The Hero and the Crown (26 page)

far; but your Damarian blood cannot stand against the one who wears the Hero’s

Crown.”

Aerin raised her eyes to his forehead, and where she had not seen it before,

the dull grey circlet that was Damar’s dearest prize and treasure was bound

closely to his brows. She could not help the shudder that ran through her, for

what he said was true. Luthe, she thought, you should have come with me; you

could have been the un-Damarian half.

The red sword bit at her again, and again Gonturan pulled her arm into place in

time to deflect it. Yet even as death awaited her so near she could see its red jaws

opening, her clearest thought was still a desperate desire to find a way to make

her chest stop itching. I wonder if one can still itch if one is dead, she thought; and

her arm jerked once more as Gonturan parried another slash. But the red sword

almost broke through her guard, and her arm seemed suddenly weak; and she did

not know if it was the fact of her opponent’s wearing the Crown, or only her

knowledge of the fact; and her eyes were drawn up again to his forehead. But she

could not bear to look at that face for long, her own face, with wide mad green

eyes, and hair red as fire. ... My hair is not that color any more, she told herself,

and my eyes are not those eyes, and I am not the man before me. I am not he,

she thought; my mother fled him as I now face him, for what he is and we are not.

And yet she was grateful that she could not look often into the face which was not

hers, for she must watch the flicker of the red sword.

“Who taught you swordplay?” thundered Agsded. “No mortal can best me.”

And the red sword looked like seven swords as it swooped down on her again;

and yet Gonturan was seven swords in return, and struck them all away. I’m

afraid you are no longer quite mortal—mortal, Aerin thought. She laughed, and

the red blade wavered when she laughed; perhaps the laugh of his sister’s

daughter echoed in Agsded’s brain as horribly as his did in Aerin’s. And as the red

blade hesitated, Gonturan struck Agsded’s shoulder. An inhuman scream went

up, from the red mage or from the blue sword, Aerin could

not tell; and then Agsded’s sword came for her again, more swiftly than before,

and Aerin could not even follow with her eyes as the two swords caught at each

other, thrust and slammed and were hurled apart. “My Damarian blood,” she

panted, “uncle, is not so cursed as you think; for I have swum in the Lake of

Dreams, and I—am—no—longer—quite—mortal.”

not tell; and then Agsded’s sword came for her again, more swiftly than before,

and Aerin could not even follow with her eyes as the two swords caught at each

other, thrust and slammed and were hurled apart. “My Damarian blood,” she

panted, “uncle, is not so cursed as you think; for I have swum in the Lake of

Dreams, and I—am—no—longer—quite—mortal.”

Agsded laughed; and within the ring of fire he thrust his sword back into his

belt and crossed his arms. “Well? Fire may still burn those who are—no—longer—

quite—mortal.” He laughed again, and Aerin flinched from his voice even as from

the licking flames; and the grey Crown was red in the firelight.

Someday, she thought tiredly, I must learn to go forward of my own free will. If

only my horrible chest would let me think clearly. She raised Gonturan, and the

blue fire cascaded over her; it was cool against her face. She closed her eyes—

closing my eyes is stupid, she thought—and jumped into the fire.

It hissed and roared around her, but she ran forward and opened her eyes, and

her uncle was just a little late pulling his sword free again, and Gonturan rose for

a slash at his neck, the cut she had missed the last time. This time the blade ran

true, and struck him squarely.

And bounced off with a harsh ugly sound, and with a nick in her edge; and the

recoil was such that she twisted out of Aerin’s grasp and fell to the fiery floor, and

Aerin fell with her.

“I am not precisely mortal either,” said Agsded, and grinned his grin again; and

Aerin, looking up at the red sword that was about to sink into her, thought, I

imagine I’ll be mortal enough when struck through the heart; I wonder what

mage trick it is he uses—or perhaps it’s because he’s wearing the Crown. And

because she had nothing else left to do, and because she was still holding the

wreath in her other hand, she threw it at him.

He screamed. It was a scream that cut across all the senses, sight and touch

and taste and smell as well as hearing; it was a scream sharper than any sword

and as bitter as hatred, as fierce as a hunting folstza and as implacable as winter.

Aerin had only the dimmest recollection, through the scream, of the surka wreath

touching his face, falling over his head to ring his shoulders; of the dragon stone

shining as brilliantly red as Agsded’s sword had been, but which now turned to

the dull rusted color of old blood; of a smaller fire, within the ring of fire, rising

around Agsded higher and higher till he disappeared from view, as the fire he had

thrown between himself and Aerin sank and darkened and died; and still the

scream went on. Aerin staggered to her feet, and found that she was clutching

Gonturan with both hands; and that the palm of one was wet with her own blood

where she had seized unwarily at Gonturan’s edge; and that her hands and arms

glowed blue, and as she bent her head the hair that fell forward around her face

was also blue, and when she looked down, her boots were blue, and there was a

pool of blue spreading around them, and as the blue widened so did the tiny

hairline cracks in the floor, which spread and crackled and sputtered as she

looked, with Agsded’s scream still beating at her. Then the scream and the short

sharp sounds the floor was making rose together in a tumultuous roar, and the

stones on which Aerin stood gave way, and she fell, and saw the walls toppling in

on her. It would be pleasant to faint at this point, she thought, but she didn’t, and

she continued to clutch Gonturan, but she shifted the bloody hand to join the

other on the hilt. When I land, she thought, I will fall over and cut myself in half

on my own sword; but the fall may already have killed me. The sound of the

mountain tower falling was so loud she could no longer make room for her

thoughts, and so she gave up thinking and blackness hurtled past her, and heavy

fragments of that blackness fell with her but did not touch her, and she wondered

if she might fall forever, as she had climbed, and thus perhaps become the God

That Falls, or perhaps the God That Climbs and Falls.

