The Hero and the Crown (23 page)

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