The Hedge of Mist

by Patricia Kennealy-Morrison

  "Shall I go to Clero, then?"

  Tarian and Gweniver shook their heads as one. "Nay," said Gweniver, "I have a thought there is more to be found out here. Perhaps Melwas has agents or friends among us we know naught of; renegade Kelts, or gallain who have been smuggled in—

  "Marguessan?" That was Morgan, and her sister’s name the first word she had spoken since Janjan had shattered us with her tidings—shattering us anew, so seldom did she speak it.

  "Naught likelier," said Grehan, and turned as the door blew open and Keils came through, the Fian doorwards snapping to the salute for their onetime commander.

  "I called Keils in," said Tarian quickly, to forestall the surprise she saw just about to be writ plain upon our faces. "When I bespoke the Fian commandery just now—We could have no better help. I do not need to remind this company of that."

  "Not for my part," said the High Queen Gweniver, and gripped Keils’s forearm in the Companions’ old straight-armed salute. Keils said no word, but covered her hand with his own other hand, and took a seat by Grehan.

  "I thank you, lord," said Majanah’s ghostly image. "The name of Keils Rathen is not unknown on Aojun, either… My consort, Brone, will rule here while I am gone, and Roric and Daron will sail with me to join Artho."

  "A war fleet is on its way at all speed to you even now," said Tarian, after another side-converse with the Fian command. "Only let you tell us what is your plan, and Arthur’s, so that I may give orders more to your need."

  "The plan is to get back my daughter," said Majanah, faintly surprised. "Artho will attack Fomor itself, if he must; though I trust he will not have need of such a measure. Does he stand alone, or will the rest of Keltia stand beside him?"

  "No question," said Gweniver swiftly, before any other could speak. "We will do what we must."

  "And our treaty with Fomor?" murmured Tarian.

  "They themselves put paid to that when they took Donayah," snapped Gweniver. "Artos will get her back."

  "And then?" asked Keils.

  The queen of the Yamazai and the Ard-rian of Keltia looked long at one another across the long, long star-miles between.

  "And then Fomor will pay," said both at once. Gweniver added, "Dearly."

  But others, as it turned out, were to pay more dearly still, and that accounting came rather sooner.

  Keltia must be one of the few—perhaps the only—realms in the known settled galaxy where even the monarch can be compelled to stand forth to a challenge from a private person. We call it the fior-comlainn, the truth-of-combat, and it may be either military or magical in nature, according as to how the challenging party (not the challenged, you will note) does choose.

  Though our brehon system of justice is rightly renowned for its compassion and its sheer breadth of scope, still there are times when even brehon wisdom does not or will not or cannot suffice. And in such cases, the aggrieved Kelt, of whatever social station, has the right to seek justice through fior-comlainn. Even against a clann chieftain or overlord; even against the High King or High Queen. And the challenged party must give satisfaction. Not necessarily in person: Champions may be sent in to settle the thing, if there is good or sufficient excuse (not simply lack of skill with sword or spell, either) for the challenged to step back from the contest. The one who seeks this justice must always, of course, fight for himself or herself; no hired strength here.

  This has been our way from our time on Earth. Brendan in his wisdom brought it with the first ships, and it was among the earliest established codices of justice declared for the new worlds of Keltia. It has worked out most well, all in all; oh, to be sure, you will have the odd frivolous suit now and again, but you would be surprised how quickly frivolity fades away like Beltane dew, once the frivoler realizes that true life-peril comes into it.

  For though these days fior-comlainn is mostly settled when first blood is drawn, in the old days it was just as often to the death—and sometimes still is, or can be demanded to be…

  We were not expecting it, I can say confidently. So intent were we all on this matter of Donah, and Arthur after her, and Majanah and both Keltic and Aojunni fleets after him, that we were not looking closer to home for any more trouble. And, of course, that is ever exactly when you get it…

  The challenge was delivered to Gweniver in aireachtas the morning after we had heard about the abduction. In Arthur’s absence, I was presiding with her in the hearing-court—another excellent institution Brendan brought from Earth—and we had been having a rather dull morning of it, the usual disputes about inheritances or land-rights or quit-claims that these courts were intended to resolve.

