Son of the Hero

"In one day? How did you get there?" I asked.

Parthet looked to the king for permission before he answered. "There is a passage from Basil Town to Carsol, one your father and I opened years ago, after your father defeated the previous Etevar."

"You have a door into the enemy's capital but you thought it was too dangerous to have one into Castle Thyme?" I suppose I was as surprised as anyone at the anger in my voice. It just flared. A doorway into Castle Thyme could have put Dad beyond the ambush, kept him alive.

"The secret way into Carsol was a risk we felt justified," Pregel said. "Now, it's easy to see how things might have been different."

"The Etevar's wizard would have looked for passages in Thyme," Parthet said. "Even a poor wizard could spot a doorway, though it would take an extraordinary one to use it. The Etevar's new wizard might be that good."

"He could find one in his own capital just as easily," I said.

"If he thought to search for it," Parthet said. "That magic is much too passive to give itself away by chance. And this is the first time that passage has been used in years."

Baron Kardeen cleared his throat. "The doorway on this end is in a cellar that is kept flooded except when someone who is authorized uses the passage. The other end is in a much smaller cellar. Anyone who managed to open the doorway from the other end-anyone not authorized to-would likely drown."

I held up both hands. "Okay, okay. A justifiable risk." I turned to Parthet. "So, you went to Carsol. What then?"

"There was an incredible amount of activity, people all over town. Part of it was celebration at the destruction of the king's greatest enemy." Parthet paused but wouldn't meet my eyes. He was talking about people celebrating Dad's death. "But part of it was anticipation. The Etevar has called for a general levy of his warlords and all Dorthinis who owe military service. He plans an all-out invasion of Varay. With our Hero dead, he feels that he can't lose this time, especially not with his new wizard."

"So what's so special about this new wizard?"

"No one speaks his name. To the Dorthinis, he is just 'The Wizard.' " Parthet sounded miffed. "They talk about him as a new arrival out of Fairy, perhaps a rebel there, but they claim that he is the most powerful wizard the seven kingdoms have ever known. They describe him as standing head and shoulders over the tallest Dorthini, which would put him well over seven feet-and makes him sound like an elf." That last was an aside to me. "All sorts of impossible powers are ascribed to him. Magic is one thing, but some of the stories are clearly beyond any magic that could possibly work in the seven kingdoms."

"How much time do we have?" I asked.

"The levy is to assemble two weeks from today at Carsol. The army will need ten, more likely twelve, days to get from Carsol to the border. An army travels more slowly than a small party. Most of them will be on foot."

"So we have a little more than three weeks to get an army to the border to meet them. Where will they attack?"

"They'll come by way of Castle Thyme, aiming straight for Basil across the middle of the kingdom. No other route would work."

"That way will be slow," I said, more to myself than the others.

"Slow, but not impossible," Parthet said.

"It does give us time to get an army in front of them."

"We have no army to put in front of them," Kardeen said. "If we pull our men from the north, we'll be overrun by the Elflord of Xayber. He's a mad rebel against his own kind, but as long as he threatens the buffer zone and not other elflords, his people let him be."

"Are you saying that it comes down to deciding who we want to lose Varay to?" I asked.

"If it ever does come to that, there can be no question," Pregel said. "Letting Fairy cut the buffer zone in half might destroy the fabric of our existence. Our only purpose is to separate the realms, Fairy and Mortal."

"What options do we have, then?"

"I don't know. I only know that we have to find a way," Pregel said.

Picture a light bulb going on above my head. "You mean that you hope I can find a way."

"You are Hero of Varay," Kardeen said. "We have always relied on our Heroes in our greatest need, all the way back to Vara himself."

"Hey, I'm the rookie here, remember? I don't have any miracles to pull out of a hat. How the hell can I take on an entire army single-handed?"

Nobody answered for a long time. But I kept my mouth shut, and eventually somebody had to speak. It was the king.

"Varay ca

"Then I must not be a proper Hero," I replied.

"You are," Parthet said. "The magic is in you. You know that."

I remembered the electricity when the king linked our rings, the sensation of power entering and surging through me, all of that. "I don't know what the magic is, how to use it."

"You mother and I can help with that, some," Parthet said. "But more of the magic can only be known by a Hero. Your father would have explained it, but he didn't get the chance."

"Because he was too busy getting himself killed trying to live up to your idea of the proper Hero?" I asked. That caused another long silence. Mother broke this one.

"Your father did what he did because he felt it was right. He knew the risks. As you know them. He made his choice."

"And don't I have the same right? Nobody ever asked me if I wanted any of this. Nobody told me what to expect, what I was going to face. You and Dad kept me in the dark for twenty-one years. I'm the son of the Hero. Does that rob me of the choice my father had?" The grief I hadn't been able to express before was finally out in the open, but it came out more as anger than grief. I was boiling. All the little snits united at once. I got up and walked across the room while I tried to get myself under control. No matter how justified the anger, this was the wrong time and place for a show of temper. Except for Kardeen, we were all blood kin. The others grieved over my father's death as much as I did. But I had been lied to all my life, had had so much hidden from me, had been trained blindly for a role I was never told about. Everyone took it for granted that I would follow in my father's footsteps. And now they all blithely assumed that I would step right up and pull a rabbit the size of Alaska out of my Cubs cap. I fought with the fire inside, trying to contain it, without much success. A lot of it was pain, emptiness, but there was more, much more. My resentment was genuine and justified. It just picked a poor moment to all come out.

"Gil?" It was Mother, standing just behind me. I turned. We were alone in the room. The others had left, too quietly for me to notice.

"No one wants to rob you of free choice," she said. "If this hadn't come up when it did, we'd have told you all about Varay. We pla

This time, she waited for me to break the silence.

"That still leaves a lot of years when you could have told me. My whole life's been based on a lie, and all I get is a note and 'we were were going to tell you soon.' It's not enough. It wouldn't have been enough if Dad hadn't got himself killed. All those years! Dammit, what the hell did you think you were doing with me? I've got plans of my own. I'm just six weeks short of a degree in computer science. I've got prospects of a good job as a software engineer, maybe a chance to strike it rich on my own with some i