"That you had seen him before, perhaps?" asked Eiluned from a few places down.
But again Rohan shook his head. "Nay; that I should see him again."
*
Down the hall, Kynon was feeling the weight of Rohan's puzzled attention as if it had been a lightsword laid across his back.
"Prince Rohan seems to take an interest in you, stranger," observed the lady-in-waiting who sat at his right. "Are you in service with the Princess Arianeira?"
Kynon muttered something that apparently satisfied her curiosity, for she turned back to her plate. He cast a savage glance at Arianeira, who was sitting up at the high table looking cool and confident, either unaware of, or, much more likely, uncaring of, his panic. She would have much to make amends to him for, and he had his own ideas of what form her atonement should take... He drained his cup and took hold of himself. There was no way Rohan could suspect him of anything, despite that close scrutiny; the Prince was no sorcerer, and if Aeron herself suspected nothing, as certainly seemed to be the case, then her brother could have no idea at all, and his attention to Kynon was merely curiosity. Besides, had not Arianeira said that her magic, as well as Jaun Akhera's, provided concealment? He would simply have to trust to that, and, in the meantime, enjoy himself.
Arianeira was very well aware of Kynon's trouble, but she had no intention of relieving it, and sat hugging her secret to herself. On her face was a look of icy remove; for if once she smiled, she would laugh, and if once she began to laugh, she would never stop. Ah, Aeron, she thought behind her strongest shields, even your magic has its blind spots; and that is well for me.
Any road, this very public appearance had been all Arianeira's own idea; Kynon had been dead set against it. But in her mind, it was by way of being a challenge, to Aeron and Gwydion both, and the Princess of Gwynedd was more than a little vexed at her brother's absence from the banqueting hall. And also it was by way of being a test: to learn if the plot she and Kynon and Jaun Akhera had wrought was indeed effectively hidden. And last of all it was by way of being a fair chance for Aeron: If the Ard-rian sensed her foster-sister's treachery, she could move to scotch it. If she did not... well, if she did not, she had had her chance and failed at the test and lost the challenge. What would happen then was plainly fated, and as a Ban-draoi, Arianeira put much faith in fate.
*
At length the meal was over, and in spite of the many friends who implored her to stay for the usual merrymaking, Aeron waved a hand in salute and dismissal, and quitted the banqueting hall. Behind her, the music struck up for the dancing.
Most of those who had been at the high table accompanied her out of Mi-Cuarta, but her wish for solitude was plain, and they made their good-nights quickly.
Aeron climbed the stairs alone to her own apartments, grateful for the tact of Rohan and the rest. It had been a long, tiring day, and quite suddenly she had had enough of people, and tomorrow was sure to be filled with strains and tensions no one had anticipated.
Coming into her solar, she fell fully dressed onto the bed and lay there for a while unmoving. "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof," she quoted absently, and all at once she felt cheered. That was something her father had always used to say, a favorite phrase of his from the Christian holy books that had been preserved as literary curiosities in the Bardic Library. Whatever its religious connotations of old, though, it seemed to her to be an entirely appropriate observation on the here and now.
Presently she rose, went into her pool-room, stripped and plunged headfirst into the huge bath. One of the more prosaic glories of Caerdroia was its baths. A network of hot springs lay deep beneath Eryri, fed by the last dying fires of the volcanism that once had covered the entire Northwest Continent in flaming rock. In part, the City had been built to take advantage of this splendid natural resource--cleanliness being an important component of the Keltic ethic of hospitality--and every home in Caerdroia, from Turusachan to the humblest house in the Stonerows, had its hot water and sweat-rooms and heating hypocausts supplied from that tremendous source.
But Aeron's thoughts were far from volcanic geology as she submerged herself in the steaming water. Her hair floated out around her like copper lace, and the warmth relaxed tense muscles and soothed her racing mind into a restful blank. After a while she came up out of the pool, brushed out her hair under the sonic dryer, and wrapped herself in a velvet robe, feeling like her customary self for the first time since the whole coil of the Terrans had begun. She had not done so ill; last night her spiritual tensions banished, tonight her mental and physical tensions: By tomorrow she should be all of a piece to face the demands of the day.
