by Rick Shelley
"Mutual funds, certificates of deposit, bank accounts, a little real estate. My accountant sends me a monthly statement. They pay me good money for the work I do." And beyond that, I was due to be the next King of Varay-if I stayed alive long enough to inherit the throne. If I ever did run short of cash I had reserves I could draw on back in the buffer zone… but I had never come close to running short. My tastes aren't that extravagant. "All the papers are in here." I put the locked drawer on top of the stack of things to go to Varay.
I had the same feeling as the last time I left the apartment, that I might never see the place again. The first time I had been wrong. Who could tell about the second? Repeated often enough, there's always a chance of being right eventually with a prediction like that. The thought that I might be cut off from Chicago, from this entire world-maybe forever-was depressing. Varay would be much less inviting without the opportunity to take time out from it whenever I needed a break.
And then I just had to sit down and look away from the stack.
"Are you all right?" Joy asked.
"Yeah, I'm okay. Just tired, I guess."
"Then let's go home and get some sleep. We can haul this stuff over in the morning."
"No, we'd better get as much as we can now. You open the doorway. I'll start humping everything through."
I did get the entire stack moved through, but I had a rotten night afterward. I slept poorly, waking with rapidly disappearing nightmares, dreams that I couldn't hold on to long enough to know what they were about. I never used to have trouble with nightmares. That started with my introduction to the Congregation of Heroes, just before the Battle of Thyme. Nightmares had been a periodic nuisance ever since.
I tossed and turned so badly that I woke Joy several times. Finally, I got dressed and went up to the battlements to pace.
Maybe that was a bad idea. It usually is, especially in the middle of the night. I mean, the times when I really feel like prowling around up there, I'm usually already feeling down and the scenery just makes it worse. I still think it all stems from Hamlet. I first read that when I was nine or ten and had to look up a lot of the old words. Coming to Varay the way I did, hoping to rescue my parents in a world I had never heard of, fixed the Hamlet idea firmly in my head, and I'd never been able to shake it.
Sleep was what I needed, and I wasn't likely to get much sleep walking back and forth atop Castle Cayenne. I searched the skies, looking for some evidence of the general way things were falling apart. A herd of dragons wouldn't have surprised me in the least. Neither would a flock of ICBMs, or little green men from Mars or someplace else. I had more than three years of living in Varay, but I still suffered the occasional reality crisis. And knowing the problem didn't seem to help solve it.
The full moon was about ready to set in the west.
The full moon was rising in the east.
I didn't stop to list all of the ways that it was impossible. In Varay, that doesn't seem as vital as it would be back in the "real" world. But it was still wrong. It was yet another impossibility, like dragon fetuses in chicken eggs.
This time, I didn't even stop to put on a weapon. I ran downstairs and through the portal to Castle Basil and went looking for Parthet. He was in his workroom, candles and lanterns burning all over the place. He looked up slowly when I came barging in. He was obviously about one yawn short of falling asleep.
"What is it?" he asked.
"Come up top, quick," I said. I almost picked him up out of his chair and half-dragged him to the stairs.
"What is it?" he asked again while we climbed stairs. His voice sounded more alert now, and a little angry, but I didn't say anything until we came out onto the tower's battlements.
"Look at the moon," I said. I pointed west, then east, turning Parthet. He started trembling.
"We're running out of time," he said.
"Have you found out where I have to go to find those balls?" I asked.
"Yes, in a general sense, but not in a more exact sense."
"Tell me."
"One is located in a shrine somewhere in the Titan Mountains, 'at the limit to which mortals may aspire,' is how the oldest texts put it. The other is in a shrine on an island 'lost in the Sea of Fairy that none may find or leave.' That's as close as I've been able to narrow it down."
"It's more than I expected," I said.
"There's worse," Parthet said. I waited, but he seemed reluctant to provide the rest.
