The Hero and the Crown (8 page)

Teka frowned. “Redroot. That’s—um—astzoran. Red-root’s the old term for

it—they used to think it was good for some things.”

“What things?”

Teka glanced at her and Aerin bit her lip. “Why do you want to know?”

“I—oh—I read a lot in the old books in the library while I wasn’t ... feeling quite

well. There was some herb-lore, and they mentioned redroot.”

Teka considered, and some of her thoughts were similar to Tor’s when Aerin

had asked him to teach her swordplay. Teka had never thought about whether

Aerin’s fate had more to do with what Aerin was or what Damar was, or for

reasons beyond either; Teka merely observed that Aerin’s fate was unique. But

she knew, knew better even than the cousin who loved her, that Aerin would

never be a court lady; not like Galanna, who was a beautiful termagant, but

neither like Arlbeth’s first wife, Tatoria, whom everyone had loved. None of the

traditions of Arlbeth’s court could help the king’s daughter discover her fate; but

Teka, unlike Aerin herself, had faith that the destiny was somewhere to be found.

She hesitated, but she could remember nothing dangerous about the no longer

valued redroot.

“Astzoran doesn’t grow around here,” said Teka; “it is a low weedy plant that

prefers open meadows. It spreads by throwing out runners, and where the runner

touches the earth a long slender root strikes down. That is the redroot.” Teka

pretended great concentration upon her patch. “I might take a few days to ride

into the meadows beyond the City and into the Hills; I am reminded that there are

herbs I need, and I prefer to gather my own. If you wish to come, I will show you

some astzoran.”

The ointment recipe, Aerin found, was not as exact as it might be. She made

one mixture, spread some of it on one finger, and thrust the finger into a candle

flame—and snatched it out again with a yelp. Three more mixtures gained her

three more burnt fingers—and a terrific lecture from Teka, who was not, of

course, informed as to the details of why Aerin seemed intent on burning her

fingers off. After that she used bits of wood to smear her trial blends on; when

they smoked and charred, she knew she had not yet got it right.

After the first few tries she sighed and began to keep careful notes of how each

sample was made. It was not an exercise natural to her, and after she’d filled

several sheets of parchment with her tiny exact figures—parchment was

expensive stuff, even for kings’ daughters—she began to lose heart. She thought:

If this mess really worked, everyone would know of it; they would all use it for

dragon-hunting, and-would have been using it all along, and dragons would no

longer be a risk—and that book would be studied and not left to gather dust. It is

foolish to think I might have discovered something everyone before me had

overlooked. She bowed her head over her burnt twig, and several hot tears

slipped down her face onto her page of calculations.

ON HER EIGHTEENTH BIRTHDAY there was a banquet for the first sol, despite

all she could do to prevent it. Galanna shot her glances like poisoned arrows and

clung curiously near Tor’s side for someone else’s wife of so few seasons. Perlith

made witty remarks at Aerin’s expense in his soft light tenor that always sounded

kind, whatever he might be saying. The king her father toasted her, and the faces

around the tables in the great hall glittered with smiles; but Aerin looked at them

sadly and saw only the baring of teeth.

Tor watched her: she was wearing a golden tunic over a long red skirt; the tunic

had embroidered flowers wound round its hem, and petals of many colors

stitched drifting down the full sleeves; she wore the same two rings she had at

Galanna’s wedding. Her flame-colored hair was twisted around her head, and a

golden circlet was set upon it, and over her forehead three golden birds held

green stones in their beaks. He saw her wince away from the courtiers’ smiles,

and he shook Galanna’s hand from his arm impatiently, and then Galanna no

longer even pretended to smile.

Aerin did not notice this, for she never looked at Galanna if she could help it,

and if Galanna were near Tor she didn’t look at Tor either. But Arlbeth noticed. He

knew what it was that he saw, for better or for worse, and it was not often that

he did not know what was best done about the things he saw; but in this case he

did not know. What he read in Tor’s face tore at his heart, for it would be his

heart’s fondest wish that these two might wed, and yet he knew his people had

never loved the daughter of his second wife, and he feared their mistrust, and he

had reason to fear it. Aerin felt her father’s arm around her shoulders, and turned

to smile up at him.

After the banquet she went to sit in her window seat, staring into the dark

courtyard; the torches around its perimeter left great pools of shadow near the

castle walls. Her bedroom was dark as well, and Teka had not yet come to be sure

she had hung her good clothes up as she should instead of leaving them on the

floor where she would step on them. There was a light knock on the door. She

turned and said, “Come in,” with surprise; if she had thought about it, she would

have been silent and let the visitor leave without finding her. She wished to be

alone after the hall full of food and talk and bright smiles.

It was Tor. She could see him outlined in the light from the hall, and she had

been sitting in the dark long enough to see clearly. But he blinked and looked

around, for her figure was only a part of the heavy

“Why do you sit in the dark?”

“There was too much light in the hall tonight.”

Tor was silent. After a moment she sighed, and reached for a candle and flint. It

seemed to Tor that the shadows it cast upon her face made her briefly old: a

woman with grandchildren, for all her brilliant hair. Then she set the candle on a

small table and smiled at him, and she was eighteen again.

She saw that he carried something in his arms: a long narrow something,

wrapped in dark cloth. “I have brought you your birthday present—privately, as I

thought you might prefer.” And so that I need not do any explaining, he thought.

She knew at once what it was: a sword. She watched with rising excitement as

he unrolled the wrappings, and from them, gleaming, came her sword, her very

own sword. She reached for it eagerly, and slid it out of its scabbard. It was plain

but for some work on the hilt to make the grip sure; but she felt it light and true

and perfect in her hand, and her hand trembled with the pride of it.

