Melangell touched her hand with real sympathy. "Jaun Akhera knows Terrans have been here, knows Aeron has offered Earth an alliance--and he has vowed vengeance on any Terran unlucky enough to be caught in Keltic space. Nay, do not worry," she said quickly, seeing the fear leap in O'Reilly's hazel eyes. "They are far, far from here by now--almost home, perhaps; but certainly safe. But now you too must leave Tara. Do you have any wishes?"
Where to go ... "There was a Ban-draoi convent on Vannin that Aeron once told--told Theo about. If I could stay there?"
"Excellent," said Niall. "There's few places you'd be safer; the Sisters will see to that."
"Oh, it's not just being safe," explained O'Reilly candidly. "Though I can still hardly believe Jaun Akhera after me... But I need some time to think. So much has happened so fast, I feel I've left part of me behind, in the dust or in the Sword, maybe both. If peace can be found anywhere now, I need it very much."
"It is yours," promised Melangell. "You will find peace at Glassary; and safety, and anything else that you may need or we can give you. Go to Ffaleira within the next day or so, and she will give you letters and instruction. When it is time to leave, Desmond will get you out on a Fian sloop." Melangell marked how the Terran girl's face lighted at the mention of Desmond, smiled to herself, and said nothing. I wonder how Aeron will like having a Terran in the family, she thought, and smiled again.
*
When Gwydion returned from the Hollow Mountains few indeed could look upon his face. Even his closest friends were shaken at the change in him, though no one could name what it was. He seemed taller, perhaps, or paler, or sterner, or more worn-—
And fewer still could meet his eyes. Sea-gray they had always been, measuring and considering and ironic, with the far distance-look of the stars, or of one who spent much time gazing upon the stars. But now only Teilo, Ffaleira and Aeron herself could keep their gazes steady before his.
The strangeness was slow to pass from him, and he could speak of it only haltingly to Aeron, as they lay that night in the tapestried bed, together for the first time since the war began. But passion was far from their thoughts, and their hours were spent in quiet talk.
"'Bid Aeron remember Prydwen,'" she repeated, musing, her cheek against his shoulder. "'And the Treasures that were lost.'"
"Gwyn would say no thing that had no meaning; of that, at least, I am certain."
"Aye, but what meaning? Prydwen was Arthur's ship, the one he sailed out against the Coranians and Mordryth's traitors in the battle of the Roads of Camlann. It has always been thought he took Prydwen, and the Coranian flagship engaging her, into the Morimaruse, and neither came out again."
"And what of the Treasures, loremistress?" He was laughing.
"You, a Druid, to jest so! But why should a king of the Shining Folk speak of them to you?"
Gwydion put his free arm behind his head and lifted his gaze to the diamonded constellations of the bed-roof. Every child in Keltia knew of the Thirteen Treasures: spoils of Atland, saved from the great waves; or perhaps older still, brought to Earth from outside, when the Danaans first came there from their lost home. Who could say? Brendan and Nia had brought them to Keltia, all knew that; but there was no word as to what had befallen them later.
"I know not," said Gwydion at last. "And any road, he bade you remember them, not me... But all his words were strange and full of presage. He told me that the trees should be my warriors, and what that might mean I cannot imagine."
"What means more to me is his pledge that the Shining Ones will indeed fight for Keltia, and the Crown will come back to me. I take no shame to admit to you that for a time I--" She broke off suddenly, twisted up on one elbow to stare down into his face. "The curse that Kynon spoke against me--He said that the Shining Ones would have to ride forth to war before I reign again as Queen in Caerdroia. And now has Gwyn promised that they shall." She lay down again beside him. "If that be so," she said, and now her voice was very small, "then two already of his dooms have come home upon me. And if two, then surely three."
"And that third?" he asked, though he remembered it well, for it had been set upon him as much as upon her.
"The stars' wandering between you and me... my lord from my bed." She tightened the arm that lay across his chest.
"That may be, or must be," he said, and kissed the top of her head. "But, Aeronwy, I am here now..."
