The Silver Branch, page 26
part #3 of The Tales of Aeron Series
They were waiting for her, their faces masked, one on each side of the narrow opening that was the only entrance or egress to the clochan, the beehive-shaped stone structure that stood on the side of the hill. There were other clochans in the country round Caer Artos, some in the high hills, some on the foreshore of the nearby sea, some in the deeps of the woods. But it was to this one that Aeron had been commanded by the Diceltair; she stood before it now, summoning the courage to step inside.
No haste, she told herself. I may choose my own time to enter; though to delay overlong is as gross a failing as to enter overhastily. She studied the structure: Built of dressed gray granite, the clochan rose to a height of perhaps twenty feet; a leather curtain covered the doorway, and from around its edges seeped blue smoke.
A puff of wind carried the smoke to Aeron then, and her throat constricted at the acrid smell of it: heavy incense mixed with certain herb powders of known properties—athair-talam, dubh-cosac, archmain, aquilegia, thale; all the mind-altering drugs of the Fianna pharmacopeia, to be used in today’s test, the test of soul, that there might be induced in her what visions should come.
Gathering herself together, Aeron stepped forward to the doorway—low of lintel, she must bend her neck to enter—and unbuckled her cloak. One of the doorwards took it from her; beneath, she was clad in a straight-cut plain red robe, her feet bare. Red, the color of death, for this is a little-death here; the death of my novice self, my rebirth as a true Fian, if I am found worthy… She shivered a little, recalling another initiation, another little-death. Only then I was robed in black, and it was Tybie led me to it. Today, I must lead myself…
With a deep breath she ducked her head to enter the clochan; the warders caught back the leather curtain for her, then closed it behind her, and Aeron was alone inside the stone bell. She glanced upward, to the small high opening through which came the only light and air; then her eyes went farther, to the neat joined ceiling, not a dab of mortar in it—the stones had been fitted together solely in the shaping, so tightly that even rainwater could find no way inside.
She started at a sound from behind: Outside, the doorwards were lacing a wicker shield over the entrance; at the test’s end, should she succeed, she would cut her way back out to daylight with the sword that lay in a niche of the rear wall.
Aoife’s weapon, though I do not yet have the right to touch it… Aeron looked reverently upon the gleaming findruinna blade, the black hilt, the pommel tipped with a single huge red gem. That had been a surprise from Struan, a gift for luck and confidence from master to pupil: He had obtained permission from mac Avera that Aeron should use her great-grandmother’s sword, and had then himself begged the weapon of Fionnbarr, arguing that it was only fitting for Keltia’s next Ard-rían to use in her test the blade that had belonged to the latest, and the King had agreed.
In front of the niche that held the sword was a small bronze tripod censer filled with smoldering incense, and before that again stood a light wicker bier, of the sort used for Fian funeral rites in time of war: low, six-legged, its joints whipped round with leather.
Aeron stared at the bier, suddenly glad that neither Gwydion nor Roderick had kept to their usual custom and come to Caer Artos to watch the tests. It would have been too much for me, and for Wenna too; we would not have been strengthened by their presence, only distracted—thank gods they seem to have realized that, or perhaps Denzil or mac Avera did warn them away. Whatever, it is best they are not here…
But the drugs in the smoke were beginning to work upon her, and she knew she had not much time. Gathering the red robe around her, Aeron lay down upon the wicker bier and commanded herself to calmness. Directly above her, the sacred smoke curled and eddied and then closed like a ghostly hand round her throat. Looking up to the ceiling, she could see the tiny window being covered over from outside; then the smoke took her to another place.
•
Her Ban-draoi instruction, and her immram especially, had given Aeron good grounding in soul-travel; though the techniques used here were different, and the planes attained to also unlike, for the first stages it felt comfortingly familiar, and she let herself run out upon the spiral in the way she knew so well.