“Thank you,” she said, her eyes still fixed on the sword, so she did not see the

look of hope and pity on Tor’s face as he watched her.

“At dawn you shall try it out,” said Tor, and the tone of his voice shook her out

of her reverie, and she raised her eyes to his. “I will meet you at our usual place,”

he said, and tried to speak as if this were a lesson like any other lesson; and if he

failed, Aerin still did not guess why he failed.

“This is ever so much better than another dressing gown,” she said lightly, and

was pleased to see him smile.

“It was a very beautiful dressing gown.”

“If it had been less beautiful, I would not have disliked it so much. You were as

bad as Teka, trying to keep me in bed, or trailing about my rooms in a dressing

gown forever.”

“And a lot of good it did us, despite the fact that you could not stand on your

feet without either fainting or falling over.”

“It was concentrating on my lessons with you that finally sweated the last of

the surka out of me,” Aerin said, waving her birthday present gently under his

nose.

“I almost believe you,” he replied sadly.

So they were standing, looking at each other, with the naked blade upheld

between them, when Teka come through the open door behind them. “Gholotat

protect us,” said Teka, and closed the door behind her.

“Is my birthday present not beautiful?” said Aerin, and turned the blade back

and forth quickly so that it winked at her old nurse as she stood by the door. Teka

looked at her face and then at Tor’s, and then back at Aerin’s, and said nothing.

“I will bid you good night,” said Tor, and because Teka was there he dared

reach out his hands to Aerin, and put them on her shoulders, as she slid her sword

into its scabbard, and kiss Her cheek as a cousin might; which he would not have

dared had they been alone. He bowed to Teka, and left them.

Perhaps it was having a real sword of one’s own. Perhaps it was being

eighteen—or that eighteen years’ practice of being stubborn was finally paying

off. If she still stumbled over the corners of rugs or bumped into doorways while

she was thinking about other things, she no longer bothered looking around

anxiously to find out if anyone had seen her: either they had or they hadn’t, and

she had other things on her mind; she reveled in those other things. They meant

that she did not blush automatically when she caught sight of Perlith, knowing

that he would have thought of something to say to her since the last time she had

failed to avoid him, and that his little half smile beneath half-lidded eyes would

make whatever he said worse. She walked through the halls of the castle and the

streets of the City the most direct way instead of the way she would meet the

fewest people; and she avoided the surka in the royal garden, but only that it

might not make her sick again. She did not cringe from the thought of its presence

or from the shame that she had to avoid it in the first place; nor did she any

longer feel that breathing the garden air was synonymous with breathing

Galanna’s malice.

She had discovered how to make the dragonfire ointment.

It was, she knew, sheer obstinacy that had kept her at it-over two years of

making fractional changes in her mixtures, learning how to find and prepare all

the ingredients for the mixtures, for she could not continue raiding Hornmar’s and

Teka’s supplies; finding small apothecary shops in the City that might sell the

odder ones, and riding out on the reluctant Kisha for the herbs that grew nearby.

It was, she knew, sheer obstinacy that had kept her at it-over two years of

making fractional changes in her mixtures, learning how to find and prepare all

the ingredients for the mixtures, for she could not continue raiding Hornmar’s and

Teka’s supplies; finding small apothecary shops in the City that might sell the

odder ones, and riding out on the reluctant Kisha for the herbs that grew nearby.

There were even those, especially among the older folk, who shook their heads

and said that they shouldn’t keep the young first sol mewed up in that castle the

way they did; it’d be better if she were let out to mingle with her people. If Aerin

could have heard, she would have laughed.

And the things she bought were such harmless things, even if some of them

were odd, and even though, as the months passed, she did buy quite a quantity of

them. Nothing there that could cause any ... mischief. Hornmar had mentioned,

very quietly, to one or two of his particular friends the first sol’s miraculous cure

of old Talat; and somehow that tale got around too, and as the witch woman’s

easy smile was remembered, so did some folk also begin to remember her way

with animals.

It was a few months before her nineteenth birthday that she put a bit of

yellowish grease on a fresh bit of dry wood, held it with iron pincers, and thrust it

into the small candle flame at the corner of her work table—and nothing

happened. She had been performing this particular set of motions—measuring,

noting down, mixing, applying and watching the wood burn-—for so long that her

movements were deft and exact with long practice even while her brain tended to

go off on its own and contemplate her next meeting of swords with Tor, or the

nagging Teka was sure to begin within the next day or two for her to darn her

stockings since they all had holes in them and lately she had perforce always to

wear boots when she attended the court in the great hall so that the holes

wouldn’t show. She was thinking that the green stockings probably had the

smallest and most mendable holes, and she had to have dinner in the hall tonight.

Since she’d turned eighteen she’d been expected to take part in the dancing

occasionally, and there was sure to be dancing tonight since the dinner was in

honor of Thorped and his son, who were here from the south; one of Thorped’s

daughters was one of Galanna’s ladies. It was difficult dancing in boots and she

needed all the help she could get. At this point she realized that her arm was

getting tired—and that the bit of yellow-slick wood was peacefully ignoring the

fire that burned around it, and that the iron tongs were getting hot in her hand.

She jumped, and knocked over the candlestick and dropped the hot tongs, and

the greasy bit of wood skittered over the dusty, woodchip-littered floor, picking

up shreds and shavings till it looked like a new sort of pomander. She had set up

shop in a deserted stone shed near Talat’s pasture that had once held kindling