The Hero of Varay

by Rick Shelley

“Isn’t eight years old a bit young to ask somebody to give up any hope of ever having children of his own?” I asked. I hadn’t forgotten about that consequence of becoming a wizard.

  “That comes with initiation, not with apprenticeship,” Parthet said.

  “It’s beside the point anyway,” I said.

  “You still don’t realize how singular an event this is, do you?” Parthet asked.

  “I guess not. And it doesn’t really matter.”

  Parthet shuffled from one foot to the other while he stared at me. “It has never happened before, anywhere, anytime. People don’t blink in and out like that, not even in the buffer zone. That lad has a stronger touch for the craft than I’ve ever seen, even in someone out of Fairy. He must be a natural.”

  “I’m going to see if I can get in touch with his grandmother,” I said slowly. “You have no right to keep him here.”

  Parthet really wasn’t ready to give up the argument, but I turned and went back to the table, and Parthet followed.

  “You have any brothers or sisters, Aaron?” I asked.

  He shook his head.

  “You want to go back to your grandmother’s house now, or would you like to look around here first? If you want to look around the castle for a while, I’ll go tell your grandmother that you’re okay, that she doesn’t have to worry.”

  “You’ll tell her?”

  “Sure. There’s a lot to see here. It’s a pretty neat castle.” I waited a moment wishing that Lesh had come through to Basil with us. I had a feeling that if I turned Aaron over to Parthet, the youngster might not get much of a free choice. Parthet wanted to keep Aaron in Varay more than I had ever seen him want anything. There was only one possible out.

  “You see that tall guy over there?” I asked Aaron. I pointed across the table. “That’s Baron Kardeen. He’s the king’s right-hand man. He knows everything there is to know about this castle, and I’m sure he’d be happy to show you around the whole place.” I looked up at Kardeen. So did Aaron. The chamberlain smiled and nodded. We went around the table. I took Kardeen aside and told him to keep Parthet away from Aaron until I could make arrangements to get him home. And I told him why.

  “Leave it to me,” Kardeen said. I left Aaron with him and went back to Parthet.

  “I do have something to ask you, Uncle,” I said. “Mother said that new rings are your job. I need a set for Joy. Any problem with that?”

  He was scowling, but he shook his head. “A minor magic, new rings. I have molds.” He glanced her way. “Small hands, right?”

  “Her ring fingers are smaller than my little fingers,” I said, holding out my hands. “You need an exact ring size?”

  He shook his head again. “I think I can come up with the proper size. I’ve seen her hands.” At least I didn’t get any excuses about his not being able to see any more. I made sure that he got his eyes checked and got new glasses every year, whether he wanted to take the time or not. He didn’t complain too much about that after seeing how much better he could see.

  I went back to the table for Joy and then we stepped back to my apartment in Chicago, directly from Castle Basil. It was Joy’s third time through a doorway, so she hardly blinked.

  “You have these gizmos set up everywhere?” she asked.

  “I’m afraid not. But I wish I had clued you in before we took that plane from Louisville to Chicago. If I had known what kind of mess was going to meet us at O’Hare, I think I would have.”

  “What do we do this trip?”

  “Get hold of Aaron’s grandmother, if she hasn’t gone completely bananas.” Then I remembered something I should have thought of before. “I didn’t ask Aaron what her name is. I don’t know if she’s his paternal grandmother or maternal grandmother. I guess that rules out the telephone. We’ll have to drive to Joliet.”

  “Her name is Emma Carpenter,” Joy said. “I asked him.”

  I kissed her. “You get a phone number?”

  “No, but with the name and address, you can get it from information.”

  Of course. I got the number and dialed. There was no answer. I let the phone ring on and on, just in case she was already in bed. It was after eleven o’clock. Joy went to the television to find out what the latest news on the Coral Lady was. The stories didn’t seem much different from what they’d been earlier—a little more detail, such as the fact that there had been a medical conference taking place on the Coral Lady, a blend of work and vacation. News was still slow in being collected. Rescue teams were being assembled and flown in from military bases and from places where they were accustomed to dealing with radioactive materials, arsenals and nuclear power plants. Navy and Coast Guard ships were on the way to the area. Getting everything organized and on the move was providing monumental confusion. Streams of refugees were fleeing the area, choking all the roads. But there had been no additional blasts, and the diplomatic scene remained peaceful if not quiet.

