The Copper Crown Read online

  Late though it was, there were still cheerful yellow rectangles of light visible all through the ten-mile stretch of the walled city, where talk or merriment or duty kept some awake, or where some other courted sleep in vain. Many of those lights shone far up in the sheer basalt walls that climbed the shoulder of Mount Eagle, culminating in Turusachan, Place of Gathering, the immense fortress-palace-citadel that crowned Caerdroia. There, a ball was still faintly in progress in one of the splendid festal halls; up in a small tower a cool blue light spoke of computer-rooms still active; in a windswept courtyard a cloaked Fenian guard stood unmoving at his post. For this was the heart of Keltia, and it beat though all else slept.

  On the extreme western edge of the city, black granite cliffs plunged their bastions two thousand feet straight down into the sea. The battlemented walls that encircled Caerdroia were here cut from the living rock of the mountain, and hanging above the sea, not the tallest nor yet the largest, was one round tower.

  Its topmost story was pierced with twelve narrow windows, their stained glass worked in patterns both heraldic and magical; at night their glow could be seen well out to sea. Just below, slightly to one side and facing square on to the sunset, a wide mullioned window opened upon a turret walk, and here a light still showed.

  This was Aeron's chamber, Aeron's tower, and it was warm and cheerful this night despite the blast that buffeted it from the northwest. Her private chambers were very different from the picture most of her people probably had of them. The solar, the main room, where everything usually happened and where she now worked so late, was a big round chamber, high-ceilinged and generously proportioned, with walls of plain white stone that reflected the light-wash off the sea in the afternoons. It was furnished in a curious and highly personal blend of the severely functional and the traditionally ancient, with things the room's owner needed to have there and things she simply liked. Computers and viewscreens and monitors and control panels stood along the walls, alternating impartially with ceiling-high bookshelves and huge tapestries and weapons both ancient and modern. Anachronistic fires blazed in marble hearths, candles flickered on the carved iron-oak tables black with age--all for atmosphere: The real light and heat and energy came from solar insets and that universal Keltic power source, the crystal. Two huge shaggy wolfhounds dozed peacefully in front of the fire.

  Aeron herself was wide awake, sitting cross-legged in the middle of her enormous tapestry-hung bed. She was clad in an old ragged guna of thick nubby brown wool, its hood thrown back on her shoulders. Her hair, only a thought darker than the flames on the hearth, was pinned up anyhow in a half-braided knot at the back of her head, and so long was it that still it cascaded down onto the fur coverlet. In front of her on the bed was a computer pad, and she was leaning over it, chin in hand and elbow on knee, scribbling intently with a lightpen. Her face, of a calm beauty, pale, fine-featured and delicate, showed only the singleminded absorption of a child or a scholar.

  Aeron Lassarina Angharad Aoife Aoibhell was thirty-seven years old, barely of full legal age by Keltic standards, which postulated an average lifespan of a hundred and sixty. She had been Ard-rian, High Queen of Keltia, for just under three years. She was the seventeenth monarch of her House to rule the Six Nations, and tonight she faced a problem that had been three thousand years in the making.

  After a while, she paused, putting down the light-pen, and stretched like a palug to ease the ache that cramped her shoulders. She reviewed her work on the computer screen, coded it for automatic storage in the big wall computers, then fell back onto the piled pillows and ran her hands through her hair. The dogs, as dogs will, sensed her break in concentration and came bounding delightedly onto the bed. She smiled absently and ruffled their ears, but her thoughts were plainly elsewhere.

  Her wandering gaze was caught and held by the portrait of her mother over the marble chimney-breast. The ethereal face of Emer ni Kerrigan looked back at her with an enigmatic smile. Emer, youngest daughter of the Prince of Leinster, who had run away from home to marry the Crown Prince of Keltia at the unheard-of age of twenty--the scandal had been appalling--and who with her husband Fionnbarr had ascended the throne only twenty-four years later. She really had been lovely: cornflower eyes, amber hair, a small sweet heart-shaped face--Aeron laughed suddenly, in half-grudging, half-amused admiration of the brazen fraud her mother had perpetrated upon an entire kingdom.

