The Copper Crown

by Patricia Kennealy-Morrison

  At Aeron's order, no public announcement had as yet been made of the part played by Arianeira, Kynon and Tindal, though rumor of the treason had run like flame, like the Solas Sidhe itself, among the folk.

  When word came, later that next day, that Kynon had been taken trying to escape from Gwynedd, Aeron ordered him brought to the Presence Chamber, and summoned the High Council to witness her judgment.

  Gwydion, still cloaked from his interrupted duties in the field, where the armies were already assembling, met her in the chamber.

  "They found him in the ruins of Caer Ys," he said quietly, taking his seat beside her under the canopy that overhung the dais and the two high chairs. "The island where the castle stood is sunk beneath the water--Arianeira had set a telesm there, to destroy the castle with her fellow traitors yet within... though no trace of Tindal has yet been found, I am sorry to say." No sign of the emotion he must surely have felt was visible upon his face; Caer Ys had been Arianeira's favorite of their family's castles, they had spent many happy hours of their childhood there together, he and she, and their brother Elved with them, later, and their parents before their father had died...

  Aeron held her face as immobile as his. "Bring Kynon in."

  A very wretched Kynon came into the chamber, within a square of Desmond's Fians. His tunic was bloody and muddy, his hair disheveled, but his eyes remained sly.

  Beside Aeron's chair, Rohan started violently as he got his first good look at the prisoner's face, and his memory fled back to Mi-Cuarta, the night before the Terrans came, and a black-haired stranger in red standing in the doorway behind Arianeira...

  "I knew I should see that one again," he said, half to himself, as Aeron looked up at him curiously. "And yet once more, I think, before the end..."

  Kynon, unaware of any of this, walked steadily enough to the foot of the thrones, then broke past his guards and flung himself prostrate at Aeron's feet.

  "I know nothing of this, Ard-rian! I am unjustly accused, and I swear to your presence that it is so!"

  "That you shall do indeed," said Aeron, and the peculiar note to her voice caused Kynon to look up suddenly fearing. She raised a hand, spoke to Teilo, who stood by. "So grave a matter may not be left to lesser proofs. Fetch in the Cremave."

  The Cremave... Aeron's Councillors turned and looked at each other, troubled. Kynon, who had little interest in magic and less skill, had heard only wild rumors of the Cremave, the magical clearing-stone of the House of Brendan. It had the power, reputedly, to tell truth from falsehood, so that the hand of the one to be cleared was placed upon the stone's center when the oath was taken.

  "If I may ask, Ard-rian--"

  "You may not ask, Kymro. We shall wait upon Teilo's return."

  There followed many minutes of deathly silence. Kynon crouched miserably on the carpet before the high seat; the others stood in small huddled groups. Aeron remained seated, hand to chin, Gwydion sat unmoving beside her, and no one spoke at all.

  At last Teilo returned, and in his hands he carried something covered by a black cloth. Aeron rose, and pointed to the center of the carpeted space before the thrones.

  "Place it there, Archdruid, and then do you withdraw."

  Teilo set the object down, bowed to Aeron and stepped back. Aeron knelt on the carpet, spread her hands for a moment above the cloth-swathed bundle, then slowly removed its black silk wrappings. As one, everyone else in the room, save for Gwydion, flinched a little. Kynon, seeing what lay there, backed to flee.

  Before the Fians could seize him, however, Aeron raised her right hand, sketched a quick interweaving gesture, and then flicked her fingers as if gently tossing something for Kynon to catch. Instantly he stood rigid, unable to lift his feet from the floor. He stared incredulously at Aeron, and gradually his expression of scorn turned to one of panic.

  "He is earthfast," whispered Rioghnach to the pop-eyed Haruko. "A spell even children can perform; but he cannot now move until she releases him."

  Aeron turned her attention again to what lay before her on the faded Kutheran carpet. A rough stone it was, all unpolished, perhaps the size of a loaf of bread, shapen only by the chippings of flint adzes in a time, or by a folk, that knew not iron, its blue-gray surface glinting darkly, laced with twisting veins of crystal and flakes of gold. It seemed somehow ominous, possessed of sentience, even, as if it had a plane of existence all its own. Kynon, as he stared at it, was suddenly filled with nameless dread, a mortal terror of the stone.

