They emerged from behind the ice-curtain and skirted the small pool into which the frozen stream vanished. It had begun to snow heavily, the unearthly snowlight that lay on the land dazzling to eyes so long accustomed to the dark.
"Snow," said Morwen, dismayed.
"Our friend the snow," Aeron corrected her. "And see how strong the wind is; our footprints will be cold and covered before our boots are fairly out of them."
They repacked their gear--thoughts of Arianeira, who had furnished it, uppermost in their minds, though neither spoke of her--then masked their faces with the lower part of the furred hoods and went out into the storm, and the driving blizzard blotted their tracks from sight.
*
"I have summoned you here, Prince of Gwynedd, to discuss with you some few points bearing on the nature of your position here."
"Your position also, lord," said Gwydion, undisturbed by Jaun Akhera's threatening overtone. "In certain ways it may be even more precarious a one than my own."
The two princes were in Aeron's marble-walled office, which Jaun Akhera had commandeered for his own use along with the rest of the State Apartments. Gwydion was grateful for the choice of location: The big luxurious room had never been a favorite of Aeron's, and did not carry so vivid an imprint of her to cause him pain as another chamber might have done.
Jaun Akhera scowled. "Yes, well, let us leave that for the moment. You had every chance to escape, yet you deliberately remained in the City and allowed yourself to be taken with Aeron and Morwen. Again, you could have escaped when they did--doubtless your late sister urged you to do so; yet again you stayed. You have a certain value as a hostage, as I need not point out, and I want to know why you chose to remain."
Gwydion laughed. "I would think that to be obvious even to you: so that the Ard-rian of Keltia has a kingdom to come back to."
"If you think to organize a resistance, Gwydion, be warned I will not tolerate it."
"It organizes itself," said Gwydion, still smiling. "How many members of the royal family did you capture? How many officers of the Fianna? How many Kin to the Dragon are still free?" Jaun Akhera was silent. "You see? You cannot hope to stop it; whether I lift a finger or no, it is moving even as we speak. Yours is an army of occupation: You hold, but you have not conquered. Ours is an army of--let us call it suspension. We have been checked, but not destroyed, and certainly not defeated."
"Your Curtain Wall has not been repaired."
He nodded. "And very likely will not be, not even when the last of you is gone from within the Bawn. Long past time those barriers were let fall. Aeron herself said that the Curtain Wall keeps out more than just invaders; it keeps out ideas. But I am more interested in your position, lord. It is true that you hold Caerdroia hostage, indeed the entire Throneworld. But it is equally true that the planet is blockaded. Our forces must regroup in secret on other of our worlds, but your forces cannot be relieved, or at least not without very great cost. You occupy Caerdroia; it is just as accurate to say that you are besieged in it."
Jaun Akhera sat back in the big chair behind the desk, studying the man who faced him with such apparent equanimity.
"Have you no fear for yourself, then? I might find it useful to make an object lesson of the fate of the Prince of Don--the obstructive Prince of Don."
"I think not." Gwydion seemed unconcerned. "If you kill me, you lose a bargaining counter of some importance. More than that, you would lose somewhat of a chance to lure Aeron back. I think you will want to keep me here a while yet."
Jaun Akhera regarded him with exasperation, some amusement and a good deal of grudging admiration.
"Perhaps, Prince Gwydion, you and I may come to be, if not friends, at least, possibly, less bitter enemies."
For the first time in their interview, Gwydion turned the full depth of his gray gaze upon the Imperial heir. In his eyes now was not only the druid-power but the bale-look of one whom Gwyn had touched, and in his voice was all the cold of the stars.
"Sooner will geese grow fur."
Chapter Twenty-six
Aeron trudged up the snowy slope, halting at the crest to try to catch her breath--a difficult feat in the bitter air. The cold was now intense; so white and so still it seared the bone, it burned in silence until one moved, and then it filled laboring lungs with pain like crystal knives.
