The Crown and the Dragon

by John D. Payne

  Aedin tugged at the string, and turned Elenn under his arm, gradually untwining them. Elenn turned again, and the string wound around her waist. Aedin reached out and pulled her in close. Elenn felt herself getting red to the tips of her ears. She told herself that it was the heat of the fire, or the exertion of the dance.

  Then Aedin unwrapped Elenn from his arms, pulling loose the lace that had bound them together. The dance was over. Aedin smiled at her, and Elenn smiled back. As they stood there, Lilith walked up to them both, and tried to rip the lace from Elenn’s hand.

  “What do you think you are you doing?” said Elenn.

  Lilith slapped her. Shocked, Elenn slapped her back.

  “Enough!” shouted Clooney, fumbling to disentangle himself from his oldest wife.

  Lilith yanked the string from Elenn’s hand and walked off.

  “Enough, I said,” Clooney growled, finally loose. He pushed his wife away. “No more music, no more dancing.” He looked all around him at the assembled Taftoughins.

  “All right, you fancy lads,” Clooney called, “lace up your kirtles. There’s dark deeds need doing while the night still hides us. Fetch your blades and be quick about it.”

  The men among the revelers said goodbye to their sweethearts and went to find their weapons. Elenn’s eyes darted to Aedin, who looked unsure.

  Clooney pointed to Aedin. “You, too. I’m not asking.”

  Aedin bowed stiffly to both Elenn and Clooney, and went to get his sword.

  Elenn walked up to Clooney. “What’s this about, Cousin?”

  Clooney snorted a laugh. “Best you not know, missy. You wouldn’t like it anyways.”

  ***

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Aedin walked through the moonlit forest with Clooney and a dozen other Taftoughins, most still drunk from the feast. Aedin was a little tipsy himself, but not nearly as much as he tried to make the rest of them think. It was a slim advantage, but it might be of some help.

  After more than an hour of stumbling through the undergrowth, Clooney still had not told them what they were doing out in the woods. Aedin had more than a small suspicion that the whole trip was an excuse to get him out in the woods alone so they could cut his throat.

  Suddenly Clooney stopped. He wordlessly motioned for the men to gather around him.This required a few minutes, during which several of them men found a tree to pee against. There was also a great deal of flatulence, followed by elbowing and sniggering. And every Taftoughin drunkenly shushed his fellows at least once.

  “All right, braw lads,” said Clooney in a loud, hoarse whisper. “The Halsings are camped a little ways through here. Come to help their mongrel kinsmen smoke us out, no doubt. We’ll sneak in and shake them up a bit.”

  The Taftoughins grunted their enthusiasm, and rattled their swords.

  “How many of them are there?” asked Aedin, after giving up on one of the other men asking it first.

  “Good question,” said Clooney. “Slackjaw?”

  One of the Taftoughin scouts who had snared Aedin and Elenn leaned in and whispered in Clooney’s ear for a moment. Clooney nodded along impatiently.

  “Long story short—don’t know,” Clooney said at last. “But what are thirty Halsings to one Clooney?”

  The assembled Taftoughins cheered—and shushed each other. One thrust his arms up triumphantly, accidentally delivering an uppercut to his neighbor, who fell to the ground. This occasioned a great deal of laughter, and more shushing.

  Aedin rolled his eyes and looked around him at the giggling, fumbling, tipsy clansmen. Could Clooney be so deep in his cups as to think that these men were in condition to fight anyone? From what Aedin had seen, there weren’t enough Taftoughins to throw away a single life, let alone a dozen.

  But Clooney led the way towards the Halsings’ camp, and his clansmen stumbled behind him through the woods. The walk should have sobered them up, but several of the Taftoughins had brought hard liquor with them, so they grew less stealthy every minute. Soon, the forest was full of their foolish chatter, their giggling, and of course their shushing.

  “Where the devil is my shoe?”

  “Shhhh!”

  “Gods! I’ve dropped my sword.”

  “Shut it, ya manky boggins,” grumbled Clooney, taking a sip of whisky from a pig’s bladder.

  Slackjaw, who had been walking ahead, raced back. He whispered to Clooney, who then waved for Aedin to come forward.

