Son of the Hero (7 page)

“I think it’s time for us to see His Majesty,” I said, checking my watch.

“We still have a few minutes to spare,” Kardeen said without looking at a timepiece. “Batheus, we’ll need the shield and other items quickly.” As the armorer left, Kardeen’s clerk came in and whispered to the chamberlain.

“And
now
it’s time for us to attend His Majesty,” Kardeen said with a soft smile in my direction.

“One more thing before I forget,” I said. “Do you have a map of the area between here and Castle Thyme?”

“We have maps of the seven kingdoms around somewhere,” Kardeen said. “My clerk will sketch you a copy of the appropriate portion if he can find them in time.”

The clerk nodded quickly. “Immediately, Your Highness.”

The throne room was an office scarcely larger than the chamberlain’s. The throne was set on a dais two feet above the floor, but it sat behind a desk as cluttered as Kardeen’s. Pregel was apparently a working monarch when the mood struck him. When Kardeen, Parthet, and I entered, there were already a couple of dozen people in the room. But the king hadn’t arrived yet. He came in just a minute after we did. Everyone bowed—not too deeply—from the time the herald announced Pregel until the king climbed on his throne and told us to rise.

“Come here, Gil,” Pregel said. “Stand on my right.”

I climbed up on the dais and stood next to the throne, feeling nervous as everyone in the room stared at me.

“My loyal subjects.” The king’s voice carried well in the small room. “This young man is Gil Tyner, son of my granddaughter Avedell and her husband, Carl, King’s Champion, Hero of Varay. Gil departs today on a mission as fraught with peril as any ever attempted by a Hero. We name him our heir for all to hear, King of Varay when I am no more. Our prayers and magics go with him today and always.”

I had a fleeting moment to wish that someone had taught me the proper etiquette for occasions of that sort. I would have settled for a simple warning of what was going to happen. I didn’t have the faintest idea what I was supposed to do. All of the people down in front of the dais bowed deeply and held it.

“What do I do now?” I whispered to the king when I had figured out that the people were going to hold the position.

He grinned, then whispered back, “A simple ‘Thank you, Your Majesty,’ loud enough for everyone to hear, should do it.”

I bowed and said exactly what he’d told me to say and everyone straightened up and started staring at me again.

“You have everything you need?” the king asked me, softly, but not in a whisper.

“It’s all been arranged, I think,” I said.

“Our prayers and magics do go with you, Gil,” he said. He gripped my arm—very tightly. “That’s not completely an empty formula here. And if you can keep Parthet from losing his spectacles, he can actually help.” Pregel smiled. “Go now, and I wish you luck.”

I bowed again and climbed down from the dais, wishing I hadn’t lost all those years with Pregel. I had only the faintest memories of him from when I was little, and I had found myself liking him right from the start that morning. Kardeen, Parthet, and I left the throne room together while people continued to stare.

“I wish somebody had warned me what to expect in there,” I said when we were out in the corridor. “Remember, I’m a stranger here. I don’t know the right things to do and say.”

“I’m sorry, Highness.” Kardeen sounded like he meant it. “I keep forgetting.”

Lesh and a boy who said his name was Timon met us in the antechamber beyond the great hall. Timon looked to be about eight or nine years old. He said he was to be my page. The armorer and Kardeen’s clerk joined us a moment later. The armorer was carrying a real load.

“I’m supposed to wear all that?” I asked.

“Just the necessities, Your Highness,” the armorer said. He held up the mail shirt, small chain links attached to a heavy leather foundation. Timon and Lesh took off my pack and sword belt. The armorer draped the mail over my fatigue shirt and I gained a quick twenty pounds or more. When he tried to clap a steel-and-leather skullcap on me though, I rebelled.

“I have my own headgear,” I said. I whipped the Cubs cap from my back pocket and slipped it on.

“But …” Lesh started. I cut him short.

“No way! I’m not even real crazy about this steel straitjacket. The tin pot is out.” Lesh didn’t argue in front of the others, but he handed the helmet to Timon, who held on to it as if it were the Grail.

