by Rick Shelley
“I may be busy by then,” I added, “but you’ve got the rings, so you can make the transfer. Get my mother to help if you have to. She knows both worlds. If I’m away, just don’t spend too much time here.”
“Where are you going?”
“I don’t know yet.” I know I had just finished telling Lesh that I didn’t want anyone scaring Joy with stories of my “exploits,” but I couldn’t keep Joy completely in the dark. I just had to try to ease her into it gently. “It depends on what Parthet and Kardeen find out about the dragon eggs and all the other crazy things going on. I’m the official Hero. When things get rough, there’s plenty of work for the Hero.” And then, because Joy had a right to know what I was getting into, I started to tell her about the interview with the dead son of the Elflord of Xayber, about the family jewels of the Great Earth Mother and the quest I would have to begin as soon as Parthet could point me in the right direction—until a new item on the television stopped me.
“Perhaps understandably,” the anchorman said, “there has been a dramatic increase in the number of UFO sightings since the bombing of the Coral Lady. But tonight, we have the following videotape recorded by a news cameramen from our affiliate in Chattanooga, Tennessee, during the station’s eleven-P.M. newscast.”
The beginning of the sequence showed the full moon in a clear sky over the city. The network anchorman continued to talk over the footage.
“This scene was being shown live as a backdrop for the weather segment on the local news. Viewers in the Chattanooga area saw this just as you’re seeing it now, except that the day’s weather statistics were superimposed.”
And then a large silhouette crossed, and almost totally eclipsed, the full moon.
“This is exactly how the television viewers in Chattanooga saw it live,” the network anchorman repeated.
Then there was another tape, obviously a recording of the newscast itself. One of the local news anchors introduced the station’s “certified meteorologist,” who went right into his opening spiel as the day’s high and low temperatures and the other weather statistics appeared on the screen over the full moon and night sky. The weatherman was into his third overlay before he noticed something on his monitor off to the side.
“Everybody wants to get into the act,” the meteorologist joked after doing a double take. “We seem to have a star-struck bat or something angling in for a close-up.” He moved a step toward the side of the frame, closer to his monitor.
“I’ve never seen a …” He stopped, then looked off past the camera in the studio. “Can we get a better shot on this, Dave?” he asked. There was a delay, and then a zoom just before the creature left the moon behind.
“That doesn’t look much like any bat I’ve ever seen,” the weatherman said. “I think we’ve got something interesting here, folks. Maybe our technical people can go back and get us more detail.” He recovered then and hurried through the rest of the weather report.
The scene shifted back to the network anchor, who had one eyebrow arched.
“This is what the station’s video technicians came up with.”
I really didn’t need the grainy enlargements, the series of stop-frames. I had recognized the creature the first time.
“That is a dragon,” I said, and Joy clutched at my arm.
“How?” she asked. Good question.
“I guess it’s just part of the general disruption,” I said. The trend that Parthet told me to watch.
“… The Air Force has refused any comment at all concerning this sighting, but civilian air traffic controllers at Chattanooga did report an unidentified radar echo crossing their air space at the same time as the videotape was being filmed. Naturally, we’ll have any further information for you as soon as it becomes available.” The network anchorman smiled and shook his head. “Frankly, I don’t have any more idea what that could be than you do.”
He cleared his throat and moved on to the next segment, a panel of security experts who gave viewers tips for protecting themselves against terrorists. I switched channels and saw part of the videotape of the dragon again.
“A dragon,” Joy said softly. “How much damage can one of those things do?”
“A lot, I suppose, but I don’t think it will last long in this world. They’re carnivorous, vicious, and big, but they can be killed. The Air Force should be able to bring it down.”
“How big?”
“The biggest ones can get to be a lot bigger than a 747.”
“Do they breathe fire?”
