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  The Silver Branch

  A Novel of The Keltiad

  Patricia Kennealy

  NAL BOOKS

  NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY

  NEW YORK

  PUBLISHED IN CANADA BY

  PENGUIN BOOKS CANADA LIMITED, MARKHAM, ONTARIO

  Copyright © 1988 by Patricia Kennealy Morrison

  All rights reserved. For information address New American Library.

  Published simultaneously in Canada by Penguin Books Canada Limited.

  NAL TRADEMARK REG. U.S. PAT. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  HECHO EN CHICAGO, U.S.A.

  Signet, Signet Classic, Mentor, Onyx, Plume, Meridian and NAL Books are published in the United States by NAL PENGUIN INC.,

  1633 Broadway, New York, New York 10019,

  in Canada by Penguin Books Canada Limited,

  2801 John Street, Markham, Ontario L3R 1B4

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Kennealy, Patricia. The silver branch: a novel of the Keltiad / by Patricia Kennealy.

  p. cm. ISBN 0-453-00627-2 I. Title. PS3561.E42465S5 1988

  813’.54—dcl9 88-18692

  CIP

  Designed by Leonard Telesca

  First Printing, December, 1988 123456789

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  Acknowledgment

  The sequence of Aeron’s immram of initiation was lifted from The Voyage of Maelduin; all praise, thanks and honor to Aed Finn, king’s bard, who composed it long ago.

  To my grandmother Agnes McDonald

  In the Earth year 453 by the Common Reckoning, a small fleet of ships left Ireland, carrying emigrants seeking a new home in a new land. But the ships were not the leather-hulled boats of later legend, and though the great exodus was indeed led by a man called Brendan, he was not the Christian navigator-monk who later chroniclers would claim had discovered a New World across the western ocean.

  These ships were Starships; their passengers the Danaans, descendants of—and heirs to the secrets of—Atlantis, that they themselves called Atland. The new world they sought was a distant double-ringed planet, itself unknown and half legend; and he who led them in that seeking would come to be known as St. Brendan the Astrogator.

  Fleeing persecutions and a world that was no longer home to their ancient magics, the Danaans, who long ages since had come to Earth in flight from a dying sun’s agonies, now went back to those far stars, and after two years’ desperate wandering they found their promised haven. They named it Keltia, and Brendan, though he refused to call himself its king, ruled there long and well.

  •

  In all the centuries that followed, Keltia grew and prospered. The kings and queens who were Brendan’s heirs, whatever else they did, kept unbroken his great command: that, until the time was right, Keltia should not for peril of its very existence reveal itself to the Earth that its folk had fled from; nor forget, for like peril, those other children of Atland who had followed them into the stars—the Telchines, close kin and mortal foes, who became the Coranians as the Danaans had become the Kelts.

  Yet Brendan himself had said that a day must come at last when Kelts and Terrans should meet again as cousins; three thousand years later, that day had not yet come, and many there were among Brendan’s people who prayed it never might.

  •

  Until one was born in Keltia to cause that day to dawn…

  Main Characters

  Aoife Aoibhell, High Queen of Keltia; known as the Shan-rían, the Old Queen

  Lasairían, her son, Tanist; later High King

  Gwyneira nighean Brega, his wife; later queen-consort

  Fionnbarr, their son, Prince of the Name; later Tanist and High King

  Elharn Aoibhell, called Ironbrow; son to Aoife, brother to Lasairían

  Budic, King of Fomor

  Bres, his son and heir; later King

  Basilea (Sovay), Bres’s betrothed; later queen-consort

  Errazill-jauna, Emperor of the Cabiri

  Strephon, his son and heir; later Emperor

  Celarain, High Justiciar of Ganaster

  Faolan, Master of Douglas, later Prince of Scots; friend to Fionnbarr

  Emer, youngest daughter of Farrell Prince of Leinster; later queen-consort to Fionnbarr

  Keina, her sister, a Ban-draoi Domina

  Aeron, daughter to Fionnbarr and Emer, Princess of the Name; later Tanista and High Queen