  Clooney pointed ahead. “There’s one of those Halsing dogs now.”

  Peering through the darkness, Aedin thought he saw movement in the shadowy outline of a distant fir tree.

  “I see him,” Aedin said.

  “Braw work,” said Clooney. “Now sneak up, and give him a little taste of the ol’ iron.” He mimed a sword thrust to the gut.

  “Why me?” said Aedin.

  “Because you’re my guest,” said Clooney, “but you took advantage of my hospitality. Now give me your sword—we wouldn’t want it to rattle and give you up.”

  “But this is my favorite sword,” Aedin lied, backing away. In truth, the long Sithian saber was a weapon better suited to cavalry action than to fighting on foot. And the eagle-headed hilt was much showier than Aedin would have liked. But since he was going to give the sword to Clooney anyway, it was good to let the vicious brute think he had won something important.

  Slackjaw and a few of the other Taftoughins drew their own blades. Clooney grinned and held out his hand. Aedin scowled and unstrapped the sword and scabbard from his makeshift harness. He handed it to Clooney, but did not relinquish his hold on it until Clooney gave it a good solid tug.

  “I’ll cherish it, as if it were my own,” said Clooney, winking.

  Aedin pulled the dagger from the sheath in his belt and weighed it in his hand, frowning.

  “Perfect,” said Clooney, who then put a hand on Aedin’s shoulder and turned him around to face the spot where Slackjaw had reported seeing a Halsing.

  “We’re right behind you,” Clooney said, with more than a hint of menace. Then he gave Aedin a not-so-gentle shove forward.

  “Back in a minute,” said Aedin, stealing off into the woods. As soon as he was about halfway to the supposed Halsing, though, Aedin turned sharply to the left.

  The whole business was pointless or worse, and Aedin wanted no part of it. If Clooney and his clansmen wanted to get themselves killed in a drunken melee in the middle of the night, that was their business. He had better things to do—like delivering a girl to the Leode, and collecting a payment of land. He smiled. It was almost too easy.

  Then a tree in front of him coughed.

  He froze. Ten feet ahead, a man leaned against a pine with his back turned. In the light of the moon, Aedin could see that the man had a Ghellish great sword strapped to his back. Who was he—a Halsing? A Taftoughin? A bandit?

  He crouched down and moved slowly to get behind another tree. Suddenly, the man shifted, putting a hand on his sword. Fortunately, he was looking forward, instead of behind and to the left where Aedin was.

  “Who goes there?” the man said.

  As Aedin gripped his dagger tight and thought about his odds, a whisper pierced the darkness from somewhere off to his right.

  “Aedin?”

  The man with the great sword spun around and saw him. Aedin sprang forward with his dagger before the man could pull his weapon from its scabbard. The man caught hold of his wrist. Biting off curses, they struggled for control of the blade.

  Aedin threw an elbow, but missed. A well-placed headbutt from his adversary knocked him back, but he kept hold of the sword. Both men tumbled head over heels into a third person, coming down in a tangle of limbs.

  Scrambling to get free, Aedin came face to face with features that had become familiar over the last few days.

  “Elenn?”

  “Aedin!”

  Hearing the soft rasp of a sword leaving a scabbard, Aedin realized that his opponenent had already got loose a
nd found his feet.

  “Move,” Aedin hissed.

  “Good advice, girl,” said the man, as Elenn scampered away into the forest. “But don’t go too far.”

  “Leave her out of this,” said Aedin, placing himself between Elenn and the man. It was an instinctive move that he immediately regretted since he had lost his dagger somewhere on the forest floor.

  “Shut it, you dobber.”

  “Who are you? What clan?” said Aedin, circling carefully, trying to keep a tree between himself and the sword. “Taftoughin? Halsing?”

  “You first, stranger,” the man countered as he advanced.

  Aedin had been trying to double back toward Clooney’s brough-fort, so he guessed that the man was a Taftoughin.

  “I was with Clooney,”said Aedin. “Got separated somehow.”

  “Too bad for you, Taftoughin pig,” said the man. “You’ve intruded into Halsing lands one time too many.”

