Once A Hero

by Michael A. Stackpole

  Finally they arrived at the Fisher mansion. Berengar dismounted and helped Gena down, then looked up at Neal. "Come, they will want to see you, too."

  Neal shook his head. "If you do not mind, my lord, I think I would like to travel through your city. Many are the changes since I was last here."

  "I have no objection, Neal, but I would be upset if your sword were to fall into the wrong hands."

  Neat nodded and pulled the scabbard with Cleaveheart in it from his belt. He handed it to Gena. "If you will safeguard this as well as your grandaunt did, I will be in your debt."

  Gena accepted the weapon, but something in the stiff formality of Neal's tone bothered her. "Are you certain you will not stay with us?"

  "Please, I will return and relax here, but this is the first opportunity I have had to be alone in a town. It has been a long time—longer even than you think, really. I just feel a need to hide myself in a crowd."

  Berengar nodded and plucked a pouch of coins from Floris's belt. He tossed it to Neal. "Here, this should see to your entertainment without compromising your identity."

  Neal deftly caught it. "My thanks. Count Berengar. If you will excuse me."

  Gena smiled hopefully at him. "Are you certain you do not want any company?"

  "I am certain, thank you." Neal winked at her, but she caught no warmth from the act. He reined his horse around and rode back out through the gate.

  Gena watched him go, all the while feeling smaller and smaller inside. A month before, beginning with the dance at the emperor's celebration, she had felt as if they were growing closer. Even on the road they had maintained a new openness, but their arrival in Aurdon appeared to have cut off any further chance to get to know Neal better. If she took what he said to her as the truth, she found herself in competition with her grandaunt, an idea she hated because she knew, ultimately, she would lose in that comparison. Neal idolized Larissa as Gena had once idolized him.

  Berengar settled his arm around her shoulder. "Don't worry, Lady Genevera, he will come back."

  She looked up at Berengar as they mounted the steps to the front of the mansion. "What makes you so certain of that?"

  "It's easy." He nodded at her. "He'll come back because we have his sword."

  Chapter 40:

  Old Weeds Bear Bitter Fruit

  Winter

  A.R. 499

  The Present

  My 536th Year

  ***

  I RETURNED TO the Fisher domain rather late in the day, or early, depending upon whether you accounted days by midnight or dawn. Five hundred years had changed Aurdon considerably, and that included a great advance in the brewer's art. Each of the taverns I visited brewed its own ale, and I enjoyed making my survey of their wares. One, an especially crisp, very amber brew lacked the sort of aftertaste I remember from when I was last alive, so I found one more reason to be happy that I had returned to life.

  My wanderings had also uncovered for me a number of other reasons to regret my resurrection. Coaxing a full litany of crimes visited by the Fishers upon the Riverens and vice versa had not taken much effort—and it included a complete and detailed chronology of my ghost's intervention in their relations. Of course, I didn't bother to mention I was the Neal who had beset the families so. Despite that omission on my part, I got the distinct impression that keeping track of family fortunes within Aurdon was a sport that amused and delighted a great number of people—especially those with ties to neither clan.

  Other things I had learned, things hinted at and rumors whispered, obliquely suggested to me that intrigue rivaled commerce as the primary occupation in Aurdon. Frustrated in their attempts to destroy each other, the Fisher and Riveren families had succeeded in crushing any other merchant house in the city. Normal citizens said they could feel the pressure building to some sort of climax, and already rumors of Berengar's return brought with it speculation ranging from an Elven invasion of the city to mercenaries using flashdrakes to slaughter the citified Haladina wholesale.

  I found the room to which the night porter guided me as spartan as it was small, which I really didn't mind. Before my death I had spent months living in a canvas tent, and since then I had fared little better, so the room I had been given appeared opulent. I closed my door and began to shuck my clothes when I heard a light knock from the door leading to the adjoining room.

  Bare-chested and barefooted, I opened the door. "Gena. I hope I did not wake you."

