by Rick Shelley
We all made the trek except Timon. I told him to stay with the horses and watch from our hilltop.
Going up the opposite slope, I tried a couple of arrows, but I was at the wrong angle to have a good shot at either of the dragon’s eyes. I hit its snout once, and then it waddled backward, out of sight. I gave the bow to Harkane and drew Dragon’s Death. As I continued up the hill, the sword’s eerie battle tune started winding its way up out of my throat as usual.
Harkane notched an arrow to the bow. Lesh had his spear extended, ready to use that. But all that either of them might be able to do was distract the dragon while I did the important work with my six-foot cleaver.
The dragon was up on all four feet when I could see him-her-it again, still backing away, groaning mightily. I pulled my other elf sword and rattled the two blades together, then went back to just Dragon’s Death. I couldn’t see trying to fight with both of those oversized steak knives at the same time.
Finally, the dragon quit backing up and hurled itself forward. I brought my sword up and braced myself, ready to meet the charge, but the dragon flapped its wings desperately and flung itself into the sky, clearing my head by a good ten feet, well beyond the range of Dragon’s Death. The dragon climbed, circled once, then flapped away toward the south and the higher peaks of the Titan Mountains.
I took a deep breath and sat down.
“I never heard of anybody scaring off a dragon afore,” Lesh commented while we watched the beast flap its way off into the distance. The dragon looked awkward in flight from our vantage. “It’s like it knowed you’re a dragon killer.”
“You missed your true calling, Lesh,” I said. “You should be working on Madison Avenue, hawking deodorant and cereal and stuff like that.”
“Lord?”
“Nothing, Lesh. Here, help me up.” I raised an arm, and Lesh helped me to my feet. With all the armor, it’s impossible to look graceful getting up off the ground. The dragon finally faded from our view, angling off behind one of the nearer peaks, quite a few miles away. I walked a little higher on the slope. There were no eggs in the depression that the dragon had scooped out.
“Let’s go home,” I said as I turned and started back down the hill. We started walking back toward our horses. Timon met us in the valley between the hills. We mounted up and started back to Castle Cayenne, a lot more relaxed than we were riding out.
I left my armor and leather padding at Cayenne and stepped through to Basil. Life appeared to be getting back to normal in the great hall there. No one was bitching about calamities lurking in the victuals for lunch, and the smells of cooking food made it out of the kitchen to tempt appetites—not that they needed blandishments. I asked around and learned that Parthet had returned. He and Kardeen were closeted somewhere still trying to figure out what dragons in chicken eggs might mean. Joy and Aaron were chatting at the head table, either still or again. Joy always gets on well with kids, better than I do. I stopped off with them for a couple of minutes, long enough to kiss Joy and to tell Aaron that there was no dead dragon for him to see, before I wandered off on my own again.
At first, I did just wander. I had no conscious goal in mind when I left Joy and Aaron. Parthet and Kardeen would keep for a while. But when I found myself near the stairs that lead down to the cellar and crypt, I decided to stop in to have a few words with Dad. That may sound crazy, but whenever I feel lonely, or just feel a need to talk out a problem, I tend to go down under Castle Basil to the room where all the Kings and Heroes of Varay are buried. I can stand there by the end of Dad’s niche and tell him what I’ve been up to, or whatever is bothering me. Sometimes I even chat with Vara, the first King and Hero of Varay.
Do I believe in ghosts? Do I think that they really hear me? I’m not sure how to answer that. Before I came to Varay, the answer would have been an easy no. But when things got rough, just before and during the Battle of Thyme, I found doubt. Two nights before the battle, I had a dream or a vision—I’m still not sure which it was. In this whatever-it-was experience, I found myself in the crypt. All of the dead Heroes were sitting around a table, waiting for me to join them. Vara told me that he had vowed that no Hero of Varay would ever die alone again, the way he had. When my time came, and Vara indicated that my time had indeed come, the whole Congregation of Heroes would be there to welcome me.
A dream? A vision? I don’t know. But getting things off my chest down in the crypt always seems to help.