The shield was round and two feet in diameter. A wood core was sandwiched between layers of sheet metal and leather, with scores of rivets holding the whole thing together and adding their own measure of protection. In the center there was a raised boss with a six-inch spike protruding. That shield was meant as much for offense as defense. I slipped my arm through the one loop on the back and gripped the wooden handle. It was heavy, but it felt good.

“I hope I can hang this thing on the horse when I don’t need it,” I said. The armorer assured me that the saddle had provision for the shield.

“How about food?” I asked. “I don’t recall anyone mentioning food.”

“Taken care of, Highness,” Lesh said. “I’ve been on a campaign or two. I saw to it myself.”

“And here’s the map you wanted,” Kardeen said, taking a bulky scroll from his clerk. I untied the leather thong and unrolled the scroll, an eighteen-by-thirty-six-inch sheet of parchment. For a rush job, it looked damn good. Roads, towns, villages, castles, and streams were marked for all of Varay and the nearer portions of Dorthin and the Isthmus of Xayber; mountains in the south, sea and isthmus in the north. There was even a large forested area north of the route to Castle Thyme marked with the warning “Here there be dragons.” What more could I ask for?

“Admirable work,” I said, smiling at the clerk. He smiled back and bowed.

We went out to the horses. Walking in chain mail, with the shield and everything else, was something like wading through Jell-O. I’d have to shed some of the weight if I wanted to accomplish anything. Putting my pack in a saddlebag was a start. Hanging my shield from the skirt of the saddle was even better. I got light enough to mount without help.

The horses were a mixed lot. I had a decent-looking stallion the size of a Clydesdale. Lesh’s charger might have been the sire of mine. It looked old, but still fit. Timon’s pony looked like a runt even without comparing it to the big animals. And Parthet—well, someone had dug up an old swaybacked nag that looked as if it came from a Three Stooges short. Someone had a sick sense of humor, I thought—putting a hunchback on a sway-back.

“She’s a fine animal,” Parthet said as I was about to blow some steam. It was almost as if he had read my mind. “I’ve ridden Glory here before, lad. We’re comfortable with each other.

I still needed a moment to cool off. “Then I guess we’re ready,” I said. I hadn’t done any riding since the previous summer, but I didn’t expect that I would have any difficulty. I learned how to ride a horse before I got my first tricycle. We all got mounted. I did manage to get aboard without help, even with all the extra weight.

“I wish you every luck,” Baron Kardeen said, standing next to my horse—Gold—and holding the pommel of my saddle. “Your coming has meant a lot to His Majesty. Come back safely.”

“I’ll try. Thanks for your help.”

Kardeen bowed and backed off. I nodded—regally, I hoped—and clicked at my horse. Gold started up and I aimed him at the gate. Parthet moved into place at my left, about two feet below me on his smaller horse. Lesh and Timon got into line behind us.

I didn’t look back.

5
Precarra

Castle Basil was located on a prominence that looked remarkably like the Rock of Gibraltar in the insurance commercials. The rock was stained by water and waste that had dripped from the castle over the ages. There was only one road into or out of the castle. It wound back and forth through a series of wicked switchbacks down a steep slope to Basil Town. The town was more a village, maybe three hundred buildings—homes, shops, and whatnot. According to Parthet, there were two good inns. “They both brew a decent enough beer” was how he phrased it. The River Tarn came from the north, past the east side of the castle’s rock, and wrapped around the south end of the town. “It bends north again farther west to finally empty into the Mist,” Parthet said.

Basil Town was aromatic, but it didn’t smell like the herb. Smell? Stench. I guess all towns must have smelled like that before indoor plumbing and municipal sewage works. At least no one emptied a chamber pot into the street while we rode through.

People stared openly at us as we passed. Craftsmen worked in their open-front shops and directed apprentices. I saw a cooper assembling a barrel, a miller hauling flour bags to a small cart that was hitched to two dogs who didn’t look far removed from their lupine ancestry. There were women sweeping out their homes, a lot of them. They might almost have had a union schedule that said, “Sweep the dirt out the front door at such and such a time.”

We passed one of the pubs, stared at it with longing, but didn’t stop. Maybe we could have afforded time for a single drink, but I didn’t know how we would pay. I didn’t have any local currency, and I didn’t expect that Parthet did. I couldn’t impose on Lesh or the boy, even assuming that one or the other might have a coin or two.

