Faery Moon

by C. J. Cherryh

  They were away then, with the wind rushing past them. He heard the pooka’s 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 the end of 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 pooka’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 icy hands and the cold 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 rudely drove all 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 pooka laughter and pooka humor and all the wickedness the Sidhe could muster. Sidhe-light broke about him, a pale glow. Sidhe stood all about him as he rested on his knees, 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 in the bracken at their feet.

  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 as far the Sidhe himself, and grasped at his shining cloak: but it passed through his fingers and he fell back to his knees.

  “I’d nae do that, man,” Dubhain said, squatting nearby, a shadow in the bracken, his eyes aglow and wicked .

  “Let him go free,” 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 did not 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. “Heed him, man,” the pooka said. “Don’t be reckless. Ye hae the curse o’ th’ Sidhe on you. ’T is all yours now. Did we nae help ye? We’ve more than kept our bargain. What else hae ye to give up, beyond your scruples?Think, man.”

  Caith managed a laugh, despairing as it was at that challenge. 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 of armed men 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 ye’ve most wanted— to have one of Sliabhin’s blood in your reach? And I’m far more guilty than the boy.”

  “You have 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 Conn; and others of Gleann 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, where he never had been

  “What hae you done?” Caith asked in horror. “Sidhe, what hae you done?”

  “Ah,” said Nuallan, looking at him, “but they will get on well, do you not think? Raghallach will remember a thing he never did. But ’t 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 Gleann Gleatharan . Oh, aye, they’ll all wake at dawn, and think themselves all heroes; and so men will sing 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 so apt, the tired small boy, asleep in safety, and the honest, brave man who sheltered him. “You could make him forget the rest,” he said.

  “You’ve nothing left to trade, man.”

  “Do it for your own kindness’ sake— if it exists.”

  “I have done that— already.” The Sidhe all were fading, leaving dark about, and the gleam of pooka eyes. But Nuallan took Caith’s arm. “Come with me,” he said.

  Ten

  Caith walked alone suddenly, 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 for hours, 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 was waiting for you,” he said.

  “For the curse. Oh, aye, that matter. But ’t 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 sixteen— Ah, you’re thinking of others now— oh, aye, Ra
ghallach— 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— Raghallach is very brave in his eyes. 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,—” said Nuallan.

  “No. I will not have it.” 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 are 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 ye, curse ye to play games with me! Ye’re no different than his sort, Sliabhin’s, Hagan’s. I’ve known that sort all my life. Is ’t 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 no fate worse nor gentler than once 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 was back, 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 ye!” 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 beside ye,” the pooka 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 acutely, but dully, 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 forever remembering a land where everything was fair and clean.

  “I’ll gi’ye a ride,” the pooka offered in his dreams, on the next dark night when Caith slept fitfully, his belly gnawed with hunger. “O man , ye need not be sae stubborn about it. I like you well. So does Nuallan. He did let you go—”

  The pooka took more solid shape, seated on a stump, as Caith dreamed he waked. “O man, dinnae ye ken, Nuallan could hae done far worse? He repented the curse. He wished it unsaid. But a Sidhe’s word binds him. Especiallyhis 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 aching miles always before him.

  “I’ll bear ye,” the pooka 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 would come 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 pooka said, whispering from behind him.

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

  “Come,” he whispered at last, as hoofbeats thumped softly, patiently on his track, and a shadow fell on him.. “Come with me, pooka, if you like.”

  Part Two: Faery Moon

  Chapter One

  The water flowed first from a spring in Teile, clear as glass, and out of the loch in broad Gleann Teile it emerged rich, peat-dark, its brown-stained bubbles swirling over tumbled basalt.

  Guagach was the name of this stream, and it plunged through sun-touched bracken and over rock as it began its chute into Gleann Fiain, a noisy fall into a barren chasm, whence it issued whispering and babbling madness. It was born bright and clear and clean on the mountains, it became one thing in the peat of Gleann Teile, and it became something else again in that pool, down among the dark-leaved trees of Gleann Fiain. A single shaft of sunlight pierced the branches and spread itself through the spray in a rainbow that made the woods and rocks seem the blacker about that boiling cauldron.