Some, the Fian instructors had warned, had not survived this test: Their bodies could not marshal the drugs properly, or their minds could not withstand the visions that were revealed in the marbh-aisling, the dreaming-death. But such tragedies were comparatively rare: If the candidate were destined not to succeed, it generally happened that he or she would simply fall asleep in trance and wake up a day or so later little the worse for it—save of course that the test had been failed.
But if the test of soul carried then the most danger, it carried also the most mystery, the true meaning of Fianship; and, pass or fail, no candidate had been known to speak of it after. Not even to the Fian instructors, nor the Diceltair, nor the Captain-General himself; what happened in the stone clochans was forever after a matter between the Fian aspirant and the gods who guided the test. Fionn himself, it might be, thought Aeron muzzily, and of him at least I have no fear; or others of his companions, Coll or Diarmid or Caoilte. For a woman, Morna or Turenn, or maybe Sorcha or Saive… She reached out with her spirit; a calling that was more than prayer: Macha Ruadh, you who are the Red War-crow; Nia the Golden, you who are my foremother; Aeron whose name means Goddess of Slaughter, you whose namesake I am, hear and help.
She could not feel her body any longer, could not smell the incense nor see the inside walls of the clochan. She seemed to be suspended in some vast hollow blackness, wide and deep as the mouth of a giant bell, and the slightest touch of thought set the bell to whispering. Though Aeron strove to still her mind as she knew she must, the faint chiming grew to a roar, and when it had filled all her head, and all the clochan, and all the world beside, suddenly it stopped; and in the giant booming silence it left in its wake, Aeron was there again.
But no longer alone: One sat now just within the door, sat very still indeed for Aeron not to have noticed before now. Or perhaps there had been no one, not until this moment; perhaps there was still no one, and the form she thought she saw was but hallucination. She could not think clear for the sick spinning in her brain; all her inner defenses, even her strongest Ban-draoi shields, seemed open to this one who sat so still and said no word. Perhaps he—or she—has no need to ask; perhaps at this very moment I am somehow saying all that needs to be heard…
Aeron forced her mouth and tongue to shape the words. “Who is there?”
The answer came at once, low and unemphatic. “I am the Red Listener.”
“What do you hope to hear?”
“I listen for your choice: victory or destruction.”
“No choice there.”
“There is also the choice of the coward: the choice of refusing to choose.”
The words struck Aeron with a sense of inevitable rightness she knew she would never be able to explain—or recall, even—with her everyday consciousness; knew too that this Red Listener—man or woman, god or mortal or creation of her own deep soul—was the Inquisitioner promised in the test. She and the other candidates had always assumed that their Inquisitioner would be a sorcerer, some Druid or Ban-draoi or Dragon Kin—at least a fellow mortal; but perhaps they had been wrong in those assumptions. And suddenly Aeron knew why no candidate had been known to speak of this moment once the moment was gone. It may not be the same for each of us; what I am given to see and hear does surely differ from that which the others are shown; but howsoever it may choose to clothe itself surely this truth is the same for us all. And this truth of Aeron’s would observe her in her trial, would without a question asked have of Aeron all the answers required, and would be the one in whom Aeron would see for herself, as in the most clear and perfect of mirrors, how she was made and how she would fare at the test.
“Then,” said Aeron, and knew she spoke aloud, “then hear what I do choose—”
•
Standing impassive and unwearied to their posts, as they had done for near seven hours, the doorwards were not surprised to hear behind them a sound as of sudden fire, a rippling brittle snap as the wicker shield was cut away from within, the shining blade of Aoife’s sword cleaving through willowwork and leather lacings alike; then they were free to assist gladly, pulling away the remnants of shield, tearing down the leather curtain that hung now in tatters over the entrance.
Aeron stood in the doorway, her great-grandmother’s sword in her hand; and perhaps a little of her great-grandmother’s look in her face, for the two Fians who had kept the door against her stepped back now and were silent.