"It might not help if I could tell you exactly which shrines the jewels are in." He paused again before he laid it on me. "According to the sources I've been able to find, it takes someone 'of the blood of Fairy, whole and pure,' to find the jewels of the Great Earth Mother."
"So we're back to Junior," I said.
"We can't do it his way."
"Look at the sky again, Uncle. Two full moons in the sky. And there's a dragon flying over Tennessee back in my world. You're the one who said we're running out of time. Just let me do the deal with our elf."
"He's looking for a death vow."
"If that's what it takes," I said.
My hands shook for a moment, but when I got back to Castle Cayenne, I was finally able to sleep.
9 – The Rock
No one disturbed Joy and me when morning came. Sunrise was a couple of hours gone when I finally woke. Strangely, I felt more rested and relaxed than I had in a long time even though I was still several days short on sleep. Lying in bed when I woke, I remained motionless for long, luxurious minutes experiencing an unusual tranquil glow, a warm floating sensation. At first, my thoughts were limited to a passive awareness of my body and how good I felt. My perceptions broadened only very slowly. I became conscious of Joy at my side and I turned my head so I could see her-and I saw her as I never had before.
Joy. Emotions coursed madly through me, racing, overlying each other, blending in new ways, an exhilarating kaleidoscope-not just the intense passion she usually aroused, something more powerful and complex. She was still asleep. Her face seemed totally relaxed. There were scarcely visible freckles across her nose, tiny lines at the corners of her eyes. She breathed quietly through barely parted, full lips. Her hair was draped across one cheek in a riot of shadings of blond and light brown over lightly tanned skin. Thin neck, soft shoulders. I felt a love that I really didn't understand, love that I had never completely recognized before, and something more, a deep empathy, a sense of being part of a greater whole.
It was a perfect moment.
I reached out slowly to touch her cheek, to brush the hair away from the corner of her mouth, and she opened her eyes before I touched her. She smiled and made a contented sigh. Her cheek was warm, her hair as soft as ever.
We kissed.
"I love you," I whispered, and Joy echoed it.
I propped myself up on one elbow and peeled the blanket and sheet off of us. Joy lay motionless while I stared at her and tried to memorize every soft contour of her body. I looked, and then I leaned over and kissed each nipple. When I laid my hand on her stomach, Joy seemed to catch fire. She pulled me over on top of her and we shared a long, deep kiss-tender and passionate by turns, and then we shifted into more urgent foreplay. Everything seemed to be deliciously protracted, as if time had slowed to stretch the moment for us. There was no frenzied abandon to our lovemaking that morning. Each instant expanded to let us savor it fully-sex as symphony, the way it is in dreams but rarely in life. We reached a blinding orgasm together, but I didn't lose my erection, and as soon as the waves of the first climax ebbed, we started moving toward a second, rolling over on our sides together. For a time, it felt almost as if we were melting together, becoming one person. I slid my arms around Joy and held her. And our second climax was as wild as the first.
After that, we both needed time to get our breathing and heart rates back in order, time to come down from the dizzying heights. Our bodies remained tangled together while I slowly deflated. The deep blush faded from Joy's face and the pale skin of
her breasts. I stroked her cheek and told her again that I loved her. I may have dropped a tear or two into the pillows when I realized how totally I was committed to her… and how likely it was to come to an end, all too soon. I had to go off and be a Hero again, and if I survived the first quest, then I would have to go into the den of my most powerful enemy to return the body of his son, the son I had killed. I didn't look forward to another confrontation with the Elflord of Xayber, especially not where his power was greatest.
To keep my thoughts from wandering farther in that direction and spoiling the morning, I had to get out of bed. I went into the bathroom and started to fill the huge oval tub that had been carved from a block of granite and polished until it sparkled. The sun had been out long enough to give us hot water for a bath.
