by Rick Shelley
"Don't worry, I'll get it all fixed up," Lesh said, and I knew he would. Within his own limits, Lesh was as efficient as Baron Kardeen.
We parted at the entrance to the great hall. Lesh went off toward the courtyard and I went into the hall. This trip, I was properly accoutered for public display, blades hanging off of me like icicles from a Christmas tree. As usual, there were a few people lounging around the great hall, and others who were working. But neither Parthet nor Kardeen was in evidence, so I went on to Parthet's workroom.
Parthet wasn't there either, but Aaron was sitting at the wizard's desk, reading. It was Aaron, no doubt of that, since he was the only black in the seven kingdoms, but he looked so different that he was almost unrecognizable. It wasn't until he stood up that I realized why.
"You look like you've grown six inches since yesterday," I said.
"Yes, sir, all of that." He grinned very briefly, but it was a happy grin, not self-conscious. His voice was different too, with an adolescent harshness to it. To all appearances he had put on five or six years of age overnight.
"Has Parthet been conjuring over you?" I asked-sharply, I suppose.
"No, sir. He was surprised too this morning."
"You're taking it pretty good."
"Ain't that much fun being a little kid." It was just another adventure to him, no worries about the impossibility of all the things that had happened to him. In a way, I envied him.
"Where's Parthet?"
"Upstairs, sleeping, I think. He was up all night."
"I know. What are you reading?" I gestured at the scroll he had been going through.
"It's about some dude named Vara. You know about him?"
"I know. When Parthet gets some free time, ask him to take you downstairs to show you where Vara is buried."
"He was for real?"
"He was for real, but I don't know how much of that stuff he really did," I said, pointing at the scroll again. "Things get exaggerated over the years."
I went out and climbed the tower stairs to Parthet's other room. He was sleeping. I could hear his snoring even through the six-inch-thick wooden door. I opened the door and hit him with a screeching whistle. Parthet woke immediately and popped up to a sitting position.
"Is that any way to treat an old man?" he demanded.
"What happened to Aaron?" I asked.
"Not my doing. His parents died, his grandmother died, he suddenly appeared in Varay-twice. Why should the fact that he's growing up overnight be any different than the rest?"
"Let's just say that I'm suspicious of wizards who want apprentices."
"If you'll think back, I didn't want an apprentice, but I recognized the signs when he showed up here." Parthet cleared his throat, coughed a couple of times, and got out of bed. He had slept in his clothes.
"What time is it?" he asked.
"After noon."
"It worries me in a way," Parthet said, his voice lower, almost somber. "The fact that he's growing up so quickly may mean that he will be needed before he could grow up naturally. I'm old, but I had planned on getting a lot older."
"Maybe it's just part of the general weirdness, like two full moons in the sky at the same time, or the dragon eggs."
"Perhaps." Parthet shrugged. "Anyhow, the lad's a positive genius. I worried that he might not be able to understand some of the texts he'll have to master to become a wizard. The translation magic can't reduce complex formulas into language so simple that someone who doesn't have the vocabulary can understand. I mean, how would you explain calculus to someone who had no concept of numbers? But the lad reads. He comprehends. He asks more intelligent questions than you do sometimes."
"Okay, he's smart. Have you come up with any way we can do this other thing without the elf?"
"No." Just the single word, without any futile protest against what I was going to have to do. But Parthet had undoubtedly stayed at his work all night making absolutely certain that there was no other way. And then he had slept because there was nothing else he could do about it. The way I had slept after I finally made my decision to meet the elf's terms.
"Have you figured out what I've got to do with the family jewels once I've got them?"
This time he shook his head. "Possession alone may be enough, though I doubt that. Possession may impart the knowledge, the instinct to use them. Or the elf may have some idea. If nothing else, I may be able to conjure up the answer once you bring them back here."
"I'll do the talking to the elf," I reminded him. "You've decided that you're not going along on this caper?"
"I could never climb the Titans. It's all I can do to climb the stairs here in the castle. I keep wishing that I had used some of that last sea-silver you collected to connect the different floors here, like an elevator."
"Next time," I said with a smile. "I'll try to pick some up on my way back from Xayber."
"You do that. You going to talk to Xayber's son now?"
"Not yet. I've got to talk to Kardeen and do a couple of other things first. Maybe an hour or two."
"He'll wait," Parthet said.
"I know."
I left Parthet and headed for the chamberlain's office. I told Kardeen what I thought we would need and that I had started Lesh off at collecting the gear.
"There have been a few climbers here," Kardeen said. "Some of our young soldiers like the challenge of trying something that's supposed to be impossible. Not all of them make it back, but most give up before it's too late." He gave me an apologetic look with that.
"So?" I asked, managing a smile. "That just means that most of the young soldiers are smarter than I am. And they had the choice. But I've done a little climbing. I won't be a total novice when we get to the difficult bits."