Then mac Avera himself was there, with Denzil and Struan a little behind him. The Captain-General and his newest Fian looked long at each other; both were apparently satisfied with what they saw, for a smile broke over mac Avera’s face, and a matching one lighted Aeron’s, and he gave her then the words she had fought three years to hear.
“If armed service be thy design, thou hast won it. Be welcome among us, thou of the tribe of Fionn.”
Chapter 22
Though the case was otherwise for most of her classmates, as she had so long ago lamented, the winning of Fianship by no means signalled the end of Aeron’s education. So after the celebrating was done, when the others departed Caer Artos to embark upon their active military service, Aeron went instead to the brehons, those revered lawgivers out of the most ancient Keltic past, to study with them for a year’s time at the Hill of Laws on Arvor: a year that she for her part found more demanding by far than the whole of the past three had been, as the energies that had been turned to winning the victory in combat were turned now to winning battles of a different sort.
“Still, it is not so bad as I had thought to find it,” admitted Aeron to Morwen, one day late in the term when her friend had come on a visit to the place where she herself had spent so many years. “And by no means so bad as you, Wenna Douglas, did give me cause to think—I must mind me never again to give such heed to your complainings.”
Morwen was unabashed. “Oh aye, easy enough for you to say, Aeron; you have only to spend a twelvemonth here, and most of that already gone. But I was here six long years together, and must yet return for another two. It is a thing I am resigned to, but not a thing I take much pleasure in.”
“You will be pleased enough when it brings you to enrobement as a brehon, and brings us two together again at Turusachan,” remarked Aeron, unmoved by her friend’s display. “As chief advisor to the Tanista, when my household is assembled—well, I know I shall be glad of it.”
“And so shall I,” conceded Morwen, giving over the mock annoyance. “It is just that it seems so far away—But if we speak of those who will join your household, what of our own fostern? What do you hear of Arianeira all this time?”
Aeron frowned. “Very little. I myself have not been the best of correspondents, but Ari has answered not one in ten of the messages I did send her.”
“And what do you hear of her brother?”
Aeron shot a sharp glance at her friend, but Morwen’s face was as studiedly innocent as her tone had been bland. Instead, Aeron startled them both with her answer, a question in its turn.
“How is Rhodri these days? He sent me no song for my birthday, and that is the first time he has failed to do so since all of us were together at Kinloch Arnoch. I do not know whether to be cross at his forgetting or worried that something is amiss with him.”
“Naught amiss; but I fear that birthday remembrances—even yours—are not to the fore of his mind just now,” said Morwen. Her blue eyes lifted involuntarily to the sky, as if to seek out her brother’s current whereabouts; but it was midafternoon, and no stars were to be seen. She sighed a little. “He has full command of a star-squadron—as I hear so also does Gwydion—and both of them have been in the thick of heavy action against the Phalanx, in the Protectorate sector of Lavellan. He does well as commander, I am told.”
“And why should he not? He excelled at Caer Artos—as also did Gwydion.”
“So he did.” Morwen put aside her reluctance to inquire into matters her friend did not choose to speak of. “I make no special pleading for Roderick, Aeron, my brother though he be; his deeds and virtues speak for themselves. But it has been long thought of, and accepted by many, that you and he should come to reign together. We have never spoken of it, he and I, so I do not know what he himself may think or feel or wish; and you and I ourselves have never spoken of it save in jest—”
“And you wish to speak of it now in good earnest.” Aeron in her turn looked up at the cloudless blue above them. “Fair enough… What I feel for Rhodri,” she began slowly, as if she herself had not yet fully fathomed the thing out, “is by no means the same as that which I feel for Gwydion. They are both so infinitely worthy, and so infinitely different—almost it seems, if such a thing were possible, that I do love them both.” She gave Morwen a glance that could have been defiance, or apology, or guilt, or all three together, but her friend did not see.
