Robin McKinley - The Hero And The Crown

This morning they were careful, for the first time since they had met at the edge of Agsded’s plain, that each should wrap only his or her own possessions in each bundle. They spoke little. Even Talat was subdued, looking anxiously over his shoulder at Aerin as she strapped the saddle in place, rather than doing his usual morning imitation of a war-horse scenting his enemy just over the next hill.

She did not mount at once but turned back to Luthe, and he held out his arms, and she rushed into them. He sighed, and her own breast rose and fell against his. “I have put you on a horse—that same horse—and watched you ride away from me before. I thought I should never get over it that first time. I think I followed you for that; not for any noble desire to help you save Damar; only to pick up whatever pieces Agsded might have left of you .... I know I shall never get over it this time. If you do it, someday, a third time, it will probably kill me.” Aerin tried to smile, but Luthe stopped her with a kiss. “Go now. A quick death is the best I believe.”

“You can’t scare me,” Aerin said, almost succeeding in keeping her voice level. “You told me long ago that you aren’t mortal.”

“I never said I can’t be killed,” replied Luthe. “If you wish to chop logic with me, my dearest love, you must make sure of your premises.”

“I shall practice them—while—I shall practice, that I may dazzle you when next we meet.”

There was a little silence, and Luthe said, “You need not try to dazzle me.”

“I must go,” Aerin said hopelessly, and flung herself at Talat just as she had done once before. “I will see you again.”

Luthe nodded.

She almost could not say the words: “But it will be a long time—long and long.”

Luthe nodded again.

“But we shall meet.”

Luthe nodded a third time.

“Gods of all the worlds, say something,” she cried, and Talat startled beneath her.

“I love you,” said Luthe. “I will love you till the stars crumble, which is a less idle threat than is usual to lovers on parting. Go quickly, for truly I cannot bear this.”

She closed her legs violently around the nervous Talat, and he leaped into a gallop. Long after Aerin was out of sight, Luthe lay full length upon the ground, and pressed his ear to it, and listened to Talat’s hoofbeats carrying Aerin farther and farther away.

SHE RODE IN A DAZE of misery, unconscious of the yerig and folstza who pressed closely around Talat’s legs and looked anxiously up into her face; and she stopped, numbly, at nightfall. She might have gone on till she dropped in her tracks, were she on foot; but she was not, and so at nightfall she stopped, and stripped her horse, and rubbed him down with a dry cloth. Talat was a little sore; that sudden gallop to begin a long day had done his weak leg no good, and so she unwrapped some ointment that would warm the stiffness, and massaged it in vigorously, and even smiled a little at the usual grimaces of pleasure Talat made.

When she lay down by the fire she sprang up again almost at once, and paced back and forth. She was dizzy with exhaustion and stupid with unhappiness, and she was riding to the gods knew what at the City; and as she remembered that, she remembered also flashes of what she had seen, deep in the Lake of Dreams. But that brought her back to Luthe again, and the tears ran down her face, and, standing before the campfire, she bowed her face in her hands and sobbed.

This would not do. She had the Crown, and she carried an enchanted sword; she was coming home a warrior victorious—and a first sol worthy of respect. She felt like dead leaves, dry and brown and brittle, although leaves were probably not miserable; they were just quietly buried by snow and burned by sun and harried by rain till they peacefully disintegrated into the earth .... She found herself staring at the earth under her feet. She had to get some sleep.

She turned despairingly back to her blanket and found two furry bodies already there. The dog queen smiled at her and moved her feathery tail an inch at least; the cat king flattened his ears and half-lidded his eyes. Neither paid the least attention to the other.

She laughed, a cracked laugh, half a choke. “Thank you,” she said. “Perhaps I shall sleep after all,” She pillowed her head on a cat flank, and a dog head lay in the curve between her ribs and pelvis, and a dog tail curled over her feet. She slept at once, and heavily; and she woke in the morning hugging the queen’s neck with her face buried in her ruff, and the big yerig had a look of great patience and forbearance on her face that no doubt she wore when bearing with a new litter of puppies.

Aerin also woke with a sense of urgency; urgency so great that it broke through the numbness. “Soon,” she said aloud to Talat, and he cocked his ear at her and grunted only a little at the indignity of having his girth tightened. “They need us soon.”

He was stiff this morning as well, but Aerin paid attention and was careful, and he worked out of it. Before the darkness came upon them a second time they had nearly passed the Airdthmar on their right hand; and by the third evening Aerin could see the fault in the top line of the Hills that was the pass to the forested plain before the City, for her way home was short when she knew where she was going. Tomorrow, perhaps, they would stand in that pass.

Her friends slept with her again that night, but they had a less peaceful time of it, for her dreams were bad, full of battle and shouting, and the groans of the wounded, and the fell ghastly sound of the language of the folk of the North. She woke often and sweating, her fist clenched and her nerves jumping. In the last dream she had before dawn she heard Arlbeth’s voice, weary and hopeless: “If only we had the Crown. We might yet ... ”

“If we had had the Crown,” another voice, higher pitched: Perlith. “If we had had the Crown, we would not be so badly off in the first place.”

“At least,” said Galanna in a voice so low that Arlbeth would not hear her, “we do not have our little bad-luck token with us. Thank the gods for that much.”

Thank the gods ... thank the gods she’s not here ... not here ... the Crown, please the gods, we need the Crown, it is not here ....

She woke up. Dawn was just creeping above the mountains’ crests. She did not want to be awake yet, for today she would come in sight of her City, and she was afraid of what she would find; afraid that she came too late; afraid that even the Crown was not enough. Afraid that they would not accept the Crown from her hands. Afraid that they would read in her face whom she had wrested the Crown from.

Afraid that they would read in her face that she knew, now, that she did not belong to Damar. She would love it all her life, and that life was likely to be a long one; and she had a duty to it that she might fulfill some part of, if she tried as hard as she could.

She told herself that she did not think of Luthe.

Her army flowed up on her either flank; a sea of furry backs, black and grey and brindled, golden and ruddy; there was no playfulness in them today. Their ears pointed in the direction they were going, and their tails were low. She had unwrapped the Crown, and at first she carried it before her balanced on the pommel, and then she thought of stowing it away again, but she wanted it close, where she could touch it and it touch her. She slung it at last up over her arm to her shoulder, and it warmed, riding there, till when she reached to touch it with her fingers it was the same temperature as her own skin.

As they rode into the morning the wind sang in her ears, but it carried strange sounds within it, and she smelled strange odors. It was Talat’s restlessness, at last, that told her what was happening; for these were the sounds and smells of battle.