The Hero of Varay (11 page)

I was shaking my head when Joy and I stepped through to Cayenne. I needed to stop there before we went on to Basil.

Since we had been gone for a while, I went to the door leading out to the hall and stairs, planning to go downstairs to check in, so to speak. But Lesh was waiting just outside the door.

“I knocked before, lord,” he said. “When you didn’t answer, I figured you weren’t back from taking the boy home.”

“We got him safely delivered,” I said.

“You told me to remind you about Harkane and Timon.”

I nodded. That was something that had come up during the goodwill tour. Timon was old enough to move up from page to squire. Harkane would become a full-fledged man-at-arms, ready to be knighted as soon as he proved himself in the interim capacity. Both would remain in my service, as my retinue continued to grow. But Timon’s promotion meant that I needed a new page to take his place.

“I’ll speak to Baron Kardeen about them today if I get the chance,” I said. “Joy and I are going through to Basil for breakfast. You want to come along, or is there enough to eat here?”

Lesh grinned. “We’ll manage, especially since you two’ll be gone.”

I grinned back at him. Getting Lesh to loosen up had been difficult. He was still more impressed with my position than I was, but at least he was willing to open up a little now and then.

“I’ll send Timon right up for you,” he said.

I started to object, but quickly changed my mind. I had to have a page at Basil, probably two of them now that Joy was with me. Protocol. Tradition. Varay was basically feudal in nature, and anyone with any kind of social status had to have servants. “Then maybe he can help choose his own replacement,” I said, and Lesh nodded.

“What was all that about?” Joy asked after Lesh clomped down the stairs. I explained the basics as quickly as I could.

“They put a lot of stock in formalities and rank and such here,” I said. “I knighted Lesh three years ago. Sometimes I think he’s still not comfortable with it—any more than I’m really comfortable with all the nonsense that goes with my titles.”

Timon came racing up the stairs so soon after Lesh went down that he must have been waiting for the summons. Timon was grinning all the way up the stairs. It was a big day for him, like making the move from grade school to high school, I guess—something like it anyway.

Joy, Timon, and I stepped through to Castle Basil and made our way down to the great hall just as the sun was making itself visible for the day. I wore my knife and both elf swords, and Joy’s arm was linked through mine. Timon stepped out in front as we reached the great hall to announce us.

But I didn’t hear one word he said. I glanced toward the head table and received one of the biggest shocks of my life.

Aaron was sitting up there next to Parthet.

    Parthet stood up quickly when I started hurrying across the great hall. He held up a hand like a traffic cop trying to get cars to stop.

“I didn’t do anything,” he said before I got halfway to him.

“What happened?” I asked, slowing down only a little. I could hear Joy hurrying to catch up with me. We went around to the head table. Two places were set for us.

“Just what happened before, it looks like,” Parthet said. “This time, he appeared right here in the great hall.”

“Where were you when you went poof this time, Aaron?” I asked.

“Right there where you left me,” he said. His voice sounded shaky. He had apparently been crying. He looked around, then looked up at me again. “Right after you left, Uncle Jake told me that Gramma was dead. I said no, she couldn’t be. Then my head felt real funny and I was here again.”

“How many people were there with you?” I asked.

“Uncle Jake and Aunt Sue. The policeman and two ladies from the hospital.” He held up his hand and extended a finger for each of them. “Five people.” That many shocks in twenty-four hours, I’d probably have to count on my fingers too. It was more than any child should ever have to suffer.

“Do you need any more proof that he belongs here?” Parthet asked softly. Family—they’re the people who never show any hesitation at saying, “I told you so.”

“I won’t argue the point right this minute,” I said. “But that also doesn’t mean that I’ve changed my mind. I’ve got to think on it first.”

Servants had already started to bring in breakfast, so the discussion was easily postponed. Parthet is hard to distract at mealtime, even when it’s something that’s really got him hopped up. Joy and I took our seats and Timon did his best to keep our plates and mugs full. He really didn’t have much trouble. Joy started slowly, though before long she was shoveling the food in almost as rapidly as anyone else in the hall.

