The Hero King

by Rick Shelley

  “There’s no precedent for a wizard dying here, no tradition,” I said. There was another smile to go with his shrug. “It leaves a big question. We have places for kings and we have places for Heroes in the crypt. Where do you fit?” That lack was one of the clues that had led me to guess how far back Parthet’s past went.

  “I’m afraid you leaped to the right conclusion through the wrong hoop, lad,” Parthet said, smiling again. He let me stew in that for a moment before he continued.

  “I’m afraid that there won’t be any remains for you to visit, so you don’t have to worry about their disposition. Look at me! If there was a bright sun behind me, you could see straight through me now.” He said that almost harshly, then softened his tone. “If you’d been around as long as I have, there wouldn’t be much left of you either, lad. I’ll simply fade away, leaving only memories in the minds of others. And in time, even those will fade. In a few generations, people here will never remember that Varay ever had a wizard besides Aaron, and in a lot more generations, if he lasts as well as I think he will, even he may come to believe it.”

  “Aaron. What’s going on between him and Annick?”

  “They share a bed, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Only partly. The jailer and his prisoner?”

  “No, no,” Parthet said. “This all began almost immediately after you left, after Xayber acknowledged Annick as his granddaughter. She already had her hatred for all things of Fairy, and then to learn that her father was the son of the Elflord of Xayber, the primary focus of her hatred …” Parthet shook his head. “The snow-white skin of Fairy. And there stood Aaron, the antithesis, his skin as black as an elf’s is white.”

  “That sounds suspiciously like a racist remark, Uncle, if you know what I mean by that.”

  “Racial perhaps, but not necessarily racist. There is a difference. Isn’t ‘opposites attract’ a properly senile adage in the world of your birth? But relationships grow sometimes. You’ll simply have to watch and decide for yourself.”

  I felt that there was something missing in the distinction that Parthet was trying to draw, but he didn’t give me a chance to think it through.

  “There’s something more important that you should be thinking about,” he said.

  “Such as?”

  “Such as your relationship to the world that’s about to be born.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Now, it wouldn’t be the same if I gave you the answer, would it? Think about it, lad. That’s the action that’s important.”

  Even without Parthet’s cryptic advice, I would probably have found my way down to the catacombs under Castle Basil that day. I had a habit of going down there when anything was bothering me, and after my return from the Great Earth Mother, a catalog of the things that were bothering me would have been approximately the size of the combined Chicago telephone books. And I just had to see for myself that the crypt far down in the center of Basil Rock was still there.

  It was.

  The room was the same as before. There were no changes along the burial wall. There had been no Laza-ruses in Castle Basil.

  I paced back and forth the entire width of the burial wall, from Pregel to my father, stopping occasionally in the center, in front of Vara. I kept my curses silent, but they came, regularly. I related my adventures again, all the way though, just talking, listening to the echoes. This time I went into more detail than I had to my living audience upstairs. Motor mouth. Maybe I was still trying to convince myself that it had all really happened the way I remembered it … or maybe I was trying to convince myself that none of it had happened at all.

  When I ran out of things to say about my adventures from Fairy to the inner temple of the Great Earth Mother, I found myself thinking about what Parthet had said I should be thinking about—my relationship to the new world. He had no doubt that a new world was coming, and I was glad to have all the reassurance I could find. But relationship?

  I thought about the crazy time while I was supposedly falling into and through the Great Earth Mother. That had to have been insanity, a hallucination, or a metaphor. So I performed a ritual of some sort that might permit a new world to follow the old. Maybe there was something like LSD in the food or wine that I had before we headed to that bedroom. The idea that my session with the Great Earth Mother would make the new universe my literal descendant, in the same sense that the baby Joy was about to have would be, was ludicrous. All of the mental raving, the images of DNA molecules, egg universes, and such had to be part of that coital craziness.

  It had to be.

  My world? No way. That would make me …

  Aaron and Annick found me in the crypt, just as I was getting ready to start the long climb back to the living levels of the castle.

  “I figured you’d be here,” Aaron said.

  I nodded, looking first at him and then at Annick. She was the major surprise. For the first time since I met her, years back in Battle Forest, there was no tension in her face. She hadn’t turned into a bubbling airhead or anything like that, but she wasn’t instantly marked with the stigma of her hate.

  “You look almost happy,” I told her. She actually smiled, but there was also a sudden edge to the grin, a cutting edge that told me that the hatred was still there, only held at bay for the moment.

  “There’s nothing left of Fairy now, is there?” she asked. Challenged.

  “I think not,” I said.

  “Once you asked me what I would do when all those I hated were gone. I told you I would find something. I did.”

  I looked at Aaron.

  “It’s not just this,” he said, holding his black hand next to her white face. It wasn’t the first time that Aaron had almost seemed to know what I was thinking. “Not even mainly this.” The trace of reservation I heard in his voice didn’t seem to be about what he said, but—I think—about how I might react. Aaron had changed while I was gone. Perhaps it was just maturation. Or perhaps he expected disapproval, or even jealousy, from me.

