The Hero And The Crown d-2

by Robin McKinley

  “Here we are, I believe,” Tor said. She dropped his hand so that he could attend to the lock, one of the small magics she had never been able to learn. He muttered a moment, touched the door in five places, and the door slid open.

  A blast of grief, of the deaths of children, of crippling diseases that took beauty at once but withheld death; of unconsummated love; of love lost or twisted and grown to hate; of noble deeds that proved useless, that broke the hearts of their doers; of betrayal without reason, of guilt without penance, of all the human miseries that have ever occurred; all this struck them, like the breath of a slaughterhouse, or the blow of a murderer. Tor fell to his knees and covered his face with his hands, and the beasts cringed back, moaning. Aerin put out her hand, leaned against the doorframe; just this she had feared, had half expected; yet the reality was much worse than what her tired mind had been able to prepare her for.

  Greetings, said Maur’s head. I did not think to have the pleasure of seeing you again.

  It is you, responded Aerin. She opened her mouth to gasp, and despair rushed in, bitter as aloes. Tears filled her eyes, but she pushed herself away from the threshold and bent slowly and carefully to pick up the candle Tor had set down before he opened the door. She shook her head to clear her vision, held the candle aloft, and stepped inside the high vaulted room, despite the silent keening of the air. I know despair, she said. There is nothing more that you can show me.

  Oh?

  The keening changed tone and madness edged it, drifted across her skin, fluttered in her hair like bats’ wings; she ducked, and the candle guttered and almost went out. Maur laughed. She remembered that silent hollow laugh.

  Angry, she said: Nothing!

  “Aerin,” a voice said hoarsely behind her: Tor. “Light my way—I cannot—see you.” The words dragged out of him as he dragged himself to his feet. “This—is why—we’ve been—so—tired—all along.”

  “Yes.” The sibilant hissed in the silence like adders’ tongues, but Aerin’s anger made a small clear space around her, and her beasts crept to her feet and breathed it gratefully, and Tor staggered to her like a man crossing a narrow bridge to freedom, and put an arm around her again, but this time it was for his own comfort.

  “Tor,” she said calmly, “we must get rid of Maur’s head. Get it out of the City.”

  Tor shook his head slowly; not in refusal but confusion. “How? It is too huge; we cannot lift it. We must wait ....”

  Wait, snickered Maur’s head.

  “No.” Aerin looked around wildly. The reek of despair stilt tingled in her nostrils and in her brain, and her anger was ebbing. She had to think. How?

  “We can roll it,” she said at last. “It’s roundish. We can roll it downstairs, and then downhill—out of the City gates.” She thrust the candle at him. “Hold this.”

  She walked purposefully up to the low platform where Maur’s skull lay; the shadows in the eye sockets glinted. Her beasts came after her, clinging to her shadow; and Tor came behind them, just clear-headed enough to hold the light high, and to watch Aerin.

  She set her shoulder in one of the ridged hollows at the base of the skull and heaved. Nothing happened but that Maur laughed louder; its laughter crashed in her head like thunder, and her vision was stained red. Then Tor found a niche for the candle and came to help her; they heaved, and heaved again, and barely the massive skull rocked on its base. Then her beasts came, and clawed at the thing, and chipped their teeth on it; their lady’s anger and their own fear gave them a wild frenzy, and the skull shuddered where it lay, but they could stir it no further, and Aerin cried at last, “Peace!” and laid her hands on her loyal friends. They calmed under her touch, but they panted where they sat, even the cats, the curved white fangs glinting in the dim light. The candle was burning low.

  “It’s no use,” said Tor heavily. He was still leaning against the skull, pressed up against it as if he loved the touch of it; Aerin grabbed him by the shoulder and yanked him away, and he staggered. He blinked at her, and a little more of Tor crept back into his eyes, and he almost smiled, and with his sleeve he rubbed his face where it had lain against the skull.

  Are you finished yet? inquired Maur’s head.

  No, said Aerin fiercely.

