The Hero And The Crown d-2

by Robin McKinley

  “No, you can’t,” said Luthe over the top of her head, “although at some date in the near future you will have the opportunity to relearn.”

  He set her down, finally, on her own feet, at the edge of a wide unfenced meadow; several brown cows grazed in it, and at its farthest edge she saw one or two deer raise their heads and look toward her; but they did not seem alarmed.

  Then she heard Talat’s great ringing neigh, and he galloped up to them, coming to a sliding halt at the last minute (Luthe muttered something that sounded like “Show-off”), and slobbered green and purple down her shirt. “Horses,” said Luthe with disgust; but she took a step away from his steadying hand to wrap an arm over Talat’s non-existent withers.

  “Here, then,” said Luthe. “You can be of some use.” He boosted her onto Talat’s well-rounded back and walked off. “This way,” he said over his shoulder, and Talat pricked his ears and followed docilely. But Luthe’s long legs covered the ground at a good pace, and Talat had to stretch himself to keep up, for he would lose his dignity if he broke into a trot; and so his ears eased half back in disapproval of so rude a speed. Aerin laughed her small half-laugh, that she would not cough.

  They came soon to the edge of a wide silver lake. Aerin blinked her dim eyes, for it was hard to determine where the land ended and the water began; the stones of the shore were a barely flatter, duller grey than the water’s gleaming surface. Talat stopped when his hoofs crunched on pebbles; it was the worst sort of footing for a horse with an unreliable leg. Luthe continued to the very edge of the water, and as he stopped just before he got his feet wet, the water gave a sudden little gloop and ripple, and a small outthrust finger of water reached out and splashed his toes. Luthe muttered something under his breath and the water replied by hunching itself up into ridges, and several tiny wave-edges crept humbly up the shoreline, but none quite touched his feet. “Here,” called Luthe.

  She slid off Talat’s back, but found within two steps that Luthe had been right, she really couldn’t walk. She sank down where she had been standing, and Talat crunched up beside her and lowered his nose for her hand, his ears saying anxiously, “It’s all my fault—I don’t really mind these wretched small stones—do please stand up again and I’ll carry you.”

  Then Luthe was kneeling beside her, and he lifted her in his arms again; his hands were wet to the elbows. He set her down, carefully, by the lake’s edge, and the water shouldered up in small ripples again, and flung itself up the stones toward her as if curious; but it did not quite touch her. Luthe dipped his hands into the water again, and held the leaky cup to her lips.

  “Drink,” he said.

  “Is this another sleeping draught?” she said, trying to smile; but he only looked sad and grim.

  “No,” he said. The water dripped on her leg, and its touch through the cloth was somehow personal, soothing like the hand of a friend.

  She drank awkwardly, over his thumb, and the water was silver, almost white, even against Luthe’s pale skin; and it was faintly sweet, and cold, and wild, somehow, wild with a wildness she could not put a name to beyond just that: wild. It seemed to course down her throat of its own volition, and foam up in her stomach. She looked up and met Luthe’s blue frowning gaze as he bowed over her and his cupped hands. She said, “What is—? Not water,” and then he and the lake and the taste of the water on her tongue disappeared; but just before her mind spiraled away after them she felt hands clamp on her shoulders, wet hands, for she could feel the damp through her sleeves, and these hands dragged her to her feet, “Aerin,” came a voice from very far away, and then she no longer had feet, or ears either. Aerin.

  Her lungs were on fire like a swimmer’s too far underwater, and she clawed her way toward the surface, and toward the voice that still called her name; and it seemed that her face broke the surface of the water which held her, and for a moment she lay gasping. The voice again. Aerin.

  She opened her eyes, and she was not on the shores of a silver lake, though a tall man stood before her, calling her name, and offering her a goblet. Drink, he said.

  She reached to take the goblet; reached out to take it with her left hand, and noticed with mild surprise that the arm was unscarred and strong. Ah, she thought wisely, I am dreaming again; but she paused before she took the goblet, and looked around her. She stood in a wide chamber that at first she thought was round, till she realized the walls were straight, but that there were five of them. She looked up, and there was a heavy weight of bound hair on her head, and this preoccupied her, so she did not examine the strange clawed creatures that writhed, black and red and yellow, against that ceiling. She lowered her head again, puzzled, for she had never been in this room before, and yet its red walls seemed familiar to her.

