The Hero and the Crown Read Online Free PDF Page A

to
    those of the royal house? True, it did not kill them; true, a leaf of it bestowed
    superhuman strength and the far-seeing eyes of a bird of prey to one of royal
    blood, or, if the Gift were strong enough, true visions; although this last was very
    rare. But when the effect wore off, in several hours or several days, the
    aftereffects were at best mortal exhaustion and blurred sight—sometimes
    permanent. Had she forgotten the tale of King Merth the Second, who kept

    himself on the battlefield for a fortnight, never resting, by the virtue of the surka,
    pausing only to chew its leaves at need? He won the battle, but he died even as
    he proclaimed his victory. He looked, when they buried him, like an old, old man,
    though he was only a year past twenty.
    “You must have eaten half the tree, from the size of the scar of the branch you
    took off. Enough for two or three Merths. Are you really trying to kill yourself?”
    Here his voice almost broke, and he had to get up and stamp around the room,
    and kick over a handy chair, which he then picked up again so that Teka wouldn’t
    notice and ban him from the sickroom. He sat on the edge of Aerin’s bed and
    brooded. “It must have been Galanna. It always is Galanna. What did she do this
    time?”
    Aerin stirred. “Of course it’s Galanna. I’ve been desperate to think of an excuse
    to get out of attending her wedding. It’s only a little over a season away, you
    know. This was the best that occurred to me.”
    Tor laughed—grudgingly, but it was a laugh. “Almost I forgive you.” He reached
    out and grabbed one of her hands. She refrained from telling him that his
    bouncing on the edge of her bed was making her feel sick, and that every time he
    moved she had to refocus her eyes on him and that made her feel more sick, and
    she squeezed his hand. “I guess she dared you to eat a leaf. I guess she told you
    you weren’t royal and wouldn’t dare touch it.” He looked at her sternly. She
    looked back, her face blank. He knew her too well, and he knew she knew, but
    she wouldn’t say anything; he knew that too, and he sighed.
    Her father visited her occasionally, but he always sent warning ahead, and as
    soon as she could creak out of bed without immediately falling down in a heap,
    she began receiving him in her sitting-room, bolt upright in a straight chair and
    hands crossed in her lap. To his queries she answered that she was feeling quite
    well now, thank you. She had learned that no one could tell how badly her vision
    wandered in and out of focus, so long as she kept still where the dizziness
    couldn’t distract her; and she kept her eyes fixed on the shifting flesh-colored
    shadows where she knew her father’s face was. He never stayed long, and since
    she closed her eyes when he came near to stoop over her and kiss her cheek or
    forehead (other people’s movements were almost as dizzying as her own) she
    never saw the anxious look on his face, and he didn’t shout at her, like Teka or
    Tor.
    When she was enough better to totter out of bed for a longer stretch than into
    a chair in her sitting-room, or rather when she hated her bed so thoroughly that

    Teka could no longer keep her in it, she had to make her way around the castle by
    feeling along the walls, for neither her eyes nor her feet were trustworthy.
    Creeping about like one of her father’s retired veterans escaped from the grace-
    and-favor apartments in the rear of the castle did nothing for her morale, and she
    avoided everyone but Teka, and to some extent Tor, even more single-mindedly
    than usual; and she stayed out of the court’s way altogether.
    Especially she avoided the garden at the center of the castle. The surka stood
    by the main gate, wrapped around one of the tall white pillars. Its presence was
    symbolic only; anyone might pass the gate without danger of touching its leaves,
    and there were several other ways into the garden. But she felt that the surka
    exhaled