The Hero And The Crown d-2

by Robin McKinley

  She considered creeping back to her laboratory, but someone would see a light where only axe handles should be. She had never mentioned that she had taken over the old shed, but she doubted anyone would care so long as lights didn’t start showing at peculiar hours—and how would she explain what she was doing?

  At last she climbed wearily out of bed and wrapped herself in the dressing gown Tor had given her, and made her way through back hallways and seldom-used stairs to the highest balcony in her father’s castle. It looked out to the rear of the courtyard; beyond were the stables, beyond them the pastures, and beyond them all the sharp rise of the Hills. From where she stood, the wide plateau where the pastures and training grounds were laid out stretched directly in front of her; but to her left the Hills crept close to the castle walls, so that the ground and first-floor rooms on that side got very little sunlight, and the courtyard wall was carved out of the Hills themselves.

  The castle was the highest point in the City, though the walls around its courtyard prevented anyone standing at ground level within them from seeing the City spread out on the lower slopes. But from the third—and fourth-story windows and balconies overlooking the front of the castle the higher roofs of the City could be seen, grey stone and black stone and dull red stone, in slabs and thin shingle-chips; and chimneys rising above all. From fifth—and sixth-story windows one could see the king’s way, the paved road which fell straight from the castle gates to the City gates, almost to its end in a flat-stamped earth clearing cornered by monoliths, a short way beyond the City wails.

  But from any point in the castle or the City one might look up and see the Hills that cradled them; even the break in the jagged outline caused by the City gates was narrow enough not to be easily recognizable as such. The pass between Vasth and Kar, two peaks of the taller Hills that surrounded the low rolling forested land that lay before the City and circled round to meet the Hills behind the castle, was not visible at all. Aerin loved the Hills; they were green in spring and summer, rust and brown and yellow in the fall, and white in the winter with the snow they sheltered the City from; and they never told her that she was a nuisance and a disappointment and a half blood.

  She paced around the balcony and looked at the stars, and the gleam of the moonlight on the glassy smooth courtyard. Somehow the evening she’d just endured had quenched much of her joy in her discovery of the morning. That a bit of yellow grease could protect a finger from a candle flame said nothing about its preventive properties in dealings with dragons; she’d heard the hunters home from the hunt say that dragon fire was bitter stuff, and burned like no hearthfire.

  On her third trip around the balcony she found Tor lurking in the shadow of one of the battlemented peaks. “You walk very quietly,” he said.

  “Bare feet,” she said succinctly.

  “If Teka should catch you so and the night air so chill, she would scold.”

  “She would; but Teka sleeps the sleep of the just, and it is long past midnight.”

  “So it is.” Tor sighed, and rubbed his forehead with one hand.

  “I’m surprised you’ve escaped so early; the dancing often goes on till dawn.”

  In spite of the dimness of the light she could see Tor make a face. “The dancing may often go on till dawn, but I rarely last half so long—as you would know if you ever bothered to stay and keep me company.”

  “Hmmph.”

  “Hmmph threefold. Has it ever occurred to you, Aerin-sol, that I am not a particularly good dancer either? It’s probably just as well we don’t dance together often or we would do ourselves a serious injury. Nobody dares mention it, of course, because I am first sola—”

  “And a man of known immoderate temper.”

  “Flattery will get you nowhere. But I leave the dance floor as soon as I’ve tramped around once with every lady who will feel slighted if I don’t.”

  His light-heartedness seemed forced. “What’s wrong?” she said.

  Tor gave a snort of laughter. “Having exposed one of my most embarrassing shortcomings in an attempt to deflect you, you refuse to be deflected.”

  Aerin waited.

  Tor sighed again, and wandered out of the shadows to lean his elbows against the low stone wall surrounding the balcony. The moonlight made his face look pale, his profile noble and serene, and his black hair the stuff of absolute darkness. Aerin rather liked the effect, but he spoiled it by rubbing one hand through his hair and turning the corners of his mouth down, whereupon he reverted to being tired and confused and human. “There was a meeting, of sorts, this afternoon, before the banquet.” He paused again, but Aerin did not move, expecting more; he glanced at her and went on. “Thorped wanted to talk about the Hero’s Crown.”

