The Hero and the Crown (10 page)

“She would; but Teka sleeps the sleep of the just, and it is long past midnight.”

“So it is.” Tor sighed, and rubbed his forehead with one hand.

“I’m surprised you’ve escaped so early; the dancing often goes on till dawn.”

In spite of the dimness of the light she could see Tor make a face. “The dancing

may often go on till dawn, but I rarely last half so long—as you would know if you

ever bothered to stay and keep me company.”

“Hmmph.”

“Hmmph threefold. Has it ever occurred to you, Aerin-sol, that I am not a

particularly good dancer either? It’s probably just as well we don’t dance together

often or we would do ourselves a serious injury. Nobody dares mention it, of

course, because I am first sola—”

“And a man of known immoderate temper.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere. But I leave the dance floor as soon as I’ve

tramped around once with every lady who will feel slighted if I don’t.”

His light-heartedness seemed forced. “What’s wrong?” she said.

Tor gave a snort of laughter. “Having exposed one of my most embarrassing

shortcomings in an attempt to deflect you, you refuse to be deflected.”

Aerin waited.

Tor sighed again, and wandered out of the shadows to lean his elbows against

the low stone wall surrounding the balcony. The moonlight made his face look

pale, his profile noble and serene, and his black hair the stuff of absolute

darkness. Aerin rather liked the effect, but he spoiled it by rubbing one hand

through his hair and turning the corners of his mouth down, whereupon he

reverted to being tired and confused and human. “There was a meeting, of sorts,

this afternoon, before the banquet.” He paused again, but Aerin did not move,

expecting more; he glanced at her and went on. “Thorped wanted to talk about

the Hero’s Crown.”

“What does anybody ever want to know about it? He wants to know where it

is,”

“So do we all.”

“Yes. Sorry. I mean he wants to know if we’re looking for it now and if not why

not and if so by what means and what progress we’ve made. And if we know how

important it is, and on and on.”

“I see that you spent a less than diverting afternoon.”

“How does he think we’re supposed to look for it? By the Seven Gods and

Aerinha’s foundry! Every stone in Damar has been turned over at least twice

looking for it, and there was a fashion there for a while to uproot trees and look

for it underneath. We’ve had every seer who ever went off in a fit or brewed a

love potion that didn’t work try to bring up a vision of its whereabouts for us.”

Including my mother? thought Aerin.

“Nothing. Just a lot of dead trees and misplaced rocks.”

Galanna had told her once that there was a Crown that kept mischief away

from Damar, and that if Arlbeth had had it when he met Aerin’s mother he would

never have married her, and if he had found it any time since Aerin was born

Galanna would no longer have to put up with having her eyelashes cut off; exactly

how the Crown performed its warding functions she did not describe. Aerin also

knew that the more strongly Gifted royalty were expected to chew a surka leaf at

least once and try to cast their minds toward a sighting of the Crown. She

assumed Tor had done so, though it was not something he would have told her

about. And all her history lessons had told her was that the current sovereigns of

Damar had gone crownless for many generations, in honor of a Crown that was

lost long ago.

Aerin said slowly, “I’ve heard of it, of course, but I’m not entirely sure what the

Crown is, or is supposed to do.”

There was a silence. “Neither am I,” said Tor. “It’s been lost ... a long time. I

used to think it was only a legend, but old Councilor Zanc mentioned it a few

weeks ago—that’s when Arlbeth told me that when he was a boy they were

looking under trees for it. Zanc’s father’s father used to tell the story of how it

was lost. Zanc thinks the increase of the Border raids is somehow due to its

absence; that Northern ... mischief ... did not trouble us when the Hero’s Crown

lay in the City. And Thorped apparently agrees with him, although he’s not quite

so outspoken about it.”

He shrugged, and then settled her more securely in the curve of his arm. “The

Hero’s Crown holds much of what Damar is; or at least much of what her king

needs to hold his people together and free of mischief. Aerinha was supposed to

have done the forging of it. Here we get into the legend, so maybe you know this

bit. Damar’s strength, or whatever it is about this land that makes it Damar and us

Damarians, was thought to be better held, more strongly held, in a Crown, which

could be handed from sovereign to sovereign, since some rulers are inevitably

better or wiser in themselves than others. Of course this system runs the risk of

the Crown’s being lost, and the strength with it, which is what eventually

happened. Zanc’s story is that it was stolen by a black mage, and that he rode

east, not north, or the Northerners would have fallen on us long since. Arlbeth

thinks ...” His voice trailed away.

“Yes?”

“Arlbeth thinks it has come into the hands of the Northerners at last.” He

paused a moment before he said slowly, “Arlbeth at least believes in its existence.

So must I, therefore.”

Aerin asked no more. It was the heaviest time of the night; dawn was nearer

than midnight, but the sky seemed to hold them in a closing hand. Then suddenly

through the weight of the sky and of her new knowledge, she remembered her

dragon ointment, and somehow neither the missing Crown nor Perlith’s malice,

the reason she had come up to stare at the sky in the middle of the night,

mattered quite so much; for, after all, she could do nothing about either Perlith or

the Crown, and the recipe for kenet was hers. If she got no sleep, she’d botch

making a big trial mixture tomorrow. “I must go to bed,” she said, and

straightened up.

“It is, isn’t it? It was given me by a friend with excellent taste.” She smiled up

at him, and without thinking he bent his head and kissed her. But she only hugged

him absently in return, because she was already worrying whether or not she had

enough of one particular herb, for it would spoil the whole morning if she had to

fetch more and she’d be mad with impatience and would botch the job after all.

“A quiet sleep to you,” she said. “And to you,” said Tor from the shadows.