“Well, clearly it is possible,” said Morwen then with her usual logic, “since you are in fact so doing… But though one may well love two men at one time, I think it would not be possible to love those two in the same way, or for the same reasons. Reasons there are for you to love Gwydion, and reasons to love my brother, and those reasons are not the same reasons, and will never be so. As to which of mem would make the better king for Keltia, I cannot say; though either would be admirable. As to who should be the meeter mate for Aeron, I can say still less. But both choices are yours to make.”
“Well, not yet they are!” said Aeron with some heat. “There are a good few other matters I must attend to first—but when I am finished here, as I shall be within the next few months, I am to be allowed an adventure indeed.”
“Oh aye? Where away?”
“My father wishes me to go on a short progress beyond the Curtain Wall, to represent him to the courts of Protectorate worlds and affirm certain formalities of our arrangement with those systems.” The green eyes sparkled. “I have never before been out-Wall, save for some training forays with the Fianna, and those brief ones, not far beyond the Pale.”
“I too have been on such raids, but who knows when I may again be out of the Bawn,” said Morwen a little enviously. “Where will you go to first?”
“A place I have long wished to see: our trading-planet of Clero.”
•
“What does your father tell you of Fomor?” asked Emer the Queen. “Do you speak of such, with him?”
Aeron, sitting on the floor sorting through a pigpile of her belongings, gave her mother a considering upward glance. They were in her own chambers—a new suite of rooms in the Western Tower overlooking the sea—to which Aeron had recently relocated from the palace’s family wing, as prelude to the establishment of her own independent household as Tanista. In one of the adjoining chambers, Aeron’s old nurse Nessa—gray-haired now, but fierce and loving as ever—and a few of the Queen’s ladies were making final additions and adjustments to Aeron’s gear and garb, which Aeron from where she sat was just as swiftly undoing, preparatory to the departure for Clero and the other worlds of the progress.
Fomor! Why does she ask this of me now… Though, as Aeron well knew, her mother was of course interested in politics insofar as they affected her husband, and only secondarily in how they might bear upon her position as Queen, she was not usually one to concern herself with the affairs of the galláin, and her question at this time made Aeron wonder.
“Well, surely we speak of Fomor,” replied Aeron at last. “It is a thing of which I can ill afford to be ignorant. I must deal with it one day, as my father deals with it now—or rather does not deal—and as did his father before him.”
“He has told you, then, of those past dealings?”
“Often,” said Aeron, warming a little to the subject despite her puzzlement; she and her mother did not often have a chance for intimate conversation, and still less chance for political discussion. “For one, he has told me often of his journey to Ganaster, what time he was defender for Keltia before the High Justiciar against Crown Prince Bres of Fomor, as he was then.”
“What does he say of Bres?”
“What does he not! Though little enough that is not commonly known: He speaks more of Bres’s heir, Elathan, who most like will be my own particular punishment—he and that one on Alphor, Jaun Akhera, Strephon’s daughter’s son. My father thinks that Strephon will name him Imperial Heir some time soon, now that Phano, his father, has been executed for plotting treason.”
“Like enough,” said Emer, uninterested. “But about Bres? Or”—she paused almost imperceptibly—“Bres’s queen?”
“Basilea?” Aeron was more surprised still. “Never to my recall has he spoken of her… I think she plays but little part in Fomorian or Phalanx affairs of state—unlike other queens I might name,” she added with a smile, and Emer laughed.
“Indeed you might, but see you do not; it is largely by this Queen’s grace that you are going on this jaunt to Clero at all. The Councils thought it by no means worth the risk, to send you on so routine a progress.”
Aeron nodded. “I know; my uncle Elharn spoke to me of the dangers, should the Coranians or the Fomori learn that the heir of Keltia is outside the Curtain Wall, and but small force with her. The risk is real enough.”
“And?”
“I am a Fian; I have been trained to risks… Besides, the advantages to be gained by my going far outweigh the chances of my coming to harm. And even did they not, still would I go; for it is a thing for the Tanista to do, and I will do it.”