  Aeron rose from her knees, and her eyes now carried some of the stone's own ominousness.

  "Kynon ap Accolon," she said in the High Gaeloch, "come thou forward."

  And he moved slowly to her as through deep water.

  "Kneel, and place thy hand to the Cremave. I would know, Kymro, the truth of the betrayal thou hast wrought against me and against Keltia. Was it Arianeira daughter of Gwenedour and Arawn, Princess of the House of Don, or thou thyself, first compounded with the enemies of thy Queen?"

  He collapsed, shivering. "I cannot..."

  Teilo said severely, "You have been brought before the High Justice to be judged. You face the Cremave to be cleared or damned, according to your acts. If you refuse to swear, the guilt is upon you and the iron-death is yours."

  "And if I do swear? What then, Druid?"

  "If you are innocent, the Cremave will clear you for all time, and right and proper reparation will be made according to your honor-price. If you are guilty, a mark will be set upon you. You will be declared fudir, and daer-fudir, nameless and rankless and clan-broken; and though your life will not be taken from you it will be a life that is no life, with the hand of man and god alike against you. The choice is yours."

  Kynon looked up at Aeron. "Must I swear, Lady?"

  Her face was no less hard than the stone itself. "You have heard the words of the Archdruid, which are as my words. Choose you, Kynon."

  He dragged himself up on his knees. The curse of the gods on that slut Arianeira--by this time she was well away out of it, safe with Jaun Akhera, no doubt, aboard the Imperial flagship. All along she had had it planned so, had planned to trap him in Caer Ys with the Terran, slaughtering them both from a clean, safe distance--though as to Tindal's fate, Kynon neither knew nor cared; once the stones of the castle had begun to crack around them, it had been each for himself, and he had not seen Tindal again.

  He looked down at the Cremave. It seemed larger now, its darkness almost pulsing. It would know his falseness as soon as he touched it--maybe. Even so, it would not kill him; the Archdruid had said so, and perhaps he could fool it after all. What was it but a chunk of rock...

  "As the Cremave is my witness," he said in a voice to be heard throughout the room, "it was Arianeira of Gwynedd lured me into treason." He laid his right hand to the slight hollow at the heart of the stone. "So swear I."

  A piercing shriek cut the silence, and even Gwydion shuddered. When the echo of the scream had died away, Kynon lay curled up on the carpet, his right arm clapped to his side and his hand hidden in his breast.

  "The Cremave has judged him," said Teilo. "Let the truth now be made known to the people."

  Aeron took in her right hand the scepter of findruinna that Rohan silently extended to her.

  "For that you yourself have been the means by which Keltia has been betrayed, and for that you have sought to further that betrayal by falsely blaming another who already carries her own guilt and her own doom, this is the judgment of the High Justice to which you have appealed.

  "Kynon of Ruabon, we name you fudir and daer-fudir; you have no place and no hearth, no name and no folk; your honor-price is set at naught, and you may claim none from man nor woman from this moment forward. All this have you forfeited by your treason, and the holy Cremave sets this doom upon you."

  Kynon, whose fearful writhing had ceased, had not looked at Aeron as she spoke, but now he lifted his head and bent upon her a stare of such malignant hatred as caused every warrior in the chamber
to start forward, hand to swordhilt.

  "And in fair return, I set this doom upon you, Aeron Aoibhell," he said, his voice deadly soft. "The stars' wandering between you and the brother of the one who betrayed me. Your crown from your head, your lord from your bed, and may the Shining Ones themselves ride forth to war before you return again as Queen to Caerdroia. Let that be your doom and your dan." He stared balefully at her, then at Gwydion, then slowly removed his hand from the concealment of his tunic.

  It had been shriveled as if drawn by some terrible disease, or by the flame, wasted and skeletal from fingertips to elbow, curved and scarred and hooked inward like the desiccated limb of a corpse long dead.

  "See now the justice of the Cremave," he said mockingly. "Yet I too shall see justice done in time."

