The Hero King (35 page)

I was in the great hall, sitting at the head table, putting considerable effort into my drinking but only eating haphazardly. The constant munchies are common in Varay anytime, and they seemed to be even worse during the limbo. Perhaps forty other people were in the great hall, some doing the same things I was, others just sitting around or even sleeping. Personal biorhythms were hit hard by the general weirdness of life and time.

The first indication I had of the maelstrom that was erupting was when somebody disturbed the King’s Peace. I heard a loud metallic clanging, something that sounded like a sword being repeatedly smashed against a suit of armor.

“What the hell’s that racket?” I asked, an instinctive thing. Somebody quickly got up from the table and went out to the hall to look.

“It’s Gorfal attacking a suit of armor,” was the report.

I swore under my breath and went to see for myself. Gorfal was one of the guards who had been in service to the crown for years, one of the men I had encountered the first morning I came to Castle Basil with Parthet.

“Gorfal, what the hell do you think you’re doing?” I shouted when I got out to the hall and found that he was indeed attacking an empty suit of armor. I was usually a lot gentler with people. That morning, I don’t know, I was just in an unusually foul mood.

“The enemy, sire,” Gorfal screamed, hysterical but puffing for breath.

“It’s all right, Gorfal,” I said, softer, but still nearly shouting to make sure he could hear me over the clanging.

I didn’t want to hurt him, but my danger sense was acting up. I took a couple of cautious steps toward Gorfal. The sword he was swinging was just a normal broadsword, nothing to compare with my two elvish blades. I didn’t draw a weapon, though. I wouldn’t, unless it became clearly unavoidable.

“They’s tricky, sire,” Gorfal said, panting harder, continuing his assault on the empty metal. “They pretends to be dead, then they comes at you from behind.”

His blows were slowing down a little. He was tiring rapidly. But I was going to have to wait a while longer before it would be safe to dash in and pin his arms. I was still the Hero, after all. It was up to me to take the foolish risks.

Before I could take any action, Mother came hurrying out of the great hall, almost at a run.

“Joy has gone into labor,” Mother said. “She’s calling for you.”

Almost as the full stop on that, Lesh came barging in from the courtyard. He glanced toward Gorfal, but ignored him for the moment to report.

“Sire, there’s something happening outside the castle walls. A change in the gray.”

“Stay here, Lesh,” I said. “As soon as he slows down a bit, grab him and put some sort of restraint on him until Aaron can work on his head.”

That seemed to be the next cue. Aaron came running around the corner at the far end of the corridor, behind me.

“Come quickly,” he shouted. “Parthet is starting to fade. He says he’s going to vanish into his past.”

As I said, everything happened at once. I hadn’t mastered the art of being in two places at once, still haven’t, and I had never even thought of needing to be in four places at once. I put Gorfal out of my mind right away. I knew I could trust Lesh to look after him. But the other three crises all demanded my immediate attention.

“How long will it be before Joy really needs me there?” I asked Mother. She was almost a doctor at that. She would be of more use to Joy now than I would anyway.

“There is a little time, but I wouldn’t dally long.”

“Lesh, can you describe what it is that’s going on outside?”

“The gray seems to be closing in on us, getting thicker. We can’t see the lowest stretch of the path leading down now.”

“Where’s Parthet?” I asked, turning to Aaron.

“In the workshop. He was adding something to the end of the book he wrote for you. Suddenly he said, ‘I can see through my hand,’ and then he sent me for you. He said to come at once.”

“Okay, I’ll go to Parthet, then up to Joy, and from there to the battlements,” I decided. That gave me an efficient route from one place to the next—a back stair from the workshop to my apartments, then a connection from the keep to the curtain wall of the castle.

“Mother, get back to Joy and tell her that I’m on my way. Tell her about Uncle Parker.” Even four years after learning that his real name was Parthet and not Parker, there were still times when the pseudonym he had used in the other world came out instead. “I’ll be with her as quickly as I can.” Mother nodded and left.

