The Copper Crown

by Patricia Kennealy-Morrison

  Jaun Akhera dragged his eyes away from the green gleam of the emerald. Without that Seal, he had no access to any of Keltia's documents or databanks or military records or treasuries or any other thing of import. But, just as plainly, without Gwydion he had not even the smallest possibility of access...

  "Will it not?" he asked quietly. "At least, Prince of Gwynedd, not yet."

  He went back down the stairs, and Gwydion went with him.

  *

  After a bare four hours' rest, Morwen's time sense roused her, and she shook Aeron awake in turn. They saddled the horses and were riding down the mountain's far side by midnight.

  As dawn broke they came to the coast. The rising sun flung a cold gold glory across the waters, and like a flat blue shield in the southeast the isle of Imaal rose up out of the morning mists.

  Here the mountains of the Dragon's Spine fell away sheer into the waters of a vast, almost circular bay. Across the south-facing curve of the cliff where they stood, a tiny track clung, almost invisible among the tumbled scree and tough stonevine.

  Aeron pointed across the bay. "That is the way we must go. Once by that headland, we can come down upon Keverango from the north, and still remain unseen as we do so."

  "Aye, but we can take the horses no further. The path is too steep for them to cross, and any road I'd not abandon them at Keverango to be ill-treated by Imperials. They will find their way home well enough."

  To that Aeron agreed at once. They dismounted, removing the sheepskin saddles from the beasts that had served them so well on the long hard flight. They made much of the animals, with many affectionate pats and words of praise, and were just removing the headstalls when Aeron suddenly froze. A few seconds later, the horses shied violently, snorting with terror and prancing nervously sideways. The sea beneath them seemed to hush, and no birds sang. Morwen turned, puzzled, to her friend.

  "Aeron?"

  Before the word was full-spoken she heard the answer: a long slow roar that sounded as if it came from the very depths of the earth. Which in truth it did: The mountain reeled beneath them. All around bounced small boulders and loose scree, shaken from the slopes by the earthquake that now billowed under the fugitives' feet. The horses screamed in fear, and, ripping free of the headstalls, bolted away back through the pass. At the first tremor, Aeron flung herself face down upon the breast of the mountain, pulling Morwen with her, and they lay unmoving until the first shock had passed.

  "Is that it?" whispered Morwen in the huge shaking silence. "Is it over?"

  "Not yet. Come quickly, we must cross the path before it falls away, or worse."

  They grabbed what gear they could carry and half-ran, half-slipped along the track that led vertiginously out over the roiled waters of the bay. Another quake came, stronger; this time, trapped on the narrow path, they were helpless, and could only close their eyes against the likelihood that the mountain would pitch them from their precarious foothold into the sea.

  At last that quake too ceased, and Aeron moved out cautiously along the talus-choked track. Her face showed that she expected worse to come, and Morwen plucked at her cloak.

  "What is it?"

  For answer Aeron pointed out to sea, and Morwen understood. Something had happened to the horizon, for she could no longer see it. A giant fold of the sea seemed to have been pinched upward, a smooth blue swelling that suddenly burst into white plumage on top. All the water in the bay beneath them trembled and fell away, sucked out by the approaching monster.

  "The earthquake has troubled the ocean bed, and now the water will come, and quickly too."

  It came almost quicker than she could speak of it. Again they flattened themselves against the rock face, thanking the gods that the part of the path where they chanced to be trapped was above the reach of the coming wave.

  But only barely higher: One after another, glass-green and colossal, the tremendous wave and its successors swept roaring by, only a few yards away.

  "We cannot cross," said Morwen. She pointed; the path ahead wound upward to safety, but first it angled sharply out and down, disappearing regularly in the foaming skirtedge of the tidal waves as each moved majestically past.

  "We must cross." Aeron flinched as another wave surged through the bay to crash in thunder on the far shore.

