The Copper Crown Read online

  After they had gone, Aeron stood motionless in the middle of the room. She seemed to come back to herself, abruptly, shaking her head as if to clear it, then took a cloak from its peg and wrapped herself in its voluminous folds. Pulling the hood up about her face, she let herself out onto the turret walk through a door set in the thickness of the tower wall.

  Out on the battlements, the full force of An-Lasca came at her, flattening her against the wall and whipping her cloak out behind her. It was hard to catch her breath in that fierce unslackening rush of air, and after a few yards she turned aside to shelter in a small recess cut into the stone.

  The ramparts shone wet and black in the light from her windows; the mist that lay as frost farther inland was here still sea-mist only. Below, the waves sounded, their sullen boom amplified by the niche in which Aeron huddled on her bench. Overhead, the Criosanna still arched luminous milky veils over Tara.

  That at least was unchanged, no whit altered by this vast new thing that had come to change all else. But beyond those circling bright ribbons, out there--her eye quickly oriented the direction--out beyond the Spearhead, a ship from Earth lay hove-to in deep space outside the Curtain Wall, and a Keltic scout ship had hailed it, and a Keltic warship kept watch on it, and a Keltic fleet would soon be racing out to meet it, and she with that fleet.

  Why had she been so insistent upon her own going? Was it, as Morwen and Rohan and Gwydion clearly thought, just mischief? In the past, when contact had been made, she had always waited regally for aliens to come to her; sovereigns of mighty nations did not dash off to meet any little curragh that ventured into their territory.

  Oh, but this was so different, she thought, and a thrill of anticipation shook her from head to foot. Surely the others had seen that? A ship from Earth, the ship Keltia had been awaiting for the past three millennia! And now it was here, in her time, in her reign; the gods having for their own reasons so ordered it that Aeron Aoibhell and no other must be the one to face this moment.

  What would her people think? Would they see it as it appeared in her eyes, as a high moment of destiny for Keltia, for all the galaxy, even? Would they remember in their bones, in that inner certainty of race-memory, in that cell-coded dim place within them that spoke to all Kelts alike, the beautiful blue-white planet that had been their home? Or, remembering, would they wish to affirm that kinship of old with the Terran world-family? They could never go back, of course; Keltia was a power in the galaxy now, for good or for ill, very possibly mightier than Earth herself, though that remained to be proven. Alliance, then? Was it possible... or even desirable?

  And the Terrans, what would they think? What would they be like? After three thousand years... Aeron felt herself shiver, pulled her cloak closer around her. For the Kelts had not left Earth in happy time, nor even for high adventure's sake. They had gone as refugees, fleeing persecutions, desperate, hoping to find the home they had been promised out among the stars, but never knowing if they would live to see it. Who aboard that first emigration, that first staggering leap into the dark, could have foreseen the Keltia to come; having foreseen, who would have believed?

  Except, of course, Brendan... Her thought spun back to contemplation of her great ancestor, founder of her House. St. Brendan the Astrogator. He was the one who had gotten her into this. He was the First Cause of this present moment. It was all his fault. When everybody else in fifth-century Ireland had been busy with leather boats and the New World across the western seas, Brendan had been busy plotting mass exodus. No leather boats for him; no, Brendan had had to get involved with the Danaans, the last of Atlantis, and end up with Starships and magic. So that when the monk Patrick came, with his preachings and his prohibitions against magic and all the high lore preserved so long at such cost, Brendan had seen the way of it, and had revolted. Supported by his mother Nia, guided by the old man Barinthus's half-mad memories of a long-ago voyage, Brendan had built ships to sail the stars again, as the Atlanteans had done, and in those ships he had taken the last of the Danaans back out to the heavens.

  With them went many others, Milesians and Kymry and Scotans, Picts and Prytani, Kernish and Vanx, who would no longer stay if magic died, and so Keltia began--here, in this very place from which Aeron now stared at the stars that had led her people home. And those same star-roads now had led Earth to meet them again; Time had spun round, flung free of the Wheel, and worlds stood waiting for her to raise her hand.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she caught the flash and smear of starlight that signalled the emergence of a ship from hyperspace, and then six golden objects, the central one far larger than the others, were moving steadily in a graceful arc out beyond the Criosanna. The fleet had arrived; she must now finish dressing, then go by aircar to Mardale Port, twelve miles away, for the shuttle out to the orbiting flagship.