  Queen Emer had been a woman of flinty resolution and surpassing deviousness; behind that pale frail loveliness had lain a will of findruinna and an unforgiving heart. She and her explosive eldest child had had more than one earthshaking passage-at-arms; even King Fionnbarr himself had not dared intervene, when his wife and his heir were in posture of war and all Turusachan became an armed camp and everybody in the line of fire went swiftly to ground.

  Always it went the hardest on the eldest, thought Aeron, with a sudden sharp flare of unreasonable annoyance. And it mattered no whit whether one was heir to a throne or a croft or a merchancy... Still, she was firstborn, and the knowledge that she would one day be Queen of Kelts had been part of her first awareness. If those whose duty it had been to train her for the role had emphasized the burden far more than the glory, that too was as it should have been. All was lesson: Even family warfare had taught her much. Sibling battles were primary learning experiences for a young princess, and the shifting alliances among the Aoibhell brothers and sisters and cousins and fosterans were early training for one who would someday have to deal in galactic alliances.

  Queen Emer had died with her husband three years ago, their son-in-law of five weeks, Roderick, only moments before, in the savage space ambush that had made Aeron Queen, orphan and widow all in one burst of Fomori lasers. She ignored the usual stab of sorrow at the thought, setting both grief and thought gently aside with discipline of three years' practice. For now, there were bigger things to consider, and the flood of change this night beat upon high far shores. Aeron gave the portrait one last long thoughtful look, then leaned across the pillows to punch up her brother Rohan on the transcom.

  "Did I wake you?" she asked, when the cheerful countenance of her heir appeared on the multiscreen beside the bed. Telepathy was as common as speech among the Keltic peoples, though it involved considerably more effort, but there was something somehow reassuring about mechanical methods of communication, and Aeron was not alone in preferring to employ them whenever she could.

  Rohan shook his head, raking his fingers through rumpled red-brown hair.

  "You did not. I was playing fidchell with the computer. Everyone else is asleep long since, I think. What is it?"

  "A moment." She cut in two more channels. "Morwen, Gwydion?"

  "Ah, Aeron, can you not leave it till the morning?" The voice was sleepy and exasperated; the face did not appear on the screen, but Aeron knew it well: the gold hair, the startlingly blue eyes, the creamy complexion, all of which made Morwen Douglas, Duchess of Lochcarron and, more importantly, First Minister of Keltia, look even younger than her years.

  "I fear not, Taoiseach. Gwydion?"

  "I am here, Ard-rian." The deep bard's voice of the Prince of Gwynedd came untroubled, though he too chose not to be seen.

  "Then come up, all of you. There is something you must hear."

  The transcom went silent. Aeron re-settled herself on the bed to await the arrival of the three who, together with herself, really ruled Keltia. It was not only politics that united them; there were also other, more complex bonds. There was fosterage, as binding in love and law as blood-kinship to the Keltic mind: and Aeron, Morwen, and Gwydion's twin sister Arianeira were all foster-sisters, having been brought up together from infancy. There was marriage: Morwen's husband was Aeron's second cousin Fergus, and Aeron's dead lord Roderick had been Morwen's adored elder brother, the Prince of Scots; and palace gossip had it that when Aeron chose to wed again her choice would fall upon Gwydion Prince of Don. And there was fealty, a bond of loyalty made easy by a strong and p
opular Crown. But above all else there was deep wordless affectionate warmth: These four were true friends.

  The wind, which had fallen off a little, suddenly slammed into the leaded windows with all the force of a fist. The dogs looked up, startled, and Aeron padded barefoot over to the casements, flinging them open to the wild night and leaning out into the wind. From here, high on a spur of Eryri, it was nearly three thousand feet straight down to where the giant waves crashed in fury on the slick slabs of rock, leaving their streaming foam-lattices halfway up the cliff. A few miles to the north, where the Avon Dia ran down to the sea, there was a fine sandy strand, wide and white, where Aeron often rode alone. But here was only the eternal clash of stone and water, bone and blood of the planet itself, neither one to outlast, or defeat, the other.

