The Hero King Read Online Free PDF Page A

Cayenne.
    Castle Cayenne had been my home for more than three years, but it still didn’t have all the emotional connotations of home . It was part of my home, but with the magical doorways, home was an entire complex—Castle Cayenne, Castle Basil, my condo in Chicago, and the house in Louisville. My parents’ house in Louisville remained part of the construct mostly on the strength of memory and childhood ties. I rarely went there except when I knew that Mother was in Varay. During the years between the defeat and death of the Etevar of Dorthin and the nuking of the Coral Lady , I had become accustomed to the double life I was leading, and even enjoyed it most of the time. I could understand the way my father had always seemed to enjoy life so fully while I was growing up … if not the way he and mother had concealed Varay and my heritage from me.
    I enjoyed the life, and sometimes I got completely hysterical just thinking about it. I mean, in Chicago, I played the part of the rich young bachelor in search of the good life, good times, and the perfect party. But by simply stepping through a secret doorway, I suddenly became the Hero of Varay, Prince Gil of Varay, complete with costumes, fancy weapons, and a complete mythos. I was like Batman/Bruce Wayne with his Bat Cave, Superman/Clark Kent with his Fortress of Solitude. And sometimes I just got carried away with how ridiculous the entire concept was. At times I reached a point where I couldn’t take either world completely seriously. I would hear people pooh-poohing magic, or fantasy literature, or whatnot, and I’d think how wrong they were, and how scared they would be if I hauled them off through a doorway into Varay and left them to find out for themselves. And in Varay, I’d catch sight of myself in a mirror—all duded up in my Hero garb with two long swords over my shoulders, maybe with bow, chain-mail shirt, and Cubs cap, and it would be all I could do to keep from collapsing on the floor in laughter. “Put that in your computer,” I’d tell myself.
    But death could be a sobering reality in either world. My first time in Varay, I had buried my father and watched a supposedly immortal elf warrior die fighting a dragon. I had seen men and trolls die—been the agent of death in many cases. I had killed and come close to dying myself. Killing does more to change you than the other does. It’s something you can never forget, never get away from. It becomes a permanent part of you.
    I think that’s why I visited the crypt below Castle Basil so often. It gave me the sense of reality that I so desperately needed if I wanted to avoid slipping off into total insanity.
    It’s also why I occasionally went out and got stinking drunk in the real world, where it’s not nearly as hard to do as it is in the buffer zone. Lesh and I would hit a bar, or a series of bars, and drink as fast as we did in Varay, where the magic of the seven kingdoms converted alcohol to sugar almost as fast as anyone could drink. Alcohol meant calories, just as food did, and the overall magic that maintained the buffer zone between Fairy and the mortal world would use any calories it could get.
    Even wasting an old man away to a living ghost to get them.
    Sometimes I think too much. I was ready for another heavy drunk, but I knew I couldn’t spare the time.
        Joy and I had one of those rousing greetings like those they used to show in the war movies: the ship docks in the States and the heroes go down to the pier and their wives or girlfriends are there to greet them—the big hugs, the whirling around, the kisses that are so passionate that you wonder that they don’t lead to more frantic action right there in public.
    Home is the sailor, home from the sea.
And the hunter home from the hill.
    Our marriage was still new enough that Joy and I both had the same first impulse, to head for the bedroom and finish the reunion in the proper manner, but we had to put that on hold for a