Joy and I took Aaron to Castle Cayenne with us. Even if I hadn't been concerned about what Parthet might do if left to his temptations, I think I would have taken Aaron with me. Since I had given my name to the people at the hospital, I was responsible for Aaron's well-being until I got him home, and we would be leaving very early in the morning.
Aaron's tour of Basil had given him plenty to get excited about. He managed to suppress any emotion about the loss of his parents for the moment, and the instantaneous teleportation to Varay didn't seem to bother him at all. Poof was explanation enough for him. It was getting quite late when we took the doorway to Cayenne, and I figured that Aaron would be ready to sleep soon. I sent Timon to put together a bedtime snack for both of them, and to find a place for our guest to sleep.
"It's going to be a short night for us, I'm afraid," I told Joy when we were finally alone in my Cayenne bedroom. "With the time difference between here and Chicago… I want to get Aaron to Joliet as early as possible. The sooner we get him turned over to the people at the hospital, the better."
Joy sat on the bed and bounced a couple of times, checking to see how comfortable the mattress was. "I suppose that means that you're just going to want to sleep tonight."
I gave her my best Groucho Marx leer and said, "I don't know about that."
"Your stitches!" Joy said, as if she had just remembered that I had gone through an operation less than four days before.
"All the more reason to find out." I had almost forgotten myself. I hadn't felt a twinge in hours-really, not since hearing about the Coral Lady. Worrying about that hadn't given me any time to think about my wound.
"We can always catch a nap after we get back in the morning," I told Joy. I had already stripped off my weapons. "An hour to drive to Joliet, an hour back. With any luck at all we can be in and out of the hospital in fifteen minutes."
"You didn't ask Aaron if he has any other relatives around."
"I know. I didn't want to start him thinking about home yet. He might wonder about his grandmother, and I don't want to be the one to tell him about her. Especially not tonight."
Joy nodded. Then she was quiet for a moment before she said, "All I need now is a hot bath."
"It's kind of late for hot water here. We can both catch a shower in Chicago in the morning."
"Primitive," Joy said.
"Yep, and so am I."
"I hope so," Joy said, starting to undress.
I extinguished the two oil lamps in the bedroom. There was a torch burning out in the hall by the stairs, and the door has a narrow transom above it, so the bedroom wasn't totally dark. We finished stripping in silence and met at the center of the seven-foot-wide bed.
Joy's mouth was warm and active. Her nipples were peaked and hard when we came together. We had been without each other for a long time. One fix wasn't enough for either of us, even though we knew that it was going to be a short night.
After we finished our second go of the night, we lay close together under the big feather comforter, facing each other, tangled together. Joy's head was on my left arm. Our bodies touched here and there, though Joy had carefully shifted away when she happened to brush against the bandage across the cut on my abdomen. The stitches hadn't interfered at all, and there had been no pain from the wound. A Hero of Varay heals quickly, especially when he gets the chance to heal in peace without adding new injuries to old.
While Joy's breathing slowed and steadied as she slid toward the rhythms of sleep, I continued to caress her softly with my free hand, letting my fingers glide lightly over her side and around her buttock. I could see her smile in the faint light. Half asleep, she snuggled closer to me. My hand came to rest on her hip, and I slept too.
I woke because I had to go to the bathroom. My bladder felt ready to burst. I staggered naked to the John and took care of business. It was chilly. Nights can be like that even in the middle of a Varayan summer. The luminous bands on the wind-up clock in the bedroom said that it was nearly three o'clock, so it was almost six in Chicago-too late for me to go back to bed and hope for more sleep.
Joy was snoring lightly. I put on a bathrobe and slippers and left Joy to sleep a little longer while I climbed up to the battlements to look around.
