Son of the Hero Read online

  “Uncle Parker?” I called. “Uncle Parker?”

  “Is that you, Carl? Are you back? Did Avedell find you?” The questions tripped over each other before the door opened and Uncle Parker—Parthet—came out. Carl was my father, Avedell my mother.

  “It’s me, Gil,” I said. Parthet squinted up at me. He was barely five feet tall and had acquired a stoop since I last saw him.

  “Gil?” He came closer and squinted so tightly that his eyes seemed to be closed. “How’d you get here?”

  “Mother left a note. What’s going on?”

  “What’s going on? What’s going on?” He snorted and shook his head. “Come in, lad, and I’ll try to explain.”

  The cottage was even bleaker on the inside than it was from out front. Everything was wood, gray with age. The planks in a small table were all warped differently. Some of the wall planks were missing completely. The floor was dirt. A fireplace at one end of the room provided the only contrast to the ash gray—soot black. A single door led to another room—a bedroom, I guessed, since there didn’t seem to be much chance that the cottage had indoor plumbing. Parthet sat me on a bench at the table. I found a splinter immediately, the hard way.

  “Young Gil, is it?” He sat across the table from me and leaned across it—as far as he reached.

  “It’s me, Uncle Parker. Mom left a note that said Dad was overdue and she was going after him, and she told me how to find you.”

  “Ah, yes, she would.” Parthet nodded. “And what do you propose to do?”

  Good question. I’d been asking myself the same thing. “I don’t know what the hell’s going on,” I said. “I don’t even know where I am.”

  “You’re in my home, not that I use it all that much. This is the Forest of Precarra in the Kingdom of Varay.”

  That didn’t help much.

  “I didn’t think it was Kentucky. Nobody gave me a script to this madness. Those doors in our basement. All this nonsense. What the hell is it all about?” I may have started sputtering. It was so insane that I wasn’t even sure what questions to ask.

  “Your father was going to tell you soon,” Parthet said.

  “All I know is what was in Mom’s note.” I dug it out of my pocket and handed it to him. Parthet looked at the paper, sniffed at it, turned it over, then handed it back to me.

  “Unfortunately, I seem to have misplaced my spectacles and I haven’t been able to find them,” he said.

  “Don’t you have a spare set?”

  “I have trouble enough keeping track of one pair, let alone two.”

  I read the note to him, with some difficulty. There wasn’t much light in the place. Parthet listened and nodded a lot. The nodding continued after I finished.

  “It’s so hard to know where to begin,” he said.

  “Well, let’s not go back all the way to Adam and Eve.” It was meant to be a joke, but it didn’t sound that way, even to me. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded, Uncle Parker.” I couldn’t call him Parthet yet. He had always been Uncle Parker, and the habit was hard to break.

  “That’s all right, lad,” he said. “I was never much of a storyteller. I could never remember which bits go where.” He shrugged, a peculiar gesture the way he was stooped. “I was never even that much of a wizard.”

  “Hold it! Time out! What do you mean, wizard?”

  “Well, yes, I think that’s still the word.” He paused a moment, then said, “Conjuring, spells, potions, the odd bit of magic. That sort of lot.”

  And I’m the King of Siam, I thought. Okay, the whole family was crazy. That was the obvious explanation. And I just happened to pick my twenty-first birthday to join the club.

  “My eyesight’s always been bad, and getting worse all the time,” Parthet continued. “Weak eyes are a terrible handicap to a wizard. So much of the craft depends on being able to see what you’re doing. A wizard who can’t see the end of his nose isn’t worth much.” He sighed, rather theatrically, I thought. “I was so glad when spectacles were invented. It gave me the chance to do a spot of business now and again.”

  “Uncle Parker, I think glasses were invented more than six hundred years ago, back in the Middle Ages.”

  He looked toward the ceiling for a moment, then nodded. “That sounds about right. As soon as I heard about this newfangled invention, I went and had a pair made for me. I got this last pair—wherever they’ve gotten themselves off to—while I was visiting the World’s Fair in St. Louis in your world.”