  Standing there in a long bedgown, with her golden hair gathered into one thick braid, she looked chillingly like her grandaunt had when I reclaimed Cleaveheart. Only Gena's violet eye color marked her as physically different from Larissa, yet in her eyes I saw much more that separated them. The expression on her face told me she had been sleeping, but not well.

  "I heard your door close, and I wanted to see if you had survived your peregrinations." She forced a smile on her face and waved a hand through the air between us. "You've been drinking."

  I nodded as I backed away from the door and retreated into the room. "That I have, Gena."

  "And wenching as well?" She kept her voice light, but I caught a hurt note in her question.

  "Wenching, me? In fact, I have not." I shrugged, the ale making the motion sloppier than I wanted. "What woman would be interested in a man old enough to be potting soil?"

  "My lord underestimates how well he has been preserved."

  "My lady forgets that I remember an Aurium where the Fishers lived in a longhouse with floors of dirt and someone who was likely Berengar's great, great, great, great, great"—I tried to keep track of greats on my fingers, but failed—"grandmother expressed a willingness to lie with me. And I remember Larissa."

  I felt my face getting hot and my anger rising, but I could not figure out why, so I tamped the emotion down. "I have not had a chance, in five centuries and more, just to sit in a tavern and watch and listen to people. Traveling with you and Berengar, I have been out of touch with normal people—except at the emperor's festivities and on the road with the Steel Pack."

  Gena's face closed down. "I did not mean to anger you."

  "I know, and you have not, really." I hesitated, my mouth open, as words lined themselves up in my brain. "It is just that you brought me back to life and reminded me what it was to be Neal Elfward. I needed common folks to remind me what it was like to be the Man I was before I became Neal Elfward."

  "But you always were remarkable."

  I laughed. "I might have been different, but there was a time when I could see why I had shouldered the responsibilities I had. I had a feel for what normal people wanted and feared. I wanted to recover that."

  "Are their fears all that different from those of Berengar or the emperor?"

  Something in her voice told me that was not really the question she wanted to ask, but it was the only one she gave me to answer. "They are. The emperor, the Fishers, the Riverens, and all the nobles we met in Jarudin all are removed from the daily terrors of life. The common folk worry about having enough food to eat or enough money to pay their taxes. Berengar worries if a wine has aged enough in a decade to be served to people he wants to impress. The emperor is able to devote all his time to reconstructing the history of the empire, which is a noble pursuit, but well and truly removed from the struggle for existence many people face."

  I watched her carefully. "So what is it you fear, Genevera?"

  She started to answer, then stopped. She folded her arms, then raised her right hand to play with the ring on the silver chain around her neck. "I fear many things, Neal. Tonight I feared that, as your departure mirrored that of Durriken, we would find you as he was found."

  "Dead by the Eight Cuts."

  "Yes," she whispered hoarsely.

  I sensed in her the same pain I had felt in her grandaunt when Aarundel and Marta had been taken away. Then Elven law kept us apart, and even though I wanted immediately to go to Gena and take her in my arms, I hesitated. I took a step forward, then stopped
, then started forward again awkwardly.

  Her head came up, and she held her left hand out to keep me back. "No, no, I understand your difficulty in reaching out to me. I do, I really do." The ring glittered as she worked it back and forth between thumb and forefinger. "These were the rooms that Berengar had given to Rik and me when . . . before Rik died. This ring is all I have to remember him by."

  "That, and the flashdrakes and the memories."

  "Yes, and the memories." Tears welled up in her eyes and spilled down over her cheeks, anointing them the way the dew anoints a rose. "And those memories mean I am missing Durriken very much right now—probably as much as you miss my grandaunt. As much as I would like to seek solace in your arms, in a hug, I am afraid it might lead to something that would leave both of us feeling awkward in its wake."

