The Oak above the Kings

by Patricia Kennealy-Morrison

  I reached over and pressed a button or two; the picture on the screen suddenly changed, to another castle, this one inland, the country in which it was set rolling downland, few trees and no other habitation in sight. This was Kerriwick, an ancient seat of the Tregarons, twelve miles from Tyntagel and perhaps five lai from the sea: Ysild's home of force, for the moment.

  Now you must not think because I use such words in my telling as 'taking' and 'raped away' that I mean to suggest Marc'h committed any violence against Ysild's person. Rape of the body is a thing of the past in Keltia: There have long been deep-encoded, soul-stamped prohibitions against that vilest of crimes, which shames only its instigator, never its subject. Of old on Earth, the punishment had been death, no questions, no quarter,—though before so irreversible a judgment was brought to bear, of course, the thing was most carefully sifted by truthsensers of the highest degree, kenning both accuser and accused. Too, rape was still on the brehons books as one of the Three Rank Offenses that required submission of the accused party (and again, the accuser as well) to the proof of the Cremave, that fearful instrument of perfect, and immediate, justice.

  But in our days since coming to Keltia we had evolved past such gross evil; and, on the rare chance that we had not, women were taught by the Ban-draoi, or by their own kins-women, a method of dealing with potential rapists that was both painful and effective, and which carried its own safeguards against possible vindictive misuse. Nay, I knew Ysild was safe enough in that respect. Still, she had been spirited away by force and was being held against her own most clearly demonstrated will; and the body is not the only thing that can be violated.

  "Talyn?"

  I came out of my musings to see Morgan and Daronwy, and Ronwyn's mate Roric, who had come with her to Keltia and who had just now joined her here. All three were watching me indulgently and curiously.

  "Marguessan," I said, with all the certainty of a Druid oracle. "As I saw on Aojun. Marguessan, and Irian, and—and one other."

  "Gwenwynbar," said Morgan quietly, and I gaped, for I had not told her of Arthur's onetime wife figuring in my vision. She saw my surprise, and laughed. "Did you think I did not know?" She reached inside her leinna, drew out a thing I had seen but once before, and then in Arthur's hand: a clach, a small sphere of purest rock crystal, bound by silver hoops incised with runes half worn away. I smiled, and reached out to take it as she undid the chain upon which it hung.

  "I remember this… Arthur had it at Caer Dathyl, what time we went to dine with Edeyrn and Owein Rheged—you were there, Ronwyn."

  "Indeed." She leaned forward, as interested as I in the magical jewel. "It was this saved all our lives, if I recall aright."

  "Birogue and I worked on it together, in Collimare." All at once Morgan looked as if she were a six-years' child struggling not to weep. "I wish to the Goddess that I had not seen in it that which I have seen—but it was this clach first gave me to know that my own sister stood behind Marc'h's astonishing new mode of treason and secession."

  "Marguessan has long been suspect," remarked Daronwy. "I mind me that Uthyr Ard-righ warned us Companions, before Cadarachta; and then of course after—" She broke off, unwilling to call more vividly to mind that scene in the High King's tent; not to herself, all the more not to Uthyr's daughter and her mate.

  "That goes back long before," said Morgan quietly. "My sister has ever thought she was our father's right heir, and her son after her; could not, would not accept the succession as it stands by law and might. But I had not wished to believe her envy and hatefulness of Arthur and Gweniver would ever lead her to such a pass as this."

  "You are certain, then, she is behind Marc'h's actions?" I asked, though I had my own reasons, old reasons, for not doubting Marguessan's bent to evil.

  "You have Seen it yourself, beloved…"

  "Will they be at Tyntagel, do you think?" asked Roric. "Or at Kerriwick, even?"

  Betwyr came in hard upon his words, slung himself into the one remaining empty chair.

  "Marc'h will be at Kerriwick, certainly," he said with conviction. "It is a strong fort, and the country roundabouts better far than that near Tyntagel."

  "Aye, well, how will we come to take Tyntagel?" asked Ronwyn. "There is but the one road to the cliff-face, and then that scareful outside stair cut in the stone, and only two may go abreast. It is like Sword-bridge, Bridge of Dread, in the lands of Dobhar and lar-Dobhar…"

  Silence fell upon the chamber: All of us here were sorcerers, we knew that place whereof Daronwy spoke, felt that bridge's bright blade-edge bite through our feet… I shook myself.