Long after she had fallen asleep beside him, Gwydion lay wakeful, and the words of Kynon's curse and the words of Gwyn's promise interlaced like knotwork in his thought, until at last he too slept, and the chamber was still.
Chapter Twenty-four
"M'anam don sleibh!" swore Niall O Kerevan softly, his field-glasses tracking the enemy army across the blue distances of the plain below Caerdroia--Moycathra, it was called: Plain of the Battles.
"My soul to the mountain," translated Aeron absently. It struck her of a sudden what a very odd oath that was; she had heard it, had used it, all her life, yet never had consciously considered what it might mean. In view of the adventure Gwydion had had... Well, when all this was over, perhaps she would look into it. But her brother-in-law was right to be surprised and annoyed.
Without turning her head, she signaled Desmond, who had been standing near waiting upon her summons.
"Call the commanders to the War Room."
"At once, athiarna."
Aeron remained on the battlement, chin in hands, staring out at Jaun Akhera's legions. Athiarna, High One, the Fianna's form of respectful address to a superior officer. Well, she thought, we shall see how high we still stand when this is done...
Yet Arianeira's treachery had cut the ground from beneath them all. Not only her treason against Keltia, but the violence she had wrought against every tie of love and fosterage and friendship. Aeron was still more astounded than anything else, still in the mercy of shock that kept her from full realization of her pain. Perhaps the violation was still too new for her to feel the betrayal as she would come to feel it later. But there was surely one who felt it now to the fullest-—
She looked sidelong to where Gwydion stood, giving his final orders to the captains of the wall in preparation for the siege to come. Clad in the unrelieved black of the Dragon uniform, his familiar scarlet cloak thrown back over his shoulders, he looked handsome as ever; but for the first time since the war had begun, his face showed his strain and his weariness.
He felt her attention on him, finished his briefing and came to stand beside her, and together they looked in silence at the marching cloud far across the plain.
"Sainn an rian," she remarked after a while. "'Check to the queen'--and by a pack of pawns."
"Check, maybe, but not mate; and not all pawns either. There is Jaun Akhera, who is for our purpose a king. Elathan too, though he has seen fit to withdraw from the board."
Aeron gave a short laugh. "King by my hand, as I am Queen by his father's; a fair trade, surely. But the Fomori were never noted for their skill at fidchell..." She glanced up at him. "I have summoned the commanders to the War Room to discuss measures to ensure the safety of the noncombatants within the City walls; will you come?"
"I am your war-leader. I have no choice but to come." He saw the shadow cross from him to her, and he took her arm. "Everyone's eyes are on you, Aeronwy; they look to you for their cue to action, and you cannot falter now." For a moment his mood lightened, and his face softened in a grin. "Do you know what they sing of you in the Imperial camp? 'Came I early, came I late, I met Red Aeron in the gate.'"
She laughed. "Sing they so? Well, I must be there to greet them, then, when they come to the gates of Caerdroia. Let us go, Pendragon, and discuss it."
*
Jaun Akhera pushed back his helmet and stared up at the walls of the city. In the low light of a somber winter afternoon, Caerdroia bulked vast as a couched dragon, and as ominous. Girdle of Isis! he swore to himself, and I thought Escal-dun was well-fortified... but how can they defend seven miles of wall?
He learned soon enough when the siege began the next morning: The Kelts did not try. Having evacuated the outlying districts of all the civilian population, they then abandoned the defense of those areas, concentrating all their force and all their folk behind the walls of the Old City that had its center in Turusachan and its entrance at the Wolf Gate.
That day saw Moycathra prove its name from of old: Plain of the Battles had it been called since the first days of Keltia; through the time of Arthur and the Theocracy and the first terrible wars against the Coranians; and now once more did it earn its name anew. All day the armies of the Kelts fought off the besiegers from the walls, and as the early winter dusk closed down upon the Great Glen, each side retired exhausted to its rest.