“Lesh, as soon as you get Gorfal quiet, get back to the wall, then catch up with me if there’s been any change. You heard where I’ll be?”

“Aye, lord.”

“Try not to hurt him, Lesh. He’s just sick.” Lesh nodded, and I turned to Aaron.

“Let’s go.”

I didn’t run flat out, but I didn’t waste any time as I hurried along the corridor, back the way Aaron had come. Aaron came a lot closer to running. He waited at the corner for me, then went on ahead again, getting to the workshop a good twenty paces ahead of me. Annick was in there with Parthet.

And Parthet was staring at, and
through
, his hands. He held them out toward me. I could see his face through his hands, but very faintly, both because there was still a little substance to his hands and because his face, his head, was also beginning to get less opaque.

“It will happen very soon,” Parthet said. “Your world must be nearly ready to appear.”

“Lesh says that there’s a change in the gray outside,” I said. “How much longer do you think you have?”

Parthet chuckled. “I don’t know of any possible way to judge that, lad. There are no precedents that I am aware of. At a guess, maybe an hour or two.” He shrugged. “Perhaps much less.”

“Joy is upstairs getting ready to give birth,” I said.

“Then that is where you should be, lad. You need to see both of your children being born, your son and your world. I’ll walk along with you. I suddenly find movement particularly easy. There is so little of me to move around now.”

Annick handed him a pair of glasses.

“Yes,” Parthet said, fitting them to his face and holding his hands as if to catch them if they happened to fall off or through his nose and ears. They stayed in place. “I should like to see as much of my final moments as I can.”

I didn’t know how Joy would respond to having a crowd around just then, but we had once discussed the way that royal births used to require witnesses of the proper rank and position. At the time, it had been something of a joke between us.

Mother was there as midwife and obstetrician. Doc McGreary had made it to Varay before World War Three broke out, but he had been out of the castle when the gray came, so he wasn’t around to do the honors. Either Parthet or Aaron could help if help was needed, except that Parthet was having his own rite of passage at the moment.

Joy was on the huge bed, near the edge, sweating, gritting her teeth and puffing. She looked as if she was suffering.

“Uncle Parthet?” she said when the contraction ended. He went to her side.

“You’re going to have a healthy son, lass,” Parthet said. “I’m not sure if I mentioned that before or not. And though you might not think it just now, I do see a relatively easy delivery for you.”

Joy seemed to focus on Parthet then. “You’re fading?” she said, lifting her head from the pillow.

“My time to leave, your son’s time to arrive. It balances out, really. I’m about to see if there’s anything beyond, if any of the religious fairy tales are real. I’ve often wondered.”

The windows along one wall of the bedroom looked outside the castle, where the keep met the curtain wall. Those windows had been shuttered continuously since the limbo came. I opened one and looked out after going to Joy and giving her a kiss and a few words of encouragement—which sounded phony to me and probably to her as well, because we both knew that I couldn’t really know what she was going through.

The gray. It was different, but I needed a moment to put my finger on the difference. There was a hint of
form
to the gray, shape, an appearance of substance rather than just a void … and it did seem to have moved closer to the castle. It was darker than before as well, and after I had watched for a moment, I started to see what appeared to be a swirling within the gray, almost cloudlike patterns.

And there was a breeze for the first time since the gray had formed.

I stared out the window. After a few more minutes, I felt that I could see something beyond the gray, something down toward where the River Tarn and some of the local farms should have been, had been before. Joy had another contraction. I started to go back to her side, to hold her hand and offer what encouragement I could, but Mother shooed me out of the way.

Aaron was off to the side chanting up a spell. I assumed that it was something to help Joy. Her face got relaxed, almost dreamy, as though she had been given an anesthetic. Her breathing got freer.

Annick watched for a moment, worrying at her lip, then she went over to stand by the window, where I had been before. Uncle Parthet stood in the center of the room, looking vaguer all the time, like a television or movie ghost.

“Uncle Parker?” I said when I noticed that I could see the open window right through his once-substantial body.

