Son of the Hero

by Rick Shelley

  “It’s possible, perhaps possible enough to start something.”

  “If you can get the message to the Elf king.”

  “I’ll do what I can.”

  “Now, suppose we reconvene the meeting I broke up yesterday.”

  * * *

  I didn’t say anything about my abrupt departure or the reasons for it. I did tell everyone about the nuclear bomb in New York and my guess that it was related to events in the buffer zone. The others all nodded. Even King Pregel seemed to understand the implications of nuclear weapons. There might not be TV or radio in the buffer zone—not even a newspaper as far as I knew—but that didn’t mean that the elite was totally ignorant of our world. They couldn’t afford to be.

  “I’ll try to get the Elflord of Xayber off our backs, if just for a few weeks, so we can concentrate on the Etevar,” I said. “I’ve given Parthet a message to send to the Elf king. I’m going after sea-silver. If I get a chance, I may spend a day or two pretending to be the army of some other elflord marauding in Xayber.” That last was a throwaway, a chance thought that came while I was talking. It sounded pompous as hell, but nobody even blinked.

  “If I can sidetrack Xayber, so much the better. We can use the sea-silver to move the army east to meet the Etevar. If I can’t sidetrack the elflord, the silver becomes even more important. We’ll set up passages from Arrowroot and Coriander to Thyme so we can move troops back and forth to cover both fronts. When I get back from the isthmus with the sea-silver, I’ll set up the doorways at the northern castles, then ride to Thyme, to that cottage in the orchard, to set up the other end. With me there and either Parthet or Mother handling the doors in the northern castles, we can keep the passages open for the troop movements.” I gave them a moment. There were no questions. The Hero was speaking words of salvation. They were eating it up. It gave me a sick feeling.

  “In the meantime, it might be wise to strip the rest of the kingdom of every possible fighting man and move them east.”

  “It sounds risky, but it’s the only chance we’ve seen that offers any hope at all,” Pregel said when I paused again.

  Heaven help us all, I thought. But I took it as a go-ahead.

  “Mother, there’s one thing you need to do while I’m gone. First thing Monday morning, take Uncle Parthet—hog-tie and drag him if you have to—to Louisville. Take him to one of those one-hour eyeglass places. Get his eyes tested and buy him a half-dozen pairs of unbreakable, unscratchable glasses with those neck chains to keep him from losing them off his face.” Parthet looked embarrassed, more so when the rest of them laughed.

  “Uncle,” I said, putting my hand on his shoulder, “we need you at your very best for this. We may need every magic you know before it’s over. And since you need to see well to do your magics, cracked eighty-year-old glasses just won’t cut it.”

  “You’re right, of course,” Parthet said sheepishly. “I should have done long ago, but I never find the time.”

  “Is there anything else we need to do right away?” Pregel asked. His willingness to defer to my plans so easily, so completely, gave me mixed feelings. It was heartening that he trusted me, but it was also discouraging, to say the least. If the wild ideas of a novice were the best Varay could manage, we were in deep trouble.

  “People, weapons, and food,” I said. “As much as we can start moving east, I’d say. And whatever authorization I’m going to need to get things moving in the north. Those people don’t know me.”

  “I’ll prepare a warrant for the royal seal,” Kardeen said.

  “You go with the full authority of the crown,” Pregel added.

  A damn blank check. That gave me more chills. But there wasn’t much more to be said right then. I went off with Mother and Parthet to learn what I could about the inherent magic of being Hero of Varay. They couldn’t tell me much. There was the greater awareness of danger that had been mentioned before. The magic was also supposed to convey something of the strength and skill of Vara, first of the line, the mystical hero-king whose golden age I was supposed to bring back.

  “Your father was secretive,” Mother said in answer to my complaint. “He told me that he couldn’t explain most of the magic, that it might weaken it. You may be able to pull off your deception in Xayber. It’s a guess, but from hints I picked up over the years, that magic may deceive an elflord at a distance. For a time. Not forever.”

  “The magic grows on you, with you,” Parthet said. “That is the ancient wisdom, and your father said it was accurate.”

