The Oak above the Kings

by Patricia Kennealy-Morrison

  "Sheep led by a goat!" Now she was challenging the rest of us, most of whom were already worn out from their earnest entreaties. Her eye fell on me; I gave her no more than what was needed to convey helplessness, between such friends as she and I, and she shook her head angrily.

  "What is on you! Artos—speak to me! Tell me how such a loon-brained scheme will serve our purpose! Now!"

  Daronwy in a rage was not someone I should myself care to go up against: And I speak as one who knows. Of all our old Companions from Gwynedd, I had ever held her, with Grehan and Tarian, as the cleverest, and perhaps she stood alone as most creative. In any number of our desperate situations, more often than not it had been Ronwyn who had cut through the brush and led us to the highroad of the solution we sought. Her mind was brilliant, and did not work as ours did; very often she was miles ahead of even Arthur, and could thwart his path with ease and logic, or at the least could turn it onto a more useful and reasonable track.

  But not, I think, today… "Lady, you speak to your High King," I murmured in mock cautioning, just to goad her a little more and enjoy the fun.

  "High King nothing!" she snarled. "I speak to an idiot! Was this ever what you had in what it pleases you to call your mind, Artos, or did it just now fall in through one of the many holes you seem to have bunged in your own head?"

  Alannagh and some of the newer Companions flinched a little in their alarm; but they had only known Artos from the Taran campaigns, mostly—they had not seen his stupidities on Gwynedd, had heard report only of his blazing triumphs. Quite naturally they would be shocked and surprised, to hear Ronwyn rant so against him. We could have told them how little good it would do in the end; but more instructive to watch…

  Ronwyn ran down like one of those ancient timepieces that work by spring-tension, and stood at last staring at her friend and King. Arthur looked back at her, a faint grin just grazing the edges of his beard.

  "I love you as well, Ronwynna," he said smiling. And we all knew it was not the love of man and woman he meant, but the love of friend and friend, and dear friends at that. Still, it looked as if that love had done naught to Arthur's course…

  Ronwyn rallied for one final throw. "Arthur," she said carefully, "Ard-righ. Tell me this one thing. Whyfor?"

  Arthur leaned forward again in his chair, all merriment gone from his face. "Because we can do it, Ronwyn, and because we need to do it. We need a bargaining chip to secure the Fomori, and since we cannot win one by arms we must try to earn one by cunning." He stood up, began to pace, and with that I knew he was by no means as sure about this as he made out to be.

  "If we take Nanteos," he said at last, "we can use his safety to negotiate a truced pact with Fomor, something that will hold for more than a season or two. If they see that even their own king is not safe from the Kelts' cleverness and bold chancing, they will go slow before they go again on the war-trail against us."

  "Or so at least you think," muttered Ferdia; which only showed how far had spread the misgivings Daronwy had given voice to.

  But before Arthur could draw breath to answer him, Daronwy herself had cut swiftly in.

  "Nay," she said, with the resigned open honesty of one who has done her best in opposition and now must form ranks upon her leader will she or nill she, "Artos it was who got us here in the first instance. Whether through luck, or dan, or policy, only the Goddess can say; but the fact remains, we are here, and it was his hand that brought us with war out of Gwynedd." She paused, looked over at her King as he stood by the viewport staring out into space. Artos, I hate it more than I can tell you, but I think perhaps you are right in this as well."

  It was a handsome admission, and Arthur bowed to her from where he stood. And suddenly I caught something in their posture, or in what they had said, or had not said… I all but blurted it out then and there, but controlled myself, and when Arthur and I were alone after the council's ending, in the corridor leading to our quarters for the few hours of rest we would most like never get, I turned on him.

  That little scene with you and Ronwyn—you cooked it up between you, not so? To lull and gull the others—Artos, answer me!"

  "If we had done," he said presently, though he would not meet my eye, "do you not think we had good cause?"

  "Well. But you might have told me, at least. I am not so bad an actor, that I could not have played along."

