The Hero of Varay vm-2

by Rick Shelley

  It was not a good place to be. I had Dragon's Death out, but all I could hope to do was fend the dragon off for a short time. It dove at us, then had to pull to one side or the other. At least it couldn't hover, and there was no room for it to perch on the ledge with us or really use the advantage of its claws and teeth.

  "Can you make this beast think we're a bigger dragon that it is or something?" I asked Xayber's son.

  "I can try," he said, not bothering with a wisecrack for a change.

  The dragon tried flying parallel to the shelf, trying to beat at us with the end of a wing. But it kept pulling the wing away from Dragon's Death, so that tactic didn't work for it either. It made a couple more passes, trying to figure out some way to get its claws into play, then it suddenly veered off, pulling for the sky with all the strength it could get into its wings. I guess our elf scored an ace.

  "How long is that bastard going to dog us?" I asked when we finally got camped in a tight little cave. No one had an answer, and the cat-and-mouse game continued, day after day.

  Dodging the dragon slowed our progress. Sometimes it would keep us penned up for hours before it flew off. Our food ran out, and in the buffer zone, even as far south as we were, that is almost as immediate a crisis as a dragon. But we still couldn't hurry. We didn't dare try the most exposed of the tricky stretches until we were certain that the dragon wasn't close. We had gone two and a half days without eating, and another three days on extremely short rations, before we finally got back to the valley where we had left our horses and the rest of our supplies.

  The dragon found us again just as we reached the high pasture and were looking forward to a badly needed meal.

  "I guess we have to deal with it," I said, resigned to the attempt. I don't care how many dragons I had faced before, or how many I might face in the future, I don't think a time could ever come when I would look forward to it. When you play in that league, you only get one loss. Even Roman gladiators had a shot for a thumbs-up reprieve when they lost if they put on a good show.

  My companions knew the drill. We dropped our packs and spread out. The dragon circled low once, then climbed and came in for the attack. This dragon wasn't nearly as huge as the behemoth that the Etevar's wizard had summoned. This one might not even have been quite as large as the one I had finished off for the elf warrior on the beach up on the Isthmus of Xayber.

  But it was big enough.

  Timon and Harkane used all of their remaining arrows on the beast. Lesh and I had at it with our blades. Maybe hunger sapped some of our strength, but it didn't lessen our determination. I was almost hungry enough to rip off a drumstick for lunch.

  The dragon aimed for me on each pass, which was no surprise. I would move to one side or the other and swing Dragon's Death. When the dragon turned its head to come at me, Lesh would dash close to plant the blade of his axe in whatever patch of dragon hide he could reach, then pull the blade free and get out of the way. It was slow going. I was reluctant to take the gamble that I had taken with the dragon at Castle Thyme-the maneuver that had cost the elf warrior in Xayber his life. The idea was to get the dragon used to its foe jumping to one side or the other at the last instant, then to stand still and swing the blade straight into the dragon's snout, let its momentum rip its head open enough to make it vulnerable to the only stroke that could kill it, a deep lunge through an eye, aimed at the tiny brain in the middle of the back of the head.

  The elf warrior in Fairy had died bringing down his dragon. I had come close to the same fate when I tried it at Castle Thyme. The same kind of injuries now, up in the mountains, days from help, would certainly be fatal. Parthet wasn't close to keep me going with his magic until the healing magic of the Hero could take over.

  My companions and I were also in no condition for a marathon battle. As easy as Dragon's Death was to wield, I couldn't do it forever after two and a half days without food.

  "We've got to try something different," I shouted as the dragon was coming in for another pass. "Go for the wings."

  Lesh only hesitated for an instant before he nodded.

  This time, I didn't try to swing at the dragon's head. Instead, I ran the other way and ripped Dragon's Death through the membranes of its wing, holding the blade up and letting the dragon rip its own hide. On the other side, Lesh was doing the same thing, though I couldn't see him doing it. There was too much dragon between us. The dragon pulled up then, trying to get altitude again. The skin of its wings continued to tear. It started to pull up, then fell, got a little air under its wings, and banked around.

