The Hero And The Crown
Part One Chapter 6

 
TALAT GREW FIT and shining: He was always a little short with the right hind when she mounted, but it took less and less time for him to work out of it. She rode him without gear for weeks, while the saddle and bridle shed oil all over the inside of her wardrobe, for she found herself superstitiously reluctant to use it - as if something would be spoiled, or a gift would become a duty, once tack officiated over their rides together. "I suppose even the pleasantest convalescence must come to an end someday," she said to him one evening; and the next day she brought all his gear and her boy's sword out to the pasture. He sniffled them all over, slowly and then with enthusiasm, and danced with impatience while she tacked him up, till she pounded on his shoulder with her fist and yelled at him to behave.
He moved off proudly and obeyed each command at once; and yet she found the jingling of the various bits and buckles annoying, and the reins took up too much of her hands and her concentration. "How does one deal with a sword and these thrice-blasted reins?" she said to the small white ears. "There must also be a way to hang the rotten thing so it doesn't bang into you when you're not using it. I carry the reins in my teeth - and accidentally strangle myself in them - and meanwhile I can't shout blood-curdling war cries of Victory! and For Damar! to bring terror into the hearts of my enemies, with my mouth full of reins." As they stood, she pulled the sword from its scabbard and swung it experimentally just as Talat turned his head to snap at a fly on his shoulder, and the sword tangled itself in the reins till Talat could not straighten his neck again, but remained with his head bent around and one reproachful dark eye fixed on his rider, and the blunt blade snuggled along his cheek.
"Ah, hells," she said, and yanked the sword free. One rein parted. Talat stood, either waiting for directions or afraid to move; the short end of the cut rein dangled a few inches beneath his chin, and he ducked his head and grabbed it, and chewed it thoughtfully.
"We did just fine without," she said furiously, dismounted, tore the bridle off and dumped it on the ground, holding her unwieldy sword in the other hand like a marauding bandit. She remounted and dug her legs into Talat's sides - harder than she meant for the saddle skirts muddled her. Talat, delighted, set off on his first gallop since the day he was wounded; and Aerin had wrought better than she knew, for he had the strength and stamina now to gallop quite a distance.
He tore across his pasture. Aerin failing to collect either her wits or her stomach, which seemed to be lying back on the ground with the bridle; and then she discovered that just as the saddle had made her misjudge how hard to squeeze, so now its bulk made it very easy for Talat to ignore her as she tried to tell him to stop by sitting heavily on his back. The fence loomed up before them; "Oh no," moaned Aerin, dropped her sword, and grabbed two handfuls of mane; and they were up and over. The take-off was a lurch, but they came down lightly, and Aerin discovered that while her ex-convalescent was still disinclined to stop, he was willing to listen to her legs again; and eventually the circles got smaller, and the gallop more like a canter, and finally when she sat back he came down docilely to a walk.
But his head and tail were still up, and he reared suddenly, and Aerin frantically clutched him around the neck. He neighed, and struck out with his forelegs. Aerin had seen him do this years before, when her father rode him, for war-horses were trained to do battle as well as to carry their riders into it; and she had seen them and others of the cavalry on the practice fields, and at the laprun trials. But it was a lot different, she found, when one was on the horse performing.
"Shh," she said. "If someone notices we're out here, there will be trouble." Talat bounced stiff-legged once or twice and subsided. "And how am I supposed to get you back into your pasture again, dimwit?" she addressed him, and his ears flicked back for her voice. "The gate is right under anyone's eyes watching from the barn; and there's always someone in the barn." His ears twitched. "No, we will not jump back in." She was shaking all over; she felt that her legs were clattering against Talat's sides.
She turned him back toward the far side of the pasture again, feeling that anything was better than being seen; and they made their way to the place where Talat had made his leap. Aerin dismounted. "You stay right here or I'll chop your other three legs," she told him. He stood still, watching her, as she clambered cautiously up the low rock wall and the wooden rails above it. She cast around a few minutes, and found her discarded sword; came back to the fence and began banging the end of the top rail with the hilt till it slid protestingly out of the post and fell to the ground. The other followed. Aerin examined her blisters grimly, and wiped her sweating face. Talat was still watching her intently, and had not stirred a hoof. Aerin grinned suddenly. "Your war-horse training is no joke, hey? Only the best carries the king." He wrinkled his nose at her in a silent whicker. "Or even a third-rate first sol, now and then."