  We had been dispensing royal justice for the better part of an hour when the doors opened to admit a litigant not on the day’s roster. Gweniver scowled and quietly questioned her secretary in an undertone, but Tammas seemed as surprised as she. Or indeed as I…

  None of us—Gwennach, myself, the secretaries and jurisconsults and recorder-bards in attendance, a Councillor or two—knew the man who now approached us. Averagely tall, strongly built, by coloring Scotan or perhaps Erinnach, he was clad plainly and bore no sword nor badge of rank nor clann token nor even personal arms—in short, no clue to who he might be, nor his affiliations or loyalties, nor yet his errand here.

  Coming to the high seats whence Gweniver and I watched him, he bowed, straightened, then flung down upon the steps of the low dais a sgian with a parchment impaled upon its short sharp blade. At a nod from Gwen, Tammas retrieved it and handed it up to her, and she read the contents attentively, with no change of expression.

  "Ard-rian?" I murmured, when she did not appear at once disposed to share her newly acquired information with the rest of us there present.

  But she spoke in the same instant. "The Ard-rian is well pleased to accept," she said, and the man bowed again but did not withdraw, clearly waiting for some other word or action which Gweniver had not yet given. And I felt sudden cold touch the back of my neck, for those words were the words of formal acceptance to the fior-comlainn.

  Gweniver did not leave us in any more suspense. "Let it be recorded," she said in her most royal voice, and the scribes and bards and legists leaped to obey, "that by this document, I, Gweniver Pendreic ac Penarvon, High Queen of Kelts, am challenged to fior-comlainn by—’ She consulted the parchment ostentatiously, an outrageously insulting provocation which was by no means lost on the incomer, whom I saw flush darkly and shift his weight from side to side. "—Errian of Kerveldin, commoner, of the planet Arvor."

  I was surprised at least as much by that last as by the declaration on the whole, for I would never have taken this man for an Arvorican, and I flattered myself that I had a good eye for origins (bards need to; but that is another tale). But Gweniver was reading on.

  "The ground of the challenge is—" And here she fell silent, staring at the paper in her hands, as if the enormity of what was there set down (which she already knew, having read it silently only moments earlier) rendered her scarce capable of forcing her lips to form the words aloud. But again she went on.

  "—is that the High Queen of Keltia failed to cause to cease the shameful ‘haviors of Arthur Penarvon ac Pendreic High King of Keltia with Morguenna Pendreic ac Glyndour, Duchess of Ys, his halfsister in the blood; or, sith that there was no such misconducting, that the High Queen failed to cause to cease the appearance of such, which did occasion much scandal among the folk and loss of face to the Crown, that being a crime of no less standing by the brehon code."

  Her voice rang out coldly as she read out the formal wording, as if it had naught to do with her or Arthur or anyone else, and when she had finished she passed the paper to me to verify what she had read.

  I scanned it quickly, committing it to memory in bardic fashion, then passed it on in my turn to the senior Crown legist, who took as if it had been some noisome dead thing found squashed on the highroad. I turned back to Gweniver, intending to advise her to put this complainant off for the moment wi
th some words about Arthur and Donah and the more pressing business just now at hand, but she was already beyond advising.

  Gweniver stood up in her place, tall and all at once very much the High Queen. In her hands was the sgian upon which the challenge had been impaled; a usual way of delivering a challenge, if not much used in these degenerate days. She looked at it a moment, then with unerring aim threw it so that it stuck quivering in the ironoak table directly before which Errian was standing. Challenge accepted; I slumped in my chair and shaded my eyes with one hand, not caring how this might be interpreted by anyone.

  Through a pounding headache, a river roaring through my ears, I heard the legists discussing with Errian’s second, whom I only just now noticed, the details for the fior-comlainn itself: place, time, weapons, seconds. And all at once, even through my headache, I knew what I must do.

  "The Ard-rian has the right to a champion," I heard myself saying, and had the intense satisfaction of seeing everyone jerk to a surprised halt, as if I had hauled hard on all their reins at once.

  "Talyn—" That was Gweniver, but I was past caring or commanding.

