by Rick Shelley
“Have you met your new roomie?” I asked, laying my hand on the capstone. “He came to Varay to kill me and I killed him instead. He’s dead, but he’s still trying to get me. And I don’t have any choice. I have to walk right into his trap.”
Dad didn’t answer. I doubt that I could have handled the situation if he had. After meeting the Congregation of Heroes in that room once, I’m spooked easily by ghosts.
“I don’t know if you’re somehow aware of all the crazy things going on here,” I said. “Maybe you are. There’s so much that’s improbable about this place, maybe you are aware of it all. And maybe you’re watching what I do. The dead elf is the son of the Elflord of Xayber. He thinks that he has me trapped and trussed up ready to send to his father. If I make it that far, though, maybe I can come up with a few surprises. I hope so.”
I was silent for a moment, listening, not so much for an answer as for any sound of someone coming down the stairs. I would hate to get caught making a soliloquy in the catacombs. That kind of thing could start rumors.
“It all starts tomorrow, I expect. It looks like we have to go to the ends of this world on this one—both ends, up the unscalable mountains and out across the uncross-able sea. How can an angry elflord hope to compete with that?
“Oh, by the way, Joy and I got married. I know you haven’t met her, but I’m sure you’d like her. She’s here in Varay with me now. Someday, if we get that kind of someday, I’ll bring her down, but not yet, not when I’m getting ready to leave on a crazy mission like this one.”
I stood there for another few minutes, then climbed back to the livelier levels of the castle. Lesh was waiting at the top of the stairs. I guess he knew my habits better than I thought.
“Are we all set?” I asked.
“It’s coming good,” he said. “We got people working on everything. I’ll have to check it out later, but it’s good for now.”
“Well, if everything’s cracking nicely here, what would you say to a tall mug or two down at the Bald Rock?”
Lesh grinned. “It is a right hot day.”
We took the magic doorway down to the Bald Rock in the town of Basil. I hadn’t been back to the inn since the night I was attacked—not all that long before. The landlord remembered that too. He came right over, full of noisy apologies and exaggerated bows. He was mortified, he was distressed, he hadn’t been able to sleep or eat right since it happened, worrying about me … and on and on. But he also claimed to be “right proud” of the way I had handled the outlander. I tried to reassure Old Baldy that I didn’t hold any of it against him, but he insisted that the drinks were on him that afternoon. I didn’t argue. After all, Lesh and I didn’t have time for more than one or two beers apiece.
“This is going to be a rough one, Lesh,” I said when we started our second, after I had stopped the innkeeper from having his boys set up a full keg for us.
“Gots to be better than dragon eggs for breakfast,” Lesh said.
“You may not think so before it’s over.”
“Be that as it will. Do we have time for another?” He finished his mug in a long draft.
“Best not. We’ve still got work to do. We get really going here, we may never get back up there. And after all, there’s plenty of beer up on the rock.”
“Aye, there is,” Lesh agreed.
We walked up the rock to the castle. That was one way to get a little exercise and sweat out some of the beer. The Rock. One of the old legends I kept hearing said that the stone that Castle Basil was built on was the hub around which all three realms rotated, the center of the universe. I wouldn’t be surprised if the people of the other six kingdoms in the buffer zone had the same sort of legends about their own local landmarks. But Basil’s rock was some sort of anomaly, a huge block of homogeneous stone just out in the middle of nowhere, geologically. It wasn’t part of any mountain chain, fault zone, or anything else. According to Kardeen, there wasn’t any stone like it in any of the mountains of the buffer zone. It was unique.
Two beers wasn’t nearly enough preparation for the confrontation with our guide. I got Parthet and Kardeen to witness the deal after I cautioned them again to let me do all the negotiating.
“You want to get home and I want to get the balls of the Great Earth Mother so I can stop all the strange happenings,” I said when Parthet pulled the head out of the alcohol.
“You know my terms. I’ll tell you where they are if you will take me home to my father—all of me.”
I shook my head. “Telling isn’t enough. You’ll have to go along to identify them. Once I get them back here, I’ll make sure that you get back to your father.”
“You personally must take me home.”
“I’ll take you back under truce with your father.”
“You take me back or there’s no deal.”
“I’ll discuss the details directly with him. We have talked before. But without your help, I can’t start and you have absolutely no hope of ever getting home. We’ll bury you with the dragon eggs.”
“If you don’t get the jewels, it won’t matter what you do with me.”
“Perhaps.” I was careful to avoid showing any reaction to his first admission that he had a stake in the success of my mission. “Or perhaps we can get the information elsewhere. The Elf king himself might be interested, or one of the other elflords.”
“Go ahead. Try.”
It had been an empty bluff, and the elf had called it.
“I’ll get you home to your father,” I said.
“Bring my body up here.”
Parthet was against it, but I nodded and Kardeen went to get men to haul the body up from the crypt. The elf remained silent until his body was carried into the room.
“Stand me up there.” The soldiers lifted the body onto its feet and it stood without further support from them.
“Set my head back on my shoulders.”
“I think not,” I said. “Not now. Once we get back with the jewels of the Great Earth Mother.”