  In any case, the time for reflection was past. Brendan, no doubt, would have understood. She brushed the sea-damp from her face and went in.

  Chapter Two

  As the bright needles of light that were the approaching Keltic fleet drew steadily nearer, so too did the crew of the Sword draw together to huddle companionably close around the screens, shoulders touching as they watched. No one admitted, even to himself, that reassurance was the reason for this unaccustomed nearness, but that was it all the same. Instinctive. Atavistic, even. But singularly comforting.

  For the rest, they watched in silence.

  Which was broken first by Hathaway. "Mother of poodles!"

  Haruko had to agree. There were six ships out there now, fully visible to the scanners, and one of them was the biggest thing he had ever seen in his life. Even the five smaller vessels were imposing enough. Escort attack craft, undoubtedly: light cruisers, or destroyers. Sleek, deadly, and, judging from their gunports, carrying enough weaponry to take out ships several times their size.

  But the central ship, the one they escorted--that was something else entirely. It looked like a golden dragon. An enormous sculptured head with open jaws, outstretched claws on stylized forelegs, swept-back wings and a curved forked tail; and it had to be ten miles long at the very least... It was a statement of arrogant and ostentatious power, on a scale that Haruko could not quite grasp just yet. A military vessel like a work of art, he thought numbly. A warship deliberately designed to flout astrodynamic conventions, as if the race who had launched her could afford aesthetics even in battle, were so mighty as to be able to ignore the demands of interstellar physics that bound ordinary mortals. And God was it big--

  "I make her more than twelve times bigger than the Empress Elisabeth," said Mikhailova, looking stunned. "Four times the size of Leviathan! I don't even want to guess at her armaments."

  Haruko nodded in abstracted wonder. Comparing the foreign flagship--for she could be nothing else--to the largest civilian and military craft that the Federacy could boast was a fairly pointless exercise. For one thing, such comparisons conveyed nothing of the beauty and sheer impact of the alien ship, and as she began to slow for the rendezvous with the invincible stateliness of an avalanche or a tidal wave, Haruko gave himself up to dazzlement and envy. She seemed hulled in seamless sheet gold that glittered in the wash of starlight across her, and for all her tremendous size and bulk, she was fast, graceful and impressive as hell.

  Sudden cold panic clamped itself around his middle. This, he knew now, beyond any faintest doubt, was what he had been afraid of for the past few hours, ever since they had met the scout ship. This dragon sailing toward him from unknown stars was the embodiment of that prescient numbing dread. That ship held his doom. Whoever commanded her knew the value of psychological warfare. Whoever ruled the race that had launched her... His mind faltered into silence before the possibilities. For the first time in his career, Captain Theo Haruko, FSN, feared contact.

  *

  Aeron stood on the vast main bridge of the Firedrake, arms folded across her chest. She was in her usual shipboard position--leaning casually against the huge v
iewport that formed one facet of the right eye of the dragon--and she was dressed in her usual shipboard attire, the same dark-green flightsuit worn by every kern and officer in the Keltic starfleet, the same knee-high black boots. Her uniform bore no decorations, no mark of rank, no insignia of any kind save the royal device of the winged unicorn upon her left sleeve. Her hair was loose, and rippled down to her knees.

  She was staring out at the blazing starfields forward as if she could somehow detect in all that velvet immensity the one significant speck that was the Terran ship. All around her, the bridge crew worked smoothly, unconstrained by her presence.

  Still, that presence was very much in the forefront of their awareness. It was always an occasion when the great flagship had the Ard-rian on board; but the crew was well used to it, and Aeron had nothing to do but be a passenger, even though she was qualified to sail this ship herself. The Firedrake, as always, was under the command of Mistress and Captain Gwennan Chynoweth, a full century Aeron's senior and latest of a long line of spacegoing Chynoweths.

