as he fell in the doorway. He 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 pooka sent the surviving pair screaming in retreat up the inside stairs.

  Then the horse-shape turned and changed, twisting 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 depths 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, where they had first come in. Thunder cracked outside, shaking the stones. The pooka 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 yet another door, having settled on human shape after all.

  “Take us to my brother,” Caith breathed, seizing Dubhain by the hair.

  “Ye’re heavy,” Dubhain complained. “Heavy—” The pooka was panting now. “And the latch is iron.”

  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 oft
ener. Haste— be quick.”

  Caith opened the door. Stairs gaped ahead of them, going downward yet again, and another outcry echoed up. Caith turned on , with a wild suspicion of betrayal. “My brother,” he insisted. “Not Nuallan— hang Nuallan! He can save himself.”

  “Gae doon an’ find ‘im, man,” said Dubhain. “We keep our bargains.”

  Caith spun about and headed down the stairs, trusting the pooka 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, down into the depths of Dun Mhor.

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

  But beyond that torch showed a glow of firelight, and the stairs took another downward bend, onto a wider scene, onto a hell of torchlight and torment in the cellars of Dun Mhor.

  Nine

  They saw him as he saw them— a dozen men, and 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, stepping down from that last step, 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.... Ye know I’d hae believed ye? Ye should hae spoke me fair, ye ken. An’ is this my brother? Brian— is ’t you, lad?”

  There was silence from the young 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 oilpot bubbled softly and sent up its acrid, stinging reek. An ember snapped. The air stank of burned flesh and mold and sweat.

  “I’ve killed your men upstairs,” Caith said, baiting them all. Such a crime as he had come down here 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 wee ones. Nothing. ’T is a fortress of bandits, father, this house of ours. And how did my mother die? A suicide, I’ve heard. Was it for love of you?”

  Sliabhin’s face twisted. “Shut your mouth.”

  “Did she kill herself after she found out what a fiend she let in? After she saw what you did? My mother surely had some scruples left. Even I had scruples left. But you have none, and I’ve given mine away. Why did ye not call me home long ago— to your loving care? Hagan— he 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 would not have it. He has the notion he should be king here. 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 ye 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 ye , do ye ken?”

  “The way you’re killing his son? Nay, I nae ken that. I’ll nae hear anything ye say. Ever. Lad. Brian—” Caith moved near the cage, shifting ever so carefully. “I’m your brother Caith, Brian, ye hear me? I hae come for ye. I’ll try to get ye out of here.”

  There was no response. Perhaps the boy had passed beyond all wit. Or trusted nothing in the world. 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.

  “Ye maun face me,”Caith said softly, looking Sliabhin in the eyes. “Come on, man, draw your sword. What’s one killin’ more?”

  A small shake of the head. “I’d not kill you .”

  “Why not? I’ll wager ye 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, ye loved my mother. You wanted her to yourself, even more than you loved her— and still ye’ll never know. Ye drove her to hate ye. Ye drove my brother to hate ye. Ye hae done it all yourself.”

  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 as bright and perilous as fire. Nuallan’s chains suddenly fell, still locked, and clinked against the stone as Nuallan-Raghallach stood free and unfettered. 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 leather bindings, falling all to pieces.

  “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, and for his purpose in living, for what he had come to do.

  “Nuallan,” Caith said hoarsely, desperately, “get the boy safe awa’. Dubhain hae 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, a protest. “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, his father having one hate now and one focus of his lifelong malice.

  Caith seized the brazier one-handed, overturned it, hurling red coals and irons across the planks between him and Sliabhin’s men. 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 first man that came up 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 from those hands, hearing the shrieks of burning men below, seeing the whole stairwell flaring up from beneath, aleap with flame and horror. A burning man raced up the steps toward him, mad with pain. That dying man he killed over Sliabhin’s corpse, and turned, gasping for breath, to race stumbling up the stairs, sword in hand.

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

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

  “Kill him,” someone shouted behind him. “Watch the gate!” another cried.

  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 stolen sword. Before him he saw the gate sealed and barred; and in front of that barred gate 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 from the Sidhe lord. 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 base of 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 as he looked for a way to climb. 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 sudden beat of hooves sounded at his right, coming from somewhere far, and a cold wind blew on him. Then 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 pooka-ride, that would end in numbing cold water, some lightless river bottom, to drift among the reeds, all life done. Caith clenched the black thick mane in his fists and flung himself astride the pooka, 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.