“I don’t think so. They don’t need to. The second one I killed, I could have ridden my horse right into its mouth, down as far as its tonsils.” If it had tonsils. I didn’t know. The finer points of draconic anatomy held little interest for me. “And my horse is bigger than the Budweiser Clydesdales.”
“What do we do now?” Joy asked.
“Go home, get some sleep. I’ll get the lanterns. That’s what we came for.”
“I’m going to raid your library too,” Joy said, almost dreamily—as if she were suddenly half asleep. “If you’re going to be off on another trip, I’m going to need something to read.”
I was tired too. Coming back from my goodwill tour of the western kingdoms, I had looked forward to catching up on my sleep and just resting for a long time, and I had been busier than ever. Once I got out of the hospital. That seemed like ages ago, not just a few days. I didn’t have the slightest pain left from the stabbing or from the surgery … stabbing of another kind. I was almost completely healed from both. In fact, I could almost forget it all except when I was naked and saw where they had shaved me before my surgery, or felt the hard ridge of new scars still in the angry, raw stage.
There are some disadvantages to living in Varay—no music from home, no movies or television. What hurt most was that I mostly had to do without music in Varay. The occasional minstrel who stopped by Castle Basil was no replacement for MTV. I had tried taking a portable stereo back, in my early days there, but it didn’t work. All the radio picked up in Varay was static. There were no stations in the buffer zone, or anywhere close enough to penetrate. Going through the passages to Varay erased all of my tapes, and the batteries wore down incredibly fast when I tried it with compact discs. The battery lanterns we were taking along so Joy could read would have the same problem. If there was time, we’d have to do some shopping and pick up a few extra Coleman kerosene lanterns and a good supply of fuel for them. Or we would be doing most of our reading in the daylight.
Joy and I spent about twenty minutes collecting stuff to take along. This time I piled up a lot of things that I might never need but wouldn’t want to miss if something happened. I just piled things by the doorway. I planned to let Joy hold the passage open while I carried and pushed it all through.
“Are you planning on moving everything you own?” Joy asked.
I stopped and looked at what I had already stacked up. “It looks that way, doesn’t it?” I shrugged. “I keep thinking that I ought to take the stuff through while I can.”
“If you really think it’s going to get that bad, maybe we should make a list and buy up everything we can think of tomorrow.”
I nodded. “Good idea. You make up the list. Be as extravagant as you want to be. Money’s no problem.” That led me to think of something else. I went to my safe and took out a small locked drawer.
“If things get really bad here, this may be all scrap paper, but I must have something in the neighborhood of six or seven million dollars lying around this world.”
“Lying around? Six or seven million dollars?” Joy actually looked impressed. We had never really discussed money. She knew that I had enough to do just about anything we wanted to do together. One time she had remarked that I never asked how much when either of us saw something we wanted.
“Mutual funds, certificates of deposit, bank accounts, a little real estate. My accountant sends me a monthly statement. They pay me good money for the work I do.” And bey
ond that, I was due to be the next King of Varay—if I stayed alive long enough to inherit the throne. If I ever did run short of cash I had reserves I could draw on back in the buffer zone … but I had never come close to running short. My tastes aren’t that extravagant. “All the papers are in here.” I put the locked drawer on top of the stack of things to go to Varay.
I had the same feeling as the last time I left the apartment, that I might never see the place again. The first time I had been wrong. Who could tell about the second? Repeated often enough, there’s always a chance of being right eventually with a prediction like that. The thought that I might be cut off from Chicago, from this entire world—maybe forever—was depressing. Varay would be much less inviting without the opportunity to take time out from it whenever I needed a break.
And then I just had to sit down and look away from the stack.
“Are you all right?” Joy asked.
“Yeah, I’m okay. Just tired, I guess.”
“Then let’s go home and get some sleep. We can haul this stuff over in the morning.”
“No, we’d better get as much as we can now. You open the doorway. I’ll start humping everything through.”
