The Hero King (20 page)

“Northeast tower now,” Joy said. “They’re in the apartments traditionally assigned to the royal builder or some such title. Charley Ingels did say that you wanted him to build a bridge?”

“I guess I did. Maybe he knows something about building houses too.”

“Baron Kardeen already has him working on that,” Joy said. Of course. Kardeen usually managed to anticipate. That’s why everything flowed so smoothly at Basil.

“And all our stuff has been moved here from Cayenne,” Joy added.

“The royal apartment?” I asked. I had avoided visiting Grandfather’s part of the keep since my return. Joy nodded.

“I’ll see you up there when you get everyone tucked in,” I said.

Joy’s mother was sleeping. Dawn and David had settled down on a bench as soon as we got back. They both looked ready to nod off with the least encouragement. I felt about that ready for sleep myself. I was exhausted.

“I won’t be too long,” Joy said. She got up to give me a quick kiss.

When I left the room, her brother, Danny, came after me.

“Hey,” he said as soon as the door closed behind us, “I know I’ve been a bit surly. Sorry. Joy told us what you had to go through to get to us. Thank you.”

I shrugged. “It’s not easy for anyone to accept the reality of this place at first. It wasn’t easy for Joy, or even for me. Four years ago, I had never heard of it. Back in our world, the idea
has
to sound crazy.”

“Maybe, but that’s no excuse for me acting like an asshole. And even if this
is
crazy, it’s a better insanity than that shit back there.”

I couldn’t argue with that.

    I wandered through the bedroom and study that had been my great-grandfather’s for a century. The bedroom had been changed around a little, and the decorations showed a new hand. The study was still about the same as before—undoubtedly waiting my decision on what to do with it. I wasn’t up to thinking about that yet. Finally, I crossed to the private dining room. That was less
personal
than the rest of the suite. A new keg of beer was on the sideboard, the wood still damp from the ice that Parthet kept supplied down in the beer cellar. I helped myself to a stein of beer and sat at the table. The hall door was open. I would hear Joy when she approached … unless I fell asleep.

Time and quiet—precious commodities, usually.

Keeping busy, riding across the war-raped middle of America and then watching the confusion swirl around me back at Basil, I had been able to keep from worrying myself totally crazy about the one quest I still had to face—the need to find and seduce the Great Earth Mother before she could put the chop to me—and the uncertainties that even a best-case scenario left. I was acting as if there were sane purpose to rescuing people from the other world, planning to build new bridges, houses,
a future
, when there might not be a very long future for anyone.

Crazy? The situation went so far beyond crazy that language can’t do it justice. The Mad Hatter has his tea party on the deck of the
Titanic. Dr. Strangelove
has
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
.

“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.”