"Then why did you not tell the Table? I have spoken to Tari; she says you never said aught to them of Mordryth, nor yet of Malgan, in it; that you said my sister and my sister only, and the Table bought it unquestioned."
"Aye, well, I had my reasons." I lay down again beside her, stared up at the underside of the bed canopy, thinking it was too plain, we must put some proper ornamentation up there to look at… "Any road," I said then, "Marguessan was doubtless far from displeased at the currency those evil tales gained among the folk. I do not think folk truly believe them, but you know as well as anyone how people like to think ill when they are given the chance. And hard it is to root it from their minds when once it has lodged there."
"What they are pleased to call their minds." She was silent again. "Well, the damage, if damage there is, is done now. What we must decide is what to do about it."
"Naught. It is generally best."
"Do we tell Gwen and Artos?"
"If they already know, they have not spoken of it to us, and that means they do not wish to ‘know’ it; and we must honor that wish. If they do not know, then I say we keep it so."
"And if they tax us with it later, that we knew and did not say?"
"Then we will worry about that when and if we must. Any road," I added hopefully, and not at all convincingly even to myself, "if ill were to come, it would have happened by now."
It had, of course; but we were not to know it for quite a while to come.
You may recall that when Melwas of Fomor made his historic visit to Keltia some while back, he had suggested to Arthur and Gweniver that one or both of them should repay the courtesy, and come to his own homeworld on a state visit. There had been a general sort of agreement that this was a good and acceptable idea, likely of fulfillment, and then it had been promptly forgotten, at least among ourselves.
But a couple of years following the rumor-spate came a formal diptych from Tory—bound in the correct silver covers, sealed with the regulation gold wafer—that reminded the rulers of Keltia of the invitation, and set a tentative date, even, for it to be taken up.
"Well, Artos," said Tarian, tossing the diptych into the middle of the Council table, "you know you must go. Either one of you. Not both. We have done too well out of the Fomorian connection and the trade links it has given us to risk insulting Melwas now. My agents on Clero advise me so, and I agree with them. And any road, you liked him, did you not?"
"Very much," said Arthur. "But I do not much wish to return to Fomor. Gwen, you shall go. It is your turn for some travel."
"A generous offer, Ard-righ," said Gweniver mockingly, but her face was wreathed in laughter. "But nay, I think I must stay here a while yet."
"Aye so, but you are always lamenting that you are never given to go anywhere," said Arthur, and all the coaxing plausible smoothness he could put into his voice was there now, and working hard. "You could even stop and visit Aojun on the way; time it is that Daronwy and Roric were back here, they have been gone too long altogether this time. And perhaps Majanah would let Donah come back again for another visit. It has been too long since her last couple of times here, and Janjan might be the more easily persuaded if she knew the lass could travel with you."
"A masterful try, cariad, but a failed one," Gweniver told him, and he shrugged comically. "But why do not you yourself do just that, Artos? Make the visit to Melwas, then go on to see Janjan yourself and bring Donayah back here. Or, better, stop at Aojun first and take Donah to Fomor. She would be thrilled to be with you, and Fomor and Aojun are on terms just now. Besides, there is a most excellent reason for me to stay." She paused, her face bright with her unspoken reason, and raised questioning brows. When Arthur grinned and nodded, she faced the rest of the Council. "Well then, my reason is that very shortly there is to be another Pendreic to make wretched all your lives."
She laughed at our astonishment, and Arthur joined her.
"Aye, an eightmonth you have to live in peace," he said. "Then shall be among us Arwenna, Princess of the Name. So that Donayah and Arawn shall have a sister in their old age—"
"—and perhaps Malgan Rheged too shall have one in his age yet older."
The words dropped into the chamber like flaming spears. I shot my glance round the Council chamber to see who it was had spoken, but everyone else there was doing likewise. It seemed that no one had spoken, or that the offensive words had come out of the air itself, or from the moons; and after an extremely tense and twangling few moments Arthur dismissed the Council with the customary phrase of royal thanks.
