The Hero King

by Rick Shelley

  “Crazy” is a totally inadequate word.

  It must have been close to midnight when Baron Kardeen came up the-back stairs into the dining room.

  “We have everyone fed and settled in for the night,” he reported. “Unless we come up with another plague of dragons in the eggs, we’re stocked for breakfast.”

  “Good. Grab a mug of beer and take a load off your feet.”

  For once, he didn’t hesitate. I know that I upset his sense of propriety quite often. Sometimes I could almost hear him reminding himself that I hadn’t grown up in Varay, that allowances had to be made for foreign ideas of manners. I had only once seen him sit in Pregel’s presence, for instance, and that was at the formal breakfast after we buried my father. But Kardeen was tired, which must have happened often, and showing it, which was rare. He filled a mug, half-emptied it, then topped it off and sat at the side of the table.

  “It’s been a hectic day,” I said. “I really dumped a load on you this time. And, as usual, you managed to handle it.”

  “It has been a hectic day,” Kardeen agreed.

  “How are our Russians doing?” I asked. It seemed strange to me even at the time, but I couldn’t work up a good hate for them even after seeing the results of the fighting back in my world—maybe because I had seen the results. I recognized potential problems, but I didn’t have the slightest inclination to take the war out on the crew of that frigate.

  “They’re not completely satisfied,” Kardeen said. “The reality of Varay is beginning to sink in, though. I doubt that they know what happened in your world after they left.”

  I smiled. “It’s okay,” I told him. In his own delicate way, Kardeen was trying to make sure that I wasn’t about to do anything rash about our Russians. “I don’t have any yen for vengeance.” Kardeen smiled back at me and nodded.

  “We’ll try to put anything more off until tomorrow,” I said. “I can’t think straight right now, and I imagine that everyone must be just as strung out as I am.”

  “There is one more thing I need to mention,” Kardeen said with obvious reluctance.

  “Go on,” I said when he hesitated.

  “I had a report from Baron Hambert at Coriander this evening, passed through when we were sending him his share of our new people. One of his patrols came across scouts for a moderately large force of Dorthinis in Battle Forest. The wizard you blinded has apparently found sight again. He may have as many as five hundred soldiers with him, not enough to stage a major invasion, but certainly enough for a large raid—likely for food.”

  A blind wizard is of no use to anyone. That’s what Parthet had told me after the Battle of Thyme. The Etevar’s wizard was blinded during the fight, when the dragon he was controlling was blinded. I hadn’t seen any purpose in doing anything more drastic to the wizard afterward.

  Now he was back, and Kardeen said he had eyes again.

  “Doesn’t he have any idea how critical this time is to all of us?” I asked.

  “I don’t doubt that he does. He may see it as his best chance to get himself a real base. Dieth has kept the pressure on the warlords of Dorthin. If this wizard gets himself a base right on the border, he can strike in either direction.”

  “How much time do we have to meet him?” I asked.

  “Hambert said he has a few tricks prepared but that the Dorthinis could still reach Coriander before sunset tomorrow. Coriander is in no immediate danger. They’re warned and there aren’t enough troops coming to take it by assault.”

  “That still doesn’t leave much time. They may not bother with the castle if they’re looking to steal part of our harvest. And that is something we can’t afford to lose, not with all of our new citizens.”

  Kardeen nodded.

  “Still, it has to wait for morning. I’m too tired to think straight now. At breakfast, here. You, me, Aaron, Parthet if he’s back from Curry. I believe that Joy will probably want to eat with her family. That reunion will be going on for days.”

  “As you wish.”

  I stared at Kardeen for a moment. He had a working knowledge of the other world, but entirely secondhand.

  “Can you even begin to comprehend the destruction back in my old world?” I whispered.

  “The queen, your mother, and I have spent many hours discussing the possibilities,” Kardeen said. “The descriptions they give … It all sounds unbelievable, unreal, impossible.”

  “About the way that most people from there view this world.”