“You’ll take me home to my father? You, yourself?”
“I will.”
“Then let’s shake hands on our bargain.”
I nodded and the elf’s right arm came up, hand extended. I stepped closer, shook hands with the headless body, and felt the cold crawl up my arm. The pact was made.
10
Nushur
“Where do we enter the Titan Mountains?” I asked after I had wiped my hand on my trousers.
“As far east of here as possible,” the elf said.
“Near the border with Dorthin?” I asked.
He considered that for a few seconds. “It will do.”
“We’ll leave tomorrow morning then,” I said. “Portal to Thyme, and ride south from there.” There were gates closer to the Titans along that border, but the doorways there weren’t situated to make it easy for horses, and we would strain the resources of either of the small castles south of Thyme if we took enough for our expedition.
“You do realize, of course, that for you to get back to your father, you’ll have to do whatever you can to make sure that we succeed and get back here,” I told the elf. “If I don’t make it back, you don’t get home.”
“There is always that risk,” he said. “And there is one detail you might consider. Floating around in that alcohol fogs my mind. It isn’t necessary. I will remain as I am until I get home.”
“Not on the basis of my spell,” Parthet said. “I didn’t try a preservative, just a communications magic.”
“No, certainly not on the basis of your puny magic,” the elf sneered. “But you let me talk and I have talked.”
“If you don’t need the alcohol, we’ll find another temporary home for you,” I said. “That pot would have been awkward on the road anyway.” I wanted to ask who else he had been talking to, but I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of the question.
“Take good care of my body while we’re gone,” the elf said, turning his eyes t
oward Parthet. “It is part of the bargain this Hero has made.”
“It is,” I agreed.
“I will know if it is disturbed, and if it is, my cooperation ends at that moment,” the elf said. “I hope that is thoroughly understood.”
I stared at Parthet, and he nodded. Behind him, so did Baron Kardeen.
“It will be properly cared for,” Kardeen said.
“You can’t get a better promise than that,” I told the elf. “In fact, I think we should get the body back into storage right now.” I didn’t want to leave head and body together in the same room. The elf had seemed much too anxious to have us set his head back on his shoulders. Maybe he couldn’t put himself back together without help, but then, maybe he could. He had controlled his arm and hand at a distance.
Kardeen called the two soldiers back in. They laid the body back on its stretcher and carried it from the room. Parthet looked at the head he was holding.
“If the alcohol is out, we’ll have to find something else for you here then,” Parthet muttered. “Don’t want you just rolling away and getting lost.” He stared over the head at the wall for a moment, then turned to me.
“I think I have just the thing. Gil, would you go upstairs to my room? On the shelf, next to the window. You’ll see what I want.”
I nodded and hurried up the steps. As soon as I opened the door of his upper chamber, I saw what he wanted—a wicker birdcage. I laughed almost all the way back down to the workroom, but I was careful to put on a straight face before I went inside.
“I assume this is what you were talking about?” I said.
“The very item,” Parthet said. “The bottom unclips there.”
I took the bottom of the cage off and set it on Parthet’s work table. He set the elf’s head on it, clipped the cage over its bottom, and dried his hands.
“It might not be the most dignified setting, and I do apologize for that,” Parthet told the head. “But it keeps you out of the alcohol and leaves you free to speak whenever you need to. And it will be easier to transport you like this than in the pot.”
The elf didn’t say a word, but I thought that he must be fairly burned up at the idea. I think I would have been, despite Parthet’s apologies. The rest of us left the room quickly.
“Aren’t you afraid that he’ll conjure up some mischief in there?” I asked Parthet.
“No more now than he might have before,” Parthet said, shrugging as we walked toward the great hall. “I have certain strong protections, especially in my shop. While they might not completely baffle our guest, they will at least make any mischief harder to accomplish and easier to detect. My magic may be infinitely weaker than his, but I’ve been in business a long time, and I have done a lot of my work in that room. The influence builds.”
“I think we ought to put his body behind the strongest locks around, and keep a guard over it until we’re out of here,” I said. “I have the notion that if he puts head and body together he won’t need us to get home to his father.”
“You may be right,” Parthet said. “That handshake of his was impressive.”
“My hand is still freezing.”
“I’ll take care of security for him,” Kardeen said. When we reached the great hall, he called out to two of the soldiers who were lounging around and got them busy.
Lesh got up from the table, drained a tankard, and came to meet me.
“Everything’s ready, ’cept for what we’ll need to fetch from Cayenne in the morning, our weapons and such, and a case of those magic dinners you got stored.” Magic dinners—I had a big stock of freeze-dried meals. They take a lot less room to pack than real food.
“That’s good,” I said. “We’ll be going to Thyme by portal and ride south from there.”
“Into Dorthin?” Lesh asked.
“Not if we can avoid it.” Yes, Dorthin was technically mine, and Dieth was ruling the country as duke in my name, but Dorthin wasn’t entirely tame, and many of the warlords in the marcher territories of Dorthin were particularly independent … and hostile to me and to Varay.
