by Rick Shelley
I concentrated on sounds, worried that the Etevar's soldiers might waylay us as they had Dad. We couldn't go on all night without rest, but every mile we covered took us that much farther from the greatest danger. We finally left the road and moved into a narrow valley. We couldn't get far from the road with the wagon, though. And there wasn't enough light for Parthet's camping magics, so we had to put up with the bugs. We kept watches through the rest of the night, one at a time except for Timon. We let him sleep straight through, better than the rest of us managed, I think. I hardly slept at all-again. Most of the time I stared at the sky and thought about times I had shared with my father, good times, generally. We had had a lot of fun together. All those memories… but he had concealed so much too. The secrets hurt, more as the night progressed. My parents had hidden an entire life, an entire world, from me.
When dawn came I was near exhaustion, but we got moving as soon as there was any light at all. The morning's ride was silent. As the wagon wheels dragged mile after mile under them, the danger decreased, but I remained too lost in my thoughts for talk. And I was so tired that I may have dozed off and on too. At noon, we ate the freeze-dried meals I had been carrying in my pack. They didn't go far among so many of us, but we weren't hungry enough for salted beef again. That afternoon, I brought down a small deer with my bow, so we had fresh meat for the rest of our journey. It took three days to get to Basil with the wagon.
After that first morning, I learned more of my hidden heritage. Mother seemed to have a need to talk, and I was content to listen.
The title Hero of Varay was as old as the seven kingdoms. Varay was named for Vara, a legendary superhero who brought the magic out of Fairy and held the land for its more mortal inhabitants as king and hero. Traditionally then, Varay's Heroes came from outside the kingdom. A Varayan might be King's Champion, but he was never given the formal title Hero of Varay. "That's one of the reasons we kept the truth from you," Mother said. "Your father wanted you to follow in his footsteps-if you chose to. But you remained an outsider, even though you are also heir to the throne. We stopped bringing you for visits when you were five."
"Why is it so important that I be both king and Hero?"
"The two have never been united in one man since Vara. Our legends promise a new golden age when one man can again hold both titles legitimately. It may be superstitious nonsense, but I don't know of another time when it's been possible to test it."
"More of the same kind of legend that makes the Etevars want to reunite the seven kingdoms under their rule?" I asked.
"Perhaps. But Varay has never sought to dominate the other kingdoms." Maybe not. Or maybe the Varayan storytellers were just better liars.
"What about the other magic doorways at home? Where do they lead?"
"All to places in Varay," Mother said. "To Basil, Arrowroot on the Mist, Coriander in the Battle Forest at the edge of Xayber and Fairy. They lead to most of the important places in Varay."
To the edge of Fairy but not to Castle Thyme? I thought, but what I asked was, "How is it done? How do you create a doorway?"
"The easiest way requires two members of the family, one at each end, linking their efforts through the rings, bringing themselves to each other. One can do it alone, but that takes longer. You have to go to each place and implant the silver, then you have to concentrate to take yourself back through the untried passage to make it permanent. Draining work."
"Where does the silver come from?"
"It's a seaweed that grows in the shallows of the Mist, along the shore of Xayber, in Fairy."
That figured. It wouldn't be anything convenient. "Do we have a stockpile of it somewhere?"
"No. The silver must be living when it's implanted in the doorway, and it lives for only a few months after being harvested from the Mist."
There were other items. Uncle Parthet was something over a thousand years old. There was nobody around who could say definitely how much over, and he tended to be vague on the subject. His first foray into our world was well before the First Crusade. Back then, according to him, there was little to separate the three realms-mortal, buffer, and Fairy. Technology was the distancing factor. Now, the mortal realms were slow poison for creatures out of Fairy and only reachable through potent magics for people from the seven kingdoms. And Fairy was consistently hazardous to the health of all outsiders. Even Mother was twenty years older than I had thought, nearing sixty-five. She could pass for half that, easily.