  Drink, said the man again, and his voice was impatient. Drink. The goblet in his outstretched hand trembled very slightly, and she wondered why he was so eager for her to take the cup.

  She tried to look up into his face, but he wore a cloak with a hood, a red cloak, so bright that it hurt the eyes, and the hood was so deep she could not see the face within it. Drink, he said, half mad with impatience, and it occurred to her at last that this was not Luthe she stood before.

  Drink.

  Then she looked again at her left hand and arm, and she thought calmly. That is not my hand; this one is smaller, and the fingers are more delicate than ever mine were. She withdrew the hand, and put it to her head, and pulled a wisp of her hair free, and held it before her eyes. It was the color it had used to be, before Maur burned it; but the hairs of it were finer.

  Aerin, said the red man; you shall take this, and drink it.

  In a voice not hers she replied: No. But the voice despaired and the red man heard the despair, and thrust the goblet at her the more eagerly, knowing that he would succeed. Drink.

  Slowly, hopelessly, her left hand reached out again, and took the goblet, and held it to her lips; but she did not taste what was within it, for she heard her name again, and paused.

  Aerin.

  This was not the red man’s voice, but another one, familiar to her. Aerin. The voice was Luthe’s voice, and frantic.

  The red man heard it too, and whirled around; the cloak spun on his shoulders, but still she saw nothing of his face. Luthe! he cried. You shall not have her!

  Luthe’s voice laughed weakly. No, I won’t; but I shall have the other one; you shall not have them both.

  Then there was a roaring around her, and it seemed that the red walls of the five-sided chamber were angry red mouths; but then the red faded to grayness, and yet still the roaring went on; and suddenly the grayness was the grayness of stone walls, not the pale stone of Luthe’s hall, but the grey and darker grey and dull red and black of her City; but before its walls lay a desert plain, empty and barren, and three of the four monoliths that marked the City gates lay on their sides, and she saw no folk anywhere. She opened her mouth to scream, but her mouth filled with silver water, and she choked, and struck out with her hands; and felt sunlight on her face. Next she realized that she had a stiff neck; and then found she was stiff all over, from lying on ... rocks.

  No wonder she hurt. The dreams faded under the onslaught of the physical discomfort. She bent an elbow to prop herself up on, and then thought to open her eyes first. Trees, blue sky. Stones. She pulled herself up on the elbow. Stones, trees, blue sky. Lake. Luthe.

  He sat up beside her. “Ack,” he said, and stretched cautiously. He was soaking wet; it occurred to her then that she was too, although they were some distance from the water’s edge—nearer, in fact, to the trees. Then there was a familiar stomp and whiffle behind her, and she reached up without looking to encounter Talat’s silky cheek.

  Luthe was getting to his feet; he looked as stiff as she felt. He watched her inscrutably as she staggered to her feet and stood beside him. The lake’s surface was smooth as glass. It was strangely silent where they stood; she heard nothing but the distant chirp of a bird and the occasion
al whisk of Talat’s tail.

  Nothing.

  “I can breathe,” she whispered.

  “Ah,” said Luthe. “Yes, I hoped for that.”

  Then the cacophony of her dreams rushed back. The red man she discarded, but—“My City—”

  Luthe’s inscrutable look settled over his face as if it was there for life. “Later.”

  “Later? The end of my land, my City, my people? Later?” My land, a far-off thought said to her mockingly. My City. My people.

  “Yes, later,” he said gruffly. “It hasn’t happened yet, and your destiny lies elsewhere.”

  She stood rooted to the ground, staring at him. “My destiny lies elsewhere,” she said in a high voice. “My destiny has always lain ... elsewhere.”

  His face softened. “Yes, that’s true, but not quite the way you think. Come. I’ll tell you what I can—of what you need to know. We’ll have to hope it’s enough.”

  “It will have to be enough,” she said fiercely, and as he looked into her eyes they were golden from the flames of her dreams; and he feared then for what he had done. “I had no choice,” he murmured to himself, but Aerin, still fierce in her fear, said, “I can’t hear you. What are you saying?”

