But it had been there. In Talorcan's eyes, as in his heart, was nothing but purest hatred...
*
And on the bridge of the Firedrake, Rohan stood leaning against the curve of the viewport, his hands hugging his arms and his gaze turned out upon the stars. Desmond stood behind him; the new High Admiral, Caradoc Llassar, had tactfully withdrawn, leaving the cousins alone to speak with each other.
"Then they are gone." said Rohan. "No one knows where?" Desmond shook his head. "It was better so, Gwydion said; in case one of us should be captured, and the Coranian should decide to try to coax the information from our minds."
"Ah gods, Gwydion... Of us all, he has put his hand deepest into the lion's mouth--" For an anguished instant Rohan's despair broke through his control; then the mask, so like his sister's, shut down again over it.
"Truly, Rohan, Gwydion knows very well what he does," offered Desmond, himself feeling as helpless as his cousin. "He it is will be master of Caerdroia in the end, and Aeron with him. You shall see. I have no fears for him."
"You were ever a poor liar, Elharn's son," said Rohan, and the face he turned to Desmond was haunted and haggard. "Nay, cousin," he said in a low voice, turning again to his contemplation of the stars, "I have naught but fears--for any of us..."
*
And alone again in the round room overlooking the sea, Gwydion paced restlessly around the chamber, trying to restore his shattered peace. He had not permitted servitors in since the night of Aeron's flight, and the guards who kept constant watch on him went in too much fear of him, and of the room's absent owner, to dare meddle with anything. Untidy evidences of Aeron's recent occupation were therefore everywhere: a blue leather boot lying under the chair where she had kicked it; a book face-down on the window seat as she had left it; a gold and ruby torc tilting out of a carved casket on the table beside the bed.
Gwydion found the clutter comforting, as if any time now Aeron would be back in the room, to read the book or pull on the boots or fit the torc around her neck. He tipped the necklace inside the casket and closed the lid, catching as he touched the rubies a brief clear picture of the last time Aeron had worn the torc. It was night, and she was laughing up at him...
He smiled at the memory, then laughed in good earnest at another memory: Jaun Akhera's frustration of earlier that day. She had been so clever, his Aeronwy. No one, not even he, had noticed that the Great Seal was no longer on her hand, not until that moment at the Gate when Jaun Akhera had looked for it and it was not there to be found. No, folk had seen what she had wished them to see, and she had left Keltia in his hands--that was the message of the Seal.
Reaching inside his tunic, Gwydion closed his hand over the Dragon medallion that hung on a leather cord against his chest; Aeron's it was, as she wore his. The little silver disks were telepathically keyed each to their owners, and they were not lightly exchanged, for they could be used to speak or to summon, even to compel. But though Gwydion now sent all his considerable strength out to its conscious limits, he could not reach her anywhere, and he knew that she must be truly gone from Keltia.
There were, of course, other possibilities... If she were dead, though, he would know it. No matter the distance, he would feel her going. But no Gwynedd gwrach had been heard on the wind, the royal banshee had not keened, and the Faol-mor, the great wolf that was the fetch of the Aoibhells, had not appeared on Mount Eagle to howl the lament. Gwydion would not need such telling, even so, to know--and if she had been captured, the Imperials would have trumpeted the news to the stars. Nay, she was still alive, still free. But far from him now, very far.
The stars' wandering between us... Suddenly desolate, he caught up the old brown guna from a chair and buried his face in it. Immediately she was there: Her faint sea-rose fragrance still clung to the cloth, and caught in the hood's silver clasp were a few long strands of golden-red hair.
"Oh gods, Aeron," he said aloud, and the wolfhounds looked up sharply at the sound of the familiar name. "What else was I to do? You could not stay, and I could not go with you..."
*
The rain that drenched Caerdroia that night fell, small and fine and softly wetting, on the circle of Ni-Maen, up in its little valley between the peaks of Eagle, the huge blue-gray trilithons gleaming wet and black in the rainy dark.