I did get the entire stack moved through, but I had a rotten night afterward. I slept poorly, waking with rapidly disappearing nightmares, dreams that I couldn’t hold on to long enough to know what they were about. I never used to have trouble with nightmares. That started with my introduction to the Congregation of Heroes, just before the Battle of Thyme. Nightmares had been a periodic nuisance ever since.
I tossed and turned so badly that I woke Joy several times. Finally, I got dressed and went up to the battlements to pace.
Maybe that was a bad idea. It usually is, especially in the middle of the night. I mean, the times when I really feel like prowling around up there, I’m usually already feeling down and the scenery just makes it worse. I still think it all stems from Hamlet. I first read that when I was nine or ten and had to look up a lot of the old words. Coming to Varay the way I did, hoping to rescue my parents in a world I had never heard of, fixed the Hamlet idea firmly in my head, and I’d never been able to shake it.
Sleep was what I needed, and I wasn’t likely to get much sleep walking back and forth atop Castle Cayenne. I searched the skies, looking for some evidence of the general way things were falling apart. A herd of dragons wouldn’t have surprised me in the least. Neither would a flock of ICBMs, or little green men from Mars or someplace else. I had more than three years of living in Varay, but I still suffered the occasional reality crisis. And knowing the problem didn’t seem to help solve it.
The full moon was about ready to set in the west.
The full moon was rising in the east.
I didn’t stop to list all of the ways that it was impossible. In Varay, that doesn’t seem as vital as it would be back in the “real” world. But it was still wrong. It was yet another impossibility, like dragon fetuses in chicken eggs.
This time, I didn’t even stop to put on a weapon. I ran downstairs and through the portal to Castle Basil and went looking for Parthet. He was in his workroom, candles and lanterns burning all over the place. He looked up slowly when I came barging in. He was obviously about one yawn short of falling asleep.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Come up top, quick,” I said. I almost picked him up out of his chair and half-dragged him to the stairs.
“What is it?” he asked again while we climbed stairs. His voice sounded more alert now, and a little angry, but I didn’t say anything until we came out onto the tower’s battlements.
“Look at the moon,” I said. I pointed west, then east, turning Parthet. He started trembling.
“We’re running out of time,” he said.
“Have you found out where I have to go to find those balls?” I asked.
“Yes, in a general sense, but not in a more exact sense.”
“Tell me.”
“One is located in a shrine somewhere in the Titan Mountains, ‘at the limit to which mortals may aspire,’ is how the oldest texts put it. The other is in a shrine on an island ‘lost in the Sea of Fairy that none may find or leave.’ That’s as close as I’ve been able to narrow it down.”
“It’s more than I expected,” I said.
“There’s worse,” Parthet said. I waited, but he seemed reluctant to provide the rest.
“It might not help if I could tell you exactly which shrines the jewels are in.” He paused again before he laid it on me. “According to the sources I’ve been able to find, it takes someone ‘of the blood of Fairy, whole and pure,’ to find the jewels of the Great Earth Mother.”
“So we’re back to Junior,” I said.
“We can’t do it his way.”
“Look at the sky again, Uncle. Two full moons in the sky. And there’s a dragon flying over Tennessee back in my world. You’re the one who said we’re running out of time. Just let me do the deal with our elf.”
“He’s looking for a death vow.”
“If that’s what it takes,” I said.
My hands shook for a moment, but when I got back to Castle Cayenne, I was finally able to sleep.
9
The Rock
No one disturbed Joy and me when morning came. Sunrise was a couple of hours gone when I finally woke. Strangely, I felt more rested and relaxed than I had in a long time even though I was still several days short on sleep. Lying in bed when I woke, I remained motionless for long, luxurious minutes experiencing an unusual tranquil glow, a warm floating sensation. At first, my thoughts were limited to a passive awareness of my body and how good I felt. My perceptions broadened only very slowly. I became conscious of Joy at my side and I turned my head so I could see her—and I saw her as I never had before.
