The Golden Shield of IBF (57 page)

‘“What?” I asked, dumbfounded. ‘Like me?’

‘“I, too, came from the other realm. It is much changed there now, I would think, albeit that time here and time there have little correlation. Still, many ages must have passed since I rode out on my quest and never returned.’

‘“You were a knight,’ I whispered.

“‘Of course I was a knight, Champion! Would you think me an imposter? I would not have taken unto myself the weapons and habiliment of a knight were I not one! But, unlike many who wore the spurs, I was also a scholar. Those two moons in Creath’s sky?’ And Mir actually winked. ‘One of those lovely moons was the sorceress who brought me here and whose bed I shared at her command and from whose clutches I escaped. Her charms were most appealing, lad, but as a knight I was sworn to defend against evil, not to fuel it. The loveliness of her body could not make me forgive the vileness of her heart.’

“Swan had begun to form the black vortex out of which Mir and his army had ridden, and into which they would return, her father with them. I was almost afraid to ask Mir what was on my mind, but I asked him anyway, ‘Under what King did you serve, Mir? And, on what quest did you ride out that day when you were taken from the other realm?’

“Mir smiled at me. ‘There was but one quest, Champion, and is still. And you well know it, I suspect. Men are men, and the quest itself becomes the goal rather than the pursuit of which the quest was first begun. The King whom I pledged to serve I serve still.’ Mir clasped my hand and started to turn away, then looked at me, smiling once more as he said, ‘And you well know it, I suspect.’

“Tre’El held his horse, Mir taking the reins from his Knight Commander and mounting his great white charger.

“For one last time, Swan embraced her father.

“As Mir was about to lead his army into the vortex, to return to death, he turned his horse aside and rode straight over to Erg’Ran, dismounted and clasped both hands to Erg’Ran’s shoulders. Mir embraced him, then remounted his steed.

“Swan stood beside me, her hand in mine, and we waited there until the last of Mir’s army had passed through the vortex and there was only darkness. A tear in her eye—for Mir and his brave knights, or for her lost father?—Swan at last took her hand from mine and clapped both hands together, closing the vortex.

“We looked at each other, Swan and I, and I knew that the time which I so dreaded was upon me.”

Abruptly, Alan Garrison closed the book, his throat suddenly tight and his voice about to crack. He had never before—aloud—read the final chapter of
The Virgin Enchantress.
He’d done readings from elsewhere in the book, of course, but not from this last part. He could not read the ending pages without totally losing control of himself, the memory of his parting with Swan too intense, still. And it always would be.

Hurriedly, so that his mind could shift focus to something else, Garrison forced a laugh. “Sorry about that, guys! But you’re going to have to buy the book. My voice is starting to go, anyway,” Garrison added lamely.

“May I ask a question, Mr. Garrison?” a blond-haired woman in her thirties called out from the back of the room. He’d seen her around a few previous DragonCons, but didn’t know her name.

Garrison cleared his throat, his voice sounding strained to him as he said, “It’s Alan, please. Yes, what’s your question?” He took a sip of water from the tumbler on the table.

“When I read the book, I wondered why you chose a kind of downer ending. I mean, don’t get me wrong! I really loved the book. And I have a second question?”

There was some laughter in the room, other hands already raised for questions.

“What’s your second question?” Garrison inquired.

“Well, the main character was an FBI Agent and you were an FBI Agent up until—”

“I resigned from the Bureau, lived off my savings, crapshot on the book and here I am. What’s your question?”

“Did you fantasize yourself in the character of the hero?”

Garrison forced another laugh, saying, “He’s better looking and a hell of a lot more courageous.” There was good-natured laughter. Garrison raised his voice and added, truthfully, “I never fantasized myself as the guy in the book.” It hadn’t been a fantasy, but he had never said that to anyone and wasn’t about to say it now.

He’d returned from Creath to his own “realm” in the instant after the grenade had made a little noise and a lot of smoke and never actually detonated, had his cuffs on the fanatical terrorist bomber William Culberton Brownwood before Wisnewski and his agents even got through the doors into the registration area.

Jim Sutton, his BATF friend, had run up to him, asking him, “You okay, Alan? You look weird.”

Alan Garrison hadn’t said anything. Glancing around, he’d seen Brenda in her cat outfit, Alicia and Gardner with her. Walking slowly, trying to keep himself under control, Garrison approached Brenda and asked, “Do you remember the girl I was with? Real pretty? You guys hung out with her earlier. She asked one of you guys about me?”

“Swan? Yeah. Where’d she go?”

Alan Garrison remembered falling to the floor because he had to sit down. Putting his hand into his pocket, he felt his shield, no longer of heroic proportions, or its lettering reversed. Intentionally, city ordinances notwithstanding, he took a cigarette from the full pack in his pocket, found his lighter—it worked—and lit up. When he looked at the pack—one cigarette gone—his heart sank.

Garrison’s mind came back to the present. “Your first question, about the downer ending. Maybe it wasn’t a downer,” Garrison told the blond-haired woman. “I mean, they still love each other—the two characters in the book, I mean—and, if you believe in fate or destiny, you can always tell yourself that somehow they got back together, sometime, somewhere.” He told himself to shut up about it before he lost it. There was brief applause.