  "There is a plan," I heard myself saying, and across the table, Morgan's glance met mine: She knew well whose was the plan I spoke of.

  "He generally has one," was all she said, and there we left it.

  Prydwen sailed on toward Kernow—it was one of the more distant systems from Tara, but even at our less than urgent pace we would come to it in well under a sevennight; Arthur did not wish, for reasons of his own, to force the approach with haste—and as I watched the planet grow in the ship's ports from an indeterminate gray blur to a sharp-cut blue and white orb, I reflected on the plan that we had made, and I wondered anew.

  On the sixth day we joined the flag vessel of the station force that had been maintaining the blockade for the past few months. Called the Dawnsio, she was one of the larger craft inherited from Edeyrn's Raven-ruled fleet, and was commanded by none other than our old friend Elen Llydaw—she who would soon be known to all Kelts as Elen Llydawc, Elen of the Hosts, for her generalship both against the Marbh-draoi and the gallain who would come after. So we had a brief happy reunion before Arthur put his plan in train.

  Thus it came to be that I found myself on foot, cold and frozen, in thunder snow and a howling wind, staring up through the whitened dark at the walls of Kerriwick castle. Daronwy and I had come ahead to spy out the land; even though we had scanned it from space and scoped it on the way in, Arthur still held to his old habit, and had sent us on to see for ourselves. Again that giddy feeling had seized us both, that feeling Ronwyn had spoken of on the way here: a sense of having been down this road many times before, and a gladness for having done so, for doing so now. And, of course, it was no new thing for us: Back on Gwynedd, we had often journeyed round the provinces as Counterinsurgency spies, Companions under Arthur's command, and had enjoyed ourselves no end while we did so.

  But none of us here this night loved freezing in the gale off the waters of Galva Sound, a few lai to the north of Kerriwick; and our moods were not improved by the knowledge that it would be even worse at Tyntagel, and that naught could or would be done to work the weather into something more clement. The worse it was, the better for Arthur's purposes: Indeed, I suspected Morgan and some others of sorcerously coaxing the storm from gray rain to this white beast, this strong cold power that rivalled the huracan.

  I brushed vainly at the sharp stinging needles of sleet that the wind was driving into my skin, squinted up at the wet slate walls. Kerriwick had originally been built as a hunting lodge; only later had one of the early ruling families felt the need of fortification, making up the perceived lack with thoroughness that struck me now, nine hundred years later as cause for hatred. How were we going to deal with that even by so clever a plan as ours?

  Daronwy touched my arm, and I turned to follow her; we slid on our bellies like otters, down through the snow-slicked hillgrass into the woods at the bottom of the combe. I ran my mind over what I had just seen, again and again, as a tongue will push and prod a broken tooth. But we spoke no word till we were away.

  "It is bigger than I thought," said Daronwy judicially. "And that glacis off to the left will hinder Arthur's maneuvering if he allows himself to be led in so close—" She went on cogently and at length about the shortcomings of the strategy—"Where is Tari when most we need her!"—but I was only half listening, my thought running on a track of its own.

  Arthur's strategy was, for him, most u
nusual: We were not going to win, or even to give true fight, if we could avoid it. Oh, Marc'h would be looking for some show of force, he had seen our shuttles, had noted Prydwen's arrival on blockade station. He would be waiting; but what he would not be doing was allowing himself to be caught inside Kerriwick. A siege was not to his interest, or so he would think; well, he would be wrong, and we knew that at the first sign of Arthur's imminence Marc'h would ride out to meet him.

  And we would join battle: But Marc'h was not to know that it would be a sham battle only, a feint, a lure to get him away from Kerriwick. While he was gone, Morgan was to enter the castle and bring away Ysild. We did not know how she was to accomplish this, and we did not ask. She said that she could do so, and we accepted her word on it.

  After that—well, then came the hard part.

  "What does methryn think of all this coil?" I asked Arthur, once I was safe and warm and dry again in the shuttle we were using, instead of battle tents, as commandery. "Have you told her what is toward?"

