Once A Hero

by Michael A. Stackpole

  "No," she laughed. "We live in the trees. You will stay in my family's home, Woodspire. You will have the chamber Neal used when he stayed here."

  "Thank you. So what is that building?"

  "That is Neal's tomb."

  He sat up taller in his saddle and shaded his eyes with his hands. "Yes? Could Cleaveheart be in there?"

  Gena shook her head. "No. I have seen inside, and I saw no weapons of any kind. We came here because my grandfather and grandaunt made a journey from Cygestolia after Neal's death. I believe that trip was made to secret Cleaveheart away."

  "You said your grandaunt had gone 'beyond.' " Berengar frowned. "You cannot do that and return with the information, can you?"

  "No, but my grandfather still lives, and he might know what the key to Larissa's spell is."

  Gena led Berengar through the city to the Seven Pines district and on to Woodspire, Elves took their horses and their baggage from them at the base of the tree; then they entered the tubes and rose through the heart of Woodspire. Wordlessly she guided Berengar through the tree and smiled when she reached the chamber that had once been home to Neal Elfward.

  "Grandfather!" Gena ran across the room to where Aarundel slowly rose from sitting on the edge of what had been Neal's bed. It occurred to her that he had not been moving so slowly when she went away, but by then she was in his arms and reveling in his hug. "It has been far too long."

  "It has, Genevera." The old Elf stroked her hair. "You are a tonic for an aged, one-eyed Elf."

  She felt a tremor run through him. "What is it?"

  "You have brought a guest."

  She slowly released Aarundel, then turned and nodded toward Berengar. "Grandfather, this is Count Berengar Fisher of Aurdon in Centisia."

  Aarundel nodded slowly. "You look the image of the Red Tiger. Seeing you there, I half expect to see Neal himself come around the corner."

  Berengar bowed respectfully, then smiled openly. "It is an honor to meet you; Aarundel Consilliarii. I have long thrilled to the stories of your adventures with Neal. Your granddaughter believes that you can help us with a problem that has brought us over two thousand miles."

  Gena suppressed a frown because she would have preferred to ease into the discussion rather than deal with it so quickly. She tried to hide from her grandfather her displeasure with Berengar, but he gave her hand a squeeze.

  "Remember, my dear, I rode with Neal. I understand." Aarundel waved Berengar to a chair and again eased himself down on the foot of the bed. "What is this problem?"

  Gena, still holding her grandfather's hand, knelt at his feet. "Do you remember Aurium and the first night you and Neal arrived there?"

  The wizened, white-haired Elf slowly smiled. "Neal forced a peace on two families there. Riveravens were one and the Fishers the other. Did that peace not last, my lord?"

  Berengar shook his head. "Not truly, Consilliarii. Over the years the oath Neal made has kept our two families from destroying each other, but it is constantly tested. The intervention of his ghost, so it is said, enforces what he began five centuries ago. The Riverens—what you knew as the Riveravens—have recently entered into an alliance with the Haladina, and this threatens my family. We would strike back, but Neal enjoins us from doing so."

  Gena looked up at Aarundel. "Neal said the two families would be joined until Cleaveheart and Wasp severed the knot he fashioned from the sleeves of two people. It is time for the knot to be severed, so we are out to recover the blades."

  Aarundel shook his head. "Your effort is doomed to failure. The blades cannot be recovered."

  "But we saw where Cleaveheart is hidden." Berengar frowned heavily. "Lady Genevera says she can undo the magick if you will give her the key. It is vital you do so."

  "My lord, were she to ask and I were able to accede to her request, I would do so, but I cannot." Aarundel drew in a deep breath and sighed wearily. "Before Neal left Jarudin for the last time, he had made arrangements to hide Cleaveheart away. He wanted the architect—Xer-something it was . . ."

  "Xerstan," Berengar offered.

  "Xerstan to create a vault that could only be keyed by Wasp. A cast of Wasp was made for this purpose, and Wasp was used to key the spell that Larissa created to ward the vault." The Elf shook his head. "The cast was destroyed after use."

  "And what of Wasp?"

  "It was lost to the Reithrese in Jammaq, though Neal said Takrakor had it at Alatun."

