The Hero of Varay (3 page)

“There isn’t. Nobody’s declaring war or anything.”

“Must have been dull for you. You’ll have to bring your young lady by to say hello one of these days.”

I just nodded. That was easier than admitting that I hadn’t told Joy word one about the buffer zone or my job. I wasn’t sure about telling her yet. It isn’t that I wasn’t sure of Joy, I just hadn’t come up with a way to tell her about Varay without either convincing her that I was crazy or scaring her out of her gourd. Joy was special enough that I didn’t want to take any stupid chance of spoiling our relationship.

Most times, I enjoyed sitting around and chatting with Pregel. His mind was clear, his sense of humor surprising. But that afternoon, I was itching so badly that I couldn’t wait to get home and soak myself until I looked like a prune, maybe baste myself liberally with baby oil or whatever it was going to take to get rid of my itching and discomfort. While I was soaking, I would call Joy and set up something for the next day. It wasn’t just that I wanted to let the anticipation build, I had a prior commitment for my first night back.

I got out of the king’s room as quickly as I could and went around to see if Parthet had popped in while Kardeen and I were with the king. The chamberlain had told me that Parthet hadn’t been at Basil since breakfast, which was quite in keeping with the wizard’s habits. He rarely took all three meals in the castle. At lunchtime he could more often be found in one of the various pubs that met his approval. He had used some of that excess sea-silver too.

“He knows you’re due, so he’ll be along early for dinner,” Kardeen said as we headed toward his office. “He’s been looking for you for the last week or more.”

“I should be back by supper,” I said. I was developing a feel for time in the buffer zone, even without a watch. “Maybe I won’t be here at the start of the meal, but I’ll be along in time to eat.” I had a solid two hours, closer to three, before supper would begin in the great hall, and it wasn’t as if I would lose time in transit. Kardeen and I nodded each other off, then I headed for my bedroom in Castle Basil to go home. I left Lesh at Basil to get an early start on the evening’s drinking, dropped Timon off at my Castle Cayenne in the southernmost part of Varay, then popped through to my Michigan Avenue condo in Chicago.

My place in Chicago is thirty-eight stories up, on the east side of the building, looking right out over Lake Michigan—a classy home in a classy neighborhood. I took frequent guilt trips over it, but the Hero of Varay has more money than he can possibly spend sanely, and gold from the buffer zone spends very well in the “real” world. So much for turning away the Elflord of Xayber, so much for defeating the Etevar of Dorthin, plus never-before-claimed bounties for killing two dragons, and a monthly salary to boot. Baron Kardeen’s chancery clerk kept very strict accounts even if the entries would send a CPA into fibrillation. I didn’t even have to draw on my status as heir for money. On top of everything else, I also drew a small income from Dorthin. Duke Dieth did his best there, but not all of the feudal lords of Dorthin had accepted the new hierarchy yet.

The master bath in my apartment is appropriately decadent for such an upscale Gold Coast address. The tub will do everything but scratch your back, and it comes close to doing that with directed jets of water circulating just the way you want it. I showered, rinsed the tub out, then filled it for that long soak. While the water was running, I phoned Joy.

Joy Bennett and I had been going together for a year before my goodwill tour. Being away from her for those three months was the main reason why my goodwill ran out before the tour did. Joy had been near the end of her last semester for a B.S. in computer science when I left on my tour—about the same point in her studies that I had been at when I stumbled into my new job and kissed college goodbye. Joy told me that she was going to be exceptionally busy for the last few weeks of school, so she didn’t object too strenuously when I told her I was going to be gone for ages on a mysterious mission that I couldn’t tell her about. She joked about it now and then during the ten days between the time I told her that I was going and the time I left, but I’m pretty certain that she halfway thought that I was working for the CIA, just the way I used to think that my father was a spy because of his periodic disappearances.

I had offered Joy the use of my condo while I was gone, but the dorm at school was more convenient through the end of the semester, and she decided that she would rather use the time after the end of school to go home for a visit with her parents. I promised to call her as soon as I got home, and she promised to get on a plane to come back to Chicago the next morning. We were in that deep about each other. Marriage hadn’t
quite
been discussed, but we had talked around the fringes of the subject now and then, and it seemed to be a likely prospect … if I managed to get the subject of Varay across without scaring her off, at least. I knew I couldn’t put that conversation off much longer.

