"I told him! I told him it was a bad idea!"
Eilonwy, engaged in egg-hunting, looked up sharply at the shout, an unusual sound from the unflappable Coll. The stout farmer was striding heavily around the corner of the stable, red-faced. After him, Taran trotted to keep up, his demeanor anxious. Gurgi loped at his heels, with the air of a spectator eager for excitement no matter what crisis precipitated it.
"A stallion!" Coll bellowed, disappearing into the low doorway of the stable; his voice continued to ring out from within. "I'd just like to know what he thought we needed with a ruddy stallion at Caer Dallben! Showing off, that's all; impractical like all the royal lot. Boy!"
The last word was a sharp bark, as Taran had hesitated outside the building, his hands twisting in his tunic. He jumped as though stung, and scurried inside. Admonishments followed, too muffled for her to make out; Coll appeared to be giving instructions, and Taran's voice answered him in a tone she recognized as sheepish.
Gurgi, left outside, noticed her and came lolloping over. "What's all that commotion?" she asked as he neared.
"Naughty, silly horsies!" he announced jubilantly, for being the bearer of news, especially that which had the capacity to shock, always pleased him. "Master's great grey beast has smashed the gate down, into splinters and slivers! He was meant to stay in his stall, and instead he broke his way into the pen where the pretty mare slept, and then neither of them slept - oh, no! They pranced and danced, and now…" His ears laid back against his furry skull in sly delight, and his rasping voice lowered as though he were revealing a mischievous secret. "Now there may be a new wee horsie next spring, too wee for ridings and stridings!"
"O-oh!" Eilonwy gasped, and clapped hand to mouth to cover a somewhat scandalized giggle…though why she should be scandalized, she didn't know. After all, she'd lived on the farm long enough to know that newborn animals of all kinds were expected and welcomed every year, the process treated as matter-of-fact. But…somehow, when it was the horses…
She set her egg basket down just as Coll and Taran re-emerged from the stable, carrying lead ropes and buckets. "…likely too late now," Coll was saying, "but just in case; maybe we'll be lucky. Another horse is the last thing we need around here, whatever - especially one that won't earn its keep for years yet. Stand at the gate and block the gap as much as you can. Shake that bucket and if she gets close enough, catch her, but leave him to me."
Eilonwy trotted toward them and called out, "Can I help?"
They both looked up, Coll sharp, Taran startled and then beet-red with embarrassment. Silly, she thought. Anyone would think he felt personally responsible for his horse's antics. Coll motioned warningly toward her. "No, stay back, love. Up a tree with you, or into the house. There's no telling what that beast will do." He pointed at Gurgi, crouched at her side. "You, too."
"Melynlas…" Taran began, by way of explanation.
"I know." She cut him off out of an impulse to be merciful, though she could not conceal a grin. "Gurgi told me."
The flush in his face spread to his ears, and he coughed and ducked away, following Coll around the stable wall once more. Eilonwy considered her options, Gurgi plucking at her elbow. "Wise princess does not wish to go into hidings," he observed shrewdly.
She blew out a breath that was almost a frustrated laugh. "No. I thought perhaps I could help draw Lluagor away. But Coll knows better than we do, I suppose. Come." She turned and cantered toward the other side of the stable and around it, hoisting herself onto the stone wall that surrounded its adjoining enclosure and stumbling along its uneven top in haste, until she reached the gnarled oak that spread its ancient arms over her path.
Gurgi leapt into the moss-furred branches ahead of her with enviable agility; she followed him, puffing a little, traversing the familiar limbs until she could see into another enclosure Coll and Taran had just entered. Its wooden gate lay in a tumbled pile of logs, and at its far corner, in the dappled shade of another tree, stood the miscreant pair - Lluagor hemmed in against the stone wall by Melynlas, who surveyed his human masters with a defiant glare.
He whinnied as Coll stepped closer, and stamped upon the muddy ground. Coll did not flinch or hesitate; he moved forward without haste, talking all the while, in words both gentle and firm. Taran, standing at the gate, shook his bucket temptingly. Coll did likewise, and both animals pricked their ears forward at the soft shuff of shifting grain.
Lluagor tossed her mane and nickered, nudging her companion's hindquarters and then stretching her long head over his back for a better look; Melyngar snorted and danced in agitation, clearly undecided about whether to pay more heed to the temptation of a grain bucket, the wandering attention of his lady, or the imminent end to his amorous pursuits.