  Berengar shook his head. "Jammaq? Alatun?"

  "Places destroyed centuries ago. You reckon the passing of the years from the date of their destruction. This is the four hundred and ninety-ninth year since the annihilation of the Reithrese. Wasp has not been seen since then, which means there is no way to recover Cleaveheart."

  "There must be another way." Berengar hammered his right fist into his left palm. "If there is not, everything is lost."

  Aarundel shrugged. "Larissa, who cast the spell, is no longer here. Breaking that spell is possible, but it would take Gena here a century of specific and concentrated study to be able to do so. I gather you have not the time to wait for that."

  "No, no I do not." Berengar growled and scowled. "I can't believe Neal would have been so stupid to have keyed Cleaveheart's hiding place with a simple, ordinary dagger that could have been broken in a fight or during a meal."

  "Perhaps it was not stupidity, my lord Count, but caution."

  Gena stroked her grandfather's hand. "And perhaps he had another way to get at the sword."

  "That could be, Genevera, but I would not know. Only Neal would."

  Gena slowly stood. "This I realize, which means I have little choice if I am to help Berengar save his family."

  "I see no choices at all for my family's salvation."

  Gena shook her head in Berengar's direction. "But there is one, Berengar, and the one we shall use because there is no other." She looked down into her grandfather's eye. "Tomorrow I intend to open Neal's tomb and bring him back from the dead."

  Chapter 30:

  To Die Far From Home

  Autumn

  Reign of the Red Tiger Year 3

  Imperium Year 1

  Five Centuries Ago

  My Last Year

  ***

  THE JOLT FROM the wagon's wheel hitting a rut stabbed a fork of pain through my chest and brought me to consciousness. I coughed, spreading the pain evenly through me. I opened my eyes and wondered if I had gone blind; then my eyes focused, and I saw stars and moons in the heavens above. Either I was alive or the paradise promised by Jistani prophets fell decidedly shy of ideal to my way of thinking.

  "Neal, are you awake?"

  I turned my head to the right and saw Aarundel sitting hunched over with his back pressed against one side of the open wagon. The edge of the blanket covering me also covered his feet. He had raised his head above his knees, and I saw a thick bandage wrapped around his head. Blood had soaked through it, especially where it covered his right eye.

  "Awake, my friend." My tongue felt thick in my mouth. "Water? Did we carry the day?"

  "Healer, here, water." Aarundel snapped his fingers and pointed at me.

  An Elf turned from another wounded Elf and knelt between Aarundel and me. He supported my head with one hand and pressed the nipple of a wineskin between my lips. I drank a little at first, bracing for the pain when I swallowed; then I took more. Finally I nodded and the Elf took it away.

  Aarundel smiled wearily at me. "We were victorious. After you closed the gates, their magickal support from the city stopped. We crushed their army when their magick allies fell apart. We found you in the chapel and a cabal of dead Reithrese wizards higher up in the tower. I was told they were torn up."

  I coughed out a laugh despite the pain. "Shijef . . ."

  "I've not seen him, but it was probably the Dreel."

  I nodded. "He knew I could kill Takrakor."

  "Did you?"

  "Returned the favor he did me." I tried to pull the blanket down
so I could look at my chest, but my hands didn't seem to work too well. "He used a spel! that will draw and quarter me."

  Aarundel rested a hand on the healer's shoulder. "Cletine, can you counter it?"

  The redheaded elf shrugged. "I know how to heal wounds. Dispelling other magicks is not my forte. I could try, but it might take me years of study before I would even have a chance at succeeding."

  "Fret not, friend Cletine." Another cough racked me. "I'll not be having magick heal me up."

  "This is different from before, Neal."

  "It's not, Aarundel. The Reithrese are dead, so am I, If I were to use magick now, well, it would be cheating, wouldn't it?" I managed a smile for him. "Never before. Not now."

  "Even if it would allow you to see my sister one more time?"

  "Perhaps that would be worth it." I thought for a moment, then shook my head. "But I'm thinking I'm not dressed for courting. Besides, Cletine's healing art would be better spent making you prettier for Marta."

