by Rick Shelley
Wood creaked finally, but there was no thump of the drawbridge coming down, no sudden surge of my danger sense.
"What's keeping them?" Annick whispered.
"Something's happened," I said, an understated expression of the surprise I felt as the feeling of danger started to wane for the first time since our arrival in Arrowroot. I took a moment to try to probe with the sense-and I wasn't even sure that I could use it that way.
"I think they're pulling back," I said after a moment.
I heard a loud yawn inside the castle, then a thick "What the hell's happening? Where'd this blasted fog come from? Where am I?" One of the garrison soldiers, fresh from his long nap. Lesh answered him, and, also inside the castle, somebody started blowing a horn.
"That's the alarm!" a new voice shouted.
"Where's the trouble?" another asked.
"Settle down," I said, not quite in a shout. "We'll know what's going on soon enough. Watch for the siege tower outside the wall."
That brought another assortment of comments from garrison soldiers. There were running feet inside the castle, in the courtyard, and on the stairs, as men raced to their battle stations, a week or two late. They were stumbling into each other and over obstructions. The fog was so thick that I couldn't make out my own feet unless I moved them.
"Somebody bring Baron Resler here," I shouted. "This is Gil Tyner." I didn't add titles, but I heard a distant-sounding voice say, "The Hero of Varay."
"They're all waking up," Annick said, her voice closer than before. "Did you scare the elflord off when you challenged him?"
"I couldn't scare Xayber off with the 82nd Airborne behind me," I said. Let her puzzle over that for a while, I thought with a chuckle.
"The fog's passing," someone said from the north side of the keep. Other voices took up the refrain and got clearer. A few minutes later, the tail end of the fog crossed the parapet where we were waiting. It was another perfectly straight line, fog on one side, clear air on the other. The fog moved across the moat, toward the town, picking up speed once it was clear of the castle. The siege tower was standing right at the edge of the moat, but there were no enemy troops in sight… except for about a dozen bodies left sprawled in the plaza.
The tower and the bodies were surprises to the soldiers who had been sleeping. "Where the hell did that come from?" was a popular question.
The fog bent toward the east like an echelon movement in a parade. There were no live soldiers in the plaza, no elf warriors waving claymores, no trace of any enemy but the dead.
"They used the fog to pull out," Harkane said.
"They've run off!" one of the Basiliers added.
Annick dropped her sword. I turned when I heard metal clatter on stone.
"Great Earth Mother!" she swore. "You've beaten the elflord again."
18 – Doors
I knew that it wasn't that simple-it couldn't be-but I was so astonished by Annick's reaction that I couldn't correct her mistake just then. Maybe the way I faced the elflord contributed to his decision to pull back from Arrowroot, but I couldn't be the main reason. Xayber and I hadn't come to our main event yet. I wasn't looking forward to that. No, something else must have convinced the elflord to call off the siege. Even if he thought I was a hotshot elf warrior out to make life difficult for him, Xayber had a bunch of elf warriors in the attacking force. This had to be Parthet's victory. His message must have reached the Elfking and started something in Fairy, behind Xayber.
Soldiers finally came through from Basil. Maybe the barn hadn't burned down first, but that was only because somebody had blown out the match. It took time to sort out the confusion in Arrowroot. Resler got patrols out to check on the town's residents, to make sure that the elflord's army was really gone, and to see to the dead that had been left behind. I went to Basil to check on Parthet. He was in bed, propped up, awake and eating. Mother was confident that he would recover.
"It'll take time, though," she told me in the hallway outside his room. "At his age, he can't spring back the way he once would have."
"Do what you can," I said. "We're going to need his magic when we meet the Etevar. He's certain to have his wizard along."
"I don't know." Mother shook her head doubtfully. "Three days? He may need that many weeks."
"We don't have weeks. Unless there's another qualified wizard lurking around that I don't know about."
"There isn't. Uncle has never trained an apprentice."