  “Oh.” Aerin joined him, leaning her elbows on the wall next to his, and he put an arm around her. She discovered that she was cold and that she was rather glad of the arm and the warmth of his side. “What did he want to know about it?”

  “What does anybody ever want to know about it? He wants to know where it is,”

  “So do we all.”

  “Yes. Sorry. I mean he wants to know if we’re looking for it now and if not why not and if so by what means and what progress we’ve made. And if we know how important it is, and on and on.”

  “I see that you spent a less than diverting afternoon.”

  “How does he think we’re supposed to look for it? By the Seven Gods and Aerinha’s foundry! Every stone in Damar has been turned over at least twice looking for it, and there was a fashion there for a while to uproot trees and look for it underneath. We’ve had every seer who ever went off in a fit or brewed a love potion that didn’t work try to bring up a vision of its whereabouts for us.”

  Including my mother? thought Aerin.

  “Nothing. Just a lot of dead trees and misplaced rocks.”

  Galanna had told her once that there was a Crown that kept mischief away from Damar, and that if Arlbeth had had it when he met Aerin’s mother he would never have married her, and if he had found it any time since Aerin was born Galanna would no longer have to put up with having her eyelashes cut off; exactly how the Crown performed its warding functions she did not describe. Aerin also knew that the more strongly Gifted royalty were expected to chew a surka leaf at least once and try to cast their minds toward a sighting of the Crown. She assumed Tor had done so, though it was not something he would have told her about. And all her history lessons had told her was that the current sovereigns of Damar had gone crownless for many generations, in honor of a Crown that was lost long ago.

  Aerin said slowly, “I’ve heard of it, of course, but I’m not entirely sure what the Crown is, or is supposed to do.”

  There was a silence. “Neither am I,” said Tor. “It’s been lost ... a long time. I used to think it was only a legend, but old Councilor Zanc mentioned it a few weeks ago—that’s when Arlbeth told me that when he was a boy they were looking under trees for it. Zanc’s father’s father used to tell the story of how it was lost. Zanc thinks the increase of the Border raids is somehow due to its absence; that Northern ... mischief ... did not trouble us when the Hero’s Crown lay in the City. And Thorped apparently agrees with him, although he’s not quite so outspoken about it.”

  He shrugged, and then settled her more securely in the curve of his arm. “The Hero’s Crown holds much of what Damar is; or at least much of what her king needs to hold his people together and free of mischief. Aerinha was supposed to have done the forging of it. Here we get into the legend, so maybe you know this bit. Damar’s strength, or whatever it is about this land that makes it Damar and us Damarians, was thought to be better held, more strongly held, in a Crown, which could be handed from sovereign to sovereign, since some rulers are inevitably better or wiser in themselves than others. Of course this system runs the risk of the Crown’s being lost, and the strength with it, which is what eventually happened. Zanc’s story is that it was stolen by a black mage, and that he rode east, not nort
h, or the Northerners would have fallen on us long since. Arlbeth thinks ...” His voice trailed away.

  “Yes?”

  “Arlbeth thinks it has come into the hands of the Northerners at last.” He paused a moment before he said slowly, “Arlbeth at least believes in its existence. So must I, therefore.”

  Aerin asked no more. It was the heaviest time of the night; dawn was nearer than midnight, but the sky seemed to hold them in a closing hand. Then suddenly through the weight of the sky and of her new knowledge, she remembered her dragon ointment, and somehow neither the missing Crown nor Perlith’s malice, the reason she had come up to stare at the sky in the middle of the night, mattered quite so much; for, after all, she could do nothing about either Perlith or the Crown, and the recipe for kenet was hers. If she got no sleep, she’d botch making a big trial mixture tomorrow. “I must go to bed,” she said, and straightened up.

  “I too,” said Tor. “It will be very embarrassing to the dignity of the royal house if the first sola falls off his horse tomorrow. Lady, that’s a very handsome dressing gown.”

