Once A Hero

by Michael A. Stackpole

  "Except the Haladina."

  "True, they were mercenaries and were very loyal to the Reithrese."

  The wide road leading toward the capital impressed Neal when they started traveling on it. Heading in toward the city, they found the route became more populated, and they passed through a number of small villages that existed solely to serve the traffic in- and outbound from Jarudin. They took a meal in one during the early afternoon, then pushed on hard and reached the capital at dusk.

  At Berengar's insistence they rode directly to the Imperial palace and demanded an audience with the emperor. The guards protested, but one of them went off anyway and returned quickly with orders to admit them and escort them to the Reithrese tower.

  While other soldiers took their horses away, an even dozen imperial guardsmen marched them into the tower. To Gena the tower seemed unchanged from her earlier visit. At the sight of it Neal grew quiet, and when he crossed the threshold, he pulled his cloak tightly about himself.

  Gena gently touched him on the shoulder. "What is wrong?"

  He shook his head. "This was never a pleasant place when I was alive, but now it seems so . . . dead. I guess a lot of things are beginning to sink in concerning the passage of time. Before I saw this tower this way, I could deny this Jarudin was the Jarudin I had known. Now . . ."

  "But you saw how much my grandfather and grandmother had changed."

  "Yes, but I quickly got past that and was communicating with the people inside their bodies. At their cores they had not changed that much, so I found my old friends therein. I can't explain it."

  "You don't have to."

  "Thank you."

  The guards ushered them into what had been the chapel. All of the [dust] and debris had been cleared from it since Gena had last been there. Torches burned atop portable stands, and the emperor himself stood in front of the magickal seal. He looked tired to Gena's eyes, but he executed a bow flawlessly. "Welcome, my guests."

  Berengar perfunctorily returned the bow. "We have brought to you Neal Roclawzi. He has come to recover his sword, Cleaveheart."

  "Oh, has he?" The emperor looked from Berengar to Neal and back again. "You are trying to tell me this is Neal. Knight-Defender of the Empire."

  Neal raised an eyebrow. "I would have thought my term in that office would have expired by now."

  "It should have, but Beltran the Great was sentimental and never replaced Neal."

  Berengar's nostrils flared. "He is Neal. He destroyed Tacorzi to recover the dagger that is the key to this ward."

  "If that thing is dead, I am in your debt." Hardelwick [liled] slyly. "Our gratitude does not, however, extend to giving you Cleaveheart."

  "What!" Berengar looked ready to explode, and only Neal's grabbing the back of his tunic stopped him from leaping forward to throttle the emperor, "How can you deny Neal his sword?"

  The emperor folded his arms. "I would not deny Neal his sword, but what proof have I that this man is a hero who perished five centuries ago? For all I know, this is some thieving wizard you found who has the expertise necessary to defeat these wards. If we discover the sword Cleaveheart in there, you will be asking me to turn an important piece of imperial history over to you. I have no desire to do that."

  "You can't do that!"

  "Oh, Berengar, I certainly can. I am the emperor, after all."

  Neal nodded. "He does have a point."

  "Thank goodness one of you sees reason."

  Gena frowned. "Forgive me. Highness, but you said you would turn the blade over to Neal, and we have told you this is Neal. What would it take to convince you that this Man is, in reality, Neal Roclawzi?"

  The emperor stroked his jaw with his right hand. "Interesting question, that one."

  Neal held up his left hand and showed the back of it to the emperor. "I received this scar in this very chamber." He pointed to the sword frozen in the stone at their feet. "The last Reithrese emperor burned my gauntlet from me, which is how I became scarred and how he died."

  Hardelwick waved that story away. "That is a common tale, sir."

  Gena stepped forward. "You know the stories about Neal. You know them all. Ask him about something no one else knows. Ask him something that only Neal would know."

  "You could have instructed him."

  "It would have taken more than four months to give him the sort of knowledge that you have of him." Gena smiled carefully. "Besides, I give you my word that this man has not been instructed by me or anyone else in the story of Neal's life."

