by Rick Shelley
"As long as we could keep you from losing your glasses again."
"Ah, yes, there is that," Parthet said. It didn't seem to bother him. "I told you I need to see to do most of my magics."
"Well, if you've got any more to spring, you'd better get cracking. It's going to be dark in another half hour."
"Yes. To work, to work, not a time to shirk."
A wizard maybe, but not much of a poet.
6 – Thyme
Parthet's only other contribution was a shield that was supposed to keep out bugs and small animals that might otherwise disturb our comfort. It may have worked. There was nothing visible about this magic, but I wasn't nibbled by mosquitos and nobody woke up with a snake or skunk in his bedding. Parthet offered to whip up a campfire, but we decided that we would be better off without it.
Under the willows, night followed posthaste upon sunset. The dark was complete. We arranged our bedrolls and settled in. There was a little soft talk at first, but the conversation languished quickly and all that remained was the murmur of the creek that flowed past the edge of our camp.
Occasionally a horse moved around or drank. The animals were tied to a picket line, more to keep them from stumbling over us than to keep them from wandering off. They had no place to wander, not even along the creek. Brambles had overgrown it, making it impassable. Only right under the willows were the brambles missing.
I slept poorly. During the day I had managed to keep from wasting a lot of energy worrying. With the night, though, the worries pecked at the edges of my mind until I paid attention. The soft breathing of the others couldn't hold off thoughts of what the morrow might bring. Castle Thyme was drawing members of the family like a magnet. Dad had gone first, to try to take the castle back from the soldiers of the Etevar of Dorthin almost single-handedly. He had a couple of soldiers, men like Lesh, and his squire. No more. Then Mom took off to see what was taking him so long, and she had gone alone. To rescue Dad. We hadn't met along the road, so she too was overdue and likely in trouble. If she happened by in the dark, while we were camped, we might or might not hear her. Parthet said he would know. I had a feeling he was right, but it was still something extra to worry about.
Now Uncle Parthet and I were going to Castle Thyme too. That would damn near complete the reunion. I knew less about the situation, about the whole damn world, than either of my parents. Everybody treated me like a big shot, son of the Hero, great-grandson and heir of the King of Varay. But I really didn't know what was going on, and that may have bothered me more than the rest. I still thought that there was at least an even chance that my brain had jumped the rails. Maybe the pressures of trying to finish my last year of college had snapped my sanity, shattered it into little bitty bits. I had seen cases of sheepskin syndrome. The pressure got to be too much and they went crackers. Or maybe I would wake up and find that it was all a dream, like Dallas.
Wake up? I couldn't even get to sleep.
I was toting around a bunch of weapons that I had practiced with for most of my life but had never used in a real fight, or even in serious competition. "It's not a game," Dad told me while he taught me how to kill and maim in every conceivable way. "It's survival. If you ever need the skills, you have to know that: it's not a game." Sometimes he screamed it. "You can't play by anybody's rules, can't wait for a referee to call a foul on the other guy or worry that he might call a foul on you. If you get into a situation where your life's on the line, the only rule is that the winner walks away and the loser doesn't." When I wasn't practicing those fighting skills, Dad had me studying military tactics on every level from squad to full army. In high school, I could map out and re-create nearly every landmark battle from Marathon and Thermopylae to Tarawa, Arnhem, and the Israelis' Six-Day War. Dad had dozens of army field manuals, technical manuals, and other military reference books. By the time I was seventeen, I had gone through most of the practical curriculum of the Army War College. And although Dad disapproved, that training made me a wicked competitor in simulation games at school.
"It's not a game," I whispered a couple of times that night in Precarra. "It's not a game." I started to get scared, so maybe I was really starting to believe the whole scam. I was going to rescue my parents if I could, if they needed rescuing-and they probably did. I might have to capture a castle to do it, a fortress whose defenders had already faced or were facing similar puny attacks. Surprise wasn't likely, and I didn't have any other advantages-unless Parthet could come up with something even fancier than his Red Sea trick, and I wasn't counting on that. Okay, Castle Thyme was a small castle surrounded by a low wall and a dry ditch. Given a dark enough night and a lot of luck, we might scale the wall and sneak inside. If Lesh had a long rope and a quiet grapple in one of the saddlebags.
