The Hero King

by Rick Shelley

  “By your standards?” Parthet asked. When the elflord nodded, Parthet seemed to blanch noticeably.

  “How do I find this place?” I asked. The elflord seemed reluctant to get down to practical matters.

  “Yes,” he said. “I will give you what directions and advice I can, but there is something I would like from you first.” He raised a hand quickly. “I do not speak of the return of my son at the moment. I merely wish to speak with the girl Annick, the hellhound. Merely talk.”

  I didn’t see why he might want to talk to her, but I had no objections.

  “Uncle Parthet, is she still at Curry?”

  “She was last night. Sir Compil has proved to be a most capable guardian. Shall I fetch the lass?” I nodded.

  “I’ll go,” Aaron said quickly. “If there’s any difficulty, I can handle her easier.”

  “It’ll take a few minutes,” I told Xayber while Aaron hurried down the stairs. Xayber nodded.

  “If you are to have any hope of reaching the Great Earth Mother in time, you’ll have to start your ride from my estate here,” Xayber said. “I can transport you through, along with my son.” Now a reminder.

  There wasn’t much choice. Right into the parlor. I nodded.

  “I did promise I would return your son,” I said.

  “Even leaving from here, there is no guarantee that you will have time enough, but you—we all—will have some chance.”

  “We all?” I asked.

  Xayber smiled. “Some hope of a new world, a posterity of any sort, is the only hope any of us has in these latter days.”

  I felt the frown jump across my face and tried to remove it. Something didn’t ring true about what he said. I couldn’t pin it down at the moment. We were still dealing with the most nebulous of legends that seemed to be supported by the dire realities around us.

  “And I gather that I need to start as soon as possible,” I said.

  “Immediately would not be too soon,” Xayber said. The expression on his face was more one of extreme distaste than a frown. “And I am not one normally given to consider hours or days.”

  “Well, no matter, I’ll need a couple of hours to get ready,” I said. At least! I thought. “I have to assemble my supplies and make a few arrangements for while I’m gone.”

  Xayber shrugged. There was little more he could say. We both knew what we were up against, the price of my all-too-likely failure.

  “Why is it so important for you to talk to Annick?” I asked when the silence became uncomfortable.

  “There is a thing I must tell her.” Xayber frowned clearly this time. Deep lines appeared on his forehead. “A thing she should hear directly from me.” He stood, his chair vanished, and he started pacing. I glanced at Parthet, but neither of us said anything.

  At least we didn’t have much longer to wait. We all heard footsteps hurrying up the stone stairs and looked that way. Aaron emerged from the stairwell holding Annick by the wrist. She pulled loose when she saw Xayber.

  “You wanted to talk to me?” Annick asked, as defiant as ever. She moved slowly toward the elflord.

  “I did,” he replied. “Stand there a moment, if you would?” I think it was more the polite tone than the words that stopped her. Annick looked at the elflord, then around at the rest of us.

  “Yes, it is so,” Xayber said after a moment.

  “What is so?” Annick asked.

  “After our previous meeting here, I decided that I should learn the identity of your father. My suspicions have been confirmed.” Xayber’s face was a study in shifting emotions, everything from deep sorrow to strong pride. I couldn’t tell which were prevailing.

  “And?” Annick prompted. Her fists were clenched at her sides. The only emotion on her face was hate.

  “Your father is dead,” Xayber said, and I thought, Another lost father! That Annick had long been looking to arrange that fate for him didn’t enter into my thoughts at the moment.

  “Then who was he?” Annick demanded.

  Sadness deepened on the elflord’s face, an emotion that made him look almost human. “He was my son, slain in combat by the Hero of Varay.”

  Oops.

  “That makes you my granddaughter,” Xayber continued. “That means something to me.”

  It obviously meant something very different to Annick. She screamed—a painfully high screech like the death call of some mythical bird. Her entire body seemed to tighten up and enter into the scream. Blood vessels stood out on her forehead and temples and along the sides of her neck. She went up on tiptoe and sort of stretched toward the sky, almost as if she had been caught in some monstrous muscle spasm. But she kept her arms down, her fists pounding against her thighs in short, rapid movements, like a nervous tic gone mad.

