Son of the Hero

Parthet and Baron Kardeen went off together for a half hour about midnight. One or the other left now and then through the night. Virtually no one could last the entire night without at least one brief absence. The king didn't stay, but he returned often. He would stand next to my father, put his hand on Dad's shoulder, and look down at the closed eyes and pale skin. Then he would take my mother's hand and they would look at each other without speaking. Once, the king came to me and clasped my shoulders. His eyes held a terrible grief.

A bell tolled in the distance before dawn. Everyone returned to the chapel dressed for the new day. Four soldiers carried the platform. Pregel and Kardeen led the procession. Parthet, Mother, and I followed Dad. Lesh, Timon, and Dad's squire followed us. Harkane was fourteen, starting to fill out. The rest of the mourners fell into line as we followed a route marked by burning torches down steep stairs and along narrow passages below the great hall, through a cellar and down again to the royal crypt of Varay. Together in one long room the kings and heroes of Varay had their burial niches, the end of each occupied niche bearing a marble headstone with the name and dates of its occupant.

Dad's place had been prepared. The soldiers slid him into it, and a mason sealed the headstone in place. A purple ba

"Our Hero is dead," he a

"Step forward and kneel before the king," Parthet whispered urgently. I did as he said. There was no time to think anything through.

"Son of my granddaughter, son of my Hero, king who will be," Pregel intoned. Baron Kardeen put a sword with jewel-encrusted hilt in the king's hand.

"Hold out your hands with the rings up," Parthet's voice hissed in my ear-even though he was standing back with my mother, ten feet away.

I held out my hands. The king touched me on each shoulder with the flat of the sword, then he touched the edge of the blade to each ring in turn, starting a burning in my hands. When he held the sword sideways and touched both rings simultaneously with the blade, sparks flew from the points of contact, as if the rings were the poles of a car battery. It was an electric charge: I felt it.

"May the magic of Vara sustain you. May the Great Earth Mother clasp you to her breasts. May your sword never know defeat. May your soul never taste shame. Rise, Prince Gil, Hero of Varay."

Pregel returned the fancy sword to Kardeen and then took my hands in his when I stood. There was an electric crackling through the crypt, a smell of brimstone, and it felt as if all the hair on my head and body was standing on end. Pregel's eyes burned into mine. Then he released my hands and hugged me-with considerable force.

"We have need of a Hero," he said aloud. Then he whispered, "We have need of you," close to my ear.

While we climbed back to the great hall, maybe eight or ten normal floors up, I could feel the magic settling in my body-it was as if new parts were being put into place.

It scared the crap out of me.

8 – Basil

Going from the crypt to the breakfast table didn't blunt anyone's appetite, but it did make for a silent meal. The king presided over breakfast in the great hall, something Parthet said he rarely did. Both tables were full. The lower table was positively packed, with far too many people crammed along the benches. But there was no shortage of food. Servants brought in platters, serving bowls, and huge pitchers in relays.

I couldn't remember ever being so hungry, even though we had just buried my father. There was still no room in me for any outpouring of grief. It was just a thing that I knew would have to wait. Our meals had been rather skimpy on the road, and I had eaten very little after we got back to Castle Basil the day before-almost nothing through the twelve hours of the vigil and funeral. A memory, a series of memories, came to me while I ate. Dad always pigged out after his "business trips." The first couple of days after he got home he seemed to eat continuously. "Gotta have fuel for the furnace," he'd say, predictably. But the bursts of compulsive eating never made him fat. When he was on one of those binges, he out-ate me, and I was growing and keeping hyperactive all the time.

While I ate, I kept glancing at King Pregel, right next to me. He might be one hundred twenty-five years old, but he was packing in the chow as heartily as anyone else. Pregel was as sedentary as he could be, but he was still lean, almost gaunt in appearance. I couldn't recall seeing any fat people in Varay. It started to puzzle me, but I filed the question for future exploration. I had a lot of questions about Varay.

When Pregel finished eating, he turned to me. "Barring great emergency it will be at least three days before we return to the usual business of the court," he said. "We have much to talk about, you and I, but not right now. Take what time you need to yourself. See to your mother. If you need anything at all, come to me or to Baron Kardeen, any time of the day or night."

I nodded and thanked him. A moment later, he stood and breakfast ended.

Timon had been at hand throughout the meal, serving me, making sure I got food from each new platter that was hauled in while the food was still hot. He knew more about a page's duties than I did, but the attention made me uncomfortable.

"Have you managed to get yourself anything to eat this morning?" I asked when I got up from the table. Timon didn't answer right off, so I assumed that he hadn't. He certainly couldn't have found much chance. He had been with me most of the time. "Then you'd better scare up some food for yourself before it disappears. I'm going up to the battlements."

"I'll go with you, lord," he said.

"Not until your stomach's bulging. It must be hell to stand around and watch others eat when you're hungry. You can come up when you're full. I won't fall off." He still hesitated. "Go on, eat!" I said firmly. Once it was a clear order, he seemed delighted to obey.

I wasn't sure how to get to the battlements of the keep, but I knew they were up there-crenellations and smaller towers at two of the corners. The logical thing was to go out to the main stairway and climb until I ran out of stairs, so that's what I did. Logic didn't always hold in Varay, but that time I lucked out.

What I wouldn't have given for a castle like Basil when I was nine or ten! Maybe it was no Caernarvon or Tower of London, but it would have seemed like it when I was a kid. The two watchtowers above the keep were the highest points in sight, off to the mountains that dimly wrinkled the southern horizon. I could see the sweep of the forest away from the castle and town, the line of the River Tarn, the patchwork greens of farms around the town and off into the distance, blending into the forest.

I climbed to the top of one of the watchtowers. There were crenellations, braziers, stands of weapons and piles of stones, a guard walking his post-in desultory fashion. The royal pe

Varay spread out in every direction. The only boundary I could be certain of from my perch was the distant line of the Titan Mountains to the south. Parthet had said that they were unscalable, an absolute barrier. Not even magic could take a person over or through them. The Mist and the Isthmus of Xayber were too far north to be seen from Basil. I knew how far east of the capital the border with Dorthin was, also out of sight. Belorz was, according to the map, more than twice that far to the west. I wasn't overly confident that the map's scale had been accurate, but Varay seemed to be about 250 miles from east to west, somewhat more than that from north to south. The actual borders were vague. Varay and Dorthin argued and fought over the line in the east. The southern border depended on how far a person thought he could extend it into the Titans. And in the northeast, the border between Varay and Fairy fluctuated through Battle Forest, even out onto the isthmus at times, depending on how the fates or whatever were ru