The Crown and the Dragon

by John D. Payne

  “You can still just turn around,” said Aedin.

  “No, no,” said Leif. “I’ve been looking forward to this.”

  Leif rushed in again, this time hacking relentlessly with the heavy Vitalion falcata. This close to the Narrows, the ground was soft treacherously soft underfoot, and Aedin nearly slipped as Leif drove him inexorably backward, and down toward the water.

  Even exhausted, Aedin was faster. But Leif was stronger and had the greater reach. Moreover, Aedin’s ancient weapon was much the worse for wear. He tried to avoid Leif’s blows, rather than parrying them, but Leif knew well his weakness. The ring of steel on steel sounded the rhythm of their deadly dance.

  Eventually, Leif hooked Aedin’s rusty blade and broke the old sword off at the hilt. Aedin threw the hilt at Leif and drew his dagger. Leif ducked and swung again. Aedin tried to jump back but slipped on the wet earth and fell to the ground.

  Leif stepped forward and loomed over Aedin with the heavy, forward-curving Vitalion sword in his hand. He smiled.

  “You can’t win this battle, Aedin,” Leif said. “You should be used to that by now. But do what you always do. Save yourself. Tell me where the girl is, and I’ll forget you were here.”

  Aedin scrambled to his feet and held his dagger out in front of hm.

  “Don’t know where you found your spine,” said Leif, “but it won’t save you. Or the girl.”

  Leif lunged forward and thrust his sword through Aedin’s quilted armor and into the fleshy side of Aedin’s stomach. As he did, Aedin stabbed his dagger into Leif’s throat, twisting it and driving it up into the brain. After a great deal of screaming and bleeding, Leif fell to the ground, dead

  Aedin groaned and sank to his knees. He slowly pulled the sword out of his torso and shoved his fist against his wound to stop the bleeding. With his other hand, he cut off Leif’s shirt and used it as a bandage.

  Lying on his back, he gasped for air as he clutched at his stomach, trying to hold in his insides. His world shrank and for a few minutes he could think of nothing but his own pain.

  When his eyes could once again focus, he realized that he was looking right at the little pouch of berries that he had dropped. Aedin crawled toward it and picked it up. Using Leif’s heavy Vitalion sickle-sword as a cane, he struggled to his feet. Clinging to the thought that Elenn needed him, he staggered back toward the hermit’s hut.

  ***

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Corvus dismounted and strode confidently to the peat-roofed stone hut, leaving behind a squadron of cavalry soldiers. Above the croft flew a flock of ravens, cawing cacophonously in the fading evening light. Corvus smiled and toyed with the fragment of the Falarica he held in his pocket.

  As Corvus reached the door, the crows descended in a tightening spiral that thickened from inchoate smoke to the solid form of a Naihman. It seemed uneasy, as it had since the death of its counterpart.

  “It is here?” Corvus asked.

  “Yes, master,” croaked the Naihman. “We have followed the song to this place.”

  “You have served me well, Suspicion,” Corvus said. “The fragments of the Falarica will soon be united and your purpose will be accomplished.”

  The creature bowed.

  Corvus turned to the door. “In the name of the Emperor,” he called out loudly, “I require entrance to this dwelling.”

  “Nuts to your Emperor,” replied an irritable voice inside.

  Corvus smiled.

  “Open this door,” he said to the Naihman.

  The creature screamed and tore at the door with its great talons. The door was solid, and an axe or maul might have broken through just as effectively as the demon’s claws. It was good for the men, though, to see his pet in its full fury.

  Once the splintery remains of the door had been ripped off its hinges, Corvus commanded the Naihman with a gesture to be still. Alone, he crossed the threshold and stepped into the hut.

  “Hello again, old man,” Corvus said. “I like what you’ve done with the place.”

  Inside the hut, the hermit stood in the midst of a circle of candles. Also inside the circle was a nude woman curled up in the fetal position atop a wooden table. Elaborate patterns were drawn on her face and body in oil and charcoal. A bowl of incense burned at her feet.

  “I told you,” said the hermit, “I won’t sell you any more relics.”

  “Yes, let’s pretend that’s what this visit is about,” said Corvus. “We’ll just ignore the girl lying over there naked.”