  The contortions she went through were fearful to watch. I was afraid that the convulsion might lead to a stroke, that she might drop dead on the spot.

  After a moment, she screamed again. This time it was a tortured but recognizable “No!”

  Xayber whispered, “Yes.”

  And then Annick collapsed. Her muscles all went limp and she pitched forward, crumpling as she fell. Aaron had been standing at least eight feet away, but he managed to catch her before her head could smash into the stone. He lifted her easily. The stark white of her half-elven skin contrasted strongly with Aaron’s deep black … and almost perfectly matched the narrow streak of white left from the face of Wellivazey.

  Her dead father.

  “She’s just fainted,” Aaron said. “She’s breathing easily. I’ll take her downstairs.”

  I nodded, even though Aaron wasn’t paying attention to anyone but Annick. He was staring at her face. Xayber took a couple of steps toward them. I was surprised to see real concern on his face. He started to speak but didn’t. Aaron carried Annick toward the stairs.

  “I’d better get downstairs and start getting things ready for your quest,” Parthet said.

  Always the quest, I thought. It was becoming a four-letter word to me.

  “Parthet,” I said. He stopped and looked at me, his face troubled. “This time, I will be going alone.”

  “There is no other way,” Xayber-said, but without any force. He was still staring at the stairs and the disappearing forms of Aaron and Annick.

  “Alone?” Parthet asked.

  “Alone,” I repeated, as firmly as I could without raising my voice. Parthet nodded and left. I turned to the elflord again.

  “Annick is your granddaughter?” I asked after the sound of footsteps on the stairs faded. “And that changes how you think of her?”

  His nod covered both questions. “She is my blood,” he said.

  And knowing that might screw up Annick’s mind worse than it already was. This time, when I wondered about psychiatrists among our refugees, I wasn’t making a joke.

  Xayber and I didn’t have much more to say at the moment. He continued to be distracted, obviously troubled by Annick’s reaction to his announcement. I wondered at that, and at the importance the elflord placed on family ties—even a tie that resulted from a rape his son had committed.

  “I’ll get ready for the trip as quickly as I can,” I told him. “I’ll have Aaron give you a shout when I’m packed and ready.”

  He nodded. Rather disjointedly, he told me that he would transport me, my horse, and his son to his estate at the northern end of the isthmus, give me such detailed directions and advice as he could, and see me “safely” out of his territory.

  “And there,” he added, “all safety ends.”

  Then I had to go downstairs to tell Joy that I would be leaving in a matter of hours, less than a day after getting back from my last jaunt.

  She was with her mother, in the room above Parthet’s workshop.

  “You’re looking much better this morning, Mrs. Bennett,” I said when I went in. Rosemary was sitting up on the side of the bed. She still looked frail, but a lot more alive than she had the night before.

  “I fe
el better,” she said with a listless shrug. She closed her eyes for a second. “Joy and I have been talking.” She stopped again for a moment. “If we had listened to her before …”

  “I understand,” I said. “I know it’s hard, but try not to dwell on it. You’re here now. Danny and his family are here. Joy and I are here. That’s something to hold to. I know that Varay is strange, but you’ll get used to it. I promise.”

  “She says that the radiation sickness is gone,” Rosemary said.

  “Completely gone,” I agreed. “Once we get you fed up, you’ll be good as new. That’s part of the magic of the place.”

  “Magic.” Rosemary reacted to that word the way I was beginning to react to “quest.”

  “I never believed in magic,” she said.

  “I didn’t either, until I got dumped in the middle of it,” I told her. I turned to Joy then. “We have to talk for a few minutes.”

  Joy nodded, but her eyes told me that she had a fair idea what we had to talk about.

  “Danny and Julia will be right back, Mom,” Joy said. “This may take more than a few minutes.”

  “Go on, children. I’ll be all right.” She did manage a sort of smile for us. “I’ve got a lot to keep my mind busy.”

  “You’re leaving again already, aren’t you?” Joy said as soon as we left the room.

