The Hero and the Crown (13 page)

young daughter rigged out like a soldier boy.

“I—er—I’ve gotten rid of the dragons already, if that’s what you mean,” said

Aerin.

Gebeth dismounted, slowly, and slowly stooped down to __stare at her

trophies. The jaws of one were open, and the sharp teeth showed. Gebeth was

not a rapid nor an original thinker, and he remained squatting on his heels and

staring at the grisly heads long after he needed only to verify the dragonness of

them. As slowly as he had stooped he straightened up again and bowed, stiffly, to

Aerin, saying, “Lady, I salute you.” His fingers flicked out in some ritual recognition

or other, but Aerin couldn’t tell which salute he was offering her, and rather

doubted he knew which one he wanted to give. “Thank you,” she said gravely.

Gebeth turned and caught the eye of one of his men, who dismounted and

wrapped the heads up again; and then, as Gebeth gave no further hint, hesitated,

and finally approached Talat to tie the bundle behind Aerin’s saddle.

“May we escort you home, lady?” Gebeth said, raising his eyes to stare at

Talat’s pricked and bridleless ears, but carefully avoiding Aerin’s face.

“Thank you,” she said again, and Gebeth mounted his horse, and turned it back

toward the City, and waited, that Aerin might lead; and Talat, who knew about

the heads of columns, strode out without any hint from his rider.

The villagers, not entirely sure what they had witnessed, tried a faint cheer as

Talat stepped off; and the boy who announced arrivals suddenly ran forward to

pat Talat’s shoulder, and Talat dropped his nose in acknowledgment and

permitted the familiarity. A girl only a few years older than the boy stepped up to

catch Aerin’s eye, and said clearly, “We thank you.”

Aerin smiled and said, “The honor is mine.”

The girl grew to adulthood remembering the first sol’s smile, and her seat on

her proud white horse.

IT WAS A SILENT journey back, and seemed to take forever. When they finally

entered the City gates it was still daylight, although Aerin was sure it was the

daylight of a week since hearing the villagers1 petition to her father for dragon-

slaying. The City streets were thronged, and while the sight of seven of the king’s

men in war gear and carrying dragon spears was not strange, the sight of the first

sol riding among them and looking rather the worse for wear was, and their little

company was the subject of many long curious looks. They can see me just fine

coming home again, Aerin thought grimly. Whatever shadow it was that I rode

away in; I wish I knew where it had gone.

Hornmar himself appeared at her elbow to take Talat off to the stables when

they arrived in the royal courtyard. Her escort seemed to her to dismount

awkwardly, with a great banging of stirrups and creak of girths. She pulled down

the bundles from behind Talat’s saddle and squared her shoulders. She couldn’t

help looking wistfully after the untroubled Talat, who readily followed Hornmar in

the direction he was sure meant oats; but she jerked her attention back to herself

and found Gebeth staring at her, frozen-faced, so she led the way into the castle.

Even Arlbeth looked startled when they all appeared before him. He was in one

of the antechambers of the main receiving hall, and sat surrounded by papers,

scrolls, sealing wax, and emissaries. He looked tired. Not a word had passed

between Aerin and her unwilling escort since they had left the village, but Aerin

felt that she was being herded and had not tried to .escape. Gebeth would have

reported to the king immediately upon his return, and so she must; it was

perhaps just as well that she had so many sheepdogs to her one self-conscious

sheep, because she might have been tempted to put off the reckoning had she

ridden back alone.

“Sir,” she said. Arlbeth looked at Aerin, then at Gebeth and Gebeth’s frozen

face, then back at Aerin.

“Have you something to report?” he said, and the kindness in his voice was for

both his daughter and his loyal, if scandalized, servant.

