“And Luthe.” The voice paused a moment. “I knew Luthe very well once.” Even through the gentle gracious melody of that voice she heard the malice behind it when it spoke Luthe’s name; she was only too well aware of malice, for it was eating a hole in her breastbone now. Furthermore, it was her own voice she listened to, for all its beauty, and she knew, when it roughened, where the roughness came from. “Luthe, who doesn’t dare leave his mountain any more. Little Luthe, never one of Goriolo’s favorite pupils, for he was always a little slow—although he sometimes disguised this rather cleverly, I must admit, with his own unique style of obstinacy.”
Do you think I like sending a child to a doom like this, one I know I cannot myself face? It was as though she were hearing the words for the first time, so loudly did they crash in her ears; Luthe’s voice was not mellifluous, like her red-haired uncle’s; Luthe’s voice was raw and angry, like the spot on her chest.
“Luthe, and his games with children, for children’s games were as much as he was capable—”
“Now that,” Aerin said quite clearly and calmly, “is nonsense. If you can do no better than cheap insults, then the prophecy over-estimates you. I shall tell Luthe that he could have met you himself.”
“The prophecy!” howled Agsded; and he seemed to grow till he towered over her, his robes billowing, his hair red as fire; and dimly Aerin thought. His hair is the color mine used to be before Maur burned most of it off. My hair isn’t that color any more.
Agsded reached for his sword, and Aerin raised Gonturan again and shook her, and blue fire ran down her edge and over Aerin’s hand and wrist, and onto the floor; and where it touched, cracks appeared, and ran in tiny rays in all directions. “You may be right about Tor and my father,” Aerin went on conversationally. “You may even be right about me. But you are wrong about Luthe.”
The red sword whipped out of its scabbard and flew at her, but Gonturan flashed to stop it, and where the blades crashed together more blue fire dripped and splashed, and there was another series of small star-shaped cracks in the floor.
“Fool,” boomed Agsded’s voice, and it was velvety no longer. “Fool. The prophecy said that only one of my blood may face me, and so you have come this far; but your Damarian blood cannot stand against the one who wears the Hero’s Crown.”
Aerin raised her eyes to his forehead, and where she had not seen it before, the dull grey circlet that was Damar’s dearest prize and treasure was bound closely to his brows. She could not help the shudder that ran through her, for what he said was true. Luthe, she thought, you should have come with me; you could have been the un-Damarian half.
The red sword bit at her again, and again Gonturan pulled her arm into place in time to deflect it. Yet even as death awaited her so near she could see its red jaws opening, her clearest thought was still a desperate desire to find a way to make her chest stop itching. I wonder if one can still itch if one is dead, she thought; and her arm jerked once more as Gonturan parried another slash. But the red sword almost broke through her guard, and her arm seemed suddenly weak; and she did not know if it was the fact of her opponent’s wearing the Crown, or only her knowledge of the fact; and her eyes were drawn up again to his forehead. But she could not bear to look at that face for long, her own face, with wide mad green eyes, and hair red as fire. ... My hair is not that color any more, she told herself, and my eyes are not those eyes, and I am not the man before me. I am not he, she thought; my mother fled him as I now face him, for what he is and we are not. And yet she was grateful that she could not look often into the face which was not hers, for she must watch the flicker of the red sword.
“Who taught you swordplay?” thundered Agsded. “No mortal can best me.” And the red sword looked like seven swords as it swooped down on her again; and yet Gonturan was seven swords in return, and struck them all away. I’m afraid you are no longer quite mortal—mortal, Aerin thought. She laughed, and the red blade wavered when she laughed; perhaps the laugh of his sister’s daughter echoed in Agsded’s brain as horribly as his did in Aerin’s. And as the red blade hesitated, Gonturan struck Agsded’s shoulder. An inhuman scream went up, from the red mage or from the blue sword, Aerin could not tell; and then Agsded’s sword came for her again, more swiftly than before, and Aerin could not even follow with her eyes as the two swords caught at each other, thrust and slammed and were hurled apart. “My Damarian blood,” she panted, “uncle, is not so cursed as you think; for I have swum in the Lake of Dreams, and I—am—no—longer—quite—mortal.”
“It will avail you naught,” he cried, and leaped back, and threw up his hands; and fire leaped up all around him. Fire. Real fire; red and orange, with hot thick smoke, and bright terrible arms that reached out for her. Aerin quailed, and there was no black cat nor white horse to help her. This fire was no mage illusion; she could smell it, and the heat of it beat against her face; and again Gonturan’s blue fire flickered and dulled in her hand.
Agsded laughed; and within the ring of fire he thrust his sword back into his belt and crossed his arms. “Well? Fire may still burn those who are—no—longer—quite—mortal.” He laughed again, and Aerin flinched from his voice even as from the licking flames; and the grey Crown was red in the firelight.
Someday, she thought tiredly, I must learn to go forward of my own free will. If only my horrible chest would let me think clearly. She raised Gonturan, and the blue fire cascaded over her; it was cool against her face. She closed her eyes—closing my eyes is stupid, she thought—and jumped into the fire.
It hissed and roared around her, but she ran forward and opened her eyes, and her uncle was just a little late pulling his sword free again, and Gonturan rose for a slash at his neck, the cut she had missed the last time. This time the blade ran true, and struck him squarely.
And bounced off with a harsh ugly sound, and with a nick in her edge; and the recoil was such that she twisted out of Aerin’s grasp and fell to the fiery floor, and Aerin fell with her.
“I am not precisely mortal either,” said Agsded, and grinned his grin again; and Aerin, looking up at the red sword that was about to sink into her, thought, I imagine I’ll be mortal enough when struck through the heart; I wonder what mage trick it is he uses—or perhaps it’s because he’s wearing the Crown. And because she had nothing else left to do, and because she was still holding the wreath in her other hand, she threw it at him.
He screamed. It was a scream that cut across all the senses, sight and touch and taste and smell as well as hearing; it was a scream sharper than any sword and as bitter as hatred, as fierce as a hunting folstza and as implacable as winter. Aerin had only the dimmest recollection, through the scream, of the surka wreath touching his face, falling over his head to ring his shoulders; of the dragon stone shining as brilliantly red as Agsded’s sword had been, but which now turned to the dull rusted color of old blood; of a smaller fire, within the ring of fire, rising around Agsded higher and higher till he disappeared from view, as the fire he had thrown between himself and Aerin sank and darkened and died; and still the scream went on. Aerin staggered to her feet, and found that she was clutching Gonturan with both hands; and that the palm of one was wet with her own blood where she had seized unwarily at Gonturan’s edge; and that her hands and arms glowed blue, and as she bent her head the hair that fell forward around her face was also blue, and when she looked down, her boots were blue, and there was a pool of blue spreading around them, and as the blue widened so did the tiny hairline cracks in the floor, which spread and crackled and sputtered as she looked, with Agsded’s scream still beating at her. Then the scream and the short sharp sounds the floor was making rose together in a tumultuous roar, and the stones on which Aerin stood gave way, and she fell, and saw the walls toppling in on her. It would be pleasant to faint at this point, she thought, but she didn’t, and she continued to clutch Gonturan, but she shifted the bloody hand to join the other on the hilt. When I land, she thought, I will fall over and cut myself in half on my own sword; but the fall may already have killed me. The sound of the mountain tower falling was so loud she could no longer make room for her thoughts, and so she gave up thinking and blackness hurtled past her, and heavy fragments of that blackness fell with her but did not touch her, and she wondered if she might fall forever, as she had climbed, and thus perhaps become the God That Falls, or perhaps the God That Climbs and Falls.