  Even that, though, was not enough; and Aeron's presence in any capacity whatever would not have been accepted by her counselors--they had accepted it reluctantly enough even as it was--were it not for the presence of the Master of Sail himself. Elharn Aoibhell, called Ironbrow, High Admiral of the Keltic Starfleet since before his grand-niece Aeron's birth, stood beside Chynoweth on the cithog side of the command deck.

  Under the terms of Aeron's promise, Elharn was her official royal representative to this exceptionally unorthodox diplomatic meeting. It would be he, with Gwennan Chynoweth, who would formally greet the Terrans in the name of Keltia and the Queen of Kelts; not Aeron, who was bound by that same promise to the role of unidentified onlooker, nameless and rankless.

  Aeron was irritated all over again when she remembered that. To hide her ill temper, she turned her gaze out again at the stars, feeling the Firedrake begin to slow around her. They must be very near now.

  Confirming her guess, Elharn approached. He saluted gravely, fist to shoulder in the Keltic fashion, and, at her nod, spoke.

  "We have arrived at the coordinates, Ard-rian."

  All her annoyance vanished, and her face lighted with a burst of unqueenly eagerness.

  "Let us see what they look like close to, then." She uncoiled from her position against the bulkhead and went to the railing that overlooked the huge control bay twenty feet below. Elharn, a step behind her, signalled unobtrusively to a tech.

  Immediately the big main screen blurred and cleared to reveal the Sword, looking much as it had done on the screen in Aeron's chamber. Off to one side of the picture, the scout sloop was visible a short way away; and, even more discreetly distant, the outlines of the destroyer Glaistig blocked the farther stars. The Glaistig had been there ever since first summoned by her scout vessel, taking up a watchful position at a safe distance, lest there should be some trap sprung before the fleet, and the Firedrake which was a fleet unto herself, should arrive.

  Taking almost automatic note of these military dispositions, of which she thoroughly approved, Aeron leaned against the railing and allowed herself to be entranced, much as was Haruko at that same moment aboard the Sword. Out here in deep interstellar space, that strange hollow sunless country of cold stars and galaxies adrift, the metal artifact of man's devising that was the Sword took on overtones of glamourie. It was almost a fith-fath, thought Aeron, bemused; a shape-shifting spell. First it looked totally natural, then it most unsettlingly did not, and then again, after she had stared at it a while longer, it did. She could not make up her mind about it. Whatever, this was what had come all that way from Earth after all those years.

  "She is very small, my lord," remarked Aeron at last to Elharn, who stood patiently at her shoulder. "How many are aboard her?"

  "Five, Ard-rian. All were in coldsleep, of course."

  "Of course." Aeron stared a while longer, then with visible reluctance stepped back from the rail, and Elharn quickly schooled the smile from his features. "Well, Master of Sail, I give place to you--as promised. Send appropriate greetings, and invite the Earth captain here. After simple decontamination, of course."

  Gwennan Chynoweth, who had joined them in time to hear this last, shook her head.

  "Forgive me, Ard-rian," she said, a careful delicacy to her tone. "But they cannot come aboard a foreign vessel without, ah, sureties. A certain faith on their part would--"

  "They are undoubtedly civilized people, gentry and officers, well used to interstellar diplomacy," said Aeron icily, her resentment getting the better of her. "Else they would never have been sent on so delicate a mission. But what do you suggest, Captain?"

  Gwennan smiled, unruffled, for she well understood her ruler's wish to be more actively a part of this breathtakingly exciting moment.

  "He'll come here, I'll go there. Fair exchange. And my lord Elharn will be here to greet him officially. With your permission, Ard-rian."

  Both Elharn and Chynoweth saw the idea leap, full-blown and shining, into Aeron's face. Elharn spoke first to scotch it.

  "Nay, Aeron, you will not go yourself."

  "Uncle, it is perfect! They can have no idea who I might be--"

  "And that is how it must remain. It is out of the question, Aeron, and I am in command of this embassy," he reminded her. "At Your Majesty's order--Besides, you are here as a plain spacer, a kern of no rank."

  "I am a Fian commander," replied Aeron a little stiffly. "And a qualified Starship captain."