  He walked carefully around the circle of candles, examining the woman curiously. Corvus recognized her as the woman he had seen through the window at the Leode the previous night. She was quivering, and her eyes were staring in his direction, but they seemed to be looking somewhere very far away.

  “Remarkable,” Corvus said with a smile. “She is in the Glyderinge?”

  The hermit looked away. “You’ll get nothing out of me. I’m not helping you ever again.”

  This was as good as a confirmation to Corvus. Coupled with the arcane symbols drawn on her body, there was only one conclusion: she was the Paladin, the living weapon whom the Leodrine had died to protect—for all the good it had done.

  “Be reasonable,” said Corvus to the hermit. “You want her to live, and so do I. Our interests are one and the same.”

  The hermit said nothing.

  “How do I help her?” asked Corvus.

  “Give her a dose of Celyn,” said the hermit, grudgingly.

  “Celyn, of course.” Corvus nodded his head. “Truly, I’m in awe,” he said. “Just to be here to witness this is an honor. Please tell me, what did you do to guide her through her anointing?”

  He glanced down at the table, and Corvus spotted the fragment of the Falarica, lying beside the bowl of incense.

  The hermit snatched at it, but Corvus was faster. He slapped the old man so hard he fell to the floor.

  “You are a traitor,” said the hermit through bloody lips.

  “And you are blind,” said Corvus. “You betray everything we have ever learned together, everything we have worked for. You are a traitor to the advancement of knowledge.”

  Corvus reached down and scooped up the woman in his arms and carried her out of the hut. As he stepped out the door, Corvus spoke to the Naihman.

  “Kill him.”

  Elenn knew she was dreaming, but she didn’t know how to wake up and leave the dream. She lay helpless, wrapped in swaddling clothes, with her adopted mother and father—her grandparents—smiling down on her. They picked her up and kissed her. Behind them, she could see her sister—her real mother—crying.

  Elenn sat in an enormous chair in the Leodrine’s study and opened a giant book. The words danced off the page and spun around in a cloud until they coalesced into the shape of her Aunt Ethelind, who nodded sternly at her.

  Elenn crawled like a baby on a rocky beach. A thunderstorm raged. Waves crashed against the rocks. A terrible scream filled her ears and lit the sky on fire. Elenn plunged herself into the water to hide from the flames and found Gawaine singing.

  Elenn stood atop Mount Iliak, holding a crown high in the air. The crown grew large in her hands, slipping down from her uplifted arms all the way to her feet. As the crown passed over her, Elenn felt her body harden and twist as she became the Falarica.

  Elenn walked alone through the woods on her father’s country estate. A unicorn marched across the sky in place of the sun. Light streamed through the leaves in the poplars, growing ever brighter until it burned her up into dust motes on the wind.

  Elenn danced on a cliff. The dragon was there, curled up in a great circle around her, eating its own tail. She tried to tiptoe over it and out of its coils, but the dragon woke up and snapped at her. She fell off the cliff.

  Elenn rode on horseback along the banks of the River Mareys with Aedin. He took the ring from her necklace and cut it in half with the Sithian’s sword, making two smaller rings. He put one on his finge
r and handed the other back to her. She tried to put it on, but it no longer fit.

  Elenn flew through the air by pulling herself along as if she were swimming. A flock of crows swarmed around her, pecking at her. Elenn closed her eyes. When she opened them, all the crows were gone but one, which spread its beak so wide she could see Magister Corvus standing inside. He laughed and pushed her with his wings and she fell out of the sky.

  Elenn opened her eyes again. She was in a vast and desolate salt pan. Her aunt Ethelind sat cross-legged before a small fire, with a ceramic pot of herbs, which gave off a fragrant and pleasant smoke. Elenn approached and sat down beside her, mimicking her cross-legged position.

  “Hello,” said Elenn.

  “Gods be praised,” Ethelind said, stretching her hand out to Elenn, her middle fingers entwined in a blessing. “Elenn, you have walked the road of the Glyderinge. You are now worthy to carry the Falarica, worthy to be called a Paladin, a holy warrior, a deliverer.”

  “To what end, Aunt?” Elenn asked. “Our people will never unite.”