  "The law says," I went on in a silky voice, "that the challenged party may choose a champion, magical or military according to the challenge given; or may serve as his or her own champion. Not so?"

  "True, my prince," said the senior legist, all but yammering in his relief, and in chagrin that he had not remembered to put this forth before I did.

  I was beginning to find a grim enjoyment in this. "And the law says also that no reason need be given for such a champion to be chosen."

  "True again, lord."

  "But I shall give a reason all the same," I said, and I spoke now in the bard-voice that took all the air from the room and filled my lungs to sound. "The High Queen is with child, a daughter who shall be Princess of the Name, second heir to Keltia after the Tanist Arawn. Therefore she will not take up this challenge in her own person, but some suitable champion shall be found, to fight in her cause and her name. So say I, Taliesin Glyndour ac Pendreic, Prince of Keltia, Duke of Ys, called Penbardd."

  I sat down again, well pleased to behold the dropped jaws and glazed eyes all round, and would have given this Errian a frump to his face had I dared. As it was, he saw it in my face, and that sufficed us both. Even Gweniver seemed taken aback, and as I watched Errian of Kerveldin gather his badly scattered forces, I suddenly caught sight or sense of something more, something else, something behind that which he had brought into the chamber. And I thought I knew it from of old…

  "It is not he," I said at once, when Errian and his second had taken huffy departure. "He is not the originator of this challenge."

  "But he must be," said Alwyn Harlech—the senior legist-bewildered and most unhappy at the sudden horrific turn of events. "The law says—"

  "The law!" Suddenly I was angry, for it seemed I saw the whole thing laid out before me, like a war-map, all arrows and blocks and strategy… "Think you all that the law has aught to do with any of this? Nay; he is but a tool, and the hand on the moving end is Marguessan’s." I brushed off their babble. "Do not trouble yourselves, I am correct in this… Now!" I said, turning to Gweniver, who sat very still and pale in her chair. "We have bought us some little time. Upon whom can we call for champion?"

  She seemed not to have heard me. I spoke her name and title, rather sharply, and she came back into her face, started and turned to me.

  "I am here. I am here. What next?"

  I rose, grabbing her hand and pulling her with me. "Let the lawdogs send what answers will win us most time. For now, we must take this to the Table." And I dragged her from the dais and out of the chamber.

  Gwahanlen was no more than half full—all Companions were not in Caerdroia just now, and indeed many who might have proved most helpful had already left Keltia on their errand to rescue Donah—but such Companions as could be assembled were there in their seats within the hour after my summoning went out. I did not tell them what was the cause and reason, but the fiosaoicht, that shared super-knowing common to all close-bound groups united by purpose and consecrated by action, seemed to have let them to know something grave was toward, for the faces that turned to me and Gweniver were wary and fraught.

  They do not yet know the half of it… When I adjudged that as many as were going to be here had arrived, I rose at my seat of Gwencathra. This was my assembling, they would hear me… As I recounted the events that had put paid to today’s hearing-court (the cases we had been giving judgment on should have to wait another day), I watched the reactions most carefully, and I had already had mindspeech with Morgan and one or two others, so that they should be looking-past, in the way of sorcerers, for hidden meaning and guilty knowledge imperfectly concealed.

  "And it is my thought," I said in conclusion, "that these two things are by no means unconnected. The taking of Donah, so that Arthur must hare off, and rightly, to rescue her, taking strength from here and Aojun both to do so; and the challenge to Gweniver, in Arthur’s absence, he not being here to answer the charge for himself, so that his Queen and wife must do so for him. It was only by grace of the Goddess that whoever set this Errian on to make the challenge—and I believe with all my life and dan and lives to come that that one is Marguessan—did not know that Gwennach is with child, and may not risk an heir to Keltia so—though any woman else in a like state may fight or not as she shall choose. Therefore have we bought ourselves some small sword-room. The question now is, Who shall be found to champion our Queen who is a Companion of this Table. The rest may all be dealt with later."