  But it couldn't stay in the air.

  The dragon came back down so fast, so completely out of control, that the collision was headfirst and it ended up on its back. Before it could recover, or even start to flop over, I ran up to the head and drove Dragon's Death into the nearest eye-at a convenient height for a change.

  When it was over, we collected our horses and went to the cave where we had stashed our equipment and supplies. Only one of our horses was missing. That was better than I expected, and we had eaten enough of our food that the other animals wouldn't be overly burdened when we left the high pasture-the next morning, after two good meals and one full night of sleep.

  Once we had horses under us and an easier trail, we all felt better, less tense. Half of our quest was finished, and we knew that it was possible to get into one of the Great Earth Mother's special shrines, nab a jewel, and get out. It could be done.

  We were back on the flat, not more than three hours south of Thyme, before the next dragon started to pick on us. It just circled high overhead like a buzzard, keeping pace with us but not diving to the attack. It made us nervous, and nearly panicked the horses, but there was nothing we could do as long as the dragon stayed in the air. I hadn't packed any surface-to-air missiles.

  We kept riding, and we kept looking over our shoulders.

  "That is no ordinary dragon," Xayber's son said after the creature had followed us for more than a hour.

  "Tell me something I couldn't guess," I said. Dragons that attacked you on sight were ordinary. Dragons that flew on by without a second glance were ordinary. A dragon that waged a war of nerves was not ordinary.

  "Very well," the elf said, "it may not be a dragon at all-but notice the stress on the auxiliary verb."

  "Okay, stress noted. But if it's not a dragon, what is it-Dumbo?"

  "I'm not familiar with the reference, but don't bother to explain. I'm sure I'm not interested. I simply meant that it might be one of the defenders of the shrine waiting to reclaim that which you wear around your neck. It is even conceivable that it is the Great Earth Mother herself, in disguise, waiting to decide how best to deal with, uh, our effrontery."

  "Do you consider either possibility likely?" I asked, watching the circling dragon as I spoke.

  "The first, perhaps. The second, probably not. They are merely off-chances to consider."

  "Long shots," I said. "Consider them considered. And I'm getting a sore neck from it all." It wasn't my intention, but that comment shut the elf up. He was sensitive to talk about necks, sore or not.

  "Folks at Thyme won't be happy at us bringing a dragon by," Lesh said. "They think they got troubles enough, I'd guess."

  "You know anyone who doesn't think he has troubles enough?" I asked.

  "I reckon not, lord," Lesh admitted.

  "We can't do anything about this dragon, or whatever it is, as long as it stays up where it is. And, quite honestly, I hope it does keep its distance. I've already bagged my lifetime quota."

  I was wearing the gold chain and ruby under my chain mail, and it was uncomfortable, a constant irritant like a pebble in a shoe. But even if the jewel was only a precious stone and not really what it was cracked up to be, I would have put up with the discomfort. A ruby that size had to be worth a fortune. I didn't want to put it in a pack or pocket, afraid that I might somehow manage to lose it.

  "We'll be in and out of Thyme quickly," I said a fe
w minutes later. "That should end the matter. Once the dragon loses track of us at the passage, it should lose interest in Thyme." It sounded like a good thing to say. If the thing was something other than a dragon, it might even work that way.

  I was looking forward to getting home and unwinding for a few days before we started out to steal the other jewel of the Great Earth Mother. Since we got out of the mountains and back on the plain of Varay, I had thought of little else but spending a little time with Joy. I knew it wouldn't be much time, but I wanted to savor however many hours or days we might have before I had to leave again.

  But the dragon overhead kept me from fully enjoying my thoughts of Joy. It was great that the dragon wasn't attacking, but it also posed a continuing threat. For all the elf's theorizing, it might be a real dragon. Why it might be following us the way it was, I couldn't explain, and I couldn't be certain that it would head back to its normal haunts when we disappeared through the passageway from Thyme. It might savage the village, even the castle. But on the other hand, if we stayed on the road and took the long way back to Basil, it might savage Basil Town. I couldn't tell what it might do and I couldn't do anything about it in any case. We could only do what we had originally planned to do, go to Castle Thyme, take the passage through to Basil Town, and climb the rock to the castle… regardless of what the dragon might do. I couldn't fight it if it didn't come down, and if it came down after I left, I still couldn't fight it.

