Read The Hero and the Crown Online
Authors: Robin McKinley
Luthe refocused his eyes to look at her gravely. “No. But my ... friends ... are
very shy. Worse than I am.”
“I’ll be leaving soon anyway,” Aerin said. “They’ll come back to you soon
enough.’’
Luthe did not answer immediately. “Yes. Soon enough,”
She got out Talat’s saddle and gear and cleaned everything, and oiled the
leather; and upon request Luthe provided her with some heavy canvas and
narrow bits of leather, and she rigged a plain breastplate, for Talat had
insufficient wither to carry a saddle reliably straight. She also made a little leather
pouch to carry the red dragon stone, which had been living under a corner of her
mattress, and hung it around her neck on a thong. Then she spent hours currying
Talat while the winter hair rose in clouds around them and Talat made hideous
faces of ecstasy and gratification.
She came dripping into the grey hall at twilight one evening, having shed a
great deal of white hair and dust in the bathhouse, and found Luthe pulling the
wrappings off a sword. The cloth was black and brittle, as if with great age, but
the scabbard gleamed silver-white and the great blue gem set in the hilt was
bright as fire. “Oh,” breathed Aerin, coming up behind him.
He turned and smiled at her, and, holding the scabbard in a shred of ragged
black cloth, offered her the hilt. She grasped it without hesitation, and the feel of
it was as smooth as glass, and the grips seemed to mold to her hand. She pulled
the blade free, and it flashed momentarily with a light that cut the farthest
shadows of Luthe’s ever shadowed hall, and there seemed to be an echo of some
great clap of sound that deafened both the red-haired woman and the tall blond
man; yet neither heard anything. And then it was merely a sword, glinting faintly
in the firelight, with a great blue gem set at the peak of the hilt.
“Yes, I rather thought she was for you,” Luthe said. “Goriolo said I would know
when the time came. Funny I did not think of her sooner; there can be no better
ally against Agsded.”
“Yes, I rather thought she was for you,” Luthe said. “Goriolo said I would know
when the time came. Funny I did not think of her sooner; there can be no better
ally against Agsded.”
“Called you?” said Aerin, although she had no difficulty in believing that this
particular sword could do anything—jump over the moon, turn herself into a
juggernaut, speak riddles that might be prophecy. “It’s a long story,” said Luthe.
Aerin took her eyes off the sword long enough to flash him an exasperated look.
“I’ll tell you all of it someday,” Luthe said, but his voice carried no conviction.
Aerin said quietly, “I leave at the next new moon.”
“Yes,” said Luthe, so softly she did not hear him but knew only that he must
agree; and Gonturan slid like silk into her scabbard. They stood not looking at
anything, and at last Aerin said lightly, “It is as well to have a sword; and I left
mine in the City, for it is sworn to the king and the king’s business; although if
Arlbeth knew of Agsded he must admit that Agsded is king’s business.”
Luthe said, “He would; but he would never admit that it was your business,
even if he knew all the story. Arlbeth is a worthy man but, um, traditional. But
Gonturan goes with you, and Gonturan is better than a platoon of Damarian
cavalry.”
“And easier to feed,” said Aerin.
“North you must go,” said Luthe. “North and east, I think you will find the way.”
Talat stood still while Aerin tied the last bundles behind his saddle, but his ears
spoke of his impatience. It’s been a pleasant sojourn, they said, and we would be
happy to return someday; but it’s high time we were off now.
Aerin gave a final tug on a strap and then turned to Luthe. He stood next to one
of the pillars before his hall. She stared fixedly at the open neck of his tunic so she
need not see how the young spring sunlight danced in his hair; but she found
herself watching a rapid little pulse beating in the hollow of his throat, and so she
shifted her attention to his left shoulder. “Good-bye,” she said. “Thanks. Um.”
The arm attached to the shoulder she was staring at reached out toward her,
and she was so absorbed in not thinking about anything that its hand had seized
her chin before she thought to flinch away. The hand exerted upward force and
her neck reluctantly bent back, but her eyes stuck on his chin and stayed there.
“Hey,” said Luthe. “This is me, remember? You aren’t allowed to pretend I
don’t exist until after you leave my mountain.”
She raised her eyes and met his; blue eyes smiled into veiled green ones. He
dropped his hand and said lightly, “Very well, have it your way. I don’t exist.”
She had already turned away, but she turned back at that, and his arms closed
around her, and so they stood, while the sun shone down on their two motionless
figures and one impatient stallion.
Aerin broke free at last, and heaved herself belly down over the saddle, and
swung her leg hastily behind, thumping a bundle with her boot in the process.
Talat grunted.
“Come back to me,” said Luthe behind her.
“I will,” she said to Talat’s ears, and then Talat was trotting briskly down the
trail. The last Luthe saw of them was a stray blue gleam from the hilt of a sword.
Spring seemed to burst everywhere around them as they went, as though
Talat’s small round hoofs struck greenness from the earth; as if the last white
hairs of his winter coat conveyed a charm to the earth they touched. When they
slept, they slept in small glades of trees where leaves had just begun to show; but
in the mornings, somehow, the leaves were uncurled and heavy with sap; even
the grass Aerin lay on had thickened during the night hours. Talat seemed to grow
younger with every day, his shining whiteness brilliant in the sunlight, tirelessly
jogging mile after long mile; and the birds followed them, as the leaves opened
for them, and the flowers cast their perfumes around them. Aerin saw, and
wondered, and thought she was imagining things; and then thought again that
perhaps she wasn’t; but the sun told her that they went steadily north, and the
hard feel of Gonturan in her hand reminded her of why they went.