  I’m glad. This is the finest amusement I’ve had since you fled the banqueting-hall. Thank you for opening the door, by the way. Your folk by the City gates should taste me quite clearly by now.

  You shall not bully me again! Aerin said, and, almost not knowing what she did, pulled Gonturan free of her scabbard and slapped the flat of her across the base of Maur’s head where once the backbone had joined. Blue fire leaped up in sharp tongues that lit the entire vault, with its many shelves and cupboards and niches, and doors into further strongrooms. It was a ghostly unhealthy color, but the skull shrieked, and there was a crack like a mountain splitting, and the skull fell off its pedestal to the floor.

  Aerin hurled herself at it as it was still moving, and grudgingly it rolled another half turn; but as it fell, the thickness of the despair pressing around them weakened suddenly, and with something like hope again Tor and the beasts shoved too, each as they could; and it moved another half circumference. The moon was high by the time they reached the courtyard, for they could not take the most direct way—the size of the skull precluded all but the widest corridors. The night wind was cold, for they were sweating hard with their labor; and the moon became two moons as Aerin’s tired eyes refused to focus. Tor had found rope, and they had tried to drag the thing, but that had worked even less well than rolling it, so they went back to the rolling. It was not nearly round, and it progressed in lumbering half-circle flops, and each flop jarred Tor’s and Aerin’s muscles painfully; and they had been painfully tired before they began.

  “We must rest,” murmured Tor.

  “Food, “said Aerin.

  Tor roused himself. “Bring some. Wait.”

  The slightly moldy dry bread and more than slightly moldy dry cheese he found gave them more strength than they would have thought possible. “Second wind,” said Tor, standing up and stretching slowly till his spine cracked.

  “Fourth or fifth wind,” said Aerin grimly, feeding the end of her cheese to her beasts; “and the strength of panic.”

  “Yes,” said Tor, and they put their shoulders to the work again, the grim echoes of bone against rock ringing terribly in the dark empty City. Depression still gnawed at them, but in a curious way their weariness worked to their advantage, for depression often went with weariness, and so they could ignore the one as a simple unfearsome result of the other. Maur had lost its ascendance once Gonturan had struck it, and while the skull still stank, it seemed almost an organic stench now, under the open sky; no more than the faint rotting smell of ancient carrion.

  It was a little easier once they reached the king’s way; each heave grew a little less, the fall-over a little hastier, and the crash a little more forceful. Then it began almost to roll; for each circle it lurched seriously twice, but it did not quite come to a complete halt each time; Tor and Aerin needed only to push with their hands. Both Aerin’s shoulders were raw beneath her tunic, and there was a long shallow cut along her jaw where one of the dragon’s ear spines had caught her briefly; and the old cut on her palm from Gonturan’s edge throbbed dimly.

  Then, just above the City gates, the vast head broke away from them. It was not merely the incline, which was little greater now than it had been down most of the slope behind them; it was Maur’s final moment, and Aerin heard its last scream of gleeful malevolence as it plunged down the road.

  “Scatter!” shouted Aerin, just as Tor’ bellowed, “’Ware!”

  The folk before the gates had indeed smelled Maur’s foul miasma after the door of the treasure house was opened, and most of them lay or crouched wherever they had been when that dreadful wind had first blown over them. It had lifted a little since, but the days past had been too much, and once undiluted despair had touched them t
hey found it hard to shake themselves free. They shifted a little now, at the voices, and the desperate urgency in them, and looked up.

  The fire had burned down, for no one had had the strength of purpose to feed it since the treasure-house door opened. Maur’s skull struck the fire’s center, and the still smoldering branches flew in all directions, and the embers splashed like water; and while a few people cried out with sudden pain, there was too little fire to do much harm. The skull crashed into one of the fallen monoliths, which shattered, and then the black skull disappeared into the night, and there was a rumbling and an echo, like an avalanche, and the people, shaken out of their lethargy, looked around fearfully and wondered which way to run; but no mountains fell. The rumbling grew louder, till people put their hands over their ears, and Aerin and Tor knelt down in the roadway with their arms around each other. The rumbling became a roar, and then there was a sudden storm of wind from the battlefield, laden with the smell of death; but the death smell passed them and in its place came a hot, dry, harsh smell like nothing the green Hills of eastern Damar had ever known; but Tor raised his head from Aerin’s shoulder and said, “Desert. That’s the smell of the western desert.” And on the wind were small gritty particles, like sand.