The weather had changed yet again. The air was now uncharacteristically mild for the time of year, soft with sea-mist and freighted with the half-muted sounds of siege, and it slapped gently against Aeron's face as she stood on the turret walk outside her tower, keeping a lonely vigil. And all the inchoate sadness of the sea-wind entered her soul, so that she faltered beneath the grief of it, and collapsed on the little stone bench in the recess, and yet she could not bring herself to weeping's release. Somehow it did not seem that sort of sadness. She tried to fit images to it: her pity for O'Reilly, her grief for Theo, her own ordeal at Tomnahara, what Gwydion had done there to save her. The pressures of battle and sovereignty had demanded that she set these things by awhile in her mind and heart, and there had been until now no chance to acknowledge them to herself, too much else with which to contend to allow herself to mourn... But at the thought of Gwydion, calm fell around her like a cloak. If, as he had said, the people took their cue from her, then she took hers from him.
Still, strength was not all the test. It was well within the borders of possibility that this war could cost her her city, her throne, her dearest ones, her lord, even her own life; but she had acted as she had thought right and best, according to the dictates of the moment, and she would do the same again in the same straits. How else was a deed to be judged? There was no changeless standard by which an act could be held forever right or wrong, no bubble-sphere of time or place or space in which inflexible judgment could be passed. The moment was all.
When Aeron got to the bubble-sphere, she stood up and shook herself free of the chill that had cramped her muscles and her soul. Kings have always died for their people, and that would be easy; but first they had to live for them, and that would be, again as always, something rather harder.
*
The siege of Caerdroia ground on into a third day, and a fifth, and a seventh. In the Imperial camp, the stresses were winding tight as a pirn. Hanno's orders came now with a harried snap to them that was utterly foreign to his usual smooth decisiveness; Sanchoniathon was beginning to move out more and more from the shadow of his brother, not entirely to his brother's satisfaction; and Arianeira became whiter and more withdrawn by the hour.
As for Jaun Akhera, he alone seemed to retain his usual mood, though his captains held out to him little hope for a victory of arms.
"The advantage always lies with the besieged," said Hanno. "You know that, my lord."
The Imperial high command was assembled in Jaun Akhera's tent to reconsider their strategy; since the departure of the Fomori, they had no cavalry arm at all and insufficient numbers to man an all-out assault on the city walls.
"Not only can they hold out indefinitely," added Garallaz, "with all the resources of the City on hand, and springs we cannot reach to foul, but once their fleets clear the other star systems, they can attack us here at their leisure. If Caerdroia is not in our hands within the week, we have failed, and we shall have little bargaining power when Rohan brings the fleet to bear on this planet. If we held the Queen as well as the City, our position would be even stronger."
Jaun Akhera looked at him with something like loathing. Garallaz was right, of course, but-—
Sanchoniathon noted his brother's hesitation. "You are not still thinking that Aeron may yet accept that so interesting offer you made her at Rath na Riogh? Not even to save her folk; she would sooner be burned alive in the Great Square... Your obsession with her is a danger to everything we are trying to do here. Besides, what of the Princess Arianeira?"
The Prince of Alphor stared at his brother until Sanchoniathon looked away in confusion from the glowing golden eyes.
"Arianeira is a Kelt," said Jaun Akhera at last. "But Aeron is Keltia." He stood up, flexing shoulders stiff from many days of living in armor and sleeping in tents. "Summon the City to surrender at dawn. No, wait, I shall do it myself. If they agree, well and good; and they might, for they have their civilians to think of, and the destruction has been cruel. Also they have suffered heavier losses than have we, and they cannot call up reinforcements any more than we can."
"I say she will not surrender the City," muttered Hanno.
"Most likely she will not," agreed Jaun Akhera. "But it is a chance I am going to try."
Unnoticed by any of them, intent as they were on their talk, Arianeira had slipped from the pavilion, and pulling her cloak about her face she fled through the lines to a solitary place near a little clump of sea-pines. In the gathering dusk she stared up at the City she knew so well, and had loved so well, before she had persuaded herself she felt for it, and all it stood for, only hatred.