  The villagers of Thyme were not as happy to see me as they usually were. But then, I didn't usually bring a dragon in my wake. We hurried past the village and straight into the castle, where I had put in a gateway to the town of Basil. Folks nodded and greeted us politely enough, but they kept looking up at the distant dragon. We didn't linger. I opened the doorway to Basil, we all got through with our horses, then we mounted again and rode up the rock to the castle.

  There was no dragon flying over Basil.

  As soon as we reached the courtyard of Castle Basil, we turned our horses over to the grooms from the mews and went into the keep with our elf. We headed straight for the great hall, needing food after our time on field rations. At least, all of us needed food except Xayber's son. The elf had no stomach to satisfy anymore. I didn't bother to look for Parthet or Kardeen. They would hear of our return quickly enough and come looking for us. And as soon as we took the edge off our hunger, Lesh, Timon, Harkane, and I would be off to Cayenne, to regroup, refit, and pig out until our guts were ready to burst-unless Kardeen or Parthet had news so dire that we couldn't afford but one night and the meals on either end of it.

  We were too early for supper, but there's always food available, and we soon had a couple of pages hauling it out for us-cold meat and fried potatoes, bread, cheese, and plenty of beer. The beer was right there in the great hall, so we started on that first, which suited me just fine.

  I was still building my first sandwich-more or less a submarine, a whole loaf of bread split down the middle that I stacked with just about everything the pages fetched from the kitchen, ham, beef, cheese, onions, a tomato-based sauce that no one could ever mistake for ketchup, lettuce, and pickles-when Baron Kardeen arrived and sat at the table across from me. I paused in my culinary construction long enough to pull the ruby out from under my mail and let it hang down in front.

  Kardeen stared at the jewel.

  "That's what we went for," I said, and he nodded.

  "Have there been any more strange happenings here?" I asked before I bit into my sandwich.

  "Everyone has tales of strange happenings," Kardeen said. He shrugged and continued to stare at the jewel. "Most are things that always happen and no one pays attention. Until now."

  That was something I could have anticipated if I had thought of it. I nodded to give me time to swallow. "But is any of it really odd, ominous?"

  "We're still getting a few dragon eggs every day, not nearly as many as that first time, maybe one in four dozen. There were snow flurries around Arrowroot. And we had one peculiar sighting of something in the air that was big and noisy. Not a dragon."

  "It was an airplane," Parthet's voice said from behind me. I turned and looked. He had sounded as if he were right at my ear, but instead he had just entered the great hall, some forty or fifty feet away. That was a trick I had heard before. I got down a couple of quick bites of food before he neared the table and reached around me to get the jewel and hold it up so he could see it better.

  He didn't try to take the chain off my neck.

  "You see this airplane?" I asked.

  "No, but I questioned the people who did, and believe me, it was an airplane, possibly a military jet, flying low enough that I got a description of numbers on the bottom of its wings."

  "Any reports of a crash?"

  "Not yet. The engines were apparently still running when our people saw it. They heard it first."

  "And I can't even get a butane lighter to work here."

  "We have a ship waiting for you at Arrowroot," Kardeen said when I went back to eating. "It's not the largest or fanciest craft that plies the Sea of Fairy, but it is seaworthy. I looked it over myself. It carries a single sail for when the wind is with you and eight oars for when it isn't."

  "Eight oars?" I asked around my food.

  "And the sailors to man them. They're all soldiers, but they've all had at least some previous experience with boats and they've been drilling together for two weeks now. So they're ready to go whenever you are."

  "I guess we can leave the day after tomorrow," I said, giving us an extra day to shove calories down our throats. "That leave enough time to stock the boat with food and such?"