  “Are you sure?” I included them both in the question, tried to make it sound friendly, hopeful. Some languages have devices for those situations, constructions that say that you expect or hope for a positive answer.

  “It’s not even this,” Annick said, tracing the white blaze on the left side of Aaron’s face—the only remains of Annick’s father.

  Annick took Aaron’s hand then, and I reached out to clasp their hands in mine. “As long as you’re both certain,” I said.

  “This is going to sound silly as hell coming from me,” Aaron said with an embarrassed grin, “but it’s magic.”

  After my ride through the gray limbo and the way that limbo continued to envelop Castle Basil, I was getting used to the nonchalant mood of time in this new environment. The gray nothingness persisted, leaving time to mark itself slowly, however it wanted to, for perhaps a week after I returned.

  When things finally started happening, they all seemed to happen at once as time tried to catch up with itself. I don’t mean that things just seemed to happen one right after the other, or simply coincidentally close. I mean that everything did happen precisely at once, which makes it especially difficult to chronicle coherently.

  I was in the great hall, sitting at the head table, putting considerable effort into my drinking but only eating haphazardly. The constant munchies are common in Varay anytime, and they seemed to be even worse during the limbo. Perhaps forty other people were in the great hall, some doing the same things I was, others just sitting around or even sleeping. Personal biorhythms were hit hard by the general weirdness of life and time.

  The first indication I had of the maelstrom that was erupting was when somebody disturbed the King’s Peace. I heard a loud metallic clanging, something that sounded like a sword being repeatedly smashed against a suit of armor.

  “What the hell’s that racket?” I asked, an instinctive thing. Somebody quickly got up from the table and went out to the hall to loo
k.

  “It’s Gorfal attacking a suit of armor,” was the report.

  I swore under my breath and went to see for myself. Gorfal was one of the guards who had been in service to the crown for years, one of the men I had encountered the first morning I came to Castle Basil with Parthet.

  “Gorfal, what the hell do you think you’re doing?” I shouted when I got out to the hall and found that he was indeed attacking an empty suit of armor. I was usually a lot gentler with people. That morning, I don’t know, I was just in an unusually foul mood.

  “The enemy, sire,” Gorfal screamed, hysterical but puffing for breath.

  “It’s all right, Gorfal,” I said, softer, but still nearly shouting to make sure he could hear me over the clanging.

  I didn’t want to hurt him, but my danger sense was acting up. I took a couple of cautious steps toward Gorfal. The sword he was swinging was just a normal broadsword, nothing to compare with my two elvish blades. I didn’t draw a weapon, though. I wouldn’t, unless it became clearly unavoidable.

  “They’s tricky, sire,” Gorfal said, panting harder, continuing his assault on the empty metal. “They pretends to be dead, then they comes at you from behind.”

  His blows were slowing down a little. He was tiring rapidly. But I was going to have to wait a while longer before it would be safe to dash in and pin his arms. I was still the Hero, after all. It was up to me to take the foolish risks.

  Before I could take any action, Mother came hurrying out of the great hall, almost at a run.

  “Joy has gone into labor,” Mother said. “She’s calling for you.”

  Almost as the full stop on that, Lesh came barging in from the courtyard. He glanced toward Gorfal, but ignored him for the moment to report.

  “Sire, there’s something happening outside the castle walls. A change in the gray.”

  “Stay here, Lesh,” I said. “As soon as he slows down a bit, grab him and put some sort of restraint on him until Aaron can work on his head.”

  That seemed to be the next cue. Aaron came running around the corner at the far end of the corridor, behind me.

  “Come quickly,” he shouted. “Parthet is starting to fade. He says he’s going to vanish into his past.”

  As I said, everything happened at once. I hadn’t mastered the art of being in two places at once, still haven’t, and I had never even thought of needing to be in four places at once. I put Gorfal out of my mind right away. I knew I could trust Lesh to look after him. But the other three crises all demanded my immediate attention.

  “How long will it be before Joy really needs me there?” I asked Mother. She was almost a doctor at that. She would be of more use to Joy now than I would anyway.

  “There is a little time, but I wouldn’t dally long.”

  “Lesh, can you describe what it is that’s going on outside?”

  “The gray seems to be closing in on us, getting thicker. We can’t see the lowest stretch of the path leading down now.”

  “Where’s Parthet?” I asked, turning to Aaron.

  “In the workshop. He was adding something to the end of the book he wrote for you. Suddenly he said, ‘I can see through my hand,’ and then he sent me for you. He said to come at once.”

  “Okay, I’ll go to Parthet, then up to Joy, and from there to the battlements,” I decided. That gave me an efficient route from one place to the next—a back stair from the workshop to my apartments, then a connection from the keep to the curtain wall of the castle.

  “Mother, get back to Joy and tell her that I’m on my way. Tell her about Uncle Parker.” Even four years after learning that his real name was Parthet and not Parker, there were still times when the pseudonym he had used in the other world came out instead. “I’ll be with her as quickly as I can.” Mother nodded and left.

  “Lesh, as soon as you get Gorfal quiet, get back to the wall, then catch up with me if there’s been any change. You heard where I’ll be?”