"Well, one thing anyway. You can be my link to open the new doorways. I'll set up one in Arrowroot, pop over to Coriander, and set one up there-with a little luck, maybe the elflord has abandoned that siege too-then come back here to start my ride to Thyme." Mother nodded. I stared at her for a moment. Our roles had changed drastically since I arrived in Varay, and I was just becoming aware of that. "You can handle a passage when we transfer the troops too, I guess."
"I might as well, since I'll be there to open them."
"Yeah. I don't want to try it solo if I can avoid it. But once the army comes through, we have to have Uncle Parthet." There wasn't the slightest doubt in my mind of that.
"I'll do what I can."
There wasn't time for much more. I wasn't even sure that I would have time to get the doorways set up and make the ride east before the Etevar's army crossed the border. Mother and I set up schedules for when I'd want somebody at the new doorways. We couldn't synchronize watches or get on the telephone, or anything like that. We would try just before sunset the next day, in case I managed to get to Thyme that fast-though Mother and I both knew that it would take Kentucky Derby racing the whole distance to make it-and then the morning after that, beginning at first light and continuing for as long as it took. I picked up one of the pouches of sea-silver and stepped back to Arrowroot. Annick was waiting for me.v
"How's your uncle?" she asked.
"Eating. He'll recover. Where's your uncle?"
"The last I saw, he was in the great hall, trying to organize a meal."
He was still there. I interrupted his work for my own. "I'm going to open new passages, one from here and one from Coriander. Then I'm going to ride to a place just this side of Castle Thyme to put the other ends of the passages. When I've got them open, we'll bring through every soldier we can to meet the Etevar."
Resler started to nod but checked his head in mid-gesture. "Just what do you mean, 'every soldier we can'? How many men do you figure to leave to guard my castle and town?"
I had never really gotten down to thinking about those details, but I hesitated for only an instant. "We don't leave a single soldier behind. This has to be all or nothing. If we don't stop the Etevar, the elflord is his headache. If we do stop him, we can ferry your men back here as quickly as we move them out." Resler nodded, but with obvious reluctance. "I'll put this end of the passage at ground level, through an outside door so we can transport horses." For a moment, I thought that Resler was going to demand confirmation of my orders by the king, but he didn't.
"The northwest tower might be best then," he said. "It's nearest the mews. You open the way. We'll be ready."
I grinned. The hoopla of being Hero had some benefits. Resler was plainly unsatisfied with my decisions, but he wasn't going to argue. "There is that problem yet," I admitted. "I've got to get cracking."
"So do I," Resler said. "I'll see you in a couple of days." His face was grim as he nodded and walked off. He did have a lot of work to do before he could be ready to move his garrison out. There were people missing from his town, though most of the locals were okay now that they were awake again-just scared. Food had to be found, which meant hunting parties. And there was a siege tower to dismantle.
"I'll show you the door he means," Annick said after Resler was gone. She hadn't said a word to her uncle. She had held back as if she didn't even want him to notice that she was around.
"I thought you'd want to get out and join the hunt for stragglers," I said, but not harshly-carefully, not harshly.
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br /> "No. I'm sticking close to you until this is over. You've hurt the elflord more in a couple of weeks than I have in a lifetime."
"And one of these days the elflord will do whatever it takes to even the score," I said. I didn't care much for this new Hero worship. In some ways, I preferred the old bloodthirsty, rebellious Annick. Especially since I knew how misplaced her awe was. When the letdown came, she would be more bitter than ever. And there would be a letdown. Few of the Heroes in the vault below Castle Basil had died of old age.
The sea-silver seemed alive and active, animal rather than plant, when I pulled the first strand from the water bag. When the silver completed a circuit between my rings accidentally, I felt an itchy tingle in both hands. I got to an end of the strand and applied it to the bottom corner of the doorjamb. The silver grabbed at the stone the way iron filings grab a magnet. I was able to stretch the weed in place as fast as I could slide my hands along the jamb. By the time I got halfway up the first side, the silver seemed to be leaping ahead, racing to attach itself, leeching to the stone. The first strand reached up the side and across the top. A second completed the circuit. When I was done, I couldn't even make out the joins between the two strands, even though I knew precisely where they were.
