She felt his glance, though she did not look at him. She was well aware of the curiosity that was consuming everyone aboard the Firedrake: Why was Aeron here, and why was it such a secret? She cared not at all for that; it was worth all the trouble, every bit, just to have been here, to have seen the Terran ship and stood on the bridge with the Terran captain. It would even be worth the harrowing that was awaiting her at the hands of her Council when she returned to Caerdroia. She spared a brief thought, and pang of sympathy, for Gwydion and Rohan and Morwen, who even now were most likely trying to explain away an action they themselves neither fully understood nor entirely approved. But she would mend all later.
"A word to you, my friend," she murmured to the guard beside her. "Nay, do not speak--but watch the Terran closely. What you see or sense may be of use to me later."
He nodded, his eyes straight ahead, and after a while Aeron began to smile quietly to herself.
*
The perambulation of the Firedrake, limited as it was, still lasted more than an hour. Haruko, exerting all his powers of diplomacy, charmed and was charmed by his hosts. By the time the tour came to an end, back in the landing-bay in front of his shuttle, arrangements had been concluded for the Sword to follow the destroyer Glaistig to a quarantine planetoid known as Inishgall.
Inishgall was not within the boundaries of Keltic space, but was rather a sort of anteroom planet, used only for the brief quarantine period required of those who would be guests in Keltia. There was some slight mystery about what in fact did constitute Keltic space, and there had been mention of something called the Curtain Wall, but no explanation had been given. Finally Haruko permitted himself to forget his manners so far as to ask, point-blank.
Elharn was equally straightforward. "You'd not believe it if I told you, Captain, so I will leave it for the moment. It will be explained to you and your crew in good time, I promise you. Any road, you will be seeing for yourself soon enough." And Haruko had had to content himself with that.
But in all other particulars he thought the Keltic proposal an excellent one. He and the crew would remain on the planetoid in semi-isolation for three days' quarantine, local time. A retinue of Kelts would be dispatched to keep them company and to teach them everything they might want, or need, to know. It all sounded perfectly acceptable.
So he took his farewells of Elharn, casting a final covert glance at the mysterious red-haired girl who still stood impassively a few feet behind the Admiral, and entered his shuttle. The doors slid closed behind him, and almost immediately the craft lifted smoothly out into space.
Behind the thick protective glass that shielded the gallery from the vacuum of launch, Elharn dismissed the escort and turned on Aeron.
"Well?"
She shrugged happily, still staring after the vanished shuttle. "Let us wait here for Gwennan. The board shows her shuttle but two minutes out."
"As you wish, Ard-rian."
"Oh, don't be cross with me," she said. "Not you, uncle."
He shook his head. "You're a hard lass to be angry with, Aeron, but I have the feeling your Council will find it no task at all."
"And therefore do I not need it from you." She slipped her arm through his. "But what did you think! Oh, I am glad I was here. But I know we were not what he expected."
"Like as not," said Elharn dryly. "And do you think you learned enough from him to justify the risk you took? Not to mention all the explanations you will have to furnish?"
Aeron dismissed this magnificently. "That pack of camurs will be no great trouble."
"They'd not thank you to call them camurs, and they may well be more trouble than you think. For one thing, they have the power to vote you a censure."
"They dare not," she said confidently. "They have not the votes, and even if they did--But look, here is Gwen."
*
"She went where?" Gavin Earl of Straloch, Lord Extern on the High Council, went first white, then purple, in his rage.
"The Ard-rian," repeated Morwen, pointedly stressing Aeron's title, "has gone to observe the Terrans from aboard the Firedrake." This was going to be far worse than they had feared; she threw a quick look at Rohan, who sat at her left in Aeron's big carved chair at the head of the Council table.