I've always loved castles. When I was just a little kid-I couldn't have been more than five or six that Christmas-my parents, aka Santa Claus, gave me a toy castle with a bunch of plastic knights and so forth. The last time I looked, that castle, somewhat battered and beaten, with many of the plastic men missing, was still in the basement back in Louisville, packed away in a box with a lot of other toys and games that I had outgrown or forgotten along the way. But there had been other castles, even before I learned about Varay-a lamp with a square wooden tower and drawbridge, a sandstone sculpture, jigsaw puzzles, calendars, posters, and what-have-you. Now, I realize that my affection for castles was carefully cultivated by my parents, like the "combat" sports that Dad involved me in from the time I was six years old. Up to the time that I went off to college, there was a book on the shelf in my room that showed how castles were built, by someone named Macauley or something like that. And one autumn, when I was nine or ten, I even got the chance to build a castle of my own in the backyard. Dad had ordered a truckload of concrete blocks. I forget what he had planned to build, a shed or workshop, something like that. But then he came home badly hurt after one of his "business trips" and announced that he would have to put off his construction until the next spring. There wouldn't be enough time to finish it before winter brought snow and ice to Louisville. I asked if I could build a castle until then and he said yes, so I had my very own castle for nearly five months. I moved and lifted those concrete blocks all by myself, spending as much time as I could building and then playing in my castle. It was almost ten feet high, and sturdy enough for kids to play on, with plywood floors supported by two-by-fours so we could get up to the "battlements." For almost five months, that castle made me the king of the neighborhood.
I enjoyed standing on the battlements of Cayenne or Basil alone, day or night. It wasn't just that I was still a kid inside, though that is probably part of the answer. The surroundings are perfect for thinking, for meditating, even for brooding. That night, I was uneasy about a lot of things. The nuking of the Coral Lady was still a frightening topic. No nuclear weapon had been used against people anywhere in the world since the end of World War Two. That wasn't just before I was born, it was before my father was born, if only by a few weeks. Then there was Aaron's mysterious appearance to ponder, Parthet's uncommon anger over being forced to turn him loose, and his prediction that things would get worse in a hurry. Even the talking head of the dead elf would be enough to haunt anyone's night, awake or asleep.
I hadn't forgotten the dead elf.
Soon, very soon, I was going to have to broach that issue back at Castle Basil. We had to do something permanent with the dead elf. Maybe Uncle Parthet thought he had a new toy to play with, keeping the head of the elf in a vat of alcohol, but I wouldn't rest easy until the son of the Elflord of Xayber was put out for the birds, or buried, or something. If the head could talk to Parthet, it could probably also talk to the elflord, his father, and we didn't need a spy of that nature around. Xayber would be after me again soon enough without the head of his dead son urging revenge.
The stars moved overhead, the constellations of the buffer zone-the Cooper, the Warlord, the Twin Horses, others that I didn't recognize right off yet. The groupings of stars were different from any I knew from Earth. I would have been delighted to see at least one familiar constellation, Orion the Hunter, for example, but he didn't hunt the skies over the seven kingdoms.
I started shivering after just a few minutes up on the battlements, and I decided that I wasn't dressed for a long session of brooding. Besides, it was time to wake Joy and Aaron and get started toward Joliet. It had to be near dawn in Illinois.
Joy had rolled over on her side and stopped snoring. I lit one of the oil lamps in the bedroom and started to get dressed before I called her name. She moaned something unintelligible and rolled over again, but she woke instantly the second time I called her. She sat straight up, eyes open wide. I guess she had just remembered where she was.
"It wasn't a dream," were her first words.
I went to her and kissed her before I said, "Varay? No, it's not a dream. And it's time to get up."
She looked at the window. It was still pitch-black outside.
"It's the middle of the night!" she said.
"It is here, almost three-thirty," I said. "But that makes it about six-thirty in Chicago. There's a time difference."
"Where is this place then, Iceland?"
"You've got your zones moving in the wrong direction," I said.
"I don't mean that, I mean the temperature."
"It's not that cold," I said.
"Cold?" She dropped the blanket she had been holding around her. She had goose bumps all over. "It is too that cold." She pulled the blanket back up.
"Time to get dressed, dear," I said, holding back a laugh. "Which suitcase do you need?"
"Both of them."
That figures, I thought. I got the two bags and set them up on the bed close to her. One held underwear, sweaters, and blouses. The other held skirts, slacks and jeans, and two extra pairs of shoes. Joy started to dress warm.
"It's probably hotter than hell in Chicago," I warned as she pulled on a heavy sweater.
"Then I'll change at your apartment. I've still got some things there. I'm worried about freezing before we get there."