A few minutes after we passed the pub, our horses clomped across a rickety wooden bridge over the Tarn into the Forest of Precarra. The bridge shimmied and shuddered as if ready to fall into the river, but none of my companions showed the slightest apprehension about using it, so I kept my worries to myself. The river wasn’t much of a stream, about forty feet wide and shallow. But the bank was steep and high on the town side.

The transition from town to forest was abrupt. There were only a few small farms on the east side of the river. Most of the Basiliers’ farms lay west of town, according to Parthet. We crossed the narrow strip of cleared fields and entered the forest.

“Precarra covers about a fifth of the kingdom,” Parthet said, “from the southwest corner to the middle of our border with Dorthin—a rough horn shape with the bell flat against the Titans and the mouthpiece sticking into the Etevar’s domain. Southeast of the forest the land is wrinkled with foothills and long valleys. It’s an area for sheep, cattle, and grapes, but mostly it’s left to wilderness. There are some evil places there. Northwest of Precarra is where most of our farmland is, and a few fishing villages along the Mist. Then there’s Battle Forest toward the isthmus, north and northeast of here. Few Varayans live in that quarter.”

Lesh snorted. “There are farms everywhere,” he said. “The forest isn’t a blanket. There are gaps all around, some natural, more made by folks who need space to plant their beans and taters. Peasants can’t wait for strangers to send them food from someplace else.”

Our ride was no mad gallop. We let the horses stick to a fast walk most of the time, a gait that would allow them to keep going for the five or six days we might need to get to Thyme and back. During the hottest part of the first day, we stopped to rest the animals and get ourselves out of the sun for a few minutes every hour or so. We had a long way to go. When we talked, it wasn’t about Castle Thyme or what might have happened to my parents. I couldn’t fully accept the danger yet, not on a gut level. We talked about Varay and Fairy, and about ourselves. Mostly, I listened and let the others talk. I was the new kid on the block and I had a lot to learn.

“Tell me about yourself, Lesh,” I said, early in the ride.

“What’s to tell, lord? I’m a soldier. I’ve always been a soldier.”

“Where were you raised? What was it like at home? Even a soldier has a history.”

“I was born in County Gemma, somewhat south of Castle Thyme. My folks farmed a small clay patch. Of six children, only four of us made it out of the cradle. I worked on the farm until I was old enough to join the King’s Guard. I’ve been a soldier ever since, nigh on thirty years. Like I said, what’s to tell?”

I looked back at him: a bored face, uncomfortable talking about himself.

“Are you married? Do you have children of your own?”

He shrugged. “I’ve never been married formal-like. As to brats, who can tell?”

The willows and birches that flanked a creek alongside the path gave way to oaks, chestnuts, and firs. The air cooled a little in the shade.

“Do you know Castle Thyme?” I asked.

“I’ve been there, lord,” Lesh admitted. “It’s not much of a castle, not nearly so grand or strong as Castle Basil. Thyme is little more than a single tower with a puny curtain wall behind a dry ditch.”

“Not much to the eye but important,” Parthet contributed. “It has been fought over so often that the magics around it are quite unpredictable.”

“Let’s leave that till tomorrow,” I suggested. I didn’t want to cram my head full of porcupines yet.
Magic
. So far, all I had seen was the doorways, and while I couldn’t explain them logically, that didn’t mean that there was no logical explanation—something out of science fiction maybe, something like folded space.

“How far have we traveled?” Timon asked when we took our first break. The boy was dressed in forest green, in an outfit that looked as though it had been handed down several times. He wore a long dagger on his belt. Timon was skinny but nearly as tall as Parthet. The boy’s voice was still childish, high-pitched. His hair was lopped off simply at the sides and back.

“About seven miles,” Parthet said.

“I’ve never been
this
far before.” Timon didn’t seem nearly as awed by being assigned to serve the heir of Varay as he was at being seven miles from home.

“And what’s your life been like, Timon?” I asked. I was sitting on the ground, leaning back against a cedar, trying to put my weight on parts of my butt that the saddle hadn’t chafed. A difficult quest.

“My mam works in the kitchen at the castle. I’ve been scrubbing pots as far back as I know.”

“You get any schooling?”

“I can read a little, and write my name,” Timon said proudly.