Rohan raised his eyebrows noncommittally. As far as he could tell, the Ard-eis, the High Council of Keltia, felt themselves fully justified in their indignation, though not all of them apparently felt it quite so keenly as Straloch. He could understand their vexation: They had been summoned from their sleep in the middle of the night--at least, the six of them who had been in residence in Turusachan; the others were even now en route to the Throneworld for the later, larger meeting--dragged into emergency session, and with no warning whatsoever been blithely informed not only of the arrival of the Terran probe ship, an event of the gravest importance in any case, but also of the fact that their Queen had dashed out to meet it without even the courtesy of informing them. Small wonder that Straloch fumed: He was, after all, Lord Extern, in charge of all out-Wall affairs, and he should certainly have been consulted on this.
"She has hardly gone alone," added Morwen with pardonable sharpness, though inwardly furious with Aeron herself. "She is with Elharn, aboard the flagship with a five-cursal escort. I think she will be quite safe."
"Too impulsive!" shouted Straloch. "That girl never thinks!"
The Chief Bard, Idris ap Caswyn, interposed quickly. "That is not entirely accurate, Gavin, and most entirely unfair--at the very least give Aeron the chance to speak for herself. In the meantime... Rohan, why did Aeron say she must go?"
From the way the Council hushed to hear his answer, Rohan was at once made uncomfortably aware how much depended on how well he explained his sister's actions. And he barely understood them himself...
"I think she simply felt a need to be there in her own person," he said at last. "She thought she might perhaps learn more, in the end, by kenning the Terrans herself at the beginning--before any barriers went up, before they knew who she was and so could relate to her only as Ard-rian."
Not good enough, he saw, and Morwen's frown confirmed it. Well, gods, he was annoyed with her himself, Straloch wasn't the only one who thought the Queen had behaved irresponsibly. But Aeron had charged her three closest advisors with the duty of explaining her actions, and they would simply have to do the best they could.
"Kenning, eh? Well, that's something, at least," growled Straloch, slightly mollified. "Don't know what good it'll do, but it's something." Magic was a reason he could understand, though he did not go in for it himself. The telepathic technique known as kenning was one Aeron was known to be skilled in; even a non-sorcerer could buy that, and the suggestion, however flimsy, that Aeron was out there exercising her powers was an excuse that all could accept with reasonable grace.
Across the table, Gwydion shifted in his seat, and instantly the undercurrent of comment ceased.
"Whatever reasons Aeron may have," he said, "--and I for one think them good reasons--the thing we must consider, here and now, is not what has Aeron done about the Terrans, but what we here are to do about the Terrans. Like it or not, Earth has found us; or, more accurately, we have announced ourselves to them. I know a matter of such weight cannot be, and must not be, decided in haste; but we have very little time in which to debate at leisure. The people must be told. And the very first thing they will ask us is what is being done. So, my friends, what are we to tell them?"
The ironic half-smile on Gwydion's bearded face was lost on none of them, and no one spoke.
"No suggestions?" he asked, after a long silent moment. "Well, I have had a little longer than most of you to think about it, and perhaps that is an unfair asking just yet... However, as First Lord of War, my first duty is the battle-readiness of this kingdom, and my last duty is that also. And I will say now there is more here than any could have foreseen. Even Aeron, and she sees twice as far as the rest of us."
"You are speaking of the Imp
erium, Gwydion." The soft Scotic accents belonged to Lady Douglass Graham. Douglass's sweet voice had led many to overlook the flint in her eyes--to their detriment. As Earl-Marischal, commander of Keltia's attack forces, she and Illoc mac Nectan, the Earl-Guardian who commanded the defense forces, were responsible directly to the First Lord of War, and so shared with Gwydion much military knowledge of which the other Councillors preferred to remain ignorant.
And clearly they would prefer to stay so now, if only they could, observed Rohan with some scorn. Straloch certainly; and Auster, the Chief Brehon; and Lodenek of Gorlas, the Sea Lord. Thank gods that Douglass was on Aeron's side, and Idris's attitude seemed to convey that he very much wanted to be persuaded onto Aeron's side. Pity it was that there even were sides in this matter... But no one could afford to remain ignorant any longer, and all in the room knew it.