SHE HAD ALMOST enough of the herb she had been worrying about. After

dithering awhile and muttering to herself she decided to go ahead and make as

much ointment as she had ingredients for, and fetch more tomorrow. It was a

messy business, and her mind would keep jumping away from the necessary

meticulousness; and she knocked over a pile of axe handles and was too

impatient to pile them up again and so spent several hours tripping over them

and stubbing her toes and using language she had picked up while listening to the

sofor, and the thotor, who were even more colorful. Once she was hopping

around on one foot and yelling epithets when her other foot was knocked out

from under her as well by a treacherous rear assault from a fresh brigade of

rolling lumber, and she fell and bit her tongue. This chastened her sufficiently that

she finished her task without further incident.

She stared at the greasy unpleasant-looking mess in the shallow trough before

her and thought, Well, so what do I do now? Build a fire and jump in? The only

fireplaces big enough are all in heavily used rooms of the castle. Maybe a bonfire

isn’t such a bad idea after all; but it will have to be far enough away that no one

will come looking for the source of the smoke.

Meanwhile she did have enough of the kenet to fireproof both hands, and she

made a small fire in the middle of the shed floor (out of broken axe handles) and

held both hands, trembling slightly, in its heart—and nothing happened. The next

day she went to fetch more herbs.

She decided at once that she would have to leave the City to try her bonfire;

and she decided just as quickly that she had to take Talat. Kisha would be worse

than a nuisance under such circumstances; at very least she would find the

bonfire excuse enough to break either her halter rope or her neck in a declared

panic attempt to bolt back toward the City.

Teka, however, did not like this plan at all. Teka was willing to accept that Aerin

was a good rider, and might be permitted to leave the City alone for a few hours

on her pony; but that she should want to go alone, overnight, with that vicious

stallion—such an idea she was not willing to entertain. First she declared that

Talat was too lame to go on such a journey; and when Aerin, annoyed, tried to

convince her otherwise, Teka changed her ground and said that he was dangerous

and Aerin couldn’t be certain of her ability to control him. Aerin was ready to

weep with rage, and after several weeks of this (she having meanwhile made vast

quantities of her kenet and almost set her hair on fire trying to test its

effectiveness on various small bits of her anatomy), Teka had to realize that there

was more to this than whim.

“You may go if your father says you may,” she said at last, heavily. “Talat is still

his horse, and he has a right to decide what his future should be. I—I think he will

be proud of what you’ve done with him.”

Aerin knew how much it cost Teka to say so, and her anger ebbed away and

she felt ashamed of herself.

“The journey itself—I do not like it. It is not proper”—and here a smile touched

the corners of Teka’s sad mouth—”but you will always be unusual, as your

mother was, and she traveled alone as she chose, nor did your father ever try to

hinder her. You are a woman grown, and past needing a nursemaid to judge your

plans. If your father says you may go—well, then.”

Aerin went off and began to worry about how best to approach her father. She

had known she would have to ask his permission at some point, but she had

wanted to get Teka on her side first, and had misjudged how alarming the horse-

shy Teka would find a war-stallion like Talat, even an elderly, rehabilitated, and

good-natured war-stallion. Aerin’s own attitude toward Talat hadn’t been rational

for years.

Aerin went off and began to worry about how best to approach her father. She

had known she would have to ask his permission at some point, but she had

wanted to get Teka on her side first, and had misjudged how alarming the horse-

shy Teka would find a war-stallion like Talat, even an elderly, rehabilitated, and

good-natured war-stallion. Aerin’s own attitude toward Talat hadn’t been rational

for years.

She caught her father one day at breakfast, between ministers with tactical

problems and councilors with strategic ones. His face lit up when he saw her, and

she made an embarrassed mental note to seek him out more often; he was not a

man who had ever been able to enter into a child’s games, but she might have

noticed before this how wistfully he looked at her. But for perhaps the first time

she was recognizing that wistfulness for what it was, the awkwardness of a

father’s love for a daughter he doesn’t know how to talk to, not shame for what

Aerin was, or could or could not do.

She smiled at him, and he gave her a cup of malak, and pushed the bun tray

and the saha jam toward her. “Father,” she said through crumbs, “do you know I

have been riding Talat?”

He looked at her thoughtfully. Hornmar had brought him this information some

months back, adding that Talat had looked like pining away and dying before

Aerin took him over. Arlbeth had wished that she might bring him the story

herself; the sort of fears Teka had did not occur to him.

“Yes,” he said. “And I would have guessed something was up sooner or later

when you stopped nagging me to get rid of Kisha and find you a real horse.”

Aerin had the grace to blush. “It’s been ... quite a while. I didn’t think about

what I was doing at first.”

Arlbeth was smiling. “I should like to see you ride him.”

Aerin swallowed. “You ... would?”

“I would.”

“Er—soon?”

“As it pleases you, Aerin-sol,” he said gravely.

She nodded wordlessly.

“Tomorrow, then.”

She nodded again, picked up a second bun and looked at it.

“I have guessed that there is some purpose to your joining me at breakfast,”

Arlbeth said, as she showed no sign of breaking the silence, “a purpose beyond

telling me of something that has been going on for years without your troubling

me with it. It has perhaps to do further with Talat?”

She looked up, startled.

“We kings do develop a certain ability to recognize objects under our noses.

Well?”

“I should like to ride Talat out of the City. A day’s ride out—sleep overnight,

outside. Come back the next day.” She was sorry about the bun, now; it made her

mouth dry.

“Ah. I recommend you go east and south—you might follow the Tsa, which will

provide you with water as well as preventing you from getting lost.”

“The river? Yes. I’d thought—I’d already thought of that.” Her fingers were

crumbling the rest of the bun to tiny bits.