C. Dale Brittain (24 page)

“When you find it, you will know it.”

“That is not an answer.”

The Seer rocked back and forth in the damp pool his wet drapes had made around him on the dock.
 
“Then ask for the Witch of the Western Cliffs when you reach the mountains.
 
She will direct you to the doorway.
 
And that,” he added in a louder voice, “is the only way you will reach the Wanderers, and the only answer you will have from me.”

She stamped her foot abruptly on the planking.
 
“It is
not
the only path to the Wanderers’ realm.
 
But I see it is the only path they intend to let us take.
 
Are they still testing our ability and resolve?
 
We shall certainly go there, go there at once, but only to recover Valmar from being persuaded to offer his own life for beings whose fated end has already come.”

She turned, took two steps, and turned back.
 
“Thank you,” she said gravely to the Seer.
 
“If I ever become sovereign queen here, unless the world is changed beyond recognition, I shall ensure that you have the respect and the comfort any Seer would want.
 
Roric?”

She held out her hand to emptiness, and someone or something took it.
 
If this was not Roric, she thought grimly, if something else had climbed out of the lake and taken his place, then she would find out at dawn.

Karin kept stumbling on the dark, uneven track as they went back down the valley.
 
She had not eaten all day and was almost unbearably weary.
 
When they had ascended, her own footsteps had been the only sound; now there was the sound of another set of feet beside hers.

“I think we shall be at the harbor shortly before sunrise,” she said.
 
“We cannot stop for conversations with my father or with Hadros.
 
As long as they are uncertain what has happened to any of us, that uncertainty will bind them together—I hope.”

She pictured Hadros flying into a rage and running her father through in the middle of his own hall.
 
A gasp of horror almost escaped her, but she closed her mind against the image.
 
If it was going to happen, it had already happened, and she could not find out without exposing Roric and herself to new danger.

“We could flee to Queen Arane’s court,” she said thoughtfully.
 
“I think the queen would take us in—she even asked about you when we first met.
 
But that would do nothing to save Valmar.”
 
She realized she kept waiting for Roric to make some response, but she alone would have to make this decision.

“No, we will have to find some way to cross the channel.
 
There may be a skiff down at the harbor that you and I could sail alone.
 
We have to get up north, have to rescue Valmar before he reaches Hel—if the Wanderers have not sent him there already.
 
Bringing him alive to his father is also the only way to rescue
you.
 
We could try to explain that there was not enough time between when you left Hadros’s court and Valmar’s disappearance for you to kill him, but he will not be interested in dates and times.
 
The only thing that will interest him will be his son …”

She was so tired it was hard to think clearly, but suddenly she laughed.
 
She heard the sound of her laugh disconcertingly loud, almost wild again, but still she smiled.

“I know how we can cross the channel,” she said to the presence beside her that she hoped was Roric.
 
“We’ll steal Hadros’s ship!”

He pulled her to a stop, and she felt hands on her shoulders.
 
“No,” she said firmly, “it is no use arguing with me.
 
I cannot hear what you say.
 
And this will work!
 
Come on.”
 
But she did not start walking at once.
 
Instead she asked, against her will, “Are you sure you
are
Roric?”

For answer he took her in his arms and kissed her.
 
She laughed again as he released her, this time in relief.
 
“If you are not Roric, I think I like you even better!
 
Now, we must make haste to be there before Hadros sails again.”

She gave his hand a tug and began to walk.
 
“Men worry too much about rule and honor.
 
I
like
my kingdom, like its luxuries—the food is better than Hadros serves, and no one expects a princess to toil!
 
But I will cheerfully give it all up to save you.”

Karin hurried down the track with new energy, her slippered feet finding a sure footing.
 
No longer was she bound by the generations who lay in the burial mound, or by the necessity to hold herself in check in a court where she was an outsider.
 
She and Roric together were fleeing for their lives, and she smiled as she squeezed his hand.

The darkest part of the night had passed and the eastern sky was lightening toward yellow when they came down the harbor road.
 
Roric was still invisible.
 
“Wait here behind these bushes,” Karin told him, thinking that men really were much easier to deal with if they could not raise objections.
 
“As soon as the sun rises come join me.
 
No one should observe you regaining visibility.
 
We want the sailors to obey us, not fear us as dead wights from Hel.”

She straightened out her clothes as well as she could by the half light and took the narrow road down to the edge of the sea.
 
She would know in a moment whether Hadros had told his men why he had suddenly decided to come here, or whether, as she hoped, he had given the orders but no explanations.

One longship, its dragon prow unmounted, lay upside down and covered with a tarpaulin on the shore.
 