  “More than eighty years ago?”

  “Why, yes, I suppose it was. My, how time flies. I’m due for a new pair, but I never seem to find the time.”

  We were getting way off track, drifting farther off into Never-Never Land. “Mom said you called Dad for help. What kind of help?”

  “Well, there was a job of work to be done, the kind of to-do your father has handled for us for the last twenty-odd years. He wasn’t much older than you are now the first time he came to Varay.” Parthet licked his lips. “This will be thirsty work. Would you care for a flagon of wine with me?” I was beginning to see where Mom’s discursive notes came from.

  “I’d prefer beer if you’ve got it,” I said.

  “Ah, me, so would I, but I don’t have any to hand, and it would take time to fetch some in.”

  Then I remembered. “I have some with me.” I stripped off my pack—which shows how distracted I had been; all that time and I still had it on—and took out two bottles. Good thing I’d fallen forward in the cave. None of my bottles had broken. “It’s not as cold as it could be, but I think it’ll do.” I handed one bottle to Parthet.

  “It will indeed.” He held the bottle close to his eyes. “Did you remember to fetch along an opener?”

  “Don’t need one. Just twist the cap.” I demonstrated with mine and he managed his.

  “Now, that’s convenient.” He almost drowned the last word by pouring beer all over it. He took a long swallow, smacked his lips, and held the bottle close to his eyes again. The afternoon was getting late and the inside of the cottage was getting darker by the minute. It hardly mattered that Uncle Parthet was more than half blind and I had perfect eyesight. Neither of us could see much.

  “The doorways are a bit of family magic,” Parthet said after a second pull on his Michelob. I wasn’t sure if that was a non sequitur or a good place to begin whatever he had to tell me. “Been in the family for ages.” He paused for a moment.

  “I guess this story really starts when I went looking for a Hero, two, maybe three years before you were born. Your mother had been kidnapped by the Etevar of Dorthin, the neighboring kingdom. To the east. Her grandfather, your great-grandfather Pregel, is King of Varay. The Etevar wanted to marry his son to your mother to unite the two kingdoms. King Pregel didn’t want any part of the union on general principles, and he couldn’t stand the old Etevar anyway, so he absolutely refused—rather less than diplomatically, not that diplomacy would have mattered. That’s why the Etevar kidnapped your mother, to force the marriage, but Pregel still refused to countenance the union. We had to rescue your mother, but open war wasn’t considered a smart response. While Dorthin wasn’t strong enough to invade and conquer us as we were, if we invaded Dorthin to try to rescue Avedell, our losses might easily have weakened us enough to make us vulnerable. And my magic wasn’t enough, even though I did have my glasses then. The Etevar’s wizard was a tad bit better than me even when I was at my best. I counseled that we find ourselves a Hero. That’s the traditional method. It took a bit of doing—it always does—but we ended up with your father. He had no family of his own and he had most of the necessary skills after serving in Vietnam.”

  Parthet fell quiet then. His face was lost in the shadows. Maybe that’s where his mind was too—not to mention mine. I brought out my last two beers and we started on them. After a couple of minutes, Parthet resumed his tale.

  “How your father rescued your mother and gave the old Etevar and his wizard their just
reward is too long a story to tell just now. And modesty forbids me telling my own part in that adventure. For a time afterward, your father lived here in Varay. He married Avedell. They didn’t go to your world until Avedell was expecting you. Since then, Carl has returned whenever we’ve needed our Hero. Varay is generally a peaceful little kingdom, but we have need for a Hero more often than you might imagine. That’s the way of things here.”

  “What about this time?” I asked.

  “The young Etevar—oh, not so young as you, lad, more your father’s age—has been causing trouble, more than usual. He’s always looking for ways to avenge his father’s death. His army took a small castle on the march between our lands, a fief belonging to a Varayan knight, a distant cousin of yours, I believe. His Majesty was angry, but there were other complications, a dispute with the elflord on our nothern border. Our army, such as it is, is fully occupied with that. Since it didn’t appear that the Etevar would leave much of a garrison to hold Castle Thyme, His Majesty thought that your father might be able to handle the incident with such modest help as we could give.”

