The Hero of Varay (16 page)

“Who’s going to pick out my horse?” Joy asked.

“Well, you obviously don’t know enough about horses to do it.” I held up a hand to keep her from saying anything about my charge. I wasn’t looking for another swat, even a playful one. I quickly added, “I don’t know a hell of a lot more. All I know is that you open their mouths and look at their teeth, and I don’t know
why
you’re supposed to do that. So I guess we’ll just do what I usually do, let Baron Kardeen take care of it. That’s pretty much a guarantee that you’ll get the best horse for you that can be found in the kingdom.”

“Really?”

“He’s the glue that holds Varay together,” I said.

“How old is he?”

“About twenty years older than your father,” I said, and then I realized that Joy had finally noticed the change in my mood. She was trying to bring me out of my sudden funk. I almost told her not to bother. Instead, I took a deep breath, held it for a moment, then let it out. I managed to paste a smile across my face then. Maybe Joy knew what she was doing after all. I took her hand and stood up. “Let’s go home.”

“Home?”

“Cayenne,” I said. Joy didn’t look particularly elated—there was no way she could consider my castle her home yet—but she didn’t complain.

Joy and I stepped through the doorway to Cayenne and went up to the battlements to be alone for a while. I had never found it necessary to station a sentry about Castle Cayenne, but I knew that Lesh put his men on rotation whenever I wasn’t “in residence,” when the place was his responsibility—or even when we were both gone. The countryside was generally peaceful, and I had the special danger sense of the Hero of Varay to protect me, so Lesh had, grudgingly, decided that maybe sentries weren’t essential when I was around. My “establishment” wasn’t so large that I had to find work for the people I did have.

I boosted myself up into one of the crenels and sat sideways in it, back against one side, feet against the other, swords skewed around so I didn’t have to worry about slicing my back. Joy leaned against me and pulled my arm around her. We stayed like that for a few minutes, then Joy turned around in my arms and stared me straight in the eye.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean. What’s going on around here? Something is wrong, it has to be, maybe something as big as what happened to the
Coral Lady.
”

“There are no nuclear weapons here. I don’t think they would work.” But I knew what she was driving at. I closed my eyes to avoid the look Joy gave me.

“The trouble seems to be spilling over here,” I said when I opened my eyes again. “That means work for me, Hero-work.”

“Dangerous work?”

“By definition,” I admitted. “And this time, if Parthet is right, the stakes are as high as they can get.”

“Can’t you get out of it?”

All I could do was shake my head.

8
Death Vow

“You do what you have to do.”

I heard that piece of advice many times while I was growing up. Dad tossed that one out anytime I had to make a difficult or painful choice. I don’t know when the first time was, but the first time that really sticks in my mind came when I was fifteen and we were deer hunting in the Rockies. I shot a handsome stag but didn’t kill it. The animal was badly wounded but managed to get away.
You do what you have to do
. In that case, it meant four hours of dangerous tracking through rough country to find the stag and finish the job. Of course, Dad didn’t send me off to do the job alone—though he might have a year later. Still, either or both of us could have been killed or badly injured tracking that wounded stag down into a canyon and through a stretch of frigid white water. And then we couldn’t get the whole carcass back out. We skinned it, saved the horns, hide, and as much meat as we could, and then hiked and climbed back to our camp. It was totally dark by the time we got there. We were both freezing and wet, and it’s amazing that we didn’t both get sick.

The price the elf demanded for his help was high—potentially as high as it could get for me—but I didn’t have much choice, and the elf knew it. It was my duty, and
you do what you have to do
.

