Chapter Seven
All day the stormclouds had been building, forming and shifting and re-forming into great slow billows of air, climbing and massing behind the Loom, until at last their outliers began to move like black towers on the march, a citadel of air that rivaled Caerdroia, a rampart of slate and lead shot through with blue lacings of lightning. Then, in the late afternoon, the clouds began to spill over the mountain barrier that had contained them and surged down the strath toward Caerdroia.
All day in the City, the southeasterly winds had blown, with their heavy ion charges, making everyone fractious and irritable. Those who lived at Caerdroia called that malign wind the Fomor-wind, or the Red Wind of the Hills. It drove everyone a little mad, beasts as well as people. Even An-Lasca, the Whip-wind out of the northwest that whirled down the winter, was better loved, for at least one felt full of energy when it cracked.
After sunset, the evil southeasterlies had given place to a clean, strong, steady east wind that raced down the strath to die in the sea. Then lightning, almost continuous, and an odd sharp thunder that cracked like breaking twigs directly overhead and was immediately silenced, short, sharp, ominous in its abruptness.
Rohan watched from his windows as the storm flared slowly around him. The air was alive with electricity; he could feel it crawl along his skin like ghostly fingers. No lightning, though, could strike even so tempting a target as the towers of Caerdroia; the City was shielded by an antistatic field against just such storms, which were frequent in high summer, though this one was most unseasonal. With each bolt, the field interface grew more intensely ionized, the smarting smell of ozone heavy in the air.
And now at last came the rain, gray sheeted veils of it. Down in the streets it was difficult to breathe; the air was almost solid with water, and what few folk had been still outdoors vanished into shelter as Rohan watched.
Behind him in the room, Rioghnach extended her quaich for more ale. "I wonder how it is with Melangell."
Morwen's husband, Fergus, filled the quaich with usqueba instead, and she saluted him with the cup in appreciative thanks.
"Did not Aeron send that spy Cairbre with her?" he asked.
Rohan drew the heavy curtains across the windows to shut out the sight of the storm, which he knew Morwen disliked.
"For all that he is the best spy we have, Fergus," he said reprovingly, "he is still a quite genuine and gifted master-bard. I shouldn't like us to use that device too often," he added. "The law that makes sacred the lives of bards is an old and a precious one. If a bard is caught doing spycraft, even on Aeron's command, it will go hard with all bards else."
"Oh, Aeron's wary enough, and if Cairbre is as good as all that, why then, he'll not be caught, will he." Fergus sent the usqueba round again, and leaned back comfortably against his wife's knees. He was a great splendid dark bear of a man, Aeron's second cousin on her father's mother's side, a sailor by avocation and Lord of the Isles by hereditary right, with a nature as open and all-encompassing as the oceans he so loved. He and Morwen saw each other less often than either of them liked, she being in attendance on Aeron at Caerdroia, and he remaining on Caledon to manage their own vast lordships and their two-year-old daughter, Arwenna.
"Well, I for one think Aeron's been injudicious and over-hasty, but all too often has that been her way, and very like will always be so. Little enough we can do about that." That was Rioghnach's husband, Niall, Duke of Tir-connell, a tall pleasant easygoing individual, as blond as his lady was dark--the only dark one of all the brood of Fionnbarr and Emer.
"Have you told her so?" said Rioghnach demurely.
Niall laughed. "Nay, not I, anwyl! There are times when the Duke of Tir-connell advises the Ard-rian of Keltia, times when Niall O Kerevan speaks his mind to Aeron Aoibhell, and times when I keep my feelings from my sister-in-law. I try not to confuse the three." On a wave of easy laughter, he stood up, reaching a hand to his wife. "Come, Riona, it's late." They bade the others good night and left arm in arm.
"Niall had the right of it," said Rohan unexpectedly. "She was injudicious and over-hasty, though I'd no sooner be the one to tell her than he."
Morwen gave a low wicked chuckle. "Nay, why should either of you, when Straloch has already done the chore?"
"And we all saw how grateful Aeron was to him for doing it... Would she truly turn him off the Council, do you think? My grandmother Gwyneira believes she will, and before very much longer too."