"Stand inside the tower, behind me," I told Annick. I didn't want any avoidable distractions while I finished my work.
I stood in the doorway the way Parthet had told me to and reached out to touch the tracing on either side with my rings, igniting that soft tingling again. I stared out at the courtyard, not focusing on anything in particular, simply trying to set the entire scene firmly in mind, what I would see from the other end of the passage. People crossed the courtyard. Some turned to look at me, others made a point of looking away. I tuned them all out, as best I could. I didn't know how much effort I had to put into this memorization for the magic to work, but I couldn't afford to come up short after making an insane marathon ride across nearly half the kingdom. Sure, I hoped to have either Mother or Parthet on this end when I opened the way, but I didn't dare count on that absolutely. I had to be ready to try the job single-handed if it came to that. And if my first shot failed, I wouldn't have time to ride back to make a second attempt. I scanned the lower parts of the curtain wall to my left, the keep directly across the courtyard, the pavement stretching away from the door. I stood there and soaked in the view until I could close my eyes and see it all almost as vividly as with my eyes open before I took my hands from the tracing and did a lot of blinking.
"That's one," I told Annick as I bent over to pick up the water bag with its sea-silver. "Now for Coriander."
Baron Dieth was almost bubbling over with excitement when I arrived. Xayber's army had simply packed up and left. "They just melted back into the forest," was how Dieth put it. He had been in no hurry to order a pursuit-a wise decision as far as I was concerned. The elflord's soldiers had taken a few villagers with them, presumably as slaves, but most of the local peasants had been safe inside the castle, so losses weren't as serious as they might have been. I told Dieth what we were going to do, in more detail than before. He nodded and suggested a suitable doorway. Annick watched while I lined the doorway and did my memorizing. Then we returned to Basil.
Parthet was sitting at a small table in his bedroom with a platter of food and a pitcher of beer-and he was making them disappear the old-fashioned way, without magic.
"You did a bang-up job at Arrowroot, lad," Parthet said, without slowing down his intake. "If you hadn't come along, I think the elflord would have kept me hanging there until I shriveled up and blew away." His voice sounded a lot stronger, he seemed to be in good spirits, and he didn't even appear to be nearly as stooped over as he had been before. His encounter with the elflord seemed to have actually done him some good.
"I still don't understand all of it, but we can puzzle it out later if we have to," Parthet said. "Don't waste time worrying about me, lad. You get yourself over to Thyme and set up the doorways. I'll be ready to do my bit on this end." He stopped eating long enough to take off his glasses and wave them at me. "You know, these are really marvelous. I'm seeing things I haven't seen in a thousand years."
I smiled. It was a tremendous relief knowing that Parthet was recovering, and not just because I wanted him beside me when we faced the Etevar's army. I told him exactly where I had put both new doorways and where I would put the ones in the east, and then I left him to his meal.
Next I had to face what almost became a mutiny among my "entourage" when I told them that I was going to make the long ride east alone.
"Every extra rider will slow me down that much more, and we don't have any hours to spare if we're going to get our army in place before the Etevar marches into Varay," I told them.
I couldn't see pulling a ride that might turn out like the one in The Three Musketeers with everyone falling by the wayside in one trap after another, leaving only the hero (small h, please) to finish the ride and quest. My promise that they could be the first ones through the doorways didn't help much, but there was a limit to how far they would press the argument. I was the Hero of Varay, after all. The only person who could overrule me was the king, and none of my people thought enough of their chances to make that appeal.
Then there was Annick. She waited until we were alone.
"I'm going with you no matter how many high-and-mighty pronouncements you make," she informed me, and then she made her arguments in a hurry, before I could blow my stack and order her locked in a dungeon or something-and I didn't even know if Castle Basil had a dungeon.
