The Oak above the Kings

by Patricia Kennealy-Morrison

  She walked up the valley perhaps half a lai, to the sheer stone cliffs that fenced in that end of the dale. But that was not all that there was: A force, a waterfall, a thin white plume that wavered like pale silk under the moon, fell down those cliffs, into a pool that fed the stream which bisected the valley floor.

  I followed after her, gazing up at the loveliness of the water in the moonlight. It seemed to have a strangely musical sound to it as it danced and beat on the rocks; almost a water-harp, it seemed to my fancy. The weather had thawed somewhat in the past two days, so that there was rather more water coming down the force than might else have been; I stooped to cup my hand into the pool, drank a few gulps of the icy water.

  When I looked up again Morgan had vanished.

  I believe my heart stood still for one long uncomprehending moment; certainly it felt as if my blood had ceased to pump and flow. Then my brain regained the mastery: She had not passed me, she could not disappear (well, she could, strictly speaking, but she would not have), therefore she was there somewhere.

  "Guenna?" My voice croaked like a crow's. "Guenna! Where are you?"

  And then it seemed that my mind had deserted me utterly, for her voice came plain to my ear, and it came from the waterfall before me. "Here! Talyn, come round."

  Then of course I saw: It was as it had been at Sychan, the entrance to the Nantosvelta was hidden behind the falls. I picked my way round the edge of the pool, slipped behind the narrow water-veil.

  Morgan stood in a little alcove screened by fantastical panels of dripstone; she was smiling with delight.

  "It minds me of Llwynarth," she said then. "The passage-way begins behind here, and it is wide enough for four or five to walk abreast. Clear but rough, from what I could see though I only went in a short way. Nay, what?" This last to me, now that she saw my face clearly in the reflected moon-glow off the pool.

  "I could not find you," I muttered, a little shamefaced at my own panicked reaction. "How did you get in here?" Then, "Do not leave me so, cariad—"

  "The moonlight showed the way," she said, answering; then, "Anwyl, anwylyd, do not fear! I will ever be with you…" She kissed me gently, and I closed my arms convulsively around her.

  "Bring the others in," she said then, softly. "We have a tryst at Brighnasa in Turusachan, with the next High King of Kelts."

  * * *

  * * *

  Chapter Eleven

  NEVER DID I FORGET that night's march through the deep places of the Nantosvelta. We had of course brought with us small handlamps, lanthorns and palmglows and the like; but their brave beams made scant impress on the vast and everlasting darkness that lies beneath the Loom.

  It was colder and drier in the ancient passage than I had expected; the floor, though rough-cut, was free of rubble. No one had passed this way for a very long time, I thought; how then came it to be so well kept?

  "Magic, mostly," came Morgan's voice floating back to me; she had the hearing of a leatherwing, whether one spoke not. "Can you not feel how the magic keeps up the very walls around us?"

  In truth, I had not been noticing much else beyond my footing and the bobbing lights up and down the column. But now that it was mentioned… I reached out as Druid, not bard and instantly I felt whereof she spoke.

  "Whose magic is it?" I whispered. "Edeyrn's?"

  "Nay!" came back Betwyr's fiercer whisper,—though, with two miles of rock above us, why any of us should have been whispering to start with was beyond me. "Nay, no magic of the Marbh-draoi's, but from farther back in time. Brendan's maybe—it was his own master-builder Gradlon who constructed this—or Saint Nia's, even; or that of others who have kept it since—Raighne, or Alwen, or Mar. It has served often enough as escape, and will again in time to come; though this I think is its first invasion."

  Indeed; there were no known bardic records of Turusachan being invaded by way of the Nantosvelta. But what of after? I thought. Given that the entry had been secret all these years; given too that now some three hundred warriors were privy to that secret… Morgan and Merlynn and I would need to do some kenning when all this was done, to see how much was remembered, and blur whatever was.

  But that was a fear for the future: Just now, our only future was that which lay ahead of us in the darkness of the tunnel, or just beyond it in the light.

  It took five hours and more for all of us to make our way to the far end of the Nantosvelta, but at last, we came up to find ourselves in a large chamber cut from the rock, perhaps five times the breadth and height of the tunnel passage itself.