And the rain fell on the packed earth of a barrow so new it had not yet even been turfed over, a dolmen at its foot, the carving upon the stone knife-bright and sharp from the hand of the graver. Within, Theo Haruko, FSN, slept as peacefully as the royal dead who lay in their own beds beside him.
And the rain fell into the dry bracken more than fifty long leagues to the east, where cairns marked the ashes of the honored fallen below the walls of Rath na Riogh, where neither cairn nor honor graced the grave of Hugh Tindal, unmarked and already forgotten, buried begrudgingly, with less ceremony than a dead beast.
And the rain fell over the leaves of the little wood up behind Turusachan, dripping soundlessly onto the pine-needle carpet of the forest floor that lay, thick and green and velvety, over the grave of Arianeira, a princess of Gwynedd...
*
And in the enormous vault of space, where no rain had fallen since the Beginning nor would even after the End, Aeron stirred upon her couch. She heard through a sleepy dimness Morwen speaking over the transcom in Thari, the secret Fianna battle-language, but her mind refused to decode the words. She started to sit up, but encountered a rigid invisible barrier, and a wave of panic hit her.
"Wenna--"
Morwen was beside her at once. "I am sorry, Aeron. I thought you slept."
"I cannot move--"
"Oh, that is but a restraint field, to keep you still awhile." She switched off the field, and Aeron struggled gratefully up onto one elbow. They had changed into flightsuits upon coming aboard, and the suits were not the most comfortable of sleeping garments.
"I heard you speaking just now?"
"A coded message to the Firedrake, to let Rohan know we are safe away. I used bardic codes; the Imperials will never be able to break it. Also I have altered our trajectory several times, so we cannot be traced; nor answered, for that matter." She paused. "I have been checking the ship's stores. There is gold enough to last us for many months, and food, and both Imperial and Fomori dress. Ari provided well for us."
But Aeron let it pass. "Where are we now?"
"Just heading past Droma."
"Droma!" That was several orbits outward from Tara. "How long did I sleep?"
"No time at all. You forget how fast this ship is, even in space-normal."
"Can you handle her?" asked Aeron presently, a bit jealous.
"Easily. Except that--Aeron, I could not go into hyperspace, because I do not know where we are going."
"Not hard." She pushed herself up on the pillows, tucking her feet beneath her in her usual posture, and smiled at her friend's bewilderment. "Well, though I say it as never thought to, we are going for help. We are going to find Arthur."
For a moment Morwen watched her expectantly, waiting for more, or for clarification. Then--
"Arthur! Arthur the King? But he has been dead these fifteen hundred years!"
"Well, so we must assume... But if he himself is dead, Morwen, his ship Prydwen may not be. And he took things with him on that last sailing may save Keltia for us now--if only we can find them."
Morwen frowned, obscurely troubled. She had heard, of course, as no Kelt had not, of Prydwen and the lost Treasures: magical things, sacred things, things that ought not to be used for vengeful purposes...
"Do you know, then, where the ship may lie?"
"Let us say I have a good idea of where to begin to seek it."
"You do? You do," amended Morwen thoughtfully, studying her Queen's smiling face. "What will you do with the Treasures, if we find them?" Her voice came slow and doubtful, and Aeron answered the reason for the doubt.
"It is not like Bellator, Wenna, not this time... I will use them
to save Keltia. I will use them to win back my crown." Aeron's smile had turned wintry. "I will use them to make myself Empress."
"But in Council you said you had no wish to be Empress!"
"And no more do I now. But even more than I wish not to be Empress, do I wish Jaun Akhera not to be Emperor. And if I must seize some form of Imperial sovereignty--even his--to stop him, be very sure I will."
Morwen fiddled with her betrothal ring, as she did when upset, and did not look up. "And after that?"
"After that--I do not yet know. But I will know..."
They spoke no more for a little while, as Retaliator raced through the fringes of the Throneworld system and headed out into empty space, on its way toward the Curtain Wall and the world beyond that was not Keltia.
