Tales of Spiral Castle: Stories of the Keltiad by Patricia Kennealy-Morrison

Author:Patricia Kennealy-Morrison [Kennealy-Morrison, Patricia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lizard Queen Press
Published: 2014-06-19T00:00:00+00:00

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One thing: despite their shared and ancient kinship with the House of Dôn, the Sidhe never came to visit. That was no real surprise, for no mortal Kelt had reported even seeing one of the Shining Folk for several centuries. But before that, matters had stood very differently.

In the long history of the Penarvons alone, there had been five weddings of mortal and magic kind, though the genealogies and relationships were so intertwined that those were by no means the only infusions of sidhaun blood, just the formally sanctioned ones—romances had there been aplenty, both casual and deep. In truth, every great Keltic family could say the same, could boast of being sidheanach, human kin to the unhuman fae: the Aoibhells, of course, current holders of the High Crown, who ruled over all Six Nations and seven planetary systems; the Douglases, the Penarvons’ counterpart on the planet Caledon; the Kerrigans and the Grahams, the Ó Dálaigh and the MacKinstreys, the Trevellians and the Kervouaecs—so many families of equal and lesser distinction could count descent from such unions.

Not so much these days, though, and perhaps that was where the strain did lie. Since the days of Edeyrn Marbh-draoi, who had imposed his evil Theocracy over all Keltia, killing the royal family of that time and causing, though it had been by no means his intent, the rise of Arthur of Arvon to become Ard-rígh over Keltia, the Sidhe had gradually widened and maintained a certain remote distance from mortal Kelts. Though no one could say why, just so: the Sidhe were not communicative on the matter, or indeed on any other; and those humans who were in a position to ask were not asking, or not answering if indeed they chanced to know.

Some said this recent distancing had all to do with Gwyn, present king of the Sidhefolk, and with the way in which he had come to his crown. His father, the late and celebrated King Neith, who had led the Sidhe to Keltia in the Great Immram, and at whose behest Taliesin Pen-bardd had founded the mighty order of the Dragon Kinship, had perished almost three centuries ago as the result of some mysterious happenstance that the then crown princess, Aoife Aoibhell, had allegedly brought about, though no one apart from the immediate kindreds concerned was at all sure as to what this terrible deed had been.

It had been held out as an accident, which in truth it was, and Neith had indeed died; but the calamity had caused the young and stricken princess to run away and hide on a world far from Keltia, sinking her guilt and shame in worse shame still, and had likewise caused the Sidhe to withdraw from mortals, in sorrow or in anger none could say. Aoife had been tracked and rescued and brought back, of course, though by no Kelt, and had gone on to rule as Ard-rían, becoming the oldest monarch in all Keltic history and the longest to reign; but the damage had been done.

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