It's not a game. One more full day on the road, maybe a few hours the following morning before we reached Castle Thyme and a kill-or-be-killed situation. I had never been in that kind of position before. I had never been in any spot that looked so dangerous going in.
Eventually, I dozed off. I don't know how long I slept; not long enough, by half. The soft hooting of an owl in the distance woke me. Sometime later, I heard thrashing noises in the underbrush, frenzied sounds of some small animal crying in its final agony. The owl apparently found dinner. I strained to hear any other sounds, but there were none around our camp. Inside, soft snoring, the horses shifting position. When my watch reached seven-fifteen, I woke the others even though it was still dark.
"Let's do what we have to do and leave as soon as there's enough light to get back to the road," I said.
"A good idea," Lesh said after a noisy routine of stretches and yawns.
"Let's start a fire," I said, an impulsive decision. "I've got instant coffee. We can heat water and have that much to get us moving. That and whatever kind of breakfast we can put together." I needed something. I felt more tired than I had been when we made camp. I got out my flashlight and Lesh assembled enough dry wood for a decent little cooking fire.
"I've never tried to conjure by flashlight," Parthet warned while Lesh was assembling the wood.
"Never mind, I've got a lighter." The disposable Mom had packed was still in its cardboard-and-plastic package. I set the flashlight on the ground next to the twigs and branches and got the lighter right down in the shavings Lesh provided with his dagger. I spun the wheel of the lighter, but nothing happened. There was a spark from the flint but no fire. I tried again with the same lack of result. I kept flicking the lighter. There was butane in it. I could hear it hissing when I held the lighter next to my ear and held the lever down. But it wouldn't light.
"It looks like magic is needed," Parthet said.
"I've got matches. They should work," I said. They did. I started to toss the lighter away but ended up sticking it back in my pack. There was no call to start littering.
Hot instant coffee, day-old bread, salted beef jerky-eating was exercise enough for anyone's morning. By the time we finished, there was light in the east. Saddling up and getting loaded gave dawn time to sneak across the sky. I made one change in my attire. I put the chain mail under my fatigue shirt. That made it easier to get at the pistol holstered at my waist. None of the others noticed the gun during the instant it was visible.
"There's light enough now," Parthet said. He hoisted himself aboard Glory. "Remember, stay close to me."
The magic was just as impressive the second time. The brambles swayed and parted in front and closed behind us. When we reached the road, we stopped and looked back across the brambles. There was no trace of our passage.
I took the lead and we started off single-file for Castle Thyme. Not long after we started, the road widened enough for us to ride two abreast again. The road turned a little more toward the north too. We were able to move faster on the better track. I was edgy after my uneasy night, so I picked up the pace to the fastest the horses were comfortable with.
"We're getting closes to the marches," Lesh said near noon. "
We're maybe ten or twelve miles from the border now, due east of here. A little farther on, we'll hit a spot where the road forks coming down from the north. The other branch runs south past my home village on to the other two marcher castles."
"Three castles to guard the entire border?" I asked.
"Four if you include Coriander in Battle Forest," Parthet said. "There aren't many decent routes between the two kingdoms, certainly not fit to take a sizable force across. There's no use building castles to guard passages no enemy can make."
It still sounded like scanty protection for a border that stretched 250 or 300 miles.
"From the fork, it's five hours to Castle Thyme, maybe six," Lesh said ignoring the interruption.
That morning, I had arbitrarily set my watch to six o'clock when I caught my first glimpse of the sun-very roughly, since the forest didn't allow for close accuracy. It still wasn't the right time, but it had to be closer than before. Minutes and hours seemed to mean less in Varay than they did in Louisville or Evanston, but I still thought in those terms and I liked the comfort of being able to look at my wrist and knowing the time.
