So I told her, told her all of it, and she harkened gravely and carefully to all I had to tell: Marguessan, Malgan, the outfrenne paid lackeys, the whole of it. When I was done, she shivered a little, then reached herself up and kissed me lightly upon the lips.
"Imagine," I said dreamily, for I was by now come to that toppling edge of slumber, having forgotten for the past little while that I was utterly exhausted. My body was falling asleep around me, though my brain was still wide awake—with good cause to be. "Imagine Malgan all his life not knowing whose son he truly was."
Morgan was silent a long while. "Nay," she said then, and with her next words the last pieces of the puzzle came crashing into place. "Imagine Edeyrn Marbh-draoi not knowing whose son Malgan truly was."
And that, of course, I could not imagine.
* * *
Chapter Twenty-two
Well, surely he knew! Edeyrn may have been evil unspeakable and incarnate, but stupid he most assuredly was not!"
Gweniver rolled her eyes at no one in particular and flung herself into a chair. "Why else did he choose to make Owein his heir?" she continued in a voice of elaborate patience, as if she spoke to furniture not folk. "Only because he knew Owein’s heir was Malgan, and knew also that Malgan was Arthur’s son, not Owein’s at all. And the idea of his worst enemy’s son as his eventual heir, a Pendreic to be suborned and perverted and given to the Dark, a son of Don to succeed the Marbh-draoi, was too tempting for Edeyrn’s twisted humor to resist. So he did not."
Morgan and Arthur and Ygrawn and I studiously avoided one another’s glances, but we all knew Gwen had the right of it. We were together again in Turusachan, home from our various voyagings, some of us with more success than others—as Arthur, for one, who had come back from Fomor with Donah, both of them safe and sain, and all those who went in Prydwen. And that, of course, was something. Much.
But the return had been to a Keltia uneasy, unsettled, fraught with troublous rumor and cry: the news I had brought from Gwynedd; the news with which Gweniver had greeted Morgan and me on our arrival, that Keils Rathen was indeed slain, and by treachery too; and, perhaps worst and direst of all, the news Arthur bore home, when he came to Tara only hours after we ourselves had landed.
We had trooped right back to Mardale to meet him, just Gwen, Morgan and me; even our closest Companions had been bidden stay behind at the palace until we returned. Prydwen was just coming in to land as we got there, settling down like a dark-green feather upon the field, still in the grip of the mighty motiving force by which it sailed the stars. I for one never tired of watching it: Since Arthur had had it built for him at the very start of his reign, Prydwen had become well known by sight to the star-navies of many worlds, and usually for excellent cause. But for all its deadly power, it was beautiful withal: long and lean of line, not so big as many battle craft, but able to carry a score score of warriors with ease. And never did I look on Prydwen without minding me of that first great reiving we had had in it; for on that sailing we had met the Yamazai, and of that meeting Arthur and Majanah had met…
And that meeting had produced the tall, rosehoney-haired young woman who was even now running at us from across the field. Donah threw herself upon the three of us all together, laughing and weeping, and we were doing the same back to her; but when the man who had followed her out of Prydwen came up behind her, we felt our laughter freeze on our faces at sight of him.
Arthur looked to have aged ten years in not even so many weeks, and he did not spare us any cushion of time to prepare for the blow but dealt it hard and swift, as was his wont; and perhaps that was best.
"Aojun is at war with Fomor for this," he said, "and Keltia will not be far or long laggard in joining her."
Now, as we sat in Ygrawn’s solar, just the five of us, all the news had been heard and told. I had had for my sins the task of giving Arthur the certain tidings of Malgan, and I must say he received them with the calm that befit a great king. But then he had always believed in his heart that Gwenwynbar had lied about the lad’s parentage, lied to him even as she had lied to all Keltia and to Owein himself; and, give him the praise, Arthur had ever conducted himself to Malgan, if not quite as a father, then as a watchful and compassionate guardian.
"And you would have thought that had carried some weight with him!" complained Gweniver bitterly. "Never did you behave to him, Artos, with aught save grace and kindness; and see how he does now."
