C. Dale Brittain (46 page)

She smiled at the irritated note in his voice.
 
“If you had asked, they would have told you.
 
I do not lie.”

“You are still trying to distract me from serving them,” Valmar replied, removing his arm from around her waist.

“Whose idea was it to go deep into the woods as soon as we met again and to remove our armor?” she said with a teasing light in her eyes.
 
“But think of this, Valmar Hadros’s son.
 
When we met before, they never scolded you, did they?
 
So you continued to serve them.
 
But now you serve me as well.”

“I cannot serve you and the Wanderers both,” he said warily, sitting up now.

“The last time we met you said you would not fight against them,” she said, sitting up herself.
 
The sunset was behind her, shadowing her features.
 
“Do you not realize that in fighting those beings at the top of the hill you will be fighting the Wanderers’ own creation?”

Valmar, feeling weariness, shame, and a renewed desire for her, said only, “The lords of voima told me that they do not create.”

She laughed at this and put out a hand to touch his knee.
 
“And they do not.
 
Or if they do, it is only creatures like those, mockeries of men, hollow beings with no backs.”

Valmar went still, his objections frozen on his lips.
 
Her words made sense at last of something the Wanderers had told him which had made no sense at the time, that their attempts at creation were now hastening their end.
 
He did not want to be arguing with this woman anyway—he wanted to be holding her close, kissing her, feeling her muscular body against his.
 
Or else he should be pushing her aside, rising with his eyes fixed on the path of honor.
 
“The man I saw, just a little while ago,” he attempted.
 
“He had a back.”

“Or wanted you to think he did.
 
In the lands of voima it is easier to mislead a mortal’s eye than in mortal realms.”

“And do
you
create?”

She smiled saucily at him.
 
“I would have thought you knew that.
 
Women create life within themselves.
 
Men can create nothing.”

He leaned his chin on his fists, considering.
 
He still, when he could be calm, was not sure what to make of this lady of voima, who seemed both to be a human woman and to be possessed of a detachment and wisdom he felt could not have come in just a few more years’ maturity than his.
 
“Women need men to create life,” he said with a frown, wondering as he spoke if even something so basic might be different here in the land of endless sunset.
 
Then, “Have
you
ever borne children?”

She went sober, shaking her head.

“Is that because you have separated yourself from the lords of voima?”

When she did not answer at once, Valmar started reaching distractedly for his clothes, slowly coming to the horrible realization that he had lain with a woman meant for the Wanderers.
 
They could not have known, before, where he had gone for so many hours, but what explanation could he give them now if he did not fulfill his mission, led astray by this woman never intended for him?

“Or they have separated themselves from
us,
” she said quietly when he had nearly given up on receiving an answer.

“Who
are
you?” he demanded, pausing in tying his laces.

Again she answered very quietly, sitting with her arms wrapped around a naked knee.
 
“We are the Hearthkeepers.
 
We stayed behind when the Wanderers left us.
 
It is now almost the end of their fated rule, the time we should overthrow them, except—”
 
She paused for a moment, and when she went on it was almost as though she was changing the subject.
 
“We have voima within us, certainly, but if our full powers were going to return I would have thought to see them by now.
 
Sometimes I even wonder if we’ve made a mistake …”

She seemed so sad suddenly, so vulnerable and unlike an immortal being, that Valmar put his arms comfortingly around her.
 
But a thought teased at him.
 
He did not
think
he had ever gotten any of the serving-maids with child, but might he have done so with this lady of voima?

Rather pleased with this idea, he gave her another hug, less comforting and more passionate.

She turned in his embrace to look at him.
 
All her laughter and teasing were gone.
 
“Originally I was sent,” she said, “to lure you from your allegiance to the lords of voima, to make you serve us instead.
 
But I have changed my mind, Valmar Hadros’s son.
 
I do not want you to fight for the Hearthkeepers against the Wanderers, any more than I want you for fight for them against us.
 
I only want you all for myself.”

“I cannot be all for you,” he said, stroking her arm and trying desperately to remember why he could not.
 
“The path of honor is higher than the path of love,” he added after a moment.

Her eyes flashed at him, and the corner of her mouth twitched.
 
“I do have to remember that you too are, after all, a man.”

Before he could answer, he heard a clanging, of swords against shields, not a quarter mile away.

“We know you’re in there, Valmar Hadros’s son!” came a booming voice.
 
For a horrible second he thought it was the Wanderers, then knew it was not.
 
“We’ve surrounded this woods and we’re coming for you.
 
Surrender yourself!
 
Since you would not be our friend as Roric was, you shall take you to our manor as our enemy!”

The woman sprang up and went for her armor and sword.
 
“We’ll compromise,” she said with a grin, “we’ll
both
fight these beings for your lords of voima, and also be together.”
 
She had her clothes on in seconds, and was sliding on her mail and stamping her feet into her boots.
 
“I’ve already seen how you do against me.
 
Now we’ll see how much a mortal can do against hollow creatures who want him dead.”

PART III:
 
Realms of Voima

CHAPTER ELEVEN

1

Karin and Roric began to run, back the way they had come, slipping and almost falling in the piles of coins.
 