  Then the wind died, and the people murmured to one another; but though there was a half moon it shed no light through the thick shadows that hung over the battlefield. They built up the fire again, but not very large, for no one wanted to venture far to look for fuel; and they tended to each other’s burns, which all proved slight; and rounded up the horses again, who had been too tired to run far, even in terror.

  Aerin and Tor stood up slowly and came into the firelight, and the rest of Aerin’s beasts came joyfully up to greet them, those that were still alive, for many of them had not left the battlefield. She blinked up at Tor for a moment and said: “What have you done with the Crown?”

  Tor looked blank, then sheepish. “I left it in the treasure hall. Not such a bad place for it; it will be spending most of its time there anyway.”

  Aerin felt a curious tickling sensation at the back of her throat. When she opened her mouth she discovered it was a laugh.

  Chapter 24

  AERIN WOKE TWO DAYS later in her own bed in her father’s castle—Tor’s castle now. It was turning over that woke her; her muscles were so sore and stiff that her weariness was finally less than her aches and pains, and as she rolled onto her right shoulder she woke with a groan.

  There was an immediate rustle from somewhere just beyond the bed curtains, and the curtains themselves were pushed back and daylight flooded in. Aerin couldn’t imagine where she was for a moment; her first thoughts were that wherever it was it was doubtless dangerous, and she groped vaguely for Gonturan’s hilt; instead her fingers buried themselves in a heavy fur ruff, and a long tongue licked her hand. She tried to sit up, and a voice, attached to the hands that had just parted the curtains, said brokenly, “Oh, my lady.” Aerin recognized Teka first, and then realized where she was, and then Teka bent down and buried her face in the bedclothes and sobbed.

  “Teka,” Aerin said, horrified by her tears.

  “My lady, I thought I should never see you again,” Teka muttered without lifting her face, but when Aerin tentatively patted a shoulder and smoothed the sleek black-and-grey head, Teka sat back on her heels, sniffed, and said, “Well, I am seeing you again, and have been seeing you again now for two and a half days, and I am very sorry to have been so silly. You’ll want food and a bath.”

  “Two and a half days?” Aerin repeated.

  “Two and a half days. Tor-sola is not awake yet.”

  Aerin smiled. “And, of course, you’ve been sitting in that chair”—she nodded at a high-backed wooden chair with a pillow propped up for the waiter’s back and neck, and a cushioned footrest, and a small table with sewing paraphernalia tidily arranged on it—“the whole time.”

  Teka opened her eyes wide in the old way that had so terrorized the very young Aerin caught out at some misbehavior. “Of course. Bath or a meal first?”

  Aerin considered. Even the muscles that made her tongue move and her jaw open and shut to speak and her lips smile hurt. “Malak, very hot, and a very hot bath first, and then food.” There was a thrashing behind her and a long pointed face poked over her shoulder. “And food for this one, too. She’ll skip the bath. Where are the rest of them?”

  Teka scowled. “Wherever it pleases them to lay themselves. I did manage to herd them all into your rooms, lady, and the back hall; they terrify all the staff and most of the court. But they won’t leave—and, well, I for one am capable of acknowledging that we owe them a debt, and loyalty is very admirable even in mute beasts, but,” she said in a tone of suppressed rage. “I do not approve of animals sharing their sol’s bed.” The yerig queen yawned widely, and then a long piece of black shadow stood up from the still curtained foot of the bed, stretched himself, and flowed off the bed to the floor. He leaned against the backs of Teka’s legs and began to purr and, to Aerin’s delight, a slow flush crept up Teka’s throat and face.