  Aeron gestured to Desmond, and the Fians closed in around Kynon and began to march him from the room to begin his long punishment. But his voice came back clear to those who remained.

  "Remember, Aeron! Gwydion, remember! The Cremave has doomed you both as surely as it has doomed me!"

  *

  Aeron had spoken to no one in the Presence Chamber after Kynon's departure, but had left the room, quickly and alone, by a different door. No word had come from her for some hours when Gwydion himself went in search of her; no other, even in the face of war, dared trouble her solitude.

  He found her, as he had expected, in her chamber of magic. The four great torches were unkindled, and there was no power in the chamber; it was only a room of stone, cold, with the last light of day dim behind the windows.

  She was huddled upon the floor against the stone bench. Her hands were pressed to her mouth, and her streaming hair and bare feet struck Gwydion to the heart. After a moment, he crossed the floor to her, sat upon the bench, and gathered her up into his arms.

  "They ask too much of you," he said, savagely angry, then tilted her face up to him with sudden concern, for she was weeping. "Cariad, what is it?"

  Her voice came choked and broken, half to herself, like a child's that has cried too long uncomforted.

  "--I, to dare to call justice to answer? When I myself have done evil a thousand times worse than his? Nay, I deserve such a dan as the one was laid upon me! I have used magic to unlawful ends, have slain for vengeance's sake, have brought war upon my folk by my arrogance..." She was trembling uncontrollably now, and he took her face between his hands, spoke with quiet urgency.

  "And you have paid in full for it, if evil it was... Hear me, Queen of Kelts: The weave of this war was laid down a thousand generations ago, on the last day of Amnael, when Telchine betrayed Danaan in Atland itself, and framed the pattern of the ages."

  "If I had not wrought the death of Bellator--"

  "Bellator was but your answer to a strike of injustice undoubted from Bres's hand," he said. "And that but a response to a word of Fionnbarr your father's, spoken seventy years ago in who now can know what justice or injustice, and he too had his reasons..." He took her hand that bore the Great Seal of Keltia, turned it so that she could see the knot of the Six Nations carved into the big emerald. "Where does the knot begin?"

  She had ceased to weep, though tears still glittered on her cheek.

  "What then do you really say to me?"

  "No words that you have not already said a hundred times over to yourself. But I say them yet again, in the hope you may hear them more clearly in another's voice."

  "And who but a prince of bards to say them," she said, with a small weary smile, and pulled herself to her feet. He rose also, and she clung to him a moment, then stood away, and already she was once again the High Queen.

  "And now?" he asked. "You are needed in many places, Ard-rian."

  "Then do you come with me and we shall attend those needs. We ride in the morning for Rath na Riogh."

  Chapter Eighteen

  The next morning dawned clear, though snow still streaked the frozen ground. The armies of Keltia, the catha, led by the twelve Fian battalions known as the Pillars of Tara, were assembled on the plain below Caerdroia. A strong east wind blew down the Strath, snapping cloaks and banners, and the bright winter sunlight was broken by high cloud.

  The banners in the wind spoke of ancient days and hallowed power: in the van, the flags of the Six Nations: the crown-collared wolfhound of Erinna, the red dragon of Kymry, the Scotic lion, the Kernish choughs, Brytaned's rose and Vannin's triskele. Behind these, in ordered ranks, the banners of the noble houses and the standards of the clanns: among them the sun-cross of the House of Dana and the unicorn of the Doniad, the Camerons' sword-fret and the black Douglas lion and the sword and serpent of Clann Drummond. And, finally, the personal battle standards of the commanders: Gwydion's gold-antlered stag, Desmond's black bull, the hawk in flight of Fedelma ni Garra and Niall O Kerevan's blue and white counterchanged boar. But highest of all floated two huge banners, one black and silver, the other gold and green: the winged-unicorn Royal Standard, indicating the presence of the sovereign, and the Keltic knot that symbolized the Six Nations.

