The Hero And The Crown d-2

by Robin McKinley

  Do you think I like sending a child to a doom like this, one I know I cannot myself face? It was as though she were hearing the words for the first time, so loudly did they crash in her ears; Luthe’s voice was not mellifluous, like her red-haired uncle’s; Luthe’s voice was raw and angry, like the spot on her chest.

  “Luthe, and his games with children, for children’s games were as much as he was capable—”

  “Now that,” Aerin said quite clearly and calmly, “is nonsense. If you can do no better than cheap insults, then the prophecy over-estimates you. I shall tell Luthe that he could have met you himself.”

  “The prophecy!” howled Agsded; and he seemed to grow till he towered over her, his robes billowing, his hair red as fire; and dimly Aerin thought. His hair is the color mine used to be before Maur burned most of it off. My hair isn’t that color any more.

  Agsded reached for his sword, and Aerin raised Gonturan again and shook her, and blue fire ran down her edge and over Aerin’s hand and wrist, and onto the floor; and where it touched, cracks appeared, and ran in tiny rays in all directions. “You may be right about Tor and my father,” Aerin went on conversationally. “You may even be right about me. But you are wrong about Luthe.”

  The red sword whipped out of its scabbard and flew at her, but Gonturan flashed to stop it, and where the blades crashed together more blue fire dripped and splashed, and there was another series of small star-shaped cracks in the floor.

  “Fool,” boomed Agsded’s voice, and it was velvety no longer. “Fool. The prophecy said that only one of my blood may face me, and so you have come this 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.”

  “It will avail you naught,” he cried, and leaped back, and threw up his hands; and fire leaped up all around him. Fire. Real fire; red and orange, with hot thick smoke, and bright terrible arms that reached out for her. Aerin quailed, and there was no black cat nor white horse to help her. This fire was no mage illusion; she could smell it, and the heat of it beat against her face; and again Gonturan’s blue fire flickered and dulled in her hand.

  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 he
r 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 took a hesitant step, for she could see very little, and small pieces of rubble crunched and scattered under her feet. The pile of fragments teetered and threatened to spill her into the bottomless blackness again. There is no sense in taking my luck for granted, she told herself sternly, and resheathed Gonturan, gave an absent rub at her chest, and then stood still, blinking, till her eyes began to readjust to simple things like daylight, and stone walls with cracks in them.

  Chapter 20

  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 tike 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.

  She had hot water for supper, by filling the pouch that had held the dragon stone with water and hanging it over the fire; it leaked very little. She’d try to figure out food tomorrow; she was weary enough with hunger, but weary too with everything else, and the sun had set, and twilight would soon be darkness. She lay down, making an uncomfortable pillow of a rock, with a piece of her tunic pulled up to protect her ear. She lay as still as the stones she rested against, without even the energy to try to scrabble for a more easy spot; but still her thoughts prowled at the ruin of the black mountain, picking at the rubble. Some of it, perhaps, Luthe could explain to her—but she shied away from the thought of seeing him again, of asking him. The forest troubled her, for she needed to find a way through it; its existence was far more than a philosophical dilemma—as was her solitude. Where was Talat? She could believe that her other allies had melted away as they had come; she had never understood why they joined her in the first place. But Talat would not have left. At least not of his own free will.

  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 now—if she went home—it would be as a runaway dog might go home, tail between legs, its highest hope only for forgiveness.

  Her eyes closed, and she slept the numbed sleep of failure; but soon after midnight even this was disturbed. The earth seemed to shiver under her, and she heard low rumblings like rocks falling far away; but perhaps she was only dreaming. Later she knew she dreamed, for she saw faces she had never met in her waking life.

  A sad-faced girl sat by a pool. The white walls around her were so high there seemed to be clouds resting on their heads; low steps behind her led to an open door, and a room beyond it. There were no doors in the other walls, and the flat earth around the pool was cov
ered with squares of white stone. The girl’s long black hair fell forward as she stared into the calm water, and her look of sadness deepened.

  Then Aerin, in her dream, saw another walled garden, but the water here played in a fountain, and the walls were blue mosaic; and in the garden stood a tall young woman with yellow hair, taller by a hand’s breadth than Aerin herself, and at her side a green-eyed folstza stood. And then she saw three men standing on the side of a mountain, on a little ridge of rock, facing a crack or a hole in the face of the mountain. A burly man with thinning black hair was staring at the crack with a set stubborn expression, and his fair-haired companion was saying, “Don’t be a fool. Tommy. Listen to me.” The third man was young and brown-skinned and slightly built, and he looked amused, but he said, “Leo, you should know better by now than to argue with him.”

  Their voices seemed to bring Aerin half awake, for her dreams became more confused, and she saw faces without being sure if she recognized them or not, and she felt the rocky bed beneath her again, and it seemed as if the ground pressed up unevenly, against a shoulder, a hip—then a lurch, and a stone she was sure had not been there before dug painfully into the small of her back. Still she could not awaken—and then, with a gasp, she opened her eyes and sat up; and it was morning, and her fire was out; not only out, but scattered, as if someone with fireproof hands had picked it up and tossed bits of it in all directions; or as if the earth had heaved up under it.

  And the forest was gone.