  "All very true. But the Terrans do not know that--as they must not; and your uniform says otherwise--as it must. It would provoke an interstellar incident were we to offer to swap one Keltic kern for their captain."

  "And when they later discovered--which they would, and sooner rather than later--that their hostage had been our Queen?" Chynoweth pointed out, with the bland guile that so often was required in dealing with Aeron. "The consequences of that could well be--unfortunate."

  Aeron, who had been scowling, was brought up short by that. It made sense, she was forced to admit, but no one said she had to be gracious about it... "Very well. You may go, Captain. If, of course, the Terrans even agree to such terms."

  The tall blonde Kernishwoman grinned. "Thank you, Ard-rian. And you?"

  "I? I shall stay here on the bridge, of course, and watch from a distance. A safe, silent distance. Unless you two jurisconsults think even that too much?"

  But, as it turned out, they did not. Saluting them both, Gwennan left for the shuttle deck, and Aeron turned disconsolately back to watch the proceedings in the control bay. Elharn maintained discreet silence for a few minutes, then laid a gentle hand on her shoulder.

  "Aeron, you do understand why we cannot risk your going, cannot risk even your speaking to the Terrans at this time? Gwydion would cut me to pieces if anything happened to you. And you did promise."

  Mutinous green eyes met his, then fell, and Aeron briefly inclined her cheek to touch his hand.

  "Ah, uncle, of course I know; who knows better than I, by now? All the same--" She broke off, then continued in a lower voice, turning away so that the crew should not see her face. "How very much I should like to not be Queen for a while... This is the greatest thing that has happened to us since the time of Arthur, perhaps since the time of Brendan himself. I wanted so much to see it as Aeron only, before I was obliged to see it as the Ard-rian Aeron." She glanced up at him. "Does that sound so very terrible?"

  He shook his head, smiling. "Not to me does it sound so, alanna. And so you bullied Gwydion and Morwen and Rohan, the poor bodachs, into letting you come. Nay, I understand that well, and your father would have done the very same, if it were he who sat today upon the Throne of Scone."

  Her quick ear had caught the subtle shadings of what he had really said. "You miss him very much."

  Elharn's eyes were distant with old, gentle memories. "He was only ten years my junior, though he was my brother's son--we were more like cousins than uncl
e and nephew. And you are very like him in many ways, you know. But even more are you like your grandfather."

  She looked startled. "Lasairian? He was not like--"

  But Elharn shook his head. "Your other grandfather. Farrell. And that worries me sometimes."

  In truth, it worried more people than just the High Admiral: Aeron's maternal grandfather, Farrell Prince of Leinster, had rejoiced in the possession of a wild strain of impulsiveness, a tendency to leap into action first and think later, if at all, that he had passed on to his daughter Emer, and she to hers. Courage and single-mindedness went with it, but Farrell's unpredictability made for a certain recklessness not entirely appropriate in a High Queen. After all, look where it had led her tonight...

  Aeron, catching much of this telepathically, smiled, for she well understood her great-uncle's concern, and now she was the one who laid a comforting hand on the other's arm.

  "Never mind, Master of Sail. As of this moment, it goes from our hands to the laps of the gods." She pointed. "Look there."

  On the deosil screen, Gwennan Chynoweth's gold and black shuttle now hovered alongside the Terran ship, and another, smaller, shuttle was on the main screen, gliding into the hangar bay of the Firedrake like a falcon alighting. The Earth captain had arrived.

  Chapter Three

  As his shuttle moved smoothly through deep space toward its rendezvous with the dragon ship, Haruko had leisure to speculate upon the probable nature of his imminent hosts, and perhaps also to regret his haste to meet them. Maybe Tindal and Hathaway had been right to urge caution. Maybe he had been too precipitate, too eager, in his instant acceptance of the Keltic offer. True, his presence on their flagship was counterbalanced by their captain's presence on the Sword, but treachery was everywhere in the universe and what guarantees did he have, really? All they knew about the Kelts up to this moment came from some antiquated anthropological tapes on the Kelts of Earth that Mikhailova had dug up, and from what little the scouts had told O'Reilly. And all of it could be a pack of lies, and in any case it had all been in one or the other of those incomprehensible languages.