She was free from her guard's duties for some hours, and had in fact been just on the point of coming to seek me out. So we went back together to her own chambers, in a cavern I had not yet seen; it seemed to be a garrison cave, quarters for the military members of the shieling's population, and on my asking Tegau confirmed this.
"Full half those dwelling here are Fians or other ranks of warrior class: kerns, galloglasses, even cavalry—though just now horseless! But that is not all we are: Most of us have another edge to our swords. We are scientists, or artificers, or even farmers; someone has to tend the ships and make the tools and grow the food. Here and in the other shielings we all turn a hand to whatever needs doing; so will you do, once you are better settled." She paused then and looked at me for the space of ten or so heartbeats; her face changed, growing gentler, warmer, and all at once I could see our father Gwyddno in her eyes. She for her part saw the myriad questions in mine, and so for the next hour and more, family was all we talked of: the whereabouts and welfare of our five siblings (most of them in the east of Gwynedd just now, fighting Owein); how Gwaelod had perished; my safekeeping at Daars; how Gorlas and his city had been destroyed; the flight here to Coldgates.
And Tegau told me what I had never yet heard: how Edeyrn had killed our father; how the Marbh-draoi had been called tyrant and necromancer to his face and before all his court, by Gwyddno in anger, knowing full well that he would die for his defiance.
"He was slain by sorcery, Talynno; never let you forget it, and learn all you can so that one day you may defeat it…"
But that was not all we spoke of, sorrow and loss, not unseasoned by tears, Tegau's and mine alike; there was love and even laughter to offset the sorrow, and very soon indeed it seemed that we, who had been strangers these ten or so years past, had never been apart. Yet for all that, not one word of our mother: Tegau did not offer, and somehow I did sense it was not yet time to ask.
I had, however, many other questions… "Tell me of this place, this shieling."
"What would you know?"
"Well, everything! Who built it, and when, and how, and whyfor, and how came the folk to live here, and—"
"Enough, enough!" laughed my sister. "I have a duty-shift I must soon return to… For the most part, you will find your questions better answered in the libraries than by any answers I might have; you have only to ask one of the recordkeepers to help you. They are all bards, and will be pleased to assist one of their own."
"Bard only by courtesy," I said, for honesty compelled me. "Many years and much to be learned before I may be truly called so…" Then I saw the indulgent affection in her eyes, and was abashed, for I was unused to the teasing give-and-take that can be between a brother and sister; though in truth I rather liked it. "Tell me this only now: What defends the shieling against the eyes of the Marbh-draoi? Surely his Ravens, or he himself, must notice the comings and goings in so desolate a place? Or the energy traces, which must be vast?"
Tegau sat back again in her chair. "I will answer this, and then truly I must be gone—Do you remember, when you were coming in to land, a kind of blue fire through which your ship did pass?"
I stared at her. "I could never forget it! It shook the ship as we passed; I thought perhaps it was some kind of lightning, or other pulse-charge."
"Not a bad guess." Tegau paused a little, considering how best to explain, while all the time I leaned forward like a hunt-rider in my seat, so eager was I for the knowledge. "In all the years of Edeyrn's rule," she said presently, "though on the outside scientific exploration has been forbidden on pain of death, in the shielings and other hidden sanctuaries it has gone on apace. And one of the first things our necessity forced us to learn was how to conceal—and defend—ourselves with light itself."
"So the blue light I saw—
"—was a kind of shield. It can be cast round a place like a magical circle, and it protects that place and all within just as surely as any riomhall. It hides everything within its bounds; it is as if that within does not exist. And not places only: It hid your ship from the Ravens' notice—that is why there was no pursuit. That is also why you could not see Sulven until you were past the barrier—we call it a pale. Light itself bends around it, and only those ships—or persons—holding keys to the defense may pass through unharmed."