  It was a question I had not dared ask him before. True it was that Ygrawn Tregaron, Rian-dhuair of Keltia, and her elder brother had long not been on loving terms of kinship—plain hunt, she thought him a wastrel, he thought her a queenly shrew—but even so…

  "I have," said Arthur evenly. "And she agrees with me as to what must be done."

  "I may assume, too, that Gweniver Ard-rian—not to mention the First Lord of War—is in agreement with you on this."

  "Assume as you like—but aye, they are that." The dark eyes had begun to grow a touch warmer, and I knew of old what that foreboded. But I pressed on regardless.

  "And you are prepared to slay your own uncle?" I asked, with a coolness I was far from feeling.

  Arthur very deliberately paced across the shuttle's tiny bridge and seated himself in the command chair before he spoke.

  "I do not wish to slay him, nay, Talyn; but if that is what it comes to—He is guilty of crimes against the Ard-tiarnas, crimes that of old have carried death as punishment. Even does he survive this night, I may yet have his blood on my hands. But, Pen-bardd"—the irony was savage here, his voice almost a snarl—"is not that what it means to be a king?"

  "I would not know,—if ever I was one in a life gone by I remember it not." I reached across to put my hand on his arm. "Besides, is not that why the brehons have given us honor-price? All to avoid such choices?"

  "Maybe, but there are some things even honor-price cannot buy back." He ran his hands over his face, left them cupped to hide his features for longer than perhaps was warranted, then lowered his hands and looked straight at me, through me. "Do you not think it the least bit strange, Tal-bach, that Gweniver should have let this go on so long as she did, and yet told me of it so hard on our returning? Almost as if, do you see, she wished me gone again from Tara before I had fairly come home…"

  I had thought just that, of course, but had foreborne to speak of it to any save my wife. As I did now; but something else came unbidden to my tongue.

  "Are you prepared, Artos, to find Marguessan here? Or Irian? Or—" But I could not say it, and he said it for me.

  "Or Gwenwynbar… Aye, I have thought much on it, you know. Ever since she left my bed for Owein's, ever since you saw her at Ratherne, before the fight at Nandruidion—in the joy I had with Janjan, even, never did I forget to wonder what Gwenar might be working. And there is the boy."

  Ah, the boy. So Malgan ap—Owein?—still lodged as a notable thorn in Arthur's heart. I saw the trouble in his eyes, and spoke, I thought, to help him. But help is not what came out of my mouth…

  "Your heir will be of Gweniver, not of Gwenwynbar: a prince for Keltia, and a princess his sister,—and another who shall be queen in a far country, and who will not forget her kin."

  I was as astounded as Arthur, for that had not been what I had planned to say. But my fostern was looking at me with the half-smile of surmise.

  "You sound more like Merlynn every day, do you know that… What has my sister been teaching you?" Then, before I could reply, Arthur swung up out of his chair with all the old grace of eager action. "And speaking of my sister—give order to break camp, let Daronwy and Roric see to it. Morgan will be at the gates of Kerriwick by now, and if we are not timely to her arrival, she will have our guts for greave-straps. And I for one would not grudge her them."

  * * *

  * * *

  Chapter Twenty-six

  I SHALL NEVER FORGET THAT CHARGE on Kerriwick in the driving blizzard, that wild night so soon to become wilder still—a night out of legend, that itself became legend before day dawned.

  As all our strategists, even the notoriously exacting Tarian, had agreed, our hope here lay not in force of arms but in surprise and cunning. If mere military victory had been all our aim, we could have reduced the entire planet to glowing cinders, let alone two castles only, and stayed warm and dry and safe aboard ship while we did so. But Arthur had decided on this as our best and most prudent way, the one most likely to leave fewest scars after; and we took his assessment on faith, now, as we had taken it all those years of war. And he, and we, were mostly right…

  So we had a small force of foot, perhaps a thousand, just enough to lure Marc'h into the path we had planned for him; and also a small cavalry wing, its riders not imported with the rest of the troops but scouted up from distant Kernish districts loyal to the Crown, not to the Duke. They were mounted on fell-ponies, clever shaggy beasts, whose footing on their native hills was nothing short of a wonder.

