C. Dale Brittain (23 page)

The way seemed much longer in the dark and on foot than it had in daylight and on horseback.
 
The moon was well into the western sky by the time they topped the escarpment to see the lake’s surface calm before them, reflecting stars.

As she picked her way along the damp shore the calls of the frogs grew silent, and there were splashes as they leapt from shore to water, but behind her their song began again.
 
The Mirror-seer’s house was a black, indistinct shape.

She stood hesitating on the dock before it, realizing he must be asleep, wondering if he could see anything with his mirrors in the dark.
 
But this was no time, she told herself, for timidity.
 
She lifted her fist and rapped boldly on the door.

There was a confused banging inside, while the frogs went silent again and a little wind sprang up among the reeds.
 
Then through the small window she could see a candle come to life, and the door opened before her.

“Princess!” said the little round man in surprise, pulling disordered clothes more firmly around himself.
 
His eyes were hidden by shadow.
 
“What can have brought you here in the darkest night?
 
And this?”

He turned toward the emptiness where Roric stood, holding up his candle.
 
She turned too, eagerly, but saw nothing but the candle’s flickering flame.

“Then you are back in mortal lands, Roric No-man’s son,” said the Seer gravely.

“You can see him?” she asked urgently.

“Of course.
 
And you cannot?”

He turned then, seeming to listen to something.
 
“I understand,” he said soberly.
 
“You were not with the lords of voima themselves but with a simulacrum of them.
 
That is why your beard did not grow while you were there, and why in the realms under the sun you are only fully real when the sun is shining.”
 
To Karin the Seer added, “My own voima allows me to see him.
 
But there may be something I can do …”

“We need to find someone,” said Karin, “Valmar Hadros’s son.
 
He walked out over the sea on moonlight to join the Wanderers.”
 
She realized the Mirror-seer was tapping the fingers of one hand against his thigh and added hastily, “You can have this ring.
 
It used to be my mother’s; I think it is very valuable.”

The Seer took the ring she handed him but did not look at it.
 
“You will soon exhaust your father’s treasury with all these people you want to see, Princess,” he commented.
 
“And you should know I cannot see someone no longer under the sun.”

“We do not need to
see
him,” said Karin, and from the way the Seer turned his head Roric apparently said something too.
 
“But we need to bring him back from the Wanderers’ realm.
 
King Hadros will kill somebody—maybe my father—unless we produce his son very soon.”

Again Roric seemed to add something, for the Seer said dryly, “Those who seek the Wanderers usually have deeper concerns than recovery of a horse.”

“If we cross the channel again,” said Karin, “and go to the stone gateway where Roric followed the—followed whatever the being was, will we be in the Wanderers’ realm?”

“There is no gateway there that mortals can pass unaided.”

For a second she could feel despair starting to mount.
 
Coming here had been useless, at best a temporary delay until she had to face the two kings, whose men were even now doubtless searching the woods for her.

But she was not going to give up now.
 
She set her jaw and asked, “I am not asking you to
see
anything by darkness.
 
I only want information.
 
Before you told me where to find a Wanderer.
 
Now I want to find the rest of them—and the knowledge you tried to keep from me before.”

“I kept no knowledge from you,” said the Mirror-seer, but he seemed uneasy, and his turned his face away toward the lake.

“You told me that an end is fated for everyone, even the Wanderers.
 
Now tell us what role they want all of us—Roric, Valmar, and me—to play as they fight against that end.”

For a moment the Seer played with the heavy ring, tossing it up and catching it one-handed.
 
The gold glinted in the candle light.
 
Then suddenly he closed his fingers around it.
 
“I am not doing this for a piece of jewelry,” he said.
 
“But you are the heiress of the kingdom in which, after all, I have to live.
 
The mirrors will sometimes show something different by night …”

He turned then abruptly and disappeared back into his house.
 
Karin stood waiting on the dock, listening to the little waves against the shore.
 
Although she strained to hear, there was no sound of pursuit from the castle.
 
It grew colder, and Roric put an invisible arm around her shoulders.

In twenty minutes the Seer was back, completely draped with black cloth, so that at first the candle he held up seemed held by a disembodied hand.
 
She pressed against Roric, either to reassure him or for reassurance herself.

“This is for you, Roric No-man’s son,” said the Seer, holding out another black cloth.
 
Roric let go of her, and in a second the cloth had disappeared, although with the moon low virtually everything outside the range of the candle flame was invisible.

The Mirror-seer went to the edge of the dock and held up the candle so that its light was reflected in a dozen shining shards on the waves below.
 
He held a mirror over the candle, then went perfectly still.
 