  He slipped his arm through mine. "Nay, braud, you and I are too close for it—we have been playing such scenes so long together that they would have twigged in an instant. Daronwy is the last Kelt on Tara they would have suspected of such connivance."

  "And so the logical one to help you connive." I was silent for a while, then, as we came to the door of my small chamber amidships, I looked my fostern full in the face.

  "And if we fail?"

  "Then Gweniver will be sole monarch over Keltia." He repented at once. "I know what you are going to say—that I am not an ordinary Kelt who may please himself with risks and adventurings. But, Talynno, that is just why I must do this thing—" He glanced at the chronodial in the wall, then drew me farther along into the corridor and into his own chamber. When I had taken the chair he waved me into, I folded my arms and waited for him to speak again.

  He was sitting on the edge of his couch, toying with something he had taken from a small carved box in the bedhead niche. As it flashed green in a sudden ray of light, I knew it for what it was: his Ring of State, the huge emerald that had been Athyn's tinnol, now set in the band of gold knotwork he had crafted with his own hands. I had not known he had it with him.

  "You should make things more often," I heard myself saying.

  He smiled. "Ah, the tongue of a bard; never one meaning where three will do better…" With sudden firmness he put the ring once again on his finger, closed his hand to a fist around it. "It will make a fine song, will it not; glad I am to have so high and gifted a bard with me, a prince of bards.

  "Ah, do not," I muttered; for still I had not managed to come to terms with my princely status, and it was well for me that such things counted for naught among the Company.

  "Is all well with you and Guenna?" he asked, almost shyly. "You seemed so happy when you came back wedded from Mount Keltia—no surprise, but even so…"

  I opened my mouth to speak, all of my great love for my wife and how it seemed to us that never had there been a day we had not been wed, but much to my own surprise I found myself saying very different.

  "What of you and Gweniver? Do the High King and High Queen of Keltia go strong together now, or is it Coldgates come again?" Coldgates, where there had been no peace between the two royal cousins from morn to middlenight, even the vast shieling had not been vast enough to contain them both…

  But he shied away from the question like a frightened colt. "Well enough… But, Talyn, this reiving—

  I understood. "I will make a fine song of it," I promised, "and I will sing it to you in Turusachan."

  And with that Arthur seemed content.

  * * *

  * * *

  Chapter Twenty-one

  IT FELL OUT NOTHING like to anything we had plotted, of course. We should have known, things being what they were, Arthur being what he was… Still, it all began perfectly according to plan: We fell upon Fomor like the wolf from the stars. It was only after that falling that everything changed.

  You would think that I might have guessed it, when it all began to seem a little too easy, that dan was only lying in wait for us. At the time I had been only grateful: We laid our diversionary trail at Meroke, the small moon—and the Fomori went for our lure as a salmon goes for a failing grub—then slipped round the postern, as it were, dashing past Launius (our flesh flinching every instant, dreading to feel the bite of sun-guns into Prydwen's siodarainn hide). But we flashed past before we ourselves, even, could quite believe it though I do recall thinking uneasily when would the Fomori drop their other boot, and how much would the hobnails in it pain us when they did. />
  But it never happened! We came to land, and hit the planet running, and that is where all Arthur's wagers were suddenly called back in…

  Before we came into Fomorian space, we had received certain information, from our extremely high-priced spies, that the King of Fomor himself, Nanteos, would be travelling to a remote corner of his throneworld; under a false identity, with few guards and no state, on an errand the nature of which required that the king go in stealth.

  Which suited our purposes well: Our plan was to intercept Nanteos as he disembarked at his destination (where, we fervently hoped, they would not have the defenses that the spaceport at Tory, the capital, could boast), and to bear him off as hostage to Prydwen before we ourselves could be hindered. Not the best plan, you are thinking; and you are so right to think it. But it was the best plan we had.

  And at first, it worked unbelievably better than any of us had any right to have hoped. Running right under the noses of any number of Fomori tracking stations, we landed at the small, undefended spaceport—a few miles out from a country town called Zennor—just in time to meet Nanteos's ship coming in itself to land, all unsuspecting of our presence.