"I'm tempted to join you myself on this one," Kardeen said, grinning self-consciously. "I did some climbing along the nearer heights of the Titans when I was young. Before I got married and inherited this job." Kardeen rarely talked about his past or his family unless I asked a direct question. That was his sense of place, I guess, something that I came up against almost every day in Varay. I had been in Varay nearly six months before I learned that the young clerk who was always in Kardeen's outer office was his son, Maldeen.
"I'd welcome you in a minute, you know that, but I think you've got more important work here. If I manage to complete this first trek, I'm going to need a boat stocked for a voyage and people willing to dare sailing out of sight on land into the Mist."
"And that's not the easiest task," Kardeen said. "But I think we can manage. Finding a vessel safe enough for long-distance work is harder than finding the men to sail it."
"Then it might keep you busy for a day or two?" More than once I had joked with Kardeen about the way he seemed to get everything done immediately.
"At least." He smiled. "What are your immediate plans?"
"I have to do the deal with our elf first, but unless he comes up with new demands, we'll probably leave tomorrow morning. As soon as I know where we have to enter the Titans, we'll use a doorway to the nearest point and ride from there." I told him that it would be just me, my three people, and the elf's head.
"You'll probably need at least two extra horses to carry supplies and equipment," Kardeen said.
"Lesh is probably in the mews choosing them now."
When I left the baron's office, I headed for the crypt again. My last visit there had been cut off when I found the workmen fixing a place for my great-grandfather. I still wanted a few minutes down there to think, and talk. Sure, the conversations were one-sided, but talking a problem out there sometimes helped me get a better perspective.
I walked slowly down the steps, thinking about Parthet's idea of installing magic doorways as elevators. The idea felt better all the time.
This time, there were no sounds of workmen to distract me on the way down. And they had cleaned up their mess in the burial chamber. But there was a stranger there now, or most of him. I had never asked what had been do
ne with the elf's body. Somehow, it had ended up in the burial crypt, which probably wouldn't have gone over very well with the permanent residents. The body was laid out on a simple stretcher, on the floor. It didn't look as if anything had been done to the body, but it didn't seem any worse for the time it had lain around without its head. There was no puddle of blood, no odor of decay.
"There goes the neighborhood," I said loudly. I had to make some kind of joke. A body lying out in the open is different from a room full of headstones.
"At least you're not likely to be hotheaded down here, even if you had your head with you," I said, looking down at the body. The crypt was deep inside the rock on which Castle Basil stands. It was cool in the room no matter how hot or cold it was outside, like being in a cave. I think they say it's always fifty-eight degrees in caves back home-Mammoth or Carlsbad, or any other cave system. You get underground and you have a constant temperature. The torches burning in the crypt and on the stairs couldn't warm it up all that much.
Deep in the heart of a rock bigger than the Great Pyramid, in a room used for the same purpose, to bury kings and heroes, I walked away from the elf's body and over to the end of Dad's burial niche.
"Have you met your new roomie?" I asked, laying my hand on the capstone. "He came to Varay to kill me and I killed him instead. He's dead, but he's still trying to get me. And I don't have any choice. I have to walk right into his trap."
Dad didn't answer. I doubt that I could have handled the situation if he had. After meeting the Congregation of Heroes in that room once, I'm spooked easily by ghosts.
"I don't know if you're somehow aware of all the crazy things going on here," I said. "Maybe you are. There's so much that's improbable about this place, maybe you are aware of it all. And maybe you're watching what I do. The dead elf is the son of the Elflord of Xayber. He thinks that he has me trapped and trussed up ready to send to his father. If I make it that far, though, maybe I can come up with a few surprises. I hope so."
I was silent for a moment, listening, not so much for an answer as for any sound of someone coming down the stairs. I would hate to get caught making a soliloquy in the catacombs. That kind of thing could start rumors.
"It all starts tomorrow, I expect. It looks like we have to go to the ends of this world on this one-both ends, up the unscalable mountains and out across the uncrossable sea. How can an angry elflord hope to compete with that?
"Oh, by the way, Joy and I got married. I know you haven't met her, but I'm sure you'd like her. She's here in Varay with me now. Someday, if we get that kind of someday, I'll bring her down, but not yet, not when I'm getting ready to leave on a crazy mission like this one."
I stood there for another few minutes, then climbed back to the livelier levels of the castle. Lesh was waiting at the top of the stairs. I guess he knew my habits better than I thought.
"Are we all set?" I asked.
"It's coming good," he said. "We got people working on everything. I'll have to check it out later, but it's good for now."
"Well, if everything's cracking nicely here, what would you say to a tall mug or two down at the Bald Rock?"
Lesh grinned. "It is a right hot day."
We took the magic doorway down to the Bald Rock in the town of Basil. I hadn't been back to the inn since the night I was attacked-not all that long before. The landlord remembered that too. He came right over, full of noisy apologies and exaggerated bows. He was mortified, he was distressed, he hadn't been able to sleep or eat right since it happened, worrying about me… and on and on. But he also claimed to be "right proud" of the way I had handled the outlander. I tried to reassure Old Baldy that I didn't hold any of it against him, but he insisted that the drinks were on him that afternoon. I didn't argue. After all, Lesh and I didn't have time for more than one or two beers apiece.