But soon they climbed into the mountains again, and there spring had more
trouble following them, although she continued to try. Aerin was not conscious of
guiding Talat, any more than she had been when they sought for Luthe; they both
knew where they were going, and it drew them on; and behind them spring urged
them forward. Higher they went, as the sun rose over them and set almost behind
them, and the ground underfoot was no longer turf, but rock, and Talat’s hoofs
rang when they struck.
When they first came to the stony ground, his hoofbeats struck a hard warning
sound; they seemed to thunder of doom and loss and failure, and Talat shied
away from his own feet. “Nonsense,” said Aerin, and dismounted, taking
Gonturan with her; and she swung her up over her head and down, and thrust her
into the trail before her, which was not rock at all, but earth; and as she drew the
blade out again, there were some small crushed grass stems growing from the
hole that she had made. Aerin knelt, and picked up a handful of dirt and pebbles
from the tiny bit of broken earth before her; and threw her handful down the
rocky way before them, as far as her arm could hurl; and as the handful
disintegrated, the bits twinkled. She threw another handful after the first; and
when she threw this into the air it smelted of the crushed leaves of the surka, and
as she looked ahead she saw, as if her eyes had merely overlooked it the first
time, a slender grey sapling bearing green leaves; and in its topmost branches
there appeared a bird, and the bird sang; and around the tree’s foot there grew a
budding surka plant, which explained the heavy pungent smell in the air.
“What a pleasant place this is,” said Aerin dryly, but it seemed that her words
were sucked away from her, and echoed in some narrow place that was not the
place where she stood. Her hand tightened a little on Gonturan’s hilt, but she
raised her chin, as if someone might be watching, and remounted Talat. Now his
hoofs rang out merrily, like hoofbeats on the stony ways of the City; and there
was grass growing in tufts among the stones, and a few wildflowers clinging to
crevices over their heads.
The feeling of being watched increased as they went on, though she saw no
one, except, perhaps, at night, when there seemed to be more rustlings than
there had been when they were still below on the plain, and more quick glints
that might have been eyes. The fifth night since she had plunged Gonturan into
the earth, and the twelfth since she had left Luthe, she stood up from her fireside
and said into the darkness, “Come, then, and tell me what you want.” Her own
voice frightened her, for it sounded as if it knew what it was doing, and she was
quite sure she did not; and so she staggered and almost fell when after a few
moments something did come, and pressed up against her, against the backs of
her thighs. She did not move; and before her she saw the glints of many pairs of
eyes, moving nearer, at about the right level for creatures the size of the thing
that leaned against her legs. She had her arms crossed over her breast; now with
infinite reluctance she unbent her right elbow and let the hand dangle down
behind her leg, and she felt the creature’s breath. She closed her eyes, and then
opened them again with an involuntary yelp as a very rough tongue dragged over
the back of her hand. The weight against her legs shifted a little, and then a round
skull pressed into her palm.
She looked down over her shoulder with dread, and the great cat thing, one of
the wild folstza of the mountains, which could carry off a whole sheep or bring
down a horse, began to purr. “Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Aerin said
shakily. “I think.”
Her eyes had grown more accustomed to the darkness, and in the shadows
now she could see more of the folstza, ten, a dozen, sixteen, twenty; they roved
restlessly through the undergrowth as they approached, for, like cats of any size,
they did not wish to admit that they approached; all but the one who warmed
Aerin’s right thigh and shivered her with its purring. At last the folstza sat before
her in a semicircle, blinking with green or gold or brown eyes, or looking off into
space as if they couldn’t imagine how they found themselves there. Some sat
neatly, tails curled around four paws; some sprawled like kittens. One or two had
their backs to her. They were all sizes, from younglings who hadn’t grown into the
length of their legs and the size of their feet, to some that were grey-muzzled
with age.
As if this were a signal, the cats stood up and wandered toward the small
campfire, where Talat laid his ears back flat to his skull and rolled his eyes till the
whites showed. “No,” said Aerin bemusedly; “I rather think these are our
friends?’’ and she looked down at the thing that now twined itself between her
legs (it had to scrunch down slightly to accomplish this) and rubbed its head
affectionately against her hip.
It was the biggest of the lot of them. The rest were arranging themselves
around the fire, some of them in heaps, some of them in individual curls and
whorls. The one that now sat and stared up at Aerin was black, with yellow eyes,
and short sharp ears with a fringe of fine long black hairs around each; and down
his neck and back were cloudy grey splotches that dripped over his shoulders and
haunches. She saw the flicker in his eyes and braced herself just in time as he
sprang up on his hind legs and put his forepaws on her shoulders. His breath was
soft against her face, and the ends of his whiskers tickled her cheeks. He looked
faintly disappointed as she stood her ground and stared back at him; and he
dropped to all fours again and padded silently over to her bedding, lying unrolled
and ready near the fire. He batted it with a forepaw till he’d disarranged it to his
liking, and then lay down full length upon it, and smiled at her.
Aerin looked at him. She looked around; the other cats were watching intently
through slitted eyes, for all their languor; none of them had their backs to her
now. She looked at Talat, who had backed up till his rump and flattened tail were
pressed against a tree, and whose ears were still flat to his skull. She looked
longingly at Gonturan, hanging from a tree on the far side of the fire, where she
had set her when first making camp. Gonturan glittered in the firelight, but Aerin
thought she mocked her even as the big cat did, and knew there was no help
there.
“Even allies must know their place,” Aerin said aloud, and was again startled at
how decisive her voice sounded. She stalked over to her blanket and the cat on it,
seized the hem of the blanket, and yanked. The cat rolled a complete
circumference and came up again looking startled, but Aerin did not stop to
watch. She wrapped her blanket around her shoulders, picked up the bundle she
used as a pillow, and rearranged herself to sleep at the foot of the tree on the far