The Hero of Varay

by Rick Shelley

“Dangerous work?”

  “By definition,” I admitted. “And this time, if Parthet is right, the stakes are as high as they can get.”

  “Can’t you get out of it?”

  All I could do was shake my head.

  8

  Death Vow

  “You do what you have to do.”

  I heard that piece of advice many times while I was growing up. Dad tossed that one out anytime I had to make a difficult or painful choice. I don’t know when the first time was, but the first time that really sticks in my mind came when I was fifteen and we were deer hunting in the Rockies. I shot a handsome stag but didn’t kill it. The animal was badly wounded but managed to get away. You do what you have to do. In that case, it meant four hours of dangerous tracking through rough country to find the stag and finish the job. Of course, Dad didn’t send me off to do the job alone—though he might have a year later. Still, either or both of us could have been killed or badly injured tracking that wounded stag down into a canyon and through a stretch of frigid white water. And then we couldn’t get the whole carcass back out. We skinned it, saved the horns, hide, and as much meat as we could, and then hiked and climbed back to our camp. It was totally dark by the time we got there. We were both freezing and wet, and it’s amazing that we didn’t both get sick.

  The price the elf demanded for his help was high—potentially as high as it could get for me—but I didn’t have much choice, and the elf knew it. It was my duty, and you do what you have to do.

  Duty. That led me to thoughts of Annick and her warped sense of duty. She thought it was her duty to spend as much of her life as it took to find and murder her father, the elf warrior who had raped her mother and sired her. In the process, Annick attacked anything and anyone out of Fairy who came within reach. I hadn’t seen her myself since the day of the Battle of Thyme, but I had certainly heard about her and her exploits often enough. Annick was a few months younger than Joy, but while Joy had been in college, Annick had been making one foray after another north into the Isthmus of Xayber, ambushing soldiers of the elflord, setting fire to houses, laying traps of one sort or another to cause trouble even when she wasn’t around. Back in my world, she would have been a terrorist, planting bombs or whatever—creating mayhem, maybe even incidents like the Coral Lady. The most charitable thing I could think about Annick was that it was a waste. At times I pitied her. At times I thought she was no better than a mad dog. She was so consumed by her hatred that there wasn’t room for anything else in her life. She called it duty. I called it obsession, insanity. There was no rational excuse for what she did, no way to justify it, even in the buffer zone. Annick would keep up with her madness until it killed her. And one of these days it would. I was surprised that she had lasted as long as she had already.

  Up on the battlements of Cayenne, I held Joy for several minutes, until we were both feeling a little better. Then we went down to the main hall for dinner. Hunger in Varay gives very little way to any competition. Afterward, while Joy went to the kitchen to compliment the cooks, I went over a few things with Lesh.

  “I don’t want anyone filling Joy’s head with all the horrors we’ve been through,” I told Lesh. “She’s shaky enough without hearing about all the injuries and so forth. I’ll tell her myself, in time.” Lesh just nodded and waited. “She’ll worry enough when we’re off on this next business.”

  “I understand, lord,” Lesh said, and I was sure that he did. Lesh—Sir Lesh to give him his proper title—was my right-hand man. He served as chamberlain, steward, majordomo for Castle Cayenne. He was my representative to the village, and he was my companion on all of my Hero-work. He had also become my closest friend, and not just in the buffer zone.

  “We’ll be off soon?” Lesh asked when I didn’t continue.

  “Probably within the next few days,” I told him. Then I reported what I knew so far and what was left to learn.

  “Oh, something else for when we have time,” I said when I got through the essentials. “Joy doesn’t know how to ride. You think you can teach her?”

  “Aye, lord. What horse did you have in mind for her?”

  “I’ll have Baron Kardeen find one at Basil. We really don’t have one here that would be right for her, do we?”

  “Well, perhaps she could take a lesson or two on Timon’s Gheffy.”

  “No real hurry, Lesh. Things may be hectic for a time.”