  "Is there nothing you can do, Aeron?" begged Morwen. "Neither of us can endure very much more of this..." Her voice shook as she spoke and her face was wet with the spray that came hissing off the waves.

  Aeron did not reply straightaway to her friend's plea. She possessed, by both art and nature, a strange inborn affinity with the forces that shaped the lands and moved in the waters, a more than animal instinct that had enabled her to sense the coming quake even before the horses. But that same sensitivity worked to her detriment once the event was at hand, and now she was deathly sick with her own reaction to the earth's torment. She barely heard Morwen's voice imploring her to action. But, far from subsiding, the waves were only growing huger; perhaps, out to sea, the earth tremors had not ceased. And her nerves were as ragged as Morwen's, not with the earth-sickness alone, but with a race-memory preserved thirteen thousand years from the drowning of doomed Atland; the inherited terror of the great waves that had taken all but a few of her people...

  But Morwen was right. They could ill bear more of this, and they must pass.

  Aeron unclenched her fingers where they had dug into the face of the cliff, and stepped out onto the path. It was streaming with cold salt water, and out to sea another set of waves was forming. She lifted her arms in front of her and spoke a short rann.

  Morwen watched in real awe as the water fell away; the waves seemed to hang back, and the path to safety lay clear and temporarily dry before them.

  "Hurry, Wenna," gasped Aeron. "The rann will not keep the water back for long."

  Morwen needed no second telling. But Aeron was nearly spent--She caught her under the arms and dragged her along the cliff-path, to where a tunnel had been cut through an outcrop of stone to the other, inland side.

  They were barely in time. Angry, perhaps, at having been balked, the wave now approaching was twice the size of the biggest that had yet struck. It would cover the path completely as it passed. In a panic Morwen pushed Aeron ahead of her into the tunnel mouth, leaped in after her, and by main force threw both of them as far down the passage as she could.

  They felt rather than saw the wave pass, for its might shook the mountain to the roots, and its passing tore the air from the tunnel for a moment. A moment only, then it was gone; the vacuum broke, and the air rushed back as a torrent of cold seawater and broken stone surged into the tunnel. It reached to their knees, and the force of it knocked them off their feet. For a moment they floundered splashing in it; then it drained away, and Morwen scrambled unsteadily to her feet.

  "Aeron!"

  "Over here." Aeron pushed herself upright against the wall of the tunnel, and gave her friend a tired smile. "I hope the horses got away."

  "They'll come safe home, Aeron. You will see."

  "Please gods, I shall."

  *

  After a brief rest and a quick meal, they used hand-crystals to dry out their packs and clothing, and then started on the last leg of their long flight. Toward noon they lay hidden on the slopes of the mountain that towered over Keverango on the north.

  "We should stay here until it is full dark," said Morwen. "And you need some rest. Go to sleep, and I will watch a while."

  Aeron was too tired to argue; Morwen made her as comfortable as she could, then settled down herself to her vigil. Clouds began to roll in from the south; at least they would help to make the night as dark as possible, though they would also, very like, make the hours till then damp and chill...

  As the skies darkened to evening, Aeron woke, much refreshed, to a hand on her shoulder.

  "Is it time? You should have roused me earlier, you are as weary as I."

  "Not quite--but look below." Down in the cleft
of the glen, lights were coming on in the buildings of the spacebase. They gathered up all their gear, to leave no trace that they had been there, and began to move carefully down the mountain.

  Three hours later they lay concealed among boulders and high ferns on the edge of the base. Keverango was small as such ports went, tucked away among shielding mountains and open on one side to the sea. Built in the reign of Aeron's great-grandfather to the fifth Brendan XXVIII, it had been maintained ever since as a center of clandestine operations. But its chief purpose, now as then, was to serve as a possible escape hatch in the face of such calamity as had now befallen Brendan's descendant.

  But neither Aeron nor Morwen thought much on this, as they lay hidden in the scrub. Presently Morwen nudged her friend, and jerked her chin silently toward the base.

