The Hero and the Crown (18 page)

about this sort of thing; all you have to do is sit up. We’re just your honor guard.”

“But—” she began, but Arlbeth turned away and, indeed, as they neared the

great gates, he and Tor dropped back, and Talat pretended to prance, but only

pretended, so as not to joggle his rider. She did as her father told her, sitting

straight and still in the saddle, and looking not quite between Talat’s ears where

she might see something, but at them, and at his poll, where his forelock grew

and lifted in the breeze when he tossed his head. The streets were quiet, but

many people watched them as they rode by; and from the corners of her eyes she

could see many of their audience touching the backs of their hands to their

foreheads and flicking out the fingers in the Damarian salute to their sovereign

but Arlbeth rode at his daughter’s heel. A breeze wandered among them and

riffled Aerin’s ruined hair, and the sunlight shone pitilessly on her scarred face;

but the audience was still silent, and motionless but for the right hands and the

flicking fingers.

She held to Talat’s mane with her right hand, and slipped slowly down his side,

her left foot touching the ground first. Then Arlbeth was beside her, and he led

her past Maur’s grinning skull, and the soldiers parted in a silent whiplash, a drill

maneuver, and they came to the castle door; and then he turned to her and

picked her up in his arms and carried her down the long corridors and up the

stairs to her room, and to Teka.

There were healers in plenty who visited her after that; but none of them could

do better for her burns than the kenet, and her ankle was healing of its own, and

they could do nothing for her cough, nor for her trouble breathing. She spent her

time in bed, or in the deep window seat that overlooked the rear of the

courtyard, toward the stables. Hornmar led Talat under her window occasionally,

and while she could not call down to him, it comforted her to see him. She tried

to eat for Teka’s sake; she hadn’t realized before that there was no flavor to her

food since she had tasted dragonfire, but she learned it now. And she took the

dragon stone from the pocket she had made from a knot of cloth, and laid it on

the table near her bed; it seemed as though when she stared at it, it grew

brighter, and red fire shivered deep inside it.

At last she grew restless, as she had in the dragon’s valley, and she began to

creep about the castle, and visit Talat in the stables. He had his old stall back, and

Arlbeth’s young Kethtaz had actually been moved one stall down to give his

predecessor pride of place. Talat was very conscious of eminence regained. She

investigated his croup carefully with her fingers; the weals from the dragonfire

had disappeared, although she could still see them, for the hair had grown back

lying in the opposite direction from the hair around them.

Her own hair was growing in vigorously if unevenly, and Teka one day combed

it out from a center spot at the top of her skull and cut in a neat arch around her

face, for it was no longer curly. Aerin looked at herself in the mirror and laughed.

“I look like a boy.”

“No,” said Teka, sweeping up the trimmings. “You look like a girl with a boy’s

haircut.”

Aerin stared at herself. She had avoided mirrors as she had avoided everyone

but Tor and Teka and her father, and the healers they sent, who could not be got

rid of; and now that she finally dared herself to look in a mirror she was surprised

at what she saw. The shiny scars across her left cheek—and a few flecks, like

freckles, on the other side of her face, where the hot dragon blood had splashed

her—were visible but not disfiguring. Her scalp was still tender on the left, and

she had to use her hairbrush tentatively; but her hair was coming back as thick as

before, although it was several shades darker and almost straight. But her face

was drawn and pale, except for two spots of red high on her cheekbones; and

there were lines on her face that had not been there before, and her eyes looked

as old as Arlbeth’s, “I look a lot more like my mother now, don’t I?” she said.

Teka paused with the cloth she’d used to gather the hair clippings dangling

from her hand. “Yes,” she said.

The first morning she came to breakfast with her father again. Tor was there

too, and was not able to stop himself from jumping out of his chair and hugging

her. He was so glad to see her walking, and with her hair grown out and combed

smoothly around her face, that he almost managed not to think about how little

there was of her to hug, how frail she felt; how each breath she took seemed to

shake her, like a wind through a sapling. She smiled up at him, and he saw the red

spots on her cheekbones, but he looked only at her smile.

“I have no doubt that we were lured away from the City just then for a

purpose,” said Arlbeth, “and the best I could do then was return as quickly as the

horses could run. I had almost forgotten Maur.”

“I hadn’t,” murmured Tor, and his eyes flicked up to Aerin’s face and away

again, and she knew that he had guessed she would ride back with the messenger

and face the Black Dragon alone.

Arlbeth frowned into his cup. “But if the only purpose was to set the Black

Dragon upon us, why then does the feeling of a dark fate still cling around us? For

it does.”

“Yes,” said Tor.

There was a silence, and Arlbeth said at last: “We can only hope that Aerin-sol

has so disturbed their plans”—and by their his auditors knew he meant the

Northerners—”that we will have time enough to prepare, and strength enough in

reserve.”

Neither Arlbeth nor Tor ever told her what they had thought when they first

saw her, bent and burnt and coughing blood onto Talat’s white neck; and Aerin

did not ask. All else that was said on the subject occurred that same morning: “I

owe you a punishment for carrying the king’s sword without the king’s wishes,

Aerin-sol,” her father said gravely.

She had been thinking much of this herself lately, and she nodded. “I await

your command.”

Tor made a noise, and Arlbeth waved him to silence. “The punishment is that

you remain prisoned in the City and not carry your sword for two seasons, half a

year, and not less. Maur has taken care of that for me.”