  “Aye, lord.”

  “Try not to hurt him, Lesh. He’s just sick.” Lesh nodded, and I turned to Aaron.

  “Let’s go.”

  I didn’t run flat out, but I didn’t waste any time as I hurried along the corridor, back the way Aaron had come. Aaron came a lot closer to running. He waited at the corner for me, then went on ahead again, getting to the workshop a good twenty paces ahead of me. Annick was in there with Parthet.

  And Parthet was staring at, and through, his hands. He held them out toward me. I could see his face through his hands, but very faintly, both because there was still a little substance to his hands and because his face, his head, was also beginning to get less opaque.

  “It will happen very soon,” Parthet said. “Your world must be nearly ready to appear.”

  “Lesh says that there’s a change in the gray outside,” I said. “How much longer do you think you have?”

  Parthet chuckled. “I don’t know of any possible way to judge that, lad. There are no precedents that I am aware of. At a guess, maybe an hour or two.” He shrugged. “Perhaps much less.”

  “Joy is upstairs getting ready to give birth,” I said.

  “Then that is where you should be, lad. You need to see both of your children being born, your son and your world. I’ll walk along with you. I suddenly find movement particularly easy. There is so little of me to move around now.”

  Annick handed him a pair of glasses.

  “Yes,” Parthet said, fitting them to his face and holding his hands as if to catch them if they happened to fall off or through his nose and ears. They stayed in place. “I should like to see as much of my final moments as I can.”

  I didn’t know how Joy would respond to having a crowd around just then, but we had once discussed the way that royal births used to require witnesses of the proper rank and position. At the time, it had been something of a joke between us.

  Mother was there as midwife and obstetrician. Doc McGreary had made it to Varay before World War Three broke out, but he had been out of the castle when the gray came, so he wasn’t around to do the honors. Either Parthet or Aaron could help if help was needed, except that Parthet was having his own rite of passage at the moment.

  Joy was on the huge bed, near the edge, sweating, gritting her teeth and puffing. She looked as if she was suffering.

  “Uncle Parthet?” she said when the contraction ended. He went to her side.

  “You’re going to have a healthy son, lass,” Parthet said. “I’m not sure if I mentioned that before or not. And though you might not think it just now, I do see a relatively easy delivery for you.”

  Joy seemed to focus on Parthet then. “You’re fading?” she said, lifting her head from the pillow.

  “My time to leave, your son’s time to arrive. It balances out, really. I’m about to see if there’s anything beyond, if any of the religious fairy tales are real. I’ve often wondered.”

  The windows along one wall of the bedroom looked outside the castle, where the keep met the curtain wall. Those windows had been shuttered continuously since the limbo came. I opened one and looked out after going to Joy and giving her a kiss and a few words of encouragement—which sounded phony to me and probably to her as well, because we both knew that I couldn’t really know what she was going through.

  The gray. It was different, but I needed a moment to put my finger on the difference. There was a hint of form to the gray, shape, an appearance of substance rather than just a void … and it did seem to have moved closer to the castle. It was darker than before as well, and after I had watched for a moment, I started to see what appeared to be a swirling within the gray, almost cloudlike patterns.

  And there was a breeze for the first time since the gray had formed.

  I stared out the window. After a few more minutes, I felt that I could see something beyond the gray, something down toward where the River Tarn and some of the local farms should have been, had been before. Joy had another contraction. I started to go back to her side, to
hold her hand and offer what encouragement I could, but Mother shooed me out of the way.

  Aaron was off to the side chanting up a spell. I assumed that it was something to help Joy. Her face got relaxed, almost dreamy, as though she had been given an anesthetic. Her breathing got freer.

  Annick watched for a moment, worrying at her lip, then she went over to stand by the window, where I had been before. Uncle Parthet stood in the center of the room, looking vaguer all the time, like a television or movie ghost.

  “Uncle Parker?” I said when I noticed that I could see the open window right through his once-substantial body.

  “The time is almost here.” His voice sounded the same as ever, though, full of life, hearty. “Did you do what I told you to do?”

  “You mean that bit about my relationship to the new world?” I asked. He nodded.

  “Some,” I said. “Down in the crypt and since. It just doesn’t make sense.”

  “It doesn’t matter whether or not it sounds true, but that it is true, and it is.” Parthet shook his head. “I thought I would have a little more time.”

  “I can see the river!” Annick shouted. “The gray is fading.”

  So was Uncle Parthet, quite rapidly now.

  “Remember this,” he said. “You are Father to this world, its Creator. You have responsibilities, duties. I have great confidence in you, lad. I couldn’t be more pleased in you if you were my own son.”

  I never had a chance to respond to him. Once again, everything happened at once. A baby cried its first breath.

  Annick shouted, “The sun is out.”

  And Parthet vanished.

  I glanced toward the window, then back at the spot where Parthet had been, and in just that second, he was gone. I turned toward the bed.

  Joy’s eyes were closed, but she was breathing freely and there was a smile on her face. Aaron was still chanting. Mother held the baby, her first grandchild. She wrapped a blanket around the tiny form and turned to me.