  "The word of an Elf. Your willingness to make an oath like that does count for a great deal." The emperor frowned and crossed his bony arms over his chest. "Very well, I will try this little game."

  Neal opened his hands. "I will answer if I can."

  "Of that I have no doubt." Hardelwick's eyes glittered wetly in the flickering torchlight. "You killed Tashayul in the Roclaws, yet no tale exists that speaks about how you did it. There is no credible story about your battle with him."

  Neal nodded. "It wasn't worth one."

  "Tashayul dies and his empire begins to crumble and you say his death was not worth a story?" The emperor frowned. "I would find this hard to believe, but I have heard rumors of how he died. My question is this: what did you use to kill him?"

  Neal laughed aloud. "That is your question?"

  "It is."

  Berengar clutched at Neal's left sleeve. "Do you know it? Can you answer it?"

  Neal nodded.

  The emperor bowed his head. "Your answer, then."

  Neal laughed again. "As you wish. To kill Tashayul, I used beavers."

  Chapter 38:

  Bittersweet, The Hero's Reward

  Winter

  A.R.499

  The Present

  My 536th Year

  ***

  BERENGAR'S GRIP ON my sleeve tightened. "Beavers? Are you insane? Beavers?"

  He looked stricken, and Gena suddenly seemed to think I had gone mad. Only the emperor had not changed his expression. "Please, explain your answer."

  I nodded and slipped my arm from Berengar's grasp. "I fought against Tashayul when I was sixteen years old, and I had hurt him. I had no idea how badly until years later, but hurt him I had. He left his troops in the field and retreated to Reith for healing. Aarundel and I did not attempt to follow him and headed east instead. Over the next three years we watched as his Reithrese army conquered Cenrisia, Ispar, Barkol, and Irtysh. That brought him to the Roclaws."

  I glanced up unconsciously at Tashayul's image above "When he returned to battle, he wore huge, heavy armor—and appeared to be almost twice as large as he had been when I fought him. I never saw him outside his armor—which is not unusual, given that I only saw him in battle—and he appeared as deadly as he had been when we fought. He was winning his empire rather easily and had even started the construction on Jarudin so it would be his capital.

  "About the only thing Aarundel and I noticed as we wandered before and behind his army, was that he had his best engineers with him rather than off building Jarudin here. They organized work parties that created wonderful wooden bridges, to be replaced with stone bridges as soon as possible. That seemed quite logical because the bridges allowed him to get troops across rivers quickly. We thought that was his reason for building them until we saw one bridge built on the site of a ford where the water was no more than ankle deep."

  I frowned. "We went into the Roclaws ahead of his army and made our way to my brother's court. He started organizing, and I set out to do anything possible to slow down the Reithrese advance. Because the mountains are split by passes that have been carved out by rivers, I knew his engineers would have a lot of work. Given that Tashayul appeared to be looking for a spring offensive, I had the late fall and winter to prepare.

  "Aarundel, some trappers, and I got ourselves a number of beaver families and transplanted them from down below to some of the higher mountain areas. We induced them to build dams that would catch the wint
er runoff. That would leave our rivers running low, so the engineers would build bridges meant to handle a lesser flow. They, both the beavers and the engineers, did what we expected, which put the Reithrese where we wanted them."

  Walking around toward the marble disk sunk in the floor, I squatted near it. "We opened the highest dam, which poured water down into the next one, and so on. The runoff it had taken two months to collect drained down into the canyons in a matter of three days. Tashayul just happened to be trapped in a canyon when the wall of water hit. In his oversized armor he sank like a stone, and his body was recovered far downstream."

  Berengar slipped his superior mask into place. "Then you didn't actually kill him, as the stories say."

  "Actually, I did. When we first fought, I'd cut his spine, [so the] lower part of his body did not work except when [magick] was used to augment his body. That's why he was [bigger] when he came back—his brother, Takrakor, had constructed a metal skeleton that he fitted to Tashayul. When a [magick] was used on it, Tashayul could move normally. Unfortunately for him, Tashayul could do nothing by way of [Us]ting magick, so his metal skeleton weighed him down and he drowned. I'd inflicted a wound in our fight that took four years to kill him, which was in keeping with a prophecy that he would die at the hand of someone twenty years old. He did."