One of the programming coordinators for the con held up his hand, fingers splayed, signaling five minutes before the room had to be emptied. Garrison said, “I’ll take one more question.”

A dozen hands went up and Garrison pointed at the man in the wheelchair in the front row. “Yes, sir?”

“Alan. What’s your next book? Another fantasy novel?”

Garrison grinned at him. “It’ll be out next year. I think you’re just going to have to wait and see. And I hope you like it. Thank you all!”

Garrison stood up, grabbed his sportcoat from the empty chair beside him and signed his way through a sea of copies of
The Virgin Enchantress
as he made his way to the door. A few people followed him into the corridor, asked a few questions, asked him to sign a few more books.

After several minutes, the last question asked, the last book signed, Alan Garrison reached the stairs and started down. He still smoked as little as he always had, but all someone had to do was post a sign announcing that smoking was prohibited and he wanted a cigarette. He had checked convention records and a one-day membership had, in fact, been sold to a woman named “Swan Creath” and there was always Brenda, and Alicia and Gardner, too. They remembered her.

There was no Swan Creath living in the entire United States. Before leaving the Bureau, he’d run the name with the best people finder program to be had.

What he remembered as happening had to have been real.

He had the nonscars to prove it. Before he’d met Swan and been magically whisked off to Creath, he’d had the usual unremarkable collection of dings people got from daily life—a mark on a finger where a wart had been burned off, a tiny chicken pox scar at the corner of his left eye, a reminder on his right leg of a serious collision with a formica tabletop when he’d been a kid. All of those scars were gone.

Wisnewski had recommended Garrison for a commendation in the arrest of William Brownwood. Garrison resigned before it was approved, but they sent him the commendation anyway.

Brownwood had been in a state of mental collapse when he was arrested. If Brownwood ever got well enough, Garrison assumed that he’d be called to testify in the man’s trial.

Garrison reached the ground floor and looked for an exit, the closest one at registration; or, as Swan would have put it, “... the great hall through which all who come here must pass.”

It sucked, Garrison told himself. Swan existed in her “realm” and he in his. He couldn’t call her, send her flowers, anything. All he could do was love her. And, the way that time passed so oddly there, a hundred years or only a hundred minutes might have gone by. “Sucked” was too mild a word.

Garrison almost punched open the door leading outside. Despite the time of year for Atlanta, the weather wasn’t that terribly hot. He took off his sportcoat, anyway. Even though he’d left law enforcement, he still carried a gun, but just the little .32 Seecamp in the Pocket Natural holster in the side pocket of his trousers.

He started digging around in his jacket pockets for his cigarettes. “G’urg,” Garrison snarled.

There were a bunch of people hanging around outside the entrance, some in hall costumes, most not, some older than he, most of them younger. Nearly all of them stood and smoked, while a few sat on the sidewalk and smoked.

Garrison pulled a cigarette out of his half-empty pack, started to flip the cowling back on his lighter.

His cigarette lit.

Garrison’s jaw dropped and he almost lost the cigarette from his lips.

He didn’t look right or left, in front or in back.

Instead, Alan Garrison stared at his pack of cigarettes. It was full.

He raised his eyes, glanced around. There were people everywhere. “Swan?” Garrison whispered. He saw her. “I’m crazy.” She was crossing the street on the green light, and he almost didn’t recognize her. Her auburn hair was cut to just past shoulder length. Instead of a medieval-style dress, she wore a cream-colored sleeveless knit top and an ankle-length brown skirt with a cream-colored floral print. She was wearing sandals. He could see her toes! He’d never seen her toes, the one time he’d had the chance his eyes were too busy elsewhere.

Garrison glanced down at the cigarette, ran into the street, but stopped dead.

He asked himself aloud, “Am I crazy?”

She stopped in the middle of the street.

Garrison stood maybe a foot away from her. “Swan?”

“Al’An.”

Garrison took the solitary step that brought him right in front of her. “Swan.”

“I decided that magic stifled technology, and that while the people of Creath depended on magic, there would be no reason for them to depend upon themselves. I appointed Mitan and Gar’Ath to rule Creath so that someday the people of Creath will learn to rule themselves. Erg’Ran will advise them, of course. Captain Bre’Gaa has convinced the Gle’Ur’Gya that his people and the people of the Land should try to live in peace. I think it will work.”

“So, uh—you’re here on vacation?”

“No. I’m not.”

The light had changed, Garrison noticed absently, from green to red. He could hear a lot of horns honking.

“You here to stay?”

“If you want me to, Al’An.”

“What about the, uh—Well, I mean, will it be dangerous to you when we—?”

“If you will help me, I think I’ll be okay.”

Alan Garrison drew Swan into his arms, looked into Swan’s grey-green eyes. “I’ll help you—every chance I get,” he promised her.

Alan Garrison let his cigarette drop into the street and kissed Swan so hard that his lips hurt. Cars kept honking at them and honking and honking and honking.