But Morgan and I lagged behind a little, the better (or so we hoped) to study the faces and postures and lowered voices of the departing Councillors. And two things there were that we both noticed. Today, for the first time in years (though he had never left nor been dismissed from the Council), Keils Rathen, Gweniver’s old lover and Arthur’s—and Uthyr’s—trusted warlord, had attended a Council meeting. And Ultagh Casnar, the Archdruid, who had never missed a Council meeting in near as many years, had today left smiling.
In the end, things were done as Gweniver wished them. Arthur went to Fomor on his state visit, complaining bitterly until he lifted off from Mardale in his beautiful ship Prydwen; and Gwen herself had stayed home delighted in the excuse of her condition.
"I thought you wanted to go to Aojun," I said peevishly to her as we returned from seeing off the King. "You are always going on about how since you are Ard-rian you never get to go anywhere…"
"Oh aye, and I do still wish to," she explained kindly. "But not if Aojun is the carrot for the stick that is Fomor."
"Sometimes I should like to smack you with that stick," I told her, still annoyed, and she laughed. "You are scarcely with child at all, that you could not have gone; and Janjan would have dearly loved to make great fuss over you."
"It would have been pleasant," agreed Gweniver, diverted somewhat. "But, Talyn, there is still that matter we both know of, and I judged it best that Artos not be the one to deal with it. While he is gone I hope to settle it. And you and Guenna will help me."
"Indeed aye, Ard-rian, if you ask it." But I was not so sure. I knew well what Gweniver meant: that little matter of Malgan’s name so featly popping up in Council a few weeks back. Perhaps she was right: Perhaps it was time at last for that to be settled once for all. The only reason it had surfaced again after all these years was that spate of rumor a year or two ago, those noisome petty sewer-ravings spread by Mordryth and Marguessan. And, so it appeared, Malgan himself, as a means of casting muddy doubt onto Arthur’s character; so that when he finally declared himself openly to be Arthur’s firstborn, as plainly he was working up to do, the folk might be less like to believe Arthur’s denials and more disposed to accept Malgan at his word.
I shifted uncomfortably next to Gweniver in the big well-upholstered closed chariot. Somehow that did not make sense: All Arthur would have to do would be to submit to certain tests, and the thing would be proved one way or the other. These tests were not medical in nature, not all of them; and though one or two might prove inconclusive, their very variety gave ironclad evidence as to the validity of any claim of blood.
And what of Ultagh Casnar? Morgan and Grehan and Betwyr and I had had long converse as to his part—or possible part—in all this. And in the end had come to no agreement among us.
"I know you have never trusted nor liked him, Talyn," Grehan had said, "not since you returned from Oeth-Anoeth and found him sitting in Merlynn’s chair at Council."
"Not Merlynn’s chair," I muttered pettishly. "He took great pains to ensure he never sat there—perhaps he feared it might emulate Gwencathra, and open up to gulp him down to hell. False modesty, no more."
"Whether that be so or no," Betwyr had concluded reluctantly, "we have naught of evidence to impeach him, or even to offer as suspicion to Artos or to Gwen. Only the monarch may choose to remove the head of an Order."
I was thinking how from time to time in Keltia the monarch had chosen
to remove the head of the head of an Order, and how very much I should like to see that happen here… But Morgan had read me as she ever did.
"We have no proof. We must bide the issue. Whoever it may be, they will set a foot wrong soon enough. And then—"
"And then?" I had prompted.
Morgan’s countenance had taken on a look I was more ‘customed to see upon her brother’s.
"And then they are ours."
Oh, they set more wrong than a foot only… And they moved swiftly, when once they began to move. I wish I could tell you that we were ready for them; and aye, to a certain point, we were. But they had planned longer and better and more desperately than we, and the hand they raised against us had many fingers, and weapons from an armory we never once suspected.