Joy was still in bed, lying spread-eagled like a pose for a men's magazine-and lovely enough to grace the best of them. I picked her up and carried her into the bathroom. While we waited for the tub to fill, we made love again. We started standing up, me holding her, her legs wrapped around my hips, and ended with me sitting on the side of the tub, still holding her, moving her against me until everything went all dark and light and crazy for us again. Somehow, I managed to get us turned around and lowered into the tub without disengaging or falling. We sat in body-temperature water and washed each other slowly, lovingly, not separating until we had to.
The morning was half gone before we dressed.
"I'll probably be leaving on this job tomorrow morning," I told Joy when I couldn't postpone it any longer. "And I'll probably be busy getting ready for the trip most of this afternoon."
Joy nodded. "I figured that it had to be that soon." She hesitated, then said, "It's going to be very dangerous, isn't it?" The form was a question, but the tone wasn't.
It was my turn to nod. I might not have volunteered that information, but I wouldn't lie to her about it. "I have to locate a couple of relics that might not exist, from unknown places that no one has ever been to, and figure out how to use them to keep everything from continuing to unravel." Piling impossibility on impossibility-but it still sounded mundane and simple when I put it into words like that.
"You won't go alone, will you?" This time it was a real question.
"I doubt it. I'm the crown prince or whatever here. I'm supposed to have a proper retinue at times like this. Lesh, Harkane, and Timon will all go with me, maybe even Uncle Parthet. He can come up with useful bits of magic now and then." I didn't plan to mention the elf's head that we would need for a guide.
"How long will you be gone?"
"I don't have any idea yet. Actually, this may turn into three separate trips, one right after the other. Depends. The first place is somewhere in the Titan Mountains to the south, the second is an island somewhere out in the Mist-the Sea of Fairy-north of Varay, and the third is the stronghold of the Elflord of Xayber in Fairy. I may be able to sneak back here between trips. Maybe."
"Do you really have to go?" That was the ultimate question, I guess. The answer was unavoidable, though.
"I have to go. It's the only hope of straightening everything out again, the only chance to get life back to normal, here and back in our world." After three years, I still made the distinction. Joy had only had a couple of days to see the differences.
"But why you?" she asked, passing by any question about grandiose delusions, Messiah complexes, or any of the other things most people might be tempted to ask.
I snorted, maybe added a bitter laugh. "Because I'm Gil Tyner, Prince and Hero of Varay. It would have been my father's job if it had happened before he was killed. Now it's my job."
"And we can't just go back to Chicago and forget it all, let them find another Hero?"
"No, we can't." I was quiet for a moment before I continued. "I didn't really choose this Hero job. My parents trained me for it without telling me what it was all about. Then, when my father died, I had the job dropped on me before I really had any understanding of what was going on. Still, I can't just walk away. It's a matter of family, if nothing else." I put an arm around her, and we walked to the window. It was a bright, warm day, right at the start of August. The grass and trees were green, the grain fields turning color, nearly ready to harvest. In southern Varay, the wheat comes in at the end of July or early August.
"You'll do okay here while I'm gone. You'll have the rest of the staff to take care of things, treat you like royalty. You can always pop through to Basil for company. My mother will be there. Kardeen too. And you'll have your folks here this time next week."
"And they're going to expect you here," she said. "How am I going to explain the fact that you're off gallivanting so soon after our wedding?"
I just looked at her for a moment while I fought back the urge to bust out laughing. "Don't you think you'll have enough to explain to them?" I asked. "They won't even notice that I'm gone."
Then we both started laughing.
"I guess I'll manage," Joy said when we got it under control. "I'll be waiting when you get back."
There wasn't much more we could say just then. We went downstairs to put in an appearance. I had to talk to Lesh and the others, tell them what we had to face and give them the option of staying put. No one took it. I was certain that no one would. Joy went to the kitchen to get us something to eat-and to avoid listening to the shop talk, I guess. We had missed breakfast and it was still a little early for lunch, but there were always sandwich fixings and whatnot to tide people over at Cayenne, like most places in the buffer zone.
Joy brought back a plate with huge ham sandwiches and the Varayan answer to potato chips and french fries-half-inch-thick slices of potato fried so that they were crunchy on the outside and soft inside.