She looked back to view their progress. They had made a good job of it in the deep snow; another few hours and none would be able to say which way the fugitives had taken. Behind her, the short winter day was falling down to darkness. The sky was clear for the moment of stormclouds, and a huge deep blue shadow hung over much of the dale. From the west came a glow as the sunset layered itself in banks of color, where the cold wind down from the hills had piled great masses of cloud in the lift, gold-barred purple, clear green, frosty red shading upward through rose-light into blue.
"Where are we?" she asked presently.
"Wolfdale," said Morwen. She pulled a water-flask from her pack and passed it first to Aeron. "At least until we cross the Ill Step. After that, Black Sail will shield us until we pass over the Stile and drop down into Upper Darkdale."
Aeron drank sparingly and returned the flask. "And then?"
"And then to Keverango, in the end; a long and weary way. I could wish the secret port had been made more convenient to those who would stand in need of it! We must hope that the others will keep Jaun Akhera's attention away from the south a while yet."
"We must hope so indeed."
Morwen glanced at her friend's face and spoke to what she had really said. "It is not cowardice to flee, Aeron. You should know that by now."
"I thought I did," she said with a bitter laugh. "Come then, Taoiseach, we must find some sort of shelter before dark."
They lay out that night in a small cave Morwen found, at the back of a wild corrie only the winter foxes knew. Even with their furred garments, and the warmth of the hand-crystals from their glaives, the cold was unforgivable. The mountain creaked with it; the frozen tarns rang like slow chimes as the ice shifted, groaning musically.
In the morning, snow lay deeper than ever all round, having fallen again in the night, and the clouds were swagged dark gray above their heads, big-bellied with the promise of more snow to come. The whole valley seemed lit from beneath, and the voice of the little burn rang loud in its ice-cut bed. A wind got up during the forenoon, sweeping down the desolate fells and troubling the deep unfrozen waters of Deer Tarn, that lay on their left as they walked, cold ruffles of foam lying on its black surface like lace on velvet.
This was wild country, and few folk lived here. The valleys closed in toward the northeast, rising in great tumbled slopes of quartzite scree to the huge barren uplands of the central massif of the Loom. From that high purple hub, the Dales radiated out like the spokes of a wheel. Standing across the path Aeron and Morwen now took out of Wolfdale, the giant whaleback of Black Sail loomed like a breaking wave, its sides, usually slate-colored, cloaked now with white.
Looking back, Aeron saw through the lowering clouds the shapes of Traprain Scar, Malisons and the Bellstones, at this distance seeming to be hewn from topaz crystal, rapidly vanishing behind the advancing veils of snow. Then some wind aloft caught the veils aside for a moment, and she saw stand out briefly, far behind them now, the tremendous three-horned bulk of Mount Eagle, Eryri, its mighty back turned toward them across the miles of air.
Only for a moment; then the snow shut down again, the path bent southward; and Aeron could no longer see the mountain upon whose knees her city lay.
*
They had been several hours going down into Darkdale when Aeron, coming down the fellside, lost control of her speed, and plunged through the ice-crust into a crevasse concealed by the drifted snow. The rift swallowed her left leg to the thigh, but she managed by main force and good reflexes to keep her other leg out of the cleft. Morwen floundered through the snow to her side.
"Aeron, are you all right?"<
br />
"I think not." Together they managed to extract her leg from the twisting fissure; once freed, Aeron fell sideways on the snowbank and Morwen eased off the thigh-high cross-gartered snowboot.
"Well," she said after a long anxious silence, "it is certainly not broken, Aeron. Can you walk on it?"
"Let us find out." She tugged the boot back on, stood up and took a few firm steps. "Not well, and not for long. It is the same leg was hurt at Rath na Riogh."
"No matter," said Morwen, trying to conceal her dismay. "I remember from the maps there are farmsteadings not much farther down the dale. There we can get help." If we dare, she thought privately; but this fear she kept to herself.
They went on some while into the morning across Upper Darkdale. For the most part they plodded through the snowy wastes in silence, saving their strength and concentration, but after a while Aeron began to talk.
"Do you ever think of Rhodri, Wenna?" she asked with no preamble.