"We do live longer, and the middle decades pass more slowly for our bodies," she explained. "When you were a baby, Grandfather could still lead his soldiers in battle. His hair was black and full. He had the stamina of a teenager. And he was already over a hundred years old."
That led to another question. "What about me? I'm half one world and half the other."
"According to Parthet, the blood of Vara always proves true."
We didn't speak of any future beyond our return to Basil. Until Father was properly seen to, the future had to wait.
At Nushur, people lined the road. We stopped at the inn for only a few minutes. The innkeeper's lads brought out a small keg of beer as well as bread, carrots, and potatoes to go with our venison. The innkeeper refused payment. Dad's squire had been through the village. The news had spread. When I shook the innkeeper's hand and thanked him for his wares, he went down to one knee and seemed ready to cry.
On the road past Nushur, I asked why everything was so medieval, why it was always like that in the books I read too. "What's so special about this stuff?" Mother didn't have a ready answer, but Parthet did.
"Many people have had glimpses of the truth, or memories of it. There was a time when the three realms were so intertwined that you could go from one to another as easily as you can drive from Louisville to Lexington today. For a long while, there were no obstacles. But people re-create their past every moment, just as surely as they create their futures."
"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked.
"You think that the past is rigid, unchanging history, right?"
"The interpretations may change, but the facts have to be the same."
"Not on your life, lad. Both change. The past is a fragile tissue of memories-'a lie everyone agrees on,' I think somebody in your world once said. That's very close. And when the memories change, the past changes. Some people have a greater control over their past and future than others do, but everyone participates to some degree. And the nonsense that grows out of people's heads! Your father once told me that historians now say that Richard the Lionhearted was homosexual and blame the centuries of war and distrust between France and England on a lovers' spat between Robin Hood's king and Philip of France. Nonsense! And I remember King Arthur and his queen. Arthur was no miserable warlord the way they make him out to be now. Camelot was real, and glorious."
"You were there, I suppose?" I asked, not even pretending to take this story at face value.
"Merlin was a valued friend," Parthet said, ignoring my tone.
"If all the worlds were one back then, what made it change, and when did it change?"
Parthet took a moment to think about that. "You've heard of Carolingian minuscule?" he asked. The term sounded familiar, but I couldn't place it. "The common script you write in, the lowercase letters at least. It was part of the revival of learning that the man you know as Charlemagne fostered. That's where it started." He laughed. "The pen is mightier than the sword."
People were waiting for us in the streets of Basil Town also. Sad faces watched our cortege. I had a little trouble dealing with the fact that all of these strangers were so moved by the fact of my father's death. And everyone in the castle was out and waiting in the courtyard, even King Pregel. Dad was placed on a fancy wooden stretcher type of platform and carried into the keep by four soldiers. They took him to a small chapel dedicated to the Great Earth Mother at the side of the great hall.
"At dawn," Pregel announced, "Carl Tyner, King's Champion, Hero of Varay, w
ill be placed in the vaults of Basil with the rest of our heroes, to return to the Great Earth Mother until he is needed once more."
A vigil continued through the night, mostly in silence. I saw tears on more than one strong, rugged face. These were my father's people, not the Hendersons and McCreareys back in Louisville. The people of Basil mourned Dad as they would a brother, or their own fathers. Mother sat next to the catafalque all night, her face nearly as rigid as Dad's. I could see the pain in her eyes, though. I could feel what she was feeling. I could almost view the mourners through her eyes, and I knew it was a new magic holding me, not just some trick of my mind.
Parthet and Baron Kardeen went off together for a half hour about midnight. One or the other left now and then through the night. Virtually no one could last the entire night without at least one brief absence. The king didn't stay, but he returned often. He would stand next to my father, put his hand on Dad's shoulder, and look down at the closed eyes and pale skin. Then he would take my mother's hand and they would look at each other without speaking. Once, the king came to me and clasped my shoulders. His eyes held a terrible grief.