  “I have noticed that,” Kardeen said. “Some of the people you sent through have become almost hysterical for a time.”

  “Strike the almost. That’s why Joy’s parents were back in that world when the shit hit the fan. They were here once, briefly, and they couldn’t handle the idea. As a result, Joy’s father is dead.”

  “Because he could only imagine one reality?” Kardeen asked.

  Exhaustion helped overcome my uneasiness over sleeping in the bed that my great-grandfather had died in. Sleep. That’s all Joy and I did that night, even after my latest absence. Her pregnancy was just starting to show, but she hadn’t lost her enthusiasm for what got her that way. We were simply both too tired to get from A to B that night. And there wasn’t time in the morning. We were wakened before dawn. I told Joy about the planning conference at breakfast and suggested that she do the honors in the great hall with her brother’s family, that I would join them as soon as I could—but probably not until after the morning meal was finished.

  “It was bad, wasn’t it?” she asked as we dressed.

  “As bad as anyone could imagine,” I said. “Louisville, Fort Knox, they simply ceased to exist. I imagine that all the cities were like that, and all the military bases. I’m sorry about your father.”

  Joy came into my arms. I held her for a moment. “We did everything we could,” I told her.

  “I know.”

  “But it still hurts. I know how it feels, Joy. We were too late to save my father too.”

  Then I had to go to my meeting.

  The others were all there already, waiting for me. Protocol: the king makes his entrance after everyone else is present. Kardeen had already told the others what was happening. We started on our talk while we started on breakfast. Aaron and I would need several days of concentrated pigging out to recover from our trip to the other world. Parthet always ate as if he hadn’t seen food in a week. Kardeen was a little more “normal” in appetite, but he was eating this morning, not standing next to the throne being the court functionary. Maybe I was finally succeeding in my efforts to get him to loosen up a bit.

  “We could funnel through enough soldiers to meet this renegade wizard and his soldiers,” I said after we had talked through everything two or three times already. “But soldiers alone won’t do it, not if that wizard got his eyesight back.” I stopped for a moment and shook my head.

  “Dammit anyway, this really isn’t the time for us to be out playing this kind of game. If only we could hang out a detour sign and send him somewhere else.”

  “They are in Battle Forest,” Parthet said, very pointedly.

  I looked at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Aaron?” Parthet said The younger wizard looked at his mentor and shrugged.

  “I don’t know the country up there,” Aaron said.

  Parthet looked from him to me. “I’m not absolutely certain this will work. If I were the only wizard available here, I’d say that it wouldn’t, not against the Dorthini. But with both Aaron and me—and maybe an assist from what’s left of Vara—we just might be able to hang out that detour sign for you.”

  “Shift the Dorthinis north into Xayber?” Kardeen asked—a beat faster on the uptake than I was.

  “This is one I can’t guarantee,” Parthet said. “But something I saw in the old scrolls I had Aaron study makes me think that it may be possible, with all three of us involved.”

  “There’s something I want to-hear more about before I
agree,” I said. “Just how do you plan to make use of ‘what’s left of Vara’?”

  “Nothing uncomfortable,” Parthet said quickly. “You’ll simply be one point of our base.”

  “How close do we have to be?” Aaron asked.

  Parthet tapped a knuckle against the edge of the table several times before he answered. “If we can do it at all, we should be able to do it from the battlements here.” He looked at Kardeen. “We’ll need one of the large maps, one that shows all of Battle Forest and the nearer reaches of Xayber.”

  Kardeen nodded. “I’ll get it now. I assume we’ll do this immediately?”

  “We’d better,” I said, looking to Parthet for confirmation.

  He nodded. “Give Aaron and me a few minutes to lay out our program. Once we get started, we won’t be able to stop for conferences in the middle.”

  “Okay,” I said. “The map.” Kardeen was already heading for the back stairs. “You two with the hocus-pocus, and me with my two cents’ worth. I’ll start up to the roof now. Just one question. What will the Elflord of Xayber think about us dumping our trash over his fence?”