Thirty minutes later, a shadow blocked the sun-too abruptly for a cloud. We all looked up. The horses got skittish.
"There's a dragon for you," Parthet said tightly. I didn't get much of a look. The creature moved past the sun, and the sudden glare put spots in front of my eyes. I couldn't see anything for a few seconds. "This time of day, he's probably already eaten and is on his way home to nest for a long sleep. Even so, it's better to hope that he doesn't see us, and best to make sure that he can't. Don't bother me for a bit."
Parthet started mumbling and humming, a different kind of sound from the one he used to part the brambles. He turned in his saddle and leaned back to keep the dragon in sight as much as possible while he conjured. When my eyes cleared, I could see the huge form in the sky, but it was too high for me to see any real detail. The body looked bulky, fat in the middle, tapering off quickly in front and back to serpentine neck and tail. The wings were massive and moved stiffly. They didn't look like bat wings, but more like the wings of some large bird of prey. The legs had to be tucked up close to the body. I didn't see any trace of them.
The sky started to shimmer like heat mirages on the highway, and the dragon became even more indistinct.
"He won't see us through that," Parthet said. I couldn't be positive that this was magic, but neither could I be positive that it wasn't. After seeing the deMille act, I was inclined to accept Parthet at his word. We kept riding and the shimmering sky stayed between us and the dragon.
"If he does see us, will that stop him?" I asked.
"If he saw us, castle walls might not stop him," Parthet said, "but he won't see us."
I got a stiff neck looking over my shoulder though. The dragon disappeared to the south within a couple of minutes, but I kept looking that way, wondering if he might decide to come back. Parthet's shimmering sky calmed down gradually. Not long after it cleared completely, we reached the fork in the road and stopped for a rest. I dismounted and walked fifty yards along the road to the south. It didn't seem any different from the road we had been on. I saw no sign of recent traffic.
"Not many folks live in these parts," Lesh said when I came back from my short walk. "Too much war. Those who do live along the marches stay close to their villages and farms, where they have some little feeling of safety. Maybe months go by without anyone but a royal messenger or tax collector coming to visit. Maybe a peddler now and then. Not often." Stay-at-homes with a vengeance. It gave me an empty feeling.
"I suppose we should start figuring out what we're going to do when we reach this castle," I said.
"We don't know yet what we're going to face," Parthet pointed out.
"Can't you find out?" I asked. "You've shown a couple of nifty magics. Haven't you got some way to get in touch with my parents or to look over the scene before we get there?" I hadn't noticed a crystal ball, but I guess that's what I was hoping for.
"Not from this distance. Not for a long while yet," Parthet said. "When the castle is in sight I might be able to penetrate its more superficial secrets. Might. Now"-he paused for a moment-"by bending my thoughts her way, I can just barely perceive something of Avedell's presence. Nothing more."
"What about Dad?"
A shrug. "He isn't blood kin to me. I'm not nearly so aware of his mind's signatures. Carl's mind isn't easy to touch even when we're standing next to each other. Nor is yours. With your father, it's part of the magic of being Hero of Varay-a protection. With you, I'm not certain. You are blood kin. I should be able to sense you."
"You read minds?"
"No!" Very forcefully, that. "No," he repeated. "I can't truly read anyone's mind, not even my own. But, with some people, sometimes, I can sense things, occasionally share a perception. It's not a simple matter."
"Let me know when we're close enough for something definite."
"Of course." Parthet looked around. "We're making better time than I expected. We might come within an hour's ride of Castle Thyme by sunset."
"Maybe that's a good thing," I said. "We may have a chance to look around before anyone knows we've arrived. Lesh, how high is the wall around the castle?"
"No more'n twenty feet," he said after a moment's reflection.
"Can it be scaled?"
"Not if it's defended, lord."
"How about at night, with no moon?"
He shook his head. "Two guards can cover the entire wall. They'd hear or see a grapple by the watchfires."
