The Hero and the Crown (17 page)

She thought fixedly of other things when she rubbed kenet into her cheek, and

when she dressed and rebound her arm. She did not think at all about being

willing to face other people again, except to cringe mentally away from the idea.

She was not vain as Galanna was vain, but she who had always disliked being

noticed was automatically conspicuous as the only pale-skinned redhead in a

country of cinnamon-skinned brunettes; she could not bear that her wounds now

should make her grotesque as well. It took strength to deal with people, strength

to acknowledge herself as first sol, strength to be the public figure she could not

help being; and she had no strength to spare. She tried to tell herself that her

hurts were honorably won; even that she should be proud of them, that she had

successfully done something heroic; but it did no good. Her instinct was to hide.

At last she grew restless. “Perhaps we should go home,” she said to Talat. She

wondered how it had gone with Arlbeth and Tor and the army; it could all be over

now, or Damar could be at war, or—almost anything. She didn’t know how long

she’d been in the dragon’s valley, and she began to want urgently to know what

was happening outside. But she did not yet have the courage to venture out of

Maur’s black grave-out where she would have to face people again.

Meanwhile she walked a little farther and a little farther each day: and one day

she finally left the steam bank, and hobbled around the high rock that separated

the stream from the black valley where Maur lay. As the sound of the stream

receded she kept her eyes on her feet; one booted and one wrapped in heavy

tattered and grimy rags; and one of them stepping farther than the other. She

watched their uneven progress till she passed the rock wall by, and a little gust of

burnt-smelling breeze pressed her cheek, and the sound of her footsteps became

the slide-crunch, slide-crunch of walking on ash and cinders. She looked up.

Carrion beasts had not gotten far with the dead dragon. Its eyes were gone, but

the heavy hide of the creature was too much for ordinary teeth and claws. Maur

looked smaller to her, though; withered and shrunken, the thick skin more

crumpled. Slowly she limped nearer, and the small breeze whipped around and

stroked her other cheek. There was no smell of rotting flesh in the small valley,

although the sun beat down overhead and made her cheek, despite the kenet on

it, throb with the heat. The valley reeked, but of smoke and ash; small black flakes

still hung in the air, and when the breeze struck her full in the face the cinders

caught in her throat and she coughed. She coughed, and bent over her walking

stick, and gasped, and coughed again; and then Talat, who had not wanted to

follow her into the dragon’s valley but didn’t want to let her out of his sight

either, blew down the back of her bare neck and touched his nose to her

shoulder. She turned toward him and threw her right arm over his withers and

pressed the side of her face into his neck, breathing through the fine hairs of his

mane till the coughing eased and she could stand by herself again.

The dragon’s snaky neck lay stretched out along the ground, the long black

snout looking like a ridge of black rock. Ash lay more heavily around the dragon

than in the rest of the small valley, in spite of the breeze; but around the dragon

the breeze lifted a cloud that eddied and lifted and swelled and diminished so

that it was hard to tell—as it had been when she and Talat had first ridden to

confront the monster—where Maur ended and the earth began. As she watched,

another small brisk vagrant breeze swept down the body of the dragon, scouring

its length from shoulder hump to the heavy tail; a great black wave of ash reared

up in the breeze’s wake and crested, and misted out to drift over the rest of the

valley. Aerin hid her face in Talat’s mane again.

When she looked up she stared at Maur, waiting to think something, feel

something at the sight of the thing that she had killed, that had so nearly killed

her; but her mind was blank, and she had no hatred or bitterness nor any sense of

victory left in her heart; it had all been burned away by the pain. Maur was only a

great ugly black lump. As she stared, another small breeze kicked up a wind spout,

a small ashy cyclone, just beyond the end of the dragon’s nose. Something

glittered there on the ground. Something red.

She blinked. The wind-spout died away, and the ash fell into new ribs and

whorls; but Aerin thought she could still see a small hummock in the ash, a small

hummock that dimly gleamed red. She limped toward it, and Talat, his ears half

back to show his disapproval, followed.

She stood on one foot and dug with her stick; and she struck the small red

thing, which with the impulsion of the blow sprang free of the black cinders,

made a small fiery arc through the air, and fell to the earth again, and the ash

spun upward in the air draught it made and fell in ripples around it, like a stone

thrown into a pond.

She tucked it into the front of her tunic, where her bound arm made a cradle

for it, and pulled herself back up Talat’s foreleg again. He had gotten so good at

being an invalid’s assistant that she could lean her stick against him and he would

not move till she took it back in her hand, that she need not have to pick it up

from the ground.

A few days after she found the red dragon stone she looked around for

something high enough to let her climb up onto Talat’s back, and low enough that

she could climb up onto it in the first place. This took some doing. She finally

persuaded him—he was willing to be persuaded once he could figure out what

strange thing she next wanted of him—to stand in the stream while she edged

out, balanced precariously on her buttocks and one hand, down a long heavy

overhanging branch from a tree growing near the shallow bank; and lowered

herself as slowly as possible onto his bare back. He gave a little whicker of

pleasure to have her there again, and took steps as smooth as silk when he

carried her; and she sat up a little straighter than she could stand on her own

feet, and felt a tiny bit more like a king’s daughter than she had for a long time.

She rode him up and down the bank of the stream that day, just for the pleasure

of a motion that didn’t hurt her right ankle; and the next day she saddled him and

tried it again, and the day after that she saddled him and tied the remains of her

belongings clumsily behind the saddle, and they left the stream and Maur’s valley

forever. The red stone knocked gently against her ribs as her body swung back

and forth in rhythm to Talat’s long gentle stride.