  “To crown a dragon,” Ethelind replied, “you must first kill the dragon.”

  “How?” Elenn asked.

  “You are strong, Elenn,” Ethelind said. “Stronger, and braver, and wiser than you could ever have imagined. Now, go. Go and set things right. Your time here is finished.”

  “How do I leave the dream, Aunt?” Elenn asked. “How do I wake up?”

  Ethelind smiled. “Close your eyes, child.”

  Elenn closed her eyes and slept.

  ***

  Chapter Thirty

  With his wound, it took Aedin almost half an hour to stumble back to the Hermit’s stone hut. Even before he reached it, he knew that something terrible had happened. The tracks of a dozen horses had churned up the ground around the croft. Leif’s Vitalion friends had found them. The fact that they had not come looking for Aedin—or for Leif—only made Aedin more miserable. Corvus had found what he was looking for.

  As Aedin stepped over scraps of what had been a door, he stopped short. The room was so badly wrecked he could barely recognize it, despite having left it less than an hour before. Black feathers covered everything, along with the bodies of at least a hundred crows. Rent books and broken artifacts were scattered everywhere. The table was in charred pieces, which still smoked.

  The hermit lay on his pile of bedding in the corner, coughing weakly. His clothes were singed, as was his beard. Aedin came to him and surveyed his wounds. They were grievous—probably mortal.

  Aedin looked around the room. “Bandages?” he asked. “Medical supplies? Don’t know if I can help you, but I can try.”

  “Too late,” the hermit breathed. But he lifted a finger toward a chest. Aedin opened it and pulled out herbs, bandages, and a makeshift sewing kit much like the one he had stored in his own cache.

  Aedin knelt by the man’s side and cut away his tunic, already in shreds. Long gashes covered the hermit’s arms and torso. He had lost a great deal of blood. It was a miracle he was still alive.

  “Told you,” said the hermit. “Too late.” He coughed. “Go. Find the Paladin.”

  “Corvus took her?” Aedin asked.

  “Yes,” said the hermit. “Sold him… artifacts… He asked me… about the Falarica… always…” He groaned with pain as Aedin tried to apply a bandage to one of the worst cuts.

  “Sorry,” Aedin muttered. “Think she’s still alive?”

  The hermit nodded slightly, his eyelids sinking. “But… the Glyderinge… not finished,” he said through clenched teeth. “She is fragile… may not wake…”

  Aedin put the bandages down. “Where did he take her? Back to the Leode?”

  “Tantillion.” the hermit gasped. He closed his eyes.

  Aedin put his hand on the old man’s jugular vein. There was no pulse. He was dead. Aedin mumbled a quick prayer. Then he slowly pulled off the quilted Sithian jack and cut off the shirt he had been given in the Leode, now stuck to his side with blood.

  As he set to tending his own wound, Aedin’s breath became labored. If he was hurt this badly, how could he walk a single league, much less the fifty that lay between him and Tantillion? On foot, it would take him six days or more. In this condition, it might take a fortnight. But he knew that he couldn’t leave Elenn in Corvus’s hands.

  Aedin finished stitching himself back together, and used the remains of his shirt as a bandage. With some difficulty, he stood. He didn’t know how he was going to get to Tantillion, but he was determined do it, or die trying.

  Elenn opened her eyes. Her mouth tasted foul, and she felt dizzy. Another hangover? She didn't remember drinking. The last thing she recalled clearly was talking to Aedin in the great hall of the Leode. After that… Nightmares of dragons, crows, Vitalion soldiers, and stranger things. How many of these memories were real? And how much time had passed since that night in the Fortress?

  She raised herself up on her elbows. She was lying underneath a light summer blanket on a simple wooden cot. A small mirror of polished copper hung on the stone wall, and a worn Yaltese carpet decorated the otherwise bare floor. Light came in through a small window with iron bars.

  Aside from the bed, the only furniture in the room was a small table and a stool, on which sat a bundle of neatly folding clothing. A wooden washbasin, half-full of water, sat next to it on the floor. Atop the table was a hunk of bread and a piece of cheese—and a decanter of wine with two glasses.