Arthur and I exchanged glances, but neither of us spoke. Still, for all its mighty reverberation within the Clann Pendreic, this of Malgan was nonetheless the least evil of the many tidings that had come our way this day. For one thing, Arthur was most interested to hear of Marguessan’s doings, and before I had quite finished telling him had already dispatched Fians to Gwynedd to round up whatever outworlders they could find, in especial her particular several tools. I myself much doubted the Fians would find any gallain on Gwynedd, let alone Marguessan’s outfrenne lackeys; they had surely been warned and gone long since. All the same…
And Keils Rathen was dead; that was true as Marguessan had told me. He had been found in a deserted street of the Stonerows, and judging by his wounds and the signs of struggle and the blood not his own, he had not made it easy for his slayers. Still, it was not the end he might have Seen, or any of us could have wished; and when word began to run like the Solas Sidhe that the shortsword that had killed him carried the High King’s personal device upon its hilt, you may well imagine the stour that followed. Arthur, in his grief for Keils, dismissed this angrily, saying, and rightly, that the most languid swordsmith in the land could forge such a hilt and fit a blade to it and claim that it belonged to the Ard-righ; and that of course was true, but the whispers grew apace to surly rumblings, and something would have to be done to put cease.
But none of this could help Keils, nor could have saved him either; and in the midst of the turmoil we were angered all the more because we were denied time even to grieve properly for him, could not mourn our dear friend and Companion as he had merited of us, though of course his murder was being investigated most thoroughly at Arthur’s own command. Nay; we could not have saved Keils, cogged we never so well: His doom had been appointed from the moment he entered Gwahanlen to stand up as champion for Gwen, and though he had won that fight he had died for his Queen all the same. I think he would not have been displeased.
Arthur was watching me, knowing my thought. "Later, braud," he murmured. "We will honor him after, as is right and fitting. Just now we have other matters to think on. He will understand."
And I knew, of course, that Keils of the Battles would understand indeed—and did. But still it was hard.
Everything had seemed to have happened in the last few days, when I was myself on Gwynedd being toyed with like a captive mouse by Marguessan and her creatures. Arthur, raging out of Keltia after Donah, had come first to Aojun and found Majanah cold and wrathful, her world already armed for war.
Together, they had sailed in pursuit of Melwas, who had fled with all speed to his own homeworld. Not the cleverest of actions—some hidden sanctuary world would have been by far the better choice—but he was harried and distracted and his common sense overridden by Marguessan’s workings; and instinctively as a hunted coney he had bolted home.
It had then gone thusly: Aojun’s forces, already raised, had joined the fleet Arthur had led out with Prydwen, and together they came upon Fomor. Melwas had put up resistance at first, but he was no match for Majanah and Arthur united, and when enough bases and crucial stations had been blown into space-sparks, and when threat incontrovertible had been at last posed to his capital city of Tory, Melwas had finally given in and relinquished Donah to her avenging parents.
"Though even then with great and strange reluctance," said Arthur. "Aye, not though Janjan vowed to leave his planet a cold clinkered ball of slag lurching through the void of space. And she would have done as much, too, and I would have been with her in it, had harm befallen Don
ayah." He smiled at his daughter, who had come from her enforced nap and joined us, and was now lying on her stomach on the hearth-furs, barefoot and quite at her ease.
"Not before I had cut him into tiny pieces and fed him to the geese," she said happily. "What is more, he knew I would, and I think he even liked the knowing. But he never harmed me in the least smallest way, unless you count being near bored to death with dreadful poetry as torture."
"And I for one well might," I said smiling. "But we are only glad and grateful to have you back, lass."
"My mother thought it best that I come here while the war is on," said Donah. "Though I did not wish to leave her and Brone to deal with this without me—" All at once she looked as a child fighting to keep back tears, and she was. Ygrawn, who was nearest, reached down a hand, and Donah took it and clung to it.
"What now?" That was Morgan. "Marguessan has in her traha brabbled most of her plan to Talyn, so that we can prepare against at least that. But I cannot help but think that there is more."
