The Copper Crown

by Patricia Kennealy-Morrison

  "I know this will be most difficult for you to undersand--yet you yourself are not unacquainted with reasons not of the material sort... Theo, I would sooner perish, and see Keltia perish with me, before I would use the magical arts against Jaun Akhera without he had cast the first spell. This is war, surely, but whosoever first brings magic into this quarrel--be that magic Low or High; Dark or Light; Old or Wild or Cold; Sun or Moon or Star; Fire or Sea or Earth; Keltic or Coranian, Danaan or Telchine, or whatever magic there may be yet unmastered and unknown--then is that one's cause lost forever, though the day be won."

  The passion that had grown in her voice during this speech astonished her hearer; once more she was silent, and when next she spoke her voice was gentle again, more human.

  "I know you and O'Reilly think this perverse and ill-done of me. Some of my own folk--some of my own kin, even--think the same... But my power and Jaun Akhera's power derive from the same root. The Coranians and the Kelts both are children of the children of Atlantis; the same pattern lies upon us both. Use magic against Jaun Akhera, you say. I and he, his people and my people, are kin from of old, and for that reason I may not. My power and his power are kin also, and for that reason I dare not. I could become such a one as he so very easily; for I have felt it in myself before now, and I would not feel like that again. Else has Bellator taught me nothing indeed."

  "But could you destroy him? If you wanted to?"

  She smiled, a little coldly, a little sadly. "I, Gwydion, perhaps a thousand others, any one of us could destroy him in a matter of minutes, if we had no care for method or aftermath, using such means as Telchine used against Danaan on the last day of Amnael, and so Atland perished... But that day would be a Beltain revel compared to what destruction would be here if I used magic in Keltia in unlawful time. Before I would call such a day into being, rather would I throw wide the gates of Caerdroia with my own hand, and bid Jaun Akhera enter." She took his arm and steered him toward the stairs. "Let us speak no more of this tonight."

  His soul in turmoil, Haruko was only too happy to oblige.

  *

  In the silk-draped tent at the center of the Imperial encampment, Jaun Akhera pulled his chamber robe around his lithe figure and studied his visitor's face, pale and impassioned in the lamplight.

  "I receive you at this hour, King of Fomor, only to avoid an open scene. Battle begins at dawn. What is your trouble?"

  Bres seated himself at the ivory table without waiting for an invitation, and Jaun Akhera's mouth went down at the corners.

  "I come at this hour, Prince of Alphor, only because you avoided receiving me all day... Unless my perception was dulled by distance, Jaun Akhera, you seemed most cordial this morning toward Aeron Aoibhell. Has your policy altered, perhaps, since we spoke on Alphor?"

  Jaun Akhera was suddenly alert, like a wild thing that hears a stick snap in a silent thicket.

  "If it has, that is my concern. I lead the armies in this fight. And, Bres, a word in your ear, lest you take too much upon yourself in our mutual interests: Remember that the Keltic queen is reputed wondrous quick with a sword, and you are not. And a further word: Inform the armies, especially your own, that whoever harms Aeron, or Gwydion, or Morwen of Lochcarron, will pay dearly in return, be he soldier or be he king. I say this once only. I want those three, and Aeron most particularly, alive and unhurt. Is that clear?"

  "Oh, very clear! So you were in earnest, then, when you asked her to consider an alliance of state... I could hardly believe it, and I'm sure your Imperial grandfather will share my disbelief. Or does he already know that you would have Aeron to be the next Cabiri Empress?"

  Before Jaun Akhera could reply, the silk curtains over the tent's inner door were flung back. Arianeira stood there, her silver-gilt hair unbound and rippling to the floor, a white velvet robe clutched close around her.

  "Empress Aeron, is it?" she said coolly.

  Bres, who had risen hastily at her entrance, now bowed with exaggerated courtliness. "Forgive my intrusion, Highness. I shall leave you to yourselves." With an ill-concealed grin, he left the tent as abruptly as he had come, and Jaun Akhera turned to face his angry ally.

  "That was not meant for you to hear."

  "Plainly not! Did you think you could truly keep such a thing from me? It was all over the camp within an hour after your return this morning. I waited only, and vainly, to hear it from your own mouth."