Even in my wonder that last caught my especial note. "But if a ship not keyed tried to pass? Or a person? Would they be—"
Tegau's face was both hard and gentle as she answered: hard for the unalterable necessity of it, gentle for that she was, after all, trying to explain that necessity to a lad of fourteen, and he her brother from whom she had long been parted.
"Aye, Talyn, they would be destroyed. We have not yet reached the selective capability of merely shunting inoffensive intruders away, and nor have we reached the point where we can afford to take the chance. Any ship, any person, who comes unbidden within range of our shield, must be our enemy, and must be dealt with so."
"But innocent folk—"
"—may be slain in error. Aye. I know. My sorrow for it. Perhaps some time soon one may come to us with the knowledge to change this; I pray it may be, and so do all of us who live each day only by grace of the shield's protection. Think how it might be if that shield did not exist: the Counterinsurgency laid bare to Edeyrn's sight and slaying, Keltia's hopes for a fairer future destroyed for all time to come, the last of the House of Don put to the sword…"
When I made no reply, Tegau sighed and rose from her seat, and laid a hand upon my shoulder; I did not see the sad gentle smile, but I heard it in her voice.
"Hard it is, Talyn, to come to grips with cold needfulness. All we here have done it, and so now must you. But I think you have done so before now—twice at least—and will again. You must."
After she had gone, I sat on alone awhile, there in a warrior's chamber, thinking on all that she had said and not said; and knew, gods help us all, that she was right.
* * *
Chapter Eleven
The very deeps of winter now at Coldgates: Outside, the air was chill and sparkling, snow lay upon the ground to the thickness of a spear's height and more, winds raged around the peaks and down the ice-choked valleys. Only the mountain's own hollow body protected us from the white beast that was winter in the End-lands; like babes before birthing we huddled in our granite womb.
The which could as easily be our tomb, if the shield failed, if systems broke down, if supply lines were severed; the refuge had been made as self-sufficient as possible—we produced our own food and light and air and water, did all our own artificing, cared for our sick and wounded, maintained the health of the rest in body and in mind, made provision for our continued—and, aye, ultimate—defense. Yet the chance of disaster was ever present, like a shadow in far corners; all in the shieling knew it, and all had learned to live with it.
And as Tegau had promised, I learned too. Perhaps the simplest fear—the day-to-day fear, that of mere survival—was less simple for me for a stranger reason. To me, all the wonders of artifice that maintained the shieling—the sheer power and diversity of an unfamiliar and unimaginable science—seemed unknowable and perverse. I have said how Edeyrn denied such wonders to the common run of folk, and by that denial had invested them with high glamourie. Even I felt some of that awe and mystery, and I, as the child of one chief and foster-child of another, had seen more of such contrivances in my fourteen years than most Kelts would these days see in a lifetime.
But, now here in Coldgates, living among more science and magic than I had dreamed possible, I saw that these things were not wonders at all, but plain tools like any other; and those who worked with them in service of the Counterinsurgency worked with them as casually as a man outside might work with a loom, or a woman with a plow. Such technologies as were commonplace here would seem the veriest aisling to that woman or that man, and all the others like them: They lamented the loss of science, but they had never even known it; they yearned for its
return, but they never hoped to live themselves long enough to see it. For to possess once again such powers would mean of force the overthrow of the Marbh-draoi, by force, and such a thing was dreamed of only in the hidden sanctuaries; and even there it was as yet but a dream.
No dreaming, however, for me… As the days passed, I bloomed. There were plenty of other young folk at Coldgates, lads and lasses of my own age to be my friends—a thing I had never before really known. All I had had was Arthur, and all he had had was me; we had so grown into each other's souls that by now it was not like having a friend or even a fostern, but another self. We were no longer companions for each other; we had all but become each other.
Not that either of us held this to be any bad thing; though I think Ygrawn and Ailithir both were somewhat concerned, foreseeing a time when we would not be together, and worrying lest our closeness should make that separation, when it should come—and come it did—more painful than it might otherwise be. Arthur and I thought only that we should go on forever so—who thinks different at fourteen?—and in the end we came as near to it as any might.