  That was Teile’s farewell to Guagach, and beyond that deep pool, Guagach went so stained and darksome that its very voice became subdued. It flowed sluggish and deep, among black reeds, along cheerless banks of black rock in an autumn forest, beneath thickets which maintained only slick rags of foliage.

  The fish that came by ill luck out of sunny Teile and fell down into that pool, the fish that ventured further through the dark water and swam close to the overhang of a certain haunted bank, found a current foul with a reek of terror and of evil, and cold with upwellings from hidden depths. That fish fled with all its silver might, lone mote of Teile’s sunlight racing through the dark of Fiain; but darkness followed it, and overtook it, and it was gone.

  A swirl of water marked the surface, a little glint of sunlight striking the darkness that Guagach had become, a slight roiling of the waters which might indeed have been a cold upwelling out of some hidden fissure; or it might have been some great dark swimmer turning near the surface— but that thing would have been great indeed, and so dark it cast nothing back that the day gave it.

  A trio of bubbles danced in the whirlpool it left. A brown leaf fell in the treachery of a breeze, as if the evil in the water had caused the limbs above the stream to move and to rattle.

  If that was the cause, it was a very vile thing which lived beneath that willow, and travelers would be well-advised to take some other course than that stony, breakneck path which led down the fell. Such travelers would have been wiser still to seek at once back to the braes of Gleann Teile and their sunlight.

  But Caith mac Sliabhin and his companion walked beside the darksome water under that autumn dearth of leaf, and Caith never lifted his head until a breeze sported ashore and touched him with its cold.

  Then he wrapped his grey storm-cloak about him, realizing how dark the path had become since they had left the pool behind; while his companion cast a look toward the dark water and that spinning leaf, and walked down to lean over the brink, hands on kilted thighs.

  Caith paid him no heed. A great many things distracted Dubhain, half of them nonsensical— a butterfly, the flutter of a leaf, the rising of a bubble in a brook.

  “Waugh, here’s something foul!” said Dubhain. He bent and, gathering up a pebble, skipped it across the water, making a neat stitch of ripples across the darkness, and one white-frothed splash where it disappeared among the reeds.

  Caith looked askance at him and walked on along the stream-bank, a tired young man in a worn grey cloak and a dark red hunting plaid, with shoes the worse for miles and weather. In all that bleak shadow he was the only light, his red hair catching the occasional sun and reminding this glen what bright color was. But his countenance was grim, settled young into the habit of dour thought. He carried a sword beneath that cloak, keeping it as close as he kept secrets, never letting it to daylight. It was a cursed blade.

&n
bsp; And for other protection he had on a cord about his neck an elfshot, a stone which running water had pierced. If he looked through this stone, so the man who had given it to him had claimed, he might discern truth from illusion. But he seldom cared to look, and, long after he had taken the gift, it had occurred to him that the man who had given him the stone had never told him which was truth, whether it was the world through which men walked, believing, or the world he could see through the river-pierced stone.

  It seemed pointless now to wonder, and perhaps self-tormenting. His dreams were haunted, and there was nothing of his possessions that was not fey and dreadful, even that stone. It was his hope yet to do good in the world, but no chance had ever come to him that had not brought disaster.

  As for the youth Dubhain, who overtook him, skipping heedlessly through the dark and moribund thicket— Dubhain was all the name he owned, and he was perhaps sixteen, the wily, light-fingered sixteen the roads might make of a wicked boy.

  Or perhaps it was only his slight stature that made Dubhain seem young at all. His hair was as dark as a thought of sin, his sloe eyes twinkled beneath a wayward forelock and danced with mischief in a face as dusky as the shadow in this woods. He might have been some sprite of merry malice, some prankish pan. His face was more apt to grin than to smile, and if he frowned, why, it was thundercloud and a clashing of black brows; but far more often it was the grin, a flash of white, square teeth, and soon a skip and a hop of quick bare feet. Dubhain had never liked shoes. He laughed and, barefoot, danced over the leaves as if the noisome wind gave him pleasure. His ragged shirt and his dark hunting-tartan skirled with his turns as he skipped atop one rock and another and another, until he squatted above the trail that Caith mac Sliabhin walked.