  "A policy of statecraft, no more. Our agreement stands."

  "Oh, cozen me not, my lord! You forget to whom you speak!" She spun away in fury from the conciliatory hand upon her arm.

  "As do you, Princess of Gwynedd," snapped Jaun Akhera, angry in his turn. "Or perhaps your informants have merely censored your information. Have you not heard that Aeron has wedded your brother?"

  Arianeira smiled thinly. "A greater surprise to you, lord, I think, than to me. But nay, I had indeed heard. As to 'wedded,' well, true it is that they are handfast, but according to our succession law they must still confirm that bond formally at a future time. Though," she added reluctantly, "that law also provides that now he may act in advance of such a formal ceremony."

  "Meaning?"

  She shrugged, enjoying his discomfiture. "King Gwydion," she said. "In all but name, at least, and you would do best to account him as such."

  "And you did not think to inform me of that possibility, back when first we laid our plans, and set our terms, for this war! Was that oversight merely, or did you simply think it politic not to mention? I had not allowed for a surprise warlord consort at Aeron's side--she does far too well on her own without one." He sat back, steepling his fingers and watching her closely. "Aeron has raised your brother high indeed--from Prince of Gwynedd to First Lord of War to King of Keltia. Small wonder he has had so little time for his own sister."

  A slow flush stained Arianeira's cheeks. "That is as it is. But do not make overmuch of this. Gwydion will be king, right enough, but king-consort only; never High King--never Ard-righ. Aeron remains Ardrian; she cannot give over her power into another's hand, and she would not if she could."

  "No, I can see that--and that is why I must take it from her. And will take it, Arianeira, if I have to take her hand along with it... either in alliance, or off at the wrist."

  "And what of our bargain, then? You swore that I alone should reign in Keltia after Aeron had been destroyed. Had I not opened the Curtain Wall to you upon that assurance, you would not now be here at all."

  "Very true. Well, you need have no fear on that score. Your wish was to be Queen in Keltia, to supplant your foster-sister and revenge yourself upon her for all her supposed sins and misdeeds to you. I was the only way you could achieve it--as you were the only way I could achieve my own ends--and I shall honor the bargain we made."

  But she was still not entirely pacified. "All its terms?"

  "You shall have everything that you have earned," said Jaun Akhera at last, but there was a glint to the gold of his eves that Arianeira rather marked than liked.

  She studied his face for some other clue to give meaning to his words, but she found nothing, and the faint narrowing of his eyes told her he knew she had failed. Her fury redoubled, and she would have let it have full rein if only she had dared. But she could not dare, not yet, and perhaps not ever... Balked and angry, she dropped him the smallest of curtsies and vanished behind the silken draperies.

  Alone again, sleep now the thing farthest from his rattled mind, Jaun Akhera sat down at the ivory table and poured out a cup of wine with a shaking hand. They had all warned him, everyone from his grandfather on down, that in this war he would walk an exceeding narrow edge; and they had been so right. Traitors were kittle cattle, always very chancy to handle; and one who had turned her cloak once could turn it back again just as easily. He would have to keep a close eye on Arianeira; it was beginning to seem that he might have to make war on two fronts at once: with Aeron, and with her new sister-in-law as well.

  Yet it was somet
hing he could not have anticipated, for all the warnings. When first his plan had begun to take shape, when he had so blithely promised the Keltic throne, and Aeron's head, to the Princess of Gwynedd, it had been very remote from any reality, purely a military and political expediency. But now it had become very personal indeed, and the only thing he was sure of at this moment was that if he won the war, Aeron should not suffer for it.

  But what troubled him most was that he could not put his finger on the moment when this change had occurred. When he had ridden out that morning to the parley, there had not been the smallest thought in his mind of offering Aeron peace on any terms whatsoever. But once there, speaking with her face to face at last, peace had seemed the most logical thing in the world, and a state alliance, of kingdoms and rulers both, the perfect solution for all concerned.

  Obviously not. He called to mind how Aeron's face had looked at the suggestion: a marble mask, with only the faintest hint of disgust playing around the corners of the lovely mouth. The only thing worse had been Gwydion, who had sat his horse twenty feet away looking like an intransigent god.

