The Hero and the Crown (7 page)

“Oh no,” moaned Aerin, dropped her sword, and grabbed two handfuls of mane;

and they were up and over. The take-off was a lurch, but they came down lightly,

and Aerin discovered that while her ex-convalescent was still disinclined to stop,

he was willing to listen to her legs again; and eventually the circles got smaller,

and the gallop more like a canter, and finally when she sat back he came down

docilely to a walk.

But his head and tail were still up, and he reared suddenly, and Aerin frantically

clutched him around the neck. He neighed, and struck out with his forelegs. Aerin

had seen him do this years before, when her father rode him, for war-horses were

trained to do battle as well as to carry their riders into it; and she had seen them

and others of the cavalry on the practice fields, and at the laprun trials. But it was

a lot different, she found, when one was on the horse performing.

“Shh,” she said. “If someone notices we’re out here, there will be trouble.”

Talat bounced stiff-legged once or twice and subsided. “And how am I supposed

to get you back into your pasture again, dimwit?” she addressed him, and his ears

flicked back for her voice. “The gate is right under anyone’s eyes watching from

the barn; and there’s always someone in the barn.” His ears twitched. “No, we

will not jump back in.” She was shaking all over; she felt that her legs were

clattering against Talat’s sides.

She turned him back toward the far side of the pasture again, feeling that

anything was better than being seen; and they made their way to the place where

Talat had made his leap. Aerin dismounted. “You stay right here or I’ll chop your

other three legs,” she told him. He stood still, watching her, as she clambered

cautiously up the low rock wall and the wooden rails above it. She cast around a

few minutes, and found her discarded sword; came back to the fence and began

banging the end of the top rail with the hilt till it slid protestingly out of the post

and fell to the ground. The other followed. Aerin examined her blisters grimly,

and wiped her sweating face. Talat was still watching her intently, and had not

stirred a hoof. Aerin grinned suddenly. “Your war-horse training is no joke, hey?

Only the best carries the king.” He wrinkled his nose at her in a silent whicker. “Or

even a third-rate first sol, now and then.”

Talat was very lame the next day, and Aerin chased him on foot for three days

to make him trot and work the soreness out before mounting him again. She

reverted to riding him without saddle or bridle, but she took her sword with her,

and slashed at dangling leaves and cobwebs—and fell off occasionally when a

particularly wicked swing overbalanced her—and learned to hang on with her legs

when Talat reared. They also cantered endlessly to the left to strengthen the

weak leg, although some days she had to yell and thump on his shoulders and

flanks to make him pick up the left lead at all.

She asked Tor, idly, what cues the war horses knew for their leaps and plunges,

and Tor, who did not know about Talat and feared what she might be doing,

warily told her. Talat nearly unseated her the first time she asked him these

things, and didn’t settle down again for days, hoping for more signals to do what

he loved best, going off in corvettes when she only wanted him to trot.

The bridle she did not return to her wardrobe, but instead only threw it under

her bed out of sight. (Teka, who had rearranged the wardrobe to allow for saddle

oil, wondered about this new arrangement, but on the whole found it preferable,

since court dresses were not kept under the bed.) She pulled the stirrups off the

saddle and began to wrench the stitching out of its bottom, pulled most of the

stuffing out, and sewed what remained back together again.

She put the resulting wreck on Talat’s back, sat on it, said hells, took it off,

pulled it entirely to bits, and began painstakingly to redesign it to follow exactly

the contours of Talat’s back and her legs, which meant that for several weeks she

was putting it on him and climbing into it maybe half a dozen times in an

afternoon, and Talat was a bit cross about it. She also had to borrow leather-

working tools from Hornmar. Her heart was in her mouth for the questions

Hornmar had never asked her but might yet someday; but he gave her the tools

silently and willingly.

Her saddle was finished at last. She had left the breastplate links on it so that

Talat could still wear the royal insignia; and when she put the saddle and

breastplate on him she was surprised at how handsome it looked.

“I did a good job on this,” she said, staring at her handiwork; and she blushed,

but only Talat was there to see.

Meanwhile the long-awaited wedding of Galanna and Perlith finally occurred,

with Tor performing the functions of first companion to Perlith with a blank and

sober face, and Galanna almost transcendent with gratified vanity, for the eyes of

the entire country were upon her. She was as beautiful as summer dawn, in rose

and gold and turquoise, her black hair bound only with flowers, pink and white

and pale blue; but she made up for this uncommon self-restraint by wearing rings

on every finger and two on each thumb, so that when she made the ritual

gestures her hands seemed on fire as the gems caught the sunlight.

But it was also at this wedding that a new and troubling rumor about the king’s

daughter began, a rumor that Galanna did not have to start, for more eyes than

hers observed and drew conclusions similar to hers without the spur of wounded

pride and jealousy. The king’s daughter, Aerin-sol, stood at her father’s left hand,

as was proper; she wore green, a long dress, the skirts nearly as full as Galanna’s,

but this was only to show her cousin proper respect. The lace of her bodice was

modest, and she wore but two rings, one of the house of the king, and one her

father had given her on her twelfth birthday; her hair was bound primly to the

back of her neck, and she carried only a small yellow-and-white posy of ring-a-ling

flowers. Aerin would not have wished to outshine Galanna even if she could, and

had argued with Teka over every stitch of the dress and every braid of her bound

hair, and tried to get out of carrying flowers at all.

The rumor began that day, for the people at the wedding feast passed it among

themselves, and took it home with them afterward, that the first sola was in love

with the king’s daughter; and that the witch’s daughter would entrap the next

king of Damar as her mother had entrapped her father; and a little breath of fear

was reawakened—for Aerin’s Giftlessness had been reassuring—and

accompanied the rumor.