"Not the Imperium alone, though the problem there has been, I admit, graver than usual of late." Gwydion sat silent a moment, and no one cared, or dared, to press him. "I am thinking of what will happen--inevitably--when the Empire and the Phalanx learn we have met the Terrans. When it dawns on them both, as it surely will, that Keltia alone is one thing, and Terra alone another, but that Keltia allied with the Terran Federacy--two realms with common ancestry and loyalties--is something else again. And I am thinking of what their probable responses to such an alliance are like to be."
"Well, we're not allied with the Earthers just yet," grated Straloch. "May never be. Aeron is so damned flighty--"
"The Ard-rian is not so flighty as you seem to think, my lord," said Rohan sharply. When would the older members of the Council stop thinking of his sister as an ungovernable, if brilliant, child--"But Gwydion is right. We have little sword-room here. We are not in posture of war at the moment, but we all know that moment could turn upon a hair. You are all well aware just how delicate is the 'peace' that now exists. Our enemies will use any excuse, however tenuous, to turn that balance. An alliance with Earth, perhaps even the mere rumor of such an alliance, might easily tip the scales to war. In such time, can we stand alone? Gwydion?"
Gwydion's gray eyes were veiled, and he did not answer at once.
"We cannot," he said presently. He rose from his chair, stretched, and went to the windows, where now the sky was lightening to the dawn. All Caerdroia lay beneath him in the growing brightness. "We cannot," he said again, almost casually. "One or the other we could stand against, and probably defeat. But we cannot stand at the same time against them both, whether they come at us one and one, or two united. Not alone."
"Therefore you want the Terrans as allies!" gasped Ffaleira, the Ban-draoi Magistra, speaking for the first time. "You and Aeron--Gwydion, we have only just met them! We do not know what they may be like, or if they even wish for alliance, or what strength they might have to lend us--"
Gwydion swung round from the windows, and his smile was that of a swordsman who has just backed his opponent into a corner.
"And what else, Magistra, did you think Aeron went out there to try to begin to learn?"
Idris laughed. "Oh, beautiful! And so Aeron goes to ken the Terrans before they even know they are being tested." His smile turned malicious. "Not much flightiness about that move, Gavin... Nay, Aeron has played this bout well. She must know and they must not, and she must know first. That's the way queens are supposed to think. Gods, I had given anything to have seen it."
Rohan smiled, but his expression was distracted. "Well," he said at last, "it appears there will be no agreement here, and any road, decisions of policy must wait for Aeron's return. But we cannot keep back the news any longer. Morwen, you must announce it at once to the people." He silenced their protests with a glance of warning. "At the Ard-rian's command, I decide here in her absence, and this is what I decide. Taoiseach, see to it."
"At once, lord."
Straloch rallied for one last throw. "Very well, tell the people if you will, but how do we know the Terrans are not already in league with another, and all this but a trap?"
Idris snorted. "Treachery? The encounter was far too chancy for that; any trap of such importance would have been far better laid."
"We know they are not for Imperium or Phalanx," remarked Morwen with an air of exasperated finality, "because if they were, they would not now be sending probe ships into unknown territory hoping to find possible friends. And--all the moithering possibilities of bluff and double-bluff aside--if they were indeed seeking to carve themselves an empire of their own, they would have dispatched an armada to conquer, not a weaponless drone on an embassy mission. I think they may need us as much as we may need them."
Douglass looked up, her dark eyes thoughtful. "But, Taoiseach, you are not certain."
"Nay, I am not certain." Morwen smiled grimly. "But I'll wager Aeron is."
Chapter Four
On the world called Alphor, a young man hurried down a palace corridor to talk to his grandfather. Guards snapped to crisp attention as he passed them, and when he had gone by they peered after him with a fearing curiosity.
The young man came to a set of double doors, upon either side of which stood sentries with weapons at the ready. The doors were blazoned in gold with the Imperial eagles, and the sentries leaped to pull back those doors for him to enter. He was called Jaun Akhera, and the grandfather he hastened to address was the Emperor Strephon, ruler of the Cabiri Empire--the Imperium.
"Grandson!" The voice, old yet strong, and pleased-sounding, came from over by the tall windows on the opposite side of the room.