  “You’ve been on that phone for ten minutes,” Joy observed. “If she hasn’t answered by now, she isn’t going to.”

  Still, I let it ring a few more times before I hung up.

  “You think she might be at a relative’s?” I asked.

  “If she is, there’s no way we can hope to find her,” Joy said. “But if she got really terrified when Aaron disappeared …”

  “A hospital?”

  “Or worse. She could have had a heart attack or something. Two big shocks one right after the other like that.”

  “She might not be very old for a grandmother,” I suggested. “She may just be in her late forties or early fifties.”

  “And maybe not,” Joy replied. “How many hospitals you think there are in Joliet?”

  “I don’t have any idea. I don’t think I’ve ever been there,” I said. Joy started to say something, but I beat her to it. “I know. Call information.”

  I did. There were two of them, Silver Cross and St. Joseph’s. St. Joseph’s just gave me a polite “We have no one listed by that name here.” The woman I talked to at Silver Cross was different.

  “Are you a relative of Mrs. Carpenter?”

  “Not exactly, but her grandson wandered off after he heard the news about his parents and ended up with my uncle. I figured that Mrs. Carpenter would be worried about the youngster, and there was no answer when I called her house.”

  “I see. Would you hold the line for a moment, please?” There was a click as I was put on hold. The wait was maybe thirty seconds long.

  “Hello. Social Services, may I help you?”

  I had to repeat the entire story. It didn’t come out any more coherently the second time. There was a silence on the other end of the line when I finished.

  “What is your name, please?”

  A long-distance call could be traced easily in any case, so I gave my real name.

  “Is the grandson with you now?”

  “No, he’s with my uncle. I said that. What about Mrs. Carpenter?”

  “Mrs. Carpenter was brought in this evening. Cardiac arrest. I’m afraid she didn’t make it.”

  “Do you know of any other relatives in the area? I know that Aaron’s parents were both doctors, but not much else.”

  “I’ll check with our chief of medical services. He may know. The Carpenters were both on staff here. If you’d care to bring the boy in here, sir, we can take care of getting him to relatives or to the county’s family services people if there are no relatives.”

  “Fine. Is the morning soon enough? I imagine Aaron’s asleep by now, and he’s had enough of a shock for one day.”

  There was another long silence. I guessed that the woman I was talking with had to check with somebody else. “It’s irregular, but I think you’re right.”

  “He is in good hands for the night, and we’ll get him there to the hospital first thing in the morning,” I said.

  I gave her my name again as well as my address and phone number. Then I explained that my uncle didn’t have a phone and
so forth. At least the woman in Family Services—or whoever she was getting instructions from—seemed to know enough about Chicago to realize that my address was a damn good one. And I got off the phone before anyone thought to ask what I was doing calling from forty miles away.

  When I hung up, I looked to Joy and shrugged.

  “We take him back in the morning?” she asked. I nodded.

  “If we can pry him away from Uncle Parthet,” I said. “He thinks that Aaron should stay in Varay and be his apprentice.”

  “You have to take him back. You gave them your name and address.”

  I nodded and smiled. “If I don’t show up with Aaron Wesley Carpenter in the morning, the police will come looking for him, and for me. That’s why I did it that way. I think that is strong enough to make even Uncle Parthet pay attention. If he won’t, Kardeen will, or Grandfather if he’s up to anything. Family honor is a big deal in Varay.”

  “Do we go back now?” Joy asked.

  “Unless you want to stay here. It looks like it’s going to be safe, for the moment at least. I won’t force you to go back to Varay if you don’t want to.”

  “But that place won’t just go away though, will it?”

  I shook my head. “I’ll tell you the whole story when we get a chance, but Varay is as much my home as this world.”