What was the proper form for a dragon-killing report? She might have paid a

little more attention to such things if she’d thought a little further ahead. She’d

never particularly considered the after of killing dragons; the fact that she’d done

it was supposed to be enough. But now she felt like a child caught out in

misbehavior. Which at least in Gebeth’s eyes she was. She unwrapped the bundle

she carried under her arm, and laid the battered dragon heads on the floor before

her father’s table. Arlbeth stood up and came round the edge of the table, and

stood staring down at them with a look on his face not unlike Gebeth’s when he

first recognized what was lying in the dust at his horse’s feet.

“We arrived at the village ... after,” said Gebeth, who chose not to look at

Aerin’s ugly tokens of victory again, “and I offered our escort for Aerin-sol’s

return.”

At “offered our escort” a flicker of a smile crossed Arlbeth’s face, but he said

very seriously, “I would speak to Aerin-sol alone.” Everyone disappeared like mice

into the walls, except they closed the doors behind them. Gebeth, his dignity still

outraged, would say nothing, but no one else who had been in the room when

Aerin told the king she had just slain two dragons could wait to start spreading

the tale.

Arlbeth said, “Well?” in so colorless a tone that Aerin was afraid that, despite

the smile, he must be terribly angry with her. She did not know where to begin

her story, and as she looked back over the last years and reminded herself that he

had set no barriers to her work with Talat, had trusted her judgment, she was

ashamed of her secret; but the first words that came to her were: “I thought if I

told you first, you would not let me go.”

Arlbeth was silent for a long time. “This is probably so,” he said at last. “And

can you tell me why I should not have prevented you?”

Aerin exhaled a long breath. “Have you read Astythet’s History?”

Arlbeth frowned a moment in recollection. “I ... believe I did, when I was a boy.

I do not remember it well.” He fixed her with a king’s glare, which is much fiercer

than an ordinary mortal’s. “I seem to remember that the author devotes a good

deal of time and space to dragon lore, much of it more legendary than practical.”

“Yes,” said Aerin. “I read it, a while ago, when I was ... ill. There’s a recipe of

sorts for an ointment called kenet, proof against dragonfire, in the back of it—”

Arlbeth’s frown returned and settled. “A bit of superstitious nonsense.”

“No,” Aerin said firmly. “It is not nonsense; it is merely unspecific.” She

permitted herself a grimace at her choice of understatement. “I’ve spent much of

the last three years experimenting with that half a recipe. A few months ago I

finally found out ... what works.” Arlbeth’s frown had lightened, but it was still

visible. “Look.” Aerin unslung the heavy cloth roll she’d hung over her shoulder

and pulled out the soft pouch of her ointment. She smeared it on one hand, then

the other, noticing as she did so that both hands were trembling. Quickly, that he

might not stop her, she went to the fireplace and seized a burning branch from it,

held it at arm’s length in one greasy yellow hand, and thrust her other hand

directly into the flame that billowed out around it.

Arlbeth’s frown had disappeared. “You’ve made your point; now put the fire

back into the hearth, for that is not a comfortable thing to watch.” He went back

behind his table and sat down; the weary lines showed again in his face.

Aerin came to the other side of his table, wiping her ashy hands on her leather

leggings. “Sit,” said her father, looking up at her; and leaving charcoal fingerprints

on a scroll she tried delicately to move, she cleared the nearest chair and sat

down. Her father eyed her, and then looked at the ragged gashes in her tunic.

“Was it easy, then, killing dragons when they could not burn you?”

She spread her dirty fingers on her knees and stared at them. “No,” she said

quietly. “I did not think beyond the fire. It was not easy.”

Arlbeth sighed. “You have learned something, then.”

“I have learned something.” She looked up at her father with sudden hope.

Arlbeth snorted, or chuckled. “Don’t look at me like that. You have the

beseeching look of a puppy that thinks it may yet get out of a deserved thrashing.

Think you that you deserve your thrashing?”