Coll was within a few paces, then an arm's length from the stallion's big head, hand reaching for his halter. The lead rope snapped into place and Eilonwy held her breath, but there was no angry neigh, no outraged explosion of hooves and dappled hide. Melynlas jerked his head up once, hard, as though to protest the principle of the thing, and then permitted himself to be distracted by the offered bucket, nipping at Lluagor when she sidled around him to investigate it likewise. She squealed indignantly, and trotted toward Taran, burying her nose in oats in her turn.
Taran attached his lead quickly and patted the mare's neck, looking relieved. "That wasn't so hard," he declared to Coll, but the farmer, busy trying to keep the enthusiastic Melynlas from knocking the bucket from his arms, only frowned.
"It's bad," he said. "Means we're too late. He's played his game already or he wouldn't be so quick to give her up."
Taran went red again and looked at his toes, where Lluagor was nosing the ground for spilled grains. "Oh. I'm…I'm sorry, Coll. I suppose we oughtn't to have kept her after all."
"Ach." Coll shrugged, looking a little defeated, and scratched Melynlas beneath the forelock. "What's done is done, and none of it's your fault. Mine, if anything, for not hustling to build that new space for her I'd been meaning to, further away." He pulled out his kerchief and mopped his bald head, adding ruefully, "Next time Gwydion comes through I'll give him a foal and ask if he intends us to start a horse farm. Well, go ahead and put Mistress Lady Love into the other pen before she's of a mind to start flirting again. I'm going to lock this great lout in his stall until we fix the gate."
Eilonwy settled herself into her tree more comfortably as they led the errant horses away. "I do wonder," she mused out loud, "why on earth Gwydion gave Taran a stallion."
Gurgi was crouched on a limb above her and gnawing on something he had found in the bark - she was afraid to imagine what. "Why not?" he said. "Master is good and brave, and did great services for the mighty prince."
"As did we all, but Mefusen and Hapus were good enough rewards for the two of us, weren't they?" she retorted, naming the roan gelding and shaggy mountain pony provided for herself and Gurgi. "And nothing you wouldn't expect to see in a place like Caer Dallben." She tapped her fingernail on her teeth quizzically. "I may not have known much about farming when I got here, but I did know something about the proper use of horses. And you don't send a fine-blooded courser where he'll be hitched to a harness and plow. Any offspring of Melyngar ought to be training with some prince somewhere, not given away to an Assistant Pig-Keeper to make more work for him.
"Everyone knew it, too," she continued. "Coll and Dallben both fussed, until Gwydion pulled Dallben away to talk where no one could hear them, and then suddenly it was all settled and there was never another word said. What could have made him agree to it?"
Gurgi shrugged in despair. "The heads of noble lords are full of mysterious thinkings. Poor, simple Gurgi cannot guess what goes through them. "
Eilonwy fell silent, puzzled and thoughtful, remembering the events that had transpired upon her first coming to Caer Dallben, as green and unfamiliar to it as the horses. It had taken weeks for all of them to settle in - even Taran, whose home it was, had suddenly seemed unsure of his own place in it.
His pride over being granted ownership of such a magnificent animal as Melynlas was clear. But it had quickly been balanced by the challenge of learning to manage him - a thing he'd had to work into an already busy round of resumed daily chores. Coll had taken the time to teach him to ride - truly ride, not just sit in the saddle and be carried - and then even had begun a series of short lessons on various maneuvers and commands one might expect of a warhorse in battle, which had, naturally, delighted Taran but mystified Eilonwy. What need had he of any such training?
Not that he wasn't good at it. There had been more than one hard tumble to the ground, and quite a few frustrated tears shed, but such was not unusual in such activities, and Taran had turned out to be a swift student of horsemanship. He eventually seemed to relish the battles of will that any stallion, even one so well-trained and even-tempered as Melynlas, could be counted upon to offer on occasion, matching them with a will of his own and learning to assert calm command. The bond that had formed between horse and boy was a lovely thing to witness. Coll had finally conceded that Taran had a way with the creature.
Eilonwy had often found him, when not at his work, perched upon the stone wall, talking to Melynlas in a companionable, frank manner not dissimilar to the one he used with her. In the past few months she had developed a habit, when her own work was done, of settling into a nook in a nearby tree, one that provided her an unobstructed vantage point from which to quietly observe him putting the horse through his paces. There was a compelling beauty in the way their movements flowed together, Melynlas's sleek-muscled power mirroring Taran's strong frame and lithe energy, their mutual bearing proud, eyes bright and determined. For long she had watched without his being aware of her presence, and with no intention of alerting him; the sensate intensity of her admiration kept her silent, barely willing to acknowledge it even to herself, let alone to him. When he had caught her at it, finally, she had brushed off his notice with a tart comment and departed before he could see the flush that rose to her face.
