C. Dale Brittain (9 page)

“That was all his message—no, he also said to tell you that he had at last found a place for a man without a family.”

“Did he seem—happy to go?”

Valmar hesitated.
 
“Not happy.
 
But also not entirely grim.
 
It was almost like—this may not make sense—like a fierce joy.”
 
He fell silent a moment, remembering his own wild yearning, the ache akin to homesickness for something he had never seen, which had sent him galloping fruitlessly after them.
 
“But, Karin!
 
I can’t believe it really was a Wanderer.
 
And why would he want to leave home anyway?”

“He has chosen honor over love,” said Karin, staring fixedly out the window.
 
Every now and then, distant voices from the Gemot reached them.

Valmar sat thinking that any warrior should make that choice, but neither of them spoke for a moment.

“Are the Fifty Kings well occupied?” she asked suddenly, her hand closing on his arm.

“Yes, I think so.
 
Your father read a list of all the cases they had to hear today, and they hadn’t gotten very far down it when I left—and then several people raised additional issues.”

“Good.
 
Then no one will miss us.
 
There used to be a Mirror-seer living at the lake just a short way up the valley.”

They took horses from the royal stables to ride south, up along the river.
 
Karin had hurried straight from the hall to the stables and been polite only with a visible effort when the chief ostler had welcomed her and then carefully selected the finest and most suitable horses for the princess and her companion.
 
She settled herself on a sidesaddle, which Valmar had never seen anyone use before, as they rode away from the castle.

Hills rose on either side of the valley, steep-sided and almost bare of vegetation.
 
But the valley itself was lush and green.
 
The road followed the river’s winding for three miles, then zigzagged up the side of an escarpment that formed a natural dam.
 
Beyond a lake was tucked, brilliant blue and smelling faintly of mud.

“I know you’re supposed to be able to influence the lords of voima by burning them offerings,” said Valmar.
 
“But what will you have to offer them to make them tell you why they took Roric?”

“In the old tales,” said Karin distantly, “the more desperate the request, the more precious the sacrifice.
 
You may have heard the story of the woman who called on the Wanderers to restore her dead husband.
 
One finally came to her while she was brewing and offered to restore her man, but demanded in return ‘that which was between her and the vat’ …”

Valmar looked at his big sister in horrified surmise a moment but said nothing and forced himself to dismiss the thought.

The Mirror-seer was where Karin remembered, living in a tree-sheltered cabin on the shore.
 
He was as round as a ball and completely bald, and he was fishing from the dock in front of his cabin when they rode up.
 
Waterstriders made constant little ripples in the water by the dock, and the fish were coming up to feed.

“And you expect me to tell you the doings of the Wanderers?” he demanded, apparently highly displeased to be taken from his fishing.
 
“Shall I also explain the workings of fate?”

“It would be most agreeable if you would,” said Valmar.
 
He felt he ought to speak on Karin’s behalf, even though he had never met a Mirror-seer before.

But she interrupted.
 
“I am the heiress of this kingdom,” she said, looking levelly at the round little man, “and would like to establish a close relationship with you.”
 
She reached up slowly to unfasten her necklace.
 
“A man named Roric No-man’s son has been taken away, perhaps by the Wanderers, and I would like to know if he still lives beneath the sun.”

The feel of the heavy gold links in his hand did much to restore the Mirror-seer’s good humor.
 
Valmar, watching him, was surprised and a little relieved at how ordinary he seemed, not like the Weaver, who could have been any age or any gender and who always appeared just when one thought oneself completely alone.

“Then you are the little princess who went away as a hostage,” said the Mirror-seer.
 
“Wait here.”

He ducked into his cabin while Karin and Valmar waited outside on a dock dappled by sunlight falling through the branches overhead.
 
Back down the valley, they could just glimpse the white spires of the castle.

Valmar jumped when the man reappeared.
 
He was draped completely in black, only his eyes showing through slits in the cloth, and he carried two mirrors.

Karin motioned Valmar back.
 
She stepped forward herself onto the dock with the Mirror-seer, but he waved her away as well.
 
Valmar shivered involuntarily.
 
The Mirror-seer’s eyes through the slits were an intense sky blue.

The man first mumbled words so low they could not understand them, but as he spoke the breezes dropped, the insects and fish were still, and the lake itself became as flat and smooth as a mirror.
 
Then he bent over the end of his dock so that he could see his reflection and positioned the two mirrors not quite facing each other.
 
He moved them slightly, until Valmar caught a glimpse of tiny repeating figures.
 
For a second, he thought one of the repeating figures in the reflection was different from the rest.

After several long, completely quiet minutes, the Seer moved the mirrors again, put his own head between them, turned them both on his reflection in the lake, and suddenly stood up.

