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IT TOOK THEM three days of Talat’s careful walking to couide to go on and face the dragon; three days complicated by the fact that Aerin didn’t dare dis near a ca

She was deadly tired each evening; her ankle throbbed fro; and she realized how ht It was hard tohurt, and she ate dutifully because eating was so Talat graze He had eaten everything edible along the banks of their strea soreat enthusiasrass they now ca the day she would coain and look around and realize that she had drifted away Sonize the trees around her, common Damarian trees whose shapes and leaf patterns had been familiar to her since childhood Occasionally she woke up and found herself collapsed forward on Talat’s neck But he would not let her fall off, and she didn’t He carried her steadily, his ears pricked and cautious; and he seemed to feel no hesitation about their direction

"Well, ," 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 fro, 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 ht she looked through hedgerows to planted fields, crops waving green and gold in the sunlight She tried tothat had she not killed Maur - whatever it may have cost her personally - the crops would have been black by now, and the faron’s meat But the comfort was cold, and she could not feel it; she was too deep in dread for as to coain that afternoon, her good hand wrapped in Talat’s ht not fall forward and hurt her burnt arhed Aerin shook herself aith the sound; and he neighed again, and tre and challenge as the Daht, 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 hialloped 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 deterrew

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 soh, 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 froround, and Tor and Arlbeth sat frozen on their horses, helplessly watching

She re a sling for her, that shedown, but while she lay down obediently there was no coled out of her litter and went gri what he had done that his lady had been taken away fro an ar 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’sas she was riding hi She spoke into his neck: "There’s no ease in being carried I would rather ride" And so she rode, and the co 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 hihtened herself in the saddle; and she remembered the description of Gorthold’s death in Astythet’s History, and hoas carried, bleeding from many mortal wounds, into the City, where all folk saluted hi, as his cousin; and all Darim sort of s into the City a hero, you knoord of your victory has gone before you, and the on’s awakening is there withthereat 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 , but at therew 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 seethe backs of their hands to their foreheads and flicking out the fingers in the Dahter’s heel A breeze wandered aht shone pitilessly on her scarred face; but the audience was still silent, and ers

When they ca’s arh for the honor guard to file in behind the king’s daughter when Talat caround lay Maur’s head, and around the head more ash fell and collected in little pools She blinked at the trophy soht 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 h skin re the head and flicked bits of it loose, they fell to the ground as ash The parted jaith their black grin leered at her

She held to Talat’s ht 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 ar 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 deepseat that overlooked the rear of the courtyard, toward the stables Hornmar led Talat under heroccasionally, 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 seehter, and red fire shivered deep inside it

At last she grew restless, as she had in the dragon’s valley, and she began to creep about the castle, and visit Talat in the stables He had his old stall back, and Arlbeth’s young Kethtaz had actually been ive his predecessor pride of place Talat was very conscious of eated his croup carefully with her fingers; the weals froh she could still see the in the opposite direction fro in vigorously if unevenly, and Teka one day combed it out from a center spot at the top of her skull and cut in a neat arch around her face, for it was no longer curly Aerin looked at herself in the hed "I look like a boy"

"No," said Teka, sweeping up the triirl with a boy’s haircut"

Aerin stared at herself She had avoided mirrors as she had avoided everyone but Tor and Teka and her father, and the healers they sent, who could not be got rid of; and now that she finally dared herself to look in a mirror she was surprised at what she saw The shiny scars across her left cheek - and a few flecks, like freckles, on the other side of her face, where the hot dragon blood had splashed her - were visible but not disfiguring Her scalp was still tender on the left, and she had to use her hairbrush tentatively; but her hair was coh it was several shades darker and alht But her face was drawn and pale, except for two spots of red high on her cheekbones; and there were lines on her face that had not been there before, and her eyes looked as old as Arlbeth’s, "I look a lot more like my mother now, don’t I?" she said

Teka paused with the cloth she’d used to gather the hair clippings dangling fro she caain Tor was there too, and was not able to stop hi her He was so glad to see her walking, and with her hair grown out and coed not to think about how little there was of her to hug, how frail she felt; how each breath she took see She smiled up at him, and he saw the red spots on her cheekbones, but he looked only at her smile

She asked about Nyrlol, and Arlbeth said that he had been humble - no, craven - in a way Arlbeth had disliked evenbluster; it was as if the threat of secession had never happened Nyrlol had see at sounds no one else heard He apologized, and clai well; that there was tooon his borders and he seemed able to do too little about it Arlbeth, with the army at his back, had made the correct noises, and after a visit of the shortest possible length consistent with courtesy, headed for ho a division of his army behind to help watch the Border near Nyrlol’s land for hirateful, and thatmore he could do

"I have no doubt that ere lured away from the City just then for a purpose," said Arlbeth, "and the best I could do then was return as quickly as the horses could run I had alotten Maur"

"I hadn’t," murmured Tor, and his eyes flicked up to Aerin’s face and away again, and she knew that he had guessed she would ride back with the on alone

Arlbeth frowned into his cup "But if the only purpose was to set the Black Dragon upon us, why then does the feeling of a dark fate still cling around us? For it does"

"Yes," said Tor

There was a silence, and Arlbeth said at last: "We can only hope that Aerin-sol has so disturbed their plans" - and by their his auditors knew he h to prepare, and strength enough in reserve"

Neither Arlbeth nor Tor ever told her what they had thought when they first saw her, bent and burnt and coughing blood onto Talat’s white neck; and Aerin did not ask All else that was said on the subject occurred that sa’s sithout the king’s wishes, Aerin-sol," her father said gravely