Emer made no reply, folding away a favorite gúna of Aeron’s and watching her daughter pack a few small personal tokens—a book or two; some bits of jewelry; miniature portraits, framed in gold and pearls, of family and friends—for the journey.
No haste, she told herself. I may choose my own time to enter; though to delay overlong is as gross a failing as to enter overhastily. She studied the structure: Built of dressed gray granite, the clochan rose to a height of perhaps twenty feet; a leather curtain covered the doorway, and from around its edges seeped blue smoke.
A puff of wind carried the smoke to Aeron then, and her throat constricted at the acrid smell of it: heavy incense mixed with certain herb powders of known properties—athair-talam, dubh-cosac, archmain, aquilegia, thale; all the mind-altering drugs of the Fianna pharmacopeia, to be used in today’s test, the test of soul, that there might be induced in her what visions should come.
Gathering herself together, Aeron stepped forward to the doorway—low of lintel, she must bend her neck to enter—and unbuckled her cloak. One of the doorwards took it from her; beneath, she was clad in a straight-cut plain red robe, her feet bare. Red, the color of death, for this is a little-death here; the death of my novice self, my rebirth as a true Fian, if I am found worthy… She shivered a little, recalling another initiation, another little-death. Only then I was robed in black, and it was Tybie led me to it. Today, I must lead myself…
With a deep breath she ducked her head to enter the clochan; the warders caught back the leather curtain for her, then closed it behind her, and Aeron was alone inside the stone bell. She glanced upward, to the small high opening through which came the only light and air; then her eyes went farther, to the neat joined ceiling, not a dab of mortar in it—the stones had been fitted together solely in the shaping, so tightly that even rainwater could find no way inside.
She started at a sound from behind: Outside, the doorwards were lacing a wicker shield over the entrance; at the test’s end, should she succeed, she would cut her way back out to daylight with the sword that lay in a niche of the rear wall.
Aoife’s weapon, though I do not yet have the right to touch it… Aeron looked reverently upon the gleaming findruinna blade, the black hilt, the pommel tipped with a single huge red gem. That had been a surprise from Struan, a gift for luck and confidence from master to pupil: He had obtained permission from mac Avera that Aeron should use her great-grandmother’s sword, and had then himself begged the weapon of Fionnbarr, arguing that it was only fitting for Keltia’s next Ard-rían to use in her test the blade that had belonged to the latest, and the King had agreed.
In front of the niche that held the sword was a small bronze tripod censer filled with smoldering incense, and before that again stood a light wicker bier, of the sort used for Fian funeral rites in time of war: low, six-legged, its joints whipped round with leather.
Aeron stared at the bier, suddenly glad that neither Gwydion nor Roderick had kept to their usual custom and come to Caer Artos to watch the tests. It would have been too much for me, and for Wenna too; we would not have been strengthened by their presence, only distracted—thank gods they seem to have realized that, or perhaps Denzil or mac Avera did warn them away. Whatever, it is best they are not here…
But the drugs in the smoke were beginning to work upon her, and she knew she had not much time. Gathering the red robe around her, Aeron lay down upon the wicker bier and commanded herself to calmness. Directly above her, the sacred smoke curled and eddied and then closed like a ghostly hand round her throat. Looking up to the ceiling, she could see the tiny window being covered over from outside; then the smoke took her to another place.
•
Her Ban-draoi instruction, and her immram especially, had given Aeron good grounding in soul-travel; though the techniques used here were different, and the planes attained to also unlike, for the first stages it felt comfortingly familiar, and she let herself run out upon the spiral in the way she knew so well.
Some, the Fian instructors had warned, had not survived this test: Their bodies could not marshal the drugs properly, or their minds could not withstand the visions that were revealed in the marbh-aisling, the dreaming-death. But such tragedies were comparatively rare: If the candidate were destined not to succeed, it generally happened that he or she would simply fall asleep in trance and wake up a day or so later little the worse for it—save of course that the test had been failed.
