A Hero Born

by Michael A. Stackpole

  Then, all of a sudden, it occurred to me that my father might well have had the same concerns and fears I did when he rode to the capital at my age. Though I harbored no illusions that I was in any way my father, I knew the capital had not killed him when he arrived. 1 decided, to assume that, were I true to myself, I could avoid embarrassment. Moreover, if anyone decided to fit me with a bumpkin badge, they would be more the fools for it than I.

  After supper I wandered down to the nearby stream to draw a bucket of water for washing up. A chill breeze nipped at my nose and ears, so I walked with my shoulders hunched against the cold and my eyes looking down at the twisting trail. In the twilight rocks and roots made the trek dangerous—if not to life and limb, certainly to one’s self-respect, as taking a tumble would undoubtedly make news faster in the camp than one’s return.

  I made it to the stream uneventfully, dunked my bucket into the water, and turned to make my way back to the camp when I saw her standing at the foot of the path. I nodded to her respectfully. “Evening, Miss …”

  Her icy blue eyes narrowed. “Who are you?”

  I must have looked like a fish that had just jumped from the stream and landed on the bank, because I stared at her gape-mouthed. That question didn’t stump me, of course, but her tone of voice surprised me completely. She demanded an answer of me, but an undertone of fear colored her words.

  The fear almost seemed appropriate for her because at first glance she could easily be taken for a timid thing. Small and fine-boned, she seemed almost childlike. Her flesh had a translucency that didn’t reveal the bones beneath it, but suggested she would shatter like porcelain if hit. Her large eyes contributed to the image of helplessness.

  The fire in them also worked against it. Her brilliantly red hair covered her shoulders and framed a face that was pretty now, but clearly would become beautiful as she grew into womanhood. There was no real mistaking her for a child, yet it was also hard to describe her as a woman. She was caught in that in-between stage of adolescence—a stage from which I was slowly emerging myself—so I felt a vague kinship with her.

  I closed my mouth, then opened it again to answer her. “My name is Lachlan. I come from Garik province, from Stone Rapids.”

  She shook her head vehemently, allowing her straight hair to lash back and forth against her pale throat. “No, that’s not it. That’s not what you are called in my dreams.”

  1 raised an eyebrow. “Your dreams?” I’d never had anyone say I’d been in their dreams before.

  “My dreams, yes.” She frowned. Glancing down at the ground, she touched two fingers of her left hand to her left temple. “I see things. In dreams and in visions, I see them. I have seen you as a warrior—older, fatter somewhat. You fight demons in Chaos.”

  “These things you see, are they of the past or of the future?”

  She shrugged her slender shoulders weakly, as if the green woolen cloak she wore had been woven of Cruach’s fur. “Some is past, much is future, but I cannot distinguish which is which in some cases. With you I cannot tell.”

  As much as I would have liked to believe she was seeing visions of me as a Chaos Rider, from the description I knew she was seeing my father. “They are visions of the past. That’s my father you see.”

  “No, no, don’t be silly.” Her eyes flicked up toward me, sending a jolt through me. “Don’t you think I would know what I see?”

  “But you just said …”

  “You don’t understand!” She spun on her heel and stalked off back toward camp.

  I started after her, then realized I’d forgotten the bucket. I went back for it and hurried along as fast as I could, but I couldn’t catch up with her. Somewhat bewildered, I returned to our campsite and sat myself down next to Roarke. “Something weird just happened.”

  “Oh?” Roarke slid to the left as Cruach lay down between us. “What was that?”

  “Down at the stream I met this girl. I think she joined us at the City of Sorcerers—I mean I think I’ve caught glimpses of her a couple of times since then. Small, red hair…”

  Roarke nodded and scratched the dog behind an ear. “You met Xoayya. She did join us at the City of Sorcerers. They were sending her home.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “She’s a wild talent, a feral mage.” Roarke gave me a half smile. “Among warriors the equivalent would be a natural-born fighter. If you take a scrapper like that and give him some training, he usually turns out pretty well.”