  "Time enough," Kardeen said. "Either Parthet or your mother can open the passageway for us here. I assume you're going on to Cayenne?"

  "Right now," I said, getting up as I crammed the last of my sandwich into my mouth.

  "We'll have everything ready for you," Kardeen said.

  I washed down the last of the sandwich with beer. "How is Grandfather doing?" I asked. If the news had been really bad, I would have heard it already.

  "His Majesty is much the same as he was before you left," Kardeen said, and his face got a little longer. "He has never remained so ill for this long before."

  I looked at Parthet.

  "I'm doing everything I can, and your mother has brought Hank McCreary over twice to help," Parthet said, very softly. I nodded.

  I knew that I should go up to see Pregel, but I wasn't up to that yet. I needed to get more food into me, and I needed to get back to Joy, hold her in my arms.

  "I'll stop back tomorrow, maybe even later tonight," I said. "I'll see grandfather and tell you about this trip, and catch up on everything else. Right now, I have to get back to Joy." We had been gone more than a month. August had ended, September begun.

  "Of course," Kardeen said. He escorted us to the doorway back to my place, and I told him about the dragon we'd left circling over Thyme.

  "I'll ask Parthet to check on it," he promised. At the moment, Parthet was taking care of our elf. I wasn't about to take Xayber's son home with me.

  There are two separate doorways between Basil and Cayenne. One connects my bedrooms in the two places. The other opens on the ground floor of Cayenne, in the stable. Since I had Lesh and the others with me, we took the lower route, just in case Joy might be up in the bedroom. It also gave us a chance to pass through the kitchen to make sure that the cooks knew we were back-and uncommonly hungry.

  I had started loosening my armor and other gear before we left Basil. I finished getting rid of all my extra weight as I climbed through Cayenne, looking for Joy. None of the items would get lost. They would probably be collected and returned to their proper places within minutes. The staff at Cayenne was small, but it was efficient, sometimes too efficient.

  Joy was all the way up on the battlements, just starting back down when I met her at the top of the stairs. We hugged and kissed and talked about taking time for ourselves before supp
er to complete the reunion properly, but ruled that out because it was already close to mealtime and I was still starving. Then I realized what was missing. Or who.

  "What happened with your parents?' I asked. "Didn't you bring them over?" It spoiled the mood.

  "I brought them," Joy said. "Mom and Dad. My brother and his family couldn't make it to Chicago that weekend."

  "What happened?"

  Joy looked away from me. "It was terrible. They got to Chicago just before noon that Saturday. At first, they were upset that you weren't there. That was before I could tell them anything about Varay or bring them here. And that was a real mess." She paused and buried her head against my shoulder for a moment, hanging on. When she continued, her voice was muffled, the words coming in almost-separated groups.

  "I tried to tell them about this place first, warn them, and they both thought I was crazy. Then Mother decided that she wanted to see our marriage certificate, like she still didn't believe that we were really married, and she wouldn't get off the subject. And Dad started grumbling because he figured he wasn't going to get to the ballpark." Joy pulled her face away from my shoulder and looked me in the eye.

  "Then I opened the doorway here." She stopped and twisted around in my arms, looking away from me again. "Scared doesn't even come close to describing what they were like. It was all I could do to get them to even step through to look at the place. But I had to make sure they knew I was telling the truth, that I wasn't on drugs or crazy. We came up here so they could look around and know that we weren't still on the Chicago lakefront. I told them about you and Varay. They held on to each other and they listened and they looked."

  Joy stopped talking again, and we went on down to our bedroom. Sunset was near and there weren't any lights on inside, so the shadows were thick, concealing. I waited for Joy to continue. She went to the window and stared out.

  "Daddy didn't say much of anything the whole time here, and nothing at all after we went up top. He looked kind of green around the edges. Mother was scared and didn't hide it. She talked a lot, but not much of it made any sense. I showed her the marriage certificate you got from Baron Kardeen, and she carried on about how she couldn't tell her friends that we got married someplace that doesn't exist and all that."