Duty
. That led me to thoughts of Annick and her warped sense of duty. She thought it was her
duty
to spend as much of her life as it took to find and murder her father, the elf warrior who had raped her mother and sired her. In the process, Annick attacked anything and anyone out of Fairy who came within reach. I hadn’t seen her myself since the day of the Battle of Thyme, but I had certainly
heard
about her and her exploits often enough. Annick was a few months younger than Joy, but while Joy had been in college, Annick had been making one foray after another north into the Isthmus of Xayber, ambushing soldiers of the elflord, setting fire to houses, laying traps of one sort or another to cause trouble even when she wasn’t around. Back in my world, she would have been a terrorist, planting bombs or whatever—creating mayhem, maybe even incidents like the
Coral Lady
. The most charitable thing I could think about Annick was that it was a waste. At times I pitied her. At times I thought she was no better than a mad dog. She was so consumed by her hatred that there wasn’t room for anything else in her life. She called it duty. I called it obsession, insanity. There was no rational excuse for what she did, no way to justify it, even in the buffer zone. Annick would keep up with her madness until it killed her. And one of these days it would. I was surprised that she had lasted as long as she had already.

Up on the battlements of Cayenne, I held Joy for several minutes, until we were both feeling a little better. Then we went down to the main hall for dinner. Hunger in Varay gives very little way to any competition. Afterward, while Joy went to the kitchen to compliment the cooks, I went over a few things with Lesh.

“I don’t want anyone filling Joy’s head with all the horrors we’ve been through,” I told Lesh. “She’s shaky enough without hearing about all the injuries and so forth. I’ll tell her myself, in time.” Lesh just nodded and waited. “She’ll worry enough when we’re off on this next business.”

“I understand, lord,” Lesh said, and I was sure that he did. Lesh—
Sir
Lesh to give him his proper title—was my right-hand man. He served as chamberlain, steward, majordomo for Castle Cayenne. He was my representative to the village, and he was my companion on all of my Hero-work. He had also become my closest friend, and not just in the buffer zone.

“We’ll be off soon?” Lesh asked when I didn’t continue.

“Probably within the next few days,” I told him. Then I reported what I knew so far and what was left to learn.

“Oh, something else for when we have time,” I said when I got through the essentials. “Joy doesn’t know how to ride. You think you can teach her?”

“Aye, lord. What horse did you have in mind for her?”

“I’ll have Baron Kardeen find one at Basil. We really don’t have one here that would be right for her, do we?”

“Well, perhaps she could take a lesson or two on Timon’s Gheffy.”

“No real hurry, Lesh. Things may be hectic for a time.”

“More dragon eggs?” he asked, in the same way he might have asked if I thought it would rain in the morning.

“This and that,” I said. “Parthet’s in a panic about all the omens.”

“It’s a wizard’s job to know about such things,” Lesh reminded me.

I shrugged. “Whatever comes, it’s likely to mean work for us.”

“Aye, that’s for sure.” Joy was coming back. Lesh spotted her before I did. “I’ll take care of the riding lessons, lord.”

If I could just cut down the number of “lords” to one or two a month, it would be perfect. But Lesh’s sense of Varayan propriety was just too strong.

Joy started talking about the methods the cooks used and how much she had liked food that she had never tasted before. All the way up to our rooms, she carried on about the kitchen and the problems of fixing such large meals for a crowd. I let her talk and just nodded or grunted as needed to keep her going.

“There’s not much light for reading in here,” Joy said when we got to the bedroom. “Those kerosene lanterns and oil lamps just aren’t enough.”

“We can fix that. I’ve just never bothered. I’ve always treated the three places as one big apartment. When I want to read, I just go through to the other room.” I hesitated, suddenly recalling the way I had felt when we left Chicago the last time, as if I might never see the place again. “I don’t suppose there’s any real reason to stop, especially since the plumbing is a lot better in Chicago.”

“You don’t sound very happy about it though.”

“Just nerves, I suspect.”

“Because of that ship?”

“That’s part of it. But things are also stranger than usual around here, what with the dragons in the eggs and all.” I was being vaguer than necessary. While I still didn’t know precisely what all the strange omens were leading up to, I could be relatively sure that it would mean acute Hero-work before long. But Joy still wasn’t all that comfortable just
being
in Varay. I hoped to let her
gradually
learn just how much my “job” entailed.

“You have to stick around?” she asked.