  Her soft words sobered me, and I realized that what she was saying was true. As I was a link for her to her past, so she linked me and my past. In her I could find a sense of peace I had not known because of the laws that kept Larissa and me apart. In me she could find a return to the days before Durriken's death and even, perhaps, to the simpler days before she left Cygestolia. We were, each of us, the balm for the other's wounds, but we threatened such complete healing that neither one of us would bear a scar from the experience that had wounded us. And each of us felt that not to have a scar, to remain unmarked, would be to forget and betray people we had dearly loved.

  Gena looked past me and shivered. "When Rik died, I felt I had betrayed him by not being there to prevent his death. I am, after all, a sorceress capable of bringing you back from the dead, but I could not do the same for him." She glanced at me and laughed ruefully. "And, of course, in my head I know you were a special case—a combination of circumstances that has no bearing on his situation, yet it eats at me more and more. Even now he lies in the Fisher vault, laid to rest in a place of honor, yet he must be angry with me because I have not done anything to avenge him."

  "Would he have wanted vengeance?"

  "Yes. No. I don't know." She looked at me imploringly. "He was a man who had once been a slave and who fought for his own freedom. Whoever killed him robbed him of that freedom. I think he would like to be avenged, and after you sever the knot tonight, freeing the Fishers to act against the Riverens and the Haladina, perhaps he will be avenged."

  "Your reasoning appears sound." I nodded and held my hand out. "Might I look at that ring?"

  She removed it and handed it to me. "Be careful, part of the setting turns and a needle comes out of the rim. He called it a slapdeath ring."

  "Even I have heard of them." Following her instructions, I produced the little bit of a needle, along with it came a sweet, cloying scent. "This belonged to Durriken?"

  "Lord Orvir, who was Berengar's brother." He died years ago—supposedly while being chased by Haladina or your ghost, depending upon which story you decide to believe." Gena took the ring back from me. "Count Berengar granted Rik the ring and the title so he could legitimately carry the flashdrakes while in Aurdon. I prefer thinking of Rik as he looked the night Berengar gave him this ring, not when they found him."

  "I understand and agree with your decision in that matter." I smiled at her in what I hoped was a reassuring manner. "And I would not worry about Durriken's ghost being angry with you. Take it from a man who has been dead—knowing that I was held in the heart of one who loved me was the only thing that made eternity endurable."

  That brought a smile to her face. "You are most kind, Neal Custos Sylvanii."

  "Kind? I'm thinking I'm only speaking the truth here. You and I know it for the truth, too."

  She nodded. "I can but hope you are right."

  "Sleep on the idea, Gena, and you will know I am."

  She drifted back toward the door to her room. "How will I know?"

  I winked at her. "You'll have sweet dreams, and in that way you can be certain."

  My dreams were not so sweet, but escaped being nightmares because they happened after the sun had risen. Everything I had learned and suspected and feared all managed to mix together into a surreal battlefield. I stood alone against an army of faceless individuals. Half of them I recognized as having fought and died at my side ages ago. Neither they nor their armor had withstood the test of time at all well, and their keening wail of despair seemed intended to tell me something, but I could not puzzle it out.

  The other half of my combatants appeared to be warriors from the era in which I now lived. They bore rapiers that twisted around my parries with the agility of an alley cat and struck with the speed of a viper. When they withdrew, a rank of men carrying flashdrakes stepped forward and triggered volley after volley at me. With each ball that hit me I relived the pain that had given me this scar and that. I realized that in the five centuries since my death, war had become no less savage, but the means for inflicting pain and death had simply become more sophisticated.

  Though I only slept fitfully, I did not come fully awake until late in the afternoon. At the foot of my bed I found a suit of clothes laid out for me. Over a white shirt I would be wearing a jacket made of brown brushed leather. The sleeves had been slashed to show off a satiny material the color of emeralds. The trousers, which reached only my knees, had been made out of brown velvet that matched the jacket. The hose matched the emerald of the sleeves, and I had been provided with a pair of brown brushed-leather bootlets that had a triangular profile and no laces to keep them tight on my feet. A similarly shaped hat with a ridiculously long green feather had also been created to complete my outfit, but I'd have sooner worn one of the shoes on my head than anything with that plume.