  Hardelwick stared hard at me, and I met his dark-eyed gaze without flinching. His eyes half-closed, he nodded. "I accept that explanation as the truth."

  Gena looked at him. "Does it match the story you had about Tashayul's death?"

  I smiled. "He had no story about Tashayul's death. The only people who knew about it were Reithrese, and they as not about to start singing of how their leader drowned. The people of the Roclaws did not celebrate it after, because it was hardly the sort of heroic deed they expected out of me. The Reithrese just pulled back to their imperial borders and waited until a successor to Tashayul had been selected."

  The emperor nodded his head to me. "It is true, I was testing you. Had someone, say Berengar Fisher here, been impersonating a hero of old, the story told would have been grandly heroic and the sort of thing that would have lived forever in song—as has your duel with the Reithrese emperor in this very room."

  I smiled at him. "And if I had told a heroic tale, you would have denied me the sword?"

  He shrugged. "And I may still, but you do not yet have it in your possession. If you can defeat the ward, and if the blade is there, then I will have a decision to make."

  I nodded and drew Wasp. On my knees I reached out with the blade and touched it to the marble disk. The image shimmered for a moment, then I heard a chorus of voices speaking. One spoke Elven, another Reithrese, and the third Mantongue. That one I understood. "Glory does not lie within. Merely a sword that did win an empire washed in blood. In the name of the common good. Let he who puts hand to hilt, from sacred duty never wilt. An empire won will yet fall if not governed for the good of all."

  I hadn't a chance to determine what that meant when I found myself on my feet on burning sands. Across from me I saw a Haladin warrior with his left hand entangled in a sylvanesti's long hair. His right hand raised a hooked dagger, but before he could even think of stabbing it down into her exposed throat, I threw Wasp at him. Five hundred years had done nothing for my ability to throw a knife, or Wasp's ability to be thrown, but it hit the Haladina in the face. I leaped at him, shielding her with my own body as the knife flashed down.

  I felt it rake across my back, but I forced the pain from my mind. Grabbing him by the throat and groin, I raised him up, then smashed him down over my right knee, snapping his spine.

  His body ran like hot wax through my fingers, and as it puddled out below me, it transformed the desert into a woodland. I heard a strangled cry behind me and whirled. The sylvanesti metamorphosed into a Manchild, exhausted and bleeding, who ran along on a dusty game path. Behind him, chasing him, came an Elven warrior with a broad-bladed spear. Spikes and barbs on his armor glinting in the dappled sunlight, the screaming hunter came on and set himself for the thrust that would kill the child.

  I found Wasp in my hand as I stepped in to stop the Elf from killing the child. The Elf shifted his spear to target me. I dodged to my right and felt the burning sting of the spear as it sliced into the flesh on my left flank. My left hand closed around the haft of the spear, and I pulled the Elf forward as my right hand brought Wasp up. The dagger pierced the Elfs jaw and jabbed up into and through his mouth. His last curse sprayed me with his blood; then he, too, melted away, and his blood washed the land in red, bringing me to the plains outside Alatun.

  I turned to look at the Manchild, but he had again changed. Dark-haired and slender, with her pale, naked flesh spattered with red mud, I saw a Reithressa stumble along. Her ruby teeth gritted in pain, she scrambled to her feet again, then half slipped in the mud and lay there vulnerable and exhausted.

  "To Alatun and victory!" I heard shouted from behind me. As I turned to face this new threat, surprise and shock ent a shudder through me. Racing in at the Reithressa, I saw myself, Cleaveheart in hand, I knew that was not how I had looked at Alatun—at least I hoped it was not—because the man bearing Cleaveheart clearly intended to slaughter the defenseless creature toward which he ran.