The catacombs are deep under Castle Basil, down in the solid rock on which the castle sits—not all that far above the level of Basil Town. Torches are kept burning on every landing along the stairs, replaced by the duty guards. There are two cellar levels that are used for larders and wine cellars and the like, then one more level, smaller and considerably below the others. That was where I headed.
I heard noises coming from the catacombs as I descended the stairs—barely audible at first, but slowly becoming quite distinct. I stopped for a moment and checked my reach to the swords slung over my shoulder. The elf swords are in what are, in effect, speed rigs. There are no scabbards that have to be cleared. Each sword is held in place by two spring-loaded C-clamps. If I had to pull five feet of blade out of a scabbard before I could use it, I’d never finish a draw.
Usually, I have complete privacy when I go down to the burial chamber. No one else has ever seemed interested in my sort of routine pilgrimage—people don’t lay flowers for the dead or anything like that in Varay—and since only kings and official Heroes are buried there, funerals are rare. But someone was down there now, maybe more than one someone.
The stairway was six feet wide, against a wall on one side, but without even a banister on the other. I moved as softly as I could on the stairs. The noises were real, and they were definitely coming from inside the burial chamber.
I had been stabbed too recently to take anything for granted, even in Basil’s crypt. Dragon’s Death was the first thing I stuck into the room. I moved in quickly behind the sword, and stopped just inside the doorway, ready for anything.
There were two workmen inside, preparing a new burial niche at the kings’ end of the room. One worker noticed me and dropped his chisel. It clattered off the stone. The other worker turned to look. Neither had heard me coming.
“What happened?” I demanded.
“This is supposed to be secret, Your Highness,” one worker said, his voice quaking. He couldn’t take his eyes off my drawn sword. I put it back over my shoulder.
“Has the king died?” It didn’t compute. Lunch had been starting as normal upstairs, and the atmosphere would have been much different if the king had just died.
“No, Highness,” the same worker said, bobbing his head low—over and over. “But the Lord Chamberlain set us to working himself. He fears the worst, he said. A secret. It was to be a secret.”
I didn’t bother to ask anything else. I just turned and started running up the stairs. I had more than a passing interest in King Pregel’s health. It wasn’t just that he was my great-grandfather or that I was extremely fond of him. I was also his heir designate, and I certainly wasn’t ready to become King of Varay. Frankly, I didn’t care if I ever inherited that job.
There are 108 steps between the catacombs and the level of the great hall. The steps are low, but too deep to take them two at a time. My legs ached by the time I finished climbing them. Kardeen wasn’t at lunch in the great hall—he rarely ate there—so I had to go on to his office. I went right past his clerk without stopping.
Kardeen and Parthet were at the chamberlain’s desk. They had old scrolls scattered all over the desk and floor. Kardeen was a stickler for order. His desk was always neat. I had never seen the office in such a mess.
“I’ve just come up from the crypt,” I said when Kardeen looked up. “What’s going on?”
“His Majesty’s health has worsened dramatically this morning,” Kardeen said, very softly. “You mother is with him. She doesn’t think he can make it back this time.”
“He has to,” I said, but I wasn’t talking to Kardeen and Parthet any longer. I was already on my way out the door.
“Come to my workroom after you see the king,” Parthet shouted after me. I nodded, but I don’t know if he saw the gesture.
I ran all the way upstairs and pulled up short just outside the door to the king’s bedroom so I could catch my breath before I opened the door and went in. There wasn’t much light in the chamber—just an oil lamp burning on a table near the side of grandfather’s bed, and it was turned down low. Mother was sitting in a straight chair next to the head of the bed. She turned when she heard me come in and held a finger to her mouth so I would be quiet. As if I might come in shouting dirty jokes or something. Mother took a close look at the king, then got up and came across the room to me.
“Let’s go out in the hall,” she whispered.
“What happened?” I asked when the door was closed between the king and us.
“He’s been doing poorly. You know that,” Mother said. “This morning, he heard the commotion downstairs and somebody told him about the dragon eggs. It seemed to take all the fight out of him. All his vitals are getting bad.”