She stepped back from the fence. "Now, you. Come here." She beckoned him as if he were one of the king's hunting dogs. He bunched his feet together and sprang over the low stones, the stirrups clanging against his sides. She ground the rails back into the post holes again, picked up the sword, and with Talat following - she felt she'd had enough of riding for one day - they walked back to the pool and the mounting stone, and the heap of bridle and scabbard.
Talat was very lame the next day, and Aerin chased him on foot for three days to make him trot and work the soreness out before mounting him again. She reverted to riding him without saddle or bridle, but she took her sword with her, and slashed at dangling leaves and cobwebs - and fell off occasionally when a particularly wicked swing overbalanced her - and learned to hang on with her legs when Talat reared. They also cantered endlessly to the left to strengthen the weak leg, although some days she had to yell and thump on his shoulders and flanks to make him pick up the left lead at all.
She asked Tor, idly, what cues the war horses knew for their leaps and plunges, and Tor, who did not know about Talat and feared what she might be doing, warily told her. Talat nearly unseated her the first time she asked him these things, and didn't settle down again for days, hoping for more signals to do what he loved best, going off in corvettes when she only wanted him to trot.
The bridle she did not return to her wardrobe, but instead only threw it under her bed out of sight. (Teka, who had rearranged the wardrobe to allow for saddle oil, wondered about this new arrangement, but on the whole found it preferable, since court dresses were not kept under the bed.) She pulled the stirrups off the saddle and began to wrench the stitching out of its bottom, pulled most of the stuffing out, and sewed what remained back together again.
She put the resulting wreck on Talat's back, sat on it, said hells, took it off, pulled it entirely to bits, and began painstakingly to redesign it to follow exactly the contours of Talat's back and her legs, which meant that for several weeks she was putting it on him and climbing into it maybe half a dozen times in an afternoon, and Talat was a bit cross about it. She also had to borrow leather-working tools from Hornmar. Her heart was in her mouth for the questions Hornmar had never asked her but might yet someday; but he gave her the tools silently and willingly.
Her saddle was finished at last. She had left the breastplate links on it so that Talat could still wear the royal insignia; and when she put the saddle and breastplate on him she was surprised at how handsome it looked.
"I did a good job on this," she said, staring at her handiwork; and she blushed, but only Talat was there to see.
Meanwhile the long-awaited wedding of Galanna and Perlith finally occurred, with Tor performing the functions of first companion to Perlith with a blank and sober face, and Galanna almost transcendent with gratified vanity, for the eyes of the entire country were upon her. She was as beautiful as summer dawn, in rose and gold and turquoise, her black hair bound only with flowers, pink and white and pale blue; but she made up for this uncommon self-restraint by wearing rings on every finger and two on each thumb, so that when she made the ritual gestures her hands seemed on fire as the gems caught the sunlight.
But it was also at this wedding that a new and troubling rumor about the king's daughter began, a rumor that Galanna did not have to start, for more eyes than hers observed and drew conclusions similar to hers without the spur of wounded pride and jealousy. The king's daughter, Aerin-sol, stood at her father's left hand, as was proper; she wore green, a long dress, the skirts nearly as full as Galanna's, but this was only to show her cousin proper respect. The lace of her bodice was modest, and she wore but two rings, one of the house of the king, and one her father had given her on her twelfth birthday; her hair was bound primly to the back of her neck, and she carried only a small yellow-and-white posy of ringaling flowers. Aerin would not have wished to outshine Galanna even if she could, and had argued with Teka over every stitch of the dress and every braid of her bound hair, and tried to get out of carrying flowers at all.
The king and his daughter stood to the right of the wedding pair, and the first companions stood across from them; and it was obvious to many pairs of eyes that Perlith's first companion's gaze rested not on the bride but on the king's daughter; and the irony was that had he not been standing first companion he would have been on the king's right hand, where he could not look at Aerin-sol whether he wished to or not, and so his secret might have been kept a little longer.
