Son of the Hero

If I believed the advertising, the kingdom would all be mine someday-if I survived my term as Hero of Varay. Now there's a job title that could have been created by an ad agency. I could go back home and cash in on it for Saturday-morning cartoons, maybe a string of flashy movies starring some ex-musclebuilder or football lineman, license an entire array of toys, T-shirts, school supplies, and anything else that could carry a logo and fetch a price.

The thoughts and images went through my head, circled and danced, but I didn't see much humor at the moment.

I looked down at my clothes. I had switched my fatigues and chain mail for an outfit of local manufacture during the night-loose trousers, coarse-woven shirt, and leather vest. The Basilier equivalent of Sunday-go-to-meeting duds. And my weapons. The Hero of Varay was expected to be armed at all times. The pistol holster inside my waistband was chafing. A knife and my sword showed.

"Highness?" I hadn't heard Timon come up. I was staring toward the Titans, lost in my moody reflections.

"Yes, Timon. Did you get your fill?"

"Aye, lord, enough to last a week."

I doubted that. "What's going on downstairs?"

"Very little. Nearly everyone has gone to bed."

"You must be tired too."

"Not really, lord," he lied. I had seen him smothering yawns at breakfast and before. "Perhaps you should retire for a few hours."

"I couldn't sleep if I had to." I guess I was lying too.

"What will you do?" Timon asked.

"I don't know. Stand here until I get bored, I suppose. Maybe find a full barrel of beer and empty it."

"I mean, about…" He didn't have to finish.

"I don't know yet," I said slowly. My voice sounded tired even to me. I had another answer for Timon, but I censored it before it could get out. What would I do? Kill the Etevar and his wizard. Maybe it would have to come down to that kind of an-eye-for-an-eye revenge, but I couldn't fill the emptiness with a mad thirst for revenge at any cost. The Etevar has killed my father because my father killed his father. So I go off, kill this Etevar, and wait for his son to kill me? Madness, even though there were no police or law courts to run to for justice. This was so far removed from the society that I knew that I still couldn't make the mental leap-not standing on the castle's battlements, in a chilly breeze, not even just hours after we had buried my father. It all seemed so clear when I entered that dark cottage near Castle Thyme. No more.

"Everyone's sleeping, you say?"

"Aye, lord. There won't be much happening afore late afternoon, not even in the town."

"Did they stand the vigil with us?"

"Many did, I hear. He was everyone's Hero."

"Maybe I should try to sleep," I mumbled.

"Your chamber is prepared, lord." As a member of the royal family, I rated a private room, more than the overwhelming majority of the people in the castle could say. For the soldiers and servants, bed was often whatever piece of rush-strewn floor they could claim and hold.

The bedroom was the one my father had used in Basil. I recognized it because I had seen it through the doorway in my parents' bedroom in Louisville. Now it was mine. Mother had taken a different room somewhere else in the keep. I wasn't sure where. Lesh was sitting across the doorway to my room, leaning against the jamb, snoring freely. Timon woke him so I wouldn't trip or wake Lesh myself. Lesh came to his feet, forcing himself alert.

"Sorry, lord," he said.

"Never mind. A little sleep is what we all need. But you might as well come inside, out of the hallway."

"My place is at your door, lord." I wanted to argue, but I didn't think I could shake his sense of propriety without a long discussion, so I let it be.

"Come on, Timon." I propelled the boy inside. "Find a comfortable spot and get some sleep yourself." There was a bench piled high with cushions. I shoved him toward that and then I stripped off my weapons and collapsed across my bed. I guess I fell asleep almost immediately.

I found myself holding Yorick's skull, standing in his grave and declaiming how well I knew him while the skull told me to wake up. I tried to tell Yorick to shut up, that I had immortal words to say, but someone was snaking me. I opened my eyes and saw Parthet standing over me, his face nearly invisible in the shadows. I had slept through the day. The only light was coming through the open door from torches in the hall. While I pried myself up to a sitting position, Lesh brought in a lit torch and wedged it into a wall bracket opposite the foot of my bed.

"What time is it?" I asked around a heroic yawn.

"Two hours past sunset," Parthet said. "Quickly, lad, His Majesty waits."

That shortened my next yawn. "What's up? He said it would be three days before we got back to business as usual."

"This isn't business as usual. The Etevar has stolen those days from us," Parthet said. "Come on, lad. You'll hear it soon enough." He started to pull me to my feet with more strength than I would have given him credit for.

"Okay, I'm up." On my feet even. I flexed my shoulders and stretched. By the time I brought my arms down, Parthet and Timon were wrapping my sword belt around me. Protocol. The Hero of Varay must be armed.

It was a long walk, down from the mezzanine where my room was, through the great hall, up the main stairway on the other side, then back across to the king's private dining hall. A huge parchment map was spread across the table, the edges of the scroll held down with weights. The map was four feet by seven and appeared to show just Varay and Dorthin, in much more detail than the map I had been given before. Mother and Kardeen were already studying the map with the king when Parthet and I arrived. Lesh and Timon waited in the hall.

"Sorry we had to disturb you, son, but this is urgent," Pregel said.

I nodded and took the seat the king indicated, next to him.

"Our relations with the Etevars have never been good," Pregel said. "The ambush the current one set for your father was just the latest in a long series of provocations. Now it appears that the attack on your father was merely a prelude to something more ambitious. Parthet, tell him what you've learned."

Parthet stood to achieve his meager height advantage. "I was too restless to sleep this morning. I knew, of course, that the Etevar bore a bitter grudge against Carl, but I worried that there might be more to the scheme he used to draw Carl to Thyme. It had been troubling me for some time, but I couldn't put my suspicions together until this morning. So I decided to do a little spying." He paused to look around. Nobody questioned him. Obviously, the king had already heard the news; maybe the others had as well.

"I started by questioning Harkane at length with hypnosis and magic, probing for any clue he might have picked up at Castle Thyme, even subconsciously." Parthet shrugged. "There was an aura of strong magic around his perceptions, but we already knew that the Etevar's wizard was involved in the setting the ambush."

"What's the importance of that?" I asked. "Why did it take a wizard to set the ambush? I'd think any competent military commander could do it."

"Part of the magic of the Hero of Varay is a considerably heightened perception of personal danger," Parthet said. "Without a more powerful magic to conceal the ambush, your father would certainly have seen that there was more to the situation than it appeared, and been able to take his own measures." He waited for my nod before he continued.

"I do make a good spy. I'm old and crippled-looking. No one would guess that I'm more than that without the talent to spot my magics, so I visited Carsol, the Etevar's capital, and nosed around."