He kept his eyes turned to the mirror, bringing his face closer and closer as the candle smoke gradually spread a dark stain over the glass.
 
To Karin, waiting with indrawn breath and heart pounding, the Seer seemed to stand motionless for an hour.

Abruptly there came a loud splash, followed almost instantaneously by another.
 
The candle light was gone, but something was thrashing in the water by the dock.

Karin froze in terror and uncertainty.
 
“Help me out, Princess!” came a voice from the water, the Mirror-seer’s voice.

She knelt down and extended an arm over the black water.
 
The Seer seized it so powerfully that she was almost pulled in, and had to brace herself to tug him out.

He came up all dark and wet.
 
She could only make out a lighter gray spot that must be his face as she helped him onto the dock and he pushed back his drapings.
 
A short distance down the shore there was further splashing, as though something very large was coming up on land.

“You are halfway back,” said the Seer, his face turned away from her.
 
“When you reappear at sunrise, you shall be fully returned to the land of the mortals.”

“Roric?” said Karin tentatively, but if he answered she could not hear his voice.

“Listen to me, Kardan’s daughter,” said the Mirror-seer then.
 
“I have seen more than even a Seer can safely see.
 
If I tell you this now, I shall be unable to tell you anything more for a long, long time, if ever.
 
It is your choice—difficult information now, or many small seeings in the years to come.”

“We may not have years to come,” she answered.
 
“Tell me what you know, and tell me plainly.”

But the Seer did not speak at once.
 
He sat on the dock, Karin beside him, and water dripped from him onto the planks.
 
He seemed to be trembling, either from the effort of his seeing or from chill.
 
She could feel exhaustion stinging the backs of her own eyes.
 
This night already seemed to have lasted years, and it was not over.

“No one can choose their fate,” he said at last, so low that she had to bend close to him.
 
“Not even the Wanderers.
 
Their realm of endless day must sometime move toward night, only to be reborn if new powers take control.”

“I knew it,” said Karin between her teeth.
 
“I knew they had no ultimate strength.”

“But they do,” said the Seer, even more quietly.
 
“Mortals cannot choose not to die.
 
Although the Wanderers cannot avoid their fate, they have a way to alter it …”

Karin thought about this for a moment.
 
“What would happen to mortal realms if the Wanderers died?”

“If
no
one replaced them—then chaos like the chaos out of which the earth was originally formed.”

“But there are other beings of voima!
 
Won’t
you
still be here?”

“Voima persists even without the lords of voima.
 
The change has come before.
 
I believe—I hope—that
someone
will take over—the same Wanderers reborn, those who now challenge them, or even, perhaps, those others that took Roric No-man’s son.
 
The Wanderers’ realm should not be an empty night for long.
 
But then—
 
Mortals may still burn offerings, but the answers they will receive will be very different …”

There was another long silence.
 
“But what do the Wanderers want with
us
?” she asked at last.
 
“And why do they want outcasts?”

The Seer shifted as though unwilling to answer, but when he spoke it was louder than anything he had said so far.
 
“There is only one solution for the present Wanderers if they want to reverse their fate.
 
And that solution is in Hel.”

“But there are no Wanderers in Hel!”

“Exactly.
 
It is reserved for mortals.
 
That is why they need a mortal:
 
to go there, to find what they need, to bring it back.”

“And that is?”

The Seer shifted again, and she thought he was shaking his head, though it was hard to be sure.
 
“I am not an ordinary mortal.
 
I do not know.”

“Well,” said Karin abruptly, determinedly, pushing herself to her feet.
 
“I for one am
not
going into Hel on behalf of the Wanderers.
 
And I will not let them send either Valmar or Roric.
 
None of us will sacrifice the rest of our lives for them.
 
You say the Wanderers want a mortal to bring something to them, but that person would come back as a wight, without a body.”

“That is possible,” said the Seer colorlessly.

“There is one thing you still have not told us,” she said, standing over him now.
 
“How can we find the Wanderers, get into their realm to rescue Valmar?
 
Will I still find that Wanderer on Graytop, the one who told you to send me there?”

“He will not meet you there again,” said the Mirror-seer, still in that distant, expressionless voice, confirming her guess that he had been instructed to send her there.

“Can we reach their realm through the faeys’ burrows?”

“There is only one path you can take, Karin Kardan’s daughter, only one route mortals may now pass unaided.
 
And that is far to the north of here, far beyond the channel, in the mountains of the hot rivers.”

“The Hot-River Mountains?” said Karin thoughtfully.
 
“They are indeed far to the north.
 
In fact—
 
I think there is a king there who was outlawed at the All-Gemot.
 
How will we find the right place in the mountains to enter immortal realms?”