  The fight was bitter and brief and sharp,—but even that went better than our expectations. We killed a few Fomori, for which we were sorry; but, mindful of what they had done to us in Edeyrn's hire, we managed to set our sorrow aside.

  But the great shock came when, having fought our way through to the king's cabin, we found within not the monarch of Fomor we had sought to find but a very frightened fourteen-year-old boy, who was trying very hard to be brave.

  "Melwas," said one of the guards we had captured; he would not have spoken if he could have helped it, but Tanwen had prodded him with something rather sharper than a sgian—a nice magical goad. "Nanteos's grandson and heir."

  Well, well… I reached out to reassure the lad with a thought-touch, and jumped back as if my mental hand had been clawed by an angry kitten. So, the heir to Fomor was a sorcerer in training, and a most promising one too… That made things easier all round: I reached out again, much more firmly this time; and with a little gasp the young prince folded up like a roosting heron, falling tranced and unconscious into Betwyr's arms.

  It was all over within moments: We were back aboard Prydwen with the sleeping Melwas and racing back out past the now thoroughly wide-awake Launius defenses. We took one or two minor hits from the sun-gun emplacements, but our shielding held and we got out into the relative safety of the scallogue belt between two of the outer moons. I saw our young hostage safely bestowed, on a comfortable blastcouch in one of the empty cabins, under bedside guard; then I hastened to the bridge, where I found Arthur standing like a dolmen, calm, immovable, impassively watching the vain hunt on several of the viewscreens.

  "They could well declare war on us for this, Artos," I said evenly, when he showed no immediate signs of conversational intent.

  He flexed his shoulders. "Aye," he said after another moment, "but they will not."

  I closed my eyes in brief annoyance; why was it he was ever so sure of things?

  "Oh aye? You know this, do you? It goes well beyond the reiving we said was all our cause for coming here. Just to prick them, you said; just a reminder that they would attack Keltia at their peril, just a small payback for their aid to Edeyrn. Not—this." I gestured helplessly, but he made no answer. "What do we do now?"

  Amazingly, he grinned. "Why, we wait, of course. What else?" He lifted a hand, and at the helm Tanwen and Ferdia did something I had never before seen. Prydwen seemed to shudder beneath us; and as I looked to the viewscreens for an explanation, any screen that showed an exterior image of Prydwen itself went suddenly dark.

  I felt as if some great gauran had suddenly kicked me in the belly, drew my breath in to croak, "Artos? What has happened here?"

  Arthur did not reply at once, but seemed to quest round him, in that way he had; finally, apparently satisfied to standard of his very own that all was well, he turned to with a smile.

  "It is called a tirr. It is a kind of cloaking spell, more magic than artifice. I learned the way of it from the Pheryllt, what time I went to study with them at Bargodion—oh, long since, back when you were tramping the roads of Gwynedd as a spying bard."

  I stared at him. "You never said."

  "Did I not?" His face was all innocence. "Perhaps it slipped my mind in the press of greater matters. All the same, it is a useful thing! We cannot move while it is at work—something the Fianna must improve upon—but while we remain at rest we are hidden from all view, sight and probes alike. Only if some ship were to sail straight into us would any know that we were here waiting."

  I had recovered some of my wits by now. "And just what do we wait here for?"

  "Why, for Nanteos's answer; what else?"

  The King of Fomor's answer was not long in coming: The long-range scanners showed warships quartering the space between the moons, so many they looked like tiny silver minnows in a peat-dark lochan. I knew we were safely hidden—well, I did not know, just so, I had merely taken Arthur's word for it, as ever—but all the same, as I watched those moving needles, any one of which could have taken such a stitch in Prydwen as to sew us all into our shrouds, I was fearful and doubting of my fostern as I had seldom if ever been.

  For his part, Arthur seemed pleased and confident. He had sent a hail to Tory some time since, and presently it was answered by someone who could only be Nanteos himself. Arthur moved to the center of the bridge to take the message, and all at once he was the Ard-righ of Keltia.

