Son of the Hero

"There's magic at work here," I whispered. "Resler said that the elflord's magics fail outside Fairy, but there is magic working against Arrowroot."

"How can you tell?" Lesh asked.

"I can feel it, can't you?" Then I realized that he couldn't, that this was my first experience of the heightened awareness of danger that was supposed to belong to the Hero of Varay. "Trust me, Lesh. There's as much danger behind us as there is in front of us."

"Aye, lord, I'll take your word." Lesh looked back. Harkane didn't say anything, but I thought I saw a smug look sneak across his face.

As we started riding forward again, I tried to analyze the feeling of danger, but that didn't help. Danger in front, danger behind-equal. I couldn't localize the feeling or tell what the source of the danger was back in Arrowroot. Or who. But I didn't question my awareness. It was firm knowledge, not nervousness. Once we reached the forest, the danger felt one-sided. The threat from Arrowroot had faded-just a little. Battle Forest was rife with danger. But the sensations still weren't specific. I only knew that there was danger, and I hardly needed the extra sense for that.

Battle Forest was as different from Precarra as Arrowroot was from Basil. Battle Forest felt immeasurably old. The trees were mostly huge firs, some of them hundreds of feet tall. The bark was a dirty gray, cracked and scarred. There were signs of old fires that had burned out the underbrush without killing the trees. In some places, gnarled vines had grown around the trunks. The oldest vines, as thick as my thigh, squeezed the trees, forcing them to grow between the garroting loops. Impenetrable brambles isolated huge tracts of forest, defining the possible routes by their absence.

Nerves made it easy to feel an evilness about the forest, no matter how illogical that feeling might be.

The three of us rode bunched close together. The road was wide and level, and the lowest branches were well above our head, but we bunched up anyway. Whether or not they were conscious of it, my companions must have felt the danger on some level. The horses, more sensible than many people, were clearly uneasy, skittish, unsatisfied with a walk. I didn't want to press the animals, though, certainly not right at the start. If we had to rely on speed once we crossed into Fairy, I didn't want to squander the horses' strength.

A little more than a mile into the forest, we heard the sounds of a horse galloping behind us.

"Off the road," I said. "Lesh, that side. Harkane, here with me." I took my bow from my shoulder and nocked an arrow. Lesh and Harkane had their spears ready, aimed back along the road. We weren't perfectly concealed, but if our horses stayed quiet, we might not be noticed by a racing rider until he was too close to avoid us.

He? It was the blonde I had seen on the battlements of Arrowroot. She reined her horse to a stop before she could possibly have seen us.

"Prince Gil?" Her voice was clear and sounded like a child's. I moved my horse to the middle of the road and eased the tension on my bowstring. Harkane followed me, but Lesh didn't come out until I told him to.

The blonde couldn't have been older than eighteen, if that. She had a sword hanging from her belt and an unstrung bow tied to the side of her saddle, under her right leg.

"Who are you?" I asked.

"My name is A

"Why did you follow us?"

"I need to go with you into Fairy. I may be your only hope of getting back alive." I let a beat or two pass. Lesh and Harkane restrained any burning need to inject their opinions.

"I think I need more of an explanation than that," I said.

"My mother is Baron Resler's younger sister, though he hardly admits to that since I was born. That was nine months after a raid during which the elflord's forces briefly occupied part of Arrowroot Town, including the house where my mother lived. She was raped by an elf warrior. That makes me halfelven. Having me along is the cloak of invisibility you need. Xayber won't spot you, at least not as quickly as he would without me."

"Send her back, lord," Lesh advised.

I took the arrow from my bow and returned it to the quiver. I understood that A

"Why is it so important to you to go with me?" I asked. "Not why I should think it's important. And how do you know where we're going?"

"There's no other place you could be going from here," A

"Lesh, do you know anything of this?" I asked.

"No, lord."

"Of course not!" A

"It's also not the sort of tale that can be hidden easily in a place like Varay," I said. Servants would talk. Repeated suicide attempts by a lady of note would be hot gossip, even without tabloids and their video sisters. The intelligent decision would be to follow Lesh's advice and send her packing, but I didn't feel any particular danger from her, and if she was by some odd stretch telling the truth, she might be the edge I needed.

"There are no proofs that will open a closed mind," A

"I think perhaps you are telling the truth, part of it anyway," I said.

"Your confidence overwhelms me, lord." She didn't try to subdue the sarcasm.

"I don't give a rat's ass whether I overwhelm you, underwhelm you, or just bore you to tears," I said. "If you've changed your mind about wanting to accompany us?"

"I should, but I won't. My quest is too important to me."

Whatever that is, I thought. "Then we've wasted enough time here. Shall we go?"

The four of us rode on through the forest. I hoped I wasn't putting too much stock in my allegedly heightened perception of danger. In any case, it would be easier to keep an eye on A

11 – Xayber

The border between Varay and Xayber was as unmistakable as the Berlin Wall, despite the talk of fluctuations. There was no fence or any other physical barrier, no signposts saying: "You are now leaving the mortal sector." you couldn't see any difference, not at first, but we all knew precisely when we crossed the border. Even Lesh felt the change and understood it. The air seemed charged, ionized like just after a vicious thunderstorm. The breeze carried a trace of rotten-egg smell like sulfur water. The forest felt sinister. The calls of birds, the rustling of branches and leaves, seemed muted, deadened. The footsteps of our horses seemed to change tone, become hollow. All the scene lacked was the eerie telltale soundtrack music of a killer about to strike to fit right into a mad-slasher movie.

Better get used to it, I told myself. You could have two weeks of this creepy shit.

"You know where we're heading?" I asked A