  “It is, isn’t it? It was given me by a friend with excellent taste.” She smiled up at him, and without thinking he bent his head and kissed her. But she only hugged him absently in return, because she was already worrying whether or not she had enough of one particular herb, for it would spoil the whole morning if she had to fetch more and she’d be mad with impatience and would botch the job after all. “A quiet sleep to you,” she said. “And to you,” said Tor from the shadows.

  Chapter 9

  SHE HAD ALMOST enough of the herb she had been worrying about. After dithering awhile and muttering to herself she decided to go ahead and make as much ointment as she had ingredients for, and fetch more tomorrow. It was a messy business, and her mind would keep jumping away from the necessary meticulousness; and she knocked over a pile of axe handles and was too impatient to pile them up again and so spent several hours tripping over them and stubbing her toes and using language she had picked up while listening to the sofor, and the thotor, who were even more colorful. Once she was hopping around on one foot and yelling epithets when her other foot was knocked out from under her as well by a treacherous rear assault from a fresh brigade of rolling lumber, and she fell and bit her tongue. This chastened her sufficiently that she finished her task without further incident.

  She stared at the greasy unpleasant-looking mess in the shallow trough before her and thought, Well, so what do I do now? Build a fire and jump in? The only fireplaces big enough are all in heavily used rooms of the castle. Maybe a bonfire isn’t such a bad idea after all; but it will have to be far enough away that no one will come looking for the source of the smoke.

  Meanwhile she did have enough of the kenet to fireproof both hands, and she made a small fire in the middle of the shed floor (out of broken axe handles) and held both hands, trembling slightly, in its heart—and nothing happened. The next day she went to fetch more herbs.

  She decided at once that she would have to leave the City to try her bonfire; and she decided just as quickly that she had to take Talat. Kisha would be worse than a nuisance under such circumstances; at very least she would find the bonfire excuse enough to break either her halter rope or her neck in a declared panic attempt to bolt back toward the City.

  Teka, however, did not like this plan at all. Teka was willing to accept that Aerin was a good rider, and might be permitted to leave the City alone for a few hours on her pony; but that she should want to go alone, overnight, with that vicious stallion—such an idea she was not willing to entertain. First she declared that Talat was too lame to go on such a journey; and when Aerin, annoyed, tried to convince her otherwise, Teka changed her ground and said that he was dangerous and Aerin couldn’t be certain of her ability to control him. Aerin was ready to weep with rage, and after several weeks of this (she having meanwhile made vast quantities of her kenet and almost set her hair on fire trying to test its effectiveness on various small bits of her anatomy), Teka had to realize that there was more to this than whim.

  “You may go if your father says you may,” she said at last, heavily. “Talat is still his horse, and he has a right to decide what his future should be. I—I think he will be proud of what you’ve done with him.”

  Aerin knew how much it cost Teka to say so, and her anger ebbed away and she felt ashamed of herself.

  “The journey itself—I do not like it. It is not proper”—and here a smile touched the corners of Teka’s sad mouth—”but you will always be unusual, as your mother was, and she traveled alone as she chose, nor did your father ever try to hinder her. You are a woman grown, and past needing a nursemaid to judge your plans. If your father says you may go—well, then.”

  Aerin went off and began to worry about how best to approach her father. She had known she would have to ask his permission at some point, but she had wanted to get Teka on her side first, and had misjudged how alarming the horse-shy Teka would find a war-stallion like Talat, even an elderly, rehabilitated, and good-natured war-stallion. Aerin’s own attitude toward Talat hadn’t been rational for years.

  She brooded for days after Teka had withdrawn from the field of combat; but she brooded not only about how to tackle her father, but also about what, precisely, she was setting out to do. Test the fire-repellent properties of her discovery. Toward killing dragons. Did she realty want to kill dragons? Yes. Why? Pause. To be doing something. To be doing something better than anyone else was doing it.

