“You have waited too long to come here.”
Her smile ebbed away. “I have not been thinking clearly for long ... I had so many strange dreams.” She thought of Maur’s head speaking to her from a wall in her father’s castle, and a spasm crossed her face, and she raised one hand from the table to cover it., “It was easy,” she said through her fingers, “not to believe there was any use in them.”
There was silence between them; Aerin stirred, and dropped her hand, but her face was still sad. “Talat?” she asked.
“ ... is eating his head off in a meadow among my cattle. You need have no fear for him.”
“I have none.” Abruptly she asked: “Am I dying?”
“Yes.”
“Can you cure me?”
Luthe sighed. “I’m not sure. I think so. Had not ...”
“Had I not listened to Maur’s head, I would have come here long since,” Aerin said dreamily. “Had it not told me that I could not win against the Black Dragon, for no one could, I might have believed that there was enough left of my life to be worth healing; but I am Dragon-Killer, the least of my family, and if I have done a great thing, then I must die of it.” Her words floated on the air, half visible, like spider silk.
“You are not the least of your family,” Luthe said violently; “your mother was worth seven of her husband, and you’ve the courage she had, or she’d not have borne you, and you would not be standing here now after what Maur has done to you—and does to you yet.”
Aerin stared at him. “Does to me yet? ... They hung its skull in the great hall, and it spoke to me. I was stronger for a while, till I saw it there, and it spoke to me.”
“Spoke—? How could anyone, even a hundred generations later, be so stupid as to bring back the Black Dragon’s head as a trophy and hang it on a wall for folk to gape at? Surely—”
“I asked them to take it away—where no one might look at it again.”
Luthe paced twice around the table before he said anything. “Dragon-Killer indeed. They do not know how lucky they are to have had you. To have had you at all. And I am fool enough to want to give you back to them.”
Witchwoman’s daughter, Aerin thought. But I told Tor I would come back if I could.
Luthe sat wearily down. “I have sat up here too long; it is so pleasant, not meddling. Perhaps after a hundred generations it is possible to forget.”
“You knew my mother?”
“Yes.”
It was not an answer, nor a tone of voice, to encourage further questions. She looked down, and noticed that there was bread and fruit on the table she leaned on, and she picked up a handful of cora berries and began to eat them one at a time.
“She was like you, but smaller,” Luthe said after she finished the last berry and had begun on a piece of bread. “The burden she carried was different from yours, and it had worn on her for many years. When I knew her she had forgotten joy, although I believe Arlbeth gave her a little back again.”
Aerin’s low rough voice seemed to come from the high grey walls and not from the thin figure bowed over the table before him: “It is said in the City that she died of despair when she found she had had a daughter and not a son.”
“It is probably true,” Luthe said, his voice level. “She had courage enough, but little imagination; or she would not have forgotten joy, whatever the weight on her, and heavy enough it truly was.”
“Is it a weight a son might have lifted from her?”
“It is a weight any of her blood and courage may lift. Damn you,” he said, his voice rising. “Couldn’t you tell the difference between a true dream and dragon poison?”
“Evidently not,” she replied, and looked straight at him, although she still leaned on the table. “If it was so important, and the Black Dragon, even in death, so insidious, why did you not come and fetch me?”
There was a little pause, and Luthe smiled faintly. “I shan’t try to bully you again.”
“You have not answered my question.”
“I don’t wish to answer it.”
She could not help herself, and she laughed: he sounded so much like a sulky child. And her laugh rang out, clear and free, as it had not done since she had first heard the name of Maur.
Luthe looked at her in wonder. “Yes, I believe I can cure you. I cannot believe that I will be let fail.”
“I am glad to hear that,” she said, and found herself surprised that she spoke the truth, and her mouth curled in a wry smile. “I am glad.”
Luthe, watching her, knew both the truth of her words and the surprise they had caused her. She wandered around the little table till she came to another chair, and settled lightly into it; and with the smile still on her lips, her eyelids drooped, and she fell into the light doze of the chronic invalid, and sagged against the side of her chair, and Luthe watched over her sleep as Tor often had, and their thoughts were very similar. But Luthe had a choice to make, and a choice that he did not like; and it was a choice that must be made soon. Even as he thought of this choice, he knew the decision had already been made. But he was in no hurry that Aerin wake again, and he do what he must.
Chapter 16
SHE COULD NOT THINK where she was when she awoke. She was sitting in a tall wooden chair, and a fire burned in a hearth not far from her outstretched feet; and she was in a hall so vast she could not see the ceiling. It was not until Luthe walked between her and the hearth, to lay another log on the fire, that she remembered all that had passed; and she sighed.
He turned to her at once, his face still solemn and frowning. “Talat?” she said, as if he was always the first thing on her mind. Luthe, exasperated, said: “If you have so little faith in my ability to look after one fat, elderly, self-centered stallion, then I will show you proof.” He leaned over her again and picked her up, and strode out of the great grey hall.
“I can walk,” said Aerin, with dignity.
“No, you can’t,” said Luthe over the top of her head, “although at some date in the near future you will have the opportunity to relearn.”
He set her down, finally, on her own feet, at the edge of a wide unfenced meadow; several brown cows grazed in it, and at its farthest edge she saw one or two deer raise their heads and look toward her; but they did not seem alarmed.
Then she heard Talat’s great ringing neigh, and he galloped up to them, coming to a sliding halt at the last minute (Luthe muttered something that sounded like “Show-off”), and slobbered green and purple down her shirt. “Horses,” said Luthe with disgust; but she took a step away from his steadying hand to wrap an arm over Talat’s non-existent withers.
“Here, then,” said Luthe. “You can be of some use.” He boosted her onto Talat’s well-rounded back and walked off. “This way,” he said over his shoulder, and Talat pricked his ears and followed docilely. But Luthe’s long legs covered the ground at a good pace, and Talat had to stretch himself to keep up, for he would lose his dignity if he broke into a trot; and so his ears eased half back in disapproval of so rude a speed. Aerin laughed her small half-laugh, that she would not cough.
They came soon to the edge of a wide silver lake. Aerin blinked her dim eyes, for it was hard to determine where the land ended and the water began; the stones of the shore were a barely flatter, duller grey than the water’s gleaming surface. Talat stopped when his hoofs crunched on pebbles; it was the worst sort of footing for a horse with an unreliable leg. Luthe continued to the very edge of the water, and as he stopped just before he got his feet wet, the water gave a sudden little gloop and ripple, and a small outthrust finger of water reached out and splashed his toes. Luthe muttered something under his breath and the water replied by hunching itself up into ridges, and several tiny wave-edges crept humbly up the shoreline, but none quite touched his feet. “Here,” called Luthe.