  I nodded. “But with magick the problem is not one that is so easy to train, right?”

  “Exactly.” The Axman snapped a small stick in half and tossed it into our fire. “Haskell said Xoayya’s mother died when she was young. Her father was a fairly wealthy merchant who married into another merchant family. His bride was on her second marriage, too, and had two daughters who were slightly older than Xoayya.”

  “And they treated her badly …”

  “No, they actually doted on her and spoiled her. Xoayya was sheltered because they thought her very frail. When she started reporting she had visions, they thought her a bit insane and did what they could to cover up her little stories. Her father died somewhere along the line and it wasn’t until her mother’s mother intervened that anyone realized she was very talented in the way of Clairvoyant magick. By that time, though, the girl was untrainable and not much of a fan of discipline and hard work.”

  I frowned. “I don’t understand that. I mean, I lost both of my parents, and yet I’m not afraid of hard work.”

  “No, but you were trained to it from early on. She wasn’t.” Roarke shrugged. “There’s also some hint that, at least in the case of her father, she foresaw how he died and feels she might have been able to prevent his death.”

  “Could she have?”

  “You have multiple questions wrapped up there together, Locke. First you have to figure out if what she saw was accurate, or just a dream. When spells are invoked to look into the future, as 1 understand it, there is no solid way of telling if the vision is true or not. Clairvoyance is supposed to work best when the time factor is minimized.”

  Roarke held up a hand. “In addition to that question, you have a more important one to look at. It is this: is the future seen the only possible future?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”

  “Let’s suppose you decide to get up now and go fetch more water. Or let’s suppose you change your mind and sit back down. Now what if what had been foreseen was along the time line that required you to get up and get water now? Since you didn’t do that, does that future no longer exist?”

  “Ahhh, I see.” I nodded. “Or, is the fact that it’s been seen something that compels me to do everything that needs to be done to make that future come true.”

  “Right. Are we creatures of free will, or is our future determined for us and we just become players in a production for which we don’t have a script?”

  I closed my eyes and rubbed at them for a moment. “1 opt for free will, but aren’t there prophecies and the like that predict the future?”

  “Sure there are, but take a good look at them. Oracles that make such pronouncements always do so in vague terms. Your father, it was said, was destined to kill the Chademon Kothvir, but no method was specified. If your father had run him through or served him bad oysters, either method would have fulfilled the prophecy. Lots of room for free will there.”

  “Fascinating.”

  “Free will versus determinism is one of those discussions that can make long rides much shorter.” Roarke clapped me on the shoulder. “So, what did she say to you?”

  “She wanted to know who I was and why I’d invaded her dreams. She saw me fighting in Chaos.” 1 shrugged. “Sounds like she saw my father, but she didn’t like that suggestion. She marched off in a huff.”

  “Wild talents are like that. They don’t have the control over their ability. With Clairvoyants it’s especially hard because they can never be sure what they
are thinking. For all you know she’ll see her meeting with you as a vision and never be able to sort truth from dreams.” Roarke smiled. “She’s a cute one, though. Having her dream of you can’t be all bad.”

  “Not my type.”

  “You grew up on a farm with your two brothers and your grandfather. When did you have time to determine you have a type?”

  I started to explain about all the Bear’s Eve celebrations I’d attended, but I stopped. “No matter what I say, you’re going to make me feel foolish, right?”

  “Gotta get back at you somehow for beating me so often in chess, don’t I?”

  Riding ahead of the caravan through a snow-dusted meadow on the last day, 1 caught up with Roarke. “The night we met you said you knew stories of my father.”

  Roarke’s lean body swayed with the motion of his horse’s walk. “1 did, didn’t 1?”

  “How did my father die in Chaos?”

  “1 don’t know what happened to your father.” Roarke exhaled a plume of steam. “I heard he went on an expedition and never came back, but then again I heard he’s buried with your mother back in Stone Rapids. When Chaos is linked to a legend you can never tell truth from fiction.”