Fergus nodded. "Gavin has been entirely too vocal of late. Aeron welcomes discussion, but only so far; and he has also been entirely too indiscreet in his opinions with regard to all this of Aeron and Gwydion."
Rohan slouched down in his chair and drained a full mether of ale. "He is not the only one troubled by that pairing," he muttered.
Both his remaining listeners sat up at that. Though as of yet the thing was only gossiped of among the people, Aeron's union with the Prince of Gwynedd had been held by her friends and kindred to be in every way a very excellent thing.
"What are you saying, Rohan?" asked Morwen finally. "I know well how you feel about Gwydion--"
"He is as dear to me as any of my brothers, and I know he loves Aeron deeply, and she him. It is that, I think, is the problem. I had hoped she would have by now decided to wed him, make him King. She has gone so far as to admit to me that she wearies of ruling alone; yet she seems unable to take matters any further. It is as if she fears to admit something to herself, and it hurts me to see Gwydion hurt because she cannot, or will not, trust him."
"That is not it at all," said Fergus quietly. "She weds him not yet because she fears to lose him. She lost Rhodri, and she hesitates to open herself to the possibility of another such loss." Morwen made a sudden uncontrollable move, and Fergus reached back to take her hand in a comforting clasp; Roderick had been her much-loved brother. "When Aeron has mastered that fear, then will Gwydion be King, and not before."
There was silence in the room save for the crackling of the fire and Rohan's hounds twitching and moaning in their sleep; outside, the storm had vanished out over the sea, leaving a watery midnight glow and a damp wind as its only traces.
"What do you think she will do?" asked Morwen at last.
Rohan looked up at her, and their gazes held for a long moment. From behind his vast sealike calm, Fergus watched them both.
"I cannot say," said Rohan. "I do not know."
*
Rohan would not have been much comforted had he known that, even as he and Morwen and Fergus sat silent beneath the weight of their speculations, Aeron herself had been doing much the same. Unlike them, however, she had decided to do something about it.
After the Council meeting, her inner peace had been so roiled that even that tender moment with Gwydion had not helped to settle it. Indeed, that one moment had shaken her even more than all the conflict that had gone before it, and all through the rest of the day and evening she had been cross and ill-balanced. She did not know where to turn for answers, but she did know where to go for peace; and at sunset, therefore, she had gone to her chamber of magic, the twelve-windowed room at the top of her tower, and this was where now she lay in the marana, the thought-trance of Keltic sorcerers.
To all appearances she was as one dead. She lay motionless upon a low stone bench between four torches; her body was naked beneath her black robe, and her hair streamed down over the bench onto the slate floor.
She had made the usual salutes and obeisances upon entering the chamber, her bare feet silent on the stone and her hands carefully cupped around a hollow crystal filled with water. The feeling of peace and power that always came to her in that room surged up to meet her. Like a dancer coming up to the beat of the measure, a seal breasting a wave, or a hawk rising on a tide of the air, Aeron's soul went up with the torches, and she knew how right she had been to come here.
For Aeron was a priestess of the Ban-draoi, the ancient order of sorceresses that had been founded at the very beginning of Ke
ltia itself by Nia, mother of Brendan. Of equal power and lineage with the Druids, the Ban-draoi were servants of the Great Goddess, that Mighty Mother who in Keltia alone had a thousand names, and when a Ban-draoi prayed, she addressed herself directly to that Lady; as Aeron did now.
She had lain down upon the bench, composed herself in the way so familiar after so many years of practice, and felt the trance take hold upon her. All her sight was deep blue shot with sparks; then that opened out and she was through, her body lying on the stone bench still aware of its surroundings, but her inner eye in the soul's body rising above Caerdroia and towering high above the sea, the words of the sacred rann to the Goddess echoing around her, as if spoken in a great voice not her own for all the worlds to hear. Breastplate of the Gael, Queen of the Danaans, Tear of the Sun...