  Luthe shook his head. “Nothing that will do you any service to hear. Come, then. What has happened to you is not all bad.”

  Chapter 17

  HER VISION HAD CLEARED with her lungs, and just as she smiled involuntarily every time she took a deep breath, she was also fascinated by the sight of things like leaves on trees, or the way the muscles moved under Talat’s skin when he went tearing across his meadow, bucking and kicking like a colt. She went for long directionless walks through the forests of Luthe’s high valley, or strolled along the edge of the silver lake, watching tiny rainbows reflect off the water. If she was absent too long, Luthe came to fetch her; he always seemed able to find her without trouble, however far she’d wandered. Occasionally he came with her when she set out.

  She had paused, staring at a tree like many other trees, but the leaves of it were waving at her; each tiny, delicate, sharp-edged green oval shivered just for her when the breeze touched it; turned that she might admire its either side, the miniature tracery of green veins, the graceful way the stem fitted to the twig, and the twig to the branch, and the branch set so splendidly into the bole. A green vine clung round the tree, and its leaves too stirred in the wind.

  Luthe idly snapped a small twig from the vine and handed it to her. She took it without thinking and then saw what it was—surka—and all her pleasure was gone, and her breath caught in her throat; her fingers were too numb even to drop what they held.

  “Hold it,” snapped Luthe. “Clutch it as if it were a nettle.”

  Her frantic fingers squeezed together till the stem broke, and the pale green sap crept across her palm. Its touch was faintly warm and tickly, and she opened her hand in surprise, and a large furry spider walked onto her wrist and paused, waving its front pair of legs at her.

  “Ugh,” she said, and her wrist shook, and the spider fell to the ground and ambled slowly away. There was no sign of the broken surka twig.

  Luthe snorted with laughter, tried to turn it into a cough, inhaled at the wrong moment, and then really did cough. “Truly,” he said at least, “the poor surka can be a useful tool. You cannot blame it for the misfortunes of your childhood. If you try to breathe water, you will not turn into a fish, you will drown; but water is still good to drink.”

  “Ha,” said Aerin, still shaken and waiting for the nausea or the dizziness, or something; she hadn’t held it long, but long enough for something nasty to result. “The taste of water doesn’t kill people who aren’t royal.”

  “Mmm. If the truth be known, the touch of the sap of the surka doesn’t kill people who aren’t royal either, although eating it will certainly make them very sick, and the royal plant makes a good story. It’s the kelar in your blood that brings the surka’s more curious properties out—although poor old Merth killed himself just as surely with it. As you would have killed yourself were it not for your mother’s blood in your veins—and serve you right for being so stupid about that Galooney woman. Anything powerful is also dangerous, and worth more respect than a silly child’s trick like that.”

  “Galanna.”

  “Whatever. All she uses her Gift for is self-aggrandizement, with a little unguided malice thrown in. Tor doesn’t realize how narrowly he escaped; a flicker more of the Gift in her and less in him and he’d have married her, willy-nilly, and wondered for the rest of his life why he was so miserable.” Luthe did not sound as though the prospect caused him any sorrow. “But you have no excuse for falling into her snares.”

  “What is kelar?”

  Luthe pulled a handful of leaves off the surka and began to weave them together. “It’s what your family calls the Gift. They haven’t much of it left to call anything. You’re stiff with it—be quiet. I’m not finished—for all you tried to choke me off by an overdose of surka.” He eyed her. “Probably you will always be a little sensitive to it, because of that; but I still believe you can learn to control it.”

  “I was fifteen when I ate the surka and—”

  “The stronger the Gift, the later it shows up, only your purblind family has forgotten all that, not having had a strong Gift to deal with in a very long time. Your mother’s was late. And your uncle’s,” He frowned at the wreath in his hands.

  “My mother.”

  “Most of your kelar is her legacy.”

  “My mother was from the North,” Aerin said slowly. “Was she then a witch—a demon—as they say?”

  “She was no demon,” Luthe said firmly. “A witch? Mmph. Your village elders, who sell poultices to take off warts, are witches.”