  I felt my mouth go dry. “Was my father a good Chaos Rider?”

  Roarke smiled easily. “That he was. Whereas other men would just use muscle against the Chademons, Cardew foxed them. He said, I’m told, fighting in Chaos was like a big chess game. He had mapped out many of the areas where time flows differently, figured out what the difference was, and was able to use that map to his advantage.”

  My face brightened. “How did he determine what the time-rate difference was?”

  The Chaos Rider arched his back and rotated his shoulders to loosen them. “Cardew was a thinker, he was. He took two twelve-foot-long planks and lashed hourglasses between them at the far ends of the boards. When he found a boundary he would insert one hourglass beyond it, then invert the whole contraption. By looking at how much sand was left in one when the other ran out, he was able to calculate the difference.”

  “That was smart!” 1 smiled proudly. “He could use fast zones to speed healing for lightly wounded people and slow zones to secure his flanks.”

  “Like father, like son.” Roarke winked his right eye at me. “That is very much the sort of thing he did. One time he had a man who had been mortally wounded. He placed him in a very slow zone, then sent riders all the way back to Port Chaos to fetch a magicker who could spell the man back to health.”

  “But you don’t know what happened to him—my father, 1 mean?”

  Roarke shook his head. “I don’t know. Cardew and the leader of the Black Shadows, Kothvir, had quite a rivalry. Kothvir even forged a sword with a likeness of your father etched into the blade. Mark of being a dangerous man, that is, to have a vindictxvara made to deal with you. And Kothvir stopped being a force among the Bfiarasfiadi at the same time your father disappeared, so perhaps Cardew got him after all.”

  I had heard a similar thing in the past, but it felt good to have a Chaos Rider say it instead of a bard. “You said there were pockets of Chaos in which time moved very slowly, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “So it is possible that my father and my uncle are still alive and trapped in one of those zones, or that they have been wounded and exiled themselves to one of them?”

  The hopeful note in my voice seemed to make Roarke wince. “It is possible, Locke, but not entirely likely. I would rather bet that the sun and moons will collide than on your kin still being alive, I’m sorry to say.”

  “But it could be true.” My eyes narrowed. “You said it yourself, ‘things like that happen in Chaos.’”

  “So I did, Locke, but I didn’t say they happened all that often.” Roarke shook his head. “Anyone expecting to find a miracle in Chaos better be damned lucky, or prepared for a big disappointment.”

  Cresting the hill on Herakopolis’s western edge, I saw a city that exceeded even Roarke’s glowing descriptions of it. Some of the larger estates in the outlying district had seriously impressed me, and I had embarrassed myself by refusing to believe that one or more of them were not the Emperor’s property. That individuals would have amassed enough money to own one building that itself was larger than my grandfather’s homestead quickly redefined my concept of personal wealth.

  The capital started me redefining my concept of reality. Stretched out in a vast demilune around Herak Bay, the city consisted, for the most part, of whitewashed buildings with red tile roofs. Gaudily colored clothes flapped in the sea breeze from lines strung between many of the buildings, setting whole portions of the city in motion. A seawall and breakwater split the azure bay from the deeper ocean, while huge walls rimmed the city itself to protect from landward assaults.

  The Imperial Palace dominated the top of the highest hillock in the city. A monstrously large building, each of the eight wings had been built by artisans from the different provinces. They worked with native materials from their homelands and created in the palace a simulacrum of the Empire as a whole. Appropriate provincial flags flew from the towers that capped each wing, while the white triskele flag of the Empire flew above the heart of the palace itself.

  Northeast of it I saw a strange collection of buildings, each with a different architectural style, yet all arrayed around a central green “Is that the Imperial University?”

  “You see, the book you read about the capital was not all that antiquated.” Roarke glanced back along the road at the distant line of the caravan, then looked at the city again. “And there, to the north, is the Imperial Theatre. It is the stepped circular building with all those pillars. The one in white marble.”