Not even deep thought can slow me down much during a Castle Basil meal. I can think and eat at the same time without any difficulty at all. And I had a lot to think about. Besides the panic in my world over the
Coral Lady
, there was the way that Aaron Wesley Carpenter kept popping up in Varay and the talking elf head that Parthet still had. And King Pregel was still sick.

Of course, Pregel seemed to be sick as often as not. His health was precarious. He would get over one thing and be fine for a week or a month—even for three or four months running—and then he would get sick again. When my great-grandfather got sick, seriously ill, Mother would tear off to our world and bring Doc McCreary back for a long-distance castle call. Doc McCreary would do what he could without any of the equipment available in a modern hospital, and leave the day-to-day nursing to Mother and a few local women Mother had been training. The king would recover and the level of tension in Castle Basil would decline.

By the time breakfast started to wind down, I had some ideas on precautions to take after Parthet’s warning that there had to be trouble ahead for Varay and the rest of the buffer zone, but I still didn’t have real answers. I asked Parthet if there had been any weird manifestations other than Aaron’s two sudden appearances.

“None that I’ve heard of,” he said. “But there are bound to be more. The disruptions are just too great for there
not
to be more.” Then he pulled a small leather bag out of some recess in his clothing. “Here, I got these done last night. I couldn’t sleep.” I opened the bag and found a set of rings like the two I wear. I gave the new rings to Joy.

“The eagle always goes on your left hand, the signet on the right,” I told her. She slipped them on and they fit perfectly. That’s not the kind of thing that Uncle Parthet was likely to make a mistake about.

“These are the rings that open those doorways?” Joy whispered.

“Yes, and they identify you as part of the royal family as well.”

“But I’m not, really.”

“You are in every way that matters. We can take care of the formalities any time you’re ready. I’ll have to ask the chamberlain. I don’t even know how marriages are done here.”

“Was that a proposal?” We were both whispering by then.

I smiled. “I guess it was. What do you say?”

She blinked, but that was the extent of her hesitation. “I say that I think we’ve come too far to back out now.”

I grinned at her before I turned back to Parthet. There was still business to talk about.

“I think I need to make a fast tour of the border castles to see if anything’s happened, and to warn them to be careful,” I told Parthet. “Find out if there’s any unusual trouble with Xayber or warlords out of Dorthin.” Parthet nodded around a mouthful of ham. I snorted. “Find out if there are any other kids like Aaron popping up around Varay.” That caught Parthet’s attention. He stopped chewing to stare at me, but Joy was at me from the other side.

“How long will you be gone?” Joy asked.

“Well, let’s see,” I said as I turned again. “There are five border castles in the north and east, four more in the west. That makes nine castellans to talk to in Varay, and Duke Dieth over in Dorthin. I don’t think I could possibly finish in less than three or four hours.”

Joy seemed to miss a beat on that. Then she swatted my shoulder. “I thought you were going to say three or four weeks.”

I smiled. “There’s no reason why you can’t come along,” I said. Before she could respond to that, I said, “Let’s go find Baron Kardeen.”

I had already looked around to see that nobody was still shoveling the food in so fast that he would be devastated to have breakfast end. That was another tradition that I had tried without success to end—the tradition that the meal was over as soon as the ranking member of the royal family or court left the table.

Kardeen was in his office, hard at work already, a large platter of food holding down one edge of the scroll he was writing on.

“Two problems for your expert attention,” I told Kardeen after we got past the hellos and so forth. I told him about my personnel situation. He said that he would send Timon to the Master of Pages with instructions and he would make the necessary entry in the records of the two “promotions.” Any ceremony was up to me, whatever I wanted to make of it.

“What’s next?” Kardeen asked then.

“What’s the procedure for getting married around here?”

He waved a finger back and forth between Joy and me and raised an eyebrow. I nodded.

“We’re really not big on formalities here,” Kardeen said, directing that mostly at Joy. “There are the rings, of course.” He looked back and forth between us, and Joy held up her hands to show him the rings.

“Mostly, it’s just a matter of entering the marriage agreement in the court records and having it announced by the magistrates around the kingdom,” Kardeen continued. He hesitated then and looked at me. “There is one bit of ceremony you might want to consider. It’s hardly old tradition.” He shrugged. “Your parents did it when they got married.”

