The Hero King

by Rick Shelley

  I turned to Captain Thompson. “Once we open the passage here, you’ll need to make arrangements for the people in the other hospital tents. Bring the people in through the door on the other end of this tent. We’ll funnel them through this way.” I had decided on a change in tactics. Shifting from tent to tent had done little but give the onlookers more time to get worked up at the other camp. “Tell the people that we have a treatment for radiation sickness. And try to get the families of the sick people here matched up with one another so we can send them through together. That cuts down on the anxieties. Then—and keep this quiet until we get all the casualties through—we’ll hold the door open as long as we can. Anyone who wants to go through to a place where there hasn’t been a nuclear war is welcome. As long as it’s orderly and there are still people who want to go, we’ll keep the way open. But if things get out of hand, we’ll break the connection from the other side. If that happens, that’s the end, no way we can open it up again.”

  Thompson nodded, then repeated the gist of what I had said. “I’ll get my people busy rounding up the families now.”

  Julia Bennett, Danny’s wife, looked like a complete wreck—understandably. I would never have recognized her. I remembered a pretty, thin blonde who had laughed a lot. World War Three had aged her at least ten years. The kids were quiet. Their faces looked too old too. Julia didn’t say much more than hello. She went to Rosemary and talked to her.

  Lesh and Timon brought our horses inside the hospital tent despite the screamed protests of two doctors. Then Aaron opened the way to Basil right away, and that shut off any complaints about animals in the hospital. Timon led the horses straight through. Lesh stayed on the Illinois side of the doorway, across from Aaron.

  “Okay, Danny,” I said. “You and I will have to help your mother through. Julia, you can manage the children?” She just nodded. She didn’t even ask where we were going or what kind of insane magic—or simple insanity—was up.

  Rosemary Bennett had lost a lot of weight. That seemed to be one of the major problems of most of the radiation cases.

  “I thought this was supposed to cure her,” Danny said after we passed through the green veil.

  “It gets rid of all the radiation in her system,” I said. “She’ll still need some care to recover from the side effects. Food and liquids, a lot of them, and a little time. But this buys her the time.” I hoped it would buy her the time. She looked awfully close to the end.

  Danny stared at me for a minute longer before he looked around. We were in the keep of Castle Basil, on the ground floor, and just off to the side of the passage from the refugee camp. Timon had the horses outside already. Someone had taken them, anyway. Timon came running toward us with Baron Kardeen and Joy almost immediately.

  The relief of the reunion blunted the immediate pain Joy had to feel when she learned that her father was dead. She questioned me about her mother’s condition. All I could do was repeat what I had told Danny. It was something Aaron and I had considered. We thought that recovery would be fairly quick.

  The first minutes of the reunion were too chaotic for anyone to chronicle them. We moved Joy’s mother through to the room above Parthet’s workroom. It had already been converted for use as an intensive care ward, and a couple of people were still there from the Marion camp. Once everyone was satisfied that the senior Mrs. Bennett was well settled, Joy and I took her brother and his family down to the great hall for a meal.

  “One thing you’ll like here,” Joy told Danny. “You can eat all day and night and not get fat.”

  Danny still didn’t have a lot to say. He looked around a lot, frowned even more. The kids—Dawn was Six and David four—perked up a little when Joy told them that it was the biggest castle in the kingdom. They ate and asked a host of questions. Julia perked up a little too. The improvement in the children’s dispositions helped hers. But Danny was a lot slower to open up, and I didn’t have time to waste at the moment.

  “I’ve got to get back to Aaron,” I told Joy. “I’m afraid he’ll get bogged down trying to get everyone through.”

  Baron Kardeen had stayed right at the portal to organize our end of the rescue. After the earlier practice, he had the methods down pat. I even recognized a couple of people from Marion helping direct the new arrivals through.

  “You did it, sire,” Kardeen said when I stopped next to him.

  I nodded. “What little I could. How’s it going here?”

  “We’re still bringing through the injured,” Kardeen said. Aaron and Lesh were still on the Illinois side of the door.

  “This is going to be a much larger group,” I told Kardeen. “More than twice as many injured, and maybe several thousand who aren’t. How much trouble is that going to be?”

  “I’ve had people out stocking extra food since the first refugees came through. We’re even making arrangements to buy supplies from Belorz. Parthet and your mother went to Castle Curry to see to that. And the fleet at Arrowroot is putting in extra hours fishing. We figured that you would be bringing through a lot of people. We’ll manage. And there is something else you need to see right away. If Parthet were here, he’d have dragged you up to the battlements already.”

  “What is it?”

  “You really need to see for yourself, sire. Now?”

  I nodded. If Kardeen thought it was that urgent, it probably was.

  “Lesh, Aaron! You two get on this side of the door when you get the last of the sick people through. Don’t take any chances after that.”

  “Aye, sire,” Lesh said. Aaron nodded a reluctant agreement of his own.

  Kardeen and I climbed to the top of the keep.

  “Parthet thinks this may be just as dire as the extra moons in the sky,” Kardeen said just before we reached the top. We went out and he pointed south. I didn’t have any trouble at all figuring out what he was talking about. The peaks of the Titan Mountains were barely visible at the horizon.