  "This must have been a guard-room," said Betwyr, even as he motioned those who followed to take places along the wall and rest awhile. "But how do we get through?"

  "And to what?" Morgan moved forward, taking a spare light as she did so and running it close to the thing that blocked our way.

  It was a wall of solid findruinna, and the best of our few sensing devices made it ten yards thick. We looked at it in despair and doubt; then Betwyr and I and some others joined Morgan in her search for some sort of key or sensor, to open the gate from our side.

  "Well," said Aled, one of Tryffin's Kernishmen, frustrated and baffled and as feared as the rest of us, "so significant a postern-gate could not be left to lesser guarding; thirty feet or findruinna, truly, scarce safeguard enough…"

  Morgan came suddenly erect, as if she had all at once remembered something. "Truly," she repeated vaguely, a smile beginning to break. She turned to me with suppressed excitement. "Talyn, bid them move back a little, back the tunnel proper. I require some privacy and a bit of help from you and Betwyr, and any other sorcerer who might be down here."

  We did as she asked; in five minutes eight Druids and Ban-draoi were standing before the findruinna gate, while the rest of our company had withdrawn to the distance of the passageway entrance.

  "It was Aled made me see it," Morgan was saying as I came up to them, after seeing the others safely shifted. "Naught short of atomics could break these gates by force—and bring down half the Loom in the process—but he who built it wished to leave no latch that might be undone by enemies."

  Light broke. "No way to open it from this side," I said. "But—"

  "Aye; from the other." Morgan stepped confidently up to the dully gleaming, monstrous metal slab. "And there are keys and keys—as we learn in our Crafts."

  "What will you do then, lady?" joked a new recruit, a bit nervously. "Will you walk through the wall?"

  Morgan smiled. "Almost." She laid her hand upon the gate, much as Birogue had done with the faerie gate at Sychan. As one, the rest of us sorcerers joined hands in a loose half-circle behind her; as my old Druid classfellow Betwyr and I closed the linking, a glow began to rise from the floor and seep like groundwater from the walls, and I did not need to repeat my cautioning to those who huddled, watching wide-eyed, in the tunnel mouth.

  Come to that, I was fairly wide-eyed myself: This that Morgan was now attempting was by no means a casual magic. Not dangerous, of itself; but demanding, near as much the ones who supported the work as of the one who directed it. But even in those early times there was none in Keltia like to Morgan…

  She did not, as had been only half-jestingly suggested, herself physically pass through the wall. But she came as close to it as makes no differ: No word spoken, she seemed to rip-smoke in a breeze, her form passing through iridescence to incandescence to near-transparency, until it seemed only a trace of her remained on the air. We reeled a little with the strain of it, but our circle held, our linked hands tightening their grip on one another.

  And then, just as it seemed we must burst or die, Morgan was back with us, almost fallen to her knees from her efforts; the great gates began to part before us, and stood wide.

  I broke the linking and leaped forward to catch her; she clutched at my arms for support, but her smile was pleased and teasing.

  "There now; so much for posterns." She went round the circle, exchanging embraces, quiet words, kisses, wit
h those who had aided her working, coming at last back to Betwyr and me and falling laughing into our arms. We stood so a moment, the three of us hanging on one another in one relieved and happy hug; then Betwyr withdrew himself and bowed to Morgan with a grin, gesturing her to pass through.

  "That is surely one very good way to open doors—lady, step beyond."

  And with a little curtsy, Morgan did so.

  On the other side of the massive findruinna gate was a plain door of black granite set into the rough rock of the mountain. We peered suspiciously round its flush frame, thinking to find some other clever device,—but this was, thank gods, a straightforward barrier only, as honest a door as ever could be. No tricks here: The builders had depended, and rightly, on the formidable gate behind us as providing all the defense that could ever be needed. Perhaps none had feared or imagined a need such as ours, or a skill such as Guenna's… Any road, this last obstacle was only a granite block that moved on a perfectly obvious track, no art or cunning to it. But before anyone could set shoulder to it, I called a pause.