  Jaun Akhera tilted his winecup from side to side, watching the amber liquid swirl within. Gwydion. He would have to revise policy with regard to him, now that he was, as Arianeira had implied, for all practical purposes Aeron's legal consort... Outside the tent, he heard the quiet challenge and response as his bodyguard changed the watch, and the faint chink of their weapons recalled to his attention the more immediate matter of the battle only a few hours away. Perhaps that battle would decide for him more than a merely military victory.

  "And perhaps not," he said aloud, and set the empty cup down hard upon the ivory table.

  *

  Aeron had moved her personal base of operations from Rath na Riogh to a tent down in the camp; as much from her wish to be in the midst of the army as from an instinct that it was better not to be pent up in a castle during a fight--too easily could one's refuge become one's prison.

  She had had a late-night conference with a few of her commanders, smoothing over the feathers ruffled earlier, then, weary though she was, stalked sleep without success. After a vain hour's tossing, she rose, borrowed a dark cloak of Slaine, and went to walk the encampment in the middle watch, putting a fith-fath upon herself so that her face might not make shy her warriors' speech. Few took any special note of the brown-haired Kymri in the Dragon uniform who wandered quietly among the clochans, and after a while she sat down at one quartz-fire where a harper sang to a small circle of warriors.

  When his song was done, the harper turned courteously to her. "Be welcome to our fire, mistress. I am Garrack of Chyvellan, and all we here are in the chariotry of Hollin Macdonald. Whose name do you ride?"

  She laid fist to shoulder, including them all in her smile. "I am called Lassarina, my masters," she said with perfect truth. "I fight in Struan Cameron's horse."

  Amused, approving murmurs. "Oh, Struan!"

  "He is the puca's own whelp--"

  "Nay, his brother Denzil is worse still, from all we hear!"

  "If you ride with the Cameron, mistress," said the harper, "he is master of horse in the marca-sluagh, and surely you must have seen the Ard-rian close to."

  Aeron took the wooden quaich of ale that a friendly hand passed to her, drinking deep before replying.

  "I have so, many times. Have you not met her yourselves, then?"

  "Nay, mistress," said another, older veteran. "Not but that we would dearly like to. But it is a big army, and Aeron has many calls upon her. You could not expect her to come among us."

  "She is the loser by it," murmured Aeron, then louder, "But what word would you have for her, if she came?"

  The harper Garrack smiled. "Only that we love her dearly, and, gods willing, we will win her this fight."

  "But if the fight was not born in righteousness? What then? Even queens must doubt."

  "That is nothing to us," said the veteran. "Who has no doubts about his acts, be they great or small? Any road, not a warrior in this army but thinks Aeron is in the right. War was made upon her, and she has made the only answer she could. Nay, mistress, we have no quarrel with that, and perhaps, if you should yourself have speech with the Queen, you will of your goodness tell her so."

  Aeron nodded slowly, and rose to her feet more slowly still.

  "Gods with you, sirs, and strength to your arms," she said quietly. They gave her the same, and then she was walking back to her tent through the dark camp.

  But many others were also wakeful in the last hours of peace.

  In his own tent, Haruko lay staring up at the roof, gnawing his knuckles and struggling to overcome the numbness that seemed to have frozen his entire body. It was not fear; that he knew well from previous encounters, and this appeared to be something entirely new. A premonition, then? That felt more like it--but the real premonition had come long since, when he had looked at the viewscreens of the Sword and beheld a gold dragon coming toward him from stars no one had seen for more than a thousand years. No, that warning had been timely given and serenely accepted. Sure, he could have tried to thwart it--he could have left with Hathaway and Mikhailova. But he had known that true fate cannot be thwarted, and if karma, or dan, or whatever you wanted to call it, had caught up with him at last, he was only glad it had done so here, now, in Keltia, and grateful that it had given him a few months of joy before calling for the payoff. All in all, not a bad trade...

  In another tent not very distant, Gwydion lay neither waking nor sleeping, but collected and very much aware in the marana trance. His present purpose was not magical nor even divinatory, but rather to allow himself to assimilate the many and diverse patterns of the past weeks, to weave the strands into an unbroken front of the spirit that he might present for battle in the morning...