  I sat down, suddenly weary beyond all words. Why could not someone just stick a handy sword or other through whatever vital part of Marguessan was reachable, and end this endless blood-feud once for all…

  But my words had let loose hornets, it seemed; hornets of dissent and discord and blame, that buzzed and snarled and stung indiscriminately and promiscuously wherever targets presented. Gweniver appeared to be taking no part in the discussion, if you could call it that; and Morgan too seemed oddly withdrawn, though I thought I knew the reason for her detachment.

  And as I scanned the Table I slowly began to see, to my horror and utter disbelief, that no champion was going to stand forth for the High Queen here. The black tides Marguessan had sent coursing through Keltia of lies and evil had washed up on even these shores, it seemed; had left wavemarks even in Gwahanlen of the Table… This could not be; would not be. I rose to my feet again, and was drawing breath and bard-power in alike, to blast them as only a bard can blast, when the chamber doors swung open once more and Keils Rathen strode in.

  "Give me leave to speak here, my Companions," he said at once. "For though I am still a member of this board and Company, I have not taken my place among you for long enough that I feel I needs must ask."

  Unerringly, he had picked me out as the presider here tonight—and I had not summoned him here, for I thought him busy with the fleets on their way to meet Majanah—and I bowed to him at once.

  "Keils Rathen onetime First Lord of War has ever leave to speak at the Table to his brothers and sisters of the Companions. The Earl of Sulven too may speak." And I took my seat again to see what would happen next.

  Keils bowed to me, or to Gweniver who sat beside me, and went to an empty place halfway round the Table’s rim before he spoke. His words were no surprise.

  "I will stand as champion to the Ard-rian in this challenge," he said to a silent chamber. "I know not why none other has offered sword to the High Queen here tonight, and nor do I wish to know. But if she will have me, I will serve. That is all."

  He sat down and stared at the wood of the table before him. I wish I could report that every sword in Gwahanlen was offered on the instant to the defense of Gweniver; but I would be lying if I said so. No one made offer, as no one had made offer before Keils’s arrival. And if I felt disgraced and dishonored by my own Companions—though I must also say that the true, old Companions were not present,
Tari, Grehan, Tryffin, Betwyr, Ferdia, Alannagh, all were occupied elsewhere on matters just as crucial; and had they been present Gweniver would not for an instant have gone unchampioned—how much more so must Gwen be feeling it! She was High Queen; that alone should have been enough to have commanded every sword-arm here to rise in her cause. That none had done so spoke volumes for the pervasive power of Marguessan’s poisonous workings: To have corrupted the Companions, to have breached the unity of the Table was no small accomplishment. Something would be done about it—I had still to put on my mantle of spy, much might be gleaned when I did so—but right here, right now, the danger was apparent. The Table was not broken; but it had been sorely cracked. Now, however, was not the time for repairs…

  As no one else appeared wishful of speaking, I rose again, and this time I let the word-whip take my voice to strike. I do not recollect what I said, but I know I flayed them, lacerated their souls with their own dishonor; and hoped that the poison had been lanced clean.

  At last I turned to face Keils, and bowed deeply. He too rose, and at my side Gweniver stirred and slowly came to her feet also. I drew breath to speak, intending to accept Keils’s offer and thank him for the generosity of spirit that had made it, but Gwen was there before me.

  "My lord," she said, and she looked at no one but Keils as she said it, "my thanks."

  "You have thought, of course, that this is how Marguessan intended it to play out?" Morgan, readying for bed after the Table had dispersed, was pacing the floor of our bedchamber like a she-wolf caged, shedding garments as she went. I picked them up as she did let them fall, and let her speak.

  "Does it not strike you—nay, it must! How not?—as just the tiniest cantlet too perfect, the timing of all this? The return of Keils, but only after his wife had died, only after he had heard those noxious lying tales about Arthur and me; the kidnapping of Donah, so that not only Arthur but a not insignificant part of our fleet strength must be gone from home just now, and our firm ally Aojun must respond likewise; the issuing of the challenge to Gwen, knowing that she would have no recourse but to accept. Even the knowledge that no one of the Companions would defend her, and that Keils out of past love and eternal chivalry would not fail to do so… The only miscalculation, if indeed it be that, is that Keils will defend her, that she will not herself fight out the challenge because of her condition."