  Rohan, her brother; later Tanist

  Ríoghnach, her sister; later Princess of the Name

  Kesten Hannivec, Ban-draoi Magistra, abbess of Scartanore

  Morwen Douglas, daughter to Faolan; later Duchess of Lochcarron and Taoiseach to Aeron

  Arianeira Penarvon ferch Gwenedour, daughter to the Prince of Gwynedd

  Roderick, Master of Douglas, son to Faolan; later Prince of Scots

  Arawn Penarvon ap Kenver, Prince of Gwynedd

  Gwydion, his son and heir; later Prince of Gwynedd, Pendragon, and First Lord of War to Aeron

  Tybie Vedryns ferch Elan, Ban-draoi anchoress, spiritual advisor to Aeron

  Sabia ní Dálaigh, friend to Aeron

  Duvessa Cantelon, schoolmate of Aeron and Sabia

  Struan Cameron, swordmaster of the Fianna

  Denzil Cameron, his brother, Fianna Trialmaster

  Donal mac Avera, Captain-General of the Fianna

  Vevin ní Talleron, friend to Aeron

  Elathan, Prince of Fomor, son to Bres; later King of Fomor

  Jaun Akhera, Prince of Alphor, grandson to Strephon; later Cabiri Emperor

  Helior, his mother

  Slaine, daughter to Elharn, cousin to Aeron

  Melangell, cousin to Aeron Kieran, brother to Aeron

  Declan, his twin

  Gwyn ap Nudd (or Neith), King of the Sidhe

  and various Personages.

  Ny yl blyth gul ken ages avel blyth.

  (A wolf can act but like a wolf.)

  The Silver Branch

  Prologue

  Queen Aoife was dying. For a hundred years and near half that again—longer than any other had before, or ever would after—she had ruled Keltia, with an iron hand and a stiff back and a mind that could work at computer speed; had given the realm four sons, four princes to follow her; had seen the father of those sons dead long since, in a battle far from his home; had gone on alone, to make Keltia stronger than the kingdom had ever been in all the centuries of its existence; had lived to see the name of Keltia respected and feared and honored far beyond the Pale of its protection, a power among the stars. Now she was dying at last, and knew that she was dying, and was more than content that it should be so.

  The vast spaces of the state bedchamber were thronged with people, subdued, watchful, conversing in whispers when they spoke at all; the witnesses custom required to attend upon the passing of a monarch—family, friends, ministers of state, ambassadors of foreign worlds, Druid priests and Ban-draoi priestesses to offer the withdrawing soul the grace of ritual, and guidance for its passage.

  Aoife herself had cared little enough for most of those present, had never stinted to show it in life; good luck to them if they thought to get other of her now… But the laser-green eyes, still piercingly perceptive for all their growing dimness, picked out the ones among them she had truly cared for, and who had cared for her in return. To her othersight, far sharper than her physical vision with her nearness to her change, they stood out like torches in fog, bright amid blurriness, their souls clearer to her now than their faces: the friends of a lifetime, the helpers who had shared with her the burdens of a long and already legendary rule, and, among a large and diverse family
, those few she had loved the best…

  “Barraun. Barraun, come here to me.”

  The whisper was surprisingly strong in the room’s rustling silence, and it carried every ounce of the old command; the murmurs of the watchers suddenly ceased. At the foot of the great bed, where he had been standing for nearly an hour now, the youth Fionnbarr smiled at the pet-name, and came round the bedside to kneel by his grandmother’s head.

  Aoife laid a claw-fingered hand—the big emerald ring that was Keltia’s Great Seal looking larger than ever against her finger’s new gauntness—on the untidy thatch of red-brown hair, met the clear hazel eyes, wide and steady and warm with love, beneath the straight-trimmed glib.

  “Ah, my Barraun, you have never been afraid of me, have you, not even as a little lad; not like the rest of these quaking slinters. That is well, for you are a prince, Prince of the Name, soon now to be Tanist, and then High King after your father; and after you—” Her strength began to fail her, and her voice cracked and faltered.

