The Hero And The Crown

 

HER HEAD ACHED. The scene was still so vividly before her that the door of her bedroom was half open before she heard it. She spun round, but it was only Teka, bearing a tray; Teka glanced once at her scowling face and averted her eyes. She was probably first chosen for my maid for her skill at averting her eyes, Aerin thought sourly; but then she noticed the tray, and the smell of the steam that rose from it, and the worried mark between Teka's eyebrows. Her own face softened.

"You can't not eat," Teka said.

"I hadn't thought about it," Aerin replied, realizing this was true.

"You shouldn't sulk," Teka then said, "and forget about eating." She looked sharply at her young charge, and the worried mark deepened.

"Sulking," said Aerin stiffly.

Teka sighed. "Hiding. Brooding. Whatever you like. It's not good for you."

"Or for you," Aerin suggested.

A smile touched the corners of the worry. "Or for me."

"I will try to sulk less if you will try to worry less."

Teka set the tray down on a table and began lifting napkins off of plates. "Talat missed you today."

"He told you so, of course." Teka's fear of anything larger than the smallest pony, and therefore the fact that she gave a very wide berth to the stables and pastures beyond them, was well known to Aerin. "I'll go down after dark." She turned back to the window. There were more comings and goings across the stretch of courtyard that her bedroom overlooked; she saw more messengers, and two men racing by on foot in the uniform of the king's army, with the red divisional slash on their left forearms which meant they were members of the supply corps. Equipping the king's company for its march west was proceeding at a pace presently headlong and increasing toward panicky. Under normal circumstances Aerin saw no one from her bedroom window but the occasional idling courtier.

Something on the tray rattled abruptly, and there was a sigh. "Aerin - "

"Whatever you're going to say I've thought of already," Aerin said without turning around.

Silence. Aerin finally looked round at Teka, standing with head and shoulders bowed, staring at the tray. The plates were heavy earthenware, handsome and elegant, but easily replaced if Aerin managed to break one, as she often did; and she had not the small Gift to mend them. She stared at the plates. Tor had mended her breakages when she was a baby, but she was too proud to ask now she was far past the age when she should have been able to fit the bits together, glower at them with the curious royal Gifted look, and have them grow whole again. It did not now help her peace of mind or her temper either that she had been an unusually large and awkward child who seemed able to break things simply by being in the same room with them; as if fate, having denied her something that should have been her birthright, wanted her never to forget it. Aerin was not a particularly clumsy young woman, but she was by now so convinced of her lack of coordination that she still broke things occasionally out of sheer dread.

Teka had silently exchanged the finer royal plates for these earthenware ones several years ago, after Galanna had found out that the red-and-gold ones that should only be used by members of the first circle of the royal house - which included Aerin - were slowly disappearing. She had one of her notorious temper tantrums over this, caused crisis and dismay in the whole hierarchy of the hafor, and turned off three of the newest and lowliest servant girls on suspicion of stealing - and then, when no one could possibly overlook the commotion she was making, contrived to discover that the disappearances were merely the result of Aerin being clumsy. "You revolting child," she said to a mutinous Aerin; "even if you are incapable" - there was inexpressible malice lurking behind the word - "of mending the settings yourself, you might save the pieces and let one of us do it for you."

"I'd hang myself first," spat Aerin, "and then I'd come back and haunt you till you were haggard with fear and lost all your looks and people pointed at you in the streets - "

At this point Galanna slapped her, which was a tactical error. In the first place, it needed only such an excuse for Aerin to jump on her and roll her over on the floor, bruise one eye, and rip most of the lace off her extremely ornate afternoon dress - somehow both the court members and the hafor witness to this scene were a little slow in dragging Aerin off her - and in the second place, both the slap and its result quite ruined Galanna's attempted role of great lady dealing with contemptible urchin. It was generally considered - Galanna was no favorite - that Aerin had won that round. Of the three serving girls, one was taken back, one was given a job in the stables, which she much preferred, and one, declaring that she wouldn't have any more to do with the royal house if saying so got her beheaded for treason, went home to her own village, far from the City.

Aerin sighed. Life had been easier when her ultimate goal had been murdering Galanna with her bare hands. She had continued to use the finer ware when she ate with the court, of course; when she was younger she had rarely been compelled to do so, fortunately, since she never got much to eat, but sat rigidly and on her guard (Galanna's basilisk glare from farther down the high table helped) for the entire evening. But at least she didn't break anything either, and Teka could always be persuaded to bring her a late supper as necessary. On earthenware plates.