  "Do we know what lies the other side of that?" Wide wondering-eyed faces, chagrined headshakes. "Well, shall we trouble to find out, do you think, before we go leaping through?"

  "It felt safe enough," said Morgan, sounding wearied and not at all concerned. "But do so, surely, if you think it best to know."

  "It is only that I do not wish us to pop out of here straight into a nest of Ravens," I explained carefully. "We have worked hard to earn surprise,—let us not lose it now."

  In the end it was a Ban-draoi sorceress named Siara, a Companion since the second Llwynarth, who helped me with the kenning. Perhaps ten minutes later we came back to our fellows quiet and demure; but our eyes were sparkling.

  "Well? What is it? Is it Ravens?"

  Siara and I exchanged glances. "See for yourselves," I said, with what I hoped was sublime disdain, and thrust the door aside.

  Beyond, anticlimactically, was seen only a heavy curtain of rich plain fabric, hanging in dusty folds that looked as if they had not been disturbed for long years. When this was battled aside, a tall chair of curious design was revealed; its back was to us a few feet away, so placed that the chair itself, standing in front of the hangings, concealed the door and the entrance to the Nantosvelta alike.

  "Somehow I think this is no ordinary chair," muttered Betwyr; then, as we turned to get a better look, the others pouring through after us, alert for Ravens, one by one we fell silent and still, and stared.

  Indeed, no ordinary chair… Rising up to the height of a tall man, its front and sides and back and arms carved deep and thick with ancient symbols, its cloud-white marble weirdly pale in the low light, the Throne of Scone peered out aloofly, emptily, over the Hall of Heroes.

  Even Morgan seemed awed; as for the rest of us, we crept out like feared mice from behind the Throne, some of us even touching reverent lips or fingertips to the stone as they passed. But there was little time for marvelling,—or, at least, not at that…

  "No Ravens," said Aled, scout's eyes raking the distant corners of that enormous chamber. "Not one—are they flown, then?"

  'By no means, Aleddach," answered Morgan. "It is said Edeyrn himself fears and hates this place,—no wonder that he would have had it shut up long since."

  They will be outside, then," said Betwyr briefly; he turned to his lieutenants, laying swift plans.

  Morgan's hand slid into mine; startled, I turned to look at her, but she was staring at the Throne, and her whole slim frame was trembling. So, love, I sent in thought-speech, so, now… But the sight of that empty throne, bereft for two centuries of its rightful occupant, had shaken me to my own soul, and I could well believe even the Marbh-draoi felt qualms that kept him from this chamber.

  But we had no time to waste in moonstruck gaping: We armed swiftly and stripped for the field, all our excess gear and clothing and baggage left in the tunnel; we had come to fight, not to carry. Then, going softly and warily, we fanned out and down through the sibilant darknesses that filled that great hall. And it seemed to us all that brave ghosts did watch our going, and proudly did they send to us their strength and love.

  There was not a soul in sight: not a Raven, not a guard, not so much as a drudge with a broom. Half-jubilant, half-dreading, we moved deeper and deeper into the Keep, even as far as where it attaches to the royal palace of Turusachan, and where guards would surely be expected. Still no one.

  What is this? I sent to Betwyr, and felt his shrug of puzzlement; and the bladepoint alertness behind it. Well, he was right to feel both: Something was plainly happening that had cleared the way for us, and I was having a thought or two as to what that might be.

  Ten minutes, and we had secured the Keep; fifteen more, and we had penetrated to both sides—to the palace on the left, and the brehons' former brugh, long closed by Edeyrn, on the other side, standing between the Keep itself and the entrance to the Way of Souls.

  And still no one sighted, let alone fought… It seemed, beyond all reason, that we had all but taken Turusachan, and that without a single swordstroke. Then from high above us came three sounds that changed the world.

  As the first light began to break far to the east—by now the snow-clouds that had followed us from Ossory had gone, perhaps back to Glenshee whence they had been sent or summoned—the first sound came in the air above, a sound that brought tears stinging to my eyes, and the memory of Gwyn's horn leaping exultant to my soul.