  “After me,” said Fionnbarr, trying to help her, to comfort her with that royal continuity he sensed she had such need to hear reaffirmed, “after me, another prince for Keltia.”

  “Nay.” Aoife’s voice came clear and strong now, like a sudden north wind in the room, and those sensitive to such things shivered like willows in that wind, for they knew that the Sight had taken hold upon her, as happened so often near the end.

  “Nay,” she said again, as clearly. “No prince to be your heir, Prince Fionnbarr, but a princess; a princess who will be such a sorceress, and such an Ard-rían, as Keltia has never yet known. You shall call her—aye, you shall call her Aeron.”

  A stir ran round the chamber. Deathbed seeings were far from uncommon among Kelts, but they were invariably strongly omened, one way or another; and for the dying High Queen to foretell the birth of the next High Queen, and one named for the Kymric battle goddess, was not the sort of portent those present were longing to hear. But, they consoled themselves in thought, Fionnbarr himself was as yet only a stripling, barely three-and-twenty, far from being wed or even betrothed; and maybe the princess would never come…

  It seemed that Aoife had heard their thought, for the green eyes gleamed wickedly, and the face, scarcely lined for all its years, flowed into as wicked a smile.

  “Ah, you may hope against her as you please, but she will come all the same: Aeron. In the old speech, the bardic meaning of that name is ‘the sword flashing downward in the stroke.’ She will earn that name, then lose it, then take it back again greater than before. Though I shall never know her in this life, she will be more truly a child of mine than any son I bore.”

  “As you say, dama-wyn,” murmured Fionnbarr soothingly, taking her hand in both of his and kissing it, “and as you have Seen. May your journey thrive,” he added, tears at last springing to his eyes.

  Aoife smiled again, this time a smile of satisfaction and farewell, and seemed to relax back upon her pillow, still looking upon her grandson. Presently her Taoiseach of thirty years’ service—Mathuin, grave, white-haired, militarily erect of posture, last of the many who had been her first servant down the decades as she had been Keltia’s—came forward to stand on the other side of the golden-pillared bed, beside Lasairían and Gwyneria: Lasairían, who would in a matter of moments now be Ard-rígh, High King of Keltia, after waiting longer for the Copper Crown than any heir in history; and Gwyneira, who would be his queen.

  “Lady?” said Mathuin softly. “Before you leave us, leave us one last word: If Keltia must change with the coming of this princess, is the change for good or for ill; and does Keltia survive it—or her?”

  But Aoife spoke no word more, and in a moment the rich silk coverlet, embroidered with the royal arms, fell over her breast and did not rise again. Then came that sound which all present had known that they should hear: Through the open casements, falling down the slopes of Mount Eagle high above them, came a terrible descant—the mournful howl of a wolf. The chamber’s stillness rang with it; then, one by one, as trees bend beneath the blast, those present went each to his right knee in token of respect, and heads were bowed for Aoife’s passing, while the keen throbbed in the hushed air.

  Rising presently from where he had knelt by the bedside, his face hidden in the coverlet, the Ard-rígh Lasairían reached out with a shaking hand to slip the Great Seal of Keltia from his mother’s finger, and the smaller Unicorn Seal of the House of Aoibhell also; and, half in guilt, as if he feared she might even now sit up and beshrew him for his haste, he placed the rings upon his own hands. Then he reached out again, to close forever the eyes that had looked upon so much for so long: the green eyes of the Shan-rían, that had struck such fear, and sparked such fealty, in so many hearts.

  As he did so, bending then to kiss his mother’s brow, Lasairían was himself struck by the expression plain upon the countenance of the dead queen.

  Aoife—oldest monarch in Keltic history and longest to reign—Aoife had died smiling.

  BOOK I:

  Fionnbarr

  Chapter 1

  The gold-bound diplomatic diptych lay upon the Council table, glowing softly against the granite’s dark grain. Though not one of the dozen or so people seated round that table would look at it directly, still it occupied the center-place of all their attention, and their whole minds were filled with it and with its import.