"You try making this crazy ride alone and you're liable to lose the whole kingdom," she shouted-right in my face. "You're going to ride day and night, you said, racing as fast as you can to beat the Etevar. Why, if it wasn't for that number you're swilling, you couldn't even stay upright that long. And what happens if your horse stumbles or steps in a hole? You're in the middle of nowhere without a ride. You won't be able to travel far or fast on foot with that busted rib and that hole in your back, no matter how much painkiller you drink. By the time you find yourself another horse and finish your ride, it's too late. The Dorthini army is inside Varay. They've destroyed the men already waiting for them and it's too late to get the rest of our soldiers in front of them. Ride at night? You're blind in the dark. I'm not. You'll travel faster with me, not slower. And if one horse is injured, we still have a second."
My first reaction was anger. With Annick, it had to be anger. But I couldn't refute her arguments and I wasn't stupid enough to let my anger get in the way. I could take a second horse, switch back and forth to spread the burden, but handling two horses might slow me too. I had never tried riding one horse and leading a second. My back? Who could say what a day and a half, almost two full days, of hard riding would do to it? And Annick was certainly right about night vision. She did have that useful bit of elvish heredity. I didn't even sputter. I kept my mouth shut until the anger faded.
"Then let's eat and get out of here," I said.
Pushing ourselves and our horses for all we were worth, I thought that we might reach that cottage in the orchard near Castle Thyme in thirty hours. Since it was well past noon when we left Basil, that meant sunset the next night, or later. Earlier would be better, but earlier was unlikely, despite the arrangements I had made for either Mother or Parthet to be ready to open the passages before dark. I needed light to complete the passages, and if there wasn't enough light to work by when we arrived, I might have to wait until the next morning when I would have Parthet or Mother waiting to help with the final connections again. I didn't know if torchlight or a fire in the cottage's fireplace would be enough for me to do the job alone. The hard part of the magic was already done, I hoped. With someone on the other end, maybe firelight would be enough. Maybe.
Most of the ride was a blur. Annick and I concentrated on our horses, willing them to greater speed, and we watched the road for holes or rocks that might twist a horse's foot and lame it. I was
swimming in sweat within an hour and developed a monumental headache from the futile mental effort. I kept putting off taking more pain-killer as long as I could. It was so powerful that I thought it might easily be addictive. I didn't want to take any more of a chance on that than I absolutely had to. Even when I did take a sip, it didn't completely erase the pains of riding or of my mending injuries.
Fields and forest passed on either side of us. Annick and I pushed our animals to their limits, almost beyond reason, stopping only when it was absolutely essential and resting for no more than a few minutes at a time when we did. My headache stretched down my spine and linked up with the pain in my back early in the ride. Then those pains connected themselves to the cramps in my legs and the throbbing of a butt too long in the saddle. While it was light out, Annick and I rode side by side, or I rode just in front of her when the road narrowed. Once dusk started to congeal into night, Annick took the lead and I concentrated on keeping my horse, Gold, close to hers, just a little behind and to the side so we wouldn't collide if Annick had to stop suddenly.
We rode through the village of Nushur in the dark. I toyed with the idea of stopping for fresh horses, but decided against it. We probably wouldn't have found very good animals, and waking the place for remounts would have cost us too much time. At least, I was afraid that it would. So we rode on through the night, into morning and a sun that stabbed deeply into our sleepless eyes.
Our horses started stumbling on dust and air. Their pace fell way off. Their chests heaved as they fought for air, sweating, trying to keep up with our demands. Long before noon, it was obvious that we had to give our animals at least a couple of hours to recuperate. If we didn't, Annick and I would both be walking before long. But we pressed on, "a little farther, a little farther," until we nearly waited too long. We finally pulled up along a decent little stream and a grassy bank that allowed us to get away from the road. The animals would have to wait to drink, but they could rest and graze while they were cooling off.