"This is going to be a rough one, Lesh," I said when we started our second, after I had stopped the innkeeper from having his boys set up a full keg for us.
"Gots to be better than dragon eggs for breakfast," Lesh said.
"You may not think so before it's over."
"Be that as it will. Do we have time for another?" He finished his mug in a long draft.
"Best not. We've still got work to do. We get really going here, we may never get back up there. And after all, there's plenty of beer up on the rock."
"Aye, there is," Lesh agreed.
We walked up the rock to the castle. That was one way to get a little exercise and sweat out some of the beer. The Rock. One of the old legends I kept hearing said that the stone that Castle Basil was built on was the hub around which all three realms rotated, the center of the universe. I wouldn't be surprised if the people of the other six kingdoms in the buffer zone had the same sort of legends about their own local landmarks. But Basil's rock was some sort of anomaly, a huge block of homogeneous stone just out in the middle of nowhere, geologically. It wasn't part of any mountain chain, fault zone, or anything else. According to Kardeen, there wasn't any stone like it in any of the mountains of the buffer zone. It was unique.
Two beers wasn't nearly enough preparation for the confrontation with our guide. I got Parthet and Kardeen to witness the deal after I cautioned them again to let me do all the negotiating.
"You want to get home and I want to get the balls of the Great Earth Mother so I can stop all the strange happenings," I said when Parthet pulled the head out of the alcohol.
"You know my terms. I'll tell you where they are if you will take me home to my father-all of me."
I shook my head. "Telling isn't enough. You'll have to go along to identify them. Once I get them back here, I'll make sure that you get back to your father."
"You personally must take me home."
"I'll take you back under truce with your father."
"You take me back or there's no deal."
"I'll discuss the details directly with him. We have talked before. But without your help, I can't start and you have absolutely no hope of ever getting home. We'll bury you with the dragon eggs."
"If you don't get the jewels, it won't matter what you do with me."
"Perhaps." I was careful to avoid showing any reaction to his first admission that he had a stake in the success of my mission. "Or perhaps we can get the information elsewhere. The Elfking himself might be interested, or one of the other elflords."
"Go ahead. Try."
It had been an empty bluff, and the elf had called it.
"I'll get you home to your father," I said.
"Bring my body up here."
Parthet was against it, but I nodded and Kardeen went to get men to haul the body up from the crypt. The elf remained silent until his body was carried into the room.
"Stand me up there." The soldiers lifted the body onto its feet and it stood without further support from them.
"Set my head back on my shoulders."
"I think not," I said. "Not now. Once we get back with the jewels of the Great Earth Mother."
"You'll take me home to my father? You, yourself?"
"I will."
"Then let's shake hands on our bargain."
I nodded and the elf's right arm came up, hand extended. I stepped closer, shook hands with the headless body, and felt the cold crawl up my arm. The pact was made.
10 – Nushur
"Where do we enter the Titan Mountains?" I asked after I had wiped my hand on my trousers.
"As far east of here as possible," the elf said.
"Near the border with Dorthin?" I asked.
He considered that for a few seconds. "It will do."
"We'll leave tomorrow morning then," I said. "Portal to Thyme, and ride south from there." There were gates closer to the Titans along that border, but the doorways there weren't situated to make it easy for horses, and we would strain the resources of either of the small castles south of Thyme if we took enough for our expedition.
"You do realize, of course, that for you to get back to your father, yo
u'll have to do whatever you can to make sure that we succeed and get back here," I told the elf. "If I don't make it back, you don't get home."
"There is always that risk," he said. "And there is one detail you might consider. Floating around in that alcohol fogs my mind. It isn't necessary. I will remain as I am until I get home."
"Not on the basis of my spell," Parthet said. "I didn't try a preservative, just a communications magic."
"No, certainly not on the basis of your puny magic," the elf sneered. "But you let me talk and I have talked."
"If you don't need the alcohol, we'll find another temporary home for you," I said. "That pot would have been awkward on the road anyway." I wanted to ask who else he had been talking to, but I didn't want to give him the satisfaction of the question.
"Take good care of my body while we're gone," the elf said, turning his eyes toward Parthet. "It is part of the bargain this Hero has made."
"It is," I agreed.
"I will know if it is disturbed, and if it is, my cooperation ends at that moment," the elf said. "I hope that is thoroughly understood."
I stared at Parthet, and he nodded. Behind him, so did Baron Kardeen.
"It will be properly cared for," Kardeen said.
"You can't get a better promise than that," I told the elf. "In fact, I think we should get the body back into storage right now." I didn't want to leave head and body together in the same room. The elf had seemed much too anxious to have us set his head back on his shoulders. Maybe he couldn't put himself back together without help, but then, maybe he could. He had controlled his arm and hand at a distance.
Kardeen called the two soldiers back in. They laid the body back on its stretcher and carried it from the room. Parthet looked at the head he was holding.
"If the alcohol is out, we'll have to find something else for you here then," Parthet muttered. "Don't want you just rolling away and getting lost." He stared over the head at the wall for a moment, then turned to me.
