The Hero and the Crown (15 page)

cupped her chin in his hands, and looked at her for a long moment; then he

turned to Kethtaz, and Aerin grasped the stirrup and turned it for Arlbeth’s foot.

At that moment there was a small commotion at the courtyard gate, and a man

on a tired horse stepped onto the glassy stone. The horse stopped, swaying on

wide-spaced legs, for it was too weary to walk trustingly on the smooth surface;

and the man dismounted and dropped the reins, and ran to where the king stood.

Arlbeth turned, his hand still on Aerin’s shoulder, as the man came up to them.

“Majesty,” he said.

Arlbeth inclined his head as if he were in his great hall and this man only the

first of a long morning’s supplicants. “Majesty,” the man said again, as if he could

not remember his message, or dared not give it. The man’s gaze flicked to Aerin’s

face as she stood, her hand still holding the stirrup for mounting, and she was

startled to see the gleam of hope in the man’s eyes as he looked at her.

“The Black Dragon has come,” he said at last. “Maur, who has not been seen

for generations, the last of the great dragons, great as a mountain. Maur has

awakened.”

Sweat ran down the man’s face, and his horse gave a gasping shuddering

breath that meant its wind was broken, so hard had it been ridden. “I beg you for

... help. My village even now may be no more. Other villages will soon follow.”

The man’s voice rose in panic. “In a year—in a season Damar may all be black with

the dragon’s breath.”

“This is mischief from across the Border,” Tor said, and Arlbeth nodded. There

was silence for a long, sad, grim moment, and when Arlbeth spoke again, his voice

was heavy. “As Tor says, the Black Dragon’s awakening is mischief sent us, and

sent us crucially at just this moment when we dare not heed it.” The messenger’s

shoulders slumped, and he put his hands over his face.

Arlbeth went on, so quietly that none but Aerin and Tor and the man might

hear. “We go now to meet a trouble that may be even deadlier than dragons, for

it is human and Damarian and spurred by mischief. Damar may yet face the

dragon; a Damar broken to bits would be nothing, even though the dragon lay

dead.” He turned to Kethtaz again, set his foot in the stirrup, and mounted. Aerin

stepped back as Kethtaz pranced, for he cared nothing for dragons and much for

bearing the king at the head of a procession.

“We shall return as soon as we may, and go to meet your Black Dragon. Rest,

and take a fresh horse, and go back to your village. All those who wish it may

come to our City and await us in its shelter.” He raised his arm, and his company

rustled like leaves, waiting the order to march; and one of the sofor led the

messenger’s wind-broken horse to one side, and the king’s procession passed the

courtyard gate, and went down the king’s way and beyond the City walls to where

the army awaited them.

“We shall return as soon as we may, and go to meet your Black Dragon. Rest,

and take a fresh horse, and go back to your village. All those who wish it may

come to our City and await us in its shelter.” He raised his arm, and his company

rustled like leaves, waiting the order to march; and one of the sofor led the

messenger’s wind-broken horse to one side, and the king’s procession passed the

courtyard gate, and went down the king’s way and beyond the City walls to where

the army awaited them.

“Lmoth will be cared for well in our stables,” said Aerin, “and I will take you

now to find food and a bed for yourself.”

The man’s eyes turned slowly toward her, and again she saw the dim flicker of

hope. “I must return as soon as I may, at least with the message of the king’s

charity for those of my folk left homeless or fearful.”

Aerin said, “Food first. It’s a long weary way you have come.” . He nodded, but

his eyes did not leave her face.

Aerin said softly: “I will come with you when you ride home; but you know that

already, don’t you?”

The hopeful gleam was now reflected in a smile, but a smile so faint that she

would not have seen it at all if she had not, in her turn, hoped for it.

“Thank you, Aerin-sol, Dragon-Killer,” he said.

They rode out together that afternoon. Talat was fresh, and inclined to bounce;

he did not heed the dragon spears attached to his saddle because he believed he

knew everything he needed to know about dragons. It was a silent journey. They

went as quickly as they dared push the horses—a little less quickly than the

messenger liked, but Aerin knew she and Talat had a dragon before them, and

Talat was old; and if he did not wish to remember it, then it was all the more

important that Aerin remember it for him.

Their course was almost due north, but the mountains were steepest in that

direction, so they went out of their way to take the easier path, and moved the

swifter for it. At dawn on the third day a black cloud hung before them, near the

horizon that the mountains made, although the sky overhead was clear; and by

afternoon they were breathing air that had an acrid edge to it. The messenger’s

head had sunk between his shoulders, and he did not raise his eyes from the path

after they first saw the black cloud.

Talat picked his way carefully in the other horse’s wake. He was better-

mannered now than he had been when he was young and the king’s war-horse;

then the idea of following any other horse would have made him fret and sulk.

Aerin left it to him, for she looked only at the cloud. When the messenger turned

off to the left, while the cloud still hung before them, she said, “Wait.”

The man paused and looked back. His expression was dazed, as if hearing the

word “Wait” had called him back a long distance.

“The dragon lies ahead; it is his signature we see in the sky. I go that way.”

The man opened his mouth, and the dazed expression cleared a little; but he

closed his mouth again without saying anything.

“Go to your people and give them the king’s message,” Aerin said gently. “I will

come to you later, as I can—or not.”

The man nodded, but still he sat, turned in his saddle to look at the king’s

daughter, till Aerin edged Talat past him and down the path the man had left,

straight toward the cloud.

She made camp that night by a stream black with ash; to boil water for malak

she had first to strain it, and strain it again, through a corner of her blanket, for

this was not a contingency she had planned for. “Although I suppose I should

have,” she said to Talat, hanging the soggy bedding over a frame of branches by

the fire in the hope that it might dry before she had to wrap herself in it. She’d

had to strain water for Talat too, for he’d refused to drink the ashy stuff in the

running stream, snorting and pawing at it, and tossing an offended head with

flattened ears.

