Robin McKinley - The Blue Sword

"I knew you would return," said Mathin, and one hand moved a few inches to close weakly around Harry's; and Harry gulped and nodded, but still her tears flowed and she could not stop them. "And you will marry our king?" he went on, in what would have been a conversational tone if it had not been so faint, and Harry nodded again.

"I wanted you to toast us at the wedding, my old friend and horse-breaker and teacher," she said.

Mathin smiled. "I leave my honor in good hands, best of daughters," he said gently.

"No," said Harry, and while her tears still fell her voice gained strength. " No ." As she knelt, Gonturan dug a hole between her ribs, and she stood up impatiently and unbuckled her and let her fall; and as she bent down again a few of her tears fell on her own hand, and they were hot, scalding hot, and left red marks where they touched the skin; and she realized that her eyes and cheeks burned with them. She drew the blanket away from Mathin's chest and belly, where a long mortal wound oozed through its wrappings; the blood was almost black, and green-tinged, poisoned, and there was an unhealthy smell.

"In Aerin's day," murmured Harry, " kelar was good for things. It didn't only hurt things, and make trouble."

Corlath came to stand behind her. Mathin looked up at his king and said, "Aerin—"

Harry felt Corlath's hands on her shoulders, and twisted where she knelt, and seized his hands. "Help me," she said. "You helped me on that mountaintop. It was as though you held me up, held me by the shoulders as you did the first evening when I tasted the Water of Sight." Her eyes, wide open, were going blind; it was like the golden war-rage, only worse; it would split her skin, she would wither and blacken in the heat of it.

Corlath said, as if against his will, "Mathin fell, guarding me, while I was far away on a mountaintop; if it had not been for him, I would have had no body to return to."

Harry shivered and the heat plucked at her nerves and ate up her strength, and blindly she reached out one hand to touch Mathin, and her fingers touched the bare skin of his upper arm, and she felt him shudder, and his breath hissed between his teeth. Whatever it was thundered through her veins and filled her lungs and stomach, her hands and mouth; and she let go of Mathin and turned to the next bed, and scrabbled with the bedclothes, for she could see nothing but the golden storm and feel nothing but one of Corlath's hands tight in one of hers, and she touched the throat of the occupant of the pallet next to Mathin. She groped her way down the long length of that tent, stumbling, almost crawling but for Corlath, touching foreheads and hands and shoulders, and the nurses turned back the bedding, and the eyes of the dying looked into her blind eyes and hoped for her touch but feared it, and none but Corlath who were themselves whole came near enough even to brush the hem of her tunic, for it was hard just to breathe if she, with the power that was in her, was too near. The fire rose through her and crackled in her ears, so that she was deaf as well; but at last they came to the door, and Corlath led her out, her feeble feet not sure where they would find the earth with each step; and she felt the evening breeze, and the fire began to subside, reluctantly at first. But as it drained out of her, back to where it had come from, it took with it the marrow of her bones and the elastic of her muscles, for such was the fire's fuel, and she leaned against Corlath. He put his arms around her, and when the fire flickered at last and went out and she crumpled, he picked her up and carried her back to his zotar, and she lay in his arms as limp a burden as when he had put the sleep on her, the night he stole her from the Residency.

Harry woke up feeling as if she had been sick for a year and was now approaching convalescence. She stared at the peaked roof of the zotar and slowly realized where she was. Even her thoughts were too weak to entertain the idea of moving. Narknon, by some extra feline sense, knew when she opened her eyes, and without moving from her sprawl across Harry's legs, began to purr.

With the purr came Corlath, who had been sitting just beyond the curtain that had been hung by Harry's bed to give her peace from the comings and goings of the king's tent. He put back the curtain when he heard Narknon. He was himself weary, for much of the strength Harry had used the evening before was his; and he had not been able to sleep that night for watching her. He watched her sleeping, hoping only that she would awaken and still be Harry. His heart was in his mouth as he dropped down beside her.

The look on his face brought Harry more strongly back to herself, and she sat shakily up; and he put an arm around her shoulders, and she was happy to rest her head against his chest and be silent.

She did not want to ask, but she could not help herself, so at last she said: "Mathin?"

His voice sounded deeper than ever with her ear against his chest when he spoke. "He will carry a handsome scar, but he will carry it lightly, and he will be strong enough to sit on Windrider when we leave this place to return to the City, in a few days' time; although his right arm still pains him somewhat, from the long raw burn near the shoulder, as though a fire had scorched him."

Harry remembered how she had known the fire was eating her, that it would leave nothing of her; and she opened her right hand, the hand that had touched Mathin. It looked as it always had, but for the small white mark across the palm, which was only two months old.

"And the others?"

"None will die, and while none is as quick to recover as Mathin, none either bears the mark of where Harimad-sol touched them."

"And—my people? Jack, and Kentarre, and those who follow them? And Nandam, and—and Richard? Have you met my brother Richard?"

"Your Jack has introduced us." Corlath had remembered Colonel Dedham when he saw him standing in the twilight behind Harry; remembered him as the one man who had seemed to listen to what Forloy said, and believe that the men of the Hills might be speaking the truth, even to Outlanders. It was that sight of the man who had offered the Hill-king his loyalty while standing on the Residency verandah that had given Corlath the courage to declare his love for Harry the night before. It had seemed a fine bold thing to him at the time to bind her sash around himself and wear it openly; it hadn't occurred to him till he saw her with her company at her back, and her pale eyes fixed on him with an expression he could not read, that it would force him to face her with it and what it meant immediately, whenever he saw her again—if he saw her again. It would doubtless have been kinder or more courteous—and less dangerous—to choose his time and place; and not make such a public display of it. But then, without the sash around his waist and his people watching eagerly for the outcome, it was so extremely possible that his courage would have failed him again, for all his noble words about risk-taking. All these things he would tell Harry later. "But Richard has the face of your family, though he has not the eyes, and I would have guessed who he must be."

"Jack would like better than anything in the world to ride a Hill horse." Harry heard the beginning of his laugh far inside him before it burst out into the air; and she raised her head and looked inquiringly into his face. He shook his head at her and said, "My heart, your Jack shall have a hundred of our horses, and welcome," and then he bent his head and kissed her, and she drew him down beside her. A few minutes later Narknon, with an offended growl, climbed off the bed and stalked away.

Mathin was a trifle paler than usual when Corlath's army mounted and set their faces to the east, but he sat easily on Windrider and looked all around him as if reminding himself of what he thought he had lost; but most often he looked at Harimad-sol, riding at the king's right hand. The army moved slowly, for there were litters to carry, and they need not hurry. Even the desert sun overhead seemed glorious rather than relentless, and their king was to marry the damalur-sol who bore Gonturan the Blue Sword, and the Northerners had been defeated, at least for their time, and probably for their children's time, and perhaps even their grandchildren's; and Damar was still theirs. And it was as well also that the army was moving slowly for the sake of Jack Dedham and Richard Crewe, who were riding Hill horses, and finding Hill horsemanship a little more difficult than Harry had, and were dismayed at the idea of being able to stop a horse at full gallop simply by sitting down a little harder in the saddle. Harry, when she was not with Corlath, rode circles around them and teased them and made Sungold do all sorts of fancy passes and turns, not really to annoy them but only because she could not contain herself for happiness. Sungold bucked and bounced till even Harry had to clutch at his mane to stay on—Jack had the temerity to laugh—and behaved not at all like a well-schooled war-horse, and seemed just as happy as she.