“That’s not meant solely as a rhetorical question. What sort of thrashing are

you eligible for? You’re a bit old to be sent to your room without any supper, and

I believe I rather gave you your autonomy from Teka’s dictates when I let you and

Talat ride out alone.” He paused. “I suppose you needed to get far enough away

from the City to build a fire big enough to test your discovery thoroughly.” Aerin

still said nothing. “I can’t forbid you Talat, for he’s your horse now, and I love him

too well to deny him his master.”

He paused again. “You seem to be rather a military problem, but as you have

no rank I cannot strip you of it, and as you do not bear a sword from the king’s

hands he can’t take it away from you and hit you with the flat of it.” His eyes

lingered for a moment on Aerin’s eighteenth-birthday present hanging by her

side, but he did not mention it.

This time the pause was a long one. “Will you teach the making of the fire

ointment if I ask it? “

Aerin raised her head. He could command her to explain it, and knew that she

knew he could so command her. “I would gladly teach any who ... gladly would

learn it,” and as she recognized that he did not command her, he recognized that

she said gladly would learn from me, the witch woman’s daughter; for he knew,

for all that it had never been spoken in his ears, what his second wife had been

called.

“I would learn.” He reached for the sack of ointment that Aerin had left lying on

his table, took a little of the yellow grease on his fingertips, and rubbed thumb

and forefinger together. He sniffed. “I suppose this explains the tales of the first

sol’s suddenly frequent visits to the apothecaries.”

Aerin gulped and nodded. “I would—would be honored to show you the

making of the kenet, sir.”

Arlbeth stood up and came over to hug his daughter, and left his arm around

her shoulders, mindless of the sleek fur of his sleeve and the condition of her

leather tunic. “Look, you silly young fool. I understand why you have behaved as

you have done, and I sympathize, and I am also tremendously proud of you. But

kindly don’t go around risking your life to prove any more points, will you? Come

talk to me about it first at least.

“Now go away, and let me get back to what I was doing. I had a long

afternoon’s work still ahead of me before you interrupted.”

Aerin fled.

A week later, when she finally dared face her father at breakfast again, which

meant sitting down at the table and risking such conversational gambits as he

might choose to begin, Arlbeth said, “I was beginning to feel ogreish. I’m glad

you’ve crept out of hiding.” Tor, who was there too, laughed, and so Aerin

learned that Tor knew the dragon story as well. She blushed hotly; but as the first

rush of embarrassment subsided she had to admit to herself that there was

probably no one in the City who did not know the story by now.

Breakfast was got through without any further uncomfortable moments, but as

Aerin rose to slink away—she still wasn’t recovered quite enough for the

receiving-hall, and had been spending her days mending her gear and riding

Talat—Arlbeth said, “Wait just a moment. I have some things for you, but I gave

up bringing them to breakfast several days ago.”

Tor got up and disappeared from the room, and Arlbeth deliberately poured

himself another cup of malak. Tor returned swiftly, although the moments were

long for Aerin, and he was carrying two spears and her small plain sword, which

he must have gone to her room to fetch from its peg on the wall by her bed. Tor

formally offered them to the king, kneeling, his body bowed so that the

outstretched arms that held the weapons were as high as his head; and Aerin

shivered, for the first sola should give such honor to nobody. Arlbeth seemed to

agree, for he said, “Enough, Tor, we already know how you feel about it,” and Tor

straightened up with a trace of a smile on his face.

Arlbeth stood up and turned to Aerin, who stood up too, wide-eyed. “First, I

give you your sword,” and he held it out to her with his hands one just below the

hilt and one two-thirds down the scabbarded blade, and she cupped her hands

around his. He dropped the sword into her hands, and then cupped his fingers

around her closed fingers. “Thus you receive your first sword from your king,” he

said, and let go; and Aerin dropped her arms slowly to her sides, the sword

pressing against her thighs. She carried the sword of the king now; and so the king

could call upon it and her whenever he had need—to do, or not to do, at his

bidding. The color came and went in her face, and she swallowed.

Aerin nodded.

“But since you are officially a sword-bearer and since we take pride in officially