  “More dragon eggs?” he asked, in the same way he might have asked if I thought it would rain in the morning.

  “This and that,” I said. “Parthet’s in a panic about all the omens.”

  “It’s a wizard’s job to know about such things,” Lesh reminded me.

  I shrugged. “Whatever comes, it’s likely to mean work for us.”

  “Aye, that’s for sure.” Joy was coming back. Lesh spotted her before I did. “I’ll take care of the riding lessons, lord.”

  If I could just cut down the number of “lords” to one or two a month, it would be perfect. But Lesh’s sense of Varayan propriety was just too strong.

  Joy started talking about the methods the cooks used and how much she had liked food that she had never tasted before. All the way up to our rooms, she carried on about the kitchen and the problems of fixing such large meals for a crowd. I let her talk and just nodded or grunted as needed to keep her going.

  “There’s not much light for reading in here,” Joy said when we got to the bedroom. “Those kerosene lanterns and oil lamps just aren’t enough.”

  “We can fix that. I’ve just never bothered. I’ve always treated the three places as one big apartment. When I want to read, I just go through to the other room.” I hesitated, suddenly recalling the way I had felt when we left Chicago the last time, as if I might never see the place again. “I don’t suppose there’s any real reason to stop, especially since the plumbing is a lot better in Chicago.”

  “You don’t sound very happy about it though.”

  “Just nerves, I suspect.”

  “Because of that ship?”

  “That’s part of it. But things are also stranger than usual around here, what with the dragons in the eggs and all.” I was being vaguer than necessary. While I still didn’t know precisely what all the strange omens were leading up to, I could be relatively sure that it would mean acute Hero-work before long. But Joy still wasn’t all that comfortable just being in Varay. I hoped to let her gradually learn just how much my “job” entailed.

  “You have to stick around?” she asked.

  “Well, I shouldn’t be out of touch for long, but Parthet and Mother both know how to get hold of me if I’m back in our world.” I shook my head. “There was something else, just before we left Chicago the last time. Part of the magic of being Hero of Varay is a special awareness of danger. You remember the way I knew something was wrong before we heard about the Coral Lady?” I waited for her to nod before I continued. “Well, that danger sense was kicking up when we left the apartment in Chicago. I had a feeling that I might never see the place again.”

  “That settles it. Let’s go right this minute and put that fear to rest.”

  I chuckled. “I forgot that you minored in psychology.”

  “Phooey. It’s just common sense.”

  “I know, like getting back on the horse right away when you fall off,” I said.

  “Did you have to bring that up?”

  “Yep, I had to. Okay, let’s give Chicago a try, but cautiously. Stay behind me while I open the way.”

  “You really believe this stuff, don’t you?”

  I shook my head, as emphatically as I could. “I’ve had my face rubbed in it too many times for any of it to be a question of belief. The rules are different here. Each of my two elf swords came from a dead elf warrior. Parthet has the head of the second one in his workroom, in a tub of booze. He’s cooked up some magic that lets the elf talk to us. And the danger sense has been keeping me alive for more than three years. It’s all real, Joy, whether
anyone believes in it or not. Like gravity.”

  Joy’s face got a little pale.

  “It takes time to sink in, I know,” I said, softer. “But this isn’t Wonderland or Never-Never Land. This is as real as the Coral Lady or lung cancer.”

  “And just as dangerous?”

  “At times. But there’s danger everywhere. You just have to know how to deal with the particular dangers of the place you are. Like street smarts, knowing how to stay out of trouble in a city back home. Chicago is probably a lot more dangerous than Varay. You just have to get used to a different set of dangers.”

  Joy nodded, very slowly.

  “There’s something else maybe we should talk about,” I said. “Your parents. Your brother and his family.”

  “What about them?”

  “There are no telephone lines or mail deliveries between St. Louis and Varay, for one thing. For another, if things keep getting weird, this may be the only safe place left. Relatively safe. At least there are no nuclear bombs or crazy terrorists willing to kill thousands of innocent people to get their names or beliefs mentioned on the news.” No, terrorism in the buffer zone was retail rather than wholesale.