  “Well,” said Lasairían at last, and the sound of the King’s voice seemed to free his companions from their strange stasis, “the mills of the law grind exceeding slow on Ganaster, but in this they have ground slower and finer even than usual.” He picked up the diptych, breaking the thin gold seal with the device of the High Justiciary stamped upon it, and held it up to read. “My eyes are not so good as once they were, and this Englic the galláin all use of late comes not so easy to me as once it might have. Do you, Barraun, read to us what this thing may say.”

  From his place at his father’s left hand—traditional seat at the Council table of the heir of Keltia, as the Taoiseach, First Minister to the Crown, sat always upon the monarch’s right—Fionnbarr Aoibhell reached out to take the tablet from his father’s hand, and scanned the message matrix within.

  “Naught but what we have heard already through less official channels,” he said presently. “It is of course our formal notification from Ganaster of the coming to trial of the Lykken matter, that the Ard-rían Aoife bequeathed to us upon her death these twenty years since.” When no response was immediately forthcoming, he added, “Surely we knew that this brangle would someday fall to us.”

  Surely they did… Around the room, the mood had perceptibly altered, and not for the lighter. Of all matters of interstellar consequence that might have occupied their attention, the Ardeis, the High Council of Keltia, could think of none just now that they would like less to deal with. Yet the Prince’s word carried truth: Deal with it they must, like it or loathe it. It had been long delayed, and for that they had been long grateful; but now the grain that had sprung of the seed Aoife had so arrogantly sown had come to full harvest, and it was for them to make of it what sheaves they might.

  Fingers thoughtfully stroking his beard, the Ard-rígh Lasairían, third of that name and fifteenth of the House of Aoibhell, let his glance move down the table over the faces of his advisors. Almost he could tell from those faces alone, or from their still or tapping fingers, or even from the very postures in which they sat, what was passing through what it pleased most of them to call their minds.

  As to those closest to him, he had no need even to look, for he knew their minds already, as their friend rather than as their King, and those minds were of the same cast as his own: Sighile of Ossory, his Taoiseach, who faced Fionnbarr from her seat on Lasairían’s right; at the far end of the table, Donlin O Talleron, First Lord of War; over against the western wall, among the members of the Privy Council, Elharn Aoibhell, called Ironbrow, both for the silver-gray hair and the war-helm that so often covered it—yo
ungest of the four sons of Aoife, and named by Lasairían his brother to be Fionnbarr’s tutor.

  And as for Fionnbarr—Lasairían looked casually away to the left, where his heir was staring at the fateful diptych as if it could be made to yield up to him that instant the Rúnachanna, the Secret of Secrets that shall be revealed at the end of time. Ah, no mystery there, amhic, he thought. Only politics, and long enmity, and in the end without a doubt yet another goaround with the Fomori… He sighed, and tapped twice on the table to catch their attention.

  “For those of us who have not kept abreast of this old matter,” he said aloud, “do you, Ossory, run it out in brief. And for those who are up with it, a retelling can only serve to make it clearer. Begin, Taoiseach.”

  “Well then,” said Sighile, as the others settled back to hear her account. “Some years before she died, the Ard-rían Aoife, upon whom be the peace of the gods, gave offer to the planetary system of Lykken, that they should become a Keltic protectorate. Now Keltia had at that time but few protectorate worlds by compare to what we have now taken upon us, and Aoife—rightly or wrongly, it is not for us here to decide—sought to increase these both in their numbers and in their possible future usefulness to Keltia.”

  “Oh, come!” snapped Dahal Hendragoth, from his place beside O Talleron; Dahal, the red-bearded giant who was Master of Sail in the Keltic starfleet. “No coyness here, Ossory; let us feign no innocence as to why Aoife did what she did. Some are in this room this very minute that helped her to it; myself among them, and not shamed to say it. Plomine is none so thick in the ground anywhere in the galaxy for her, or for us, or for anyone else, to pass up so rich and gleanable a source—or to scorn suppliers who are so eager to offer it. The Lykkenoi were never anything other than hopeful of gaining our commerce and anxious to be sheltered by our shield.”