Another ship, its awnings spread, floated on the tide.
 
The sleepy men guarding it heard her approach and jumped up.
 
They recognized her after only a second in spite of her rich clothing.

She scanned the men on board surreptitiously as they woke and came to greet her.
 
“Are you coming home then, Karin?” one asked eagerly.
 
“The maid you left in charge knows nothing of your herb chest, and spends all day screeching at the other women.
 
And we have had but poor fare since you went away!”

There were only a few warriors here with the seamen.
 
Hadros must have taken the rest with him to the castle and spent the night there—which suggested, she thought with hope, that the king and his men had not gotten into a fight with her father and his much more numerous guards, or the survivors would have fled.

“Is the king ready to sail?” asked another seaman.

She did not answer but instead made a show of looking around.
 
“Is Roric not here?” she asked carefully, watching their reactions.

But they only seemed puzzled.
 
“Don’t you mean Valmar?
 
Is Roric here too?
 
He was home for less than a day before he left again.”

The edge of the sun was just peeking over the horizon.
 
“Hadros sent me to sail home with you now,” she said clearly.
 
“Take down the awnings and prepare to set out at once.
 
The king will be detained at my father’s castle for some weeks, busy with affairs of the All-Gemot.”

“Or arranging your marriage!” said one man slyly, but the others shushed him.

“Roric said he would accompany me,” she continued, deliberately ignoring this remark.
 
“He was going to meet me here.”

Even if they rescued Valmar from the Wanderers, even if they all lived past the change of the world the Seer could not describe, she did not know how she would escape this marriage, which kept seeming more and more imminent until even Roric half believed in it.
 
If Valmar had already descended into Hel for the Wanderers, this would no longer be a problem.
 
But allowing him to die was no solution, even if Queen Arane might have thought it one.

Direct sunlight now came rippling across the sea.
 
The sailors were loosening the awnings from the pegs.
 
Karin cupped her hands and turned toward the headland.
 
“Roric!” she shouted.
 
“Are you up there?
 
We are ready to sail!”

And he appeared, himself, solid, coming down the steep road in long leaps.
 
“We must leave at once,” she said, even before he reached the shore.
 
“Sails up!
 
Oars out!”
 
By the time Roric reached the narrow quay and vaulted into the ship, the sailors were releasing the mooring lines.

“Just in time,” he said in her ear as they came out past the shelter of the headland, and the wind bellied out the red sail.
 
“I saw a group of people heading this way from the castle.
 
Another five minutes and they would have had us.”

4

Valmar ran into moonlight, the empty air churning beneath his boots.
 
He kept closing his eyes against that brilliant whiteness, then opening them to take in its glory.
 
He had run, it seemed, for many minutes, for hours, while the moon grew and grew, big enough to swallow him, the headland, Kardan’s kingdom, the sea, the entire earth.
 
And the man who ran at his side, whom he did not dare look at, was also growing.

His eyes flew open again as he felt solidity beneath his feet and almost stumbled.
 
The moon had caught fire.

But it was not the moon, he realized, as his feet slowed first to a walk and then to a halt.
 
It was the sun, and he was running into a sunset that had set all the clouds around it ablaze.

They seemed to be in a meadow of grass and clover.
 
Cows grazed on the far side, but they kept raising their heads and lowing uneasily.
 
Everything, even the rank grass, was tinted pink by the sky.

Then Valmar turned to look at the being beside him.

He was white, brilliant white, so white the sunset did not touch him.
 
He was more than twice the size of a man and arrayed in robes that glowed.
 
The face he turned on Valmar was enormously solemn, enormously wise and noble, and yet there too was an almost friendly air if such were possible, a touch of good humor.

Valmar dropped to his knees.
 
“My lord,” he stammered.
 
He fumbled his sword free of the peace straps and out of the sheath, and held it up, hilt first, while keeping his head down.

“As I recall,” commented an amused voice above him, “you were going to ask no more of the lords of voima.”

“Lord, I did not know,” said Valmar, his face averted.
 
He kept expecting to feel his sword taken from his hands, but it was untouched.

“You were going to make your life into the best tale your own strength and honor and manhood could create,” the other continued, “and all without asking anything of us.”

Valmar put a hand across his eyes.
 
“Do not mock me now, Lord.
 
I did not know—I did not know that you were the source of strength and honor and manhood.”

“In fact,” said the Wanderer, still sounding amused, “we pattern our honor on that of you mortals.
 
Voima flows from life, not the other way around.
 
But as you can see, our land is hastening toward night.
 
And while you may have decided you would ask nothing more of voima, we would ask something of
you.
”