  “They seem to sink measurably day by day,” Kardeen said. “Parthet says the barrier between the seven kingdoms and the lesser world is fading away.”

  “Did I do that, letting so many people through?” I asked.

  “I think not, sire. It has been going on almost since you left.”

  What happens when the mountains are no longer a barrier? I wondered.

  12

  Autumn Leaves

  There are times when taking any action at all is wrong, when the only proper thing to do is sit back, close your eyes, and let everything sort itself out. The trick to effective management is knowing when to leave the chaos to others and to time, and when to wade in and take an active hand. After we returned from fetching Joy’s family, it was a time for me to sit back and wait—mostly. I had confidence in Baron Kardeen and the people he had trained at Castle Basil. All I could do by butting in was get in the way and slow him up.

  It was well after dark in Illinois, and near sunset in Varay, before the last of the refugees made it through the portal to Castle Basil. The captain and half of the Army detachment had chosen to come through as well, and they brought some of the supplies from the camp—not nearly everything, because the captain would not have shorted the refugees who remained behind, but enough to ease the start of life in Varay for the more than four thousand people who came through from the camp. Bedding was a big item.

  Lesh had to help support Aaron on their way to the great hall. I got them both seated at the head table close by me, and gestured for someone to bring more food and beer. I knew that Lesh at least would have about a two-gallon thirst.

  “How many came through?” I asked, after both men had their beer.

  “About forty-two hundred, Baron Kardeen said,” Lesh said. “Call it sixty companies. If they were all fighting men, we’d have an army to match any in the buffer zone now.”

  “Some people didn’t come through?” I asked.

  “About a thousand, according to that captain,” Lesh said. Aaron was still concentrating on fo
od and drink exclusively. Magic was a drain. Parthet had often told me that. And Aaron had been holding a particularly active magic for a lot of hours. “He said two hundred soldiers were staying and the rest were civilians who didn’t want to chance our doorway.”

  “Well, dig in. There’s plenty of good food coming out of the kitchen, some of it stuff that I’ve never had in Varay before.”

  “I heard, sire,” Lesh said, helping himself to another tankard of beer. “Talk is, some of the folks we sent through t’other day are working in the kitchens. Two of ‘em was cooks before. They wanted to earn their way right off the mark here.”

  That sounded like good news. We were going to have to find ways for a lot of our new citizens to make their way in the buffer zone—if anyone had a long-term future. We could support refugees for a time, but not indefinitely.

  Baron Kardeen was in and out of the great hall a dozen times that afternoon and evening. Then, as soon as the last of the refugees came through, I made him sit and take a long break so he could do some eating and unwind a little. I mentioned the new cooks and he nodded.

  “Two cooks, and a couple of the men are already training with the castle guards. A few others have asked about work. Most will still need a few days of rest and eating before they’re really up to anything.”

  “We need to do some kind of survey, find out what kind of talents our new citizens have,” I said. “Charley Ingels is an engineer, a bridge builder among other things, so we can find work for him and a crew or two. We’ll probably have quite a few farmers among the two batches.” I hoped we would, anyway. Farming is the major occupation in the buffer zone. “At least people who have done enough gardening to learn the rest. But we’ll probably have a lot of people who don’t have any skills that will translate directly. If they have military service in their past, we can fill out the Army a little, and some of the people are soldiers already.” I chuckled. “But they’ll have to learn the weapons we use here. And there might be a few artisans and craftsmen. Well, you know the kind of information we need. Once we get everyone settled who won’t need complete retraining, we can give more attention to the ones who only know TV repair or something like that.”

  “I’ve already been asking about carpenters and other building trades,” Kardeen said, nodding vigorously. “Those are the skills we need first.”

  Very softly, I said, “Seeing as how we don’t know yet if any of us has a lengthy future.”

  This time, Kardeen’s nod was almost imperceptible. “But we will need places to house everyone. The nights will be getting quite chilly soon.” Varay had an extremely short, and usually mild, winter, but late autumn could see some downright cool days and nights.

  “Any problem with building materials?” I asked.

  “A shortage of seasoned wood,” Kardeen said. “Parthet or Aaron should be able to help with that. And rock will have to be quarried. But we will have a lot of laborers, even if they’re mostly untrained.”

  Several times, before and after that break, Kardeen came to get me to open up passageways to the other castles. There were simply too many extra people around to house them all in Basil, castle and town, even for a day or two. We sent contingents of refugees through to all of the castles in Varay, spreading out the work. That is, we sent them to all of the castles but Arrowroot. Baron Resler already had the crew of that Russian frigate to deal with … and I didn’t want to get our American refugees and the Russians in the same place. That would have been asking for trouble.

  I even did a little work myself that evening—of an appropriately “regal” nature. Okay, it sounds rather hokey to say it like that. It felt just as bad thinking of it in those terms at the time. Once I had sated my hunger and thirst, my responsibilities started to weigh on me, my duty as king—and as the person responsible for the sudden population explosion. I felt guilty just sitting around, even though I knew I was more likely to get in the way than be a real help if I tried to get actively involved in the problems of getting all of our new citizens settled in for the night.

