The Hero of Varay Read Online Free PDF Page A

shouting for help.
    I didn’t pay much attention to the step-by-step drag or my reception in the castle. Things got kind of dreamy for me, but I’m sure that I was still at least partly conscious. Even at the time, I wasn’t worried about dying. I didn’t have an instant’s doubt about my eventual recovery—once I managed to forget the elf’s message. After all, I didn’t die on the spot, and the elf did. I had been through worse. I had certainly felt worse. I didn’t see Vara or any of the other members of the congregation of Heroes that had haunted me before and during the Battle of Thyme. Parthet had said that it was all nonsense, but I still couldn’t write off my experiences to imagination.
    I recall seeing Baron Kardeen looking anxiously at me, and I felt surprise that we were already back at the castle. I thought to smile, to reassure the chamberlain, but I don’t know if the thought reached my face.
    There was some kind of delay then. We didn’t pop straight through to Louisville. Lesh got me stretched out on a bench and sat by my head, holding on to make sure I didn’t roll off. Parthet and Kardeen conferred for a moment, off to the side, out of earshot for me in the shape I was in. Parthet examined the dead elf’s sword closely and then shook his head. He picked the elf’s head up and shook it. He set the head on a small table, facing him, and touched his rings to the elf’s temples.
    There was some chanting.
    “Talk to me, you bastard,” Parthet said.
    “I can’t,” the head replied—quite clearly.
    “If you don’t, we’ll bury you in chicken shit.”
    I guess that was some sort of ultimate threat to make to a dead elf warrior. His eyes opened wide and his face grew a look of supreme terror.
    “You wouldn’t!”
    “In a second, with the greatest glee,” Parthet assured him. “Tell me, was your blade poisoned?”
    “I am the son of Xayber! I have no need of poisons.”
    Parthet spit in his eye. “You ain’t the hot shit you thought you were, or you’d still have a body beneath your wagging chin.”
    “Enough,” Baron Kardeen said softly. I was thinking the same thing, but my mouth was still on strike. I had never seen Uncle Parthet behave so crudely.
    “For now,” Parthet said, sighing. “But fill a crock with the strongest whiskey you can locate and put this head in it. We may need to talk to him again later. It depends on how Gil fares in the hospital. If there was more than steel to his blade, we may have to question him again.”
    “We’ll keep him available,” Kardeen said. His voice sounded oddly strained, taut .
    Maybe I was the only one shocked by the head of a dead man, or dead elf, talking. He had no lungs to push air through a larynx. In fact, I doubted very much that he had a larynx left. Dragon’s Death had caught him extremely high in the throat. I had a lot of questions that I wanted to ask, but I couldn’t ask them. I had all the parts the elf was missing, but he could talk and I couldn’t. What’s fair about that?
    But then they started moving me again. I could no more move on my own than that elf could. We went through a doorway to Louisville and woke Mother. She got her chance to fuss over me, but she didn’t take long at it. She knew enough about medicine to know that my wound was out of her league. She got clothes on and led the way to the garage. They stretched me out in the back of her Dodge van. We all went to the hospital. Mother didn’t bother calling an ambulance. I doubt that she even considered it. She preferred to do the driving—like a maniac, but Mother always drives that way. I was too numb to cringe, but I was still conscious enough to worry about her driving.
    My first hours in the hospital are a blank. After an initial examination, x-rays, and other tests, they decided that I had to have immediate surgery, and for that, they turned out my lights. I have a feeling that they were surprised by how difficult it was to put me under, and