  Ducking around a pine tree, the Halsing stabbed out at Aedin, using his great sword two-handed like a spear. Aedin jumped back and tried to roll out of the way but hit a tree. The Halsing dashed up and stood over him, sword poised to deliver a killing blow.

  “Wait!” said Aedin. “I’m not really with Clooney! He sent me off alone to kill a Halsing guard, but I didn’t! That’s why I’m here instead of up there with the rest of them.”

  “So you’re not one of Clooney’s men,” said the Halsing.

  Aedin nodded, his hands held upward in an attitude of surrender.

  “But you’re still a skulking villain with no loyalties,” said the Halsing with a sneer, “and a worthless git with no stomach for battle. That’s near as bad as being a Taftoughin.”

  The Halsing raised his sword. Aedin tensed himself, ready to spring in one direction or the other, and hopefully dodge the blow.

  There was a sudden thump and the Halsing slumped forward, dropping his sword. As Aedin pushed the groaning man off of him, he looked up to see Elenn standing over him in the moonlight, holding a heavy stick in both hands.

  “Rivers of the abyss,” said Elenn, with irritation.

  “Well done,” said Aedin, impressed.

  “I was trying to do that with a spell,” said Elenn, looking cross.

  “Stick worked very nicely,” said Aedin.

  “You can thank me later,” said Elenn. “We need to get out of here. I have the Falarica, and they’ll be coming for it. Do you know where we are?”

  “Aye,” said Aedin, with rather more confidence than he felt. “Follow me.” He leapt to his feet and took the the Halsing’s great sword in one hand and Elenn’s hand in the other. They started off north, hopefully skirting Clooney and his expedition.

  “So,” Aedin said, “how did you get that back?”

  “I got it from Lilith,” said Elenn, with great satisfaction.

  Aedin decided not to ask any more. They walked in silence until they heard a commotion not far ahead in the woods.

  “What’s that?” said Elenn.

  An arrow hit a large pine in front of them with a quiet thunk. They both dropped low, and crouched behind the cover of nearby trees.

  “Think we’re walking into Clooney’s little battle,” Aedin said.

  He glanced around the side of the tree and saw twenty or thirty men locked in combat, and a few who were sniping with bows.

  “Get them, you useless numpties!” they heard Clooney cry out.

  Aedin didn’t know whom he was referring to, and he didn’t want to find out. He grabbed Elenn, and they crawled through the undergrowth until they could no longer hear shouts or the ring of steel. When Aedin felt it was safe, they stood and hurried east through the moonlit woods toward the Narrows.

  ***

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  After crossing the Narrows, Elenn began to relax. The familiar mountains made her feel as if they were truly in Ghel at last. And Aedin’s pronouncement that they had left dragon country dispelled much of her fear. Even the people that they encountered were courteous and Gods-fearing, quite unlike the Taftoughins and Halsings on the other side of the Lough.

  Outriders met them an hour after they entered Ghel, their tunics decorated with the emblem of the Leode, a growing tree inside a chain of interlocked rings. Each wore a leather plait-jack and carried a great sword and bullhide shield. Reminded of the brave messenger who had promised to lead the Vitalion away from their trail, Elenn asked if they had any word of his return. They knew Ranulf's name, but did not know his fate.

  Hearing of their mission, the outriders put Elenn and Aedin on horseback and escorted them to the Fortress of the Leode. They also sent word ahead so that when Elenn and Aedin arrived, two young nuns welcomed them and took them to private chambers to bathe and change their clothes.

  Smoothing out the wrinkles in a clean new dress, Elenn felt like a completely different woman. Her relief was undercut by a dull ache of guilt, though, which puzzled her. Perhaps it was because her old clothes had been stained with Ethelind's blood, and now that macabre connection was lost—like her mother's gold ring.

  Reunited with Aedin, nuns ushered them to their audience with the head of the Order. Deep inside the vast Fortress of the Leode, the Leodrine Mother's office was small and clean, much like the humble chambers where Elenn had washed off the grime of travel and put on her borrowed dress. The chief difference was that instead of a bed, this room had a desk, bare aside from a case of carved Renonian oak which held the Falarica.