What more, we could never in all our lives have imagined.
The next morning, we awakened to the news that the Archdruid, Ultagh Casnar, had crowned Marguessan Pendreic Queen of Kelts, and Mordryth Tanist. The thing was done on Gwynedd, in Oeth-Anoeth of baneful memory, in the presence of the kindred of Locryn (much diminished since the death of Galeron and the defection of Gwain, who was with us this day in Turusachan), some malcontent Companions who had seen fit to take Marguessan’s part—including that Morholt who had helped begin it—and quite a number of trimmers who set their sails to fit the wind that blew; also Marguessan’s outfrenne abettors, whom many held responsible for the death of Keils.
Arthur had summoned us to the Council chamber: Morgan, Gweniver, me, Ygrawn, Gwain, Gerrans who was in from Gwynedd, Roric and Daronwy back from Aojun, the true Companions. And there he told us of what had befallen, and looking round the chamber I saw that no one was surprised.
He gave us the news in a quick, clipped voice—the bare facts, little more was just yet known, though indeed those were ill enough.
"The Archdruid gives as his reason the certain knowledge that the monarchy is corrupt, witnessed by the fior-comlainn to defend the Queen—plainly rigged, for clearly she was guilty and her champion should not have triumphed so featly against the truth—and the subsequent murder by the Crown of that champion, as equally plainly he knew the truth, had been bought off and must have his mouth stopped before he talked."
Elen Llydaw, newly returned from Fomor with Arthur, looked ill with anger and disgust, but spoke with all her customary force.
"Artos, we must isolate Gwynedd as it were the seat of infection. Do we cut Marguessan off from any outside help, we can contain the revolt, limit the danger and the damage to one world."
Arthur shook his head. "The danger is spread, Elenna, and the damage is done. We must call up all our forces, and prepare not only for civil risings against us but against invasion from outside as well."
"This Marguessan has promised," I said, over the denials and protests. "We were fools indeed to ignore aught she may tell us, and I was there to hear her say it. I do not think she lies."
"And for certainty we have war with Fomor," Gweniver reminded us. "Aojun has already declared, and we as Aojun’s ally—and fellow aggrieved party—will soon do the same."
"And what of the Protectorates?" That was Ruard Darnaway, who was Lord Extern, responsible for the administering of Keltia’s commonwealth worlds—several dozen systems by now, all looking to Keltia for a shield against the peril that can come from far stars.
"A good question," said Arthur. "But quickly answered: They are not in this. We will not withdraw from them any patrolling ships or forces, but nor shall we be able to send them any more than is already there. They must make do with what they have."
"And so must we," said Tarian grimly. "We shall be hard put to it even so, Artos. Fighting outfrenne invaders—Fomori certainly, and who knows what others Marguessan has contracted for—and quelling civil disturbances at one and the same time…" Her voice trailed off, and that was not like her.
"Can it be done, Tari?" asked Gweniver quietly.
"It must be done, Ard-rian," answered the Taoiseach.
"And so it shall." Arthur had leaped up and begun to pace, and I had a sneaking suspicion—shared, I could tell, by a number of the others present—that Arthur was not entirely displeased or even very much daunted by these developments.
No surprise, not for one who had known him as long as I had; Arthur was ever at his best when his forces were outnumbered and his back was to the wall. Desperate odds seemed to lift him to a next higher plane of being, a redoubled fervor of action and thought; this we all knew well. But then he had never before come to such a strait and struggle…
Gweniver had been mostly silent, but you could sense it was white silence, the strains building, until at last she gave vent to her feelings with a sound that might have been made by a she-wolf fettered, and stood up.
"The idea of Marguessan crowned Ard-rian," she explained to the staring faces turned her way. "It—grates me. That is all. But what do we do now? Grehan?"
Grehan Aoibhell, who had been this long time busy with star-maps and holomaps of Keltia and many notes, looked up from his computations.