  It wasn’t much. I decided to go to Arrowroot in the morning after a couple of good Basilier meals and a night’s sleep. When I got to my room, I found that my entourage had grown. Harkane, Dad’s squire, was waiting with the others. When I entered the room, Harkane came to me and went down on one knee.

  “I would be honored to serve you as I served your father,” he said. There was no way to refuse—especially after Lesh told me that the king had sent Harkane.

  We all went to the great hall to eat, and when we got back upstairs after we finished—about two hours later—I told my people what we were going to be doing for the next couple of weeks. “Timon, you’ll be okay here while we’re gone,” I added.

  “My place is with you, lord,” he said.

  “Not this time. We ride to war, to Fairy and Dorthin. It’s no place for a boy your age.” He argued longer than Lesh or Parthet would have. Even when I made it a flat order, Timon sulked.

  “You did right, lord,” Harkane said when we were more or less alone. “Your father always left his page behind when the danger was greatest also.” I felt that it was a presumptuous remark for a squire new to “my service,” but I was glad he’d made it. Varay was still strange to me. I thought that by local standards. Timon might be right, that he did belong with me, even on such a ridiculously dangerous mission. But there was no way I was going to haul a kid his age along on what might be as suicidal a quest as my father’s last one.

  I lay awake for a long time that night, second-guessing my decision to return to Varay, and trying to put together a more solid plan for its defense. But no matter how I stirred the mix, I was going to have to ad-lib most of it, and that didn’t feel very smart to me. The algorithm was full of bugs. After midnight I got up and headed down to the crypt. Alone. I managed to get out of the room without waking the others by taking the scenic route. I stepped back into my parents’ bedroom in Louisville, went down to the basement, and stepped back through to a different part of the castle. Some of the rigmarole was sinking in. I took my sword and knife along. I strapped on the belt almost without thinking. The Hero of Varay must be armed.

  The route to the crypt wasn’t as brightly lit as it had been for the funeral procession, but there were occasional torches along the way, even one inside the burial chamber—fresh, so someone took care to keep a light burning there.

  I don’t think I went down there to communicate with the dead. I never believed that was possible. I’m not sure why I headed almost instinctively for the crypt that night. Maybe Hamlet was working on my head again. A stone-carver had been at work, preparing the headstone on the new niche. Dad’s name was finished, but not the dates. I put my hands against the stone. Cold marble. In my mind, I talked to Dad, told him what I was planning to try, confessed that I was scared, that I didn’t see how I could possibly pull it off. No matter what kind of front I put on for the living folks upstairs, I still didn’t know what I was doing, I was scared, and I wanted to run for home and try to forget the whole nightmare.

  Dad didn’t answer.

  It was appropriately chilly in the crypt, and I got hungry almost at once, as ghoulish as that might sound. But I didn’t leave. I was in no real hurry to get out of the crypt, and that surprised me.

  It was eerie. The slightest noise echoed over and over, forcing me to pay attention, to look around me almost constantly, as if someone might sneak up on me down there.

  I looked at the capstones on the other niches
. There were a lot of them. The dates weren’t A.D. or B.C., so I couldn’t place them absolutely, but the numbers ranged from a high of 3713 down to a death date of 177 on the stone labeled Vara, right in the center. Looking at the wall, it was kings to the left and Heroes to the right.

  Something happened. I don’t have any idea what it was—something just inside my head, I think. I hope. I got so frightened, though, that I almost chickened out and ran for home again. When I could control the panic, I forced myself to stand there and look at the wall of burial niches again. I wondered where they would put me when the time came, if I served as both Hero and king. Which end would be mine? Or would they start using the other wall and put me in the middle opposite Vara? Gloomy thoughts in a gloomy place. Of course, the odds looked good that the question wouldn’t arise. I might easily end up in the vault before Pregel. I assumed that that would put me next to my father, or just above him.

