Son of the Hero

Parthet aimed for a copse of willows two hundred yards from the road. Willows would provide shelter and probably meant that water was near.

I watched silently. I couldn't have spoken if I had to. Magic doorways might be future or alien science, something I just didn't know about. This snake dance had to be Magic with a capital M. Maybe I still wasn't the King of Siam (I certainly wasn't going to shave my head!), but heir designate to the crown of Varay was almost as outrg. Good old Uncle Parker, always handy with a dirty joke when we happened to be alone together-once I got into my teens. This wasn't that Uncle Parker. This was Parthet the Wizard of Varay-somebody entirely different.

He had to bend over in the saddle to get under the hanging branches of the weeping willows, and the rest of us had trouble clearing them even lying flat against our horses' necks. Parthet kept going, kept whooshing, until the rest of us got out of the brambles into the clear ground right under the trees. When he stopped swaying and making noises, the brambles also quit swaying. I dismounted and looked back the way we had come. There was no hint that anyone had ever ridden through that mess.

"You see," Parthet said, gri

I nodded, not up to a wisecrack for a change. I looked at Parthet differently than I ever had before, I think. What choice did I have? "The king said there was."

"He did?" That seemed to please him more than the deed.

"As long as we could keep you from losing your glasses again."

"Ah, yes, there is that," Parthet said. It didn't seem to bother him. "I told you I need to see to do most of my magics."

"Well, if you've got any more to spring, you'd better get cracking. It's going to be dark in another half hour."

"Yes. To work, to work, not a time to shirk."

A wizard maybe, but not much of a poet.

6 – Thyme

Parthet's only other contribution was a shield that was supposed to keep out bugs and small animals that might otherwise disturb our comfort. It may have worked. There was nothing visible about this magic, but I wasn't nibbled by mosquitos and nobody woke up with a snake or skunk in his bedding. Parthet offered to whip up a campfire, but we decided that we would be better off without it.

Under the willows, night followed posthaste upon sunset. The dark was complete. We arranged our bedrolls and settled in. There was a little soft talk at first, but the conversation languished quickly and all that remained was the murmur of the creek that flowed past the edge of our camp.

Occasionally a horse moved around or drank. The animals were tied to a picket line, more to keep them from stumbling over us than to keep them from wandering off. They had no place to wander, not even along the creek. Brambles had overgrown it, making it impassable. Only right under the willows were the brambles missing.

I slept poorly. During the day I had managed to keep from wasting a lot of energy worrying. With the night, though, the worries pecked at the edges of my mind until I paid attention. The soft breathing of the others couldn't hold off thoughts of what the morrow might bring. Castle Thyme was drawing members of the family like a magnet. Dad had gone first, to try to take the castle back from the soldiers of the Etevar of Dorthin almost single-handedly. He had a couple of soldiers, men like Lesh, and his squire. No more. Then Mom took off to see what was taking him so long, and she had gone alone. To rescue Dad. We hadn't met along the road, so she too was overdue and likely in trouble. If she happened by in the dark, while we were camped, we might or might not hear her. Parthet said he would know. I had a feeling he was right, but it was still something extra to worry about.

Now Uncle Parthet and I were going to Castle Thyme too. That would damn near complete the reunion. I knew less about the situation, about the whole damn world, than either of my parents. Everybody treated me like a big shot, son of the Hero, great-grandson and heir of the King of Varay. But I really didn't know what was going on, and that may have bothered me more than the rest. I still thought that there was at least an even chance that my brain had jumped the rails. Maybe the pressures of trying to finish my last year of college had snapped my sanity, shattered it into little bitty bits. I had seen cases of sheepskin syndrome. The pressure got to be too much and they went crackers. Or maybe I would wake up and find that it was all a dream, like Dallas.

Wake up? I couldn't even get to sleep.

I was toting around a bunch of weapons that I had practiced with for most of my life but had never used in a real fight, or even in serious competition. "It's not a game," Dad told me while he taught me how to kill and maim in every conceivable way. "It's survival. If you ever need the skills, you have to know that: it's not a game." Sometimes he screamed it. "You can't play by anybody's rules, can't wait for a referee to call a foul on the other guy or worry that he might call a foul on you. If you get into a situation where your life's on the line, the only rule is that the wi

"It's not a game," I whispered a couple of times that night in Precarra. "It's not a game." I started to get scared, so maybe I was really starting to believe the whole scam. I was going to rescue my parents if I could, if they needed rescuing-and they probably did. I might have to capture a castle to do it, a fortress whose defenders had already faced or were facing similar puny attacks. Surprise wasn't likely, and I didn't have any other advantages-unless Parthet could come up with something even fancier than his Red Sea trick, and I wasn't counting on that. Okay, Castle Thyme was a small castle surrounded by a low wall and a dry ditch. Given a dark enough night and a lot of luck, we might scale the wall and sneak inside. If Lesh had a long rope and a quiet grapple in one of the saddlebags.

It's not a game. One more full day on the road, maybe a few hours the following morning before we reached Castle Thyme and a kill-or-be-killed situation. I had never been in that kind of position before. I had never been in any spot that looked so dangerous going in.

Eventually, I dozed off. I don't know how long I slept; not long enough, by half. The soft hooting of an owl in the distance woke me. Sometime later, I heard thrashing noises in the underbrush, frenzied sounds of some small animal crying in its final agony. The owl apparently found di

"Let's do what we have to do and leave as soon as there's enough light to get back to the road," I said.

"A good idea," Lesh said after a noisy routine of stretches and yawns.

"Let's start a fire," I said, an impulsive decision. "I've got instant coffee. We can heat water and have that much to get us moving. That and whatever kind of breakfast we can put together." I needed something. I felt more tired than I had been when we made camp. I got out my flashlight and Lesh assembled enough dry wood for a decent little cooking fire.