"I'll get Aaron," I said, turning away so Joy wouldn't see me grin.
My mention of Aaron slowed Joy down for a moment. "I feel so sorry for him," she said.
"Me too. But we've got to get him back to whatever family he has left before Parthet gets too possessive."
"Is your uncle always like that?"
"That's hard to say." I stopped and stared vaguely at Joy for a moment. "I've never seen him like that before, but 'always' covers something over twelve hundred years in his case."
"You're kidding." Joy came out from under the blanket long enough to slip on panties and blue jeans-quickly, then heavy socks and tennis shoes.
"I don't think so," I said. "He was only admitting to a thousand when I first came here, but one time I caught him talking about Charlemagne's court as though he had actually been there and he admitted it. That takes him back to A.D. 800 or thereabouts, and he claims to have known Merlin and Camelot, so that drags it back even farther."
Joy stared at me, all thought of the cold shoved aside for a bit. "You're serious," she said. She turned to sit on the edge of the bed. "You're really serious."
"I am. Get him talking about history sometime. You'll see."
Joy stood up, raised the sweater to pull the jeans up where they belonged, snapped and zipped, then rearranged the sweater. I wished that we had more time. I would have liked to watch her take everything off again.
"It's part of being a wizard," I said. "They live virtually forever unless something violent happens to them. But the price is sterility-no kids, no way, no how. And Parthet wants to initiate Aaron. I told him that Aaron's too young to make that kind of decision."
"I certainly hope you told him. But… your uncle is really that old?"
"He's probably a lot older than that even." I took a deep breath. There was something I hadn't planned on mentioning to Joy just yet, but… "Down below the cellar of Basil Castle, there is a crypt with the remains of all the kings and heroes of Varay. But there aren't any wizards buried there, not a one. The other tombs go back a couple of thousand years beyond what Parthet admits."
"You think he's been around that long?"
"I don't know. He never gives me a straight answer, and nobody else around here is old enough to remember a time when he didn't look the way he does now. The king is only one hundred and twenty-eight."
"Only?" Joy got up and we shared a too-brief kiss.
"Only. I'll go get Aaron," I said again. "We can have breakfast back in Illinois."
Joy sat on the edge of the bed again to wait until I got Aaron. Aaron was still sleeping, so I just picked him up and carried him down from the sixth floor. Timon woke, but he's always been a light sleeper, afraid I'll want something and he won't hear me call the first time. Aaron didn't make a sound. I needed both hands to open the doorway to Chicago, but Joy held Aaron for the few seconds that took. Aaron was quite a load for her, though.
As soon as we were through the passage, I took Aaron back. He still didn't wake. I laid him on my bed in Chicago. Joy beat me to the bathroom in the master suite, so I went out and used the other bathroom for a quick shower. Joy hadn't come out yet when I finished, so I turned on the television in the living room, volume low, to check out the morning news before we got too far away from the escape hatches to Varay.
The Coral Lady was obviously still the main topic, and the damage done to western Florida. Main topic? It was the only story anyone was talking about. It was the traditional off-season for tourists in Florida, but traditional seasons don't mean as much in Florida as they used to. With the Disney complex not all that far away at Orlando, tourism wasn't nearly as seasonal as it had once been. There were still so many visitors around that it might be weeks before anyone could make an even halfway accurate estimate of onshore casualties. The Air Force had a lot of planes in the air checking radioactivity levels and the direction of drift of the radioactivity. Two full divisions of the Army had been moved to the perimeter of the affected area to deal with refugees, to try to cut down on looting, and generally to try to restore order. Many of the medical people who had gone to Chernobyl a few years before were gathering to help in Florida-except for one doctor who had been on the Coral Lady. Casualties were being airlifted to hospitals as far away as San Antonio and Baltimore for treatment.
The press were getting frustrated at their inability to get camera crews into the area on the ground, and most of their aerial footage had to be shot from a distance as well. But there was finally some tape of the devastation: the missing span of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, the wreckage of the remainder, the ruins and ashes ashore. Fires were still burning out of control around much of the perimeter of Tampa Bay. The "conservative" estimates predicted a minimum of sixty-five hundred dead, fifteen thousand injured or exposed to immediately dangerous levels of radiation, perhaps millions facing long-term health problems as a result, and two and a half million people displaced, either permanently or temporarily. The monetary cost had only the vaguest estimates yet, but they started at fifty billion dollars and climbed to over a trillion.