  “I see it. And that must be the Street of the Gods.” 1 pointed to a double rank of tall buildings with towers topped by stars and moons and animals. “And, obviously, that’s the waterfront.”

  “Correct.” Roarke again looked back at the caravan, then frowned. “Listen, Locke, I have to ride back to the caravan and get the papers we have to present at the gate. You should ride ahead to your grandmother’s house. Do you know how to find it?”

  “If the streets have not been changed in the last forty years.” I laughed. “I ride past the Church of the Sunbird for two streets. I go east and then north along Butcher’s Row. She lives in the fourth house on the right as you go up the hill.”

  Roarke nodded with pride. “Spoken like you’ve lived in the capital for ages.”

  “Thank you for your friendship on this trip. Will you, if you have time, come see me?” I asked quietly. “Will you bring Cruach?”

  “The hound will probably hunt you out on his own, the way you feed him.” Roarke gave me a reassuring smile. “After Bear’s Eve, i will find you. Unless they decide to sail you back to Stone Rapids, I think Haskell will have work for you with his first caravan heading west again.”

  “If you don’t, I’ll hunt you down at the Umbra.” 1 grinned as he looked a bit surprised at my naming a tavern that catered to Chaos Riders. “See, I remembered everything you told me about Herakopolis.”

  “Sharp lad, but 1 don’t recall mentioning the Umbra.”

  “You must have; I know I didn’t read about it.” I shrugged. “Bye, Roarke. Say good-bye to Eirene for me. Have a happy Bear’s Eve.”

  “And you, lad. Try not to step on any princess’s toes when you’re dancing in polite company.”

  “I won’t, promise.” I tugged gently on Stall’s reins and started toward the capital of the Empire. 1 joined the trickle of other folks entering the city, and the guardsman leaning against the wall barely gave me notice. By keeping an eye on the Sunbird Church’s tallest spire, I managed to negotiate the narrow, cobblestone streets of the city’s oldest section. The Street of the Gods proved to be a wide boulevard that I crossed easily.

  I turned where 1 had been told to turn and located Butcher’s Row by seeing a bloody stream washing down the gutter. Heading up the hill, I counted houses
once, then frowned and counted them again. Grandfather told me it was the fourth house, but it can’t be. That one is so … so big!

  Audin had always spoken of my father’s mother in decidedly neutral terms, though he regularly expressed his disbelief at a woman of Garik finding happiness in Herakopolis. I knew very well the story of this girl from Stone Rapids marrying a merchant from the Imperial capital, but 1 had always assumed, from the way Grandfather told the story, that Evadne’s husband, before he died, owned a bazaar stall and sold copper pots.

  Somewhat stunned by the size of the three-story building, I dismounted and just let Stail’s reins drop to the ground. Clearly this house belonged to someone more important than a bazaar barker’s widow. The wall around it hid the ground floor from sight, but trees and ivy vines overhanging it from the inside told me the house had a nice garden. I heard the tinkling of water landing in a pool, so that meant they had a fountain as well. The windows themselves were fitted with glass—much akin to the home of Stone Rapids’s Lord Mayor—but the blue and gold brocade drapes I saw in them were a lot finer than the Mayor had managed.

  Even the stories Aunt Ethelin had told of this house had underestimated its grandeur. 1 turned around and counted one final time. It was the fourth house, but I couldn’t get rid of a sense of dread as I reached out and pulled the clapper cord for the bell beside the gate. It rang loud and strong, like an alarm bell, and I almost ran away because I just knew I had to be in the wrong place.

  I probably would have run, but seconds after the bell’s echoes died, I heard a door open and close. I saw an old man accompanied by two hounds a bit smaller than Cruach come trudging up the crushed-stone carriageway toward the wrought-iron gate. I smiled at the man, but nothing short of a hive’s worth of honey could have sweetened the sour look on his face.

  The man grabbed two of the gate’s iron bars. “And who would you be?”