"How did you learn where we must search for Prydwen?" asked Morwen at last.
"I was told, and we are sent."
"Who sends us?"
"The Shining Ones."
"Who told you?"
"Gwyn ap Neith."
"What shall we use for maps?"
"Taliesin ap Gwyddno, greatest of bards, shall be our guide. In his histories of Arthur--there is a poem--but I shall show you all presently. We must sail in strange places, Wenna, if I am right in my reading. To, and through, the Morimaruse; to the planet Fomor, very like--"
"Fomor!"
"Perhaps even to Kholco," continued Aeron. In spite of her cares, her face sparkled with anticipation. "Where only the Salamandri, the Firefolk, do live; the oceans boil there, it is said, and the lands sail upon seas of liquid stone. And before we are done, we may well come to Earth herself... Oh, Wenna, to see Earth! Where we came from, and where Brendan was born, and Theo--"
She fell abruptly silent, and Morwen, sensing her wish, left her to her thoughts and went back to the cockpit.
Alone again in the little cabin, Aeron thrust her hand inside her flightsuit to touch the silver medallion that lay on its silk cord between her breasts. It was too far a stretch even for her, she could not reach him--but she could conjure him, not the austere prince nor the deft politician nor the consummate warrior, but the real Gwydion that she loved...
"Oh, beloved," she said aloud, "And so I will take my own other hand, to touch this life once more..."
*
So now across the hollow dark three ships did move; they went with purpose and celerity, and they went each alone.
Not so swift nor so elegant as Retaliator, nor yet so deadly, the Sword continued on her way to Earth. In their coldsleep bunks, Straloch and Fionnuala, Morgan and Emrys, all slept in the same bright dream-filled peace as Mikhailova and Hathaway, and around them the Sword sailed herself home without fuss...
And far across the long lazy arc of the galactic spiral arm, another ship, bigger and faster and altogether more impressive, was preparing to leave its home system. Upon its hull it bore galactic ensigns of embassy, and it carried a hundred people, all of them very much awake. The Earth ambassador's vessel, for such it was, had departed the Terran starharbor some four local days ago, and now it was sweeping past the dark ringed giants that graced Sol system's outer orbits. Soon it would swing its bows to Keltia, and go into the hyperdrive that would bring it there in a thousand hours...
And in Retaliator, Aeron had taken the helm. They were nearing the Curtain Wall now, the familiar blue werelight of the energy barrier showing clear on Retaliator's screens. It shimmered and flared around the ship for an instant, and then they were through.
Aeron put her ship's nose to the distant Morimaruse, then stared at the screen that showed Keltia receding rapidly astern.
"Se do bheatha," said Aeron to Keltia as it fell away behind her. Then she lifted her eyes to the viewports ahead and sent Retaliator into hyperdrive.
The stars became a blazing lattice of smudged light, set with milky jewels at the interstices, and the heavens rolled tremendously into new patterns around them: the same constellations seen by Brendan, and by Arthur. And now Aeron too had taken them for guide, bound as she was to seek help from the past--and from the unknown.
(Here ends The Copper Crown, a book of THE KELTIAD. The sequel is called The Throne of Scone.)
* * *
Appendices
History of the Tuatha De Danaan and the Keltoi
The Tuatha De Danaan, the People of the Goddess Dana, arrived on Earth, as refugees from a distant star system whose sun had gone nova. They established great city-realms at Atlantis, Lemuria, Nazca, Machu Picchu, and other centers of energy. It was an age of high technology and pure magic: lasers, powered flight in space and in atmosphere, telepathy, telekinesis and the like. There was some minimal contact with the primitive Terran native inhabitants, who, awed, regarded the lordly Danaans as gods from the stars.