The rumor began that day, for the people at the wedding feast passed it among themselves, and took it home with them afterward, that the first sola was in love with the king's daughter; and that the witch's daughter would entrap the next king of Damar as her mother had entrapped her father; and a little breath of fear was reawakened - for Aerin's Giftlessness had been reassuring - and accompanied the rumor.
Galanna, who had hoped to make Tor just a little sorry after all that he had not married her, had her day of glory almost ruined when at last she noticed where her new husband's first companion's eyes were tending; but anger became her, so long as she kept her tongue between her lips. It was almost worth it, for a few days later one of her dumber but most well-meaning ladies mentioned, worriedly, to her that someone had said that Tor was falling under the spell of the witch woman's daughter, and that history was to repeat itself. "I don't quite know what she meant, do you?" said the lady, frowning. "Aerin-sol's mother was queen; it would be a most suitable match,"
Galanna laughed her most light-hearted laugh. "You are so young," she said caressingly. "It was a terrible scandal when Arlbeth married Aerin's mother. Didn't you know that Aerin's mother was from the North?"
The lady, who had grown up in a small town to the south, did not know, and her eyes opened wide; Galanna could read her eagerness to have an interesting fresh slice of gossip to slip into the conversation the next time she and her friends gathered together. "Oh, Arlbeth certainly married her," Galanna said gently, "but she wasn't exactly queen." She made it sound as if Arlbeth's only excuse for such a liaison was misguided passion and, blinded by that passion, perhaps he hadn't quite married her at all. She let this sink in a moment - the lady was very stupid, and had to be played carefully - and then, seeing dawning comprehension in the lady's eyes, sent her gently and kindly, that the comprehension would not be joggled loose again, about her business.
Aerin herself bore up under the wedding and the feast afterward as best she could, but as this meant that she withstood them stoically as a martyr might withstand torture, she did not notice either Tor's eyes or Galanna's fury - she was only too accustomed to ignoring Galanna whenever possible; the one thing she did observe about the bride was the twelve rings, which were hard to miss - nor did she notice any more than usual stiffness in the courtesy that those around her offered her. And Tor, who was either viewed as dangerously enamored and therefore to be treated with caution, or as pitiably misguided and thus to be protected - or, as a few implausibly simple souls believed, capable of deciding his own fate - did not know till much later all that he had betrayed.
Aerin peeled out of her fancy clothes and fancy manners and pelted off to the barns at the first opportunity, and thought no more about weddings.
She had taken some time away from her leather-working to begin experimenting with the fire ointment. Most of the ingredients she found easily, for they were common things, and a first sol's education included a little basic herb-lore - which Aerin had learned gladly as an escape from deportment and history. One or two things she asked Hornmar for, from his stock of horse cures; and he, thinking she wished perhaps to try some sort of poultice on Talat's weak leg, granted her the run of his medicines as he had his tool chest, and again asked no questions. She was aware of the great boon he offered her, and this time she couldn't help but look at him a little wonderingly.
He smiled at her. "I love Talat too, you know," he said mildly. "If I can aid you, you need only to ask."
Teka and the redroot were a little more difficult.
"Teka, what is redroot?" Aerin asked one afternoon as she applied an uneven patch to a skirt she had always detested, and glowered at the result.
"If you spent a quarter of the time about your mending that you have over that old saddle, you would be better turned out than Galanna," said Teka with asperity. "Rip that out and do it again."
Aerin sighed, and began to pick at the irregular stitches. "I suppose there's no point in mentioning that I have no desire to be better turned out than Galanna." She picked a moment in silence and added, "For that matter, Galanna never wears anything that has a patch or a tear."
Teka grinned. "No. She takes out a great gash and puts in a whole new panel of different cloth, and it's a new dress."
"I would like to make a new floor mop out of this thing," replied Aerin.
Teka lifted it out of Aerin's hands and squinted at it. "The color has not worn well," she explained, "but the cloth is sound. We could re-dye it." Aerin did not show any marked access of enthusiasm for this plan. "Blue perhaps, or red. Don't overwhelm me with your gladness, child. You're always wanting to wear red, in spite of your flaming hair - "
"Orange," murmured Aerin.
"You could do quite well with this skirt in red, and a golden tunic over - Aerin!"
"It would still have to be patched," Aerin pointed out.