Yet sometimes I confess it could make things difficult: when one of us, say, had somewhat he would conceal from the other, and could not; or when one had a thing to share, and could not, finding that the choice, the volition, of offering was diminished. We could not hide such things because naught was hidden; we could not share because all was shared already—at times the involuntary union of spirits can be most inconvenient, if not even tiresome.
But chiefly we cherished our nearness and our bond, and met many down the years who envied us that closeness—envied me the more, for that it was Arthur with whom I shared such links—and who would have given much to have such a bond, with Arthur by choice, but failing that with anyone, in their own lives.
And then one day of days a truth was told to test its holding…
That afternoon I was in the grianan used in leisure hours by Arthur and myself and some other of the young folk quartered on our cavern level. Deep in the rock as it was, the chamber would never in ten million years know the touch of the sun, and so the name was purely symbolic; but it was convenient, and we used it without a second thought.
By chance—or dan—I was alone when Arthur came to find me. I looked up from my reading to greet him with a smile, and then I saw his eyes.
People speak idly of a smile that freezes upon one's face; they have no idea, and for myself I had not thought until that moment how such a thing might feel. Now I knew.
"Arthur?"
He looked blankly at me as if I had been some importunate stranger, then shook his head and dropped heavily into the facing chair.
"I have been to see my mother," he said presently, after the silence had grown intolerable. "You know—for that I could not grieve for Gorlas. Until now I had not been able to bring myself to speak to her of it."
"Well, then," I said, hoping to cheer and encourage. "What does methryn say?"
Arthur gave a short indescribable laugh: In that one harsh wordless syllable spoke despair, and betrayal, and confoundment, and something that seemed very near derangement, and bitter, blinding pain.
"Well, for one thing, she says Gorlas was not my father." The room spun about me. "Ah, nay, Artos, do not even in jest—"
"He was not my father!" shouted Arthur, and I shrank back in terror at the fury that blazed from him. He took a deep shuddering breath to master himself, and went on in a cold clear deadly voice. "It was not possible, do you see, that he could sire any child; and this my mother knew before they were wedded… by which time I was full two years old."
I scarcely dared to raise my voice above a breath. "Then—"
Again the desperate, half-mad laugh. "Whose son am I? Well, I myself asked that very question, and thus did my mother answer: I am the son of Ygrawn Tregaron and Prince Amris Pendreic, eldest child of Darowen Ard-rian and her consort Gwain of Kells."
The silence was white and taut and neverending. I dared not look at Arthur, but all I could see before me was a face. One face: not Arthur's, not Ygrawn's, not even Gorlas's (ah, Gorlas-maeth!)—but the face of Uthyr Pendreic, King of Kelts, as he looked upon Arthur in the presence chamber when they had met those few weeks since. And all I could think was one thought only: that the King had been seeing then for the first time his own nephew, his eldest brother's only son; and that Uthyr had known very well who Arthur was.
But now Arthur was speaking again, and my glance flew to him. He was ashen-pale, but calm of countenance: I knew that calm of old, however, knew well how he ever used it to conceal anguish and anger; and so I kept my eyes close upon him, watching him as if he had been a fevered child.
"It was all a secret union, for that their kindreds did not approve, and sought some better match for each of them." Now his voice sounded less cold than casual—another bad sign.
"What match could be better found than the Tanist and a duke's daughter?" I had not meant to speak, lest I break that carefully bridled calm—his grip on its reins was barely there—but the words came forth, and he spoke to them as if they named a thought of his own.
"Many, if the Tanist in question is but a prince in name only, and the duke is not beloved by that Tanist's mother… Bregon my grandfather, who was Kernow's duke at that time, wanted better for my mother than a life in hiding and a hunted lord, and spoke against the match. Darowen"—no 'Ard-rian', I noted, and certainly no 'grandmother'—"for her own part took offense, and so forbade it."