“The time is almost here.” His voice sounded the same as ever, though, full of life, hearty. “Did you do what I told you to do?”

“You mean that bit about my relationship to the new world?” I asked. He nodded.

“Some,” I said. “Down in the crypt and since. It just doesn’t make sense.”

“It doesn’t matter whether or not it
sounds
true, but that it
is
true, and it is.” Parthet shook his head. “I thought I would have a
little
more time.”

“I can see the river!” Annick shouted. “The gray is fading.”

So was Uncle Parthet, quite rapidly now.

“Remember this,” he said. “You are Father to this world, its Creator. You have responsibilities, duties. I have great confidence in you, lad. I couldn’t be more pleased in you if you were my own son.”

I never had a chance to respond to him. Once again, everything happened at once. A baby cried its first breath.

Annick shouted, “The sun is out.”

And Parthet vanished.

I glanced toward the window, then back at the spot where Parthet had been, and in just that second, he was gone. I turned toward the bed.

Joy’s eyes were closed, but she was breathing freely and there was a smile on her face. Aaron was still chanting. Mother held the baby, her first grandchild. She wrapped a blanket around the tiny form and turned to me.

“You have a healthy son,” she said.

I looked at the tiny face framed by the blanket, then at Joy. Joy had opened her eyes. She mouthed the words, “A son.” I smiled at her, then at the boy.

“His name has to be Parker,” I said. Not Parthet, but Parker, the name I had known the original by for most of my life.

“Of course,” Joy whispered, and Mother seemed delighted by the choice.

Lesh came rushing into the room without knocking—an unprecedented breach of etiquette for him.

“Basil Town is back!” he shouted. “It’s
all
back!”

21
My World

An end and a beginning. Mother chased Aaron, Lesh, and me out of the bedroom. She kept Annick to help with Joy and the baby—my son, Parker.

“We should try the magic doorways,” Aaron said as soon as we got out of the bedroom.

“One step at a time,” I told him. “The world may not extend very far yet. If this rock is the hub of the universe, we may have to wait awhile yet before there’s anyplace very far from here to go to.”

“How far away’s the sun?” Aaron asked.

“I don’t have the foggiest idea. In the old universe, it was something like ninety-three million miles from earth. In this one? We’ll let the astronomers answer that, if there are any astronomers.”

“Sire, are you saying that we can’t count on
anything
until we see it?” Lesh asked.

“I guess I am.” I hadn’t really thought of it, but that was indeed what I was saying. “If what happened to me at the temple of the Great Earth Mother really happened, then the new world, the universe, should be a mixture of my memories and hers.”

“You still don’t believe it,” Aaron observed.

“Not until I see it. Maybe not even then.” We were heading down toward the great hall. The commotion there was audible while we were still on the stairs, some distance away.

“Let’s start by seeing if the front gate will open,” I said. “I left a lot of stuff on the path coming up because I didn’t think the horses would make it carrying anything more than their own weight.”

The people in the great hall were more animated than I had seen anyone since my return. Something more important had returned.
Hope
. I saw some folks already heading out into the courtyard, toward the stairs up to the ramparts of the curtain wall. They wanted to see for themselves as quickly as possible. Most of the people who were still in the great hall were toasting the event before going out to confirm it, giving other people a chance to take the first risks.

“I need some hands to open the gate,” I said from the doorway of the great hall. There was only a very brief pause before men started coming, raising their hands to volunteer. As soon as it was clear that there were enough volunteers to do the work, the rest of the people started to crowd together toward the door, willing to come out and watch.

I led the march out to the front gate. Men climbed up to watch from the wall. Others moved to slide the large bar out of its brackets, and more got ready to pull open the two heavily reinforced wooden gates.

Baron Kardeen came hurrying out of the castle. “I just heard,” he said, sounding embarrassed that anything had happened in Castle Basil without his knowing it virtually at once.

“There’s a lot more than this,” I said. I was watching the gate, though, not Kardeen, too intent on that to mention the other happenings yet.