Morwen, if she had been less cold, would have been chilled to the heart by the strangely casual tone in which her friend had couched the question. Aeron never, never spoke of her dead lord; even to Morwen, Roderick's own sister, Aeron had not once spoken his name since his death. His brother Tarsuinn now bore Roderick's title of Prince of Scots, and it seemed that, to Aeron, none of it had ever been. Though Morwen could understand such a reaction, she herself had, once the first violence of her grief was past, desperately longed to speak of her dead brother to the others who had loved him. But she had been unexpectedly shut out: Aeron was locked away with her own grief and her new sovereignty and the guilt of having killed a planet for revenge; and Gwydion, the only other who shared the full measure of their loss, had likewise withdrawn into himself, going into a Druid monastery for silent retreat. And so Morwen had been forced to turn elsewhere for comfort. She had turned to Fergus, had married him six weeks later, in a whirlwind but undoubted lovematch. Still--
"Often, Aeron," she said at last. "Why do you ask?"
Aeron waved a hand. "No reason, truly. I was but thinking how matters might have fallen out had he been here..."
Alarm flared in Morwen's blue eyes at the offhand conversational mode. Was this uncharacteristic nonchalance, and unprecedented topic, the herald of the snow-sickness? Aeron had nearly died at Tomnahara, had been injured anew at the siege of the City, had lived under crippling stress for weeks. The delirium caused by high altitudes and low temperatures and snow-glare would strike her first, maybe, sooner than Morwen, who if in no better emotional state was at least something sounder.
"Look! A steading!" Morwen pointed down into the dale, all reluctance to approach strangers vanished in the face of this new peril. "Aeron, look--you can see the warm air rising from the hearths."
"I go no farther," said Aeron, in a voice as cold as the air around them, and sat upon a rock, closing her ears to Morwen's entreaties and seeming to drift off into some other reality.
Snow-sickness for sure... "Well, rest here then, and I will go for help," said Morwen doubtfully. "I'll not be long. Aeron? You will stay?" Receiving no answer, she backed away uncertainly, then hurried down the snowy fellside toward the valley bottom.
Coming round a projecting corner of rock, Morwen ran full-tilt into a tall man cloaked and hooded in sheepskin. She stared at him blankly, then he reached out to catch her arms as she swayed on her feet.
"Lassie, are you snow-mazed? How came you here? None has come up the dale past Tintock these ten days gone."
Morwen found her voice. "We--came over the Loom from the City."
"Ah, you flee the fighting, then. Is it that you need refuge? You look to want food and warmth and shelter, certainly, and for those you are welcome to our house."
"I thank you indeed, sir, but the--my sister is still up on the fell, she is too weary to walk any farther."
"Well then, we must fetch her down."
When they reached Aeron, she had fallen into a sort of dreamy doze, and she took no note of their presence. The man lifted her into his arms with no more effort than if she had been an exhausted lamb.
"This one is ill of the snow-sickness," he observed. "And that is not all."
Morwen scrambled alongside him as he strode easily through the drifts. "She fell and hurt her leg. I think it is only strained, but I am no healer or sensitive to tell for certain, and she has raxed that same leg before."
"Well, no great matter. Muscles can be eased, and snow-sickness is a thing that swiftly passes. My wife will care for her."
*
In a very short time they reached the ancient farmstead called Tintock--the House in the Mist. It was a graceful old manor, built of the gray-brown stone of the fells and set within a ring of tall pines. Within, all was snug and warm, with a delicious smell of cooking. Morwen received only a confused impression of greeting by the ban-a-tigh, who spoke her name as Ithell, before Aeron was whisked away into the culist, the traditional best chamber directly behind the enormous freestanding fireplace on the ground floor.
In the warmth of the house Aeron sensed the nearness of others and seemed to come out of her daze. She was half-lying on a soft, wide wall-bed in a room illuminated only by the firelight. Someone had stripped off her snow-sodden outer garments, wrapped her in a soft swanskin plaid to keep the chill away, and was now examining her leg with gentle pressure. She struggled to sit up.