  Parthet started to answer, then stopped while he thought back through my question. “We can always let him know what we’re doing. It might even amuse him, especially if that Dorthini wizard is a renegade out of Fairy.”

  I guess that I had some intuitive understanding of the basic idea. The force that the Dorthini wizard had assembled was inside Battle Forest and we were going to get them lost. No matter which way they headed, they were going to move north onto the Isthmus of Xayber—if it worked. The Dorthini wizard had been a powerful magic force before he went blind. He had been much better than Parthet. I thought that Aaron might prove to be his superior, but I couldn’t be certain. Neither could Aaron, not until the confrontation came.

  By the time we all gathered on top of the keep, the idea seemed even more familiar. It was something the bad guys usually used against the good guys. Come on down to the riverside and get eaten by a tree. That sort of thing. But … I really didn’t want to waste the time and men to take a force up to Battle Forest to chase the outlaws back to Dorthin for Dieth to take care of. Force of arms is no more certain than the force of magic.

  I stood looking out toward the north, toward Fairy and the Mist, though I couldn’t see anywhere near that far, while I waited for the others. The morning was overcast, gloomy, promising rain, the same kind of day I had seen too much of back in the other world. It was a perfect day for sorcery and moping. We were getting ready to take care of the sorcery. I figured I could manage the moping all by myself afterward. It was that kind of morning. All that was missing was the kind of thick, mysterious fog that had come in over Castle Arrowroot to cover the retreat of the elflord’s army several years before.

  “It gets like this a lot in autumn, sire,” Kardeen said, just coming up off of the stairs. He had a huge scroll tucked under one arm. “Sometimes we go for a week or more without seeing clear sky.”

  “And this autumn is far from ordinary,” I said. That was the least negative remark I could come up with. The arrival of our wizards spared Kardeen the necessity of a reply.

  “Lay out the map aligned with the compass points,” Parthet said. “North to north.” Aaron helped the chamberlain get the scroll uncoiled and situated. “We may get the parchment a bit soiled. At least one of us will have to stand on it.”

  That turned out to be me.

  “You’re the apex of our triangle,” Parthet told me, adjusting my position down to the inch. “Don’t move your feet or turn your body.”

  Parthet and Aaron were the bases, facing me. A line bisecting the Parthet-Gil-Aaron angle would touch the corner of land where the eastern shore of Xayber broke north from the mainland, just north of Coriander, where Xayber, Varay, and Dorthin all touched.

  “Now, remember, don’t budge,” Aaron said. “And watch the map. If this works, you’ll see the results.”

  The map was one of Baron Kardeen’s large, classy hand-drawn jobs, in four colors, with a lot of detail drawn in. It was “illuminated,” in the style of those ancient monastic books, a real work of art. And I had my combat boots planted firmly on it, over the Eastern Sea, just beyond the corner of land where the three countries meet.

  Parthet and Aaron started chanting together—point and counterpoint, not in unison. They carried on for several minutes before I started to feel a strong tingle that was highly localized … in what was left of Vara. It was almost like a jolt of static electricity that didn’t go away. It wasn’t comfortable, but I remembered Parthet’s injunction and didn’t move an inch.

  Slowly, the map got hazy. Then, something happened. The closest I can come is to say that the map appeared to turn into a large television screen showing the territory covered by the map as it was, not as it had been drawn. It started out like a high-altitude shot, like some of the pictures taken from a space shuttle, first of the entire area, and then zooming down on the area in Battle Forest north and east of Castle Coriander.

  It was like being there, hovering overhead, real enough that it made me dizzy. And then, we saw the soldiers riding west. I held my breath for a moment, as if I was afraid that they would hear me. I didn’t even dare rub my eyes, afraid that I would move too much and spoil the magic.

  Then the map itself moved, or the forest it showed did. Paths, creeks, everything shifted around. Aaron and Parthet kept chanting. I kept watching. After maybe five minutes, the column of soldiers stopped. There was a flash of light near the head of the column, a bright orange glow, almost like a flame. The light faded and the column started to move again, northwest, closer to north, bending more and more toward Xayber.