A bell tolled in the distance before dawn. Everyone returned to the chapel dressed for the new day. Four soldiers carried the platform. Pregel and Kardeen led the procession. Parthet, Mother, and I followed Dad. Lesh, Timon, and Dad's squire followed us. Harkane was fourteen, starting to fill out. The rest of the mourners fell into line as we followed a route marked by burning torches down steep stairs and along narrow passages below the great hall, through a cellar and down again to the royal crypt of Varay. Together in one long room the kings and heroes of Varay had their burial niches, the end of each occupied niche bearing a marble headstone with the name and dates of its occupant.
Dad's place had been prepared. The soldiers slid him into it, and a mason sealed the headstone in place. A purple banner was draped across the front. Pregel stood in front of the purple and looked around at the rest of us.
"Our Hero is dead," he announced, his voice echoing eerily in the catacombs,"but we have a new Hero at hand: Gil Tyner, Prince of Varay, heir designate, son of the Hero." He looked at me.
"Step forward and kneel before the king," Parthet whispered urgently. I did as he said. There was no time to think anything through.
"Son of my granddaughter, son of my Hero, king who will be," Pregel intoned. Baron Kardeen put a sword with jewel-encrusted hilt in the king's hand.
"Hold out your hands with the rings up," Parthet's voice hissed in my ear-even though he was standing back with my mother, ten feet away.
I held out my hands. The king touched me on each shoulder with the flat of the sword, then he touched the edge of the blade to each ring in turn, starting a burning in my hands. When he held the sword sideways and touched both rings simultaneously with the blade, sparks flew from the points of contact, as if the rings were the poles of a car battery. It was an electric charge: I felt it.
"May the magic of Vara sustain you. May the Great Earth Mother clasp you to her breasts. May your sword never know defeat. May your soul never taste shame. Rise, Prince Gil, Hero of Varay."
Pregel returned the fancy sword to Kardeen and then took my hands in his when I stood. There was an electric crackling through the crypt, a smell of brimstone, and it felt as if all the hair on my head and body was standing on end. Pregel's eyes burned into mine. Then he released my hands and hugged me-with considerable force.
"We have need of a Hero," he said aloud. Then he whispered, "We have need of you," close to my ear.
While we climbed back to the great hall, maybe eight or ten normal floors up, I could feel the magic settling in my body-it was as if new parts were being put into place.
It scared the crap out of me.
8 – Basil
Going from the crypt to the breakfast table didn't blunt anyone's appetite, but it did make for a silent meal. The king presided over breakfast in the great hall, something Parthet said he rarely did. Both tables were full. The lower table was positively packed, with far too many people crammed along the benches. But there was no shortage of food. Servants brought in platters, serving bowls, and huge pitchers in relays.
I couldn't remember ever being so hungry, even though we had just buried my father. There was still no room in me for any outpouring of grief. It was just a thing that I knew would have to wait. Our meals had been rather skimpy on the road, and I had eaten very little after we got back to Castle Basil the day before-almost nothing through the twelve hours of the vigil and funeral. A memory, a series of memories, came to me while I ate. Dad always pigged out after his "business trips." The first couple of days after he got home he seemed to eat continuously. "Gotta have fuel for the furnace," he'd say, predictably. But the bursts of compulsive eating never made him fat. When he was on one of those binges, he out-ate me, and I was growing and keeping hyperactive all the time.
While I ate, I kept glancing at King Pregel, right next to me. He might be one hundred twenty-five years old, but he was packing in the chow as heartily as anyone else. Pregel was as sedentary as he could be, but he was still lean, almost gaunt in appearance. I couldn't recall seeing any fat people in Varay. It started to puzzle me, but I filed the question for future exploration. I had a lot of questions about Varay.
When Pregel finished eating, he turned to me. "Barring great emergency it will be at least three days before we return to the usual business of the court," he said. "We have much to talk about, you and I, but not right now. Take what time you need to yourself. See to your mother. If you need anything at all, come to me or to Baron Kardeen, any time of the day or night."