  I sat there and tried to soak it all in. No matter how it sounded, I had to accept everything as real until proved otherwise. Sure, it all sounded like the premise for an arcade game, but just maybe we weren’t all crazy. I wasn’t sure about this Hero jazz, but it would explain all of Dad’s scars, and the way new ones appeared now and then. While I was on my James Bond kick, I thought Dad was a spy, off on dangerous missions with beautiful lady spies.

  “What did Mother think she could do?” I asked.

  Parthet chuckled. “Well, she’s not all that helpless, lad. She’s really deadly with a bow. I’ve seen her skewer a hot dog—the long way—from fifty yards. And she does control a wee bit of magic of her own. Nothing major, you understand, but a little, a little.”

  “So what do I do?”

  “I’m not sure.” He shook his head a couple of times. “If your father and mother didn’t succeed, there may be more to this than I thought. There may be wizardry involved.”

  “It’s getting dark,” I said, since Parthet didn’t seem to have noticed. “You have any candles or anything?” The shadows were so deep that I could do no more than make out Parthet’s outline.

  “There’s a lamp, if there’s any fuel left. Hold on, I’ll try to find it.” He got up and went to the end of the fireplace, right to the lantern. He shook it gently and brought it back. “There seems to be a bit of kerosene left.” When the light came on, I was surprised to see that it was a Coleman lantern, not some primitive local thingie.

  “Ah, yes, that is better.” Parthet sat across from me again. “Now, where were we?”

  “You said there might be wizardry involved.”

  “Yes, certainly there might be. A wizard with better eyesight than mine. You may have a touch of the gift yourself, lad, like your mother. Your father was going to bring you around so I could make some tests. Should have done years ago, but your parents didn’t want to expose you to any of this until you grew up.”

  “So I gather. Still, I have to do something. I guess that means I have to go to this castle and see if I can find them.”

  “I suppose you do, lad.” He steepled his fingers and rested his chin on them. “And I suppose I need to go along. Not that I’ll be much use. I can’t even see well enough to conjure up a meal in the field.”

  “Then we’ll do it the old-fashioned way,” I said, glad to have any company at all. I was feeling way out of my depth. “There is game around, isn’t there?”

  “Plenty of game and fish, but it takes so long that way.”

  “Well, you have any idea where you might have lost your glasses?”

  “I expect they’re around here somewhere. Perhaps a packrat grabbed them.”

  “Wonderful,” I mumbled under my breath. Louder: “Maybe I can find them. I’ve got a good flashlight and I can see well enough.” I didn’t give him much chance to answer. I just got busy. The cottage was so small that I knew it wouldn’t take long to give it the once-over, even if I had to do it two or three times.

  “How long’s it been?” I asked.

  “I’m not rightly sure. Maybe a month or two.”

  “How do you get by?”

  “Oh, I know where ‘most everything I need is at. And I’m truly not here all that much.”

  I only needed ten minutes to find the glasses, but finding them at all was a fluke. I happened to glance up at the ceiling at the right place. The glasses were stuck in the thatch over the front door. The halogen beam of my flashlight glinted off a lens. The glasses were absolutely cruddy and the left lens was badly starred. I cleaned them as well as I could, then handed them to Uncle Parthet.

  “How in the world did they get up there?” he asked as he slipped the wires over his ears.

  “Somebody had to put them there, and I doubt it was your packrat.”

  “Much better.” He looked at me—still squinting.

  “How much difference do those glasses really make?” I asked.

  “Oh, worlds, worlds. I still couldn’t read anything but very large letters, but oh, this is so much better.” He came right over to me. “You look more and more like your mother, lad—the jaw line, the nose, the—”

  “When do we leave?” I asked, cutting off the comparisons.

  “First thing in the morning. No good starting out this time of the day.”

  I nodded. That made sense. Anyway, I was ready for sleep. I took the thermal blanket from my pack and looked for an area light on the cobwebs to spread it.