The afternoon was just about shot, so Lesh and I headed back to Cayenne for supper. It would be a night for heroic pigging out, for eating far beyond the point of satiation. The four of us who were going on the road in the morning would all try to fill ourselves to the bursting point against the inevitable light rations of the next few weeks—or months. In the height of summer, it might not be as bad as it would be at other seasons. Lesh and Harkane were sure to know which wild fruits and vegetables would be ripe and edible, and we could figure on occasionally supplementing our stores through the benefices of some unsuspecting wild animal along the way, but there was simply no possible way to mount a lengthy expedition in the wilds and carry enough food to provide garrison-style meals for long. You hit the point of diminishing returns very quickly in the buffer zone. The more food you haul along, the more animals you need to carry your supplies, the slower you travel … and the more food you have to bring along. Supper, a bedtime “snack,” and breakfast—we would stuff ourselves at all three meals, and try to top it off at Basil and before we rode out of Thyme. The bloated feeling we started with would pass all too soon, and we would ride with an edge of hunger until we returned to someplace with civilized kitchens.
When we stepped through to Cayenne, Joy and Timon were still hauling their booty through from Louisville. I let Joy hold the passage open and pitched in to help Timon cart everything through.
“What did you do, clean out the city?” I asked as I carried two cases of Pepsi through.
“I tried,” Joy admitted cheerfully. “That was fun, a real binge.”
“We filled up the wagon twice,” Timon said as we passed, me going back for another load, him carrying one through.
“I got a lot of Pepsi and pizza mixes, and junk food and books, good coffee, cocoa, powdered milk, German wine, two cases of beer for you, and a lot of other goodies.”
“What’s the latest news?” I asked, hauling through the two cases of Michelob. It was in cans. I always buy the bottles, but cans meant that I could take some along on the road without worrying that it would get busted and wasted.
“They’re tracking the radioactivity across Florida and they’re burning thousands of acres of orange and grapefruit trees. They say that a lot more than a half million people were exposed to radiation at dangerous levels. The hospitals are all full, and they’re rushing to get all of the bodies buried as quickly as possible. The UN Security Council is debating a resolution calling for member nations to take ‘all necessary measures to eliminate the threat of organized terrorism worldwide,’ whatever that means.”
“It means a lot of bloody fighting,” I said.
“Everyone seems to think that it will pass.”
“Then you’d better be damn sure you get your family moved through as quickly as you can Saturday. Don’t dally in Chicago.”
“I won’t. Oh, I cleaned the supermarket out of Hershey Bars and Milky Ways too.”
“They’ll come in handy. Chocolate’s good for quick energy.” I was quick to decide that we’d have to sneak some of the candy bars out for our trip.
“Powdered hot chocolate mix, a bunch of canned food, today’s newspapers—USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, Louisville Times, New York Times. This week’s news magazines, and I don’t know what-all else. Some clothes, shampoo, personal things.” She hesitated a minute. “Gil, I think I spent more than two thousand dollars.”
“Is that all? The way you kept listing stuff, I figured it would be more than that. But I didn’t know I could get that much out on my bank card in one day.”
“You can’t. You had about six hundred in your wallet and there was a little over a thousand in cash in that lock box you brought over from Chicago, and I had some cash of my own.”
“Don’t worry about it. Money’s no problem. I told you that. You could have taken the credit cards too.”
“I didn’t think about i
t or I would have,” Joy admitted with a smile.
Timon and I brought the last of the loot through, and Joy let the doorway close. We kissed and then she started digging through all the stuff to show me what she had bought.
“We can look at it all later,” I told her. “It’s supper-time.”
“Oh, I got a bunch of those big square batteries for the lanterns too. You said batteries wear out fast.”
“If you want your Pepsi cold, you’ll have to coax Parthet to come over and freeze a block of ice for you,” I said as we walked downstairs to eat.
“I didn’t think about ice,” she admitted.
“We’ve got a closet fixed up something like a shower stall, with a watertight door. Fill it with water and Parthet does his abracadabra bit and turns it into a solid chunk of ice. Chip off what you need either to put in a glass or to chill bottles in one of the coolers. Takes about ten days for the ice in the closet to melt and drain away.”
Joy kept talking all through supper, but she still managed to wolf down her share of everything. “Shopping makes me hungry,” she said, as if living in Varay wasn’t excuse enough for eating as much at one meal as she used to eat in half a week. She hadn’t noticed the way everyone’s bellies puffed out and then deflated in the hour or two after a meal—like recurrent, transient beer guts. When she first saw herself that way, she was likely to panic. Joy put a lot of stock in her trim figure. So did I, for that matter, but I knew just how ephemeral the bloated stomachs were in the buffer zone.
I couldn’t see how Joy had managed to buy everything she did and get it transferred to Varay in one afternoon. Timon said that they had filled the van twice, and they must have really packed every cubic inch both times. Of course, most stores would have help to get the purchases out to the van, but Timon and Joy would have had to unload the van at Mother’s house, carry everything to the doorway leading to Cayenne from there, and then do it all again. Timon had already hauled through quite a lot before Lesh and I got back from Basil. There were ten full cases of Pepsi beside the two cases of beer and everything else Joy bought.