* * *
Chapter Eighteen
Keils Rathen had exiled himself from Court many years since, when first Arthur returned from his own stay on Aojun. There was no need for him to have done so—his rank as First Lord of War dated from the reign-in-exile of Uthyr Ard-righ, and his status as Gweniver’s lennaun was known by all and approved of by most—but as Arthur and Gweniver began to pull in double harness, as Ard-righ and Ard-rian according to the terms of their marriage contract, Keils seemed to be prescient, to have had an-da-shalla of the outcome. And by the time Gwen and Artos finally fell in love with each other, Keils had quietly pulled away from all royal involvements and attendance.
He could easily have stayed on as First Lord—indeed, Arthur himself begged him to do so—but chose not to be swayed. And long before my immurement in Oeth-Anoeth, Keils had retired and returned to Gwynedd with his new lady, Meloran. It was lost on no one that she bore a rather startling resemblance to Gweniver the Queen.
And there he had lived in semi-exile, all these years. Arthur had gifted him with a duchas and the title of Earl of Sulven, in token of his many services to Uthyr and to Arthur in the fight for Gwynedd, and he had also been granted the governorship of the rich province of Sarre, to provide him revenues and keep in political fighting trim. But though as I have said he never gave up his seat on the Council, in all those years Keils never came once to court, and saw his onetime beloved and her mate only when they chanced to visit Gwynedd on progress every year or two.
His behavior on such occasions had never been anything but scrupulously correct. He had received Artos and Gwen at his splendid new seat of Archdale, the Lady Meloran by his side, and had fulfilled in all particulars his duty as liegeman. I myself had been on several of these progresses, and had also made a point of visiting Keils when Morgan and I were in residence at Tair Rhandir. And he had been the same Keils I had known and loved and admired from of old. We had refought old battles, old defeats as well as old victories—Keils still rolled his eyes every time he minded himself of the notorious escape from Talgarth—and had refound our old friendship and old Companionship as strong as ever.
And yet I never dreamed of asking him his reasons for staying away. Perhaps I was afraid to hear them. So when all unheralded and unannounced Keils simply arrived one gray wet morning at Turusachan, throwing the palace rechtair into a state unparalleled as he rushed to find suitable lodgings for the great Keils Rathen, I was not alone in wondering what had brought him back at such a time.
And when on the very day he had attended his first Council meeting in more than, what, twenty-five years?, and the name of Malgan Rheged so coincidentally dropped into the midst of it, again I was not alone in wondering how Keils of the Battles, as he was known to ballad-bards, figured in it.
"No great mystery," said Keils in the old deep voice I remembered. "My lady died last year"—he waved away my protestations (sincere ones, to be sure) of sympathy—"and I had been considering returning to Court for some months. So I left the governance of Sarre in the hands of my son—oh aye, did you not know? Meloran and I could have none of our own, and so adopted Brennic five years after we left Tara. He was orphaned in the fighting on Gwynedd, and we fell in love with him as soon as we found him. Any road," he resumed, "he protested my resigning the office, but I think he was pleased in the end to have real work to do. And I came back."
"To find Gwen alone, and Artos gone to Fomor."
Keils’s eyes glinted. "Not quite—I was here a full fortnight first. We even dined together once or twice."
"I did not know."
"Nay, well, no matter. Talyn"—he turned and looked me full in the face, that old straight sword-look of his—"I heard things on Gwynedd, things that troubled me sore, and that is why I have come."
"Have you told that to Artos?" I asked, keeping my eyes fixed on his; I would know it at once if he lied. "Or to Gwen?"
"I have not," he said steadily, and I knew he spoke truth. "And maybe I should have come sooner, but Meloran—Well, now I am free to be here, and I should like to do what I can, or may."
"What do you think that might be?"
He stood up and began to pace the room, just as of old he had paced the command-tents when we campaigned on Gwynedd. I watched him covertly: He had changed little in all the decades; though he was some few scores of years older than Arthur and Gweniver and I, who had all been born in the same year more years ago than I quite cared to remember, he was a powerful man still, one I should not wish to have to meet either in challenge-ring or on the field.
But Keils was speaking in a low rapid voice. "These rumors of some time back, that muck about Artos and—"
"—and Morgan," I said calmly. "We heard it here too, you know."
"Well then, you must know also that not every Kelt there is found it wholly impossible of belief."
