Deathstalker 07 - Deathstalker Return

Grendels… People aren't supposed to be able to do things like that..."
    "It's not real," said Rose. "It can't be. Just stories, grown in the telling. Owen was a great warrior, and that's enough. It's all anyone needs."
    "It's legend," Lewis said slowly. "But if we doubt this telling of the story, can we trust the official legends either? At least these people actually knew Owen and Hazel. Moon's still here, still alive. But… I saw Owen and Hazel, Jack Random and Ruby Journey. Saw the real people, in contemporary records. Shub showed them to me, and the Dust Plains of Memory. Real people… stirring, moving, incredibly impressive people, but not… this. Not fairy tales."
    "Does it matter?" said Brett.
    "Of course," said Lewis. "It's everything. Because only a legend has any chance of stopping the Terror when it comes."
    They all stood together and thought about that for a while. Lewis turned off the display screen, and put the data crystal back in its case on the shelf. He couldn't afford doubts like this. He had to be strong, just as Owen had to be what he was believed to be—or the Empire was doomed.
    "Come on, Lewis," said Jesamme. "Let's get out of here."
    "He went through the Madness Maze," said Lewis. "He came out changed. More than human. Everyone said so. You all saw what Carrion could do. And Captain Silence. The stories have to be true… because if they aren't, then Owen is dead and he isn't coming back and our quest is useless."
    "Let's go," said Jesamine. "We'll talk to Moon. He can tell us the truth… whatever it is."
    "Moon wanted us to come here," said Lewis. "To see this, this shrine, and what it contains. Why?"
    "Perhaps he wanted us to know the truth, at last," said Jesamine. "To let us see what Owen could do, so that we'd have the confidence, and the faith, to continue on our quest."
    "Yeah, right," said Brett.
    "Shut up, Brett."
    "I don't know what to believe anymore," said Lewis. "So many things and people I believed in turned out to be not what I thought them to be. Even me. How can I believe in something like this?"
    "Because he was a Deathstalker," said Jesamine. "And so are you."
    Outside the mission, Hellen Adair was waiting for them. She didn't ask any questions, and none of them felt like saying anything, so they walked back to the boundary of the city in silence. They made one stop along the way. Lewis insisted on being allowed to see the city cemetery, where the old leper colonists were buried. There was one grave he needed to see. He found it easily enough. Just a simple grave, and a simple headstone, bearing the single name Vaughn. It looked no different from any of the hundreds of other graves. He checked with the cemetery custodian, who looked up the old records, and confirmed that there really was a body in the grave. Lewis thanked the man, and went back to look at the grave again, while his companions waited more or less patiently at the gates to the cemetery.
    Vaughn was dead, long dead. So who had come to Lewis atDouglas 's Coronation, to give him Owen's ring? A ghost? Once, Lewis would have said he didn't believe in such things, but Captain Silence's death had been widely reported, and still he came to help fight the good fight, on Logres and Unseeli. If that really was John Silence.
    You had to have faith, Lewis decided finally. In the end, it all comes down to faith. To have faith in the things that matter. To be a Deathstalker.
    Hellen Adair took them to the edge of the city and pointed them on their way. No one else was there to see them off. Lewis checked the directions carefully against his internal compass, and quickly calculated the distance to be just under a mile. Hellen Adair made it clear she had no intention of going with them.
    This was their pilgrimage. Lewis and his companions said good-bye, and thanks, with varying amounts of sincerity, and set off into the crimson jungle again.
    The going was easier this time. Someone had spoken with the Red Brain, and it had spoken with its separate parts. Although there was no easing of general aggression in the jungle as a whole, somehow the individual plants swept back out of the party's way, forming an open trail to take them to Tobias Moon.
    At first, Lewis had thought Brett was up to his old tricks again, but one look at the con man's uneasy face was enough to correct that impression. Brett didn't approve of other people pulling his own tricks on him.
    It was a steady, much less strenuous march this time, and they