Joy. Emotions coursed madly through me, racing, overlying each other, blending in new ways, an exhilarating kaleidoscope—not just the intense passion she usually aroused, something more powerful and complex. She was still asleep. Her face seemed totally relaxed. There were scarcely visible freckles across her nose, tiny lines at the corners of her eyes. She breathed quietly through barely parted, full lips. Her hair was draped across one cheek in a riot of shadings of blond and light brown over lightly tanned skin. Thin neck, soft shoulders. I felt a love that I really didn’t understand, love that I had never completely recognized before, and something more, a deep empathy, a sense of being part of a greater whole.
It was a perfect moment.
I reached out slowly to touch her cheek, to brush the hair away from the corner of her mouth, and she opened her eyes before I touched her. She smiled and made a contented sigh. Her cheek was warm, her hair as soft as ever.
We kissed.
“I love you,” I whispered, and Joy echoed it.
I propped myself up on one elbow and peeled the blanket and sheet off of us. Joy lay motionless while I stared at her and tried to memorize every soft contour of her body. I looked, and then I leaned over and kissed each nipple. When I laid my hand on her stomach, Joy seemed to catch fire. She pulled me over on top of her and we shared a long, deep kiss—tender and passionate by turns, and then we shifted into more urgent foreplay. Everything seemed to be deliciously protracted, as if time had slowed to stretch the moment for us. There was no frenzied abandon to our lovemaking that morning. Each instant expanded to let us savor it fully—sex as symphony, the way it is in dreams but rarely in life. We reached a blinding orgasm together, but I didn’t lose my erection, and as soon as the waves of the first climax ebbed, we started moving toward a second, rolling over on our sides together. For a time, it felt almost as if we were melting together, becoming one person. I slid my arms around Joy and held her. And our second climax was as wild as the first.
After that, we both needed time to get our breathing and heart rates back in order, time to come down from the dizzying heights. Our bodies remained tangled together while I slowly deflated. The deep blush faded from Joy’s face and
the pale skin of her breasts. I stroked her cheek and told her again that I loved her. I may have dropped a tear or two into the pillows when I realized how totally I was committed to her … and how likely it was to come to an end, all too soon. I had to go off and be a Hero again, and if I survived the first quest, then I would have to go into the den of my most powerful enemy to return the body of his son, the son I had killed. I didn’t look forward to another confrontation with the Elflord of Xayber, especially not where his power was greatest.
To keep my thoughts from wandering farther in that direction and spoiling the morning, I had to get out of bed. I went into the bathroom and started to fill the huge oval tub that had been carved from a block of granite and polished until it sparkled. The sun had been out long enough to give us hot water for a bath.
Joy was still in bed, lying spread-eagled like a pose for a men’s magazine—and lovely enough to grace the best of them. I picked her up and carried her into the bathroom. While we waited for the tub to fill, we made love again. We started standing up, me holding her, her legs wrapped around my hips, and ended with me sitting on the side of the tub, still holding her, moving her against me until everything went all dark and light and crazy for us again. Somehow, I managed to get us turned around and lowered into the tub without disengaging or falling. We sat in body-temperature water and washed each other slowly, lovingly, not separating until we had to.
The morning was half gone before we dressed.
“I’ll probably be leaving on this job tomorrow morning,” I told Joy when I couldn’t postpone it any longer. “And I’ll probably be busy getting ready for the trip most of this afternoon.”
Joy nodded. “I figured that it had to be that soon.” She hesitated, then said, “It’s going to be very dangerous, isn’t it?” The form was a question, but the tone wasn’t.
It was my turn to nod. I might not have volunteered that information, but I wouldn’t lie to her about it. “I have to locate a couple of relics that might not exist, from unknown places that no one has ever been to, and figure out how to use them to keep everything from continuing to unravel.” Piling impossibility on impossibility—but it still sounded mundane and simple when I put it into words like that.