  As Arianeira had said, Keverango was indeed garrisoned by Imperial troops, though, again as Ari had said, not many, and not heavily armed. At the moment, all the personnel in sight appeared to be going into the main hall, no doubt for the nightmeal. Only four guards could be seen, all of them at some distance from Aeron's ship Retaliator, which stood alone in an apparently disused area of the main field.

  "That at least is well," said Aeron. "And the ship looks spaceworthy enough--but how are we to reach it? It must be half a lai away, and there is no cover."

  Morwen studied the bracken in front of her nose. "I thought perhaps you could--do something again?"

  Oh gods, not more magic ... "If I had the time and strength for such a spell as that which we need here, I had done it long since, Wenna," she said gently. "And we'd not have had to fret ourselves with that trooper or with Borvos... the rann for quieting the water is a cantrip by comparison to a rann of control."

  Aeron rested her chin on the boulder she leaned against. There was one thing she might try: the fith-fath, the shapeshifting spell. It was not especially difficult, but something tricky of sustaining, and exhausting in the end if it had to be long maintained. Still, it would be for but a few minutes and a short distance, and she would have to cast the illusion only for those few guards--not so taxing as if the entire garrison should be watching. And she could rest after...

  "Aye, then," she said. "Gather our things, and be ready to run when I say." She raised her fingertips to her temples and closed her eyes. Strength suddenly flooded into her from some unknown source; she swayed with the unexpected force of it, and Morwen watched her closely. "Now."

  Even as they ran, Morwen looked down at herself, then over at her friend.

  "We are unchanged, Aeron."

  "Only to our own eyes. It is less strainful so. But to any who see us, we appear as wolves."

  Wolves... "Was that your best choice?"

  "It was my easiest. Now be silent. It is not a true fith-fath, but glamourie only, and I have not changed our voices."

  As it turned out, only one guard saw them pass; and he saw not two fleet gray forms, but three, the third a huge brindled male, twice as big as the others...

  They ducked around the side of the ship away from the rest of the base, panting a little from the long run. Moving forward along the line of the hull, Aeron set her bare palm to a silver plate waist-high in the seamless black metal. Doors slid aside where no doors had been before, and they tumbled through into the ship.

  Once within, Morwen helped Aeron to a blastcouch, then ran forward to the cockpit. Lying in white exhaustion upon the couch, her strength all but gone, Aeron felt from what seemed a million miles away the motion of Retaliator rising beneath her; then that was replaced by the motionless illusion that was true flight, as Morwen threw in all power to get them out of the planet's pull. They flashed beneath the Criosanna and were away.

  Epilogue

  And now all the threads that the gods had spun were strung upon the frame of the loom, all their color and gleam and complexity planned into the pattern, the weaving begun in true earnest...

  On the mist-mantled planet of Vannin, O'Reilly walked in the cloisters of Glassary, looking out across the shining sea-loch toward blue hills. Around her, the gray-clad Sisters of the Ban-draoi moved and worked and prayed, with no more noise or fuss than one of their planet's mists.

  There was more than a touch of envy in the look O'Reilly bent upon them. Though utterly elsewhere, they seemed so--here, so all of a piece, while she herself was sadly scattered. Part of her was here, and part on its way to Earth with those who sailed the Sword, and part at Caerdroia with Gwydion and the ghost of Haruko, and part--a rather larger part than she was at present prepared to admit--was with Desmond on his way to the Firedrake. But the largest part, the central part, the part most to the forefront of both her conscious and unconscious minds, was with Aeron. And O'Reilly didn't even know where that might be...

  *

  And at Caerdroia. Jaun Akhera looked out at the winter rain that had been falling steadily upon the City since midday. Was the weather here never any better than this, he wondered, vexed. He had never been so damp and so cold in his life, he was chilled to the bone. Why couldn't the Kelts have built their capital somewhere warm and dry and sunny? But no, that was undoubtedly not perverse enough for them.