Jaun Akhera dropped briefly to one knee, then rose and crossed the sun-filled stoa to the golden longchair where his grandfather reclined upon silk pillows.
The Emperor of the galaxy, for so he liked to think of himself, was playing senet, a game that had been ancient when Akhenaton and Nefretiti had played it on a board brought from Atlantis. Jaun Akhera watched for a while, then pointed out a move with a flick of his fingers, and his grandfather brightened.
"That's won it for me," he said, delighted, and looked up at his daughter's son. "You are well today, young Akhi?"
"I am very well, and so will you be, lord, when you have heard." Without waiting for an invitation, Jaun Akhera curled up gracefully in a chair and regarded his grandfather. "I have just received a communication from one of my contacts--the one in Keltia."
The Emperor looked interested. "I didn't know you had a spy in Keltia."
But his grandson was not discomfited. "Be that as it may, sire, the news I have is certain and it is good. The Terrans have made contact with the Kelts at last. An Admiralty drone probe out of Earth was intercepted outside the Curtain Wall by a Keltic destroyer, and it is even now on its way to Caerdroia."
"In Seti's name, what is the good news there?" The old, lined face grew petulant. "Are you really so stupid after all? We have been fearing that alliance since before you were born, yes, and longer."
Jaun Akhera's face, which had darkened momentarily, cleared again, and his voice was velvety.
"I say it is good news, lord, because it sets up our chance to move against the Kelts at last. And have we not waited even longer for that?"
"Mmm... yes, well, perhaps it is as you say." Strephon peered keenly at his eldest daughter's eldest child. Certainly it was as the boy had said; and in fact they had waited nearly fifteen centuries for a chance as good. But best not to be too eager, too approving too quickly, at least not for the boy to see. Obviously he had come here with a plan; but that was to be expected. He was brilliant, this one; he had inherited all his mother's deviousness and had combined it with the cold, calculating intellect of his father's family. His late father, Strephon corrected himself. Not that Phano hadn't deserved execution, to be sure... But all that unpleasantness was past now. The son of Phano and Helior was unquestioningly loyal; that was, after all, one of the reasons why Strephon had felt safe in formally naming him Imperial Heir. And if Jaun Akhera claimed advantage here for the Imperium, for the Coranian people, and m
ost importantly for the family Plexari, it was surely so.
"Well, tell me, then."
Jaun Akhera leaned forward, his tanned face animated. "I think the Kelts will not refuse this encounter. I think they will ally themselves with Terra. I propose to come between them before that alliance can be consummated, and in so doing, I shall be able to crush them both.
"As you know, Sire, Terra and Keltia both are easily strong enough to stand against us alone should it come to war, though not, perhaps, with any real certainty of victory. Allied, however, they could threaten us, could inflict great damage on us, could--conceivably--defeat us. But the one thing neither Keltia nor Terra could expect is an alliance on our side. If we threw in with the Phalanx worlds, or even just with the kingdom of Fomor alone--and we know well how the Fomori feel about the Kelts--" He paused to let the image sink into his grandfather's mind. "The time for us to strike is soon," he continued. "Before any such Keltic-Terran alliance is concluded. Before there is either commitment or plan for either to come to the aid of the other. If we move at such a time, in common cause with Fomor, Keltia should fall; and, if we play our hand aright, Terra with her."
Strephon drummed his fingers on the senet board. The plan held great possibilities, that was easy to see, as well as great risks. If what Jaun Akhera had heard was even a tenth part correct, Keltia must now be in a state of political uncertainty. And when had there ever been a better time to begin hostilities?
"I like it well," said Strephon. "How do you plan to start?"
"I shall summon certain individuals here for a meeting," said Jaun Akhera. "And then I have a pawn in mind to make my opening move in Keltia." He fingered one of the senet pieces, smiling to himself. "Yes, a pawn to take a Queen... May I have Your Imperial Majesty's sanction to begin?"
How very simple it was to start a war... Strephon was taken aback for the second time that afternoon. He really must keep closer watch on this very, ah, energetic heir of his.
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