But if the test of soul carried then the most danger, it carried also the most mystery, the true meaning of Fianship; and, pass or fail, no candidate had been known to speak of it after. Not even to the Fian instructors, nor the Diceltair, nor the Captain-General himself; what happened in the stone clochans was forever after a matter between the Fian aspirant and the gods who guided the test. Fionn himself, it might be, thought Aeron muzzily, and of him at least I have no fear; or others of his companions, Coll or Diarmid or Caoilte. For a woman, Morna or Turenn, or maybe Sorcha or Saive… She reached out with her spirit; a calling that was more than prayer: Macha Ruadh, you who are the Red War-crow; Nia the Golden, you who are my foremother; Aeron whose name means Goddess of Slaughter, you whose namesake I am, hear and help.
She could not feel her body any longer, could not smell the incense nor see the inside walls of the clochan. She seemed to be suspended in some vast hollow blackness, wide and deep as the mouth of a giant bell, and the slightest touch of thought set the bell to whispering. Though Aeron strove to still her mind as she knew she must, the faint chiming grew to a roar, and when it had filled all her head, and all the clochan, and all the world beside, suddenly it stopped; and in the giant booming silence it left in its wake, Aeron was there again.
But no longer alone: One sat now just within the door, sat very still indeed for Aeron not to have noticed before now. Or perhaps there had been no one, not until this moment; perhaps there was still no one, and the form she thought she saw was but hallucination. She could not think clear for the sick spinning in her brain; all her inner defenses, even her strongest Ban-draoi shields, seemed open to this one who sat so still and said no word. Perhaps he—or she—has no need to ask; perhaps at this very moment I am somehow saying all that needs to be heard…
Aeron forced her mouth and tongue to shape the words. “Who is there?”
The answer came at once, low and unemphatic. “I am the Red Listener.”
“What do you hope to hear?”
“I listen for your choice: victory or destruction.”
“No choice there.”
“There is also the choice of the coward: the choice of refusing to choose.”
The words struck Aeron with a sense of inevitable rightness she knew she would never be able to explain—or recall, even—with her everyday consciousness; knew too that this Red Listener—man or woman, god or mortal or creation of her own deep soul—was the Inquisitioner promised in the test. She and the other candidates had always assumed that their Inquisitioner would be a sorcerer, some Druid or Ban-draoi or Dragon Kin—at least a fellow mortal; but perhaps they had been wrong in those assumptions. And suddenly Aeron knew why no candidate had been known to speak of this moment once the moment was gone. It may not be the same for each of us; what I am given to see and hear does surely differ from that which the others are shown; but howsoever it may choose to clothe itself surely this truth is the same for us all. And this truth of Aeron’s would observe her in her trial, would without a question asked have of Aeron all the answers required, and would be the one in whom Aeron would see for herself, as in the most clear and perfect of mirrors, how she was made and how she would fare at the test.
“Then,” said Aeron, and knew she spoke aloud, “then hear what I do choose—”
•
Standing impassive and unwearied to their posts, as they had done for near seven hours, the doorwards were not surprised to hear behind them a sound as of sudden fire, a rippling brittle snap as the wicker shield was cut away from within, the shining blade of Aoife’s sword cleaving through willowwork and leather lacings alike; then they were free to assist gladly, pulling away the remnants of shield, tearing down the leather curtain that hung now in tatters over the entrance.
Aeron stood in the doorway, her great-grandmother’s sword in her hand; and perhaps a little of her great-grandmother’s look in her face, for the two Fians who had kept the door against her stepped back now and were silent.
Then mac Avera himself was there, with Denzil and Struan a little behind him. The Captain-General and his newest Fian looked long at each other; both were apparently satisfied with what they saw, for a smile broke over mac Avera’s face, and a matching one lighted Aeron’s, and he gave her then the words she had fought three years to hear.