“Why don’t we get him to a real hospital then? Get Doc McCreary to take care of him there.”
“It wouldn’t help. The King of Varay is tied too tightly to the magic of this place. Leaving Varay now would almost certainly kill him.”
“And if we don’t move him?”
Mother shook her head. “I’m even afraid to leave him long enough to go for Hank McCreary,” she said. “Anyway, by the time he could get here …”
I don’t think I completely managed to suppress the growl that was my reaction to that kind of dead-end thinking.
“Why don’t you take a break?” I suggested, as evenly as possible. “Powder your nose or stretch your legs, or something. Give me a few minutes alone with him.”
Mother wanted to argue, I could see that in her eyes, but she shut her mouth before the first word of protest could get out. I was relieved when she nodded and started for the stairs. If she hadn’t gone on her own, I would have carried her off, and I’m fairly certain that she realized that. I know it sounds horrible, and maybe it was, but I had to have some time alone with Pregel and—as Hero and heir—I had that right. And Mother … well, I’ll leave it at this: I still hadn’t forgotten that she and Dad had completely concealed Varay and my heritage from me until I was twenty-one and Dad was in trouble, already dead, actually. They had programmed me to take over as Hero from the time I was a baby. After living their lie for twenty-one years, my patience with my mother could get ragged in a hurry.
I went back inside the bedroom, lengthened the wick on the oil lamp that was burning, lit a second, then pulled the drapes open on the window to let some daylight in. Mother had the room so gloomy that it might already have been the king’s lying-in-state.
“Grandfather?” I walked up along the side of the bed nearest to him. His face was pasty white, his cheeks unshaven for several days. His thin hair was disheveled. He didn’t open his eyes or move. I sat on the edge of the bed and laid my hand on his chest, lightly, feeling the slight movement as he breathed, the even fainter pulse.
“Grandfather. It’s Gil.” His eyelids flickered a little. There was a little movement at the edges of his mouth. He seemed to breathe just a little deeper.
“I’ve got good news,” I said. I figured that it was good news anyhow. If the story about the dragon eggs had sapped him, maybe I could give him back a little vigor. “A dragon was sitting out near Cayenne this morning. They called me to take care of it. I went out there and scared the dragon off. I went ‘shoo’ and it skedaddled.”
He opened his eyes and stared up at me.
“Truth,” I said. Well, it was close to the truth. “The last we saw of the dragon, it was hightailing it into the Titan Mountains. Lesh, Harkane, and Timon were with me.”
He may have smiled a little.
“Of course, it wasn’t the biggest dragon ever, but it was big enough, and it turned tail and ran.”
I was sure of the smile then. It was weak, but clearly visible.
“You’d better hurry and perk up here, Grandfather. I’ve got work enough of my own to do without worrying about doing your job as well.”
The smile got a little wider as his eyes slid closed. I held my hand on his chest for another minute or so. He was still alive. I thought maybe he was doing a little better. I couldn’t be sure.
Parthet had two rooms in the castle, one over the other, in the northeast tower. The lower room was his workshop or laboratory. The other was a bedroom. He still had his cottage in the forest, but it seemed that the only time he used it anymore was when he just wanted to get completely away from everybody else. That wasn’t too often. His social instincts were strong. And since I had made him keep glasses with a current prescription, he was in more demand for his wizardry.
I let Mother back into Pregel’s room—she was just coming back down the hallway when I opened the door—and then I went on to Parthet’s shop. The chamberlain was there with him. They were still going through scrolls and books.
Parthet’s tower was narrower than the tower that held Kardeen’s offices. Parthet’s rooms were only about fifteen feet in diameter, and the lower one was in the state of disarray that I always associated with my uncle. The only thing I spotted in the room that was new since my last visit was a large glass vat—about five gallons large-sitting in the center of Parthet’s work table. The elf head was in the vat, eyes closed, long hair floating toward the top of the alcohol that came to within an inch of the lid. Like seaweed.