  “Then I’ll have to find a way to get used to it.” She took a deep breath, then got up from the sofa and came to me. We hugged. “It still scares me. I can’t help worrying that I’ve gone completely out of my mind.”

  “That’s normal. That’s how I felt when I found out about it. Uncle Parthet is going to make you a set of rings like mine. They’re the keys to the doors. I’ll show you how to use them and where all the doors are and where they go. Then you’ll have as much freedom as anyone has.”

  “You mean anyone can use them?”

  “Not exactly. It’s a family magic.”

  “I’m not part of your family.”

  “You are in the important way.” I put my mouth right up against her ear and told her just why she would be able to use the doorways.

  “Aren’t you afraid I’ll run out and make a lot of other guys part of the family?”

  “I don’t think secondhand works.”

  “But we’d better make sure about me. It’s been so long. Maybe it wore off.” She started nibbling at my ear.

  “We’ll take care of that soon enough. You ready to go back to Basil?”

  She sighed. “As ready as I’m going to get, I guess.”

  This time, I explained just what I was doing at the doors and showed her how the rings had to touch the silver tracing. Back at Castle Basil, I told her where the silver came from, that it was damn hard to get any, and about some of the connections that had been put in.

  I asked around and found that Aaron’s tour was still going on. Baron Kardeen had taken Aaron up to the battlements of the keep. I didn’t feel like climbing all that distance, so I went after Uncle Parthet. He was in the great hall, drinking with a few other people. The other people were talking and drinking. Parthet was just drinking.

  “The grandmother’s dead,” I told him. “Aaron goes back in the morning. The people at the hospital have my name and my Chicago address. He has to go back.”

  “Dead?” Parthet asked. I nodded. “Then he has no family at all there now, right?”

  “I don’t know that. The people at the hospital will check. His parents were both doctors there.”

  Parthet shook his head. “You had to go and mess in things.”

  “I had to,” I conceded. “You know that.”

  “You don’t understand.” His voice was more morose than angry now.

  “You keep saying that,” I told him.

  “Think about it. You have a major disruption in your world. Thousands of people are killed by terrorists. A nuclear bomb goes off. Then a little black kid just goes poof in your world and turns up in downtown Basil. Coincidence? Horseshit. We haven’t seen the last of the trouble yet. That bomb has to have repercussions here, and in Fairy. It will—it has to—make the elflords stronger. And when they get stronger, they spill over into the seven kingdoms. Mark my words, lad. Things are going to get stranger yet.”

  He stopped for a minute, stared at me, then shook his head and drained his beer.

  “I told you that I would know when it was time for me to start training an apprentice, and then you get in the way when the time finally comes.”

  I still didn’t respond. His anger wasn’t far from the surface yet, and I wasn’t going to give him any new fuel.

  “Just watch the trend, boy. Things have to get worse here, soon!”

  5

  Dragon Eggs

  Joy and I took Aaron to Castle Cayenne with us. Even if I hadn’t been concerned about what Parthet might do if left to his temptations, I think I would have taken Aaron with me. Since I had given my name to the people at the hospital, I was responsible for Aaron’s well-being until I got him home, and we would be leaving very early in the morning.

  Aaron’s tour of Basil had given him plenty to get excited about. He managed to suppress any emotion about the loss of his parents for the moment, and the instantaneous teleportation to Varay didn’t seem to bother him at all. Poof was explanation enough for him. It was getting quite late when we took the doorway to Cayenne, and I figured that Aaron would be ready to sleep soon. I sent Timon to put together a bedtime snack for both of them, and to find a place for our guest to sleep.

  “It’s going to be a short night for us, I’m afraid,” I told Joy when we were finally alone in my Cayenne bedroom. “With the time difference between here and Chicago. … I want to get Aaron to Joliet as early as possible. The sooner we get him turned over to the people at the hospital, the better.”

  Joy sat on the bed and bounced a couple of times, checking to see how comfortable the mattress was. “I suppose that means that you’re just going to want to sleep tonight.”

  I gave her my best Groucho Marx leer and said, “I don’t know about that.”

  “Your stitches!” Joy said, as if she had just remembered that I had gone through an operation less than four days before.