Their feet could find no purchase.
 
It was like trying to wade through surf-swirled sand—like a nightmare in which one struggled to move until wakened by one’s own kicks, but there was no waking here.
 
The scraping and slithering behind them became louder, and the dragon’s hot breath blew on their hair.

Karin clung to Roric’s hand, struggling to keep her feet, staring through blurred eyes at the fire burning at the side of the cave.

Why should the dragon have a fire in its den?

She caught her foot on a jeweled sword, half-buried in the coins, and fell, nearly pulling Roric down with her.
 
“Go!” she gasped.
 
“Go!
 
One of us may still escape!”
 
Wildly she thought that it would be better to be eaten in one gulp than pursued up the narrow passage down which they had slid into the dragon’s den.

Not hearing or not listening, Roric stood over her, facing the dragon with his sword out.
 
The long snout came toward them, slowly, very slowly.
 
For a second Karin hoped that the mind behind the burning eyes was only curious, that the dragon was at the moment more interested in their presence than hungry.

And then the enormous mouth opened, showing hundreds of needle teeth, and the forked tongue licked toward them.

Roric’s armed darted out, and his sword clanged on the dragon’s scales with a ring like steel against steel.
 
The scarlet nostrils flared and the jaw opened even wider.
 
Roric stabbed toward the closest nostril, his full weight behind the sword.

The blade bit home, and the dragon’s head jerked upwards, almost yanking the sword from Roric’s hand.

In the seconds while the dragon bellowed in pain, Roric dragged Karin to her feet and almost carried her, not toward the passage down which they had come but toward the fire.
 
Through tangled hair she thought she saw in the uncertain firelight a dark crevice in the rock wall next to the blaze.

The dragon’s mouth behind them opened wider and the head darted forward, no longer moving slowly.
 
Roric reached the wall a dozen feet ahead of the dragon’s teeth, threw her into the crevice, and dove in behind her.

“Back!
 
Further back!” he cried hoarsely, but she was already scrambling deeper into the crevice, for the rock here was burning hot and the dragon’s teeth snicked together just behind Roric’s feet.

It tried to work its head into the crevice, hissing horribly.
 
Roric kept pushing her onward.
 
She crawled blindly as the dragon’s head blocked all the light from the firelit room.

Suddenly she cried out, for the stone was gone beneath her hands.
 
She reached back desperately, grabbing Roric’s arm, but could not regain her balance.
 
For a second she teetered, the edge of the dropoff biting into her flesh.
 
Then, pulling him with her, she tumbled down into a pit where no light penetrated.

They landed hard on a sandy floor, and Roric’s sword clattered against the stone wall.
 
They lay still for a moment, gasping for breath, waiting for whatever creature lived in this pit to attack them next.
 
When nothing happened at once, they slowly sat up.

“Are you all right?”

“Are you all right?”

They collapsed into each other’s arms, clinging to each other until the worst of the trembling passed.

“I couldn’t have left you, certainly not to save myself,” Roric said quietly.

She couldn’t answer, her face pressed against his chest.

Above them they could still hear deep, angry rumblings from the dragon, but it did not seem able to follow.
 
“If nothing’s broken,” said Roric after a moment, “let’s follow this passage a little further and see if we can find a way out.
 
Maybe if we go slower we won’t have any more surprises like that one!”

“Roric, please!
 
I can’t crawl through any more dark tunnels.
 
I just can’t!”

“Then I’ll go ahead, and you can wait for me.”

“No, please don’t leave me!”
 
She was sobbing now.
 
This was entirely her fault, from the decision to try to find Valmar to the decision to descend into the firelit room under the rocks in search of the Witch of the Western Cliffs, and if they starved to death here it would only be an appropriate end to their story.

He held her again, rocking her like a child.
 
“I won’t leave you behind if you don’t want,” he murmured into her hair.
 
“But feel how smooth the floor is here.
 
And
someone
built that fire in the dragon’s den, and I doubt it was the dragon.
 
Don’t you think some of your faeys might have found a way to live close to it?”

At the thought of the faeys she sat up straight, peering about in the blackness in search of the faint green light cast by their lamps.
 
She still saw nothing, and she realized that no faeys she had ever known, either the ones in Hadros’s kingdom or the ones here, had used open fires.
 
But imagining this was a faeys’ burrow gave her courage.
 
She took a deep breath.
 
“Let’s go then,” she said.

Roric went first, crawling with his sword in one hand, feeling his way in the dark.
 
The surface under their knees and hands remained level.
 
“
Someone
certainly must live here,” he said over his shoulder.

“Of course someone does,” said a deep voice in front of them.

Karin reached forward to grasp Roric by the shoulder.
 
The voice was good-natured and deeper than the voice of any faey, but with a detached, almost weary note that reminded her oddly of Queen Arane.
 
“Are you—” she began tentatively, addressing the darkness and already knowing the answer, “are you a faey?”

There was a chuckle then before the voice continued.
 
With the echoes, it was impossible to judge distance, but it sounded very close.
 
“I have been called many things, but never that.”