Arthur's hands, that had been gripping the arms of his chair, began to tremble, until I thought the wood would crack and splinter beneath the convulsive spasms of his fingers. I poured out a measure of usqua to the depth of a handspan and held it out to him; his hands shook so as he drank that he spilled near half the cupful, but the rest flowed down his throat like water, and the terrible trembling ceased.
"He was killed, my—Amris—four months after my birth. I am to the best of anyone's knowing his only child; he it was who named me Arthur. So much, at least, did he give me." I have ever been more than commonly quick to grasp nuance—perhaps it was simple shock that had slowed me here—but all at once it broke upon my dazed wits like an exploding star.
"Then—it is YOU who are heir to Keltia! Not Gweniver, but you! Amris was eldest of the three brothers, and so now it comes to you!"
The color was beginning to leach back into Arthur's face now; but before answering my astonished outcry—though to him the thing had been self-evident long since—he held out the mether. I refilled it to the brim, and held my breath and my peace alike while he drained it; this time the golden-brown drink went down unspilled.
His words came cool, if a little too precisely clipped. "As to that, not so. The succession law as it now stands provides that an heir born of an oathfast marriage—as was the Princess Gweniver—takes precedence of an heir born of a union with a ban-charach—as was I."
'Ban-charach'—literally, 'the loved woman'—is a title used for one who is a man's pledged lover (though not pledged to wed), or one who is accepted in place of a wife, or one who is partner to a man in addition to a wife. Not mistress nor concubine nor courtesan nor lennaun: To be ban-charach—or far-charach for that matter, it is a state for a man as well as for a woman—is as honorable as to be wife, and has by law most specific rights and privileges. But Arthur knew all this as well as any Kelt…
"That may be," I said then. "But still Amris was senior of Darowen's sons. Leowyn the Princess's father was her secondborn, and Uthyr who now reigns is but third. By descent of line—''
"No matter. Leowyn and Seren were wed at the stones, and my—and Ygrawn and Amris were not. So though I am the firstborn of Darowen's firstborn, Gweniver must still come before me."
I leaned back, studying him in silence as he toyed with the empty mether. "Many will not see it so," I said at last. "When word of this gets out—and it will—I think you will find more than a few folk more than willing to set you first in the succession—as you
r father's son."
He flinched as if I had struck him upon a bleeding wound—as indeed I had, and had meant to, though it tore my own heart to do so. But better it was he heard it first from someone who loved him, who had naught to gain by suggesting the possibility—though Ygrawn must have said somewhat to him very much like to what I had just spoken, for I saw by his eyes that the wound was not a new one. But his tone kept its even calm.
"It is not within their choice—nor yet within mine—to do so. Keltia is in desperate straits enough without a battle over meaningless rights to a nonexistent crown. Any road, Uthyr remains King no matter who be named his heir, and neither the Princess Gweniver nor I will be of age to rule for full on twenty years to come, nor could rule even then save Uthyr's death."
This was of course truth uncontrovertible, and I said naught in answer for naught could be said. Arthur too fell silent; I watched him covertly, then reached out in gentleness, almost in stealth, to touch both his hand and his thought. But he was far distant, and felt neither touch, and I withdrew as quietly to a distance of my own.
What must it be like! Suddenly to find yourself not only not the son of the man whom all your life you have loved as your father, but the son of a prince of Keltia whom you never knew—a man who, had he lived, would have been King of Kelts reigning this day, and you his firstborn and only heir…
His sudden change of birth status would be the least of Arthur's concerns just now: There is no bastardy in Keltia, and never has been among the Keltic nations from our days on Earth and earlier. Brehon law, renowned throughout the galaxy for fairness and compassion, holds every child to be true-born. Any differences in birthright and birthrank—and there are many, subtle ones as well as great—come about solely according to the relationship of the child's parents. For not only do we have no baseborn in Keltia, we have ten different sorts of marriage—every one of them most legal and all equally honorable—and, needless to add, goleor of brehons and jurisconsults to sort it all out.
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