The Hero and the Crown (20 page)

worth seven of her husband, and you’ve the courage she had, or she’d not have

borne you, and you would not be standing here now after what Maur has done to

you—and does to you yet.”

Aerin stared at him. “Does to me yet? ... They hung its skull in the great hall,

and it spoke to me. I was stronger for a while, till I saw it there, and it spoke to

me.”

“Spoke—? How could anyone, even a hundred generations later, be so stupid

as to bring back the Black Dragon’s head as a trophy and hang it on a wall for folk

to gape at? Surely—”

“I asked them to take it away—where no one might look at it again.”

Luthe paced twice around the table before he said anything. “Dragon-Killer

indeed. They do not know how lucky they are to have had you. To have had you

at all. And I am fool enough to want to give you back to them.”

Witch woman’s daughter, Aerin thought. But I told Tor I would come back if I

could.

Luthe sat wearily down. “I have sat up here too long; it is so pleasant, not

meddling. Perhaps after a hundred generations it is possible to forget.”

“You knew my mother?”

“Yes.”

It was not an answer, nor a tone of voice, to encourage further questions. She

looked down, and noticed that there was bread and fruit on the table she leaned

on, and she picked up a handful of cora berries and began to eat them one at a

time.

“She was like you, but smaller,” Luthe said after she finished the last berry and

had begun on a piece of bread. “The burden she carried was different from yours,

and it had worn on her for many years. When I knew her she had forgotten joy,

although I believe Arlbeth gave her a little back again.”

Aerin’s low rough voice seemed to come from the high grey walls and not from

the thin figure bowed over the table before him: “It is said in the City that she

died of despair when she found she had had a daughter and not a son.”

“It is probably true,” Luthe said, his voice level. “She had courage enough, but

little imagination; or she would not have forgotten joy, whatever the weight on

her, and heavy enough it truly was.”

“Is it a weight a son might have lifted from her?”

“It is a weight any of her blood and courage may lift. Damn you,” he said, his

voice rising. “Couldn’t you tell the difference between a true dream and dragon

poison?”

“Evidently not,” she replied, and looked straight at him, although she still

leaned on the table. “If it was so important, and the Black Dragon, even in death,

so insidious, why did you not come and fetch me?”

There was a little pause, and Luthe smiled faintly. “I shan’t try to bully you

again.”

“You have not answered my question.”

“I don’t wish to answer it.”

She could not help herself, and she laughed: he sounded so much like a sulky

child. And her laugh rang out, clear and free, as it had not done since she had first

heard the name of Maur.

“I am glad to hear that,” she said, and found herself surprised that she spoke

the truth, and her mouth curled in a wry smile. “I am glad.”

Luthe, watching her, knew both the truth of her words and the surprise they

had caused her. She wandered around the little table till she came to another

chair, and settled lightly into it; and with the smile still on her lips, her eyelids

drooped, and she fell into the light doze of the chronic invalid, and sagged against

the side of her chair, and Luthe watched over her sleep as Tor often had, and their

thoughts were very similar. But Luthe had a choice to make, and a choice that he

did not like; and it was a choice that must be made soon. Even as he thought of

this choice, he knew the decision had already been made. But he was in no hurry

that Aerin wake again, and he do what he must.

SHE COULD NOT THINK where she was when she awoke. She was sitting in a

tall wooden chair, and a fire burned in a hearth not far from her outstretched

feet; and she was in a hall so vast she could not see the ceiling. It was not until

Luthe walked between her and the hearth, to lay another log on the fire, that she

remembered all that had passed; and she sighed.

He turned to her at once, his face still solemn and frowning. “Talat?” she said,

as if he was always the first thing on her mind. Luthe, exasperated, said: “If you

have so little faith in my ability to look after one fat, elderly, self-centered stallion, then I will show you proof.” He leaned over her again and picked her up, and

strode out of the great grey hall.

“I can walk,” said Aerin, with dignity.

“No, you can’t,” said Luthe over the top of her head, “although at some date in

the near future you will have the opportunity to relearn.”

He set her down, finally, on her own feet, at the edge of a wide unfenced

meadow; several brown cows grazed in it, and at its farthest edge she saw one or

two deer raise their heads and look toward her; but they did not seem alarmed.

Then she heard Talat’s great ringing neigh, and he galloped up to them, coming

to a sliding halt at the last minute (Luthe muttered something that sounded like

“Show-off”), and slobbered green and purple down her shirt. “Horses,” said Luthe

with disgust; but she took a step away from his steadying hand to wrap an arm

over Talat’s non-existent withers.

“Here, then,” said Luthe. “You can be of some use.” He boosted her onto

Talat’s well-rounded back and walked off. “This way,” he said over his shoulder,

and Talat pricked his ears and followed docilely. But Luthe’s long legs covered the

ground at a good pace, and Talat had to stretch himself to keep up, for he would

lose his dignity if he broke into a trot; and so his ears eased half back in

disapproval of so rude a speed. Aerin laughed her small half-laugh, that she would

not cough.

They came soon to the edge of a wide silver lake. Aerin blinked her dim eyes,

for it was hard to determine where the land ended and the water began; the

stones of the shore were a barely flatter, duller grey than the water’s gleaming

surface. Talat stopped when his hoofs crunched on pebbles; it was the worst sort

of footing for a horse with an unreliable leg. Luthe continued to the very edge of

the water, and as he stopped just before he got his feet wet, the water gave a

sudden little gloop and ripple, and a small outthrust finger of water reached out

and splashed his toes. Luthe muttered something under his breath and the water

replied by hunching itself up into ridges, and several tiny wave-edges crept

humbly up the shoreline, but none quite touched his feet. “Here,” called Luthe.