“Well, I shouldn’t be out of touch for long, but Parthet and Mother both know how to get hold of me if I’m back in our world.” I shook my head. “There was something else, just before we left Chicago the last time. Part of the magic of being Hero of Varay is a special awareness of danger. You remember the way I
knew
something was wrong before we heard about the
Coral Lady?”
I waited for her to nod before I continued. “Well, that danger sense was kicking up when we left the apartment in Chicago. I had a feeling that I might never see the place again.”

“That settles it. Let’s go right this minute and put that fear to rest.”

I chuckled. “I forgot that you minored in psychology.”

“Phooey. It’s just common sense.”

“I know, like getting back on the horse right away when you fall off,” I said.

“Did you have to bring that up?”

“Yep, I had to. Okay, let’s give Chicago a try, but cautiously. Stay behind me while I open the way.”

“You really believe this stuff, don’t you?”

I shook my head, as emphatically as I could. “I’ve had my face rubbed in it too many times for
any
of it to be a question of belief. The rules are different here. Each of my two elf swords came from a dead elf warrior. Parthet has the head of the second one in his workroom, in a tub of booze. He’s cooked up some magic that lets the elf talk to us. And the danger sense has been keeping me alive for more than three years. It’s all real, Joy, whether anyone believes in it or not. Like gravity.”

Joy’s face got a little pale.

“It takes time to sink in, I know,” I said, softer. “But this isn’t Wonderland or Never-Never Land. This is as real as the
Coral Lady
or lung cancer.”

“And just as dangerous?”

“At times. But there’s danger everywhere. You just have to know how to deal with the particular dangers of the place you are. Like street smarts, knowing how to stay out of trouble in a city back home. Chicago is probably a lot more dangerous than Varay. You just have to get used to a different set of dangers.”

Joy nodded, very slowly.

“There’s something else maybe we should talk about,” I said. “Your parents. Your brother and his family.”

“What about them?”

“There are no telephone lines or mail deliveries between St. Louis and Varay, for one thing. For another, if things keep getting weird, this may be the only safe place left. Relatively safe. At least there are no nuclear bombs or crazy terrorists willing to kill thousands of innocent people to get their names or beliefs mentioned on the news.” No, terrorism in the buffer zone was retail rather than wholesale.

“How can I tell anyone back home about this place? I’m not sure that I believe it yet.”

“I know the problem,” I reminded her. “Look, we don’t have to do it right this minute, maybe, but you should be thinking about it. Maybe the next target will be the Gateway Arch or one of the riverboats on the Mississippi.”

“If you’re trying to scare me, you’re doing a darn good job.”

I sat on the bed and shook my head, slowly this time. “I’m not
trying
to scare you, Joy. This
Coral Lady
bombing and all the strange things that have happened here—I don’t know how to handle it all myself yet. And I don’t know how much more of this roller-coaster up-and-down we’ll have. This world has dangers. It has elflords and dragons, and evil wizards. It has sicknesses that our world hasn’t seen in ages, but not as much as you might think. It’s primitive and it can be uncomfortable for anyone who’s only known the comforts of modern civilization back home. But it doesn’t have as many wholesale dangers as what I used to call the ‘real’ world.”

“And this is where you belong.” No question. Joy looked out the bedroom window, then came over to the bed. “So this is where I belong too. I’ll get used to it.” Her smile was weak, but she sat next to me and put her head on my shoulder.

“I will get used to it,” she repeated.

“I know you will,” I said. “Come on. Let’s go get some lights and whatever else we need. I’ve got a pair of good camping lanterns with fairly fresh batteries back in Chicago.”

“No hurry. I don’t think I’ll be doing much reading tonight. Besides, I just thought of something else. Aaron disappeared from Joliet again. They may come looking for you.”

“It’s possible,” I agreed. “But if he simply disappeared out of a room filled with people, after we left, they’re going to be pretty confused to start with.” I started to laugh, then stopped quickly. “It’s really not funny,” I said. “I feel sorry for them, especially the aunt and uncle. They had enough shocks to deal with already.”

I stood and stretched. “You were right about the psychology, though. Let’s visit Chicago anyhow. See what’s on the news. It’s been more than forty-eight hours since the
Coral Lady
explosion. There ought to be something fresh about it on the airwaves.”