"Parthet, could you help with this?" I was still groping in the dark, but Dad had made me study all that military jazz. I knew the words, the concepts, even if I had never had to apply them in real life.
"If the circumstances are right. I need light to work, but the more light, the more difficult the problem. I'll study on it while we ride."
We rode. Precarra Forest thinned out. There were occasional areas where the scrub brush held trees in isolation from each other, patches of rocky soil that supported only a little grass. We took advantage of one clearing to eat an early supper and rest the horses. The meal was more hard bread and harder beef jerky. The stream we dipped our water from was clear, the water cool and refreshing, coming from a spring on the side of a low ridge that paralleled the road. Lesh climbed to the top of the ridge with me.
"That deeper line of green in the distance." Lesh pointed and moved his arm to show the line he meant. "Unless I'm mistaken, that's the Borerun. The river bends our way, then returns to Dorthin. It runs north to the Eastern Sea east of Xayber. We fought a battle at the bend over this way when I was just a young soldier. My first campaign it were. We had to retreat when the old Etevar's wizard turned the river out of its banks against us."
"Maybe we'll get something back on the new Etevar tonight or tomorrow," I said, starting back down the slope.
"Maybe we will, lord," Lesh said.
I shook my head, very casually. None of my companions had expressed any reservations about the sanity of our mission or the fact that an utter rookie was going in to attempt something that the seasoned veterans had apparently failed to manage. Maybe there was nothing remarkable about the situation in the buffer zone. Parthet had told me that Dad had regularly done "Hero work" through the years, that there was more call for it than I might imagine. And half the time, I accepted the idea that it was natural for me to be doing this. That was enough to send ominous shivers up my spine the other half of the time.
Lesh was solid, ready to take on any challenge. Timon seemed eager for the adventure, whatever it might involve. And Uncle Parthet-when he showed any feeling at all about it-seemed to regard our mission as a chance for his own vindication as a wizard. If he worried about Mom and Dad, and I'm not saying that he didn't, he hid it well.
We rode on again into an area of old primary forest, straight, tall trees with little undergrowth. The canopy overhead filtered the light, casting deep greens. The occasional s
haft of late-afternoon sunlight stood out in sharp relief like a spotlight beam. Parthet seemed buried inside himself. His horse followed mine without guidance. Glory was an old campaigner. Parthet didn't even respond to my questions, so I finally quit trying. I guessed that he was deep in some magic, probably trying to contact Mother. Either that or he was dozing.
"Another hour to sunset," Lesh said when we reached the end of the tall timber. "If we're going on to Thyme tonight, maybe we should rest our horses a bit now. And maybe have another bite." I nodded, and we dismounted, Parthet last. He didn't seem to notice that we stopped at first.
"You look troubled," I said when Parthet finally got down from Glory. Parthet wouldn't meet my eyes at first. "You've learned something," I said. What is it?"
"Nothing certain, lad," he whispered, none too calmly. "I still can't make firm contact with your mother, but there is an agony in the air that eats at my mind. It's too vague to know what it means." He turned to look north. According to Lesh, Thyme was almost directly due north of us now.
"I fear the worst," Parthet said, "but I fear my fears even more."
Lesh and Timon tended the horses. I stared at Parthet's back. He walked a few steps toward the final rank of lofty trees.
"If my fears were true, there could be no way for me to catch them. But if they aren't true, there's a rare deception in the wind, a more powerful magic than my own."
"At Castle Thyme?"
"Somewhere near for it to be so strong." He turned and stared blankly at me. He was far enough away that my features were probably only a blur to him. "Why are we stopped?" He looked around and blinked, coming back from wherever his mind had wandered.
"To rest the horses so we can push on this evening," I said.
Lesh came to us. "In two miles or so, the road turns east and climbs toward higher ground, bending back north. Castle Thyme sits atop a low mound on the west side of the road, perhaps four miles altogether from here."
"Can we cut cross-country and come from a way they won't expect?" I asked.