*
After many centuries of peace and growth, social and spiritual deterioration set in: faction fights, perversion of high magical techniques, civil war. The Danaan loyalists withdrew to the strongholds of Atlantis, or Atland as they called it, there to fight their last desperate battle with those of their own people who had turned to dark ways. Atlantis was finally destroyed, in a fierce and terrible battle fought partially from space, and which resulted in a huge earthquake and subsequent geologic upheaval that sank the entire island-continent. (The battle and sinking of Atlantis were preserved in folk-myth around the world; obviously the effect on the Earth primitives was considerable.)
The evil Atlanteans, the Telchines, headed off back into space: their descendants would later be heard of as the Coranians. The Danaan survivors made their way as best they could over the terrible seas to the nearest land--Ireland--and to the other Keltic sea-countries on the edge of the European land mass. There had long been Atlantean outposts in these lands, and they made a likely refuge.
But the refugees had yet another battle to fight: with the Fir Bolg and the Fomori, the native tribes currently in occupation of Ireland. Atlantean technology carried the day, however, and the Danaans settled down to rebuild their all-but-lost civilization.
*
After a long Golden Age, the Danaan peace was shattered by invasion: the Milesians, Kelts from the European mainland. War exploded; the new race was clever, brave, persuasive and quarrelsome. The Danaans, at first victorious in defense, were at last defeated by the strategies of the brilliant Druid Amergin. They conceded possession of Ireland to the sons of Miledh, and obtained sureties of peace.
The peace and amity between Danaans and Milesians lasted many hundreds of years; there was much intermarriage, informational exchange, joint explorative and military expeditions against raiding Fomori and Fir Bolg. Then a period of Milesian distrust turned to outright persecution, and the Danaans began to withdraw to live strictly isolated, although even then there continued to be marriages and friendships and associations. With the coming of Patrick to Ireland, bringing Christianity, the persecutions resumed with redoubled intensity, as Patrick and his monks called upon all to denounce the Danaans as witches and evil sorcerers.
*
Brendan, a nobleman of the House of Erevan son of Miledh, was also half-Danaan by birth--and more than half one in spirit. His mother was Nia, a Danaan princess, and he had been taught by her in the old ways. He rebelled against the persecutions, the narrow-mindedness and prejudice and condemnation of all the high old knowledge, and he resolved to relearn all the ancient lore, to build ships and take the Danaans back out to the stars, to find a new world where they could live as they pleased. All who felt as Brendan did might go, and did: Druids, priestesses of the Mother, worshippers of the Old Gods and followers of the Old Ways, all now so ruthlessly put down by the Christians.
After much study, instruction, construction and a few short trial runs, Brendan was ready at last, and the Great Emigration began. Following the directions of Barinthus, an old man who was probably the last space voyager left on Earth, Brendan and his followers left the planet. After a two-year search, they discovered a habitable star system a thousand light-years fr
om Terra. He named it New Keltia; eventually Keltia, as it came to be known, would command seven planetary systems and a very sizable sphere of influence.
*
The emigrations continued in secret over a period of some eight hundred years, with Kelts from every Keltic nation participating in the adventure, and not human Kelts alone; the races known as the merrows and the silkies also joined the migrations.
After the first great voyage, or immram, Brendan himself remained in the new worlds, organizing a government, ordering the continuing immigrations, setting up all the machinery needed to run the society he had dreamed of founding: a society of total equality of gender, age, nationality and religion. He personally established the Order of Druids in New Keltia; his mother, Nia, who left Earth with him, founded the Ban-draoi, an order of priestess-sorceresses.
Brendan, who would come to be venerated by succeeding generations as St. Brendan the Astrogator, became the first monarch of Keltia, and his line continues to rule there even now.
*
By about Terran year 1200, the Keltic population had increased so dramatically (from both a rising birth rate and continued waves of immigration from Earth) that further planetary colonization was needed. The Six Nations were founded, based on the six Keltic nations of Earth: Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Man, Cornwall and Brittany, called in Keltia Erinna, Scota, Kymry, Vannin, Kernow and Brytaned. A ruling council of six viceroys, one from each system, was set up, called the Fainne--"The Ring." The monarchy continued, though the Fainne had the ultimate sovereign power at this time.
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