"So I have heard," I said, still evenly. "Given who had begun the lying tales, I suppose I cannot wholly blame them. But I do."
"Truly. But we cannot kill them all, Talyn." The old wolf-grin flashed, and I answered it, for well I knew that catchline of his from the Llwynarth days, when he had employed it to comfort Arthur in his dubhachas every now and again over some colossal blunder or error or betrayal or stupidity.
And all at once I found myself missing Keils sorely, though he stood before me… It was gone in a moment; but, I say, I missed him.
"I cannot say why I came, Talyn," said Keils then. "And if Morgan or Tari or Grehan finds me suspect for that, my sorrow. But Gwennach may have need of an old friend, and I would that I were here should that need come upon her."
It was upon us all almost as soon as he had said it.
It came as a double blow, so close together and so hard upon each other that it fell as one. But such a one. .
The first we heard was a frantic message from Majanah, sent across the many star-miles to inform and apprise. When her face came upon the transcom screen, a private transmission, only Gwen, Morgan, Tari, Grehan and myself there to hear it, we all felt the same ghastly cold shock at what we saw there. She wasted no time on greetings.
"Donah is kidnapped," she said in such a voice as I had never heard before in all my life. "And Artho has gone after her. I will join him as soon as we have finished speaking."
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. Gweniver was more successful at commanding her response.
"How? Who? Who would dare take the Heir of Aojun and a daughter of Keltia?"
Majanah smiled, and I saw Grehan step back a pace. "Melwas of Fomor. The late King of Fomor." Seeing the question: "Nay, he is not dead. Not yet is he dead. But he will wish himself dead a thousand times over when Artho comes up with him; unless I find him myself first, and then he will wish it still more…"
All at once she became again a mother wild with terror for her only child, and I closed my eyes briefly. When I opened them she was once more the warrior queen, and almost I could find it in my heart to pity Melwas. Almost.
"Do you wish our help, Janjan?" That was Tari, and the quiet inexorable question somehow shocked us all back to our old working mode. This was something we could do…
"Whatever you could spare would be helpful," said Majanah carefully
; you could see how she hated to ask even in such straits.
"It is on the way." Tarian turned to another transcom, spoke swift sharp orders in battle language, turned back to Majanah. "Done, Jamadarin. Tell us more, if you will. How was Donah taken?"
The forcing herself to tell the account seemed to help Majanah deal with it, for she looked less dazed and more centered as she told us. It seemed that Arthur had visited Aojun first on his way to Fomor, and had brought Donah with him to Melwas’s court. Where apparently she had been a great social success—the heir of a prosperous and thriving planet, and a very beautiful young woman, how could she not be?
It seemed that Melwas of Fomor thought so too, so much so that upon the conclusion of Arthur’s visit he had requested a private audience and had formally besought Arthur—and by proxy Majanah—for Donah’s hand, to wed her as his queen.
"Artho put him off," continued Majanah calmly, "but when Melwas pressed him Artho rightly refused, in my name as well as his. Also Donayah much misliked the Fomorian king, and would for no sake have considered such a match. But Melwas would not accept the refusal, though he gave most plausible appearances of having done so; and when Artho and Donah set out from Fomor to return to Keltia, stopping at Clero your trade-world on the way, Melwas organized an abduction."
"He must have had help from Clero, then, his own agents or hired ones," said Grehan instantly, to cover the moment, for Majanah appeared on the edge of breaking. "We can begin with our own spies there; I will contact them at once. And, Talyn—?"
I nodded unhesitating agreement. Though we do not like to make too public a thing of it, bards are among the best spies in Keltia. There is for one thing that convenient little law that makes sacred the lives of bards, and so we carry a protection with us into dubious situations that your more ordinary sort of spy could not command nor hope for. But as a rule we do not like to resort too often to the pressing of bards into spycraft. Only when no other course will serve… But Grehan, I knew well, was asking me not only for my help as Pen-bardd, but for my personal help as onetime spy. And, no question, I was going to give it, for this was my niece in peril here; besides, I had spied before for lesser cause, and now I would again.
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