  Famished, she threw aside her blanket and discovered that all her exposed skin was marked with strange runes. Also, she was naked. Blushing, she immediately pulled the blanket back up to her chin. Glancing over at the window, she was relieved to see nothing but blue sky.

  Elenn gathered the blanket up and wrapped it carefully around her torso. She crossed the floor to the table and took a big bite of bread. As she chewed, she grabbed the bundle from the stool and returned to the bed. Pulling the blanket over her head, she clothed herself, safe from prying eyes.

  Now properly covered, she got up and examined the dress. It was a richly embroidered white and gold silk gown. She stepped quickly to the mirror and was dismayed to see that her hair was a mess and that her face, too, was covered with runes. She definitely didn’t remember that. What had happened to her? And where was she?

  The door was locked and barred, so she dragged the stool over to the window. Outside she saw battlements and fortified stone buildings in the style typical of Deiran castles in Adair, but nothing particularly familiar. Listening to the voices of the soldiers drilling in the courtyard, she realized they were speaking Vitalae. That made this Tantillion Castle, the headquarters of the Vitalion occupation. She was a prisoner.

  Her stomach growled. Elenn returned to the table and hungrily tore into the bread and cheese. She left the wine alone. When the food was gone, she used the water in the basin to clean her face and hands of the strange marks.

  As she scrubbed, she noticed her mother's ring and thought of Aedin—gone now, just like her mother, sister, and aunt. She took the ring off and turned it over in her now-clean hands. Nearly everyone she cared about was connected to it in some way, and all of them were lost to her. Was this little band of gold cursed? Was Elenn herself a magnet for sorrow? Perhaps these were just dark times. She sighed.

  The bar outside the door slid open with a rasp. Hurriedly, Elenn shoved the ring back on her finger and stood facing the door as it opened. In walked a fit Deiran man in his middle years. For some reason she could not recall, she recognized him as Magister Corvus.

  “You look lovely in that gown,” said Corvus. “It’s the latest fashion in Rhona, I believe.”

  Elenn made no reply, although she felt her face growing red with anger and embarrassment at the thought that this man had seen her unclothed. Her mouth was a tight, thin line of contained fury as she watched him casually stride to the stool and sit down.

  “I thought you might like these,” Corvus said. He held out a wooden box to her.


  “What is it?” she asked, making no move toward him.

  He opened the box, revealing a hair brush and three beautiful lacquered wooden combs. “For you,” he said. “I’m sorry we have no Lady’s servants to take care of you properly.”

  “I don’t want a comb,” said Elenn. And she certainly didn't want to be this repellant man's kept woman. “I want what you stole from me. Where’s the Falarica?”

  “It’s safe,” he said, “as are you.” He closed the box and set it on the table.

  “Safe from who? You?”

  “You’ve undergone an incredible ordeal, Elenn of Adair,” he said. “To be pushed to the edge of one’s own self and to come back—” he grasped the air as if searching for the right word. “I envy you that. You truly are a remarkable woman.”

  She narrowed her eyes. Empty compliments and feigned sympathy meant little coming from the mouth of Deira's most infamous torturer. He was supposed to have drugs that forced people to do his will. Perhaps this was how she had lost her memory.

  “I know you don’t trust me,” said Corvus, smiling. “But you should. We are on the same quest, you and I.” He unstopped the decanter, poured wine into the two glasses, and gestured to one. “Please,” he said. “Won’t you join me?”

  “Never.”

  He sighed sadly and took a sip of wine. “You think you know me. But you don’t.”

  “I know you,” said Elenn, “Corvus the traitor,”

  “I prefer Corvus of Renonia,” he said with a shrug. “Or Magister Corvus—but I hardly expect you to enjoy pronouncing a foreign title.”

  “It suits you.”

  “I am a Deiran,” he said, “like yourself. I was born Bartram Pugh, to a noble House like yourself. And, like you, I am continuing the work my parents began.”

  Elenn was furious at the idea that this man could compare his scheming, treacherous Renonian House to her own noble family. Not wanting to give him the satisfaction of knowing how much he had affected her, she turned her back on him. Ignoring him, she opened his box, took out the brush, and began fixing her hair while watching herself in the mirror.