The Hero and the Crown (5 page)

over distance, but they were exceedingly nimble, and could balance easily on any

one foot the better to rip with any of the other three, as well as with the barbed

tail. The neck was long and whippy, so that the dragon might spray its fire at any

point of the circle; and they often scraped their wings against the ground to throw

up dust and further confound their enemies, or their prey.

“It is fortunate for all who walk the earth that the Great Ones bred but rarely;

and that mankind has borne Plough heroes to vanquish the most of them. But it is

this writer’s most fervid belief that at least one more hero must stand forth from

his people to face the last of the Great Ones.

“Of this last—I have said one or two; perhaps there are three or four; I know

not. But of one I will make specific remark: Gorthold, who slew Crendenor and

Razimtheth, went also against Maur, the Black Dragon, and it he did not slay.

Gorthold, who was himself wounded unto death, said with his last strength that

the dragon would die of its wounds as he would die of his; but this was never

known for a certainty. The only certainty is that Maur disappeared; and has been

seen by no man—or none that has brought back the tale to tell—from that day to

this.”

In the back of the book Aerin found an even older manuscript: just a few pages,

nearly illegible with age, sewn painstakingly into the binding. Those final ancient

pages were a recipe, for an ointment called kenet. An ointment that was proof

against dragonfire—it said.

It had a number of very peculiar ingredients; herbs, she thought, by the sound

of them. She knew just enough of the Old Tongue to recognize a few syllables;

there was one that translated as “red-root.” She frowned; there was a thing called

redroot that showed up in boring pastoral poems, but she’d always thought it

belonged to that classic category known as imaginary, like nymphs and elephants.

Teka might know about redroot; she brewed a uniquely ghastly tea or tisane for

every ailment, and when Aerin asked what was in the awful stuff, Teka invariably

rattled off a list of things that Aerin had never heard of. She had been inclined to

assume that Teka was simply putting her off with nonsense, but maybe not.

An ointment against dragonfire. If it worked—one person, alone, could tackle a

dragon safely; not a Great One, of course, but the Black Dragon probably did die

of its wounds ... but the little ones that were such a nuisance. At present the

system was that you attacked with arrows and things from a distance, with

enough of you to make a ring around it, or them, so if they bolted at someone he

could run like mad while the other side of the ring was filling them full of arrows.

They couldn’t run far, and usually a family all bolted in the same direction. It was

when they didn’t that horses died.

Aerin had been sitting under the convenient tree by Talat’s pond most

afternoons for several weeks when she found the recipe for dragon salve. It made

her thoughtful, and she was accustomed to pacing while she thought. The surka

was slowly losing its grip on her, and while she couldn’t exactly pace, she could

amble slowly without her cane. She ambled around Talat’s pool.

Talat followed her. When she stopped, or grabbed a tree limb for balance, he

moved a step or two away and dropped his nose to the ground and lipped at

whatever he found there. When she moved on, he picked up his head and drifted

after her. On the third afternoon since finding the recipe she was still pacing, not

only because she was a slow thinker, but because her four-legged shadow with

the dragging hind foot intrigued her. It was on the third day that when she put her

hand out to steady herself against the air, a horse’s neck insinuated itself under

her outstretched fingers. She let her hand lie delicately on his crest, her eyes

straight ahead, ignoring him; but when she took another step forward, so did he.

Two days later she brought a currycomb and some brushes to Talat’s meadow;

they belonged to Kisha, her pony, but Kisha wouldn’t miss them. Kisha was the

ideal young sol’s mount: fine-boned and delicate and prettier than a kitten. She

was also as vain as Galanna, and loved nothing better than a royal procession,

when the horses of the first circle would be all decked out in gilt and tassels. The

sols’ horses further would have ribbons braided into their manes and tails, and

Kisha had a particularly long silky tail. (She would doubtless be cross at missing

the mounted salute at Galanna and Perlith’s wedding.) She never shied at waving

banners and flapping velvet saddle skirts; but if Aerin tried to ride her out in the

countryside, she shied sulkily at every leaf, and kept trying to turn and bolt for

home. They thoroughly detested each other. Galanna rode her full sister, Rooka.

Aerin was convinced that Rooka and Kisha gossiped together in the stable at night

about their respective mistresses.

Talat was still too much on his dignity to admit how thoroughly he enjoyed

being groomed; but his ears had a tendency to lop over, his eyes to glaze and half

shut, and his lips to twitch, when Aerin rubbed the brushes over him. White hairs

flew in a blizzard, for Talat had gone white in the years since he was lamed.

“Hornmar,” she said, several days later, trying to sound indifferent, “do you

suppose Talat’s leg really hurts him anymore?”

Hornmar was polishing Kethtaz, Arlbeth’s young bay stallion, with a bit of soft

cloth. There wasn’t a dust mote on the horse’s hide anywhere. Aerin looked at

him with dislike: he was fit and shining and merry and useful, and she loved Talat.

Hornmar looked at Arlbeth’s daughter thoughtfully. All of the sofor knew by now

of the private friendship between her and the crippled stallion. He was glad for

Talat and for Aerin both, for he knew more than she would have wished about

what her life was like. He was also, deep down, a tiny bit envious; Kethtaz was a

magnificent horse, but Talat had been a better. And Talat now turned away from

his old friend with flattened ears.

“I imagine not much anymore. But he’s gotten into the habit of favoring that

leg, and the muscles are soft, and stiff too, from the scarring,” he said in a neutral

voice. He buffed a few more inches of Kethtaz’s flank. “Talat is looking good, this

season.” He glanced at Aerin and saw the blood rising in her face, and turned

away again.

“Yes, he’s getting fat,” she said.