After the pool-room's billows of steam, her solar was shockingly cold, but by now she was too sleepy for it to matter. She slid out of her robe and under the fur coverlets, feeling the silkwool sheets chill against her skin, and was asleep almost at once.
She woke with a start and a cry some nameless timeless time later. For a terrifying moment, confused and disoriented, she was back in her nightmare of two nights ago; then she saw the tall figure standing silhouetted before the dying fire.
"You are late abroad, Prince of Don," she murmured, heart still racing from the shock, but comforted by his presence.
Gwydion came to sit on the edge of the bed, and she curled up beside him, her head in his lap. "I thought you asleep, cariad," he said. "My sorrow that I woke you. Tonight of all nights I did not wish you to fall asleep alone."
"No matter; you are here now. Why did you not dine in hall tonight? Your sister was there."
"I know," he said. "I have just now come from her rooms--Well, I did not come to Mi-Cuarta because there was a report from Inishgall that I wished to read. I would repent to you, though, of Ari's conduct. Niall told me the manner of her arrival; it was unnecessarily discourteous, and I said as much to Ari."
Aeron yawned and snuggled closer. "Again, no matter. Very likely she believes I deserved the discourtesy, and very likely she is right. Come to bed."
"Presently." He smoothed the clean sweet-smelling tumble of hair that spilled over his knees. "Aeron, is all truly well with you? The last days have not been easy ones for you, I know, no matter what you may have been able to cozen everyone else into believing."
She shifted beneath the hypnotic hand upon her hair. "It has not been easy for any of us, Pendragon. And like to grow less easy as we go along what way we have begun. New and interesting times will take their toll of us all, not the Ard-rian only." She kissed the hand she held. "You have been my main strength to sway the Council and the people."
"Say you so? I cannot even sway my own sister."
Aeron looked up into his face; she was fully awake now. "Has Ari been at you so soon? I thought that at the least her coming here might begin to smooth over her displeasure. I had not much hope of her heart softening in my direction," she added, matter-of-factly and without a trace of self-pity, "but still I did not expect her to continue to hold her grudge against you."
"Leave it," he said curtly. He felt her surprise at his tone, and he kissed the fistful of gleaming hair he had twined in his fingers. "She is not worth losing your peace over, Ard-rian. I know how hard-won that peace is, and I intend to see that you keep it, for you will need it tomorrow."
"And you," she said, and now she was again on the edge of sleep. "But after tomorrow, Arianeira will not trouble us, surely?"
"She will trouble all Keltia before she is done." But Aeron was asleep.
Chapter Eight
Inishgall was a minute bright green dot in their wake, and Keltia not yet there, as the Terrans marked their third hour aboard the Glaistig. Their three days in quarantine had passed quickly enough, and that morning, after breakfast, they had been escorted by Melangell and Morgan Cairbre up to the Keltic destroyer for the journey to the throneworld of Tara. The Sword followed in tow.
As a captain, Haruko had been accorded the courtesy of an invitation to spend the trip on the bridge. He stood now on
the command deck--a lot smaller than the Firedrake's, he thought, recalling with awe that spacegoing dragon--and tried to be as unobtrusive as possible. His own crew was ensconced in what passed for luxury aboard a warship, down in the wardroom with off-duty Keltic officers and Morgan Cairbre to keep them company. Melangell was with him on the bridge.
O Davoren, the Glaistig's commander, beckoned to Haruko then, and pointed out the huge front viewports. Haruko looked where the Kelt pointed and felt his skin begin to crawl, and backed a half-step in instinctive terror of what he saw out those ports.
Ahead of the ship lay a nothingness, a lacuna in space even blacker than space itself, a blood-chilling, evil-looking vortex spinning in the void, that no sane captain--no, nor insane either--would dare to steer a ship across. Any ship lost in there was lost forever, in a sea of seething dusty darkness lit from beneath by fires of hell, a giant roiling cloud of electromagnetic chaos such as Haruko for all his travels had never seen before.
"The Morimaruse," said O Davoren. "The Dead Sea of space. It is a horror when first you see it." He seemed cheerfully unconcerned. "We do not take that way."