“If armed service be thy design, thou hast won it. Be welcome among us, thou of the tribe of Fionn.”
Chapter 22
Though the case was otherwise for most of her classmates, as she had so long ago lamented, the winning of Fianship by no means signalled the end of Aeron’s education. So after the celebrating was done, when the others departed Caer Artos to embark upon their active military service, Aeron went instead to the brehons, those revered lawgivers out of the most ancient Keltic past, to study with them for a year’s time at the Hill of Laws on Arvor: a year that she for her part found more demanding by far than the whole of the past three had been, as the energies that had been turned to winning the victory in combat were turned now to winning battles of a different sort.
“Still, it is not so bad as I had thought to find it,” admitted Aeron to Morwen, one day late in the term when her friend had come on a visit to the place where she herself had spent so many years. “And by no means so bad as you, Wenna Douglas, did give me cause to think—I must mind me never again to give such heed to your complainings.”
Morwen was unabashed. “Oh aye, easy enough for you to say, Aeron; you have only to spend a twelvemonth here, and most of that already gone. But I was here six long years together, and must yet return for another two. It is a thing I am resigned to, but not a thing I take much pleasure in.”
“You will be pleased enough when it brings you to enrobement as a brehon, and brings us two together again at Turusachan,” remarked Aeron, unmoved by her friend’s display. “As chief advisor to the Tanista, when my household is assembled—well, I know I shall be glad of it.”
“And so shall I,” conceded Morwen, giving over the mock annoyance. “It is just that it seems so far away—But if we speak of those who will join your household, what of our own fostern? What do you hear of Arianeira all this time?”
Aeron frowned. “Very little. I myself have not been the best of correspondents, but Ari has answered not one in ten of the messages I did send her.”
“And what do you hear of her brother?”
Aeron shot a sharp glance at her friend, but Morwen’s face was as studiedly innocent as her tone had been bland. Instead, Aeron startled them both with her answer, a question in its turn.
“How is Rhodri these days? He sent me no song for my birthday, and that is the first time he has failed to do so since all of us were together at Kinloch Arnoch. I do not know whether to be cross at his forgetting or worried that something is amiss with him.”
“Naught amiss; but I fear that birthday remembrances—even yours—are not to the fore of his mind just now,” said Morwen. Her blue eyes lifted involuntarily to the sky, as if to seek out her brother’s current whereabouts; but it was midafternoon, and no stars were to be seen. She sighed a little. “He has full command of a star-squadron—as I hear so also does Gwydion—and both of them have been in the thick of heavy action against the Phalanx, in the Protectorate sector of Lavellan. He does well as commander, I am told.”
“And why should he not? He excelled at Caer Artos—as also did Gwydion.”
“So he did.” Morwen put aside her reluctance to inquire into matters her friend did not choose to speak of. “I make no special pleading for Roderick, Aeron, my brother though he be; his deeds and virtues speak for themselves. But it has been long thought of, and accepted by many, that you and he should come to reign together. We have never spoken of it, he and I, so I do not know what he himself may think or feel or wish; and you and I ourselves have never spoken of it save in jest—”
“And you wish to speak of it now in good earnest.” Aeron in her turn looked up at the cloudless blue above them. “Fair enough… What I feel for Rhodri,” she began slowly, as if she herself had not yet fully fathomed the thing out, “is by no means the same as that which I feel for Gwydion. They are both so infinitely worthy, and so infinitely different—almost it seems, if such a thing were possible, that I do love them both.” She gave Morwen a glance that could have been defiance, or apology, or guilt, or all three together, but her friend did not see.
“Well, clearly it is possible,” said Morwen then with her usual logic, “since you are in fact so doing… But though one may well love two men at one time, I think it would not be possible to love those two in the same way, or for the same reasons. Reasons there are for you to love Gwydion, and reasons to love my brother, and those reasons are not the same reasons, and will never be so. As to which of mem would make the better king for Keltia, I cannot say; though either would be admirable. As to who should be the meeter mate for Aeron, I can say still less. But both choices are yours to make.”