She bowed her head; and then a woman of the hafor brought fresh malak and

hot rolls, and they busied themselves with passing and pouring, and that was the

end of it. She put milk in her malak now, to cool it before she drank it, so that she

would not have to wait so obviously for it to grow tepid by itself—a long process

at the king’s castle, where it was served in huge heavy earthenware cups with

wide thick bases and narrow tapered rims. She didn’t like the flavor so well—

malak was supposed to bite, and the milk gentled it—but there were worse

compromises she had to make.

Arlbeth asked her when they might hold the banquet in her honor, and she

blinked stupidly at him, thinking. My birthday isn’t till—?

“Maur,” he said gently. “We wish to honor you for your slaying of Maur.”

Tor and Arlbeth both knew she wanted nothing of the sort, but she said grimly,

“I thank you. Name the day.”

The hush that fell on the great half that evening when she entered it was worse

even than what she had imagined. It should have been little different than it ever

had been, for her father’s court had never been easy in the presence of his

daughter; but it was different nonetheless. Her head buzzed with the silence, and

her dim vision dimmed further, till the people around her were no more than

vague hulks draped in the bright colors of their court clothing. She wore a long

brown dress, high in the collar, and with sleeves that fell past her wrists; and

while there was much embroidery on it, the threads were black and darker

brown, and she went bareheaded, and wore only one ring, on her right hand. She

looked around, and the hulks turned slowly away from her, and she took her

place at her father’s side. The talk started up again, but she did not hear the

words of it; she heard the broken flickering fear beneath it, and calmly she

thought: It is I that they are afraid of.

Maur’s ugly black skull had been hung high on one wall of the great hall, whose

ceilings were three stories tall. It had been placed there by some other direction,

for she had had nothing to do with it, nor would have wanted it there had she

been asked. Even in the great hall it was huge; she looked at it, and it she could

see clearly, and it leered at her. I am the shape of their fear, it said, for you dared

to slay me. I am the shape of their fear, the thing said.

Maur’s ugly black skull had been hung high on one wall of the great hall, whose

ceilings were three stories tall. It had been placed there by some other direction,

for she had had nothing to do with it, nor would have wanted it there had she

been asked. Even in the great hall it was huge; she looked at it, and it she could

see clearly, and it leered at her. I am the shape of their fear, it said, for you dared

to slay me. I am the shape of their fear, the thing said.

The thing laughed; the laugh came as a ripple of heavy silence that muffled the

uncertain conversation in the hall; but only Aerin heard. Ah, but you lived, and

you slew me; that is enough, and more than enough, for I was as big as a

mountain and might have swallowed all of Damar at last. The villagers who saw

me before you came—the man who guided you to me—all say that when I reared

up, my head touched the stars; that nothing human could have stood against me.

They say it who saw me, with awe and gratitude for their deliverance; but that is

not how the story travels.

She heard the rhythm of the voices around her; the broken rhythm of syllables

under the words they said aloud. Witch, they said. Witch woman’s daughter.

But I saved them, she said desperately. I saved them.

The head howled: Better you had not! Better that they lay now in my belly’s

pit!

See how the first sola still looks at the witch woman’s daughter, for all that her

face is haggard and scarred; see how he looks at her, as if he does not wish to

look at anything else.

As if he cannot look at anything else. The old ones among them said:

Remember how the king looked at the witch, how she spelled him to sire her a

child that she might be born again with greater strength, for the blood of Damar

would run in the child’s veins with her own witch’s wickedness!

Witch woman’s daughter. Nothing human could have killed Maur. She will

swallow Damar as the Black Dragon never could have; for we could have hidden

in deep caves till it slept again.

Shall we let her spell the first sola?

We remember the old tales of Maur. We remember.

Witch woman’s daughter.

And the words spoken aloud: The North. The raiders from the North, they

come oftener, stronger. Why is Nyrlol afraid of his own shadow? He, who was

never known for wisdom, was never known either for lack of courage. Mischief.

Witch woman’s daughter.

“You had done better to let me eat you!” the thing on the wall shrieked.

“It was only luck that I slew you!” she cried. I only dared because I knew I was

already dead!

The thing laughed.

Witch woman’s daughter.

It was only luck!

Was it? said Maur’s head. Was it?

Aerin stood up abruptly and said, “You must excuse me.” She turned and

walked, slowly, for she still limped a little, toward the gaping door that would let

her out of the halt. Tor was at her elbow. “Aerin?”

“Let me be!” she cried. “Go talk to your guests! Don’t come near me!” She

began to cough, and still she ran from him, staggering, not caring that she limped

in the sight of the entire hall, through the door and away.

SHE COULD NOT SLEEP, and she coughed, and blood spotted her pillow; and

the fever that came and went, and would not leave her alone even as her burns

healed and her hair grew, came again that night, and light-headedly she relived

the scene in the hall; and she heard the thing laugh, and heard the court say,

Witch woman’s daughter.

Near dawn she dreamed of the tall blond man she had seen once before, while

she slept in the dragon’s valley. He did not speak to her, nor did he seem to know

she watched him. Perhaps he is only a dream, her dreaming self-thought; but she

looked at the way his blond eyelashes caught the sunlight, at the freckles on the

backs of his hands, at the way the little fingers curled under the base of the cup

he held, at the steam that rose from the cup. He blinked when it wafted into his

eyes.

She woke, coughing.

He had said he would help her. How could he help her? He had said he would

tell her how she could aid Damar. Damar didn’t seem to like her aiding it. She

turned onto her back and stretched till her throat and chest lay flat and straight;

sometimes that eased the coughing. She listened to the gurgling rasp of her

breathing; no matter how shallowly she breathed, still the air rustled in her lungs.

She thought dispassionately, This cough will kill me before too long, and Maur will