Search Worlds Without End

It is a time when the star-kingdom of Keltia is plagued by the Firvolgi, an ancient alien race. Yet along with a problem, the gods have sent a solution: Athyn Cahanagh, born orphaned on a battlefield, becomes High Queen and drives the invaders out. Athyn--now known as Blackmantle--and the great bard Morric Douglas fall in love and wed, ascending the Keltic throne as king and queen. But the lovely, dissolute courtesan Amzalsunea vows she would sooner kill her onetime lover Morric than see him with Athyn--and she keeps that vow.

But Athyn has sworn an oath, too, one of love and vengeance; and taking the Low Road that only those mighty in magic may tread, she journeys to the Otherland, to find her lost lord and bring him home.

In the Earth year 453 by the Common Reckoning, a small fleet of ships leaves Ireland, carrying emigrants seeking a new home in a far land. But the ships they sail are not the leather-hulled boats of later legend, and the seas they cross are not the wild Western Ocean. Their ships are starships; the oceans the starry gulfs of space itself. The new world they seek is a distant double-ringed planet, and though this great voyage is indeed led by a man called Brendan, he is no Christian navigator-monk but the son of a mortal lord and a princess of the Sidhe. To escape an invader named Patraic determined to drive the magic of the Old Ways from the land, he must take the best of Celtdom, the faerie race known as the Danaans, to the stars.

When Earth meets Keltia will star empires fall?

When lore became legend on ancient Earth and the powers of magic waned, the Kelts and their allies fled the planet for the freedom of distant star realms.

But the stars were home to dangerous foes, and millennia later, the worlds of Keltia still maintained uneasy truce with two enemy empires - the Imperium and the Phalanx. Then, at the start of the reign of Aeron, mistress of high magic and queen of all the Kelts, an Earthship made contact with her long-fled children. And while Earth and Keltia reached out to form alliance, the star fleets of the enemy mobilized for final, devastating war.

Aeron, Queen of the Kelts, has fled to the stars on a desperate mission to find the fabled Thirteen Treasures of King Arthur, hidden from his Keltic descendants for fifteen hundred years. Her search will lead from the depths of space, where worlds are born, to the heart of an ancient enemy's stronghold and on to a trial of courage and magic that even the Queen of the Kelts may not survive!

And while Aeron pursues her destiny among the stars, all the forces of Keltia are mobilizing for a war that could set the very worlds ablaze--a war that can only be won if Aeron returns triumphant from her doom-shadowed quest.

She was Aeron, heir to the throne of Keltia at a time when the people of the Keltic worlds had not yet re-established contact with their distant brethren of Earth...and when dangerous foes were mobilizing to destroy this mighty space empire hidden beneath its seemingly impenetrable magic-fueled Curtain Wall. From events long before her birth which would shape the worlds and the burdens she would inherit...to her first discovery of the magic that could move the very sun from its path...to the dangerous rites of passage that would make her sorcerer, warrior, avenger, and ultimately Queen...this is the tale of Aeron -- mistress of high magic, and last defender of the Kelts -- whose brilliant powers of sorcery would change the destiny of friends and foes alike when war finally exploded across the starways.

It was a time out of legend, an early age in the history of the worlds of Keltia, when a youth named Arthur dared to regain the throne for the royal House of Don from the usurper Ederyn. The greatest of druids and sworn enemy to all who defied his will, Ederyn swore when he seized power that he would crush the House of Don -- by cutting the people off from their greatest strength, the ancient arts of druids, warriors, and bards. Still, some had managed to keep the secret knowledge alive...preparing for a time of destiny when their skills -- and the penetrating genius of one called Arthur -- would be called upon to strike out against their oppressor.

Taliesin, Chief Bard of Keltia, brother in sword and deed and marriage to Arthur the King, sets his magical Seeings into fated words. He tells how Arthur the lost prince, overthrows the evil, usurping Archdruid and at last comes to his own kingship. But it is a double throne which he must share by law and love with the one woman in all Keltia fit to share it with him. She is Gweniver, princess and priestess, his own cousin -- and his wife.

In this third volume of the Tales of Arthur series, Taliesin Glyndour, chief poet of Keltia, reveals the climax of the epic of Arthur, his sister Morgan, his beloved Gweniver, and the quest for the Graal -- and finally brings his own Triad to triumphant completion.