In that astral immensity, only she was there, she alone was real; until into her vast awareness an unmistakable Presence made itself known. Few words, and insufficient, for such a feeling: The peace that came upon her was as a smile, a touch, a kiss; her doubts and fears were taken from her, and she knew herself safe, wrapped in the mantle of the Mother. Water of Vision, Wind out of Betelgeuse, Light of the Perfection of Gwynfyd...
For the Goddess she served had many faces: the gentle Maiden Blodeuwedd or the war-red Morrigu, Beira the Queen of Winter or Briginda the Lady of Spring, Rhiannon of the Horses or the Divine Sow that eats Her own farrow. She was the Moon Mother and the Sun Goddess, the Lady of Heaven crowned with stars, whose blue cloak was the deepness of space itself, in whose long hair were caught comets and the burning glow of suns, whose spear stretched across the universe, whose shield blazed with the cold fires of a billion galaxies, whose heart was the heart of everything that lives.
*
When Aeron returned into herself, it was full morning, and the torches had long since burned themselves out. She lay without moving a moment longer, for her heart was very full, and gladness clung around her like a cloak she was loath to shed.
When at last she quitted the chamber of magic and began to descend the stairs down to her solar, she saw through the windows in the tower wall the little turret walk outside her rooms. Gwydion stood there on the battlements; his head was lifted like a wolf that scents the wind, and the wind off the sea stirred his dark hair. He wore no cloak; at his side hung a sword, his hand upon its hilt. He was looking out over the water, and upon his face was a reflection of the peace and glory that shone from Aeron's own countenance.
She paused on the stairs and thought one thought, one name, that rang clear through the silence. Though he could have heard no sound, for her feet were bare upon the stone steps and she spoke no word aloud, his head came up as at a shouted hail, and he looked up to where she stood. A smile lighted his face, and he seemed to know exactly how she had spent her night.
"It was needed, then."
She nodded once, solemnly, and then came the rest of the way down the steps to him.
"And now you are ready."
Again she nodded.
"Then let us go in. Your presence is required, and there is much to do today. Tomorrow the Terrans arrive; or had you forgotten?"
"Not I," she answered, smiling, and leaned into his side, her arm around his waist. "And I doubt not they neither."
*
Now indeed did all ways lead to Caerdroia, as the royal fiants went out, summoning peers and senators, assemblators and planetary governors, generals and admirals and captains of the Fianna, poets and bards and those who commanded a more awesome magic--Ban-draoi, Druids, and those who were Kin to the Dragon. All were summoned now to the greatest aonach that had ever been seen in Turusachan's Hall of Heroes.
A very great number who had not been summoned at all came as well. Although all ceremonies would be broadcast on the farviewers to all the Keltic worlds, there were many who preferred to be there in person, sharing perhaps less perfectly in the seeing for the chance to be part of what would be seen. All these came to Caerdroia like arrows to the gold, crowding the houses of their kin and friends and clansfolk, taxing the sacred law of the coire ainsec, the undry cauldron of guestship, and straining the bruideans, those amazing waystations of Keltic hospitality, to the bursting point.
Finally Bronmai of Tallon, Rechtair of the planet of Tara, stepped in at Aeron's reluctant order and closed all ports, making the Throneworld inaccessible to incomers for the first time in centuries.
Except, of course, to the Terrans. When the news of the Earth ship had been announced to Keltia, by Morwen in Aeron's name, the delight of the Kelts had been unbounded--and quite astonishing to most of the Kelts' rulers. Some politicians had even gone so far as to wonder publicly if, judging by the way the news of the probe had been received, Keltia's long isolation had indeed been to Keltia's best advantage.
"It seems a popular decision," remarked Aeron dryly, "this of, ah, ours to welcome the Terrans. I knew not I had so many supporters on the Council and in the houses of government; how came I so to miscount at our last meeting?"
She was in her solar with a small group of her intimates. The time was early evening, and the nightmeal was at hand. They had been watching one of the interminable news programs on the farviewer, listening to two assemblators, a senator, an earl and an institutional bard speculate with almost no accuracy--and little information upon which to base any--as to the nature of an alliance with Earth, and what Aeron's next move was likely to be.