She slid off Talat’s back, but found within two steps that Luthe had been right,

she really couldn’t walk. She sank down where she had been standing, and Talat

crunched up beside her and lowered his nose for her hand, his ears saying

anxiously, “It’s all my fault—I don’t really mind these wretched small stones—do

please stand up again and I’ll carry you.”

Then Luthe was kneeling beside her, and he lifted her in his arms again; his

hands were wet to the elbows. He set her down, carefully, by the lake’s edge, and

the water shouldered up in small ripples again, and flung itself up the stones

toward her as if curious; but it did not quite touch her. Luthe dipped

“Drink,” he said.

“Is this another sleeping draught?” she said, trying to smile; but he only looked

sad and grim.

“No,” he said. The water dripped on her leg, and its touch through the cloth

was somehow personal, soothing like the hand of a friend.

She drank awkwardly, over his thumb, and the water was silver, almost white,

even against Luthe’s pale skin; and it was faintly sweet, and cold, and wild,

somehow, wild with a wildness she could not put a name to beyond just that:

wild. It seemed to course down her throat of its own volition, and foam up in her

stomach. She looked up and met Luthe’s blue frowning gaze as he bowed over

her and his cupped hands. She said, “What is—? Not water,” and then he and the

lake and the taste of the water on her tongue disappeared; but just before her

mind spiraled away after them she felt hands clamp on her shoulders, wet hands,

for she could feel the damp through her sleeves, and these hands dragged her to

her feet, “Aerin,” came a voice from very far away, and then she no longer had

feet, or ears either. Aerin.

Her lungs were on fire like a swimmer’s too far underwater, and she clawed her

way toward the surface, and toward the voice that still called her name; and it

seemed that her face broke the surface of the water which held her, and for a

moment she lay gasping. The voice again. Aerin.

She opened her eyes, and she was not on the shores of a silver lake, though a

tall man stood before her, calling her name, and offering her a goblet. Drink, he

said.

She reached to take the goblet; reached out to take it with her left hand, and

noticed with mild surprise that the arm was unscarred and strong. Ah, she

thought wisely, I am dreaming again; but she paused before she took the goblet,

and looked around her. She stood in a wide chamber that at first she thought was

round, till she realized the walls were straight, but that there were five of them.

She looked up, and there was a heavy weight of bound hair on her head, and this

preoccupied her, so she did not examine the strange clawed creatures that

writhed, black and red and yellow, against that ceiling. She lowered her head

again, puzzled, for she had never been in this room before, and yet its red walls

seemed familiar to her.

Drink, said the man again, and his voice was impatient. Drink. The goblet in his

outstretched hand trembled very slightly, and she wondered why he was so eager

for her to take the cup.

She tried to look up into his face, but he wore a cloak with a hood, a red cloak,

so bright that it hurt the eyes, and the hood was so deep she could not see the

face within it. Drink, he said, half mad with impatience, and it occurred to her at

last that this was not Luthe she stood before.

Drink.

Then she looked again at her left hand and arm, and she thought calmly. That is

not my hand; this one is smaller, and the fingers are more delicate than ever mine

were. She withdrew the hand, and put it to her head, and pulled a wisp of her hair

free, and held it before her eyes. It was the color it had used to be, before Maur

burned it; but the hairs of it were finer.

Aerin, said the red man; you shall take this, and drink it.

In a voice not hers she replied: No. But the voice despaired and the red man

heard the despair, and thrust the goblet at her the more eagerly, knowing that he

would succeed. Drink.

Slowly, hopelessly, her left hand reached out again, and took the goblet, and

held it to her lips; but she did not taste what was within it, for she heard her

name again, and paused.

Aerin.

This was not the red man’s voice, but another one, familiar to her. Aerin. The

voice was Luthe’s voice, and frantic.

The red man heard it too, and whirled around; the cloak spun on his shoulders,

but still she saw nothing of his face. “Luthe!” he cried. “You shall not have her!”

Luthe’s voice laughed weakly. No, I won’t; but I shall have the other one; you

shall not have them both.

Then there was a roaring around her, and it seemed that the red walls of the

five-sided chamber were angry red mouths; but then the red faded to grayness,

and yet still the roaring went on; and suddenly the grayness was the grayness of

stone walls, not the pale stone of Luthe’s hall, but the grey and darker grey and

dull red and black of her City; but before its walls lay a desert plain, empty and

barren, and three of the four monoliths that marked the City gates lay on their

sides, and she saw no folk anywhere. She opened her mouth to scream, but her

mouth filled with silver water, and she choked, and struck out with her hands;

and felt sunlight on her face. Next she realized that she had a stiff neck; and then

found she was stiff all over, from lying on... rocks.

grayness was the grayness of stone walls, not the pale stone of Luthe’s hall, but

the grey and darker grey and dull red and black of her City; but before its walls lay

a desert plain, empty and barren, and three of the four monoliths that marked

the City gates lay on their sides, and she saw no folk anywhere. She opened her

mouth to scream, but her mouth filled with silver water, and she choked, and

struck out with her hands; and felt sunlight on her face. Next she realized that she

had a stiff neck; and then found she was stiff all over, from lying on ... rocks.

He sat up beside her. “Ack,” he said, and stretched cautiously. He was soaking

wet; it occurred to her then that she was too, although they were some distance

from the water’s edge—nearer, in fact, to the trees. Then there was a familiar

stomp and whiffle behind her, and she reached up without looking to encounter

Talat’s silky cheek.

Luthe was getting to his feet; he looked as stiff as she felt. He watched her

inscrutably as she staggered to her feet and stood beside him. The lake’s surface

was smooth as glass. It was strangely silent where they stood; she heard nothing