She lifted her eyes to Teka, who was still standing motionless behind the tray. "Teka, I'm sorry I'm so tiresome. I can't seem to help it. It's in my blood, like being clumsy is - like everything else isn't." She walked over and gave the older woman a hug, and Teka looked up and half smiled.

"I hate to see you ... fighting everything so."

Aerin's eyes rose involuntarily to the old plain sword hanging at the head of her tall curtained bed.

"You know Perlith and Galanna are horrid because they're horrid themselves - "

"Yes," said Aerin slowly. "And because I'm the only daughter of the witchwoman who enspelled the king into marrying her, and I'm such a desperately easy butt. Teka," she said before the other had a chance to break in, "do you suppose it was Galanna who first told me that story? I've been trying to remember when I first heard it.''

"Story?" said Teka, carefully neutral. She was always carefully neutral about Aerin's mother, which was one of the reasons Aerin kept asking about her. ' "Yes. That my mother enspelled my father to get an heir that would rule Damar, and that she turned her face to the wall and died of despair when she found she had borne a daughter instead of a son, since they usually find a way to avoid letting daughters inherit."

Teka shook her head impatiently.

"She did die, "Aerin said.

"Women die in childbed."

"Not witches, often."

"She was not a witch."

Aerin sighed, and looked at her big hands, striped with callus and scarred with old blisters from sword and shield and pulling her way through the forest tangles after her dragons - Dragon-Killer - and from falling off the faithful Talat. "You would certainly think she wasn't from the way her daughter goes on. If he was going to turn out like me, it wouldn't have done my poor mother any good to have had a son." She paused, brooding over her last burn scar, where a dragon had licked her and the ointment hadn't gone on quite evenly. "What was my mother like?"

Teka looked thoughtful. She too looked toward Aerin's sword and dragon spears, but Aerin was pretty sure she did not see them, for Teka did not approve of her first sol's avocation. "She was much like you but smaller - frail almost." Her shoulders lifted. "Too frail to bear a child. And yet it was rather as though something was eating her from the inside; there was a fire behind that pale skin, always burning. I think she knew she had only a little time and she was fighting for enough time to bear her baby." Teka's eyes refocused on the room, and she looked hastily away from the dragon spears. "You were a fine strong child from the first."

"Do you think she enspelled my father?"

Teka looked at her, frowning. "Why do you ask so silly a question?"

"I like to hear you tell stories."

Teka laughed involuntarily. "Well. No, I don't think she enspelled your father - not the way Galanna and her lot mean, anyway. She fell in love with him, and he with her; that's a spell if you like."

They had had this conversation before; many times since Aerin was old enough to talk and ask questions. But over the years Teka sometimes let fall one more phrase, one more adjective, as Aerin asked the same questions, and so Aerin kept on asking. That there was a mystery she had no doubt. Her father wouldn't discuss her mother with her at all, beyond telling her that he still missed her, which Aerin did find reassuring as far as it went. But whether the truth behind the mystery was known to everyone but her and was too terrible to speak of, particularly to the mystery's daughter, or whether it was a mystery that no one knew and therefore everyone blamed her for endlessly reminding them of, she had never been able to make up her mind. On the whole she inclined to the latter; she couldn't imagine anything so awful that Galanna would recoil from using it against her. And if there were something quite that awful, then Perlith wouldn't be able to resist ceasing to ignore her long enough to explain it.

Teka had turned back to the tray and poured a cup of hot malak, and handed it to Aerin, who settled down cross-legged on her bed, the hanging scabbard just brushing the back of her neck. "I brought mik-bars too, for Talat, so you need not go to the kitchens if you don't wish to."

Aerin laughed. "You know me too well. After sulking, I sneak off to the stables after dark - preferably after bedtime - and talk to my horse."

Teka smiled and sat down on the red-and-blue embroidered cushion (her embroidery, not Aerin's) on the chair by Aerin's bed. "I have had much of the raising of you, these long years."

"Very long years," agreed Aerin, reaching for a leg of turpi. "Tell me about my mother."

Teka considered. "She came walking into the City one day. She apparently owned nothing but the long pale gown she wore; but she was kind, and good with animals, and people liked her."

"Until the king married her."

Teka picked up a slab of dark bread and broke it in half. "Some of them liked her even then."

"Did you?"

"King Arlbeth would never have chosen me to nurse her daughter else."

"Am I so like her as folk say?"

Teka stared at her, but Aerin felt it was her mother Teka looked at. "You are much like what your mother might have been had she been well and strong and without hurt. She was no beauty, but she ... caught the eye. You do too."