The sleek palfrey they had inherited from Adaon had had no such inhibitions, however. Lluagor had made herself quite at home at Caer Dallben upon their return from the cauldron quest. Though sweet-tempered, she was spirited, the sun-kissed burnish of her chestnut coat an outward reflection of an inner fire. She had quickly established pecking order over the gentle Mefusen and Hapus, and then settled into her own place…a place that always seemed to be somewhere close to Melynlas's side.
Once the excitement of homecoming had dimmed into lingering grief over their losses, once their companions had departed, day by day, leaving the little farm to the bleak anticipation of winter, the residents of Caer Dallben had all taken note of the bond the horses had formed in the interim. Coll had been frustrated at himself for not realizing it sooner. He had made vague noises about the impracticality of keeping Lluagor, but seeing Taran's sadness, conceded that the mare was a worthy memento of Adaon, and paddocked her in a separate enclosure, barred from close contact with Melynlas unless both animals were supervised and hard at work.
But apparently, not barred enough.
"It's bound to happen again," Eilonwy said out loud. "There'll be foal after foal unless one or the other of them is sent away. Oh, I couldn't bear to lose Lluagor!"
She scrambled down from the limbs and to the wall, leapt to the ground and ran, arriving out of breath just as Taran was closing the gate upon a safely-ensconced mare. "Oh, Taran," she gasped, "will Dallben make us get rid of her, do you think?"
Taran looked up in surprise. "Why would he do that?"
Lluagor's silky head craned over the wall, velvet nostrils whuffing softly at her face, and Eilonwy curled her arm around it and pressed her cheek to the warm muzzle. "Because she'll foal every year. You'll never be able to keep Melynlas locked away from her, and what on earth will we do with so many horses?"
"Train them, I suppose," he answered, after a moment's thought, looking mildly hopeful. "And then trade them, or sell them. They'll have excellent lineage, after all." He seemed to catch his own dreams by the threads then, pulled them back, and shot her an amused glance. "Anyway, what do you know about keeping horses apart? Coll will sort something out."
"I'm not…" she began, and he cut her off.
"She's yours, really," he said, openly acknowledging an unspoken fact. Eilonwy's preference for riding Lluagor over Mefusen - who, though a reliable mount, had none of the mare's sparkling liveliness or swift grace - had produced a sense of ownership that no one had argued against. "More yours than anyone else's. You can have the naming of the foal, if you like."
She did not know whether it were this offer or his smile that brought the warmth to her face, the little gasp of pleased surprise to her lips. "Oh…truly, can I?"
His green gaze flickered with sudden intensity; he looked down at his feet, toe digging a hole in the soft earth, and spoke rather gruffly. "Of course. And don't worry. Dallben wouldn't send her away, knowing how fond of her you are."
A deep voice rasped behind them. "Would I not?"
Startled, they both turned toward the sound; Dallben stood there, having approached with his typical stealth, and though his voice had been grave, he looked, if anything, amused. "So," he said, "it seems horses have behaved exactly as horses are wont to behave…indeed as almost all creatures behave this time of year…and this was deemed worthy of all the noise that interrupted my meditations."
Eilonwy heard Taran gulp, and clear his throat. "I…I, er…"
But the old enchanter was looking at Lluagor, not at either of them. "Fear not," he rumbled. "What will be, will be, but it will not happen again. Where wood and stone do not suffice, stronger tools must be used, and I will ensure a barrier even a warhorse cannot cross." He shook his head and sighed. "It was foolish of me not to notice what was happening under my nose."
Suddenly his grey gaze bored into them, from one to the other, glittering like ice, sharp and lucid, and Eilonwy felt suddenly that she had nothing on, and almost stammered out some excuse. But he had already shifted that keen look away, back to Taran, who was staring once more at the ground, and she sighed aloud in relief to mask her confusion.
"Hm," Dallben grunted, and then added, inexplicably, "and that will also not happen again."
He turned and shuffled back toward the cottage, stooping to pick up her forgotten egg basket on the way. She watched him, with a strange sense of foreboding.
"You see," Taran said, though his voice seemed a little pale. "I told you he won't send her away."
"No," she answered. "I mean, yes. I mean…I think I'll stay with her a bit. Make sure she's settled."
He nodded, mumbled something about getting back to work, and trudged off to the stable. She climbed onto the stone wall and sat, a long time, and shivered often, though the day was warm.
I will leave aside all the reasons I am almost certain Lloyd knew very little about horses, because the symbolism of Taran and Eilonwy's favorite mounts being a mated pair is just too darn sweet and appealing to get persnickety about equine accuracies. Let them all live happily ever after having foals and babies. Just not yet.