  Gil Tyner, King of Varay? It sounded crazy, absurd. There was a surrealistic air about the entire situation. That feeling was as dangerous as the Elflord of Xayber or the Etevar of Dorthin. Maybe I hoped that standing in the crypt where we had buried the last Hero would help etch the reality in my mind. How can you prepare for mortal danger, make it feel as real as it has to feel? I didn’t have a drill sergeant to scream at me, or banner headlines in newspapers and network anchormen wailing about a war. No jingoistic propaganda, no visible evidence of the danger but that stone on my father’s burial niche.

  I guess I spent a couple of hours there, standing before the rows and layers of dead kings and heroes while my mind drifted wherever it wanted to go. Part of the time I thought about things Dad and I had done together. At times I could almost hear him talking to me—memory-talking, not spirit-talking—bits of lessons he had taught me, even some of the corny jokes he liked to tell just to hear people groan. I tried to come to grips with my resentment over the secret life my parents had led. Maybe all parents lead lives their children don’t know about, but this was something more than a teenager’s shock at learning that his “ancient” parents still enjoyed sex.

  There was no way to recover the years of lies, no way I could change my own past to include Varay—despite Parthet’s philosophy of history. Maybe I couldn’t even extinguish the resentment I felt, but I couldn’t let it fester. Forgive and forget? Not exactly. I wasn’t ready to tell Mother, “That’s all right what you did to me,” because it wasn’t. And I certainly didn’t expect to forget.

  I was as trapped as any of the people in those burial niches, and I was still alive to suffer the frustration of the trap.

  Finally, I climbed the stairs back to my room. I even slept for a time, and this time there were no dreams. After a hearty breakfast and a round of farewells, I opened the passage to Castle Arrowroot and stepped through with Lesh and Harkane.

  My war was about to start.

  10

  Annick

  The waters of the Mist lapped at the curtain wall of Castle Arrowroot, a constant background music. The castle sat at the angle where the coast bent north to form the Isthmus of Xayber. A broad moat wrapped around two-thirds of the fortress and connected with the sea, making the castle an island, all to itself. Castle Arrowroot wasn’t overly large, but its walls were high and thick, a weapon of war guarding one of Varay’s most vulnerable border areas. Our point of entry was in a corridor leading from the outer battlements to the keep. Lesh knew the layout of the castle and headed us toward the great hall. The first person we met was a garrison soldier. Harkane announced me in a drill-field voice, and got through the spiel without a crack in it.

  “His Highness Prince Gil, Hero of Varay, wishes to be shown to Baron Resler, Castellan of Arrowroot.” Even though Harkane’s voice wasn’t solidly sunk into its adult register yet, he sounded fairly impressive.

  The soldier bowed his head toward me and said, “At once, Your Highness.” Then he led the way.

  Baron Resler was still at the table, eating breakfast with fierce determination, a scowl apparently glued to his face. The garrison soldier announced me with a flourish. Everyone stared for a moment. Resler stood and made a formal bow and greeting. He was about five foot six, built wide and solid but without visible fat. He was a military man. That was clear in his face and in the way he moved. His face was weathered, his beard trimmed, his hair rough-cut but shorter than most men wore it in Varay. Bushy eyebrows were separated by the deep vertical furrows of a perpetual frown that had nothing to do with his mood.

  “Will you breakfast with us, Highness?” he asked.

  “We ate before we left Basil, but perhaps a morsel or two, and coffee.” I saw a steaming pitcher on the table. “Don’t let me interrupt you.”

  Resler took me at my word. He seated me at his right and went on eating while a page brought me a platter and utensils, and poured coffee. I had to remind the boy not to give me heaping portions, just a sampling of everything. Eat, eat, eat, etiquette and need—a need I didn’t fully understand. Lesh and Harkane found seats lower on the table. They showed no reluctance at shoveling in another full meal even though they had eaten at least as well as I had at Basil.

  “We don’t have time for social graces here,” Resler said around his chewing. “We plunge right into the business at hand, even in the midst of a meal … if you have no objection.”

  “No objection at all, Baron.” The coffee was stronger and more bitter than the usual brew at Basil. If you weren’t expecting it, that coffee could cross your eyes. “I need the three best horses you have, this morning, and you need to get ready to move virtually all of your men to Castle Thyme about two weeks from now. The reasons for that will have to wait until we’re alone.” I took out the warrant that King Pregel had signed and sealed. Resler wiped his hands on his wool robe before he took the document and read it.