  “Just as fast as I can get packed and ready,” I said. “Maybe two hours or so. I don’t dare wait much longer than that.”

  Joy wrapped her arms around me. “This is the big one, right? The one that determines whether there are any tomorrows left?”

  “The final quest,” I said. If I failed, there wouldn’t be anything for anyone to quest after. If I somehow managed to succeed … I planned to retire from the Hero racket. King Gil. That’s senior management, time to find somebody else to do the harebrained, dangerous stuff.

  We started to walk down toward the great hall together. I had to make sure that the preparations were well in hand before I did anything else. It is wonderful to have reliable staff. Kardeen came up and started listing the things that were being packed for me to take along. I would ride Electrum and lead a packhorse. Since there was no way to know how long I might be gone, and considerable question as to whether I would be able to find any victuals in a region that was weird by even the loose standards of Fairy, I had to figure on toting along a lot of provender.

  “Are you sure you must go alone this time?” Kardeen asked—an obligatory question, I suppose, one that Parthet probably put him up to.

  “Absolutely certain,” I told him.

  A few minutes later, Lesh asked the same question in the great hall and I gave him the same answer. “I have something more important for you to do this time, Lesh,” I added. “While I’m gone, I’ve got just one duty for you. Take care of my family for me—all of them.”

  “Aye, sire,” Lesh said.

  “Joy will make sure that all her relatives know you’re looking out for them. And Baron Kardeen will make sure you get any help you need. We’ll leave Harkane to continue caring for Cayenne, though you might check in on him from time to time to make sure everything is okay there.”

  “We’ll manage, won’t we, Lesh?” Joy said.

  He grinned at her. “Aye, my lady, we will at that, I suppose.”

  “We’re going up to our apartment now,” Joy said. That was news to me, but no real surprise. “We’re not to be disturbed for anything.”

  “I’ll make sure of it,” Lesh said.

  And then, as quickly as we could reach it, Joy and I were alone in the huge bedroom we had inherited from my predecessor and great-grandfather. And the huge bed. There was so much to say that we didn’t speak at all for quite a time. We got undressed, slowly, wasting minutes. Soft caresses, tender kisses, and an occasional stray tear that was blinked away quickly. I was getting ready to leave Joy on a mission to find and have sex with another female—who might not, technically speaking, be even remotely human. That was something that Joy and I couldn’t even begin to discuss. At the moment, it really didn’t matter. It was part of some very iffy possible future, something too unreal to come between us.

  We more or less rolled to the center of the huge bed, pressed together, both conscious of every second we were spending in what might be our final time together—a slightly out-of-focus long shot with petroleum jelly smeared on the camera lens to give it the proper dreamy appearance; soft music in the background, becoming slightly louder as we caught fire and hurried on to the climax. In the movies, it would be fade to black—or cut directly to a different scene with a different pacing.

  We weren’t on film, though.

  Stolen breath. A moment of panting while we recovered—still holding each other, still clasping, clinging. Sweat and flushed faces. A few more tears, hidden from each other because we had our cheeks together.

  “Come back to me,” Joy whispered after a too-short eternity.

  “I will.” The promise hurt because I didn’t know if it would be possible, and this time, I was almost certain that it wouldn’t be. Even if I succeeded in reaching the Great Earth Mother and putting to work what remained of Vara, I didn’t know what there would be afterward. And I did know how lonely any new world would be without Joy.

  “I will,” I repeated. “I love you, Joy, more than anything else, ever.”

  I was glad that she couldn’t see my tears. I rolled us a little more to the side so my tears wouldn’t drip on her neck and face and betray me.

  “They’ll all be waiting for you downstairs,” Joy said finally. “They must know what we’re doing up here.” A sudden touch of embarrassment warmed her face.

  I laughed softly. “If they do, then they’ll be damn sure not to interrupt us before we’re ready.” But time was passing. We disengaged, with more slow kissing and whispered tendernesses that almost delayed us further. There was only time for me to hurry through a quick, and cold, bath. I didn’t have a tank installed to provide hot water at Basil yet.