Teka sighed heavily. "You would try the patience of Gholotat herself. If you will do something useful with that wretched bridle that has been lying under the bed for the last fortnight, I will re-dye your poor skirt, and put a patch on it that not even Galanna will notice - as if you cared."
Aerin reached out to hug Teka, and Teka made a noise that so sounded like "Hmmph." Aerin fell off the window seat and made her way over to the bed on her hands and knees and began to scrabble under it. She re-emerged only slightly dusty, for the hafor were dutiful floor-sweepers, held the bridle at arm's length and looked at it with distaste. "Now what do I do with it?" she inquired.
"Put it on a horse," Teka suggested in a much-tried tone.
Aerin laughed. "Teka, I am inventing a new way to ride. I don't use a bridle."
Teka, who still occasionally watched Aerin and Aerin's white stallion in secret to reassure herself that Talat would do her beloved child no harm, shuddered. It was the luck of the gods that Teka had not been watching the day Talat had jumped the fence. "I don't want to hear about it."
"Someday," Aerin went on with a bold sweep of her empty hand, "I shall be famous in legend and story - " She stopped, embarrassed to say such things even to Teka.
Teka, holding the skirt to the light as she made deft invisible stitches around the patch, said quietly, "I have never doubted it, my dear."
Aerin sat down on the edge of the bed with the bridle in her lap and looked at the fringe on the bed curtains, which were the long golden manes of the embroidered horseheads on the narrow canopy border, and thought of her mother, who had died in despair when she found she had borne a daughter instead of a son.
"What is redroot?" she asked again.
Teka frowned. "Redroot. That's - um - astzoran. Red-root's the old term for it - they used to think it was good for some things."
"What things?"
Teka glanced at her and Aerin bit her lip. "Why do you want to know?"
"I - oh - I read a lot in the old books in the library while I wasn't ... feeling quite well. There was some herb-lore, and they mentioned redroot."
Teka considered, and some of her thoughts were similar to Tor's when Aerin had asked him to teach her swordplay. Teka had never thought about whether Aerin's fate had more to do with what Aerin was or what Damar was, or for reasons beyond either; Teka merely observed that Aerin's fate was unique. But she knew, knew better even than the cousin who loved her, that Aerin would never be a court lady; not like Galanna, who was a beautiful termagant, but neither like Arlbeth's first wife, Tatoria, whom everyone had loved. None of the traditions of Arlbeth's court could help the king's daughter discover her fate; but Teka, unlike Aerin herself, had faith that the destiny was somewhere to be found. She hesitated, but she could remember nothing dangerous about the no longer valued redroot.
"Astzoran doesn't grow around here," said Teka; "it is a low weedy plant that prefers open meadows. It spreads by throwing out runners, and where the runner touches the earth a long slender root strikes down. That is the redroot." Teka pretended great concentration upon her patch. "I might take a few days to ride into the meadows beyond the City and into the Hills; I am reminded that there are herbs I need, and I prefer to gather my own. If you wish to come, I will show you some astzoran."
Teka asked no questions when Aerin rolled up a small herb bundle of her own and tied it to Kisha's saddle during their journey, a bundle that included several long thready roots of astzoran, and if any of the outriders noticed (for Teka only rode at all under duress, and even on her slow, sleepy, elderly pony she felt much safer with several other people around), they said nothing either.
The ointment recipe, Aerin found, was not as exact as it might be. She made one mixture, spread some of it on one finger, and thrust the finger into a candle flame - and snatched it out again with a yelp. Three more mixtures gained her three more burnt fingers - and a terrific lecture from Teka, who was not, of course, informed as to the details of why Aerin seemed intent on burning her fingers off. After that she used bits of wood to smear her trial blends on; when they smoked and charred, she knew she had not yet got it right.
After the first few tries she sighed and began to keep careful notes of how each sample was made. It was not an exercise natural to her, and after she'd filled several sheets of parchment with her tiny exact figures - parchment was expensive stuff, even for kings' daughters - she began to lose heart. She thought: If this mess really worked, everyone would know of it; they would all use it for dragon-hunting, and-would have been using it all along, and dragons would no longer be a risk - and that book would be studied and not left to gather dust. It is foolish to think I might have discovered something everyone before me had overlooked. She bowed her head over her burnt twig, and several hot tears slipped down her face onto her page of calculations.