  But I knew at once that this was different: a kind of music, as if a great chord were being played somewhere in the heavens, as if the Loom itself were one vast clarsa. The chord grew and shifted tone, now ringing, now diving down almost below the range of human ears; but always lovely. Then it died away, moving far above our heads and out to sea and I turned to stare in wonder at the others nearest me.

  It was, as I was later to learn, a phenomenon not uncommon here in winter: the heat of the sun meeting the cold air rising above the Loom, and the granite rockfaces, caught between, acting as a sounding-board to make the mountain-music by which we had been so enthralled.

  But as swiftly as it passed, two other sounds rang out to take its place, and no mistaking the earthliness of either: Arthur's own horn calling from the hillside above, and Tarian's answering it from the Falls of Yarin, seven miles to the east.

  That was it, then: We leaped from our concealment like leopards from cover, engaging almost at once with the Ravens that had materialized just as suddenly. I could see Arthur and Tanwen now, with our precious hundreds of horse, down off the hill and forming for the charge, and shouting I have no recollection what I drew off half my company and dashed to clear them a path.

  It seemed that the Ravens had had some warning after all—that was why we had encountered no one in all the Keep, they had been needed elsewhere, and no soldier in right mind guards an empty hall that cannot be taken by stealth and holds no strategic advantage—or so at least was thought; but it can only have been a matter of moments, for they were in disarray to begin with, and never succeeded in mounting any real threat to us. Our sidemarch on Caerdroia, perhaps Arthur's greatest gamble ever, was a triumph of surprise.

  We were surging together like magnet and iron, Arthur from the hill and we from the great open square, when down the far slopes of Eagle, faint and clear in the cold Brighnasa morning, floated the strains of the terrible Douglas pibroch that had come from Caledon with Tarian and her Scotans: ‘Come wolves for I will feed you flesh.' Even Edeyrn's troops, it seemed, could still rouse to the sound of war-pipes, for they came flooding out of their garrison halls, and we were there to meet them.

  The end it was almost too easy to take delight or pride in; well, almost… We went through Caerdroia, and the Ravens' rummeled ranks, like sgians through summer butter chasing our enemy down through the streets of the UpperTown and into the Stonerows that lie behind the northeast walls. Aye, truly, some did stand to fight, and fought well, indeed, fought like warriors worthy of a no
bler cause. But it did not avail them; we were by now too heedless and undeniable, and we pushed them like drifts of autumn leaves right to the walls of the City.

  "Follow on!"

  The familiar ros-catha carried across half Caerdroia, cried there for the first time: taken up at once by the Companions, then by all who had come with us, that long cold road from Ossory. Indeed, it must have echoed in the hearts of all who followed from Gwynedd… This had been no fight worth the naming or the chaunting, not until that moment; and then, of course, it flamed. It was a star of combats, a king-stag of battle, a wonder among nations. Ah, Mihangel, thou wert there! Malen Ruadh, thou wert there!

  Before noon it was finished: strong points taken and held; captives secured in their own garrisons, now in their prisons; our own dead and wounded sped or attended. Then, carefully, quietly, like uncertain frightened wildlings of the woods nosing out of their burrows after a forest fire has roared overhead, the people of Caerdroia began to come out of their housen.

  Some, to be sure, had emerged sooner than this, and in no uncertain manner: At the first clash of battle joined, many who saw or guessed what was afoot—for days there had been rumor of Arthur's coming; by the time the tales were told, he was coming to the City on a comet or a dragon at the very least—had roared out of stone cots and tall brughs, shouting for Arthur, Uthyr and the royal House of Don. They meant what they shouted, too: Without their help—intelligence work as much as swordcraft—we had never taken Caerdroia so featly as we did, and maybe had not taken it at all.

  They came now, proudly, ancient weapons banned by Edeyrn and long hidden away clutched in hands or slung over shoulders, their heads high, some of them leading prisoners or giving urgently needed information, often with tears and blood mingling impartially upon their faces. We were glad of them, and welcomed them as warmly as they did us; but we prayed and wondered all the same, hoping that not overmany should prove turncloaks in the end.