Galanna, who had hoped to make Tor just a little sorry after all that he had not

married her, had her day of glory almost ruined when at last she noticed where

her new husband’s first companion’s eyes were tending; but anger became her,

so long as she kept her tongue between her lips. It was almost worth it, for a few

days later one of her dumber but most well-meaning ladies mentioned, worriedly,

to her that someone had said that Tor was falling under the spell of the witch

woman’s daughter, and that history was to repeat itself. “I don’t quite know what

she meant, do you?” said the lady, frowning. “Aerin-sol’s mother was queen; it

would be a most suitable match,”

Galanna laughed her most light-hearted laugh. “You are so young,” she said

caressingly. “It was a terrible scandal when Arlbeth married Aerin’s mother. Didn’t

you know that Aerin’s mother was from the North?”

The lady, who had grown up in a small town to the south, did not know, and

her eyes opened wide; Galanna could read her eagerness to have an interesting

fresh slice of gossip to slip into the conversation the next time she and her friends

gathered together. “Oh, Arlbeth certainly married her,” Galanna said gently, “but

she wasn’t exactly queen.” She made it sound as if Arlbeth’s only excuse for such

a liaison was misguided passion and, blinded by that passion, perhaps he hadn’t

quite married her at all. She let this sink in a moment—the lady was very stupid,

and had to be played carefully—and then, seeing dawning comprehension in the

lady’s eyes, sent her gently and kindly, that the comprehension would not be

joggled loose again, about her business.

Aerin herself bore up under the wedding and the feast afterward as best she

could, but as this meant that she withstood them stoically as a martyr might

withstand torture, she did not notice either Tor’s eyes or Galanna’s fury—she was

only too accustomed to ignoring Galanna whenever possible; the one thing she

did observe about the bride was the twelve rings, which were hard to miss—nor

did she notice any more than usual stiffness in the courtesy that those around her

offered her. And Tor, who was either viewed as dangerously enamored and

therefore to be treated with caution, or as pitiably misguided and thus to be

protected—or, as a few implausibly simple souls believed, capable of deciding his

own fate—did not know till much later all that he had betrayed.

Aerin peeled out of her fancy clothes and fancy manners and pelted off to the

barns at the first opportunity, and thought no more about weddings.

She had taken some time away from her leather-working to begin

experimenting with the fire ointment. Most of the ingredients she found easily,

for they were common things, and a first sol’s education included a little basic

herb-lore—which Aerin had learned gladly as an escape from deportment and

history. One or two things she asked Hornmar for, from his stock of horse cures;

and he, thinking she wished perhaps to try some sort of poultice on Talat’s weak

leg, granted her the run of his medicines as he had his tool chest, and again asked

no questions. She was aware of the great boon he offered her, and this time she

couldn’t help but look at him a little wonderingly.

He smiled at her. “I love Talat too, you know,” he said mildly. “If I can aid you,

you need only to ask.”

Teka and the redroot were a little more difficult.

“Teka, what is redroot?” Aerin asked one afternoon as she applied an uneven

patch to a skirt she had always detested, and glowered at the result.

“If you spent a quarter of the time about your mending that you have over that

old saddle, you would be better turned out than Galanna,” said Teka with

asperity. “Rip that out and do it again.”

“If you spent a quarter of the time about your mending that you have over that

old saddle, you would be better turned out than Galanna,” said Teka with

asperity. “Rip that out and do it again.”

Teka grinned. “No. She takes out a great gash and puts in a whole new panel of

different cloth, and it’s a new dress.”

“I would like to make a new floor mop out of this thing,” replied Aerin.

Teka lifted it out of Aerin’s hands and squinted at it. “The color has not worn

well,” she explained, “but the cloth is sound. We could re-dye it.” Aerin did not

show any marked access of enthusiasm for this plan. “Blue perhaps, or red. Don’t

overwhelm me with your gladness, child. You’re always wanting to wear red, in

spite of your flaming hair—”

“Orange,” murmured Aerin.

“You could do quite well with this skirt in red and a golden tunic over—Aerin!”

“It would still have to be patched,” Aerin pointed out.

Teka sighed heavily. “You would try the patience of Gholotat herself. If you will

do something useful with that wretched bridle that has been lying under the bed

for the last fortnight, I will re-dye your poor skirt, and put a patch on it that not

even Galanna will notice—as if you cared.”

Aerin reached out to hug Teka, and Teka made a noise that so sounded like

“Hmmph.” Aerin fell off the window seat and made her way over to the bed on

her hands and knees and began to scrabble under it. She re-emerged only slightly

dusty, for the hafor were dutiful floor-sweepers, held the bridle at arm’s length

and looked at it with distaste. “Now what do I do with it?” she inquired.

“Put it on a horse,” Teka suggested in a much-tried tone.

Aerin laughed. “Teka, I am inventing a new way to ride. I don’t use a bridle.”

Teka, who still occasionally watched Aerin and Aerin’s white stallion in secret to

reassure herself that Talat would do her beloved child no harm, shuddered. It was

the luck of the gods that Teka had not been watching the day Talat had jumped

the fence. “I don’t want to hear about it.”

“Someday,” Aerin went on with a bold sweep of her empty hand, “I shall be

famous in legend and story—” She stopped, embarrassed to say such things even

to Teka.

Teka, holding the skirt to the light as she made deft invisible stitches around

the patch, said quietly, “I have never doubted it, my dear.”

Aerin sat down on the edge of the bed with the bridle in her lap and looked at

the fringe on the bed curtains, which were the long golden manes of the

embroidered horseheads on the narrow canopy border, and thought of her

mother, who had died in despair when she found she had borne a daughter

instead of a son.

“What is redroot?” she asked again.