"That wasn't a dream either," Joy whispered. I hadn't heard her come into the room.
"No, no dream. It's going to take forever to clean up after this one."
Joy put her hands on my shoulders. "This world will never be the same." I think she was talking about the nuclear bomb, but maybe she was thinking about her introduction to Varay too.
"I'm afraid that the Coral Lady won't be the only case like this," I said. "The genie's out of the bottle and we may not be able to get him back in." Like when car bombs become so faddish. "It's a miracle it's taken this long. You remember that A-bomb they found in New York a few years ago?"
"I remember."
"It may have been the same batch of terrorists. Or different people with the same idea. There's tons of uranium and plutonium unaccounted for."
Joy shook her head. "The sooner we get started, the sooner we get back," she said.
I nodded. I was ready to change the subject too.
"I just hope Eddie kept my car going the last three months." Eddie was the day man down in the building's garage. I paid him to run the car a couple of times a week while I was "traveling" to keep the battery charged.
It was still too early for Eddie to be on duty, but my LeBaron started right off, so I knew that he had been doing his job. The odometer reading hadn't changed, but the low-fuel light started blinking as soon as I turned the key in the ignition. Aaron finally woke up while I was backing out of my parking space.
"Where are we?" he asked, his voice still sleepy.
"We're in Chicago, Aaron," I said. "We're on our way to Joliet now."
"I'm going home?" I couldn't tell what he was feeling, disappointment, sadness, or a mixture of both.
"Yes, you're going home," I said, and I had to be careful to keep any emotion out of my voice. But Aaron curled up as best he could under the seat belt in the backseat and he went to sleep again.
We had got an early enough start to stay ahead of the worst of the rush-hour traffic downtown. I took Lake Shore Drive down to the Stevenson Expressway and got on that for the straight run out to Joliet. Traffic never got completely insane that morning, and even the inbound traffic across the median seemed a lot lighter than usual. I suspected that a lot of people had decided that it was a good day to play hooky from work, to keep up with the latest news… or just in case there was any more trouble like the bombing in Florida.
Joy found Silver Cross Hospital marked on the map in my glove compartment, but I still had to stop and ask directions when we got to Joliet. The main entrance to the hospital was just opening up as we arrived.
Aaron had slept the whole way out. I had to wake him when we reached the hospital. I didn't want to carry him inside and maybe cause misunderstandings.
I hated every second of the hospital ordeal. A volunteer at the front desk directed us to Family Services. There were people waiting for us there-hospital people, a police officer, and a couple who introduced themselves as Aaron's aunt and uncle. Aaron went to them and started carrying on about the wonderful things that had happened to him, while it was all the aunt and uncle could manage to keep from bawling from their grief and their anxiety over Aaron. The uncle thanked me for bringing Aaron in and for taking care of him. When he asked where we had found him, I repeated the story I had told on the telephone. The cop stopped frowning. I was worried that he would ask a lot of uncomfortable official questions, but he started listening to Aaron's tale of knights and castles and a funny old wizard and he forgot all about Joy and me. We were able to slip away like the Lone Ranger and Tonto, and we got out of the hospital almost as quickly as I had hoped to.
Once we were out of the parking lot and on our way back to the Interstate, I breathed a lot easier.
"They'll assume that his story is just a reaction to the shock of losing his parents," I said. "What else could they think?" When Joy didn't reply, I looked her way. She was just staring straight forward. Tears were running down her cheek.
"He'll be okay, Joy. He'll do fine."
She nodded a little at that, but she still didn't speak, so I turned on the radio and we listened to the still-continuous coverage of the Coral Lady disaster.
The drive back to Chicago went a little slower than the ride out, but traffic still wasn't up to its usual rush-hour madness. Joy and I said virtually nothing the entire drive. She wasn't quite up to breakfast yet, so we went straight back to my place. Food could wait a little while. We pulled into the garage under my apartment building before nine-thirty.