  Aarundel raised his right hand to cover his missing eye. "No, this once I think I'll follow your example, my friend."

  "You need not be stupid, Aarundel,"

  He gave me a brave smile. "Not stupid, Neal. That eye was my stupid eye, my blind eye. Without it I see many things, many injustices that I have condoned by not opposing them. Next to my wife, I love you and my sister more than anyone, and I kept you apart. Let's make a pact, Neal, you and I. This time I forgo magick for healing and you use it."

  "I'd accept if I could, my friend, but I'm thinking I've not got much longer." I coughed and convulsed, but kept my scream trapped in my chest. "You have those letters?"

  He patted his hand against his gambeson. "I can give them back to you."

  "Not this time." I looked up at the healer. "Cletine, could I be troubling you for something to ease the pain? Not magick, a draught or something?"

  Cletine nodded and drew a leaf from a pouch on his belt. He crushed it, and a faint scent like mint chased death from my nostrils. He opened my mouth and laid the leaf down in front of my lower teeth and let my lip hold it in place. "Suck on that. It will help. You may sleep."

  "Thank you." I turned my head toward Aarundel. "You have Cleaveheart?"

  He nodded.

  "Good. I entrust it to you. Take it to Jarudin. Talk to Xerstan. He knows what to do."

  "Xerstan." Aarundel nodded at me. "You know you've done more than destroy the Reithrese, don't you?"

  "More?" I found it easier to smile as the pain in my chest dulled. "I think ending the Reithrese threat is enough for a Man, don't you?"

  "A task worthy of a hero, Custos Sylvanii, and a task acquitted by a hero."

  "By many heroes, Aarundel, most all of them Elven." My eyes began to want to close. "Thank you for being my friend."

  "The honor has been mine."

  "It is an honor we share." I shut my eyes and summoned an image of Larissa. "Tell her I died with her in my mind and my heart."

  "Rest peacefully, my friend."

  I felt him grip my shoulder and I tried to smile. I don't know if I succeeded, because along with the pain all other sensations faded. I hoped I had, because I'd, rather have him remember my smile than my death. He was a true friend, and I owed him at least that much.

  Chapter 31:

  For The Greater Good

  Late Autumn

  A.R. 499

  The Present

  ***

  WITH A SWIFT rub of the polishing cloth, Genevera removed the last bit of tarnish from the silver bracelet. She remembered her grandaunt taking it from her own right wrist and putting it onto Gena's wrist. "I make to you a gift of this because you can bear the responsibilities that come with it." She had not understood at the time, when Larissa had gone excedere, but now she wondered at her grandaunt's prescience.

  Gena turned toward Berengar. "What was that you said?"

  "I cannot believe you can do this—defeat death." His spirit had been dampened by her proposed actions, and his face remained a bit pale. "Neal has been dead for five centuries."

  She shook her head. "Neal has lain in a tomb for five centuries. Death is a process that has some leeway in it."

  "I don't understand."

  "I'm not certain I do either, fully, but Larissa, my grandaunt, used to provide me with examples while she worked and taught me. If you go out and cut for me a flower, is it alive or dead?"

  "Dead, obviously."

  "Yet if placed in water, the blossoms will open and close normally." Gena smiled at him and slipped the bracelet onto her right wrist. "If you cut a shoot from a plant and place its cut end in the ground, it will take root, yet many would consider the shoot dead."

  Berengar nodded. "All true, but plants are not Men."

  "Yes, but Men do not die all at once either. You know, for example, that hair and fingernails continue to grow after death. You have seen cases where warriors who are struck in the head still breathe for a time even though they are dead."

  "True, but none of them last five hundred years in that state."

  "None of them had Elven magick to help them survive." She pointed Berengar to the doorway leading out onto the walkway that would take them to the council tree and the island with Neal's tomb on it. "The healers with the army, at least those being sent back with the wounded, could not counteract the Reithrese magicks used to kill Neal. Do you recall when I explained that magick dealt with the manipulation of chance and time?"

  "Yes."

  "The healer attending to Neal wove a spell that slowed the passage of time for Neal. He hoped that when Neal arrived in Cygesiolia, someone would be able to reverse the magick worked on him."