“What do you see?” asked Karin urgently.

“I see a disturbance among the Wanderers,” the little man answered slowly.
 
He reached up to pull the black cloth off his bald head.
 
Valmar saw with a sudden shock that he was much thinner than he had been only a quarter hour before, as though his flesh had been consumed like a candle.
 
“I might guess what this means, but I would prefer not to say …”

“I gave you a necklace worth twenty Mirror-seers’ hides,” said Karin fiercely.
 
“I think you will say.”

He sat down on the dock, the mirrors face-up in slack hands.
 
Valmar, looking at them, thought that now they reflected nothing, not even sky.
 
“It is said,” the man answered after a moment, “that the Wanderers have not always ruled earth and heaven, that there were rulers of voima before them and will be others after them …”

“Even for the lords of voima,” said Karin as though she was quoting someone, “fate does not always go well.”

“An end is fated for everyone, not just for mortals,” said the Mirror-seer, giving her a quick glance.

“But where is Roric?” she demanded.

“I did not see him with the Wanderers.”
 
He held up a hand against her protests.
 
“I cannot say what that means.
 
I can only tell you what I saw.
 
And you have heard more from me than you will hear from any other Seer.”

None of this made any sense to Valmar.
 
“Then if you cannot tell us where Roric is,” he put in, “we’ll have to find him ourselves.
 
Even if you won’t tell us the fate of the Wanderers, you can certainly tell us where to find them.”
 
When the man turned to stare at him, he fumbled at his cloak.
 
“Would this clasp make the telling easier?”

But the Mirror-seer unexpectedly smiled, a wide crack in his pale face.
 
“Save your jewels.
 
I can tell you where a mortal is most likely to meet a Wanderer without consulting my mirrors.”

Karin interrupted.
 
“And where is that?” she cried.

He went on speaking to Valmar as though he had not heard her.
 
“But I warn you, that which you must offer the Wanderers themselves may be far more than a Seer or Weaver will ask you.”
 
He then turned to Karin.
 
“I am surprised, as princess of this kingdom, that you did not know.
 
A Wanderer may often be glimpsed at twilight on the top of that bald hill at the head of the valley.
 
How you reach him and what you say to him,” turning his back abruptly, “is your problem.”

“You don’t have to come with me,” said Karin as she and Valmar rode on up the valley.

“Yes, I do.
 
Roric told me to take care you if he didn’t come back.”

She smiled suddenly as though very pleased.
 
But she said, “King Hadros will wonder if you are not there at the end of the day’s meeting.”

“Will they not wonder in
your
castle?”

She stopped smiling.
 
“Let them wonder.
 
Let them imagine anything they like about you and me.
 
I could not stay in my castle, not knowing what has happened to Roric, surrounded by those people and doing nothing.”

Valmar was momentarily disconcerted by the implications of what she thought people might imagine.
 
But he said, “If fate does not go well for the Wanderers, I wonder if that means they are being attacked by people with no backs.”

The valley was narrowing, with little room for more than the track and a few firs beside the river under steep rocky walls.
 
The water beside them dashed white over tumbled boulders.
 
At first the tracks had led on either hand up out of the valley, toward villages perched on the hills above it.
 
But now their path seemed little frequented, shaded and strewn with brown fir needles.
 
Valmar, looking ahead, saw no pass, only the river cascading as a thin white line out of a cliff face.

Karin reined in where the path died out completely.
 
“The Seer must have meant that hill,” she said, pointing.
 
“It’s called Graytop.
 
I came up here on a picnic once, not long before the war, with my older brother and our nurse.
 
We decided we were going to climb it.
 
I doubt if we made it more than a quarter of the way up.”

Valmar looked at it critically.
 
The hill stood out, separated from the valley walls and higher.
 
It rose sharply from the far side of the river, its lower slopes green, the upper slopes bare granite.
 
“If you made it a quarter of the way up, you were doing well.”

“I have always been good at climbing,” said Karin with a small smile.
 
She dismounted.
 
“If the Wanderer comes at twilight, that should give me about two hours.
 
I think I can make it up there in that amount of time.”

“How shall we cross the river?” asked Valmar.

“As I recall, a little way along the bank there’s a place where we scrambled down to the water.
 
The river’s course is very narrow there—I could jump it even when I was eight.”
 
She turned her eyes full on him.
 
“But I am going alone.”

Valmar swung off his own horse and seized her by the hand.
 
“I told you I have to take care of you!
 
I couldn’t wait here quietly while you tried to climb—perhaps slipping—and then maybe met—”

She put her free hand over his mouth.
 
“I cannot climb in my mother’s brocade dress, so I am taking these clothes off.
 
I am quite sure,” and for a second her lips twitched in amusement, “that your father would not want you beside me as I went up the hill naked.”