“What kind of ceremony?” I asked.

“They met in front of the king and me, faced each other, and linked their fingers together so the rings were touching.” He demonstrated. With two people doing it, it would look like finger-wrestling, a painful little sport I hadn’t tried since I was a freshman in high school.

“How is the king?” I asked. He hadn’t met Joy yet. That was something we had to correct before there was any ceremony anyway.

“Pretty much confined to bed yet,” Kardeen said. He made a helpless gesture with his arms. “It’s hard to tell. You know that. He’s been worse before, I suppose. Your mother is upstairs with him now, probably feeding him breakfast. You can go up and see.” This latest downturn had happened after he heard that I had been wounded by the elf warrior in the Bald Rock.

The baron led the way upstairs, walking quickly as he always did. My great-grandfather was sitting up in bed, propped up by a dozen thick pillows. He wasn’t reading now though, the way he had been the last time I had seen him. Mother was sitting on the edge of the bed, holding a tray of food on her lap and feeding the king.

“Hello, lad,” Pregel said. Both his voice and his smile were weak.

“Grandfather, this is Joy Bennett. We’d like to get married.” The king didn’t like to have anyone talking about his health in front of him, no “How do you feel” or anything like that, especially when he wasn’t feeling well.

His smile got a little broader. “Come over here then, children,” he said. He scooted himself up a little higher. Mother set the breakfast tray on a small nightstand, then stood up and moved out of the way.

“I’ve heard about you, young lady,” Pregel said, reaching out to take her hand.
His
hand was shaking rather badly. Joy clasped it in both of hers. “And yes, you are lovely.”

“Thank you,” Joy said, stuttering a little before she added, “Your Majesty.”

“Don’t worry so much about the formalities, dear,” the king said. “I quit worrying about them decades ago. Now, how are you bearing up?”

Joy shot me a quick look. “He knows that you had never been here before yesterday,” I told her.

“I still wonder if I’m going crazy, sir,” she said, obviously uncomfortable.

“Healthy sign, they tell me.” Pregel laughed softly and reclaimed his hand. “So, when do you two want to do this?”

“We haven’t really talked about timing,” I said. “Is there anything wrong with right now?” I aimed that question more to Joy than to the king.

Joy smiled. “I don’t see anything at all wrong with now,” she said.

“Nothing like the rush of young love,” Pregel said, and he laughed again. “I don’t see anything wrong with now either.” He looked at Mother, then at Kardeen. Neither of them contradicted him.

There really wasn’t much to the ceremony. Joy and I stood facing each other, right there next to the bed. Grandfather, Mother, and Baron Kardeen were the only witnesses. Too late, I thought to warn Joy what might happen when we completed a circuit with the rings. There just wasn’t time to say anything. When we linked our fingers, I could feel the familiar electricity—and I saw Joy’s eyes get wide. The exchange of vows was impromptu—obviously. I don’t remember exactly what either of us said, though Joy probably does. I said something about promising her my undying love and she said pretty much the same thing. We broke the circuit of the rings, accepted congratulations, and left the room.

“What the blazes was the shock?” Joy asked when we were in the hallway alone.

“I didn’t think about it until it was too late. It’s some sort of side effect of the magic of the rings.”

“It felt like my hair all stood on end.”

“It didn’t,” I assured her.

“I don’t mean on my head,” Joy whispered, looking around to make sure that we were really alone.

I started laughing, very loudly, and Joy’s face got red. She started pounding on my nearest shoulder, until she missed and hit the guard on one of my elf swords.

“Do you have to wear those things all the time?”

“The Hero of Varay must be armed,” I said. “I think I’m even breaking tradition by taking them off to bathe and sleep.”

We started right out on my tour of the border castles. I let Joy operate the doors each time we made a hop. It’s not that the doors take practice, but I thought that it might make her feel a little more confident of using them if I didn’t happen to be around. The full tour ended up taking a lot more than three or four hours. We spent the entire day making the circuit, and it could easily have taken even longer. I introduced Joy around. We sat and chatted with the various castellans, gave them the warning, asked for news, and looked around a little at each place.