  “How can I tell anyone back home about this place? I’m not sure that I believe it yet.”

  “I know the problem,” I reminded her. “Look, we don’t have to do it right this minute, maybe, but you should be thinking about it. Maybe the next target will be the Gateway Arch or one of the riverboats on the Mississippi.”

  “If you’re trying to scare me, you’re doing a darn good job.”

  I sat on the bed and shook my head, slowly this time. “I’m not trying to scare you, Joy. This Coral Lady bombing and all the strange things that have happened here—I don’t know how to handle it all myself yet. And I don’t know how much more of this roller-coaster up-and-down we’ll have. This world has dangers. It has elflords and dragons, and evil wizards. It has sicknesses that our world hasn’t seen in ages, but not as much as you might think. It’s primitive and it can be uncomfortable for anyone who’s only known the comforts of modern civilization back home. But it doesn’t have as many wholesale dangers as what I used to call the ‘real’ world.”

  “And this is where you belong.” No question. Joy looked out the bedroom window, then came over to the bed. “So this is where I belong too. I’ll get used to it.” Her smile was weak, but she sat next to me and put her head on my shoulder.

  “I will get used to it,” she repeated.

  “I know you will,” I said. “Come on. Let’s go get some lights and whatever else we need. I’ve got a pair of good camping lanterns with fairly fresh batteries back in Chicago.”

  “No hurry. I don’t think I’ll be doing much reading tonight. Besides, I just thought of something else. Aaron disappeared from Joliet again. They may come looking for you.”

  “It’s possible,” I agreed. “But if he simply disappeared out of a room filled with people, after we left, they’re going to be pretty confused to start with.” I started to laugh, then stopped quickly. “It’s really not funny,” I said. “I feel sorry for them, especially the aunt and uncle. They had enough shocks to deal with already.”

  I stood and stretched. “You were right about the psychology, though. Let’s visit Chicago anyhow. See what’s on the news. It’s been more than forty-eight hours since the Coral Lady explosion. There ought to be something fresh about it on the airwaves.”

  “You’re sure you want to go?”

  “Yeah. Just remember what I said about when I open the doorway. Stay behind me. If there’s big danger close, I’ll know.”

  Joy nodded, and we kissed before we went to the doorway.

  I hesitated before I touched the silver tracing, though, thinking. Danger can come in a variety of guises. At the moment, a crowd of police uniforms in my Chicago apartment would be almost as dangerous as a raging elf warrior, especially if they saw my entrance and the elf swords I had slung back over my shoulders. Even though I wasn’t around when Aaron Wesley Carpenter disappeared from a room filled with people, there would certainly be questions for me. There was a damn good chance that my connection to him might make me a fugitive in my native world. I sure as hell couldn’t explain the way he vanished so that Illinois bureaucrats would buy it. Partly, that was why I wore the elf swords even though we were going back to the other world. Mostly, it was because I was more used to blades than guns by this time. A sword can’t misfire, and it never runs out of ammunition. But it would sure add to the confusion if police saw me appear out of nowhere with those blades over my shoulders.

  Finally, I touched the silver tracing, ready to back off and break the connection if I had to. But there were no uniforms visible, no flood of danger signals pouring through the passage. Joy and I stepped through and I made a quick tour of the apartment to make sure that there were no surprises.

  “Perfectly safe,” Joy said. I don’t know if that was for my benefit or her own. She stayed close to me through the entire inspection.

  “Looks like,” I agreed. “But if there’s a knock at the front door, we bail out the nearest exit. I’m not ready to stand around and answer questions.” I showed her where all of the magic doorways were and told her where each one led.

  “What time is it?” Joy asked.

  I shrugged, then headed into the bedroom, where the nearest clock was.

  “Ten-fifty,” I said, even though Joy was still at my side and could read the clock as easily as I could. “Too late for the regular news. Nightline should still be on, though, and then we can switch over to CNN.” We headed for the living room.

