“Maur,” he said gently. “We wish to honor you for your slaying of Maur.”
Tor and Arlbeth both knew she wanted nothing of the sort, but she said grimly, “I thank you. Name the day.”
The hush that fell on the great half that evening when she entered it was worse even than what she had imagined. It should have been little different than it ever had been, for her father’s court had never been easy in the presence of his daughter; but it was different nonetheless. Her head buzzed with the silence, and her dim vision dimmed further, till the people around her were no more than vague hulks draped in the bright colors of their court clothing. She wore a long brown dress, high in the collar, and with sleeves that fell past her wrists; and while there was much embroidery on it, the threads were black and darker brown, and she went bareheaded, and wore only one ring, on her right hand. She looked around, and the hulks turned slowly away from her, and she took her place at her father’s side. The talk started up again, but she did not hear the words of it; she heard the broken flickering fear beneath it, and calmly she thought: It is I that they are afraid of.
Maur’s ugly black skull had been hung high on one wall of the great hall, whose ceilings were three stories tall. It had been placed there by some other direction, for she had had nothing to do with it, nor would have wanted it there had she been asked. Even in the great hall it was huge; she looked at it, and it she could see clearly, and it leered at her. I am the shape of their fear, it said, for you dared to slay me. I am the shape of their fear, the thing said.
But I am lame and crippled from our meeting, she replied; I am human like them, for I was sorely wounded.
The thing laughed; the laugh came as a ripple of heavy silence that muffled the uncertain conversation in the hall; but only Aerin heard. Ah, but you lived, and you slew me; that is enough, and more than enough, for I was as big as a mountain and might have swallowed all of Damar at last. The villagers who saw me before you came—the man who guided you to me—all say that when I reared up, my head touched the stars; that nothing human could have stood against me. They say it who saw me, with awe and gratitude for their deliverance; but that is not how the story travels.
She heard the rhythm of the voices around her; the broken rhythm of syllables under the words they said aloud. Witch, they said. Witchwoman’s daughter.
But I saved them, she said desperately. I saved them.
The head howled: Better you had not! Better that they lay now in my belly’s pit!
See how the first sola still looks at the witchwoman’s daughter, for all that her face is haggard and scarred; see how he looks at her, as if he does not wish to look at anything else.
As if he cannot look at anything else. The old ones among them said: Remember how the king looked at the witch, how she spelled him to sire her a child that she might be born again with greater strength, for the blood of Damar would run in the child’s veins with her own witch’s wickedness!
Witch woman’s daughter. Nothing human could have killed Maur. She will swallow Damar as the Black Dragon never could have; for we could have hidden in deep caves till it slept again.
Shall we let her spell the first sola?
We remember the old tales of Maur. We remember.
Witchwoman’s daughter.
And the words spoken aloud: The North. The raiders from the North, they come oftener, stronger. Why is Nyrlol afraid of his own shadow? He, who was never known for wisdom, was never known either for lack of courage. Mischief.
Witchwoman’s daughter.
You had done better to let me eat you! the thing on the wall shrieked.
It was only luck that I slew you! she cried. I only dared because I knew I was already dead!
The thing laughed.
Witchwoman’s daughter.
It was only luck!
Was it? said Maur’s head. Was it?
Aerin stood up abruptly and said, “You must excuse me.” She turned and walked, slowly, for she still limped a little, toward the gaping door that would let her out of the halt. Tor was at her elbow. “Aerin?”
“Let me be!” she cried. “Go talk to your guests! Don’t come near me!” She began to cough, and still she ran from him, staggering, not caring that she limped in the sight of the entire hall, through the door and away.
Chapter 15
SHE COULD NOT SLEEP, and she coughed, and blood spotted her pillow; and the fever that came and went, and would not leave her alone even as her burns healed and her hair grew, came again that night, and light-headedly she relived the scene in the hall; and she heard the thing laugh, and heard the court say, Witchwoman’s daughter.
Near dawn she dreamed of the tall blond man she had seen once before, while she slept in the dragon’s valley. He did not speak to her, not did he seem to know she watched him. Perhaps he is only a dream, her dreaming self thought; but she looked at the way his blond eyelashes caught the sunlight, at the freckles on the backs of his hands, at the way the little fingers curled under the base of the cup he held, at the steam that rose from the cup. He blinked when it wafted into his eyes.
Where? her dreaming self thought. If he exists, where?
She woke, coughing.
He had said he would help her. How could he help her? He had said he would tell her how she could aid Damar. Damar didn’t seem to like her aiding it. She turned onto her back and stretched till her throat and chest lay flat and straight; sometimes that eased the coughing. She listened to the gurgling rasp of her breathing; no matter how shallowly she breathed, still the air rustled in her lungs. She thought dispassionately, This cough will kill me before too long, and Maur will have slain me after all.
Perhaps the man in my dream could cure my cough.
If she could find him. If he existed. She was so tired; she could not imagine what it was like not to be tired. She fell asleep again, listening to her breath rattle in her chest like dead leaves, and woke tired. She stared into the canopy over her head for several minutes, her eyes tracing the graceful embroidered forms of the galloping horses and their super-naturally long manes and tails, the manes almost like wings, the grass underfoot almost like clouds.
The fever would not let her go. She could not get out of bed that day, nor the next. Tor came to see her, and she would not speak to him; but he came again, and she remembered she had one thing she needed to say to him. “What happened?” he asked her over and over again.
At last she said, “I grew dizzy,” but would not say more; and Tor fell silent, holding her hand in a hand almost as feverish as hers.
It was only luck, she had pleaded with Maur. Was it? Maur’s head had answered her.
“Aerin.” Tor’s voice. What was it she needed to say to him?
“Will you ... take Maur’s head off the wall ... and put it ... somewhere far away ... that no one may see it?”
“Of course,” he said anxiously. “Of course. It shall be done today.”
She remembered little clearly after that; she saw Teka’s face bent over hers, and Tor’s, and her father’s, and others’ whom she dimly remembered as the healers who had done her so little good before. She did not know how many days or weeks she spent this way; and then one night she woke again from an especially vivid dream of the blond man.
“You stupid woman—climb off your deathbed while you still can, and come to me.”
The words still rang in her ears. She sat up slowly. She drew on her boots, and her leggings and tunic; she picked up the red stone on the table by her bed, and thrust it into the breast of her shirt. She looked at her sword—the king’s sword—hanging over her bed, and did not touch it, she fumbled for a cloak, and drew it over her shoulders. She had to sit down on the edge of her bed again and catch her breath. I must tell them where I am going, she thought. But I don’t know where I am going.