Read The Hero and the Crown Online
Authors: Robin McKinley
far; but your Damarian blood cannot stand against the one who wears the Hero’s
Crown.”
Aerin raised her eyes to his forehead, and where she had not seen it before,
the dull grey circlet that was Damar’s dearest prize and treasure was bound
closely to his brows. She could not help the shudder that ran through her, for
what he said was true. Luthe, she thought, you should have come with me; you
could have been the un-Damarian half.
The red sword bit at her again, and again Gonturan pulled her arm into place in
time to deflect it. Yet even as death awaited her so near she could see its red jaws
opening, her clearest thought was still a desperate desire to find a way to make
her chest stop itching. I wonder if one can still itch if one is dead, she thought; and
her arm jerked once more as Gonturan parried another slash. But the red sword
almost broke through her guard, and her arm seemed suddenly weak; and she did
not know if it was the fact of her opponent’s wearing the Crown, or only her
knowledge of the fact; and her eyes were drawn up again to his forehead. But she
could not bear to look at that face for long, her own face, with wide mad green
eyes, and hair red as fire. ... My hair is not that color any more, she told herself,
and my eyes are not those eyes, and I am not the man before me. I am not he,
she thought; my mother fled him as I now face him, for what he is and we are not.
And yet she was grateful that she could not look often into the face which was not
hers, for she must watch the flicker of the red sword.
“Who taught you swordplay?” thundered Agsded. “No mortal can best me.”
And the red sword looked like seven swords as it swooped down on her again;
and yet Gonturan was seven swords in return, and struck them all away. I’m
afraid you are no longer quite mortal—mortal, Aerin thought. She laughed, and
the red blade wavered when she laughed; perhaps the laugh of his sister’s
daughter echoed in Agsded’s brain as horribly as his did in Aerin’s. And as the red
blade hesitated, Gonturan struck Agsded’s shoulder. An inhuman scream went
up, from the red mage or from the blue sword, Aerin could
not tell; and then Agsded’s sword came for her again, more swiftly than before,
and Aerin could not even follow with her eyes as the two swords caught at each
other, thrust and slammed and were hurled apart. “My Damarian blood,” she
panted, “uncle, is not so cursed as you think; for I have swum in the Lake of
Dreams, and I—am—no—longer—quite—mortal.”
not tell; and then Agsded’s sword came for her again, more swiftly than before,
and Aerin could not even follow with her eyes as the two swords caught at each
other, thrust and slammed and were hurled apart. “My Damarian blood,” she
panted, “uncle, is not so cursed as you think; for I have swum in the Lake of
Dreams, and I—am—no—longer—quite—mortal.”
Agsded laughed; and within the ring of fire he thrust his sword back into his
belt and crossed his arms. “Well? Fire may still burn those who are—no—longer—
quite—mortal.” He laughed again, and Aerin flinched from his voice even as from
the licking flames; and the grey Crown was red in the firelight.
Someday, she thought tiredly, I must learn to go forward of my own free will. If
only my horrible chest would let me think clearly. She raised Gonturan, and the
blue fire cascaded over her; it was cool against her face. She closed her eyes—
closing my eyes is stupid, she thought—and jumped into the fire.
It hissed and roared around her, but she ran forward and opened her eyes, and
her uncle was just a little late pulling his sword free again, and Gonturan rose for
a slash at his neck, the cut she had missed the last time. This time the blade ran
true, and struck him squarely.
And bounced off with a harsh ugly sound, and with a nick in her edge; and the
recoil was such that she twisted out of Aerin’s grasp and fell to the fiery floor, and
Aerin fell with her.
“I am not precisely mortal either,” said Agsded, and grinned his grin again; and
Aerin, looking up at the red sword that was about to sink into her, thought, I
imagine I’ll be mortal enough when struck through the heart; I wonder what
mage trick it is he uses—or perhaps it’s because he’s wearing the Crown. And
because she had nothing else left to do, and because she was still holding the
wreath in her other hand, she threw it at him.
He screamed. It was a scream that cut across all the senses, sight and touch
and taste and smell as well as hearing; it was a scream sharper than any sword
and as bitter as hatred, as fierce as a hunting folstza and as implacable as winter.
Aerin had only the dimmest recollection, through the scream, of the surka wreath
touching his face, falling over his head to ring his shoulders; of the dragon stone
shining as brilliantly red as Agsded’s sword had been, but which now turned to
the dull rusted color of old blood; of a smaller fire, within the ring of fire, rising
around Agsded higher and higher till he disappeared from view, as the fire he had
thrown between himself and Aerin sank and darkened and died; and still the
scream went on. Aerin staggered to her feet, and found that she was clutching
Gonturan with both hands; and that the palm of one was wet with her own blood
where she had seized unwarily at Gonturan’s edge; and that her hands and arms
glowed blue, and as she bent her head the hair that fell forward around her face
was also blue, and when she looked down, her boots were blue, and there was a
pool of blue spreading around them, and as the blue widened so did the tiny
hairline cracks in the floor, which spread and crackled and sputtered as she
looked, with Agsded’s scream still beating at her. Then the scream and the short
sharp sounds the floor was making rose together in a tumultuous roar, and the
stones on which Aerin stood gave way, and she fell, and saw the walls toppling in
on her. It would be pleasant to faint at this point, she thought, but she didn’t, and
she continued to clutch Gonturan, but she shifted the bloody hand to join the
other on the hilt. When I land, she thought, I will fall over and cut myself in half
on my own sword; but the fall may already have killed me. The sound of the
mountain tower falling was so loud she could no longer make room for her
thoughts, and so she gave up thinking and blackness hurtled past her, and heavy
fragments of that blackness fell with her but did not touch her, and she wondered
if she might fall forever, as she had climbed, and thus perhaps become the God
That Falls, or perhaps the God That Climbs and Falls.