  “I’m going to call home, since we’re here,” Joy said. I nodded and turned on the television. I was only moderately surprised when a quick scan of the channels showed that there was still coverage of the disaster on all three regular networks. It took a few minutes to find out that the shows were just long special reports. The continuous coverage had finally ended, earlier that day.

  I tuned in during the middle of a piece from the State Department. There had been strident complaints and threats out of Teheran, Beirut, and Tripoli. The complaint was that the United States had strafed, bombed, and firebombed a city in North Africa, totally destroying it and killing as many as fifteen thousand civilians. The threats were of massive retaliation against American citizens and installations around the world. The Pentagon, the State Department, and the President acknowledged that we had attacked a training camp for terrorists in the Libyan desert and suggested that the total number of casualties, killed and wounded, had to be considerably below five hundred.

  While Joy was on the telephone talking to her mother, I kept the volume low on the television, just loud enough so I could hear it. And although I was listening to the news, I couldn’t help overhearing parts of Joy’s conversation, which got more agitated as it went on and Joy heard more of the news, from her mother and from the TV.

  “Gil and I got married yesterday. I think it was just yesterday,” Joy said after nearly ten minutes of other talk. I nodded. It had been just the day before.

  “Well, it was a spur-of-the-moment decision,” Joy said. “You know we talked about it before Gil went off on his business trip, and we just decided that the time was right, you know, after that bombing.”

  Close enough, I thought.

  “No, I am not pregnant.”

  Then the conversation got interesting.

  “We got married in a castle. … No, we’re not in Europe. I’m calling from Chicago. … Well, I can’t really explain where the castle is over the phone, but I can show you if you and Daddy come up here to visit.”

  By that time, Joy and I had seen film of the bombing runs made against the terrorist school in retaliation for the Coral Lady. The TV in the living room has a forty-five-inch screen. It’s almost like being at the theater. Joy was staring at it while she talked on the phone. The only way that fifteen thousand people could have been in the few buildings we saw in the film was if they w
ere already dead and stacked up like firewood.

  Then reporters covered another string of threats against the United States and all things American.

  “Why don’t you come up over the weekend?” Joy said on the phone. “Get Danny and his family and all of you come. … It is? You’re sure today is Friday? … I guess it is. Well then, next weekend. That gives you a whole week to get hold of Danny and make arrangements. … You have the address here. We’re right on the lake. … That’s right, not too far from Wrigley Field. … No, I don’t know who’s playing next weekend. I don’t think Gil does either.”

  I shook my head. I didn’t even know if they were in town. I hadn’t been out to a Cubs game since April, the first week of the season, just before I started my goodwill tour of the buffer zone.

  “No, he says he doesn’t know. We’ll check and let you know. … Okay, next week, Saturday morning. Bye, Mom.” Joy hung up and came over to sit next to me on the sofa. Close. She seemed drained by the call.

  “They’re coming?” I asked.

  “Mom and Dad, for sure. I don’t know about Danny and his family. Mom thinks I’m on drugs or something, talking about castles. She wants to see the castle, and she wants to see a marriage certificate.”

  I laughed. “You knew it wouldn’t be easy.”

  “We don’t have a marriage certificate.”

  “I’ll have Baron Kardeen draw one up. Real parchment. That should impress your mother.”

  “Once we convince her that’s it legal.”

  The network anchorman on the television was drawing in comments from a half-dozen correspondents stationed around the world now, with the predictable reactions of diplomats in the capitals of our allies and others.

  “It is going to get worse here, isn’t it?” Joy asked.

  “Probably,” I said. “That’s why you decided to get your family here, isn’t it? To take them to Varay?”

  Joy nodded. “I guess. I’m still not sure how we’re going to manage it, though. Can we find room for them?”

  “No problem,” I assured her. No problem except, maybe, time. Eight days was long enough for a lot of varieties of hell to break out. But it wouldn’t help to worry Joy about that too quickly.