In the elevator going up to thirty-eight, Joy clung to me and I held her. She still wasn't talking.
"We've still got time to make breakfast at Castle Basil," I said when we got inside the apartment. She just nodded.
Before we left for Varay, I went through the place twice, making sure that I didn't leave anything turned on, making sure that I wasn't forgetting anything I might really want in Varay. It was almost as if I was leaving the place for good. That realization hit me, and I stopped abruptly in the living room. I forced myself to look around the room, almost casually. I did feel as though I might never see the apartment again, even though it was only a doorway away from Cayenne, Basil, or Louisville. I didn't say anything about the feeling to Joy, but it made me very uneasy. It wasn't exactly like a warning from my danger sense, but after the Coral Lady, I didn't need much to set me on edge.
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 ex-tended 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.
Baron Resler was still in charge at Arrowroot. He was civil but not overly warm. But then, that was his normal style. Baron Hambert ran things at Coriander. He was a lot warmer, and he made a point of telling Joy that he owed his barony to me. I cut him off when I thought he was about to start telling her about the Battle of Thyme. I didn't want to lay that story on Joy yet.
Although proximity had nothing to do with the speed of using the magic doorways, we went from Coriander over to Carsol, the capital of Dorthin, to talk with Dieth. He was as ebullient as ever, carrying on about the work of holding that kingdom together. It was an adventure rather than a pain in the butt to him. I got Joy out of Carsol before Dieth could get too deep in details as well.
Castle Thyme was being renovated, as were the other two small castles to the south of it. I had insisted on that. Even though Dorthin was no longer a threat, I knew we couldn't count on that always being the case. One of the first things I had insisted on after the Battle of Thyme was that we had to have doorways into all of the border castles, ways to avoid the sort of ambush that had cost my father his life.
Then we hopped over to the western border. Varay hadn't had trouble over there for ages. Castle Curry, the major fortress on our border with Belorz, was as peaceful as ever. Baron Veter was still a minor, only a couple of years older than Aaron. The castellan was his guardian, Sir Compil, an elderly knight who liked to tell me stories about the grandparents I had never known. They had died back in what would be the early 1940s in the other world. When World War Two had our world in an uproar, Fairy and the buffer zone were in similar chaos. Varay had lost four Heroes in as many years.
All in all, it was a pretty good tour. No one had any hard evidence of really weird happenings, although you can always get a few strange tales in a place like Varay. There were no indications of invasion from any of our neighbors. There were rumors, but there are always rumors. At both Arrowroot and Coriander, the word was that the Elflord of Xayber was on the verge of a successful end to his civil war, perhaps within weeks or even days of overthrowing the Elfking and taking his place… or at least obtaining a favorable truce that would leave him free to pursue "other interests," like getting even with me. At Carsol, Duke Dieth mentioned a rumor that the blind wizard of the late Etevar of Dorthin was now working in Mauroc, the kingdom east of Dorthin, the farthest east of the seven kingdoms. The rumor was that the wizard had somehow regained at least partial use of his eyes. Something was plainly going on in Mauroc. There were refugees fleeing west, crossing Dorthin to settle in Varay or to go even farther west.
If the Elflord of Xayber was about to finish his war inside Fairy, he would certainly look south at Varay, particularly since his son was there. And trouble in Mauroc could easily spill westward, particularly if Parthet's apprehensions were justified. I would have to discuss both sets of rumors with Kardeen and Parthet, but I decided that it could wait until the next morning. This was my wedding day, after all. Joy and I stopped back at Castle Basil just long enough to collect Timon and our two new pages, boys named Jaffa and Rodi.
I wasn't too interested in new pages at the moment, or in the supper we rushed through when we got back to Cayenne. As soon as we could, Joy and I left everyone in the great hall and retired upstairs to our bedroom.
It was a beautiful night, all either of us could have asked for. It didn't matter that we were off in something like Never-Never Land for real. That night was our own fairy tale.
But we were wakened at dawn by Uncle Parthet pounding on the bedroom door. And by his screaming. I pulled on a robe and went to the door, ready to commit mayhem. I opened the door and Parthet almost fell into the bedroom.
"The kitchen at Basil is full of dragon eggs!" he shouted.