  In Aeron's tent, O'Reilly sat up in the little anteroom, sleepy and worried sick. Aeron had been gone nearly two hours, and she had looked so troubled--maybe O'Reilly should go out herself in search of her? With that fith-fath on her, nobody would know her as Aeron if anything happened to her, not until it was too late--and even the Fianna had so far not managed to find Tindal. Suppose he had sneaked into the camp and was even now lurking about outside, waiting for the chance to do Aeron a mischief, or worse? Then she heard the sound of spears striking ground in salute, outside in the faha, and she knew Aeron had returned at last...

  And in the tent at the center of the Imperial camp, Arianeira had not ceased her agitated pacing. Presumably Jaun Akhera slept untroubled, in his own chamber beyond the silk and tapestry walls, for no sound came through to her ears.

  Her anger had not abated; she had tried to sleep it away, to drug it into calmness, but it had resisted all strategems, and had even grown stronger, as if it were some living thing contemptuous of her feeble efforts to put it down. So now she paced, and in the blazing heart of her wrath an old seed of doubt began to blossom.

  In the weeks since she had first made her bargain with Jaun Akhera, Arianeira had maintained a hold of findruinna on both her motivation and her conscience, and she had had no reason to expect that her grip on either would ever diminish. Jaun Akhera was for her, Gwydion and Aeron against; to her mind it was as simple as that. And so she had betrayed the two, and pledged to the one, and he to her.

  And that was what now fed the secret root of doubt, what nourished all her fear and fury: the perceived possibility that Jaun Akhera might betray her in turn and pledge to Aeron. Indeed, had not such a thought already crossed his mind, and had not all heard it? Even Bres had been apprehensive for it...

  Yet the root as she followed it went deeper still. All that day, Arianeira had had much leisure for thought, for memory and pondering of both present and past, and what had come recurrently and unerringly to her mind over those hours was in fact the far past. Days of her childhood with her parents and her brothers at Caer Ys--by now destroyed, she thought, the pang of loss striking curiously deep even through her anger. She had destroyed that p
ast as surely as she had destroyed the castle, and with the same hand. Days too at Turusachan and Kinloch Arnoch, with Aeron and Morwen, and all the other Aoibhells and Douglases-—

  Yet the festering resentment held firm as the doubt began to grow. Aeron had preferred Gwydion to her, had preferred Morwen to her, had preferred Rohan and Roderick to her, had even, now, preferred Terrans to her... Arianeira had always been the least and the last of Aeron's intimates, had not been chosen to either of Aeron's councils, and--could never be Aeron.

  Sick and dizzy with the struggle, she fell onto the rumpled bed, a huddled shape of white silk in the dimness, her hair covering her face and her hands to her mouth.

  Oh gods, she thought, and a little whimpering sound, half moan, half protest, escaped her, have I been wrong after all? Is this truly the only way it could have gone?

  So Arianeira, in the Imperial camp, waited as the others waited for the dawn, her soul no less a battlefield than the one that would be contested at the rising of the sun.

  Chapter Twenty

  Tindal saw the cloud-veiled surface of the planet Gwynedd sink below him as the little ship darted out into space. Well, that was that, then... "Put not your trust in princes," he muttered. "Or their sisters, either." But Christ, he had been lucky to get away at all from that little magical firecracker Arianeira had planted in the castle of Caer Ys. Unless he was much mistaken, their other co-conspirator, the ineffable Kynon, had been caught in the wreckage. The same fate had been planned for Tindal, of course; Arianeira's little way of hedging her bets. She had never had the slightest intention of honoring her part of the bargain, the royal slut. She had used them both, him and Kynon alike, and when she had what she wanted fast within her little grasping hands, she had coolly sent them off to Gwynedd and their deaths.

  Well, he hated to disappoint her, but by God, he was not about to roll over and play dead, even to oblige a princess. He consulted the coordinates she had given him. They seemed perfectly accurate; knowing he was a Starship science officer, no doubt she had feared to fob him off with bogus starcharts. He had no intention now, naturally, of venturing near the sailing route indicated here for the Marro, Jaun Akhera's flagship. They might spot him and decide to blow him out of the spacelanes, for one thing; for another, the Marro might have already engaged the Firedrake, and recalling only too well what the Keltic flagship had looked capable of, he wasn't going anywhere near it.