  "I love what way you do that," I muttered, and a quick grin flashed over his features before he schooled them to a more kingly expression.

  Nanteos of Fomor was older than I had expected, with long white hair, a carefully trimmed white beard forked into two plaits and a stately bearing that minded me at once of my dear lost Merlynn. He was plainly angry; but behind his wrath, and his concern for his grandson, he seemed almost amused: the amusement of a skilled fidchell player at the utterly outrageous and unconscionable, unexpected move of a novice opponent. But he was no dotard and no fool, and he fixed Arthur with a very grim glance indeed.

  "I could declare war for this offense, Arthur Pendreic," he said, before greetings had even been thought of; an uncanny and unnerving, echo of my own words to Arthur not an hour since.

  Arthur's mouth quirked at one corner as he read my thought, but he addressed himself gravely enough to the Fomori monarch.

  "And I upon you, Nanteos, for your hiring-out to the Marbh-draoi," he answered. "Consider this a small return on your services."

  There came a subtle shift in Nanteos's features. "Edeyrn is dead, then? We had heard somewhat… And it is you who now rule; we have heard of you, too—a little—even in Tory."

  Arthur permitted himself a smile, and Nanteos's face changed yet again. "I do not doubt it; not even a little. But I rule conjointly with my royal cousin, Gweniver Ard-rian; so do not think that if you destroy us—if you find us—you will be ridding yourself of yet another Keltic sovereign; a lawful one this time, I might add."

  Nanteos snorted. "That might be argued! What of my grandson, Pendreic? If you have harmed him—'

  "No harm has come to him, nor will. Melwas son of Tisaran is safe and sleeping."

  Across the star-miles, Nanteos seemed to quiver and grow still again. "And what will it take to keep him so?"

  "Only a little small thing; you may think of it as honor-price, an eraic for your work against the Counterinsurgency, which is now the lawfully constituted Ard-tiarnas of Keltia." The smile vanished, and the steel flashed. "You will pact with me, and with Gweniver Ard-rian, and with our lawful heirs and successors, never to come in arms against Keltia again. And this you will swear to, before the High Justiciar at Ganaster, so that the pact be known."

  I looked at Arthur in wonder, as indeed did all others who were just then on the bridge with us. The Justiciary on the planet Ganaster was an old, old instituti
on in the settled galaxy: It had often served in the past as arbiter and mediator in planetary disputes short of war, and sometimes even in cases of war. Of late, or so we had heard even in our isolation under the Marbh-draoi, Ganaster's power had waned from its onetime high prestige, its authority diminished by repeated floutings. But a pact signed, sealed and settled by Ganaster was still the galaxy's best surety,—for Arthur to ask it now of Fomor showed—well, I was not yet sure what it showed. But it seemed that Arthur was.

  Nanteos seemed as surprised as were we. "That pact would bind Keltia too, I take it?" At Arthur's curt nod: "Well, then. But what surety do you have, that Fomor will hold to this pacting?"

  Arthur looked back at him and moved not a muscle. "Hostage-keeping has been a tool of Keltic statecraft for ages past."

  Nanteos had gone very pale, and abruptly cut off the voiceband of the transmission, to consult with some who had remained out of view all this time. When he cut back in again, his voice carried more uncertainty than it had yet done in this parley.

  "He is but a boy. You would return him safely to us?"

  Arthur laid his hand over his heart. "Once the pact is made on Ganaster, he will be sent back with honor. Until then, he remains our guest."

  The white head slowly nodded. "And that is a sacred status among our folk as well as your own, Keltia… Who shall negotiate for you, cousin?"

  I sensed the great wash of ease and relief that flooded out from Arthur just then, but he gave no sign of it as he spoke.

  "In another time, I had sent my fostern, my sister's lord, the Prince Taliesin Glyndour ac Pendreic." I startled to hear this, glad that I was out of scanner range to Arthur's side, then realized the focus had shifted, and I was in plain view to the Fomori king. I bowed with as good a grace as I could manage, sending evil thoughts to Arthur behind deep shields.