The phone in St. Louis rang four times, then a fifth. I had a sinking feeling that no one was home, but then Joy answered. After a round of long-distance greetings that I wouldn’t dare confide to paper, I said, “I’m home.”

“It’s about time.”

“Way past time,” I told her. “I’ve missed you so much.”

“Not even a postcard in three months.”

“I wasn’t anywhere I could count on mail service,” I said.

“Oh? I didn’t see you on campus.” A private joke.

“Still coming back to see me?” I asked.

“I’ll be at O’Hare fifteen minutes after noon tomorrow.”

“You have the schedule handy?”

“Don’t need it. I memorized it weeks ago.”

“Twelve-fifteen. I’ll be there. I love you, Joy.”

“After three months, you’re going to have to prove that all over again, you know.”

“Ummm. I can hardly wait.”

    No, the bathtub wasn’t overflowing when I got back to the bathroom. It
can’t
overflow. It says so right on the guarantee. An electronic eye shuts the water off when it gets to the fill level. Other sensors adjust the hot and cold water to whatever temperature I set the thermostat for. And there is a panel just out of reach of the faucets that gives me a telephone, intercom to the front door, five-inch television, and speakers to bring the comfort of my stereo into the comfort of my tub.

I listened to the elevator music of WLAK while I soaked—relaxing music to help me unwind. It put me to sleep, as usual. But I didn’t doze for long. My danger sense won’t let me be when I fall asleep in the tub. The instant I start to slide down a little, it wakes me with an annoying little jerk. And then my stomach started growling, so I knew it was time to head for supper.

My entryway to Castle Basil is in the hall closet of the apartment in Chicago. Leaving my bedroom there takes me to my bedroom on the fifth floor of Castle Cayenne. Going from dining room to kitchen takes me to my mother’s home in Louisville. And the kitchen-dining room direction takes me to a small office I keep on West Washington in Chicago’s Loop. I only keep the office as a place for the doorway, a shortcut to get downtown. We had a
lot
of sea-silver left after my foray into Xayber, and the stuff is useless if it isn’t used within three months after it’s harvested, so we used it.

I went through Cayenne on my way to Basil to pick up Timon again. The Hero of Varay must be properly accompanied. Timon was still my page. And I had to appear fully armed as always. Most times I didn’t worry about wearing both of my swords. The elf blade, Dragon’s Death, had stood me in good stead when I needed it, and during the intervening years I had practiced extensively with the claymore until it was almost second nature for me to use it. Besides that, it was a much more impressive weapon. A big part of the secret to avoiding trouble is making people think that you can return more than they can serve up.

There were already people eating when I reached the great hall of Basil. I took my customary seat at the head table, and Timon started dishing up the food for me. I didn’t accept that kind of service in my own castle, but in “public” I had to put up with it. Varay can be very tradition-bound about some things.

Naturally, Uncle Parthet was one of the people who had started eating as soon as the first platters and pitchers were hauled in. He waved a spoon my way when he saw me coming in, but our dinner talk was severely limited. Our mouths were always full. Someday, I’d like to do a real study of just how much food people eat in Basil. As the roughest estimate, I’d say that people eat their weight every two to three weeks—and that might be overly conservative.

Weight Watchers would find no business in Varay, though. I asked Uncle Parthet about all of the eating once, back while I was recovering from my injuries after the battle around Castle Thyme. “It’s all the magic, lad,” he told me. “The energy has to come from somewhere, and mostly it comes directly from the people who live here.”

At just about any dinner at Castle Basil, you’ll find beef and pork roasts; ham; sausage; chicken and/or turkey and/or duck and/or goose; potatoes fixed three or four different ways; a selection of vegetables, salad items, and fruits—fresh in season, canned, dried, or otherwise preserved the rest of the year; bread, rolls, and desserts—usually fried or baked desserts, as fattening as possible; beer, wine, and coffee; and on and on, including “side dishes” of stew and soup. The buffer zone is a glutton’s paradise. Just sampling everything at a meal puts your calorie count well into four digits, and nobody “just” samples it all. It’s like having Thanksgiving dinner three times a day,
every
day, and the cooks of Varay have never heard of things like low-fat, cholesterol-free, salt-free, “light” foods, sugar substitutes, margarine, and the like.