“When are you going to get rid of that damn thing?” I snapped, pointing at the head.
“When he can’t do us any more good,” Parthet snapped back.
“It’s sick. Maybe you can make him talk to you, but I bet his father has even less trouble hearing him. I’d just as soon the Elflord of Xayber didn’t have a pressing reason to turn his attention to us again.”
“We may be damn lucky to have Junior there with us,” Parthet said.
Kardeen cleared his throat and cut off any reply I might have made to Parthet. “We heard that you were off chasing a dragon.”
I nodded and gave them the capsule summary.
“That sounds encouraging,” Kardeen said, glancing at Parthet.
“It’s about time something sounded encouraging,” the wizard growled. “Look. We’ve gone through so many musty old tomes this morning that I’ve just now stopped sneezing from all the dust. Some of the ancient books of lore are maddeningly vague or ambiguous, but as near as I can gather, things like chickens laying dragon eggs are among the signs of the End of Everything, or the complete domination of Fairy over all three realms, or your choice of total, top-of-the-heap, major-league disasters.
“You don’t know which?” I asked, as if it made a difference.
“Hard to tell for sure, but it looks like the complete scrambling of everything, even the lords of Fairy, at the very least. Not much solace in that.” He looked at the severed head.
“Is there any way to reverse the trend?” I asked. “Any way to stave off the collapse or whatever?”
“The ancient treatises make a point of saying that there is a cure for any ill. The problem is that we can’t find out what the cure is, or exactly what we have to cure. But he might know.” Parthet pointed at the head again.
“Okay, but what have you got to trade?” I asked.
“What do you mean?” Parthet asked, letting his arm drop.
“He’s dead. He’s an elf. I doubt that even your truth spells will be very effective on him now. You’ll have to do a deal, and what can a dead elf want?”
Parthet looked at the elf’s head, then back at me. “Okay, what?”
I shrugged. “I didn’t say that I knew the answer, just the question. Why don’t you ask him?”
Parthet went to the glass vat, took off the lid, and set it aside. He st
arted mumbling one of his obscure, incoherent chants as he reached in and grabbed a handful of hair. He lifted the elf’s head out of the raw alcohol and held it over the vat while the whiskey dripped off the head.
The eyelids opened and madly bloodshot eyes—in a head that didn’t have a drop of blood left—started to look around. The elf looked at Parthet, at me, and at as much of the room as he could see. Baron Kardeen was behind the elf, out of sight.
The son of Xayber opened his mouth. The first sound out was a monstrous, drunken belch, followed by a badly slurred, “Where’s the rest of me?”
7
Two Heads
I almost choked myself cutting off a laugh, but I guess that none of the others were familiar with that line. People in Varay might recognize the name Ronald Reagan, but I doubt that anyone (with the possible exception of my mother) had seen any of his movies; there are no movie theaters or television in Varay. And the question didn’t sound nearly as funny the second time the elf asked it.
“Where’s the rest of me?”
“We have some questions for you,” Parthet said, throwing in a few totally incomprehensible words of magic for good measure.
“Where is my body?”
“Tell him,” I said, even though I realized that we might be throwing away a bargaining chip.
“It’s safe,” Parthet said, turning the head so they could look at each other eye to eye. “It’s here in the castle.” I thought that was a nice compromise. Tell the elf but don’t tell him all of it.
The elf started a singsong chant. I felt his sword getting warm on my back and I could see Parthet’s face getting red. The wizard went back to his own chanting.
“Enough, dammit!” I shouted. I whipped the hot sword off my back and touched the tip of the blade to the elf’s upper lip.
“You recognize this?” I asked.
“I know my own,” he replied.
“You know who I am and why I’m wearing your sword?”
“I know.”
“You came here disguised and tried to kill me. You lost and I killed you,” I reminded him. “I took your head straight off, in case you missed the details. It wasn’t even a difficult stroke. Your head bounced off the table and then it just sat there and couldn’t believe what had happened. Now, either you help us or we bury you in pieces with a day’s worth of shit.” I was starting to get as touchy as Uncle Parthet.