  I can’t say how long I watched that remote picture. There were two more pauses by the soldiers, both marked by the orange glow near the head of the troop. I eventually figured out that the orange flashes were the Dorthini wizard’s efforts to identify and nullify the magic being used against him.

  “Okay, lads, that should do it,” Parthet said. I looked up. Parthet had backed off from his corner of the triangle. Aaron blinked rapidly several times and rubbed at his eyes. I stepped off of the map. It was once more just a drawn representation.

  “Don’t you have to keep it up until they get out of our territory?” I asked.

  Parthet shook his head. “Unless the Dorthini wizard somehow manages to break the spell, it will hold of itself … long enough. And we’ll know if the spell breaks.” He chuckled suddenly. “And you’ll probably be the first to know. If the Dorthini wizard manages to penetrate the spell, the backlash of energy will likely raise your lance ready for the joust.” He pointed toward what remained of Vara. I got his point.

  “Okay, so we’ll know if it breaks. Now, when do we notify the elflord that he’s got visitors coming?”

  “Might as well do it now while the air is hot.” Parthet said. He had to be referring to different air from what I felt. The morning was decidedly chilly.

  “I’ll make the link,” Aaron said. “I built in a shortcut the last time we talked to him.” Parthet just nodded, and Aaron let off a short chant.

  The elflord appeared on the battlements with us almost instantly.

  “I was just about to call you,” he said, taking one step in my direction.

  13

  On the Roof

  “You know where I can find the Great Earth Mother?” I asked.

  “Yes.” Xayber looked down at the map and then around at my companions. “I gather that there is something else in the wind this morning, though.”

  “That’s why we made the contact,” I said. “That Dorthini wizard is about to intrude on your domain, with about five hundred soldiers.”

  The elflord raised an eyebrow.

  I smiled. Xayber didn’t make me nearly as nervous as he used to. “The Dorthini wizard thinks he is invading Varay, probably to steal as much of our harvest as he can grab for his outlaw band. But we’re a little pressed at the moment, so we
diverted him. I thought you might enjoy a little amusement.” I shrugged. “This wizard sees only a chance for his own aggrandizement and vengeance in the current chaos, maybe a chance to take over much of the buffer zone.”

  “Yet you managed to ‘divert’ him?” Xayber said. He seemed to find a little amusement in the idea.

  “The three of us in concert,” Parthet said.

  Xayber nodded as though he understood completely, which was more than I could say for myself.

  “I suppose we can arrange a proper reception for the fellow. Give me a moment. I shall return.” The elflord vanished without fanfare.

  Kardeen rolled up his map and left. He had plenty of work waiting for him below. Our new arrivals would likely keep him busy for ages … perhaps for as long as the world would last.

  “So far, so good,” Aaron said softly. Parthet nodded.

  And then the elflord was back.

  “My compliments on that bit of work,” Xayber said. “Quite nicely turned—for outsiders.”

  I walked a few steps to the side and leaned back against one of the crenels. “What about the Great Earth Mother?”

  “She can be found,” Xayber said. He moved to sit down, and there was a chair under him when his butt got that far. “It is even possible that you are the one who can find her and do what must be done.” He didn’t sound as if he had any great confidence in that, though. Well, fair is fair. I didn’t have much confidence myself.

  “You can tell me how to reach her?

  “I can tell you where she is, where you’ll have to go. The question is whether or not you can even manage to get there. She bears you a deep hate.”

  “I know.”

  “And there is the question of time.” Xayber looked up at the cloudy sky. “There are five moons now.”

  “Where do I find her?” I asked.

  “Her central temple,” Xayber said. His voice got vague-sounding. “It is located beyond Fairy, in a place where nothing is constant, nothing reliable. I can’t even call it a ‘land’ of a certainty. It is—a place that is strange beyond belief.”