People don’t drop dead young from heart attacks or strokes either. Go figure.

Dinner takes time when it’s that full of treats. Ninety minutes, even two hours, isn’t rare for a meal in Basil. It was dusk before Parthet, Lesh, and I broke away from supper and headed for the main gate. The “welcome home” bash was on me.

    And then that damn elf warrior walked in and spoiled the party.

2
Joy

I don’t
think
that I lost consciousness for even a second, but I didn’t take an active part in any of the immediate proceedings. I looked down, saw the blood on my shirt and blue jeans, reached down, and felt the wound. The cut started about three inches to the right of my navel and quit about three inches short of including a vasectomy. I didn’t even feel any real pain at first. The shock of being wounded numbed me, if only for a moment. I stared at the wound like a fool, touched it, managed to feel a certain amazement at it all. My assailant seemed pretty confident that I was going to die from it. Or maybe it was just a rehearsed speech, something he was supposed to say when it was my head lying on the table. I certainly
hoped
that it was nothing more than that.

The Elflord of Xayber had not forgotten me—not that I had expected him to. He had sent his son to do me in.

I stood there wondering what to do next, and I didn’t have a clue. I saw the elf’s head on the table, his body on the floor and across a stool, and I
think
I actually took time to think about falling down myself. I was slow in realizing that Parthet and Lesh were talking about me, that Lesh was at my side now, holding me up—and seemingly having trouble holding himself up. We were weaving back and forth, and I didn’t remember wavering that way just a moment before. That was when the pain finally got to me and I came close to passing out. I sagged, but Lesh was there and somehow managed to keep us both on our feet.

“We’ve got to get him through to a hospital,” Parthet said. “That wound looks too dangerous for home remedies, even mine.”

“Hospital?” Lesh asked. The word had trouble getting out past all of the alcohol.

“We’ll take him through to his mother’s house. She can get him to help. Hang on just a second. I’ve got to stop the bleeding first.”

Parthet went into one of his mumbo-jumbo chants. I was still staring at my wound, not up to speaking … or even to falling down yet. The circle of blood quit growing, and I got numb again, this time just from the waist to my knees—an anesthetic numbness, not shock numbness. When the feeling went out of me, I started to fall again, but Lesh still managed to keep me from hitting the floor.

Parthet finished his conjuring, then got on the other side of me from Lesh. As small as he was, Parthet wasn’t completely helpless. Parthet also carried along the head of the dead elf.

“Get some lads to carry the body up to the castle, tonight,” Parthet told Old Baldy. “The king will want to see him without any bits and pieces hacked off for souvenirs or charms. If
anything’s
missing, be it so little as a fingernail, your beer will taste like vinegar for a year.” Sometime later, I heard Parthet mumble, “Old Baldy would sell him off by the ounce and retire if he could. Where would I go for beer then?”

I didn’t notice at the time that Parthet had also fetched along the elf’s sword.

There was a magic passage from the back room of the Bald Rock up to the castle, a passageway put in by Parthet and my father a couple of decades back. That was the route Parthet had wanted us to take when we started out after supper. We did use it going back. Parthet opened the way and Lesh hauled me through into the castle and started shouting for help.

I didn’t pay much attention to the step-by-step drag or my reception in the castle. Things got kind of dreamy for me, but I’m sure that I was still at least partly conscious. Even at the time, I wasn’t worried about dying. I didn’t have an instant’s doubt about my eventual recovery—once I managed to forget the elf’s message. After all, I didn’t die on the spot, and the elf did. I had been through worse. I had certainly
felt
worse. I didn’t see Vara or any of the other members of the congregation of Heroes that had haunted me before and during the Battle of Thyme. Parthet had said that it was all nonsense, but I still couldn’t write off my experiences to imagination.