"Nay, lass," came a quick thick country voice. "Lie still now. You've raxed your leg sore, but it will mend quicker if you rest quiet. You are safe here, and your friend with you."
"I put you all in peril," muttered Aeron. "I will go."
"You will not, then! We know all about it, and you will stay here until you are better fit to travel." An old woman's face came into the light; strong of bone and brow, with expressive dark eyes. "I am Ithell, and it was my man Brioc who helped you from the snow."
"Mistress Ithell, you do not understand--"
"We understand very well. You are Aeron the Queen, we knew you as soon as we saw you. The Marbh-draoi has his armies searching for you all over Tara, you and young Morwen. Both of you will be safe hid here for as long as you need."
Aeron felt tears burn behind her eyes. "I cannot thank you as is fit, mistress, for your kindness. But we shall go in the morning all the same."
"Well, I do not argue with my Ard-rian, but we'll leave that till morning, to see how your leg is then. And no need of thanks; are there not still sacred laws that rule such? As well you know, lassie--Lady, rather--no Kelt would turn away any who stood at the door in need, not if the stranger had the blood of his host's father upon his blade. That is the reality of our law, lass, and it does not change in time of testing."
"That indeed I know," said Aeron. "But perhaps I knew it less well than I thought..."
When Ithell had gone, vowing to prepare her guests a meal truly fit for queens, Aeron sat back thankfully, feet to the fire, and listened to the snow seething again on the windows. No trackers would be moving through these storms, even with a clear trail to follow; and the traces of passage she and Morwen had left would have been obliterated within minutes.
And that too was a strange thing, she thought with drowsy wonder. The storms that had saved them had come out of the Hollow Mountains, whence no storm came but that it was called--or sent. And no weather-worker, she knew, had summoned these. Maybe Rohan had been right. Maybe the Shining Ones did fight alongside.
*
In the morning Aeron's leg was much improved, and all trace of the snow-sickness gone; and, over the respectful objections of the folk of Tintock, she and Morwen resolved to continue their flight. Though no guest in Keltia need ever offer payment for hospitality--indeed, even to hint that a guest should feel obligation was an offense of criminal stature--it was nonetheless considered a serious lapse not to offer some token for courtesies rendered and received, and Aeron wished to do so now. Coin would be an unforgivable insult, even though the Ard-rian herself should give it, and in any case they would need
all their store of gold to sustain them off-planet. All the same-—
Aeron unhooked the smallsword from her belt and held it out to Ithell. It was not an heirloom of her House, but Aeron had carried it for years: a weapon of great age and beauty, with heavy silver fittings and blue stones inlaid in patterns, hilted with a single large sapphire.
"Take this and my thanks for the kindness you and your man have shown us. If ever you need a thing, bring it to my brother Rohan, or to Gwydion Prince of Don, and tell them how you came by it; they will know it, and will redeem it for a hundred times its value."
Ithell stared down at the glittering weapon, stammered, "Lady, I cannot accept it! This is too valuable by far! We did only what was right, lassie, and it was joy to do it. To leave you weaponless in your flight--"
Still Aeron held it out to her, smiling. "Take it, my friend. I shall not need it if I win through to Retaliator, and I shall need it still less if I kneel upon Jaun Akhera's scaffold."
*
Far away on Vannin, in the cloister of Glassary, O'Reilly took Desmond's hand.
"You won't forget I'm here?"
His dark eyes lighted as he looked down at her. "No fear of that. I go now to lead my squadron back to Erinna, and then I must go to Rohan as I have been bidden. But I shall see that you receive all news, and I will return as soon as I can. You will do very well here; the Reverend Abbess is foster-kin to Melangell's mother's family, and she will look after you." He kissed her fingers, surprising them both, and was gone in a swirl of brown cloak.
"Gods with you," said O'Reilly softly, and it was the first time she had used the formal Keltic farewell, though he did not hear.
There was a rustle beside her, and she turned to see a tall woman standing a yard away, robed in the soft gray of a Ban-draoi nun. Her face was strong of feature and serene of mood, her eyes clear and of the same gray as her robes.
The Copper Crown Page 39