  I washed and dressed myself quickly enough and was surprised by the close fit of the clothes. Though they made me feel considerably younger than I was, and even younger than I appeared to be, I felt only the hat would compromise my masculinity. I cinched my belt tight around my waist and slipped Wasp into the waiting sheath. As I slipped the bracelet I had made so long ago onto my right wrist, I looked for Cleaveheart. I could not find the sword and panicked for a moment before I remembered having entrusted it to Gena the night before.

  I knocked on her door and she bade me enter. One step into the room, and any vanity I might have harbored about my appearance vanished. Two women backed away from Gena and giggled at my slack-jawed expression, but they barely existed in my eyes. Never had I seen anyone look as beautiful as Genevera did.

  Her golden hair had been brushed out so it shone like silk. It fell to her shoulders and complimented the soft violet of her gown. Cut from satin and gathered here and there with buttons, it draped her in ruffles and frills. Lying taut against her flat stomach, yet flowing out into gathered skirts, the dress confirmed a stateliness and nobility that I had all but missed as we traveled. The gown displayed her bosom to best advantage, and lavender lace gloves hid her delicate hands. Judiciously applied cosmetics molded her inhumanity into an intoxicatingly exotic and seductive snare.

  Surprised by her appearance, I wondered how the Genevera I had seen on the trail had been able to blossom into this flower. I knew she had always possessed this sort of beauty, and had easily been as ceremoniously dressed for the emperor's reception, but I had been unable to see her beauty for what it was. Something in my mind prevented me from actually being able to believe what my eyes showed me.

  I realized that when I first joined her and Berengar on their quest, in Gena I saw Larissa, and recalling old memories hurt. Then, after Gena had been battered by Tacorzi, I could not imagine her as she stood now. And on the road from Jarudin to Aurdon I had been learning more of the world and trying to integrate my memories of the past with the realities of the present. I had excluded her from that process because I feared having her supplant Larissa in the same way I let changes in the course of a river supplant my old memory of it.

  I held my hands open and wide of my body, unable to speak.

  She laughed and broke eye contact shyly.

  I looked down as well. "Yo
ur beauty vindicates the Consilliarii's wisdom in letting your parents and your grandparents bring children into the world."

  She nodded her head graciously, then smiled at me. "And you, for a Man who said he was naught but potting soil, are quite handsome. I can understand the Dun Wolf being a legend for more than his prowess in battle."

  I laughed. "That being said, I hesitate to ask for my sword."

  Gena pointed to the table where the sword lay in its scabbard. I slid the blade and scabbard home at my left hip, then bowed to Gena. "M'lady, if you would do me the honor of allowing me to escort you to the festivities."

  "It would be my pleasure."

  The two servants cooed and clucked as Gena took my right arm. I stiffened a bit because that meant I could not draw Cleaveheart easily, but to have her on the other side meant we would have the blade between us, and I did not want that. The elder of the two women shooed the younger one over to open the door, and I let Gena precede me from the room.

  As she had been at the mansion more than I, she set the pace and direction of our travel. Quickly enough we found ourselves at the head of stairs in the southwest corner of a large and high-ceilinged, rectangular room. Opposite us, along the long western wall, an orchestra had been situated, and played simple and sedate music. The stairs led down to the east, then switched back to the west, which gave all those gathered below us ample time to see us make our way to the room's floor.

  The throng below us struck me as just as awkwardly jammed together as the emperor's guests had been. Nearest us I saw Berengar and enough people with similar faces and postures to assume the area at the foot of the stairs was the demense of the Fisher Clan. That meant that the nervous group at the far end of the room were likely Riverens. The people in the middle must have been the richer and more ambitious among Aurdon's population—which meant I did not recognize a single face among them from my journey through the city. The only exception to that rule came in the form of four men who, were they not wearing incredible finery, I would have thought brigands waiting for a signal before robbing the place.