  Before the sun stood very much higher, the hai atton sounded from the City walls, and was answered from the plain below: then the Wolf Gate opened, and Aeron rode out upon her black mare Bronach at the head of a small company of perhaps forty horse. She was wearing a light lorica of highly polished findruinna--as did most of those who rode with her--and the black Dragon uniform under a fur-collared green cloak. At her right stirrup rode Gwydion on a big gray stallion, and on her left Rohan, who would leave the riding at Mardale to join his escort and sail out to the Firedrake; others of her household who were in the party included Sabia, Melangell, Haruko and O'Reilly.

  The standard-bearers fell in, the pipers skirled on before, and the ride to the plain began. This marchra, which would last six days and cover nearly sixty leagues, was intended chiefly to hearten the folk. The main body of troops committed to the defense of the Throneworld, horse and foot alike, was already being transported to the chosen battleground by troop carrier. Aeron had elected to ride the full distance herself, with a strong escort of her personal guard in addition to those of the royal household; she was only thankful there was time enough to do so.

  Haruko, somewhat ill at ease in the saddle, though mounted on the smallest and placidest charger in the royal stables, was a few files to the rear of the banners, riding beside Desmond, and after a while he expressed some doubts as to the leisurely progress of the royal cavalcade in the face of the incoming armada.

  "We will be there two days before them all the same," Desmond assured him. "And the armies will be fully assembled in camp by this time tomorrow. As you know, the invaders dare not sail in through hyperspace, and normal space is, of course, heavily mined. Elharn predicts forty to fifty per cent Imperial ship losses by the time their vanguard reaches Tara." He looked pleased.

  Fifty per cent! Haruko privately thought the estimate a bit on the high side, but said only, "That's very encouraging, but do we really have the time to waste in riding to the end of the Glen?"

  "I do not think that the Ard-rian thinks of it as time wasted. In addition to reassuring the people by her presence--for you must remember they have never seen anything like this on Tara before--the marchra will also allow the officers and troops to refresh their memories of the Strath's terrain, should it come to land battle all along the Glen and we be forced in the end to fall back upon Caerdroia."

  Haruko glanced at him, but the blue eyes under the black brows were staring straight ahead.

  "Do you think that likely?"

  "Likeliness seems to have little to do with this whole coil. Who among us ever thought it likely the Curtain Wall could be breached? Or that a princess of Gwynedd could betray her Queen?"

  The bitterness in Desmond's voice was deep and plain, and Haruko did not know how to answer it.

  "When will the armada arrive at Tara?" he asked at length.

  "No more than a sevennight tomorrow, Haruko. You will see action in Keltia's service sooner than m
ight have been expected."

  Haruko thought about that for a while. Well, he could not say he was sorry, not really; if truth be known, all this made him feel young again. He had been a Terran serving officer all of his adult life, and during the course of that career there had been battles aplenty, in space and on worlds alike. Yet none of those engagements--some of which had earned him medals--had filled him with the kind of anticipation he felt at this moment. War was never fun; but sometimes it could be--well, satisfying in a righteous kind of way, and there was no question whatsoever here as to who was in the right. Keltia had been invaded, laid open by treason to invasion; the only thing to be done was fight back. Nothing war-mongering about that, and he was glad to be able to be a part of it.

  But he wondered all the same if he could get out another message to the Admiralty on coded frequencies. Such a message would reach Earth long before the Sword. It might well have occurred to Jaun Akhera and his stooges to send a few legions in that direction as well, since the news of the alliance seemed to be the prime cause of the present hostilities. Or at least the avowed cause, he corrected himself. The prime cause of Imperial irritation rode a few ranks ahead of him, on a black mare under the Royal Standard.

  *

  The marchra rode dawn to dusk, making perhaps thirty miles a day, with stops for the noonmeal and frequent brief halts to rest both horses and riders. The first night from Caerdroia saw them at Blair Drummond, guests of David Drummond's family, who held the castle from the Earl of Rannoch and who had been friends and courtiers to the Aoibhells for five hundred years; and the night after that at the royal hunting lodge of Nancarrow.

  On the third day, Haruko found himself riding beside Desmond's brother Macsen, and they passed the hours agreeably, swapping tales of battles past, for Macsen, along with Gwydion and Desmond and the late Roderick Prince of Scots, had seen much active service outside the Curtain Wall in defense of the Protectorates. Finally Haruko worked up the courage to speak of what was troubling him.