Then there was a shock, but to her feet or her skull or only her mind she did
not know; whatever part of her was struck staggered, and she shook herself, and
discovered that it was her head she was shaking, and then she blinked her eyes
and looked up, and realized that she saw sunlight leaking through cracks as
though through the ruined wails of an ancient building. At the same time that her
confused eyes and brain figured out the sunlight she also realized that her feet
were standing on something, that she hadn’t chopped herself in two by landing
on Gonturan, and that she was no longer falling.
SHE WAS ON THE FLAT TOP of a small mountain of rubble; and off to her right,
at its foot, was a break in the surrounding circular wall wide enough that she
thought she could probably squeeze herself through it. She made her way slowly
and cautiously down the slope toward the broken place in the wall, but the stuff
underfoot shifted and slithered, and she came to the bottom sitting back on her
heels, with the unwounded hand holding Gonturan up by the scabbard so she
wouldn’t drag. She stood up and went toward the crack and, indeed, she could
push through, although it was a tight fit; and then the sunlight dazzled her, and
her abused legs turned abruptly to jelly, and she sat down quickly and put her
head between her knees. Staring at the ground, she thought, I wonder how long
it’s been since I’ve eaten. Food might help. The mundane thought made her feel
better at once, and hungry as well. She raised her head. She still felt shaky, and
when she had clambered back to her feet—ungracefully using Gonturan as a
prop—her knees were inclined to tremble, but she almost cheerfully put it down
to lack of food.
She looked around. Where was she? The black tower had risen from a plain
where nothing grew; now all around her she saw jungle, trees with vast climbing
vines (though none of surka that she could see), and heavy brush between the
trees. The sunlight fell on the ruined tower and the little bramble -covered
clearing it made for itself, but the light could not make much headway through
the thick leaves. Ugh. It would not be a pleasant journey out. And where might
she find Talat? She set out to walk around what remained of the tower.
Nothing but tumbled rock and encroaching forest. Nothing else. No sign of
anything else ever having been here either—but where was she? Was the ruined
tower she was stumbling around now the same that she and Talat and her wild
beasts had faced? She tipped her head back to look up at the remaining walls.
They didn’t look nearly big enough; the fallen rock was not enough to have been
built into such vastness as she remembered. She sighed, and rubbed a hand over
her face—and pulled it away again as she remembered that it was the wrong
hand. But the cut had already healed; there was nothing on her palm but a
narrow white scar. She stared at it, puzzled; but there were more important
things to be puzzled about.
So what now? She was alone—somewhere—she was hungry, and the sun was
getting low. She did not look forward to a night alone in this place—although it
certainly didn’t look as if anything big enough to trouble her much could get
through that forest, there were always, well, spiders, for example. As she thought
of spiders it occurred to her that her chest was only barely itching, almost idly, as
if once it had gotten the way of it it didn’t particularly want to stop, even though
it didn’t have much reason left. That’s something, I guess, she thought; and
glanced again at her scarred palm.
She sat down, closed her eyes, organized one or two of the simpler things
Luthe had taught her, and thought about the air. She followed invisible eddies
and tiny currents as they strayed over her and back among the trees again; and
eventually she found one that felt damp, and she followed that until it sank to the
ground, and there she found a spring. It looked all right; it felt like water.
She opened her eyes and stood up. The spring, when she reached it, still looked
like water and smelled like water; and she sighed, because she had no choice. She
ducked her head, and then threw her wet hair back, and then drank deep. She sat
back on her heels and scowled into the underbrush. The tiny spring was only a
few paces from the edge of the clearing, and yet it had taken her some expense of
time and energy to hew her way even this far. How was she going to get out?
One thing at a time. Remembering something else Luthe had taught her, she
gathered a few dry twigs and a heap of dead leaves together, and set them on fire
by glaring at them—though the effort gave her a fierce headache and she couldn’t
focus her eyes for a long time afterward, and the fire was sullen and inclined to
smoke. She wandered around gathering more twigs, and saw at least two for
each, and two hands reaching for them, and generally misjudged which hand and
which twig were the real ones; but still she gathered enough at last to keep the
fire going all night. She hoped. And the fire was beginning to burn a little better.
Then the worst thought of all hit her: Agsded is gone, or at least he seems to be
gone; but I have yet failed, for the Hero’s Crown is gone also.
She rolled over and stared at the sky. There was no moon, but the stars shone
fiercely down on her. She realized suddenly that Agsded himself had never been
quite real to her; her terror had been real enough, and her sick horror at the face
he wore; and she had known that she went to a battle she had less chance of
winning than she had had even when she faced Maur, But the thing that had held
her, the dream that had drawn her on, was the Hero’s Crown. It had nothing to do
with her own blood and birthright as her mother’s daughter, nothing of personal
vengeance; it was the idea of bringing the Crown back to her City, of presenting it
to Arlbeth and Tor. She had been sure, for all that she had never consciously
thought of it, that as Damar’s doom lay with Agsded, so must the missing Crown.
No one knew of Agsded; no one would believe her even if she told the story, and
she could not tell it, for what could she say of the prophecy, of the kinship that
made her the only possible champion? What would she say of her uncle?
But who Agsded was did not matter, or mattered only to her. The Crown
mattered, and the story of it she might have told: that she had wrested it away
from him who held it, to bring it back to her City, to lay it before her king. As it
was, for all that she had done, she had done nothing. If she went to the City