Haruko tried to feel relieved, but he had been badly shaken by the sight of that--that nothing stretching across the galactic horizon like a giant maw, and Melangell gave him a sympathetic smile.
"The first time I saw the Morimaruse," she offered, "I was physically ill. It's not meant for folk to see such things, perhaps; our minds cannot absorb the idea of it."
"Has it--has it ever been crossed?" Oh, surely not...
But Melangell was nodding. "Many centuries ago, Arthur did so, though to our best knowledge no one since. Before we raised the Curtain Wall, the Morimaruse was our chief line of defense."
Haruko could well believe it. Few spacers, however brave or crazy, would care to chance an unknown the scope of that...
"It was deterrent enough then," said O Davoren. "But we use it now to better purpose. Morgan gave us the key to that."
"Morgan?" said Haruko, taken aback. "The bard--"
"Nay, Morgan Magistra," said Melangell with a little laugh. "Arthur's sister, the Ban-draoi sorceress who raised the Curtain Wall after Arthur went away."
"'Went away'? You mean died."
Melangell shook her head. "I mean 'went away.' He disappeared during a space battle with the Coranians. His last words to us were that he would return when he was needed."
"But Arthur lived over fifteen hundred years ago!"
"So he did," said O Davoren. "But no one saw him die, or his ship Prydwen destroyed either; so according to the brehon law he remains King of Kelts. All monarchs since hold their throne by Arthur's grace and make their laws in Arthur's name."
Haruko blinked. Of all the many things he had learned so far about the Kelts, this seemed to him the most revealing; except that he wasn't sure just exactly what it revealed...
He was spared further painful abstractions by Melangell, who touched his arm lightly. Her face was bright with gladness.
"Look, Theo," she said. "Home."
While they had been speaking, the Glaistig had altered her course and increased her speed. Ahead of her now, in place of the Morimaruse, was something very different and in its own way even more alarming. The Morimaruse was a thing of nature's making; but this was not natural, a created artifact; and so, far more terrifying.
Haruko knew without being told that he was looking at the Curtain Wall, the greatest achievement of the Keltic people. It appeared on half a dozen of the viewscreens as a blue shimmer across the stars, a kind of unblinking lightning that remained steady in time and place and did not pass. Haruko stared open-mouthed. The power that thing must take to maintain, he thought, numbed. And, August Personage of Jade, the power of the mind that had raised it...
"I can't see it out the viewports," he heard himself saying in a small tight voice. "Why can't I see it?"
"Only the main screens are equipped to register it," said O Davoren. "It was designed to be invisible to direct view. Any ship that carries uncoded screens will see nothing, and if a ship is not keyed, as we are, to pass through the Wall--"
"What happens then? Are they destroyed? The Sword will be all right?"
"Your ship is in tow within our shadow, she will pass easily," Melangell reassured him. "As to your other questions, nothing so crude. That would be a treacherous measure indeed. No, unkeyed ships are simply shunted away, along certain pathways of flux called leys, and they find themselves--somehow--on the other side of the Morimaruse. That was what O Davoren meant when he said that Morgan taught us how to use the sea as a defense. Wait, now--"
There was a vibration, as if something soft and heavy had struck the hull, and the Glaistig shook very faintly all along her length. Then she was sailing smooth again, and within the compass of the blue radiance, where no planets or suns had been a moment before, seven stars now burned.
"We have passed the Curtain Wall," said O Davoren formally, "and we are now within the Bawn."
"Welcome, Haruko," said Melangell. "Oh, welcome to Keltia."
*
Even if it had not been destined to see the events it would soon witness, that day at Caerdroia would have been special. The last rags of the storm of the previous night had blown away, and it was one of those mornings of dizzying clarity that come only in late fall among mountains. The skies above the City were that deep autumnal blue that so often astonishes; high clouds raced past on a strong cold wind out of the north, and blazing color lay on the forested slopes that ran down into the Great Glen.
Caerdroia itself shouted in the sun, every wall hung with banners, every battlement friezed with people in colors as brave as the flags. From the landing field at Mardale Port, where Morwen and Straloch waited as official royal envoys, to the courtyards of Turusachan itself, all Tara seemed waiting to welcome the Terrans.