  “All the more reason to find out.” I had almost forgotten myself. I hadn’t felt a twinge in hours—really, not since hearing about the Coral Lady. Worrying about that hadn’t given me any time to think about my wound.

  “We can always catch a nap after we get back in the morning,” I told Joy. I had already stripped off my weapons. “An hour to drive to Joliet, an hour back. With any luck at all we can be in and out of the hospital in fifteen minutes.”

  “You didn’t ask Aaron if he has any other relatives around.”

  “I know. I didn’t want to start him thinking about home yet. He might wonder about his grandmother, and I don’t want to be the one to tell him about her. Especially not tonight.”

  Joy nodded. Then she was quiet for a moment before she said, “All I need now is a hot bath.”

  “It’s kind of late for hot water here. We can both catch a shower in Chicago in the morning.”

  “Primitive,” Joy said.

  “Yep, and so am I.”

  “I hope so,” Joy said, starting to undress.

  I extinguished the two oil lamps in the bedroom. There was a torch burning out in the hall by the stairs, and the door has a narrow transom above it, so the bedroom wasn’t totally dark. We finished stripping in silence and met at the center of the seven-foot-wide bed.

  Joy’s mouth was warm and active. Her nipples were peaked and hard when we came together. We had been without each other for a long time. One fix wasn’t enough for either of us, even though we knew that it was going to be a short night.

  After we finished our second go of the night, we lay close together under the big feather comforter, facing each other, tangled together. Joy’s head was on my left arm. Our bodies touched here and there, though Joy had carefully shifted away when she happened to brush against t
he bandage across the cut on my abdomen. The stitches hadn’t interfered at all, and there had been no pain from the wound. A Hero of Varay heals quickly, especially when he gets the chance to heal in peace without adding new injuries to old.

  While Joy’s breathing slowed and steadied as she slid toward the rhythms of sleep, I continued to caress her softly with my free hand, letting my fingers glide lightly over her side and around her buttock. I could see her smile in the faint light. Half asleep, she snuggled closer to me. My hand came to rest on her hip, and I slept too.

  I woke because I had to go to the bathroom. My bladder felt ready to burst. I staggered naked to the John and took care of business. It was chilly. Nights can be like that even in the middle of a Varayan summer. The luminous bands on the wind-up clock in the bedroom said that it was nearly three o’clock, so it was almost six in Chicago—too late for me to go back to bed and hope for more sleep.

  Joy was snoring lightly. I put on a bathrobe and slippers and left Joy to sleep a little longer while I climbed up to the battlements to look around.

  I’ve always loved castles. When I was just a little kid—I couldn’t have been more than five or six that Christmas—my parents, aka Santa Claus, gave me a toy castle with a bunch of plastic knights and so forth. The last time I looked, that castle, somewhat battered and beaten, with many of the plastic men missing, was still in the basement back in Louisville, packed away in a box with a lot of other toys and games that I had outgrown or forgotten along the way. But there had been other castles, even before I learned about Varay—a lamp with a square wooden tower and drawbridge, a sandstone sculpture, jigsaw puzzles, calendars, posters, and what-have-you. Now, I realize that my affection for castles was carefully cultivated by my parents, like the “combat” sports that Dad involved me in from the time I was six years old. Up to the time that I went off to college, there was a book on the shelf in my room that showed how castles were built, by someone named Macauley or something like that. And one autumn, when I was nine or ten, I even got the chance to build a castle of my own in the backyard. Dad had ordered a truckload of concrete blocks. I forget what he had planned to build, a shed or workshop, something like that. But then he came home badly hurt after one of his “business trips” and announced that he would have to put off his construction until the next spring. There wouldn’t be enough time to finish it before winter brought snow and ice to Louisville. I asked if I could build a castle until then and he said yes, so I had my very own castle for nearly five months. I moved and lifted those concrete blocks all by myself, spending as much time as I could building and then playing in my castle. It was almost ten feet high, and sturdy enough for kids to play on, with plywood floors supported by two-by-fours so we could get up to the “battlements.” For almost five months, that castle made me the king of the neighborhood.