  Berengar raked fingers back through wind-tousled red hair. "So you are saying he is not really dead, just frozen in time before he died."

  Gena shook her head. "No, he actually is dead. He is trapped in the midst of that process, anyway, and has not been revived. No one could be certain that their spells could counteract the Reithrese magick. Many sorcerers labored for centuries to find a way to dispell the Reithrese enchantments. They succeeded and turned the results of their research over to my grandaunt. I am certain she would have brought Neal back, but because there was a chance of failure, she did not want to take the risk of losing him forever."

  "She told you this?"

  Gena frowned sharply. "No. She did not like talking about Neal's death, but I was able to coax things out of her, and that is the impression she gave me. She would speak of him and his deeds, but never about the feelings they shared. Even so, I know she loved him deeply." She looked down at the stone tomb so far below. "Once a month she would enter the tomb and she would look at him. I think she wanted to take the chance to bring him back, but she dared not be selfish."

  Shrugging, she continued. "I am willing to take the chance, because, if I do not, your family will die and Rik's death will go unavenged."

  They crossed the branch bridge in silence; then Gena stopped when she saw her grandfather standing alone in the middle of the Consilliarii chamber. On his right arm he wore his insigne nuptialis—the one Rik had recovered—and she knew he put it on only at times of importance and ceremony. "Grandfather? Are you going to try to stop me?"

  The one-eyed Elf looked from her to Berengar and back again. "If I did, you would ignore me."

  "I would listen."

  "I know you would, Genevera." He watched her closely. "Are you prepared for this? It will not be easy."

  "I know. I have studied Larissa's notes and I have rested. I can and will succeed, grandfather."

  "I am certain you will. Please, indulge me in one thing; remember that for all the stories and legends, Neal is just a Man. And he was once my friend." Aarundel folded his arms, and Gena thought he meant his speech for Berengar and not for her. "If he cannot solve your problem, it is not his fault, but if he can, do not be amazed. I have learned there was not much he considered impossible."

  Berengar narrowed his eyes. "You approve of what we ar
e doing?"

  "I will not gainsay you." Aarundel stepped aside, then followed them as they passed through the chamber and onto the staircase spiraling around the trunk of the tree.

  Walking down to the tomb, Gena remembered all the previous pilgrimages to that site she had made with Larissa—only realizing this time that she actually did consider them pilgrimages. Her grandaunt had not spoken much during the visits, yet afterward they would sit in the shadow of the tomb, and she would entertain Gena's questions about Neal and his life.

  It occurred to her that she had not visited the tomb since the last time she and Larissa had done so together. After that last trip Larissa had given her the bracelet and told her that she was going beyond. When I asked why she was going away, she just told me her work was done. Gena felt a shiver run down her spine. She went beyond and I left Cygestolia.

  Each step down took her back in time to the previous visits. She wore the same sort of white cotton gown Larissa had demanded she wear on their visits, and she had gathered her hair back into a thick braid as her grandaunt had done. She imagined herself now taking her grandaunt's place, and that idea both chilled and pleased her. Larissa had always seemed more responsible than Gena had, so accepting that responsibility made her happy, yet it also inspired fear in her.

  She rubbed at the bracelet and felt the Man-runes slide beneath her fingers. She knew they defined Neal and that it had been created by him, but its association with her grandaunt made it so much more to her. The bracelet was a piece of history, frozen in time, just as was the man who had pounded it out of shapeless metal.

  The small stone building loomed larger as she walked across the grassy sward toward it. The grass felt cold on her bare feet, and the earth vaguely moist. Everything smelled very much alive around the stone monument to death. The sunlight poured down upon her, yet its warmth failed to reach her. A chill of doubt came to her as she reached the stone-blocked doorway.

  Will Neal want this? That question had not occurred to her before, and it made her hesitate. Just as quickly as it had come, an answer followed, and she smiled. Larissa's tales had all stressed Neal's devotion to Mankind and to protecting it. If he had been able to foresee the trouble his actions long ago would have wrought, he would have refrained from taking them. And if he was forced to act to repair the damage, he would. Of this she had no doubt, and she took the Aurdonian ghost stories as confirmation of Neal's desires.