"I think they think you mean to lower the Curtain Wall to any galactic trampship that happens by," said Aeron's brother Kieran, disgusted. He and his pregnant wife, Eiluned, had arrived at Turusachan only an hour before, from their own seat at remote Inver on the planet Caledon.
"Well, more fools they," said Aeron. "That Wall stays up. It was raised for good reason by one who knew well what she was about, and I have seen nothing yet to convince me that the reason for which she raised it has died or changed, or is like to. In fact, quite the contrary."
"Policy is well and good, Aeron, but have you asked us here to starve us?" That was Eiluned, and her sister-in-law laughed.
"Nay, come, let's go down."
*
The living and working quarters of Turusachan were scattered over the dozens of towers and brughs and courts that constituted the palace, but it was a long-standing and pleasant custom that the evening meal brought the royal household together at the end of the day; as in the most ancient days at Ireland's Tara, it was likewise the monarch's custom to preside over that meal, in Mi-Cuarta, the great royal banqueting hall.
Mi-Cuarta was a huge vaulted chamber, with arches and pillars and walls of topaz-colored marble flecked with gold. Across the width of the hall, over against the far wall from the main doors, was a high table of old iron-oak, in shape of an E without the center-stroke. Midmost at this table, facing the hall, were two high-backed chairs taller than the rest, their cushions of royal green embroidered with gold. At right angles to this center table, forming the top and bottom strokes of the E, were two other tables with seats on both sides; the rest of the hall was filled with long refectory boards and benches, arranged around a big open central space where often the feasting ended in dancing to pipes and harps and fidils.
Mi-Cuarta filled rapidly with those, several hundred in number, of all ranks and positions, whose privilege it was to dine in hall with the Ard-rian; her officers of state, the Fians who guarded Turusachan, members of the royal family, servitors, clerks, guests, friends, any wandering bards who might have been at the palace and claimed hospitality according to the ancient law. All could rightly seek a place at the royal table, and usually did; and most especially tonight.
When the benches of the cross-tables were nearly filled, and the high table's seats also, Aeron came in, unattended as she preferred, and her guests rose as one. She took the left-hand high seat, and indicated to the rechtair that the meal should begin.
It was into the brief quiet before the customary health to the monarch, and Rohan as senior noble present
had risen to offer that health, that the doors swung open again.
"Well, Ard-rian," said Arianeira in a clear pleasant carrying voice, "I see that your hall is kept ever faithful to the old rules, and open to the unexpected guest." Kynon stood a little behind her.
"Greetings to you, Arianeira of Gwynedd," said Aeron, after a rather long pause. "And to those who come with you to my halls," she added, with a glance at Kynon and an emphasis on the possessive pronoun that none there missed. "But you, at least, are hardly unexpected. If you would join us?" She gestured, and Arianeira came forward to seat herself at the high table, taking the empty place Aeron had indicated, on the right of Declan, Kieran's twin and the youngest of the Aoibhell princes. Kynon found himself a place on a lower bench, and the room, which had hushed dramatically at Arianeira's sudden appearance, now filled again with talk. Rohan offered the Queen's health, all drank, and he sat down again in his chair on Aeron's left; the high seat at her right hand remained empty, as it had for three years now--the seat of the monarch's consort, it had last been occupied by Emer ni Kerrigan.
Rohan leaned over and spoke into his sister's ear. "Trust Ari to make an entrance."
Aeron laughed. "I wonder if Gwydion knows that she is come," she said, looking around. "He does not dine with us? It was his wish that I ask Arianeira here for all this."
"Was it now." He looked interested. "Who is that who entered with her? Down on the lower bench, the Kymro in the red tunic--"
"I have never seen him before. A friend of Ari's, most like, or a retainer, part of her tail from Caer Ys. Ask the rechtair for his name, if you are so curious."
Rohan, still watching Arianeira's dark-visaged escort, shook his head, and his face cleared then of the faint frown that had creased it.
"No matter... I just had a strange feeling about him. It is gone now."
The Copper Crown Page 11