Kethtaz sighed and flicked his tail; Hornmar had tied it up so it wouldn’t slap

him in the face. He worked his way round the stallion’s quarters and started the

other side; Aerin was still leaning against the stable wall, watching. “Talat might

come back a little more,” Hornmar said at last, cautiously. “He’d never be up, say,

to a man’s weight again, though.”

“Oh,” said Aerin, still indifferent. Kethtaz had a black dapple on one shoulder;

she rubbed it with a finger, and he turned his head around and poked her with his

nose. She petted him for a moment, and then she quietly slipped away.

The next day she rode her crippled stallion. She brushed him first, and when

she was done, she dropped the grooming things together in a pile. She ran a

finger along one wide cheek; Talat, nothing loath for a little more attention,

rested his nose against her stomach so she could stroke’ the other cheek with the

other hand. After a moment she worked down his left side, and placed her hands

on his withers and loins, and leaned on them. He was smaller than most of the

royal war-horses, but still too tall for her to put much of her weight into her

hands. He flicked his ears at her. “Well,” she said. She rested one hand on his

shoulder and he followed her to a rock she had picked out for the purpose some

days before. She stepped up on it, and he stood quietly as she slowly eased one

leg over his back.

She was sitting on him. Nothing happened. Well, she said to herself crossly,

what was supposed to happen? He was broken to saddle while I was still learning

to walk. The first time.

Talat cocked his ears back toward her, his head bowed as if he felt the bit in his

mouth again. She nudged him with her legs, and he walked away from the

mounting stone: thunk-thunk-1hunk-drag. He was bigger than she expected, and

her legs ached spanning a war-stallion’s broad back. For all that Talat had done

nothing but stand in a field for over two years, the shoulders under her hands

were hard with muscle.

She rode him every day after that. At first it was once around his field, starting

and stopping at the mounting stone; then it was two and three times: thunk-

thunk-thunk-drag, thunk-thunk-thunk-drag. He walked when she squeezed with

her legs, and went right or left when she bumped him with the outside knee; and

after a few tries he realized she meant him to stop when she dug her hipbones

into his back. She ran her hands over the bad leg every day after she dismounted:

there was no heat, no swelling, no tenderness. One day she banged the long ugly

scar with her closed fist, said, “Very well, it really doesn’t hurt, I hope,” got back

on him again and wrapped her legs around him till, his ears flicking surprise at

her, he broke into a shuffling trot. He limped six steps and she let him stop. Tears

pricked at her eyes, and she fed him mik-bars silently, and left early that day.

AERIN WAS GOING to have to take part in Galanna’s wedding after all. The

surka was indisputably wearing off—”It’s lasted this long, why couldn’t it have

hung on just a little longer?” Aerin said irritably to Tor.

“It tried, I’m sure,” said Tor. “It just wasn’t expecting Galanna.”

Galanna had contrived to have the great event put off an extra half-year

because, she said coyly, she wanted everything to be perfect, and in the time

remaining it was not possible to drag a sufficient number of things up to meet

that standard. Meanwhile Aerin had resignedly begun to take her old place in her

father’s court; her presence was not a very necessary one, but her continued

absence was noted, and the surka hadn’t killed her after all. “I wonder if I could at

least convince her that I’m too woozy to carry a rod and a veil or throw flowers

and sing. I could maybe get away with just standing with my father and looking

pale and invalid. Probably. She can’t possibly want me around anymore than I

want to be around.”

“She should have thought more exactingly of the timing involved when she

goaded you into eating the surka in the first place.”

Aerin laughed.

Tor said ruefully, “I almost wish I’d had the forethought to eat a tree myself.”

Perlith had asked Tor to stand behind him at the ceremony. The first companion

was supposed to hold a sola’s badge of rank during his wedding; but in this

particular case there were some interesting politics going on. Perlith was required

by tradition to ask the king and the first sola to stand by him for the ceremony,

and the king and the first sola by tradition were required to accept the invitation.

The first companion’s place was, as attendants go, the most important, but it was

also the most attentive; the slang for the first companion’s position was rude, and

referred to the companion’s location near his sola’s backside. Asking Tor to stand

first companion was a token of Perlith’s unrivaled esteem for his first sola, as the

first companion’s place should go to Perlith’s dearest friend. It would also be

Perlith’s only chance ever to have the first sola waiting on him.

“You should drop the badge with a clatter just as the chant gets to the bit

about family loyalty and the unending bliss of being a member of a family. Ugh,”

said Aerin.

“Don’t tempt me,” Tor said.

Fortunately Galanna did not have her future husband’s sense of humor, and

she was glad to excuse Aerin from participation on the grounds of the continuing

unreliability of the first sol’s health. Galanna was incapable of plotting much of

anything over a year in advance, and the surka incident had had nothing to do

with the predictable approach of her wedding day. It had had to do with the loss

of her eyelashes just when she knew Perlith had decided to offer for her—which

offer had then had to be put off till they were long enough again for her to look

up at him through them. (She had actually been weak enough to wonder if Aerin

was Gifted after all, her timing in this case being no less than diabolical.) But it

had occurred to her lately that it would be a boon to find a way to keep Aerin out

of the ceremony itself, without giving visible public offense (and since the surka

hadn’t killed her off, which, to give Galanna what little credit she deserves, she

had not been attempting). Galanna understood as well as Perlith did why Tor had

been asked, and would stand as first companion; but Tor was reliable, for all his

disgusting sympathy for his youngest cousin. He believed in his first sola’s place as

Aerin had no reason to believe in her place as first sol; and Aerin, if dragooned

into performing some ceremonial role, would by fair means or foul mess things

up. Nothing was going to spoil Galanna’s wedding day. She and Aerin understood