  I walked around the courtyard where most of the people were milling about waiting to be told what to do and where to go, and I toured the areas inside the castle where refugees were being put up for the night—approximately every square foot of the castle, except for the private apartments.

  I talked to people.

  “Where is this place?” was one question that I heard over and over.

  “It’s a land between our world and the realm of Fairy,” I’d say, or, perhaps more often, “It’s something like Never-Never Land in Peter Pan, except people do grow up here.” Or variations on those themes.

  More people wanted some kind of reassurance that they hadn’t gone completely crazy, that this wasn’t all hallucination, some unexpected side effect of their radiation sickness. I did what I could to put their minds at ease, knowing that only time and full recovery would be really convincing. And, at that … well, there were still times when I found it all a little hard to swallow.

  There was one other thing I had to do in the hours after getting back from Illinois—check in frequently on Joy and her family. And that wasn’t simply a result of my sense of duty, or guilt.

  The room above Parthet’s workshop was crowded and still cluttered with Parthet’s stacks of books and odds and ends. Rosemary Bennett was on the single bed left in the room. When I returned after supper, she was awake and propped up against several pillows.

  “There you are,” she said when I entered. I smiled, relieved that she was conscious and alert finally. When we carried her out of Illinois, she was comatose and seemed near death.

  “Here I am,” I agreed. “You’re looking better.”

  “I’m still alive,” she said, and then she closed her eyes.

  “She’s kept down soup and a little solid food,” Joy said. She was sitting on the edge of the bed next to her mother. Joy looked as though the weight was off of her. Danny and Julia looked more relaxed too. Danny looked and sounded as if he was still nursing a grudge, but not one as bitter as before. He didn’t say much more to me than a simple hello. Julia had come out of her daze. Food, a little wine, and the general improvement in conditions helped a lot, I think.

  I helped a little more by taking the kids, my niece and nephew, on a tour of the castle. Dawn and David both managed to work up a refreshing enthusiasm for the novelty of being in a castle. A couple of candy bars from my private hoard helped.

  When I took the kids back to their parents after our tour, Joy had the family housing sorted out.

  “Dan and Julia and the kids will have your old room here,” she announced. “Part of it has already been partitioned off to make a second small bedroom.” It was certainly big enough. The bed in that room was almost the size of my entire bedroom back in Louisville.

  “Uh, fine,” I said, “but I thought the Ingels family had that room. The first family Aaron and I sent through from the other world,” I added for the benefit of Joy’s family.

  “Northeast tower now,” Joy said. “They’re in the apartments traditionally assigned to the royal builder or some such title. Charley Ingels did say that you wanted him to build a bridge?”

  “I guess I did. Maybe he knows something about building houses too.”

  “Baron Kardeen already has him working on that,” Joy said. Of course. Kardeen usually managed to anticipate. That’s why everything flowed so smoothly at Basil.

  “And all our stuff has been moved here from Cayenne,” Joy added.

  “The royal apartment?” I asked. I had avoided visiting Grandfather’s part of the keep since my return. Joy nodded.

  “I’ll see you up there when you get everyone tucked in,” I said.

  Joy’s mother was sleeping. Dawn and David had settled down on a bench as soon as we got back. They both looked ready to nod off with the least encouragement. I felt about that ready for sleep myself. I was exhausted.

  “I won’t be too long,” Joy said. She got up to give me a qu
ick kiss.

  When I left the room, her brother, Danny, came after me.

  “Hey,” he said as soon as the door closed behind us, “I know I’ve been a bit surly. Sorry. Joy told us what you had to go through to get to us. Thank you.”

  I shrugged. “It’s not easy for anyone to accept the reality of this place at first. It wasn’t easy for Joy, or even for me. Four years ago, I had never heard of it. Back in our world, the idea has to sound crazy.”

  “Maybe, but that’s no excuse for me acting like an asshole. And even if this is crazy, it’s a better insanity than that shit back there.”

  I couldn’t argue with that.

  I wandered through the bedroom and study that had been my great-grandfather’s for a century. The bedroom had been changed around a little, and the decorations showed a new hand. The study was still about the same as before—undoubtedly waiting my decision on what to do with it. I wasn’t up to thinking about that yet. Finally, I crossed to the private dining room. That was less personal than the rest of the suite. A new keg of beer was on the sideboard, the wood still damp from the ice that Parthet kept supplied down in the beer cellar. I helped myself to a stein of beer and sat at the table. The hall door was open. I would hear Joy when she approached … unless I fell asleep.

  Time and quiet—precious commodities, usually.

  Keeping busy, riding across the war-raped middle of America and then watching the confusion swirl around me back at Basil, I had been able to keep from worrying myself totally crazy about the one quest I still had to face—the need to find and seduce the Great Earth Mother before she could put the chop to me—and the uncertainties that even a best-case scenario left. I was acting as if there were sane purpose to rescuing people from the other world, planning to build new bridges, houses, a future, when there might not be a very long future for anyone.

  Crazy? The situation went so far beyond crazy that language can’t do it justice. The Mad Hatter has his tea party on the deck of the Titanic. Dr. Strangelove has Breakfast at Tiffany’s.