by Rick Shelley
Parthet turned and headed back to his workroom. Kardeen walked on with me.
"So these things really exist?" I asked.
"If you mean has anyone actually seen them and reported seeing them, the answer is no, not in any of the records that I have seen," Kardeen said. He shook his head. "But I would not disbelieve the story. There is something, there has to be."
"You know that we're going to have to deal with Xayber's son before this is over," I said.
Kardeen didn't answer immediately. I glanced at him. He looked lost in thought.
"The king would never consent to the deal the elf demands," he said finally. "The Elflord of Xayber has too bitter a grudge against you, and he isn't likely to forget the reckoning."
"None of that matters if things come down to a choice of risking me or the possibility of losing everything, which includes me. There won't be any choice, any at all. The End of Everything sounds awfully final, while I might survive a close encounter with Xayber. I have before, and I know a little more of what's going on now than I did then. There's at least some chance in that option." I wasn't overly confident, but even in a worst-case scenario, it was still the only way. If we somehow managed to latch on to this pair of perhaps mythical family jewels and figured out how to use them to keep Armageddon or whatever from happening.
"Something can be worked out with the elf," Kardeen said, but he didn't sound overly confident either.
"What are you going to do, offer him a new pair of suspenders?" I asked. I was usually very careful not to be sarcastic with Kardeen. The chamberlain was a good guy, organized, efficient, indispensable-and a good friend-but this time, it just slipped out of me. "He wants me to take him home to Daddy," I said, trying to sound a little more serious. "I guess part of that is concern for being laid out proper, but I imagine that it's more because his daddy sent him to kill me and this is his only way of getting the job done. Maybe…" I stopped talking and almost stopped walking.
"Maybe?" Kardeen asked blandly, slowing down to match my reduced pace.
The idea that had popped into my head wasn't fully formed, so I didn't want to spring it on anyone until I had a chance to turn it over in my mind a few more times. "Look, if it comes down to actually making a deal with the elf, let me do the making, all right? I've got a few ideas of my own on this."
Kardeen made a formal nod of agreement. "It's your neck on the line," he observed, and I nodded back.
"By the way, I think you'll be able to pull the workmen out of the crypt for a while. I don't think that grandfather will need it quite yet."
"Prophecy, or a gift of healing?" he asked.
I started to treat his remark as a joke until I recognized that he wasn't making a joke, he was serious. "There's something in the legends about the Heroes of Varay being able to do that?" I asked. In turn, my question was also serious. I was still learning about the magic that went with my job the hard way, falling into one bit of it after another.
"Vara was said to be a healer at special times."
"But Vara was also supposed to be of Fairy blood," I reminded him. In the three years and odd months since I fell into the job of Hero of Varay, I had read every word that existed of Vara and his time, and I had heard the much more extensive legends that were handed down and embellished from generation to generation. Vara was something like the Prodigal Son, but he didn't go crawling home in shame. He set up the buffer zone to cut his fattier and older brother off from the mortal realm, which they had been using for their personal sport-and some of those tales sounded straight out of Bulfinch and Homer… or vice versa.
"We all have something of the blood of Fairy," Kardeen said. "It's what makes the seven kingdoms so special. We come from both worlds. And in your family, the line is direct."
"How long do you figure Parthet will need to find out where these… relics are, or to find out that he can't find them?"
"He'll keep at it until he exhausts all of his sources-and until I've exhausted mine. It may be a couple of days, probably not much longer."
"A couple of days of everybody going into a panic at anything the least bit out of the ordinary?" Somehow, that didn't come out too well. I had visions of Chicken Little.
"You don't seem to take any of this very seriously," Kardeen said, the closest he had ever come to scolding me about anything.
"I take the deaths of thousands of people back home very seriously," I told him. "I just haven't seen anything to convince me that dragon eggs have anything to do with nuclear bombs or the End of Everything or anything else."
"You'd prefer to think that it's a coincidence?" Kardeen asked.
"I'd prefer to think that it was all a bad dream. Since I know it's not, I don't know what to make of it, but I'm not ready to jump all the way to doomsday conclusions."
Parthet was busy, every minute, keeping at his work. Kardeen had loads of work to do, all of his regular work and this extra quest for information-however he planned to fit that in. One way or another, there would be plenty of work for me coming up, but at that moment there really wasn't anything I could do to speed things up. I went back to the great hall. Joy was sitting by herself.
"Where's Aaron?" I asked.
"He's off with one of the boys from here in the castle," Joy said. "I guess he's exploring. Are we ready to leave?"
"Not yet, I'm afraid. It won't be long, though." I got a mug of beer and hung around long enough to drink it. "I've just got a little more to do here. I'll be back in a few minutes and then we can go."
I went back up to the king's bedroom to check in with Mother. Pregel was awake and seemed measurably stronger than he had just a little while before. His smile was encouraging.
"You look better," I told him, despite his longstanding aversion to talking about his health.
"I feel better," he replied. Mother shrugged and nodded.
I sat with them for a few minutes, then went back to the great hall to collect Joy.
"There's something I never thought to ask you," I said as I plopped down on the chair next to her. "Have you ever done any horseback riding?"