"As First Lord of War it is my duty to see us ready to meet this threat, and as of this moment we are not. But we shall be, and that soon." He rose, and addressed Gweniver and Arthur. "If I may have your permission to leave, and to take Elenna, Betwyr and Daronwy with me? We can more readily plan our course at the Fian commandery."
Arthur nodded, Gweniver lifted a hand, and they were gone. The room seemed somehow to close up behind them, as water cut by a knife. Arthur stared unseeing a while at the table, then shook himself all over and stood up.
"Well. Do the rest of you go where you are needed, also. But I must speak with Talyn and with Guenna."
When the room had emptied, I turned in my chair to inquire with my eyebrows of my foster-brother. The chamber seemed colder and darker now with only ourselves in it—Ygrawn too had been bidden stay behind—and I had a terrible feeling something I would like not at all was on its way…
And I was so right to think it. Once the doors were shut and we were all gathered round Arthur’s end of the long basalt table, he looked at Gweniver, who nodded, and then looked at us.
"Talyn, you and I have a thing to do ere this begins in earnest," he said in a low hesitant voice. "I have Seen it some time since, and I have spoken of it with the Ard-rian, and now I would speak of it with you three who are most dear and near to us both." He paused, then went on. "You and I, Tal-bach, have another errand to Glenshee, and this time it will be the last."
I caught my breath back into my chest, but in all truth I had been half-expecting something of the sort. How not, when all such encounters for the past three decades and more had been every one of them pointing the way to this? And I called deliberately to mind the great visions that had been vouchsafed me during the quest for the Cup: what, and who, I had seen in that time; what they had said to me; what they had told me would and should be…
And I heard myself answering Arthur as in a dream. "Last, and, I think, greatest. When are we away?"
"At first light," said Arthur. "There is much to settle here before then, and no time to delay past. We will take an aircar as close as we dare come, and walk the rest of the way in." He closed his eyes, sighed deeply and ran both his hands over the center of his face, speaking through his fingers. "Much shall perish in this bitter harvest tide."
For it was Lughnasa here on Tara, and August had been held since our time on Earth as one of the months of sacrifice. And as I left the Council chamber with Morgan silent beside me, I turned my mind in terror from the thought of what—or whom—might not be asked in offering so that Keltia should go on.
Morgan and I went early to bed, for sheer weariness of spirit and body both. It had been a long and mortally taxing d
ay, and we were far forspent, I even more than Morgan.
With good cause, I might add: I had been all but executed at Saltcoats, then snatched away to Tair Rhandir thinking I was dead, and then discovering that I was, in fact, not; travelling home to Tara only to learn of Keils’s murder; last of all Arthur’s own return, with such dark tidings as made it seem that Annwn itself had been loosed upon our worlds and lives. A busy enough day right there; and now according to Arthur, he and I had another call to pay upon the Shining Folk in Glenshee.
Oddly enough, that prospect which would have frighted most Kelts else gladdened my heart—a good thing too, since naught else this terrible day had done so, save of course Donayah’s rescue—and as I tumbled bonelessly onto the piled pillows I found myself eager for the dawn journey to the north and east.
"To see Gwyn again—" I said, half-asleep. "And Birogue, and my mother’s grave, now that I know all her story—
"And Merlynn Llwyd," said Morgan softly. "You are called to this tryst beneath the hill, trygariad, for high purpose’s sake; and it is in my mind that it is Merlynn himself who calls you, and his great purpose which you and Arthur shall work. Else is all in vain."
I sighed deeply and pulled the coverlets up to my chin. "I know. I mind me of things I Saw—as a lad, on the quest—and now it is come upon us."
"Of my sister’s doing." She lay silent beside me a while, then began to speak in a hushed voice, scarce audible even to me on the pillow beside her own. "I never answered that asking of yours, Talyn, back in Tair Rhandir, as to why she and I do never speak the other’s name, sith that it cannot be avoided. Well, there is good reason for that."
"I’ll bet there is," I muttered grimly. "When I asked her in
Saltcoats that very question, she went white as, well, salt on the instant. But she would not tell me why."
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