Tor's eye, thought Aerin, for which Galanna hates me even more enthusiastically than she would anyway. She is too stupid to recognize the difference between that sort of love and the love of a friend who depends on the particular friendship - or a farmer's son's love for his pet chicken. I wonder if Perlith hates me because his wife hoped to marry Tor, or merely for small scuttling reasons of his own. "That's just the silly orange hair."

"Not orange. Flame-colored."

"Fire is orange."

"You are hopeless."

Aerin grinned in spite of a large mouthful of bread. "Yes. And besides, it is better to be hopeless, because - " The grin died.

Teka said anxiously: "My dear, you can't have believed your father would let you ride in the army. Few women do so - "

"And they all have husbands, and go only by special dispensation from the king, and only if they can dance as well as they can ride. And none at all has ridden at the king's side since Aerinha, goddess of honor and of flame, first taught men to forge their blades," Aerin said fiercely. "You'd think Aerinha would have had better sense. If we were still using slingshots and magic songs, I suppose we'd still all be riding with them. They needed the women's voices for the songs to work - "

"That's only a pretty legend," said Teka firmly. "If the singing worked, we'd still be using it."

"Why? Maybe it got lost with the Crown. They might at least have named me Cupka or Marli or - or Galanna or something. Something to give me fair warning."

"They named you for your mother."

"Then she has to have been Damarian," Aerin said. This was also an old argument. "Aerinha was Damarian."

"Aerinha is Damarian," said Teka, "and Aerinha is a goddess. No one knows where she first came from."

There was a silence. Aerin stopped chewing. Then she remembered she was eating, swallowed, and took another bite of bread and turpi. "No, I don't suppose I ever thought the king would let his only, and she somewhat substandard, daughter ride into possible battle, even though sword-handling is about the only thing she's ever gotten remotely good at - her dancing is definitely not satisfactory." She grunted. "Tor's a good teacher. He taught me as patiently as if it were normal for a king's child to have to learn every sword stroke by rote, to have to practice every maneuver till the muscles themselves know it, for there is nothing that wakes in this king's child's Wood to direct it." Aerin looked, hot-eyed, at Teka, remembering again Perlith's words as he left the hall last night. "Teka, dragons aren't that easy to kill."

"I would not want to have to kill one," Teka said sincerely. Teka, maid and nurse, maker of possets and sewer of patches, scolder and comforter and friend, who saw nothing handsome in a well-balanced sword and who always wore long full skirts and aprons.

Aerin burst out laughing. "No, I am not surprised."

Teka smiled comfortably.

Aerin ate several of the mik-bars herself before dusk fell and she could slip privately out of the castle by the narrow back staircase that no one else used, and into the largest of the royal barns where the horses of the first circle were kept. She liked to pretend that the ever observant men and women of the horse, the sofor, did not notice her every time she crept in at some odd hour to visit Talat. Anyone else of the royal blood could be sure of not being seen, had they wished to be unseen; Aerin could only tiptoe through the shadows, when there were shadows, and keep her voice down; and yet she knew she was simply recognized and permitted to pass. The sofor accepted that when she came thus quietly she wished to be left alone, and they respected her wishes; and Hornmar, the king's own groom, was her friend. All the sofor knew what she had done for Talat, so the fact that they were being kind by ignoring her hurt her less than similar adaptations to the first sol's deficiencies did elsewhere in the royal court.

Talat had been wondering what had become of her for almost two days, and she had to feed him the last three milk-bars before he forgave her; and then he snuffled her all over, partly to make sure she was not hiding anything else he might eat, partly to make sure she had in fact returned to him. He rubbed his cheek mournfully along her sleeve and rolled a reproachful eye.

Talat was nearly as old as she was; he had been her father's horse when she was small. She remembered the dark grey horse with the shining black dapples on his shoulders and flanks, and the hot dark eye. The king's trappings had looked particularly well on him: red reins and cheekpieces, a red skirt to the saddle, and a wide red breastplate with a gold leaf embroidered on it; the surka leaf, the king's emblem, for only one of the royal blood could touch the leaves of the surka plant and not die of its sap.

He was almost white now. All that remained of his youth were a few black hairs in his mane and tail, and the black tips of his ears.

"You have not been neglected; don't even try to make me think so. You are fed and watered and let out to roll in the dirt every day whether I come or not." She ran a hand down his back; one of Hornmar1 s minions had of course groomed him to a high gloss, but Talat liked to be fussed over, so she fetched brushes and groomed him again while he stretched his neck and made terrible faces of enjoyment. Aerin relaxed as she worked, and the memory of the scene in the hall faded, and the mood that had held for the last two days lightened and began to break up, like clouds before a wind.