On a high inconspicuous rampart of the Keep, Aeron stood in the sun and wind, enjoying a last few moments of solitude before her duties fell upon her. She was arrayed for the formal aonach in the Hall of Heroes, several stories below her on the Keep's ground floor, though she had not yet put on the crown she so seldom wore. If she had to become part of an immortal moment, she thought, eyes turned unseeing into the middle distance, this was the way she wished to be remembered. There would be accounts and pictures and remembrances of this day's work for as long as Keltia existed...
She lifted her face to the wind, saw her fingers white and strong-looking against the ruddy granite of the battlement. It must be very nearly time; she could hear the people cheering and shouting down in the lower quarters of the City, and from her own tower windows an hour or so ago she had seen a silver needle plummet past the clouds and disappear from sight behind the Loom, over toward Mardale. As if in confirmation, she sensed presences behind her, and she spoke without turning round.
"I am nearly ready."
"I know."
She glanced over her shoulder at them. Rohan, Tanist of Keltia, Prince of Thomond--it was he who had spoken--smiled at her; Gwydion, Prince of Gwynedd, Chief of the House of Don, did not. Both men were resplendent in formal attire, Rohan in royal green, jewel-trimmed and gold-embroidered, Gwydion in his usual splendid severity of black and silver. But over the black velvet tunic he wore the white and purple cloak of heavy silk that denoted the Pendragon of Lirias, and the Star and Dragon of the Kinship flashed diamond brilliance upon his breast.
"I shall come presently," said Aeron, and Rohan bowed and was gone. She and Gwydion held each other's glance; then, very deliberately and with great grace of formality, he went to one knee before her and kissed her hand in the traditional gesture of fealty. Keltic royalty exacted such homage from their lieges only once in a reign--at their coronations--and Aeron was moved to tears to see it now, and from him.
Gwydion rose and held out his arm to her, and she placed her hand over his.
"Come, Keltia," he said. "It is time to greet your guests."
*
As he stepped d
own from the gilded chariot in which he had ridden all the way from Mardale, Haruko looked around him in hopes of reassurance. The blonde woman who had stood beside him all the way--Morwen, he rehearsed to himself, she's the Prime Minister--gave him an encouraging smile. The third rider in the chariot, Gavin, Earl of Straloch, gave him only a sour glance. The man seemed intensely irritated with all the Terrans, and Haruko did not have the faintest idea why.
Haruko dismissed the thought and turned again to Morwen. She waved a hand at the many buildings that surrounded them on three sides of the enormous paved square.
"This is Turusachan. That there is the Keep, and, over there, the royal palace--your home while you are with us."
Haruko was glad of the friendly overtures, but it was not until the other chariots drew up, with his crew in them similarly accompanied by Keltic officers of state, that he began to feel a bit easier. A few files back, Melangell waved merrily to him as she jumped down from her own conveyance.
There really was no reason whatsoever to be so stupidly apprehensive, he told himself fiercely. For twelve miles he and the others had been escorted by outriders and banners and cheered like liberating heroes by what he estimated had been several score million Kelts. Nothing in all his experience had prepared him for such a thing, and he was still boggled by the memory of it.
But even their arrival on the planet had been staggering. They had come down in one of the Glaistig's shuttles, arrowing in low over the rolling plain of Moymore, the green gash of the Strath, and then, at last-—
O'Reilly had seen it first. "Oh my God--it's not possible!"
Caerdroia had lain below them, fortress-capital of the Keltic nations. It was clearly and pre-eminently a fortification of war; but it was also beautiful as nothing else Haruko had ever seen.
Raised in the days of the Fainne by the master-builder Gradlon of Ys, it lay along the northern slopes of Eryri--"Abode of Eagles"--as if it had grown there, stretching seven miles from Aeron's tower above the sea to the Fianna garrisons behind the eastern walls. Cut from the volcanic rock of the Loom, the City reached back to the roots of the mountains, and the colors of its stone shone clear and vivid: lime-white, basalt-black, gold-cream and slate-blue and warm ruddy brown. The points of the towers were capped with gold and silver and the softly glowing metal called findruinna, and from every tower floated a standard...
The Copper Crown Page 12