Dawn came, and Aerin lay wide awake, watching the light broaden, and still she

felt the earth tremble with the dragon’s pulse; and the light did not grow as bright

as it should, but remained grey as twilight. She rolled her blanket, and left it and

her cooking gear in the lee of a rock; and she rubbed Talat all over with kenet, and

herself as well, and donned her greasy leather suit; and then she rubbed herself

and her horse with kenet all over again, and even Talat was subdued by the grey

light and the trembling ground and did not protest this deviation from the proper

schedule. Aerin rubbed her spears with kenet, and checked that the rough suede

grips were looped firmly in place; and she checked the clasp of her sword belt and

the lie of the short knife she carried in her right boot. Lastly she pulled on her

gauntlets; the fingers felt as stiff as daggers.

Maur was waiting for them. They had spent the night separated from the

dragon by no more than a knob of rock a little taller than Talat; and it was in the

direction the dragon lay that Talat had so often looked during the dark hours. Or

perhaps Maur had approached them from where it had lain yesterday and it was

the weight of its footsteps Aerin had felt as its heartbeat as she lay awake by the

smoky camp fire.

Perhaps the dragon was not so large as a mountain; but the heavy black cloud

that clung around it made it larger than a mountain, and when it first caught sight

of them it lifted its wings, briefly, and the sun disappeared, and a wind like a

storm wind howled around them. Then it bowed its long neck to the ground, its

nose pointed toward them, and its half-lidded red eyes stared straight at them.

Talat stopped as they rounded the protective stone shoulder, and threw up his

head. Aerin was ready to dismount hastily if Maur was too much even for Talat’s

courage, for he had not had the warning she had had, and at least till the night

before he must have believed that they went to fight a dragon like other dragons.

But he stood, feet planted, and stared back at the dragon, and Maur’s red eyes

opened a little wider, and it began to grin a bit, and smoke seeped out between

its teeth, which were as long as Talat’s legs. The smoke crawled along the ground

toward them, and curled around Talat’s white ankles, and Talat stamped and

shivered but did not move, and the dragon grinned a little more.

They were in a small cup of valley; or what remained of the valley with the

dragon in it was small. There had been trees in the valley, and on the steep slopes

around them, but there were no trees now. It was hard to see anything. The

smoke was rising around them, and the valley was blackened; when a low rocky

hillock moved toward them, Aerin realized suddenly that it was some of the

dragon’s tail. Dragons sometimes stunned their prey with their tails when they did

not care to expend the energy that breathing fire required, or didn’t feel the prey

was worth it.

She loosened a dragon spear in its place, and drove Talat forward with her legs.

He was only a little slow to respond. She lifted the spear and hurled it with all her

strength at the dragon’s nearer eye.

Maur raised its head with a snap, and the spear bounced harmlessly off the

horny ridge beneath its eye; and Talat lurched out of the way of the striking tail.

The dragon’s head snaked around as Talat evaded the tail, and Talat dodged

again, and fire sang past Aerin’s ear, fire like nothing either Talat or Aerin had

ever seen before, any more than this dragon was like any other dragon they had

seen. The fire was nearly white, like lightning, and it smelted hard and metallic; it

smelled like the desert at noon, it smelled like a forest fire; and the blast of air

that sheathed it was hotter than any Damarian forge.

Talat’s eye showed white as he glared back over his shoulder at the dragon;

Maur was sitting half crouched now, but it was grinning again, and it made no

further move toward them.

Aerin was shivering in the saddle, the long convulsive shudders of panic. She

loosened the second spear, and reluctantly she turned Talat to face the dragon

once more; she wanted desperately to run away and hide, and had her throat not

been dry with terror she would have sobbed. Her shoulder creaked as she lifted

the spear. She urged Talat forward, and he moved stiff-legged, tail lashing

anxiously; she put him into a trot as if they were going to pass the dragon by on

their left side; all the time she was horribly aware of Maur’s slitted eyes watching

them. She coughed on the rising smoke, and almost lost her grip on the spear;

and as they were almost past the dragon’s farther shoulder she kneed Talat

abruptly around, swerving in under the dragon’s breast as it crouched, and flung

the spear at the soft spot under the jaw.

Talat swerved again, and the fire only nicked them in passing. Maur shook its

head violently and Aerin’s spear came free and whipped away like a leaf on a gale;

the dragon’s eyes were wide open now, and they heard the hiss of its breath, and

it sent more fire at them, and Talat spun desperately aside once again. There was

sweat on his neck, and sweat ringing his dark eyes; and Aerin could do nothing

but cling dumbly to the saddle; her brain refused to function. Her spears were

gone, and there was nothing useful to be done with her sword. Talat leaped aside

once more, nearly unseating her; she cowered miserably and wondered why Talat

did not turn tail and run, but continued to face the monster, waiting for her to do

... something.

Another blast of fire, and this time, as Talat reared back on his hocks and spun

frantically to the right, the weak hind leg gave way. He screamed, with fear or

shame, as the leg buckled and he fell; and Aerin fell with him, for her reflexes

were too numb to pitch her free. And so she was a little above him as they fell

together, and the dragonfire caught her, briefly, and she fell through it.

One arm was flung up, or left behind, as she fell, and the fire burned the kenet-

rich leather to ash instantly, and scorched the arm within; and the helmet on her

head blackened and fell away, and most of her hair vanished, and her kenet-

smeared face was on fire. She opened her mouth to scream, and she was almost

past the band of fire then, or she would have died at once; but still a little of the