  In the end, it proved absurdly easy; the first part, at least. At our approach to Kerriwick, Marc'h, whom none had ever either accused or acclaimed as a master of war, emptied the castle and trailed after us, as biddable as if he had been a pig on a string. I looked up toward the castle gates a mile or more distant, hoping for a sign of my wife, but all was still and no figure showed. Which was, I hoped, a good thing.

  Our purpose down below was, as I have said, not to give real battle, but only to keep Marc'h busy while Morgan brought out Ysild; and, later, if that went well, while we went to Tyntagel for Tryffin. Though I tried to hide it, I was full of fear: Morgan had gone alone into Kerriwick; not only that, she had laid heavy geis on any who tried to follow her, thinking to 'help'; and she had been cold and inflexible as findruinna upon that point.

  Not that any was so inclined, to disobey Morguenna Pendreic when she stood in her power as sorceress. Even I, her mate, had flinched a little when she emerged from the tent of the Goddess, where she had been preparing herself and her magic, when I saw the light in her eyes, and the look upon her face, even though the plan she now worked had been of my own devising… But we bent to our tasks, and she to hers; and when after three hours of us playing at pig-i'-the-wood with Marc'h's troops, in and out amid the mist-thick downs and twisting combes, Morgan was suddenly there among us as if she had flown there, and another beside with her, we all froze where we stood, and stared, and were more afraid than ever.

  She dispelled that at once by breaking into a grin that warmed us all, and drew forward to Arthur and me the pirn around whom all this coil did wind.

  I must say, she did not look like the damsels of legend who had been carried off for love or lust or simple politics. Then again, little about Ysild Formartine was usual; and just now, the prevailing mood with her seemed to be fury. Not at us, this rage of hers: Ysild made Arthur the reverence due the High King, gave me a courteous nod of recognition, glanced round at each of us with eyes like sapphire lasers and said, "Where is Marc'h? I wish to kill him."

  Even Arthur was a little shaken. "All in good time, lady. I take it you had no trouble?" This to Morgan, who grinned again.

  "We were not the ones who had the trouble, Arthur, this I can say in all modesty! As for the rest of them up at the castle, well, you would have to ask of them yourself."

  Ysild laughed. "The Princess Morguenna is more modest than you know: Never have I seen aught like it, magic wielded so featly against so many."
>
  "But what did you do, Guenna?" burst out Daronwy, unable further to endure the curiosity that was consuming us all where we stood.

  "Played them a sleep-strain, a suantrai, such as my lord himself might have done—" Morgan cast a wicked glance at me, her eyes brimming with mirth and the pleasure of a thing achieved.

  "They are all asleep!" asked Arthur.

  His sister nodded. "And will stay so until, oh, about sunset tomorrow, if all goes aright. If not, they will snore on another day; no more. And will take no harm of it, save maybe for a raxed neck or arm here and there; some of them dozed off in less than ideal or easeful attitudes. I found Ysild, who had helped me cast the spell, and we walked out the main gate, got on our horses and came here."

  The utter everyday plainness of her voice and mien did little to dispel the awe everyone was feeling—myself included. Oh, it was one thing to know Morgan's gift, even to have seen some of it at work; but this was of an order entirely different, and we knew it.

  "The fith-fath may have helped too," added Ysild casually, and she and Morgan laughed together like two schoolgirls.

  "What fith-fath would that be?" I asked warily.

  "Oh, the one where I made myself into Marc'h's image," said Morgan, with a becoming modesty. "You and I must speak, Arthur, before we go on to Tyntagel, for you will have to do the same to get us in there, and I must use my own Power to keep them all snoring at Kerriwick."

  "That was the plan?" asked Roric. "To use magic? But will not the defenders at Tyntagel be aware of it? And what of Marc'h himself?"

  "My uncle is no sorcerer," said Arthur. "Yet I have sensed—I know not, something, someone, at Tyntagel whose strength is set against our own. If you insist, we can discuss it as we go, though it will not alter our plan. But the night is wearing on, and I wish to be clear of Kernow, Tryffin safe with us and Marc'h safe in keeping, before the sun is up."