  Aeron looked up, to where the Criosanna glittered in the light of the two small moons, both now fully risen, though Argialla was still only a slim crescent curve of silver-blue. The Criosanna, the Woven Belts, were the glory of Tara, flat shining rings that girdled the planet at the equator. Scientists disagreed on their nature: Some said they were the remains of former satellites, late moons, while others contended they were rather moons in the making. Any road, they were beautiful, and unique in the seven Keltic systems: they had been the first spacemark of the original Danaan starfarers, their first assurance of journey's end safely reached, when they made planetfall three thousand years ago after the great emigration from an Earth that was no longer home.

  The Criosanna seemed to put everything into perfect perspective. Aeron smiled, and turned as the door opened behind her. Her smile widened and warmed as she saw her brother.

  Rohan was as a rule the first to arrive for anything, and tonight he had been not only awake and dressed, but the closest at hand of the three she had summoned. The many towers and brughs and courts that constituted Turusachan were not merely governmental; they served as official residences for the chief Keltic nobles and officers of state, as well as home to the rather extensive royal family. As Tanist, heir-presumptive to the Throne of Scone, Rohan Revelin Aoibhell, Prince of Thomond and Duke of Ythan, occupied a tower not far from his elder sister's, with his own household and guards and dependents and duties.

  He came in now, dressed in the bardic dark-blue he favored. The wolfhounds leaped joyfully upon him, standing on their hind legs to lick his face. Those immense beasts were but little loftier than he: Tallness of stature ran in the Keltic race, and in the Aoibhell family; Rohan and his brothers Kieran and Declan all towered seven feet high or more. Even their sisters, save for Rioghnach, stood well on the far side of six feet.

  Laughing, Rohan pushed the dogs away and went to a sideboard.

  "Wine?" At Aeron's nod, he poured out four cups and passed one to her. "Morwen is on Lochcarron time as ever, I suppose."

  His sister laughed. Morwen's unpunctuality, a family jest for years, was deplorable in one who was after all the second most important person in the realm; but it was also as unchangeable as the stars.

  "Gwynedd at least is not laggard," said Gwydion lightly, coming in through the library doors.

  "Nor has ever been," said Aeron, and he bowed in acknowledgment of the compliment. But that was only simple truth: Those who belonged to the House of Don, over which House the Princes of Gwynedd were Chief, had always been in Keltia's vanguard was it peace or was it war. They were rivaled in their antiquity, rank, honor and divine ancestry only by the House of Dana--whose Chief was the head of the line of Aoibhell.

  Indeed, Aeron reflected idly, watching the two men talk bard-lore over their wine, at one time the Crown itself had been seated in the House of Don; from there it had passed peacefully into the keeping of the Douglases, Morwen's clann; and, eight hundred years ago, equally peacefully, to the Aoibhells, who had held it ever since--making the rulership of Keltia more than ever a family matter.

  Gwydion had taken his cup of wine and stretched out on the fur rugs by the fireside; one of the wolfhounds laid its head upon his knee and gazed up at him soulfully. He was tall even among a tall people, the Prince of Don, with a build at once lean, graceful, and powerful. His dark hair and beard were flecked with gray, and his eyes were sea-gray in a stern handsome face. He was a master-bard, and a brilliant general, and a towering magician, and there were few finer swordsmen in all Keltia.

  Also he was First Lord of War on the Keltic High Council, and for that alone he would have been summoned by Aeron to this owl-time parley. The gray eyes looked up consideringly to meet Aeron's green ones, and after a moment she smiled.

  Again the oak door swung, and Morwen entered at last, unhurried, casual, looking faintly aggrieved and supremely unconcerned for her tardiness.

  Aeron raised her fine brows. "Have some wine," she said politely.

  Her sister-in-law cast her a dark look. "Gods help you, Aeron, if this is aught less than war or treason or galactic pestilence. Fergus leaves tomorrow for Duneidyn, and a royal chat was not part of my plans for tonight. It had better be important, Ard-rian, or I shall rip your throat out, truly." She took the cup of wine Rohan offered her and drank it off.

  "Your Grace of Lochcarron will doubtless decide for yourself. As for Fergus, I suggest he change his plans for departure and remain at Turusachan." Aeron had returned to the middle of the bed, and now she drew up her bare feet beneath her and fixed her company with a level green gaze. It had been Aeron in her threadbare old robe who had sat cross-legged on the bed; it was the High Queen of Keltia who now spoke.