  “Was she human?”

  Luthe didn’t answer immediately. “That depends on what you mean by human.”

  Aerin stared at him, all the tales of her childhood filling her eyes with shadows.

  Luthe was wearing his inscrutable look again, although he bent it only on the surka wreath. “Time was, you know, there were a goodly number of folk not human who walked this earth. Time was—not so long ago. Those who were human, however, never liked the idea, and ignored those not human when they met them, and now they ...” The inscrutable look faded, and he looked up from his hands and into the trees, and Aerin remembered the creatures on the walls of her sleeping-hall.

  “I’m not,” he said carefully, “the best one to ask questions about things like humanity. I’m not entirely human myself.” He glanced at her. “Time I fed you again.”

  She shook her head, but her stomach roared at her; it had been almost ceaselessly hungry since she had swum in the silver lake. Luthe seemed to take a curious ironic pleasure in pouring food into her; he was an excellent cook, but it didn’t seem to have much to do with culinary pride. It was more as if a mage’s business did not often extend to the overseeing of convalescents, and the interest he took in his humble role of provider ought to be beneath his dignity, and he was a little sheepish to discover that it wasn’t.

  “Aerin.” She looked up, but the shadows of her childhood were still in her eyes. He smiled as if it hurt him and said, “Never mind.” And threw the surka wreath over her head. It settled around her shoulders and then rippled into long silver folds that fell to her feet, and shivered like starlight when she moved.

  “You look like a queen,” Luthe said,

  “Don’t,” she said bitterly, trying to find a clasp to unfasten the bright cloak. “Please don’t.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Luthe, and the cloak fell away, and she held only silver ashes in her hands. She let her hands fall to her sides, and she felt ashamed. “I’m sorry too. Forgive me.”

  “It matters nothing,” Luthe said, but she reached out and hesitantly put a hand on his arm, and he covered it with one of his. “There may have been a better way than the Meeldtar’s to save your life,” he said. “But it was the only way I
knew; and you left me no time. ... I was not trained as a healer.” He shut his eyes, but his hand stayed on hers. “No mages are, usually. It’s not glamorous enough, I suppose; and we’re a pretty vain lot.” He opened his eyes again and tried to smile.

  “Meeldtar is the Water of Sight, and its spring runs into the lake here, the Lake of Dreams. We live—here—very near the Meeldtar stream, but the lake also touches other shores and drinks other springs—I do not know all their names. I told you I’m not a healer ... and . . , when you got here, finally, I could almost see the sunlight through you. If it weren’t for Talat, I might have thought you were a ghost. The Meeldtar suggested I give you a taste of the lake water—the Water of Sight itself would only have ripped your spirit from what was left of your body.

  “But the lake—even I don’t understand everything that happens in that lake.” He fell silent, and dropped his hand from hers, but his breath stirred the hair that fell over her forehead. At last he said: “I’m afraid you are no longer quite .. .mortal.”

  She stared up at him, and the shadows of her childhood ebbed away to be replaced by the shadows of many unknown futures.

  “If it’s any comfort, I’m not quite mortal either. One does learn to cope; but within a fairly short span one finds oneself longing for an empty valley, or a mountain top. I’ve been here ...”

  “Long enough to remember the Black Dragon.”

  “Yes. Long enough to remember the Black Dragon.”

  “Are you sure?” she whispered.

  “One is never sure of anything,” he snapped; but she had learned that his anger was not directed at her, but at his own fears, and she waited. He closed his eyes again, thinking. She’s being patient with me. Gods, what has happened to me? I’ve been a master mage since old Goriolo put the mark on me, and he could almost remember when the moon was first hung in the sky. And this child with her red hair looks at me once with those smoky feverish eyes and I panic and dunk her in the lake. What is the matter with me?

  He opened his eyes again and looked down at her. Her eyes were still smoky, green and hazel, still gleaming with the occasional amber flame, but they were no longer feverish, and their calm shook him now almost as badly as their dying glitter had done. “I followed you, you know, when you went under. I—I had to make a rather bad bargain to bring you back again. It was not a bargain I was expecting to have to make.” He paused. “I’m pretty sure.”