  She caught her father one day at breakfast, between ministers with tactical problems and councilors with strategic ones. His face lit up when he saw her, and she made an embarrassed mental note to seek him out more often; he was not a man who had ever been able to enter into a child’s games, but she might have noticed before this how wistfully he looked at her. But for perhaps the first time she was recognizing that wistfulness for what it was, the awkwardness of a father’s love for a daughter he doesn’t know how to talk to, not shame for what Aerin was, or could or could not do.

  She smiled at him, and he gave her a cup of malak, and pushed the bun tray and the saha jam toward her. “Father,” she said through crumbs, “do you know I have been riding Talat?”

  He looked at her thoughtfully. Hornmar had brought him this information some months back, adding that Talat had looked like pining away and dying before Aerin took him over. Arlbeth had wished that she might bring him the story herself; the sort of fears Teka had did not occur to him.

  “Yes,” he said. “And I would have guessed something was up sooner or later when you stopped nagging me to get rid of Kisha and find you a real horse.”

  Aerin had the grace to blush. “It’s been ... quite a while. I didn’t think about what I was doing at first.”

  Arlbeth was smiling. “I should like to see you ride him.”

  Aerin swallowed. “You ... would?”

  “I would.”

  “Er—soon?”

  “As it pleases you, Aerin-sol,” he said gravely.

  She nodded wordlessly.

  “Tomorrow, then.”

  She nodded again, picked up a second bun and looked at it.

  “I have guessed that there is some purpose to your joining me at breakfast,” Arlbeth said, as she showed no sign of breaking the silence, “a purpose beyond telling me of something that has been going on for years without your troubling me with it. It has perhaps to do further with Talat?”

  She looked up, startled.

  “We kings do develop a certain ability to recognize objects under our noses. Well?”

  “I should like to ride Talat out of the City. A day’s ride out—sleep overnight, outside. Come back the next day.” She was sorry about the bun, now; it made her mouth dry.

  “Ah. I recommend you go east and south—you might follow the Tsa, which will provide you with water as well as preventing you from getting lost.”

  “The river? Yes. I’d thought—I’d already thought of that.” Her finger
s were crumbling the rest of the bun to tiny bits.

  “Good for you. I assume you planned to go soon?”

  “I—yes. You mean you’ll let me?”

  “Let you? Of course. There’s little within a day’s ride of the City that will harm you.” Momentarily his face hardened. Time had once been, before the loss of the Crown, that any sword drawn in anger within many miles of the City would rebound on the air, twist out of its wielder’s hands, and fall to the earth. “Talat will take care of you. He took excellent care of me.”

  “Yes. Yes, he will.” She stood up, looked at the mess on (and around) her plate, looked at her father. “Thank you.”

  He smiled. “I will see you tomorrow. Mid-afternoon.”

  She nodded, gave him a stricken smile, and fled. One of the hafor appeared to remove her plate and brush the crumbs away.

  Aerin was early at Talat’s pasture the next morning. She groomed him till her arms ached, and he loved every minute of it; he preferred being fussed over even to eating.

  Maybe she should hang a bridle on him. She’d mended the cut rein on his old bridle the night before, and brought it with her today. But when she offered the bit to him—he who had so eagerly seized it two years before, knowing that it meant he would be really ridden again—he looked at it and then at her with obvious bewilderment, and hurt feelings. He suffered her to lift the bar into his mouth and pull the straps over his ears, but he stood with his head drooping unhappily.

  “All right” she said, and ripped the thing off him again, and dropped it on the ground, and picked up the little piece of padded cloth that passed for a saddle and dropped it on his back. He twisted his head around and nibbled the hem of her tunic, rolling his eye at her to see if she was really angry. When she didn’t knock his face away he was reassured, and waited patiently while she arranged and rearranged the royal breastplate to her liking.

  Arlbeth came before she expected him. Talat had felt the tension in her as soon as she mounted, but he had cheered her into a good mood again by being himself, and they were weaving nonchalantly around several tall young trees at a canter when she noticed Arlbeth standing on the far side of the stream that ran through the meadow. They forded the water and then halted, and Arlbeth gave them the salute of a soldier to his sovereign, and she blushed.