  “I’m glad not everyone in my father’s house is terrified by my friends,” said Aerin.

  “No, my lady,” Teka said in a low voice. The king cat poked his head around Teka’s waist to smile smugly at Aerin, and Aerin said, “You know, my wild friends, if you are planning to move in with me permanently, you will have to have names. If you live in a house, you are domesticated, and if you are domesticated, you must be named.” The yerig sitting beside her licked her ear.

  Aerin began the long excruciating process of getting out of bed; she felt that she would never move easily again. “I’ll help you, my lady,” said Teka, as Aerin touched her feet to the floor and hissed involuntarily. Teka was thinner than she had been when Aerin saw her last, and as Teka put out a hand to help her, Aerin saw a long bandage wrapped around her forearm under her sleeve. She jerked her eyes away and looked up at Teka’s face again. “Must you call me lady?” she said crossly. “You never did before.”

  Teka looked at her oddly. “I know that perfectly well,” she said. “If you’re up. I’ll look to your bath.”

  The hot water helped the deeper aches but just about killed the blisters, and Aerin herself with them. She padded the back of the bath with two or three towels so that she could at least lie softly; and after three cups of very strong malak she dared climb out of the bath. Teka laid her down on a cushioned bench and rubbed a little more of the soreness out with the help of some astringent solution (that smelted, of course, very strongly of herbs) that was even worse than the hot water on blisters; Aerin shrieked.

  “Quiet,” said Teka remorselessly. She finished by smoothing on a silky pale ointment that almost made up for the astringent, as Aerin told her. “Your adventures have made you no more polite, Aerin-sol,” Teka said with asperity.

  “You could not possibly have hoped for so much,” Aerin responded as she eased into the undershift Teka had laid out for her.

  “No,” Teka admitted, and turned down the corners of her mouth, which meant she was suppressing a smile.

  Aerin turned to pick up the tunic. “Why am I getting all dressed up to eat breakfast?” she inquired. The tunic was new to her, blue and heavy, with a lot of gold thread worked into it.

  “It’s mid-afternoon,” Teka said repressively. “The honor of your company for an early dinner has been requested by Tor-sola.”

  Aerin grunted, and put the tunic on—and grunted again. “He woke up, then.”

  “So it would appear. There is nothing that can be done with your hair.”

  Aerin grinned and shook her head so that the fine not-quite-shoulder-length tips swung across her cheeks. “Nothing at all. It doesn’t seem to want to grow.”

  Tor looked haggard but convalescent, as Aerin felt she probably looked as well. She’d worn Gonturan as a way of acknowledging the formality of the occasion, but the swordbelt only reminded her more intensely of certain of her blisters, and s
he was glad to hang it on the tall back of her chair. Tor came to her at once and put his arms around her, and they stood, leaning against each other, for a long time.

  He put her away from him only an arm’s length then and looked down at her. “I—” He broke off, and dropped his arms, and paced around the room once. He turned back like a man nerving himself for a valorous deed, and said, “I’m to be made king tomorrow. They seem to think I already am, you know, but there’s a ceremony ...” His voice trailed off.

  “Yes, I know,” Aerin said gently. “Of course you’re king. It’s what my—what Arlbeth wanted. We both know that. And,” she said with only a little more difficulty, “it’s what the people want as well.”

  Tor stared at her fiercely. “You should be queen. We both know it. You brought the Crown back; you’ve won the right to wear it so. They can’t doubt you now. Arlbeth would agree. You won the war for them.” Aerin shook her head. “The gods give me patience. You did. Stop being stubborn.”

  “Tor—calm down. Yes, I know I helped get the Northerners off our doorstep. It doesn’t really matter. Come to that, I’d rather you were king.” Tor shook his head. Aerin smiled sadly. “It’s true.”

  “It shouldn’t be.”

  Aerin shrugged. “I thought you invited me here to feed me. I’m much too hungry to want to stand around and argue.”