I nodded and thanked him. A moment later, he stood and breakfast ended.
Timon had been at hand throughout the meal, serving me, making sure I got food from each new platter that was hauled in while the food was still hot. He knew more about a page's duties than I did, but the attention made me uncomfortable.
"Have you managed to get yourself anything to eat this morning?" I asked when I got up from the table. Timon didn't answer right off, so I assumed that he hadn't. He certainly couldn't have found much chance. He had been with me most of the time. "Then you'd better scare up some food for yourself before it disappears. I'm going up to the battlements."
"I'll go with you, lord," he said.
"Not until your stomach's bulging. It must be hell to stand around and watch others eat when you're hungry. You can come up when you're full. I won't fall off." He still hesitated. "Go on, eat!" I said firmly. Once it was a clear order, he seemed delighted to obey.
I wasn't sure how to get to the battlements of the keep, but I knew they were up there-crenellations and smaller towers at two of the corners. The logical thing was to go out to the main stairway and climb until I ran out of stairs, so that's what I did. Logic didn't always hold in Varay, but that time I lucked out.
What I wouldn't have given for a castle like Basil when I was nine or ten! Maybe it was no Caernarvon or Tower of London, but it would have seemed like it when I was a kid. The two watchtowers above the keep were the highest points in sight, off to the mountains that dimly wrinkled the southern horizon. I could see the sweep of the forest away from the castle and town, the line of the River Tarn, the patchwork greens of farms around the town and off into the distance, blending into the forest.
I climbed to the top of one of the watchtowers. There were crenellations, braziers, stands of weapons and piles of stones, a guard walking his post-in desultory fashion. The royal pennant flew on both towers, but below it flew a black flag of mourning and the pennant of the Hero of Varay. A mild breeze came out of the northeast. It wasn't cold, but it was invigorating after the stuffy, smoky warmth of the great hall. Maybe Shakespeare sent me racing to the battlements, but there was a bright sun shining; it wasn't midnight and I didn't see any tattletale ghosts.
Varay spread out in every direction. The only boundary I could be certain of from my perch was the distant line of the Titan Mountains to
the south. Parthet had said that they were unscalable, an absolute barrier. Not even magic could take a person over or through them. The Mist and the Isthmus of Xayber were too far north to be seen from Basil. I knew how far east of the capital the border with Dorthin was, also out of sight. Belorz was, according to the map, more than twice that far to the west. I wasn't overly confident that the map's scale had been accurate, but Varay seemed to be about 250 miles from east to west, somewhat more than that from north to south. The actual borders were vague. Varay and Dorthin argued and fought over the line in the east. The southern border depended on how far a person thought he could extend it into the Titans. And in the northeast, the border between Varay and Fairy fluctuated through Battle Forest, even out onto the isthmus at times, depending on how the fates or whatever were running. The only borders that seemed fixed were the coastline of the Mist and the line between Varay and Belorz. They were separated by a dandy river that both kingdoms accepted as a political divider.
If I believed the advertising, the kingdom would all be mine someday-if I survived my term as Hero of Varay. Now there's a job title that could have been created by an ad agency. I could go back home and cash in on it for Saturday-morning cartoons, maybe a string of flashy movies starring some ex-musclebuilder or football lineman, license an entire array of toys, T-shirts, school supplies, and anything else that could carry a logo and fetch a price.
The thoughts and images went through my head, circled and danced, but I didn't see much humor at the moment.
I looked down at my clothes. I had switched my fatigues and chain mail for an outfit of local manufacture during the night-loose trousers, coarse-woven shirt, and leather vest. The Basilier equivalent of Sunday-go-to-meeting duds. And my weapons. The Hero of Varay was expected to be armed at all times. The pistol holster inside my waistband was chafing. A knife and my sword showed.