"You mean on real, live horses?" she asked. I nodded, and Joy shook her head. "I don't even ride on merry-go-rounds. They make me dizzy."
"Well, a real horse doesn't go in circles like that normally," I said, ruling out any wisecracks about dizziness. "Unless it's on a racecourse."
"I haven't seen any cars here," Joy noted, figuring out where I was leading.
"No internal combustion engines of any sort. They don't work. Besides the doorways, there are just two ways to get anywhere, foot and horse. The doors don't go everywhere, and feet will only take a body so far."
"I think you're telling me that I'm going to have to learn how to ride."
"It's not that bad, really. A good horse is as comfortable as a rocking chair." And then, because I couldn't let the opportunity pass, I added, "Mostly, learning to ride is simple arithmetic."
"What do you mean?"
"You just have to get back up in the saddle one more time than you fall off." I laughed and ducked as she took a light swing at my shoulder.
"You stinker," she said. Then she started laughing too. "When does all this falling off start?"
"Pretty soon, I think. I'll talk with Lesh, have him give you lessons."
"Why not you?"
"Something I read once said that spouses should never try to teach each other anything, that it just makes reasons to fight. And besides, you'd clobber me the first time I laughed at you falling."
"Darn right I would. I may clobber you just for thinking about it."
"We'll have to see about getting you a horse here. We don't keep a lot of spares at Cayenne." The light mood seemed to evaporate from me then. There was no special reason that I could see, but I sort of slumped a little and felt the smile leave my face.
"You mean I've got to ride home?" Joy asked, not catching the change at once. "How far is it?"
"No, you don't have to ride home, though i
t would be a nice jaunt if we wanted to take a week or so to ourselves. I don't think we can afford the time right now, though. But there's a good stable here and we'll be able to find a horse that's just right for you." The conversation was suddenly an effort, and I had to really push myself to continue it. I'm still not certain what happened to me sitting there.
"Who's going to pick out my horse?" Joy asked.
"Well, you obviously don't know enough about horses to do it." I held up a hand to keep her from saying anything about my charge. I wasn't looking for another swat, even a playful one. I quickly added, "I don't know a hell of a lot more. All I know is that you open their mouths and look at their teeth, and I don't know why you're supposed to do that. So I guess we'll just do what I usually do, let Baron Kardeen take care of it. That's pretty much a guarantee that you'll get the best horse for you that can be found in the kingdom."
"Really?"
"He's the glue that holds Varay together," I said.
"How old is he?"
"About twenty years older than your father," I said, and then I realized that Joy had finally noticed the change in my mood. She was trying to bring me out of my sudden funk. I almost told her not to bother. Instead, I took a deep breath, held it for a moment, then let it out. I managed to paste a smile across my face then. Maybe Joy knew what she was doing after all. I took her hand and stood up. "Let's go home."
"Home?"
"Cayenne," I said. Joy didn't look particularly elated-there was no way she could consider my castle her home yet-but she didn't complain.
Joy and I stepped through the doorway to Cayenne and went up to the battlements to be alone for a while. I had never found it necessary to station a sentry about Castle Cayenne, but I knew that Lesh put his men on rotation whenever I wasn't "in residence," when the place was his responsibility-or even when we were both gone. The countryside was generally peaceful, and I had the special danger sense of the Hero of Varay to protect me, so Lesh had, grudgingly, decided that maybe sentries weren't essential when I was around. My "establishment" wasn't so large that I had to find work for the people I did have.
I boosted myself up into one of the crenels and sat sideways in it, back against one side, feet against the other, swords skewed around so I didn't have to worry about slicing my back. Joy leaned against me and pulled my arm around her. We stayed like that for a few minutes, then Joy turned around in my arms and stared me straight in the eye.
"What's wrong?" she asked.
"What do you mean?"
"You know what I mean. What's going on around here? Something is wrong, it has to be, maybe something as big as what happened to the Coral Lady."
"There are no nuclear weapons here. I don't think they would work." But I knew what she was driving at. I closed my eyes to avoid the look Joy gave me.
"The trouble seems to be spilling over here," I said when I opened my eyes again. "That means work for me, Hero-work."
"Dangerous work?"
"By definition," I admitted. "And this time, if Parthet is right, the stakes are as high as they can get."
"Can't you get out of it?"
All I could do was shake my head.
8 – Death Vow
"You do what you have to do."
I heard that piece of advice many times while I was growing up. Dad tossed that one out anytime I had to make a difficult or painful choice. I don't know when the first time was, but the first time that really sticks in my mind came when I was fifteen and we were deer hunting in the Rockies. I shot a handsome stag but didn't kill it. The animal was badly wounded but managed to get away. You do what you have to do. In that case, it meant four hours of dangerous tracking through rough country to find the stag and finish the job. Of course, Dad didn't send me off to do the job alone-though he might have a year later. Still, either or both of us could have been killed or badly injured tracking that wounded stag down into a canyon and through a stretch of frigid white water. And then we couldn't get the whole carcass back out. We skinned it, saved the horns, hide, and as much meat as we could, and then hiked and climbed back to our camp. It was totally dark by the time we got there. We were both freezing and wet, and it's amazing that we didn't both get sick.