IT TOOK THEM three days of Talat’s careful walking to come to the crossroads

where they had parted with their guide to go on and face the dragon; three days

complicated by the fact that Aerin didn’t dare dismount till she found something

near a campsite that would let her remount in the morning.

She was deadly tired each evening; her ankle throbbed from hanging vertical so

long; and she realized how much weaker she was even than she had thought. It

was hard to make herself eat; she was never hungry, and eating hurt, and she ate

dutifully because eating was something one did; but she got more pleasure out of

watching Talat graze. He had eaten everything edible along the banks of their

stream, including some of the bark off the trees, and he tore with great

enthusiasm into the fresh grass they now camped beside.

Not infrequently during the day she would come to herself again and look

around and realize that she had drifted away. Sometimes it would take her a

minute or two just to recognize the trees around her, common Damarian trees

whose shapes and leaf patterns had been familiar to her since childhood.

Occasionally she woke up and found herself collapsed forward on Talat’s neck.

But he would not let her fall off, and she didn’t. He carried her steadily, his ears

pricked and cautious; and he seemed to feel no hesitation about their direction.

“Well, my friend, you know what you are doing,” she whispered to Talat, his

ears cocked back to listen, when at last they reached the crossroads. “It wasn’t I

that got us here.”

When they set out from the crossroads again the next morning, the way

opened up. She had not remembered that the narrow path became a small

roadway so soon; but that had been when she still had her hair and the use of all

her limbs, and open spaces had held no terrors for her. The mountains climbed

steeply to their left, but on their right she looked through hedgerows to planted

fields, crops waving green and gold in the sunlight. She tried to make herself feel

better by thinking that had she not killed Maur—whatever it may have cost her

personally—the crops would have been black by now, and the farmers, dragon’s

meat. But the comfort was cold, and she could not feel it; she was too deep in

dread for what was to come.

She was drifting in and out of awareness again that afternoon, her good hand

wrapped in Talat’s mane that she might not fall forward and hurt her burnt arm,

when Talat suddenly came to a halt and stiffened—and neighed. Aerin shook

herself awake with the sound; and he neighed again, and trembled, and she knew

he would have reared to cry greeting and challenge as the Damarian warhorses

were taught, but he did not for her sake, and she closed her eyes briefly on tears

of exhaustion and self-pity.

She was drifting in and out of awareness again that afternoon, her good hand

wrapped in Talat’s mane that she might not fall forward and hurt her burnt arm,

when Talat suddenly came to a halt and stiffened—and neighed. Aerin shook

herself awake with the sound; and he neighed again, and trembled, and she knew

he would have reared to cry greeting and challenge as the Damarian warhorses

were taught, but he did not for her sake, and she closed her eyes briefly on tears

of exhaustion and self-pity.

Aerin threw her own head up .in panic, and the scabs on her face pulled and

protested. Her right hand scrabbled at the collar of her tunic, and pulled a fold of

her cloak up over her head for a hood; and her fingers briefly touched the left side

of her head where a determined stubble grew.

Her father and her cousin and the riders with them were upon her almost at

once, and Arlbeth called out to her, but she did not answer, for her croaking voice

could not have been heard above the sound of the hoofbeats; and then Tor rode

up beside her and said anxiously, “Aerin, it is you?” but she delayed answering

him till he reached over and seized her—by her left forearm. She screamed,

except that she could not scream, but she made a hoarse awful sound, and Tor

dropped his hand and said something she did not hear, for her scream made her

cough, and she coughed and could not stop, and the bleeding began, and flecks of

her blood dripped down Talat’s neck, and her body shook, and the cloak fell away

from her and onto the ground, and Tor and Arlbeth sat frozen on their horses,

helplessly watching.

She remembered little of the rest of the journey. They tried to rig a sling for

her, that she might travel lying down, but while she lay down obediently there

was no comfort in it, and at the first stop she struggled out of her litter and went

grimly to Talat, who had been hovering nearby wondering what he had done that

his lady had been taken away from him. She hung an arm over his neck and hid

her face in his mane, ignoring the feel of it wisping against her left cheek. Tor

followed her at once. “Aerin—” His voice was full of unshed tears, and her fingers

tightened in Talat’s mane, dear cheerful Talat who felt that so long as she was

riding him there was nothing too serious wrong. She spoke into his neck: “There’s

no ease in being carried. I would rather ride.” And so she rode, and the company

all went at Talat’s gentlest walking pace, and it was a long time before they

reached the City.

When at last the stone City rose up before them from the forest, she felt for

her cloak, and pulled it forward to shadow her face again, and her father, who

rode at her side, watched her. She looked at him, and let the cloak slip back

where it had lain, and straightened herself in the saddle; and she remembered

the description of Gorthold’s death in Astythet’s History, and how he was carried,

bleeding from many mortal wounds, into the City, where all folk saluted him as

their savior; and he died in the castle of the king, who was his cousin; and all

Damar grieved for his death.

A grim sort of smile touched Arlbeth’s mouth. “You’re riding into the City a

hero, you know; word of your victory has gone before you, and the messenger

who first brought the tale of the Black Dragon’s awakening is there with most of

his village, and they are all vying among themselves to describe how great and

wicked Maur was.”

“How did they know?”

Arlbeth sighed. “I didn’t ask. Several of them met us as we rode east toward

the City, and we didn’t wait for details. Look between Talat’s ears; he knows all