Then there was a shock, but to her feet or her skull or only her mind she did

not know; whatever part of her was struck staggered, and she shook herself, and

discovered that it was her head she was shaking, and then she blinked her eyes

and looked up, and realized that she saw sunlight leaking through cracks as

though through the ruined wails of an ancient building. At the same time that her

confused eyes and brain figured out the sunlight she also realized that her feet

were standing on something, that she hadn’t chopped herself in two by landing

on Gonturan, and that she was no longer falling.

SHE WAS ON THE FLAT TOP of a small mountain of rubble; and off to her right,

at its foot, was a break in the surrounding circular wall wide enough that she

thought she could probably squeeze herself through it. She made her way slowly

and cautiously down the slope toward the broken place in the wall, but the stuff

underfoot shifted and slithered, and she came to the bottom sitting back on her

heels, with the unwounded hand holding Gonturan up by the scabbard so she

wouldn’t drag. She stood up and went toward the crack and, indeed, she could

push through, although it was a tight fit; and then the sunlight dazzled her, and

her abused legs turned abruptly to jelly, and she sat down quickly and put her

head between her knees. Staring at the ground, she thought, I wonder how long

it’s been since I’ve eaten. Food might help. The mundane thought made her feel

better at once, and hungry as well. She raised her head. She still felt shaky, and

when she had clambered back to her feet—ungracefully using Gonturan as a

prop—her knees were inclined to tremble, but she almost cheerfully put it down

to lack of food.

She looked around. Where was she? The black tower had risen from a plain

where nothing grew; now all around her she saw jungle, trees with vast climbing

vines (though none of surka that she could see), and heavy brush between the

trees. The sunlight fell on the ruined tower and the little bramble -covered

clearing it made for itself, but the light could not make much headway through

the thick leaves. Ugh. It would not be a pleasant journey out. And where might

she find Talat? She set out to walk around what remained of the tower.

Nothing but tumbled rock and encroaching forest. Nothing else. No sign of

anything else ever having been here either—but where was she? Was the ruined

tower she was stumbling around now the same that she and Talat and her wild

beasts had faced? She tipped her head back to look up at the remaining walls.

They didn’t look nearly big enough; the fallen rock was not enough to have been

built into such vastness as she remembered. She sighed, and rubbed a hand over

her face—and pulled it away again as she remembered that it was the wrong

hand. But the cut had already healed; there was nothing on her palm but a

narrow white scar. She stared at it, puzzled; but there were more important

things to be puzzled about.

So what now? She was alone—somewhere—she was hungry, and the sun was

getting low. She did not look forward to a night alone in this place—although it

certainly didn’t look as if anything big enough to trouble her much could get

through that forest, there were always, well, spiders, for example. As she thought

of spiders it occurred to her that her chest was only barely itching, almost idly, as

if once it had gotten the way of it it didn’t particularly want to stop, even though

it didn’t have much reason left. That’s something, I guess, she thought; and

glanced again at her scarred palm.

She sat down, closed her eyes, organized one or two of the simpler things

Luthe had taught her, and thought about the air. She followed invisible eddies

and tiny currents as they strayed over her and back among the trees again; and

eventually she found one that felt damp, and she followed that until it sank to the

ground, and there she found a spring. It looked all right; it felt like water.

She opened her eyes and stood up. The spring, when she reached it, still looked

like water and smelled like water; and she sighed, because she had no choice. She

ducked her head, and then threw her wet hair back, and then drank deep. She sat

back on her heels and scowled into the underbrush. The tiny spring was only a

few paces from the edge of the clearing, and yet it had taken her some expense of

time and energy to hew her way even this far. How was she going to get out?

One thing at a time. Remembering something else Luthe had taught her, she

gathered a few dry twigs and a heap of dead leaves together, and set them on fire

by glaring at them—though the effort gave her a fierce headache and she couldn’t

focus her eyes for a long time afterward, and the fire was sullen and inclined to

smoke. She wandered around gathering more twigs, and saw at least two for

each, and two hands reaching for them, and generally misjudged which hand and

which twig were the real ones; but still she gathered enough at last to keep the

fire going all night. She hoped. And the fire was beginning to burn a little better.

Then the worst thought of all hit her: Agsded is gone, or at least he seems to be

gone; but I have yet failed, for the Hero’s Crown is gone also.

She rolled over and stared at the sky. There was no moon, but the stars shone

fiercely down on her. She realized suddenly that Agsded himself had never been

quite real to her; her terror had been real enough, and her sick horror at the face

he wore; and she had known that she went to a battle she had less chance of

winning than she had had even when she faced Maur, But the thing that had held

her, the dream that had drawn her on, was the Hero’s Crown. It had nothing to do

with her own blood and birthright as her mother’s daughter, nothing of personal

vengeance; it was the idea of bringing the Crown back to her City, of presenting it

to Arlbeth and Tor. She had been sure, for all that she had never consciously

thought of it, that as Damar’s doom lay with Agsded, so must the missing Crown.

No one knew of Agsded; no one would believe her even if she told the story, and

she could not tell it, for what could she say of the prophecy, of the kinship that

made her the only possible champion? What would she say of her uncle?

But who Agsded was did not matter, or mattered only to her. The Crown

mattered, and the story of it she might have told: that she had wrested it away

from him who held it, to bring it back to her City, to lay it before her king. As it

was, for all that she had done, she had done nothing. If she went to the City