“And a very long time falling.”
“And a very long time falling.”
Aerin said nothing more while she pulled Talat’s saddle off and dropped it by the fire, and rubbed his back dry, and checked his feet for small stones. “I suppose I should forgive you, then, for making me other than mortal,” she said.
“You might. I would appreciate it if you did.” He sighed. “It would be nice to claim that I knew this was going to happen all along, knew that your only chance of success in regaining your Crown was to do as I did. But I didn’t. Sheer blind luck, I’m afraid.”
He handed her a cup of malak, steaming hot, which she drank greedily; then stew on a thin metal plate, but she ate it so fast it had no time to burn her fingers, and then she had seconds and thirds. When she was finished at last, Luthe gave what remained to the king cat and queen dog, in carefully measured halves, on separate plates. Aerin heard his footsteps behind her as he returned from setting those two plates out, and she said, “Thank you.”
The footsteps paused just behind her, and she felt him bend over her, and then his hands rested on her shoulders. She put her own hands up, and drew his down, till he was kneeling behind her, and he bowed his head to press his cheek to her face. She turned in his arms, and put her own arms around his neck and raised her face and kissed him.
They remained near the fire far into the night, feeding it with twigs so that it would keep burning; the animals were all long since asleep, and even Talat was relaxed enough to lie down and doze. Luthe sprawled on his back with his head in Aerin’s lap, and she stroked his hair through her fingers, watching the thick curls wind around her fingers, stretch to their fullest length, and spring back again. “Is it so amusing?” said Luthe.
“Yes,” said Aerin, “although I should like it just as well if it were straight and green, or if you were bald as an egg and painted your head silver.”
She had not told him much of her meeting with her uncle, nor had she asked him any questions about him; but she could not say how much he guessed—or knew, in the same way he knew of her fire-starting—and she listened eagerly when he began to talk of Agsded, and of their school days together. The chill of hating someone with her own face eased as she listened, and eased still more at the sight of Luthe smiling up into her face as he talked; and at last she told him, haltingly, a little of what had passed between them.
Luthe looked wry, and was silent for a time, and they heard the soft contented moan of a dog stretching in its sleep. “Agsded was not entirely wrong about me,” he said at last. “I was stubborn, and no, frankly, I was not one of Goriolo’s most brilliant and promising pupils. But I survived on that stubbornness and stayed with my master long enough to learn more than most of the ones who had greater gifts to begin with and then went off and got themselves killed or became sheep farmers because a mage’s life is such a grim and thankless one.
“I was also always at my worst when Agsded was around, for he was one of those glittering people whose every gesture looks like a miracle, whose every word sounds like a new philosophy. You’ve a bit of that yourself, valiantly as you seek to hide it.
“But I don’t know that he and I are so unequal in the end; for as I made mistakes in ignorance, or obstinacy, he made mistakes in pride ... .”
“You haven’t asked me how I—how he lost and I won,” said Aerin, after another pause.
“I have no intention of asking. You may tell me or not as you wish, now or later.”
“There is something at least I wish to ask you.”
“Ask away.”
“It requires you move; I need to reach my saddlebags.”
Luthe groaned. “Is it worth it?”
Aerin didn’t mean to laugh, but she did anyway, and Luthe smiled languorously, but he did sit up and free her. “This,” she said, and handed him the charred wreath and its red stone.
“The gods wept,” said Luthe, and no longer looked sleepy. “I should have thought you might have this. I am the earth’s most careless teacher and Goriolo would have my head if he were around to collect it.” He parted the dry vines and spilled the red stone into his hand. It gleamed in the firelight; he rolled it gently from one hand to the other. “This makes your Hero’s Crown look like a cheap family heirloom.”
“What is it?” Aerin asked, nervously.
“Maur’s bloodstone. The last drop of blood from its heart—the fatal one,” Luthe replied. “All dragons who die by bloodletting spill one of these at the last; but you’d need a hawk’s eyes to find that last curdled drop from a small dragon.”
Aerin shuddered. “Then you keep it,” she said. “I’m grateful for its wizard-defeating properties, and if I have the great misfortune ever to need to defeat another wizard, I shall borrow it from you. But I don’t want it around.”
Luthe looked at her thoughtfully, cradling it in his hand. “If you bound it into your Damarian Crown, it would make whoever wore it invincible.”
Aerin shook her head violently. “And be forever indebted to the memory of Maur? Damar can do without.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying. A dragon’s bloodstone is not for good or wickedness; it just is. And it is a thing of great power, for it is its dragon’s death—unlike its skull, which your folk treated like a harmless artifact. The bloodstone is the real trophy, the prize worth the winning; worth almost any winning. You’re letting your own experience color your answer.”
“Yes, I am letting my own experience color my answer, which is what experience is for. A dragon’s heartstone may not be goodness or evil from your vantage point, but I was born a simple mortal not that long ago and I remember a lot more about the simple mortal viewpoint than maybe you ever knew. A bloodstone is not a safe sort of emblem to hand over to any of us—them—even to the royal family of Damar.” She grimaced, thinking of Perlith. “Or even the sovereigns of Damar only. Even if it were used wisely, it cannot be well enough protected; for there will be others, like you, who know what it is—others with fewer mortal limits than Damarian kings. Look at the amount of harm Agsded did with the Crown alone.”
She paused and then added slowly, “I’m not even sure I believe you about its being a power of neither good nor evil. Our stories say that the dragons first came from the North. Almost all the evil that has ever troubled our land has come from there, nor has it often happened that something from there was not evil. You said once that Damarian royalty—any of us with the Gift, with kelar have a common ancestor with the Northerners. So why have they and their land turned out their way and we ours?
“No. I’ll not take the thing with me. You keep it, or I’ll bury it here before we go.”
Luthe blinked several times. “I’ve grown accustomed to being right—most of the time. Right all of the time in arguments with those who were born simple mortals not that long ago. I think—perhaps—in this case that you are right. How unexpected.” He smiled bemusedly. “Very well. I shall keep it. And you will know where to find it if ever you have the need.”
“I will know,” said Aerin. “But gods preserve me from needing that knowledge ever again.”
Luthe looked at her, a small frown beginning. “That’s not a good sort of vow to make, at least not aloud, where things may be listening.”
Aerin sighed. “You are indeed a terribly careless teacher. You never warned me about vow-making either.” The frown cleared, and Luthe laughed, and it turned into a yawn halfway.
“Aerin,” he said. “I’m wearied to death from dragging you backward through the centuries by the heel, and I must sleep, but it would comfort my rest to hold you in my arms and know I did succeed.”
“Yes,” said Aerin. “It was not a comfortable time I spent being so dragged, and I would be glad to know that I do not spend this night alone as I did that one.”