  The Leodrine, whose chosen institutional sobriquet was Mother Rejoicing, rose to greet them as they entered the room. In some ways, she reminded Elenn of her Aunt Ethelind, although Elenn judged the Leodrine to be quite a bit older—perhaps fifty or sixty. Embracing Elenn and nodding to Aedin, she gestured to three wooden chairs in the center of the room and invited them to sit.

  As soon as they were seated, the Leodrine leaned forward and placed one hand on Elenn’s. “I am sorry, child,” she said. “We have received word of your aunt’s passing. It is simply tragic, and if there is anything you need to help ease your suffering, please do not hesitate to ask.”

  “Thank you,” said Elenn. The kindness in the Leodrine’s eyes was almost startling after a week of danger and rough travel.

  “In addition to being a strong, brave, remarkable woman,” the Leodrine said, “Ethelind was a keeper of our lore and magic. It is a terrible loss for the Order, and for all Deira.”

  The Leodrine heaved a heavy sigh and her gaze drifted upward. Elenn turned and saw a wooden carving on the wall which depicted servants of the Gods, including unicorns, water nymphs, tree folk, antlered men, and the ursine daughters of Arthu.

  “The blood was strong in the House of Barethon,” said the Leodrine contemplatively. She glanced at Elenn. “And still is strong today, I believe.”

  Elenn nodded, unsure if the Leodrine knew of her own ancestry. She could not remember if Ethelind had told her.

  “And thus, Garrick Kilkarrin, son of Lioba Barethon, will be crowned at dawn on Lammas Eve,” said the Leodrine.

  “That’s… four days from now—right, Sister?” said Aedin.

  “Mother,” mouthed Elenn to him, her eyebrows knitted in silent rebuke.

  “Yes, child,” said the Leodrine, with a grandmotherly smile. “Four days from now.”

  Aedin raised his eyebrows and waved four fingers at Elenn, mouthing the word “four”.

  The Leodrine turned to Elenn. “As one of the last of Syffred Barethon’s children, your aunt had claimed the honor of officiating at the coronation. This would have required reinstating her in the order, which is very unorthodox. But given the circumstances, I was inclined to grant her petition.”

  She sighed. “After hearing of her tragic death,” the Leodrine continued, “we have naturally been considering other candidates.” She gazed directly into Elenn’s eyes. “As the one who bore the Falarica safely to us, and as an initiate in the Order, it has been suggested that you might want to represent us at the corona
tion.”

  “The coronation…” Elenn felt a knot in her stomach. “That will be lovely, I’m sure. And very interesting for me to watch. Because of course I am completely unversed in such ceremonies.” Her words tumbled out in an embarrassing rush, and Elenn felt the heat of red blood flooding to her face.

  “Of course,” the Leodrine said.

  Elenn looked down. She didn't know who had put her name forward, but the whole idea was unthinkable. For one thing, to officiate she would have to renounce her own name and join the Order. Elenn was not ready to face that decision. Not yet.

  “The Sisters are preparing for the Vigil of the Paladin tonight,” said the Leodrine, “as they do at every mid-moon. Might you come and meditate with us?”

  “Mother,” said Elenn, “what if our hope is vain? What if we await a deliverer who will never come?”

  The Leodrine opened the wooden case and removed the Falarica. She turned it over gently in her hands, inspecting it. She handed it to Elenn.

  “Your father once said that the Deiran should put away their myths,” said the Leodrine, “and save themselves. Is this your belief as well, Elenn?”

  Elenn was silent. She wondered if she meant Ethelward Barethon, or Mathis of Adair. It sounded more like her adopted father than Ethelind’s pious older brother.

  “You brought the Falarica back to us,” said the Leodrine. “And in so doing, you have become its protector.”

  Elenn shook her head. “Aunt Ethelind was the true protector. She didn’t even want me to come on this journey. I’m a failure. I never even learned the conjuring she taught me.”

  Aedin raised an eyebrow, but thankfully said nothing.

  Elenn handed the Falarica back to the Leodrine. “Perhaps if my aunt had married and had children, one of them would have been fit to finish her work. But not I.”

  The Leodrine smiled sadly and took Elenn’s hand. “Faith requires courage,” she said. “You must have faith to find the path which is laid out before you and find the courage to step onto it.”