The price the elf demanded for his help was high-potentially as high as it could get for me-but I didn't have much choice, and the elf knew it. It was my duty, and you do what you have to do.
Duty. That led me to thoughts of Annick and her warped sense of duty. She thought it was her duty to spend as much of her life as it took to find and murder her father, the elf warrior who had raped her mother and sired her. In the process, Annick attacked anything and anyone out of Fairy who came within reach. I hadn't seen her myself since the day of the Battle of Thyme, but I had certainly heard about her and her exploits often enough. Annick was a few months younger than Joy, but while Joy had been in college, Annick had been making one foray after another north into the Isthmus of Xayber, ambushing soldiers of the elflord, setting fire to houses, laying traps of one sort or another to cause trouble even when she wasn't around. Back in my world, she would have been a terrorist, planting bombs or whatever-creating mayhem, maybe even incidents like the Coral Lady. The most charitable thing I could think about Annick was that it was a waste. At times I pitied her. At times I thought she was no better than a mad dog. She was so consumed by her hatred that there wasn't room for anything else in her life. She called it duty. I called it obsession, insanity. There was no rational excuse for what she did, no way to justify it, even in the buffer zone. Annick would keep up with her madness until it killed her. And one of these days it would. I was surprised that she had lasted as long as she had already.
Up on the battlements of Cayenne, I held Joy for several minutes, until we were both feeling a little better. Then we went down to the main hall for dinner. Hunger in Varay gives very little way to any competition. Afterward, while Joy went to the kitchen to compliment the cooks, I went over a few things with Lesh.
"I don't want anyone filling Joy's head with all the horrors we've been through," I told Lesh. "She's shaky enough without hearing about all the injuries and so forth. I'll tell her myself, in time." Lesh just nodded and waited. "She'll worry enough when we're off on this next business."
"I understand, lord," Lesh said, and I was sure that he did. Lesh-Sir Lesh to give him his proper title-was my right-hand man. He served as chamberlain, steward, majordomo for Castle Cayenne. He was my representative to the village, and he was my companion on all of my Hero-work. He had also become my closest friend, and not just in the buffer zone.
"We'll be off soon?" Lesh asked when I didn't continue.
"Probably within the next few days," I told him. Then I reported what I knew so far and what was left to learn.
"Oh, something else for when we have time," I said when I got through the essentials. "Joy doesn't know how to ride. You think you can teach her?"
"Aye, lord. What horse did you have in mind for her?"
"I'll have Baron Kardeen find one at Basil. We really don't have one here that would be right for her, do we?"
"Well, perhaps she could take a lesson or two on Timon's Gheffy."
"No real hurry, Lesh. Things may be hectic for a time."
"More dragon eggs?" he asked, in the same way he might have asked if I thought it would rain in the morning.
"This and that," I said. "Parthet's in a panic about all the omens."
"It's a wizard's job to know about such things," Lesh reminded me.
I shrugged. "Whatever comes, it's likely to mean work for us."
"Aye, that's for sure." Joy was coming back. Lesh spotted her before I did. "I'll take care of the riding lessons, lord."
If I could just cut down the number of "lords" to one or two a month, it would be perfect. But Lesh's sense of Varayan propriety was just too strong.
Joy started talking about the methods the cooks used and how much she had liked food that she had never tasted before. All the way up to our rooms
, she carried on about the kitchen and the problems of fixing such large meals for a crowd. I let her talk and just nodded or grunted as needed to keep her going.
"There's not much light for reading in here," Joy said when we got to the bedroom. "Those kerosene lanterns and oil lamps just aren't enough."
"We can fix that. I've just never bothered. I've always treated the three places as one big apartment. When I want to read, I just go through to the other room." I hesitated, suddenly recalling the way I had felt when we left Chicago the last time, as if I might never see the place again. "I don't suppose there's any real reason to stop, especially since the plumbing is a lot better in Chicago."
"You don't sound very happy about it though."
"Just nerves, I suspect."
"Because of that ship?"
"That's part of it. But things are also stranger than usual around here, what with the dragons in the eggs and all." I was being vaguer than necessary. While I still didn't know precisely what all the strange omens were leading up to, I could be relatively sure that it would mean acute Hero-work before long. But Joy still wasn't all that comfortable just being in Varay. I hoped to let her gradually learn just how much my "job" entailed.
"You have to stick around?" she asked.
"Well, I shouldn't be out of touch for long, but Parthet and Mother both know how to get hold of me if I'm back in our world." I shook my head. "There was something else, just before we left Chicago the last time. Part of the magic of being Hero of Varay is a special awareness of danger. You remember the way I knew something was wrong before we heard about the Coral Lady?" I waited for her to nod before I continued. "Well, that danger sense was kicking up when we left the apartment in Chicago. I had a feeling that I might never see the place again."
"That settles it. Let's go right this minute and put that fear to rest."
I chuckled. "I forgot that you minored in psychology."
"Phooey. It's just common sense."
"I know, like getting back on the horse right away when you fall off," I said.