Oh Mother--the thought was a psychic moan, and she doubled over, folding up and falling to her knees as if she had taken a swordcut in the guts--what have I done? It could not be undone now, not now and never until the end of time; but somehow the hate and jealousy that had fueled her actions for the past few months had been swept suddenly aside. What stood now alone in their place was the memory of the love she had given and been given in return: Gwydion, Aeron, Morwen, all those others to whom her name was now become a hissing and an evil taste upon the tongue. Yet no matter what the rest of Keltia thought of her, there were two who loved her still. Even though they knew all her deeds, still did they love her, and had said so, back on that little hill near Rath na Riogh. They had not changed their hearts since then; that she would stake her life on.
For that was indeed what she must stake, if anything was to be done to mend the havoc she had wrought. Her deed could not be undone, but it could still be atoned for; and by atoning she could yet buy some measure of final victory for those two she could now, at last, admit that she loved indeed--and some measure of final peace for herself. Yet the price would be a high one, and not hers alone to pay.
*
Dawn over the Wolf Gate. O'Reilly, on the ramparts to the west, rubbed her tired eyes and peered into the morning mists. It was much too quiet--something must be happening.
She turned to Niall, who stood nearby with some of his Dragons.
"What's going on?"
Niall jerked his chin down toward the Gate. "The Marbh-draoi would speak with the Ard-rian. Though what he thinks they have yet to say to each other, I do not know."
"Will Aeron speak to him?"
He nodded. "She goes now to the Gate."
O'Reilly waited to hear no more, but thanked him and fled down the long curving wall toward the Gate, arriving in time to see Aeron coming down from Turusachan. Reassured, she looked down over the battlements. Jaun Akhera and an armed escort sat their horses, waiting quietly under a white flag beneath the walls.
To O'Reilly, it was an outrage barely to be borne. There he sat on his horse, immaculate, elegant even, in a fur-trimmed white cloak, with his brother and his generals, and, most brazenly upon his left, the Princess Arianeira on a white stallion.
O'Reilly's gaze flew loyally to Aeron, who now stood on top of the Gate in plain view of all her Kelts and all her enemies, and her heart almost broke.
"She makes all too fine a target," muttered the Fian beside O'Reilly, and the Terran nodded grimly. Then Aeron raised her arm, and Jaun Akhera rode forward alone, and those both upon the walls and before them hushed to hear what those two
would say.
Unlike their previous interview, this time both Aeron and Jaun Akhera knew that the balance of power had altered, and both knew also who it was now held that balance over the other.
He wasted no words this time on courtly civilities, and spoke in Englic to be understood by the greatest number of his hearers.
"Aeron, yield up to me this City, this kingdom and yourself, and I swear to you I will spare your people."
"I have put them that choice already," she replied in the same tongue, her tone clear yet conversational. "And pledged them my word that whatsoever they asked of me, that even would I do."
"And?"
"And they choose to fight on. So long as they do choose so, I shall not lay down my sword to forsake the least, or the last, of my folk."
Jaun Akhera smothered a wave of irritation and reluctant respect. From all that he had heard, she had nearly been killed in that fight with Bres, and Isis alone knew how she had survived, yet here she was, as coolly intransigent as ever.
"If I take this city, Aeron," he said slowly and clearly, "I will take you with it, and I will nail your head above the Gate as I have promised."
On his left, Arianeira shifted in her saddle, and her horse pawed restively, perhaps catching her mood; but she neither spoke nor looked up.
Aeron shrugged. "I had rather have my head on a spike for this quarrel than my portrait in the Emperor's sitting-room."
Behind his brother, Sanchoniathon tried unsuccessfully to suppress a smile: Few people indeed had ever dared to so flout his elder brother, and no doubt Jaun Akhera was finding it almost intolerable.
Though he was unaware of his brother's assessment, Jaun Akhera would have agreed, and he stood in his stirrups to deliver his final words.
"So be it, then, Aeron! Did you not say it yourself--over your blood on the stones of Caerdroia?" He wheeled his horse savagely, cutting its mouth on the bit with the force of his jerk upon the reins, and spurred away, as, above, Aeron jumped down from the crenelation where she had stood. She looked deathly pale, as one who has trodden upon a viper or some other noisome thing, and hands caught her, but she shook them off.
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