  Joy pulled on her clothes quickly, then helped me to dress in all the crud that questing requires—weapons, armor, heavy boots and trousers, all the way up to my swords and lucky Cubs cap. Going into Fairy and beyond, I wasn’t even going to bother carrying a gun. There wasn’t a chance in a million that one would work in the farther reaches.

  We walked down to the great hall with our arms around each other—but carefully, because of all the hardware hanging off of me.

  “Everything’s ready for you, sire,” Lesh said. “The horses are in the courtyard, and the cooks have put together a hot meal for you before you start.”

  “Thanks, Lesh,” I said. No matter what, find time to squeeze in a banquet. It’s not show in the buffer zone. It’s the calories that power the whole setup.

  After the more than three and a half years since my arrival in the buffer zone, I was used to cramming in food at an alarming rate. And washing it down with quarts of beer and wine and coffee. Nobody passes up a chance for a meal.

  But, all too soon, it was time to go out to the horses. The head and body of Wellivazey were on a stretcher. Electrum was saddled. My packhorse was loaded.

  “Whenever you’re ready,” Aaron said. I nodded, and he did the quick chant to contact the elflord.

  This time, we saw him as a large face in the sky, like an image projected against the clouds, the way Parthet and I had seen him following the Battle of Thyme. Aaron, Joy, and the rest of my people backed away, leaving a large clear space around me.

  “Anytime,” I said, conversationally. And Castle Basil disappeared from around me.

  14

  The Three Mirrors

  It would look like a simple optical effect on the screen, a jump cut from me sitting on my horse in the courtyard of Castle Basil to a similar shot of me sitting on my horse in the courtyard of the elflord’s manor, with the packhorse on my left and the stretcher with the remains of Wellivazey on my right. There is no change in that foreground tableau, just the chang
e in setting, in background.

  I had no sensation of movement. This transition was even simpler than stepping through one of the magic doorways, and I was so accustomed to those that I rarely thought of them as magic any longer. But the motionless jump from Basil to northern Xayber left me dizzy and disoriented for a moment.

  It had been late morning at Basil, ten, maybe closer to eleven o’clock, and the sky had been thickly overcast. I reached the elflord’s estate at the northern end of the Isthmus of Xayber on a crystal-clear night. The stars were sharp specks in the sky, the five crescent moons a chilly reminder of the way that time was running out.

  Even that shouldn’t have shaken me up the way it did. There was a time difference of about three hours between Varay and Louisville or Chicago. The change involved in that move had never really disrupted me, not even the first time. There were enough other weirdnesses to distract me that first time through one of the magic doorways.

  But this shift did bother me, in ways that I could hardly explain. There was a tingling of my Hero’s danger sense, but not the all-out alarm that signals imminent deadly peril. I sat still on Electrum, my knees squeezed tightly against my horse’s flanks, while I waited for the dizziness to pass. The night air was quite cold. I could see my breath, and the breath of both horses. The cold actually helped, I think. It jogged my mind with familiar sensations, let me concentrate on those until the discomfort passed.

  When my head quit spinning and I was able to think of things beyond the boundary of my skin, I noted that I was just in front of a wide staircase leading up to what had to be the main entrance to a huge manor house—or palace, if you like fancier terms. I was on a circular drive about the size of the racetrack at Arlington Park. The house looked to be at least five stories high, well over two hundred feet long, with wings projected toward the front at both ends.

  I dismounted just as the front door of the house opened and a flood of light jumped out to repel the darkness.

  The elflord led the way. He had a crowd of retainers with him. Only a few showed any weapons, and none of the blades I saw were being brandished. My training, and the paranoia that the elflord induced, led me to notice things like that. The servants—or slaves, whichever they were—were mainly human, though I did spot a couple of the vaguely porcine faces of troll-kind. But Xayber was definitely the only elf in evidence. Most of the servants carried lights, torches that burned as bright as halogen headlights, but without smoke. Those servants who came out of the house empty-handed went to the stretcher that held Wellivazey, the son of the elflord … and the father of Annick.