The Hero and the Crown (16 page)

outermost edge of the dragonfire, no hotter, perhaps, than the fire used to

temper the king’s swords, slid between her lips and down her throat and into her

lungs, and then she had nothing left to scream with.

Then she was below the fire lash, and lying on the ground, and one foot was

caught under Talat’s body, and Talat lay still. The pain of her scorched throat and

lungs was so great she almost forgot the pain of her arm and her head; but she

found, somewhere, enough consciousness left to be surprised, when she saw a

great shadow shifting toward them and looming over them, that she could still

see, and out of both her eyes. I’m still alive, she thought, and blinked; her unburnt

cheek was pressed against the ground, which felt as cold as ice. That’s the dragon

leaning over us, she thought; it will kill us for sure this time. There was a red haze

hanging before her eyes, or maybe her eyes were only sore from the smoke and

ash; but she could not see clearly. She must have imagined that she saw the

dragon’s jaws opening, for had she seen it, there would have been no time left. As

it was she had time to think, calmly and clearly, I’ve killed Talat because he

wouldn’t turn and run; he’s a war-horse. Well, perhaps I can run forward, not

back too, now that it’s too late.

She hadn’t had time to figure out how seriously hurt she was, so she picked

herself up and flung herself at the dragon’s nose as it bowed its head to nuzzle

them, or swallow them, or whatever it had planned; and she found out too late

that the ankle that had been caught under Talat was broken, and her left arm so

withered by the fire that it could not obey her; but somehow still she had grabbed

Maur’s nostrils, and as it yanked its head up she held on grimly with one hand and

one foot, and perhaps with her teeth. This is for Talat, she thought, but dimly

now. There’s still a knife in my boot, but I have only one hand; I can’t hold on and

pull it out both.

But Maur reared up as it raised its head, and the weight of the air held her flat

upon its nose for a moment, and almost she laughed, and worked her good hand

down to her boot top and pulled the knife free. The dragon finished rearing, and

clawed at its nose with one front leg; but its eyes were set too low and far back

on its head to see her where she lay, and its skin was too thick for it to feel her

location accurately, and the swipe missed. She thought, A few steps, only a few, it

doesn’t matter that my ankle’s broken; and she half stood up and ran the length

of the dragon’s head, flung herself down flat again, and plunged her knife into

Maur’s right eye.

WHEN SHE CAME to herself she was screaming, or she would have been

screaming had her ravaged throat been capable of it. It hurt to breathe. She lay

on the ground, a little distance from where the dragon lay crumpled up against

the mountainside, its head and tail outflung and motionless. She thought, I must

have killed it after all; but the thought did not please her particularly. She hurt too

much. Water was her next thought. There was a stream ...

The thought of water made her wounds burn the more fiercely, and she fainted

again.

Somehow during that long afternoon she crawled to the stream; it was not

until twilight that she finally put out her hand—her right hand, caked with dragon

gore—and felt water running over it. She had been afraid that she had, in her

desperate need, imagined the sound and smell of running water, and her periods

of unconsciousness were full of dreams that told her she was crawling in the

wrong direction. Two or three tears crept down her blackened face, and she

pulled herself up on her right elbow again, and dragged herself forward, and fell

full length into the water. It was shallow where she lay, and she feebly propped

herself against a moderate-sized boulder where the water could run freely over

her left arm and the left side of her face and yet let her breathe.

She spent at least that night in the cool stream, moving only to drink, and then

turning her face up again against the rock in that she might go on breathing;

although she wondered, occasionally, as she wandered in and out of

consciousness, why she cared. Dawn came; or perhaps it was the second dawn

since she had pulled herself into the water; or the twelfth. She watched the sun

rise and it occurred to her that she seemed to be spending more time conscious,

and she was sorry for this. It would have been simpler if sometime during the

night when she had wandered off, leaving her crippled body in the cold running

water, she had not returned. But instead she found herself blinking at the light of

morning, and then staring at a vaguely familiar pale hulk at the shore of the

stream. Talat.

“Talat,” she croaked, and discovered that her voice was not entirely gone after

all. Talat raised his drooping head and looked at her; he had not recognized the

thing in the stream as his beloved Aerin, and he whinnied eagerly but uncertainly.

“If you’re still around,” Aerin whispered, “then perhaps I’d better stay too,” and

she hunched herself painfully into a sitting position.

Talat backed a step or two away from the thing in the stream as it rose up at

him, but it croaked “Talat” at him again and he paused. The voice did not sound

the way Aerin’s voice should sound, but he was quite sure it had something to do

with his Aerin, and so he waited. Aerin found out that sitting up was as far as she

could go in that direction, so she lay down again, rolled over on her belly, and

hitched her way slowly up onto the shore of the stream, Talat lowered his head

anxiously and blew, and the touch of his breath on her face made her grunt with

pain. She worked her right hand out of its sodden gauntlet, and raised her good

hand to her horse, and he lipped her fingers and then gave a great sigh—of relief,

she thought; but she turned her face away from his warm breath, “A lot you

know,” she whispered, but for the first time since they had fallen together before

the dragon it occurred to her that she might not die.

Her burns and her broken ankle throbbed more harshly once she was out of

the water, and she thought, I could spend the rest of my life lying in streams. A

very small thought added, “that may be no very long time anyway. Then she

thought, “I have to find a way at least to stand up and get Talat’s saddle off before

it galls him. Well, I still have one arm and one leg.”

