“Well, my friend, you know what you are doing,” she whispered to Talat, his ears cocked back to listen, when at last they reached the crossroads. “It wasn’t I that got us here.”
When they set out from the crossroads again the next morning, the way opened up. She had not remembered that the narrow path became a small roadway so soon; but that had been when she still had her hair and the use of all her limbs, and open spaces had held no terrors for her. The mountains climbed steeply to their left, but on their right she looked through hedgerows to planted fields, crops waving green and gold in the sunlight. She tried to make herself feel better by thinking that had she not killed Maur—whatever it may have cost her personally—the crops would have been black by now, and the farmers, dragon’s meat. But the comfort was cold, and she could not feel it; she was too deep in dread for what was to come.
She was drifting in and out of awareness again that afternoon, her good hand wrapped in Talat’s mane that she might not fall forward and hurt her burnt arm, when Talat suddenly came to a halt and stiffened—and neighed. Aerin shook herself awake with the sound; and he neighed again, and trembled, and she knew he would have reared to cry greeting and challenge as the Damarian warhorses were taught, but he did not for her sake, and she closed her eyes briefly on tears of exhaustion and self-pity.
She could not see who approached; Talat told her that it was not merely someone, but someone that he knew, and thus it was necessarily someone from the City. But her vision had never quite cleared since she had fallen through the dragon-fire, and her left eye burned and leaked tears as she squinted and tried to look down the road. The effort made her dizzy, and the road leaped and heaved under her eyes. But she then saw that it was not the road that heaved, but riders on the road who galloped toward her; and when Talat neighed again, someone answered, and she saw the lead horse’s head toss upward as he neighed, and finally she recognized him: Kethtaz. And Tor’s mare, Dgeth, galloped beside.
Aerin threw her own head up .in panic, and the scabs on her face pulled and protested. Her right hand scrabbled at the collar of her tunic, and pulled a fold of her cloak up over her head for a hood; and her fingers briefly touched the left side of her head where a determined stubble grew.
Her father and her cousin and the riders with them were upon her almost at once, and Arlbeth called out to her, but she did not answer, for her croaking voice could not have been heard above the sound of the hoofbeats; and then Tor rode up beside her and said anxiously, “Aerin, it is you?” but she delayed answering him till he reached over and seized her—by her left forearm. She screamed, except that she could not scream, but she made a hoarse awful sound, and Tor dropped his hand and said something she did not hear, for her scream made her cough, and she coughed and could not stop, and the bleeding began, and flecks of her blood dripped down Talat’s neck, and her body shook, and the cloak fell away from her and onto the ground, and Tor and Arlbeth sat frozen on their horses, helplessly watching.
She remembered little of the rest of the journey. They tried to rig a sling for her, that she might travel lying down, but while she lay down obediently there was no comfort in it, and at the first stop she struggled out of her litter and went grimly to Talat, who had been hovering nearby wondering what he had done that his lady had been taken away from him. She hung an arm over his neck and hid her face in his mane, ignoring the feel of it wisping against her left cheek. Tor followed her at once. “Aerin—” His voice was full of unshed tears, and her fingers tightened in Talat’s mane, dear cheerful Talat who felt that so long as she was riding him there was nothing too serious wrong. She spoke into his neck: “There’s no ease in being carried. I would rather ride.” And so she rode, and the company all went at Talat’s gentlest walking pace, and it was a long time before they reached the City.
When at last the stone City rose up before them from the forest, she felt for her cloak, and pulled it forward to shadow her face again, and her father, who rode at her side, watched her. She looked at him, and let the cloak slip back where it had lain, and straightened herself in the saddle; and she remembered the description of Gorthold’s death in Astythet’s History, and how he was carried, bleeding from many mortal wounds, into the City, where all folk saluted him as their savior; and he died in the castle of the king, who was his cousin; and all Damar grieved for his death.
A grim sort of smile touched Arlbeth’s mouth. “You’re riding into the City a hero, you know; word of your victory has gone before you, and the messenger who first brought the tale of the Black Dragon’s awakening is there with most of his village, and they are all vying among themselves to describe how great and wicked Maur was.”
“How did they know?”
Arlbeth sighed. “I didn’t ask. Several of them met us as we rode east toward the City, and we didn’t wait for details. Look between Talat’s ears; he knows all about this sort of thing; all you have to do is sit up. We’re just your honor guard.”
“But—” she began, but Arlbeth turned away and, indeed, as they neared the great gates, he and Tor dropped back, and Talat pretended to prance, but only pretended, so as not to joggle his rider. She did as her father told her, sitting straight and still in the saddle, and looking not quite between Talat’s ears where she might see something, but at them, and at his poll, where his forelock grew and lifted in the breeze when he tossed his head. The streets were quiet, but many people watched them as they rode by; and from the corners of her eyes she could see many of their audience touching the backs of their hands to their foreheads and flicking out the fingers in the Damarian salute to their sovereign but Arlbeth rode at his daughter’s heel. A breeze wandered among them and riffled Aerin’s ruined hair, and the sunlight shone pitilessly on her scarred face; but the audience was still silent, and motionless but for the right hands and the flicking fingers.
When they came to the courtyard of the castle-, rows and rows of the king’s army stood in a three-sided square, leaving a space large enough for the honor guard to file in behind the king’s daughter when Talat came to a halt. Before them on the ground lay Maur’s head, and around the head more ash fell and collected in little pools. She blinked at the trophy someone else had brought home for her. The skull around the empty eye sockets was now burnished bare and clean; and the bone was black. Her eyes trailed slowly down the long nasal bones and the ridged jaw, and she realized that much of the bone was showing; shreds only of the tough skin remained, and as the wind sidled along the head and flicked bits of it loose, they fell to the ground as ash. The parted jaws with their black grin leered at her.
She held to Talat’s mane with her right hand, and slipped slowly down his side, her left foot touching the ground first. Then Arlbeth was beside her, and he led her past Maur’s grinning skull, and the soldiers parted in a silent whiplash, a drill maneuver, and they came to the castle door; and then he turned to her and picked her up in his arms and carried her down the long corridors and up the stairs to her room, and to Teka.
There were healers in plenty who visited her after that; but none of them could do better for her burns than the kenet, and her ankle was healing of its own, and they could do nothing for her cough, nor for her trouble breathing. She spent her time in bed, or in the deep window seat that overlooked the rear of the courtyard, toward the stables. Hornmar led Talat under her window occasionally, and while she could not call down to him, it comforted her to see him. She tried to eat for Teka’s sake; she hadn’t realized before that there was no flavor to her food since she had tasted dragonfire, but she learned it now. And she took the dragon stone from the pocket she had made from a knot of cloth, and laid it on the table near her bed; it seemed as though when she stared at it, it grew brighter, and red fire shivered deep inside it.