  "Well then, my children, an hour ago I received a first-urgency communication out of Falias sector, from the commander of the Glaistig, a destroyer on routine patrol just outside the Curtain Wall. One of her scout sloops has made contact with a stranger ship."

  Rohan groaned. "Gallain?" he asked, using the Gaeloch word that served as a blanket term for all alien humanoid races. "Is that what you dragged us up here for? Where is the urgency there? We have made contact with strangers often enough before. All we ever do is quarantine them for a time, receive their ambassadors here at Caerdroia, and give them audience with you. What is so different now?"

  For answer, Aeron activated the big wallscreen at the far end of the room. Against a sharp-edged background of starfield, a small, rather old-fashioned ship hung motionless in hologram. She increased the magnification, and as one her companions sat up startled.

  "A deep-space interstellar probe ship, with its crew in coldsleep," commented Aeron, in a dry lecturer's voice that fooled nobody. She added almost casually, "From Earth."

  Now she had their undivided attention, and she waited quietly while they stared at the image, studying it, gathering their own thoughts and questions. She had done the same herself scarcely an hour since; their thoughts and questions would be much the same as her own...

  "Terrans," breathed Morwen at last. "Have they spoken to you?"

  "What are you going to do about them?" asked Rohan at the same moment.

  Gwydion remained silent, though he glanced up sideways at Aeron for her response. This event had been long expected; ever since, three millennia ago, the Kelts had first settled in their new home, the eventual, or inevitable, reunion with Earth had been anticipated--with varying attitudes.

  Some monarchs over the centuries had counseled extending the hand of friendship and alliance and common kinship to Earth, should that day ever come when Terra and Keltia must meet again at last. Others had set their faces against it, and had called for hostility, or at best a policy of severely neutral disregard. As First Lord of War, Gwydion had his own ideas; as Pendragon of Lirias, leader of the awesome magical-military order known as the Dragon Kinship, he had others. But he kept his own counsel for the moment, and waited to hear his Queen's thought.

  "They have not yet spoken to any Kelt, save the two pilots aboard the scout vessel and the commander of the Glaistig," Aeron was saying. "And as for what I shall do--well, first of all I shall do as we always do when strangers are in the gate: show them sacred Keltic
hospitality." She slid off the bed as she spoke, crossed the room to a wardrobe and began pulling out clothing. "Have the Firedrake and an escort brought in and stand ready in orbit. I am going to greet our guests."

  An instant rigidity seized the room.

  "Is that wise?" murmured Gwydion. He did not look at her.

  "They will not know who I am," she said reasonably, "if nobody is fool enough to tell them... I know what you are thinking, Gwydion, but I shall worry about that later. Tonight, I need very desperately to know what like are these Terrans. I need to know how came they here, what they do seek, what more they may know of us, and who it was told them. And I need to know all this before I take the news to the Council." She sensed the disapproval in the silence, turned to face them. "It is but a probe drone, after all, not an armada."

  "Then why go out on Firedrake?" asked Morwen immediately. "The Starfleet flagship, with a destroyer escort, going to meet a probe--does that not seem something strange?"

  "Not to my mind! These Terrans already know some little about us, from the scout ship if from nowhere else. By now, they undoubtedly are aware we are originally of Earth, and if I were one of them, I would certainly think it peculiar if some dramatic first gesture were not made. I might even begin to wonder what was being hidden... If my going chafes you so, Elharn shall come; he shall be my official representative, and I only an anonymous observer. But I will go." The green eyes glinted, and there was sudden steel beneath the light tone of her voice.

  Morwen sighed, resigned. "And what to us?"

  "I wish you, Taoiseach, to inform my High Councillors, or as many of them as you can locate at this time of night. Call an immediate session for all those in Caerdroia, and summon the others who are not in the City or who may be off-planet. Tell them what has happened, so far as you know, and decide how best to announce the news to the people. Rohan, you will of course take my chair in my absence. Then, call another meeting to be held when I return: a joint session of High Council, Privy Council, and the leaders of Senate, Assembly and House of Peers. By then I shall have a better idea of the Terrans upon which to act." Aeron flashed them a smile. "And perhaps the Rechtair of Tara should begin planning of a suitable ceremonial welcome. Earth seems to have found us at last."