  “The wizard was here two days ago,” he said when he finished. “I knew your father, of course. I grieved to hear of his end. You look a lot like he did when he was younger.” Resler’s voice was gravelly, even when he spoke softly.

  “The grief has to be postponed for now,” I said. “We have to worry about all of Varay.”

  Resler nodded solemnly. “Perhaps we should go to my apartments to discuss what needs to be discussed.”

  At Arrowroot, meals didn’t end when the big shots got up. I doubt that anybody even noticed when we left. Once Resler and I were alone, I told him the essentials of my plan.

  “I know of the doorways, of course, but I never considered that they might be used to move an army,” he said.

  “That depends on my being able to get fresh sea-silver out of Xayber.” I reminded him, not sure that he knew about the weed or its use. “That’s why I need your best horses for my men and me.”

  “You’ll get them. When will you leave?”

  “As quickly as possible. You know the situation here far better than I do. What’s the best time and route? What will give us our best chance to avoid the elflord’s forces?”

  “There’s no certain time or road.” He lowered his head and thought about it, holding up a hand for silence when I started to speak. “I think I’d best give you some idea what we face here first,” he added.

  ‘I’d appreciate that.” The views of the man in charge at the scene had to be better than what I’d gotten at Basil.

  “Things get powerful confusing. This isn’t a proper little war at all. There are just two main routes from Xayber into Varay. Arrowroot guards one. Coriander sits astride the other. Any large force, any army, has to take one or the other—or come by sea—but there are dozens of paths and trails that a small raiding party could take. We have to patrol the coast and halfway to Coriander.”

  “With how many men?”

  “Never enough,” Resler said, predictably. What commander ever thinks that he has enough men, supplies, or support? “Right now, I have about four hundred and fifty men. Ten times that wouldn’t be enough to do a thorough job, even if we only faced steel and not elfin magic
.”

  “What about Coriander?”

  “Baron Dieth has a more vulnerable castle, fewer men, and as much ground to cover.”

  I knew that manpower was spread thin throughout Varay. By any “modern” demographic standards, the country was more underpopulated than some deserts back home. People had moved to other kingdoms over the centuries. Many had left the buffer zone altogether, fleeing to Fairy or to our world. Varay was too often in the way of invaders.

  “Attackers come at any point of our border,” Resler said. “When the elflord is feeling particularly strong or cross, he sends his army against the castles and towns. But he’s never been able spring a strong enough magic to cut us off from resupply.” I understand that he was talking about the magic passages. “More often, though, he just sends raiding parties to attack our villages, burn crops, steal livestock. Usually, the raiders come out of Battle Forest from the isthmus. More rarely, a dragon ship comes out of the Mist to ravage a coastal fishing village and escape before we can respond.”

  Resler shrugged. “It could be worse. Vara’s magic protects us somewhat. The elflord’s offensive magics always seem to go awry when he hits us with them. Outside Fairy, those magics aren’t always reliable for Fairy folk.”

  The way Varayan magic didn’t work in Fairy or the way my lighter wouldn’t work even in Varay, I thought. I wondered if my pistol would work either place. Dad had carried firearms, though they hadn’t been with his body, and guns hadn’t saved him. It was something else to ask Parthet about when I got a chance. In the meantime, I just had to remember not to count on my gun.

  Baron Resler walked to a window. It wasn’t glass, but a skin that had been scraped and oiled until it was translucent, then stretched and tacked to a frame. He opened the window and looked out at the Mist.

  “I’ve spent most of my life fighting forces out of Fairy,” he said. “Oh, there are months, even years at a time, when the elflord makes no trouble, but we can never be sure. We can’t stop our patrols. We never know until our people spot his, or until he attacks. He never tires of it. Over and over your father put his mind to the problem without success.” Resler turned to look at me again. “You can’t imagine how weary I get of the fighting, how I long to see the old prophecies come true.”