My Hero by Tom Holt Read Free Book Online Page A

drawbacks, principally the disorientation effect when a hero comes off duty. It is disconcerting and often humiliating to come home after a day of strangling dragons with your bare hands to find you can’t get the lid off the pickled onion jar.
    Regalian’s main problem was with doors. His character in the trilogy was three inches shorter than him, with the result that he was forever nutting himself on low door-frames.
    A rather more insidious side-effect was the severe personality crises he tended to suffer when he was off work for more than forty-eight hours. The longer he was out of
character, the more his own submerged personality tried to reassert itself; but since he was no longer entirely sure what it was, this caused various problems which he usually resolved by staying in bed with the radio on.
    Jane’s four-day book-signing tour was, therefore, something of a trial for him - a cross between ice-cold turkey and a fortnight in a decompression chamber. By the end of the second day, his landlady had forced him to switch the radio off, he wasn’t really convinced he knew where he was, and he felt an unaccountable craving at the back of his mind to telephone someone called Valerie and explain that the whole thing with the budgerigar had been nothing but a silly misunderstanding. It was accordingly a relief when his bleeper went, indicating an urgent message from his Creator.
    Even so, the decencies have to be observed.
    â€˜This had better be bloody important,’ he snarled into the telephone. ‘Disturbing me on my day off. Aren’t you supposed to be in Stockport?’
    â€˜I am in Stockport,’ Jane’s voice replied defensively. Because of the trans-dimensional shift and its peculiar effect on telephone signals, Jane’s voice had an echo on it like God saying, Testing, one-two-three, can you hear me at the back there? ‘Look, I need your help, something odd’s come up.’
    The phrase something odd , magnified, echoed and distorted by being shoved backwards through the fabric of reality, can be very disconcerting indeed. Regalian raised an eyebrow and put his hand on his left temple to stop his head reverberating.
    â€˜Could you,’ he asked pleasantly, ‘keep your voice down?’
    â€˜Sorry. Really, I hate to bother you, but this could be rather important.’
    â€˜Fire away.’

    â€˜Right, it’s like this. There’s - oh nuts, my money’s run out. Could you call me back on 0167—’
    The line went dead.
    Regalian frowned. Jane was, by and large, a reasonably considerate author, and it was very unusual indeed for her to call her characters at home - probably, so the consensus ran, because she was sick to the teeth with them during working hours anyway. Rather important in this context could be anything from nuclear war to a firm offer for the film rights. He needed to know more.
    Five minutes later, the phone hadn’t rung again, and Regalian decided it was time to show a little initiative. Here again, the dislocation effect took its toll. Regalian the hero had more initiative than a busload of management trainees on an encounter weekend, and knew he’d think of something. The other Regalian scratched his head and wondered precisely what something might turn out to be.
    Let’s think this through. What would I do in this situation?
    Well. I’d know she was in Stockport.
    Concentrate. I’d ride up into the hills, probably in the middle of the night during the worst electric storm in living memory, and consult some old crone who’d summon up spirits of the dead, and they’d say where she was. Piece of duff.
    Regalian had been Regalian longer than it’s safe to be anybody, but even he had the notion that real life isn’t quite like that.
    The part of him which wasn’t Regalian whispered, Phone the publishers .
    So he did. ‘Publicity department, please,’ he said. ‘Quick as you