  Reithrese or not, I had to intervene. I dove and tackled my twin. He went down hard, but kept Cleaveheart in his grasp. I rolled away from him, narrowly avoiding a slash that split open the earth. Blood geysered into the air and poured down over me, all hot and sticky. It revolted me, and I recoiled from the shower; then I saw my analog crawling his way along toward the Reithressa.

  Snarling incoherently, I leaped through the gushing wall of blood and landed on his legs. He tried to turn and slash me with the sword, but I blocked his strike, then pounced to his back as he recovered himself. The bloody fountain lined viscous fluid over us, and I took advantage of it. Using my knees to pin his arms, I grabbed his head with both hands and forced his face into a puddle of blood. I held on as he tried to buck me off and twist away, and I continued to hang on until bubbles stopped coming up and his body surrendered.

  Then his body melted away, and I knelt there in a [bloody] lake. The stink of death clung to me, and drying blood threatened to stick my eyes shut. I looked over at where the Reithressa had been, but she had again become a sylvanesti. Clothed in robes of the brightest white, she turned toward me and I recognized her.

  "Larissa?" A smile slowly spread across her face. "I knew it would be you, Neal. It had to be you. I wish I had been brave enough for it to be the two of us together."

  "What are you talking about? You are here, now."

  "I will keep my promises to you, Neal, all of them, not after how much they hurt me, because I would not cause hurt to you." As she spoke, I knew that what I was seeing was a magickal image of her. It could not hear me, it could not reason, and worst of all, it could not explain. All it could do is what Larissa had created it to do when she locked my sword away after my death.

  Her image came toward me, hovering above the blood with each step. "Remember that I love you and will always love you, Neal," she said as she extended her right hand toward me. "Never forget me and do forgive me."

  I reached up to take her hand in mine, but as my flesh met hers, light flashed and I felt the cool leather and weight of Cleaveheart once again in my hand. As my vision again cleared, I saw the sword with which I had won an empire. An old friend, it fit my hand as if I had never let it slip from my grasp. I smiled and, for a second, felt as I had before I died.

  Then a tingle ran up my arm from the sword, and its special magick began to work.

  In the same way that Cleaveheart had been more of a traditional Reithrese weapon when Tashayul used it, and then had become a stout broadsword when it passed to me, now it transformed itself again. The cross-hilt threw out tendrils of metal that wove themselves into a fascinatingly intricate basket-hilt. The blade itself stretched and narrowed, with both edges taking on a razor's sheen. T
he tip narrowed to a needle's point, and the hilt shifted subtly in my hand to provide me the greater control I would need to use it with the techniques I had learned from Berengar.

  My circle of vision expanded beyond the sword, and I once again found myself in the old Reithrese chapel in Jarudin. My companions and the emperor, along with the dozen guards beyond them, stared at me intently. I smiled at them, stood, and worked the blade through a simple salute. "May I present Cleaveheart."

  Berengar shook his head. "That can't be Cleaveheart. Cleaveheart was a broadsword and this is a rapier." He looked hard at the emperor. "What kind of game are you playing here?"

  Hardelwick's expression mixed surprise with delight—the kind of open-faced, open-mouthed smile seen at juggler's shows. "There is no deception. Count Berengar. This is as much of a surprise to me as it is to you. Can you explain this, Man-Who-Would-Be-Neal?"

  While I had seen the transformation, I had no idea what they had seen, so I asked.

  Gena pointed to the marble circle. "When you touched the dagger to that circle, a solid column of light shot from you to Tashayul's forehead, and it pulled you inside. I saw shadowy movements, but heard nothing and could make no sense of what I saw. Then the light vanished and you were kneeling there with the sword."

  I nodded. "This is not the first time this sword has altered its shape. I saw the transformation this time, but I expect that was just part of a spell that wanted to introduce the changed blade to me. I did not see the change the previous time because it happened during the year between Tashayul's death and my recovery of the blade from Jammaq. This sword is involved with destinies and empires, it appears to change itself to be best suited for the environment in which it is being used."

  Berengar smiled. "That is fascinating. Perhaps, as it has become the sort of blade I wield, you should entrust it to me for safekeeping."