“Well, not yet they are!” said Aeron with some heat. “There are a good few other matters I must attend to first—but when I am finished here, as I shall be within the next few months, I am to be allowed an adventure indeed.”
“Oh aye? Where away?”
“My father wishes me to go on a short progress beyond the Curtain Wall, to represent him to the courts of Protectorate worlds and affirm certain formalities of our arrangement with those systems.” The green eyes sparkled. “I have never before been out-Wall, save for some training forays with the Fianna, and those brief ones, not far beyond the Pale.”
“I too have been on such raids, but who knows when I may again be out of the Bawn,” said Morwen a little enviously. “Where will you go to first?”
“A place I have long wished to see: our trading-planet of Clero.”
•
“What does your father tell you of Fomor?” asked Emer the Queen. “Do you speak of such, with him?”
Aeron, sitting on the floor sorting through a pigpile of her belongings, gave her mother a considering upward glance. They were in her own chambers—a new suite of rooms in the Western Tower overlooking the sea—to which Aeron had recently relocated from the palace’s family wing, as prelude to the establishment of her own independent household as Tanista. In one of the adjoining chambers, Aeron’s old nurse Nessa—gray-haired now, but fierce and loving as ever—and a few of the Queen’s ladies were making final additions and adjustments to Aeron’s gear and garb, which Aeron from where she sat was just as swiftly undoing, preparatory to the departure for Clero and the other worlds of the progress.
Fomor! Why does she ask this of me now… Though, as Aeron well knew, her mother was of course interested in politics insofar as they affected her husband, and only secondarily in how they might bear upon her position as Queen, she was not usually one to concern herself with the affairs of the galláin, and her question at this time made Aeron wonder.
“Well, surely we speak of Fomor,” replied Aeron at last. “It is a thing of which I can ill afford to be ignorant. I must deal with it one day, as my father deals with it now—or rather does not deal—and as did his father before him.”
“He has told you, then, of those past dealings?”
“Often,” said Aeron, warming a little to the subject despite her puzzlement; she and her mother did not often have a chance for intimate conversation, and still less chance for political discussion. “For one, he has told me often of his journey to Ganaster, what time he was defender for Keltia before the High Justiciar against Crown Prince Bres of Fomor, as he was then.”
“What does he say of Bres?”
“What does he not! Though little enough that is not commonly known: He speaks more of Bres’s heir, Elathan, who most like will be my own particular punishment—he and that one on Alphor, Jaun Akhera, Strephon’s daughter’s son. My father thinks that Strephon will name him Imperial Heir some time soon, now that Phano, his father, has been executed for plotting treason.”
“Like enough,” said Emer, uninterested. “But about Bres? Or”—she paused almost imperceptibly—“Bres’s queen?”
“Basilea?” Aeron was more surprised still. “Never to my recall has he spoken of her… I think she plays but little part in Fomorian or Phalanx affairs of state—unlike other queens I might name,” she added with a smile, and Emer laughed.
“Indeed you might, but see you do not; it is largely by this Queen’s grace that you are going on this jaunt to Clero at all. The Councils thought it by no means worth the risk, to send you on so routine a progress.”
Aeron nodded. “I know; my uncle Elharn spoke to me of the dangers, should the Coranians or the Fomori learn that the heir of Keltia is outside the Curtain Wall, and but small force with her. The risk is real enough.”
“And?”
“I am a Fian; I have been trained to risks… Besides, the advantages to be gained by my going far outweigh the chances of my coming to harm. And even did they not, still would I go; for it is a thing for the Tanista to do, and I will do it.”
Emer made no reply, folding away a favorite gúna of Aeron’s and watching her daughter pack a few small personal tokens—a book or two; some bits of jewelry; miniature portraits, framed in gold and pearls, of family and friends—for the journey.