"The choice of drinks seems to be beer, wine, or coffee," Joy said.
"That's usually the choice, unless I pick up a case of Pepsi and bring it over."
"Maybe I'll go get some this afternoon while you're busy."
The idea of her going off alone like that made me nervous, but I finally nodded. "You'll probably find it easier to go through Louisville," I said. I reminded her which doorways to take, told her where my mother kept the spare keys to her van. We had to go back upstairs to get a set of house keys for her. I also gave her one of my bank cards and the code number to use it and told her how to find the bank machine and then the supermarket. "It's in a big shopping center. If you think of anything else we need, go ahead and get it."
"In that case, I could use someone to help carry things."
I thought about it for a second. "Lesh and Harkane will both be busy, but go ahead and take Timon. He's been there a few times and he knows enough English to get by."
"What do you mean? He speaks perfect English. Everyone here does."
I laughed. "You mean you haven't noticed?" I asked.
"Noticed what?"
"Watch people's lips when they talk. The only people in Varay who speak English fluently are you, me, my mother, and Uncle Parthet. Lesh is pretty good at it, but he slips into Varayan quite frequently. Harkane's almost as good as Lesh, and he tries harder. The rest of the people here speak no English at all, except for Timon."
Joy got a bewildered look on her face.
"You ever see a foreign movie dubbed in English?" I asked. "Seen the way words and lip movements don't match?" She nodded. "It's like that here." I switched into Varayan for the last sentence and Joy's eyes got wider.
"And everybody sees me like that?" she asked.
"Except for the people who speak English well enough to avoid having the translation magic kick in. Part of the magic of this place lets everyone hear his own language, no matter what language a speaker uses. You get used to it in time."
"I think I'd rather learn to speak Varayan."
"You can't, not here. The translation magic makes it impossible for anyone to learn a foreign language in the buffer zone. I had to take my lessons back in our world, and that's where I taught Lesh, Harkane, and Timon what they know of
English. Well, Harkane knew some English before. He was my father's last squire."
For a time, I knew that Joy would be staring at people's lips whenever they spoke. I went through that too.
"Ah, you'll find that Timon's English is pretty sports-oriented," I said. "I've taken him to see all the Chicago teams in action. But he can get by around food too." Timon loved football and hockey most of all, hard contact sports. Soccer and basketball were lower on his list, and baseball still confused him a little. His proposed remedy for a called third strike was for the batter to take off the umpire's head with his dandy warclub. I could see the temptation of that myself.
"Just remember," I said, getting more serious. "Keep an ear on the news and don't waste time there. If I get the mess straightened out here, maybe we won't have to worry so much about what might happen in the other world, but I haven't started yet."
I waited around to see Joy and Timon off through the doorway. Timon had changed to blue jeans and a Chicago Bears jersey, number 50, Mike Singletary's number. Timon liked Singletary's approach to the game. "He looks like he's ready to bite their heads off," Timon said one Monday night while we were watching the Bears play on television. The networks always liked to show a close-up of Singletary looking out over the line.
After Joy and Timon left, Lesh and I went to Castle Basil to get going on our work.
"Since we'll probably be going to the mountains first, we're going to need a lot of rope, as much as you can lay your hands on," I told Lesh as we walked from the doorway toward Basil's great hall. "A couple of grappling hooks if you can find them." I had done a little climbing with Dad-we had sampled a little of almost everything, it seems-but not a lot. I tried to describe pitons and some of the other climbing gear I thought we might be able to fake. I didn't know of anywhere in either Chicago or Louisville where I could just walk in and buy climbing equipment off the shelf, and I was positive that we wouldn't have time to do any traveling or to wait for the items to be delivered by mail order. If the place we had to reach in the Titan Mountains was really at the very limit to which people could climb, we were going to have to leave our horses behind at some point and finish on foot, which also meant that there was a limit to how much gear we would be able to take along.
