The Hero And The Crown

 

TEKA FOUND HER OUT very soon; she'd been keeping a very sharp eye on her wayward sol since she first crawled out of bed after the surka episode. She'd been appalled when she first discovered Aerin under the tree in the vicious stallion's paddock; but she had a bit more sense than Aerin gave her credit for ("Fuss, fuss, fuss, Teka! Leave me alone!") and with her heart beating in her mouth she realized that Talat knew that his domain had been invaded and didn't mind. She saw him eat his first mik-bar, and when they thereafter began disappearing at an unseemly rate from the bowl on Aerin's window seat, Teka only sighed deeply and began providing them in greater quantity.

The book with the interesting binding was a history of Damar. Aerin had had to learn a certain amount of history as part of her royal education, but this stuff was something else again. The lessons she'd been forced to learn were dry spare things, the facts without the sense of them, given in the simplest of language, as if words might disguise the truth or (worse) bring it to life. Education was one of Arlbeth's pet obsessions; before him there hadn't been a king in generations who felt much desire for book learning, and there was no precedent for quality in royal tutors.

The book was faded with age, and the style of lettering was strange to her, so she had to puzzle out some of the words; and some of the words were archaic and unfamiliar, so she had to puzzle out the meanings. But it was worth it, for this book told her stories more exciting than the ones she made up for herself before she fell asleep at night. And so, as she read, she first learned of the old dragons.

Damar had dragons still; little ones, dog-sized, nasty, mean-tempered creatures who would fry a baby for supper and swallow it in two gulps if they could; but they had been beaten back into the heavy forest and the wilder Hills by Aerin's day. They still killed an occasional unwary hunter, for they had no fear, and they had teeth and claws as well as fire to subdue their prey, but they were no longer a serious threat. Arlbeth heard occasionally of one - or of a family, for they most often hunted in families - that was harassing a village or an outlying farm, and when that happened a party of men with spears and arrows - swords were of little use, for if one were close enough to use a sword, one was close enough to be badly burned - went out from the City to deal with them. Always they came back with a few more unpleasant stories of the cunning treachery of dragons; always they came back nursing a few scorched limbs; occasionally they came back a horse or a hound the less.

But there was no glamour in dragon-hunting. It was hard, tricky, grim work, and dragons were vermin. The folk of the hunt, the thotor, who ran the king's dogs and provided meat for the royal household, would have nothing to do with dragons, and dogs once used for dragons were considered worthless for anything else.

There were still the old myths of the great dragons, huge scaled beasts many times larger than horses; and it was sometimes even said that the great dragons flew, flew in the air, with wingspreads so vast as to blacken the sun. The little dragons had vestigial wings, but no one had ever seen or heard of a dragon that could lift its thick squat body off the ground with them. They beat their wings in anger and in courtship, as they raised their crests; but that was all. The old dragons were no more nor less of a tale than that of flying dragons.

But this book took the old dragons seriously. It said that while the only dragons humankind had seen in many years were little ones, there were still one or two of the great ones hiding in the Hills; and that one day the one or two would fly out of their secret places and wreak havoc on man, for man would have forgotten how to deal with them. The great dragons lived long; they could afford to wait for that forgetfulness. From the author's defensive tone, the great dragons even in his day were a legend, a tale to tell on festival days, well lubricated with mead and wine. But she was fascinated, as he had been.

"It is with the utmost care I have gathered my information; and I think I may say with truth that the ancient Great Ones and our day's small, scurrilous beasts are the same in type. Thus anyone wishing to learn the skill to defeat a Great One can do no better than to harry as many small ones as he may find from their noisome dens, and see how they do give battle."

He went on to describe his information-gathering techniques, which seemed to consist of tirelessly footnoting the old stories for dragonish means and methods; although, thought Aerin, that could as well be from the oral tale-tellers adapting the ancient dragons to the ways of the present ones as from the truth of the author's theory. But she read on.

Dragons had short stubby legs on broad bodies; they were not swift runners 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 customary today to hunt the dragon with arrow and thrown spear; but if one of the Great Ones comes again, this will avail his attacker little. As their size has diminished, so has their armament; a well-thrown spear may pierce a small dragon anywhere it strikes. The Great Ones had only two vulnerable spots that might be depended upon: at the base of the jaw, where the narrow head joins the long neck; and behind the elbow, from whence the wings spring. Dragons are, as I have said, nimble; it is most unlikely that a Great One would be so foolish as to lower its head or its wings to make an easy mark. A great hero only may slay a Great One; one who by skill and courage may draw close enough to force the fatal blow.

"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.

Kisha had dozens of brushes. Aerin rolled up a few in a bit of leather and hid them in an elbow of her reading tree by the pond.

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 any more?"

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 any more. 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.

Nonetheless she returned the next afternoon, though she looked glum, and tried to pick up her book after she'd done grooming him. But he went so expectantly to the mounting stone and stood watching her that she sighed, and climbed on him again, and sent him forward with her legs. But he broke at once into the shuffling trot, and at the end of the six steps he did not stumble to a halt, but strode out a little more boldly; a quarter of the way around the field, halfway - Aerin sat into him and he obediently subsided into a walk, but his ears spoke to her: You see? It was that day that a small but terrible hope first bloomed in Aerin's heart.