  “Just one more question for now,” I said. “Where’s the john?” That beer was screaming to get out.

  3

  Pregel

  I curled up in the back corner, next to the fireplace, and wrapped my blanket around me. I hoped that Uncle Parker’s packrat wouldn’t get too chummy. It had been a long day full of more shocks and surprises than any day has had a right to. Still, I got to sleep without much trouble, and that’s rare enough for me even when things are normal. It might be dramatic to say that I had a bunch of weird or frightening dreams, but if I did, I slept right through them and didn’t recall a one. What did wake me was a nasty cramp in my left leg. I woke with a painful jerk as the muscles knotted up, then sat up and massaged the leg. It was three in the morning by my watch, but that was Louisville time. Judging from the difference in sunsets, it was probably midnight or one in the morning in Varay, wherever Varay was.

  Sitting in the dark rubbing my leg gave me time to do some thinking without getting sidetracked. My parents were missing and maybe in great danger. My Uncle Parker—actually my mother’s Uncle Parthet—claimed to have been wearing, or at least needing, glasses for more than six centuries. He also claimed to be a half-baked wizard. What was worse, I was starting to accept the whole damn fairy tale: those doors in our cellar, the lizards, this place that wasn’t Kentucky. Having survived a crazy childhood and adolescence helped, I guess. All the survival rigmarole Dad insisted on made sense if he was leading up toward making me assistant Hero—or whatever he planned to spring on me for my twenty-first birthday. And it did fit in with a lot of the things I had always written off as testaments to Dad’s general nuttiness.

  The difficulty with accepting the major premise was that I also had to accept the minor premise, the likelihood that my parents were in mortal danger, or worse. It took forever to get back to sleep. I still didn’t dream, but I woke several times before I heard Parthet stirring in the other room. When he came out and lit the Coleman lantern, I was up and folding my blanket.

  “Ah, good lad, you’re an early riser.” He peered at me more or less through his glasses.

  “Not when I can help it,” I said. “When I can get away with it, I like to sleep till a more civilized hour, like noon.”

  Parthet clucked over that. “Still, you’re up early today, and that’s what matters. We can get an early start.”

  “We are going to wait for sunup, aren’t we
?” I rubbed at my leg again. It was still a little tender.

  “Hmmm. I guess that would simplify matters.”

  “Do we have time for a little breakfast?” It had been a long time since those peanut butter sandwiches.

  “We don’t want to spoil our appetites, do we, lad? We’ll have a fine meal when we get to Pregel’s castle, as much as you can possibly eat.”

  “I thought we were going to this border castle, the one that was captured by the whoozis.”

  “By the Etevar of Dorthin.” Parthet nodded. “Of course we’re going there. First, however, we must drop by the palace to see if they have any news. And for a good meal.” It sounded as though the meal was the more important reason. “I take most of my meals there.”

  “So how far is it from here to the king’s place?”

  “How far?” He stopped bustling around and stared at me. “Why, I think it’s about twenty miles. I’ve never paid much attention. Why?”

  Twenty miles before breakfast? I stifled my groan. “I was just wondering how far we had to hike on empty stomachs.”

  Parthet’s mouth dropped open. “Hike? You mean as in walk?” A dazed sound. “Who said anything about walking?” He seemed to gather his thoughts then. “Oh.” He blinked several times. “I forgot. You’re new to this. We won’t walk at all. We’ll just pop straight through. The doorway there.” He pointed at his bedroom door.

  I felt foolish, and then I felt even more foolish for feeling foolish. I wasn’t used to thinking in terms of magic doors to anywhere. I wasn’t used to not having the faintest idea what was going on. I’m not stupid, but I certainly felt that way then.

  “There’ll be a grand meal awaiting when we get there,” Parthet said. “Always a fine table in the hall of Pregel. He sets great store by it.” So, obviously, did Parthet.

  A good meal close at hand made me feel better. I looked at the doorway. The silver tracing was almost as tarnished as on the doorway in the cave. Then I checked the front door and saw tracing there too.