  He had been in an evil temper all day, ever since Gwydion had shown him where the Great Seal of Keltia had been hidden. Hidden! He laughed bitterly. He could see it, plain as salt, any time he wanted... and he could come no closer to it than if it had been on the other side of the universe.

  Still, all was not black. He held the City, and all within it, and most particularly Gwydion Prince of Don; and while he did so no Kelt would lift a hand against him.

  Not even Aeron, presumably. But what about Aeron? His soldiers had scoured the lands in all directions around Caerdroia, and found no trace of her. He shrugged impatiently: If she had died in the escape attempt, and Morwen Douglas with her, so much the better. If not, no doubt but that he would know of it in very good time; she would raise a stour that would be heard from one end of the galaxy to the other.

  His thought veered to his grandfather. He must get a message out to him, somehow, as soon as he could; a carefully worded message, of course, since as yet he had not succeeded in all that he had so rashly promised.

  For a moment, the thought of Alphor overwhelmed him with longing: Escal-dun, his home, and Tinao--the way she had been when last he had seen her, all smooth honey skin glowing through white silk, her hair tumbled about her.

  Jaun Akhera pressed interlaced fingers to the back of his neck, banishing the tension that knotted the muscles of his shoulders. They were waiting on him for the nightmeal, Sancho and Hanno and the others, and finally he headed reluctantly toward the small banqueting hall he had taken over for his own use.

  But a small corner of his mind remained on Alphor--and on his grandfather. The Cabiri Emperor had his own ways of gathering information, even when--especially when--the information was not over-eager for itself to be gathered...

  *

  And on the Imperial planet of Alphor, in his garden city of Escal-dun, the Cabiri Emperor lay upon his golden longchair, feeding the carp that lived in the lilied pool. Strephon's eyes were half-closed, and at first any who watched would have said that he slept.

  But then suddenly his hand would move, a flick quick as a fish's tail, and the golden carp would rise goggling to the surface, their fat glistening bodies crowding each other aside in their haste to mouth the bits of soft bread.

  And sometimes his hand would flick, and there would be no bread at all falling from his fingers, but the fish would contend for the nonexistent morsels just the same.

  For you never know, thought Strephon lazily, and his eyes gleamed like opals under the hooded parchment lids. It might be there, and then again it might not. You have to try regardless, because fish or princeling, you just never know...

  And again at Escal-dun, in another part of the sprawling white palace, deep behind the aurichalcum walls, where pierced grillwork windows cast lacy shadows upon mosaic floors, Tinao wrapped herself in a
big-sleeved robe of stiff yellow silk and sat down before the computer. Her gold-tipped fingers thrummed expertly over the touchboard, and presently data began to flow across the viewscreens, beneath the hologram portrait of a red-haired, green-eyed queen...

  *

  And on Fomor, in the royal city of Tory, the crown of his ancestors was set upon Elathan's head. He looked out over the heads of the cheering crowds in the huge square before the palace, then smiled as Camissa, first of all his subjects, came forward to do reverence to her newly crowned King and future husband. Her eyes cast demurely down, her dark head bowed beneath a diamond coronet, she gave him a deep, billowing curtsy, then took her place upon a gold chair set slightly below and to the left of his jewel-encrusted throne, for they were not yet wedded, and she could not yet share honors as his queen.

  And Elathan's mother came forward, the Dowager Queen Basilea, her face full of loving maternal pride, her curtsy straight-backed and regal. And his sister the Princess Rauni, tall, coltish, honey-haired, who winked at him as she rose from her obeisance.

  And Talorcan came forward, splendidly attired in crimson velvet slashed with gold, and knelt before his half-brother, placing his hands between Elathan's own in the age-old ritual of fealty. He took the oath in a clear carrying voice, and the face he turned up to his monarch's kiss of peace was correct and cold. Only the eyes were alive, and in time to come Elathan would have cause to remember the expression those eyes had held; although he had not believed it at the time, and so swiftly was it gone that he could not say it had truly been there.