She slithered back to the ground again, landing on the saddle. She found

herself staring at the buckles that had held the saddlebags. Food. Where did I

leave my gear? It was near the stream here somewhere. Behind a rock. She

looked around, but her sight was blurry, and she could not tell which smaller

humps were rocks and which might be saddlebags. Her mouth and throat

throbbed. I probably can’t eat anything but mush, she thought, and grimaced, but

wrinkling her face for the grimace was so painful that she could think of nothing

for a few minutes.

It was Talat who found her saddlebags. He ambled away from her, snuffling

along the ground by the edge of the stream; and he paused by one particular

group of small dim hummocks and bumped them with his nose; and Aerin knew

by the noise that they were not rocks. He moved away from them again, and one

hoof in passing glanced off them, and again the noise was a faint rustle instead of

the thunk of hoof against stone.

It was another long afternoon before she dragged herself within reach of her

saddlebags, for she had often to climb back into the water and soothe her burns

and her throbbing ankle. She lay with one hand on their smooth leather, and then

thought: A fire. If I could boil something to a pulp till I could swallow it... She

fumbled one of the flaps open; there was still bread, and she put it in her hand

and held her hand in the water till she felt it begin to disintegrate, and then

lapped it up slowly.

She did build a fire; she found a way to wedge her tinder between stones so

that she could strike it with her good hand; and fortunately there was plenty of

fuel by the shores of the stream. Trees still grew here, for they were a little

protected from the dragon’s valley by the long stone shoulder that had hidden

Maur from Aerin’s campsite. She found the remains of her campfire, and it looked

old and weathered; and she thought to notice that the stream was running clear

again, and she wondered again how long she had lain in the stream. She found a

flat rock for a lid, and began the long process of boiling dried meat in her tin till it

was soft enough for her to eat. She didn’t dare make the fire very large, for she

could not go far to fetch wood for it; nor could she bear the heat of it.

She slept, or fainted again, often, drifting back and forth across the boundary of

selfhood; it was no longer only oblivion that those periods of blank ness brought

her, but the beginning of healing. She pried the boot off her right foot, gingerly

felt the ankle, wrapped it in strips made from spare clothing, tying knots with one

hand and her teeth; and hoped she was doing something useful. The wrappings

reminded her, if they did no other good, to keep the foot quiet, and the ache of it

ebbed away to a dull mutter.

She had looked only once at her left arm, and had felt so sick at the sight that

she did not look again. But not looking reminded her the same way as bandaging

her foot reminded her; and the pain of the burns had subsided but little, and she

had often to crawl back to the stream and soak herself in it. “And how long before

I get sick from the cold?” she thought, shivering; for now that her body was trying

to fight back it recognized that lying in cold water for long periods of time is not

generally a good thing to do, and the unhurt bits of it shivered. She sneezed, and

sneezed again. Great, she thought dully, and her eyes fell again on the

saddlebags. It was hard to think because of the pain.

Kenet, she thought. Kenet. It can’t hurt to try.

Hope rose up and blocked her aching throat. She crept to the saddlebags and

unrolled the long wallet that held the kenet; and twitched her left arm forward

and let it lie in the thick yellow ointment. She closed her eyes, trying not to hope

so desperately; she feared the pain might drive her mad soon, and she could not

spare the strength to withstand too great a disappointment. But as she grappled

with herself the pain in her arm dwindled and ebbed and finally died away to a

vague queasy discomfort. I’m imagining this, she thought, holding perfectly still so

as not to disrupt the beautiful unexpected dream of peace. She opened her eyes.

Her arm was still black and horrible-looking. She lay down, very, very slowly, til

her left cheek was cradled as well in the dragonfire ointment; and slowly her face,

too, hurt less and less till it did not hurt at all. She fell into sleep, real sleep, the first real sleep she had had since the evening she had read Tor’s note.

“I will help you if I can,” said a voice; but she was dreaming, and could not be

sure if the words were spoken aloud. She looked up from where she sat huddled

on the ground; a tall blond man stood near her. He knelt beside her; his eyes were

blue, and kind, and anxious. “Aerin-sol,” he said. “Remember me; you have need

of me, and I will help you if I can.” A flicker came and went in the blue eyes. “And

you shall again aid Damar, for I will tell you how.”

“No,” she said, for she remembered Maur, and knew Maur was real, whether

or not she was dreaming now; “no, I cannot. I cannot. Let me stay here,” she

begged. “Don’t send me back.”

A line formed between the blue eyes; he reached one hand toward her, but

hesitated and did not touch her. “I cannot help it. I can barely keep you here for

the space of a dream; you are being pulled back even now.”

It was true. The smell of kenet was in her nostrils again, and the sound of

running water in her ears. “But how will I find you?” she asked desperately; and

then she was awake. Slowly she opened her eyes; but she lay where she was for a

long time.

Eventually she began walking again; leaning heavily on a thick branch she had

found and laboriously trimmed to the proper length. She had to walk very slowly,

not only for the sake of her ankle, but that her left arm not be shaken too gravely;

and she still had trouble breathing. Even when she breathed in tiny shallow gasps

it hurt, and when she forgot and sucked in too much air she coughed; and when

she coughed, she coughed blood. But her face and arm were healing.

She had also discovered that the hair on the left side of her head was gone,

burnt by the same blast of dragonfire that had scarred her cheek. So she took her

hunting knife, the same ill-used blade that had been forced to chop her a cane,

and sawed off the rest of her hair till none of it was longer than hand’s width. Her

neck felt rubbery with the sudden weightlessness, and the wind seemed to

whistle in her ears and down her collar more than it used to. She might have wept

a little for her hair, but she felt too old and grim and worn.

She avoided wondering what her face looked like under her chopped-off hair.