C. Dale Brittain Page 5

  Instead she bowed formally to him and offered him her hand. He was wearing black, mourning that contrasted with her own jewelry and brightly embroidered garments.

  “I am— I am glad to see you again, Karin,” he said. His voice came out half-choked. “By the Wanderers, you look like your mother.” He paused for a moment, then found his voice again. “We have put your brother—your brothers—into the same burial mound as your mother. Before you leave again, we can go there together if you wish to burn an offering.”

  “I have brought her home, Kardan,” King Hadros said behind her. “You will find her as pure a maiden as when you first sent her to me.” She stiffened for a second, consciously trying to keep any expression from her face. “After more than ten years of peace between our kingdoms, our warriors have forgotten how to make war.” He held up a piece of parchment, dangling with seals, then crushed it and threw it into the hearth. “I remit you the tribute from this year forth, and I send you back your hostage.”

  And suddenly it was as she had imagined ten years ago it would be, crushed in her father’s arms while he laughed with joy and kissed her. She kissed him back enthusiastically, feeling tears at the corners of her eyes. All at once, beyond expectation, she was home and safe.

  But if she was not going back to Hadros’s castle, who would direct his household, whom would the faeys try to tame in her place, and what would Roric think when he came back again?

  “So— You mean I am to stay here?” she asked King Hadros, turning in her father’s embrace. As she turned she realized that he had not said one word of regret or apology for sending her away.

  “That is what I said, little princess,” Hadros said with a smile. “Acquaint yourself with your kingdom before you come to rule it. And that other matter—the matter of which we spoke—there is no haste for you to decide. Your dower chest will be safe for now in my castle. But accompany your father to the All-Gemot next year, and I shall bring Valmar with me again, and perhaps then we can reach an agreement.”

  King Kardan lifted one eyebrow at her, but she shook her head. Valmar, she was quite sure, had no idea of any of this. For a second she wondered wildly if the rider with no back had been summoned by Hadros himself, to take Roric away permanently, and if he hoped that here, away from his castle with all its associations, she would quickly forget him.

  Well, he might hope she would forget Roric, but she did not think any mortal king could make the Wanderers do his will. She gave Hadros a long look, not wanting to insult him and certainly not wanting to agree. “I shall consider,” she said gravely, “but I fear my answer will remain the same.”

  They had not realized here any more than she had that Hadros intended to bring her home for good. The maids ran about madly preparing a suitable place, finally putting a bed for her in her mother’s old private parlor, off the royal bedchamber.

  Karin lay between linen sheets, under a green brocade coverlet, her eyes open in the dark. She thought that they all acted as though treating her with the respect due the heiress to the kingdom would make up for the last ten years.

  Here were no cupboard beds, and she could hear the sound of no one else’s breathing. The horsehair mattress felt hard and awkward to someone who had slept for years on rye straw. Her pillow was small, not the large pillow stuffed with goose down she had plucked herself. Though one wall of the room backed up to the fireplace in the royal chamber, she had no fire, no coals to wink at her in the dark.

  She thought over what Queen Arane had said that afternoon, and as she considered it King Hadros’s castle seemed simple, comfortable, even welcoming. The faeys, she remembered, had told her that queens had to deal with upsetting things every day.

  And without the fogged perception through which she had gone the last ten days, she could also think about Roric clearly. She had not been able to ask him—and now perhaps never would—if he knew why the Wanderers wanted him. Hadros had spoken truly that the Wanderers did not appear to mortals except in the oldest tales. Even if the faeys were right, the housecarls’ story—which had taken on additional wild embellishments each time it was told—was not the story of a Wanderer.

  What could a mortal do against beings like that, armed only with his own strength and a little bone charm? And where could he possibly be now? But Roric was indubitably gone, and since he had been gone for days already without a word, he might well be gone forever.

  Suppose she was carrying his child? She had not really considered the matter before—first they had assumed they would soon be wed, and then she had been too worried for his safety, even before her life had passed into a fevered dream. But she had thought of it when Hadros told her father she was coming home a pure maiden. Would her father reopen the war himself if her waist began to thicken?

  She put her hands on her stomach. It felt the same as it always did, except perhaps a little uneasy. But even worse might be to lose Roric and not even have his child.

  And in the meantime, what could she possibly do with herself tomorrow morning? She could not relieve her tension with weaving, would not have the milking and churning and brewing and sewing to keep her stepping. She put an arm across her eyes and gritted her teeth, homesick as she had not been since she left this very castle.

  3

  Valmar slipped away from the All-Gemot.

  He had often attended the royal Gemot back home, held four times a year, but he had expected the conclave of the Fifty Kings to be different. To his disappointment, the proceedings within the cords that marked the Gemot-field were very similar, whether accusations were made, sworn testimony given, or evidence—a bloodstained cloak or a sealed agreement—handed around.

  The only markedly different aspect had come at the very beginning, when the two kings new since the last All-Gemot stood forward and announced their rule, and those kings who had brought their heirs with them for the first time introduced them to the rest. King Hadros introduced Valmar, and Karin’s father showed her to all the other kings. Several of the younger ones, and several of the older ones whose heirs were reaching marriageable age, made low and appreciative comments that made Valmar frown as though they had been insults. She wore a heavy gold brocade gown slightly too big for her, and she seemed not to see him or anyone else. Once introduced, she returned to the castle with the maids and warriors who accompanied her.

  But after that the All-Gemot was very much like the quarterly Gemots Valmar knew. Karin’s father, King Kardan, presided, as Valmar’s father presided at home. Even though the Gemot began at dawn, when everyone was sober and most men still sluggish, there was the normal arguing and shouting. Men leaped at each other, reaching where their swords should be except that no one was allowed weapons within the cords, and were pulled back by their friends. The most exciting part was when the conclave voted to outlaw a king who had not even attended, for killing a man secretly in a fit of jealousy according to the testimony, and then hiding the body.

  Any man could kill an outlaw with no bloodguilt falling on him. Valmar drummed his fingers on his belt and wondered if it would be hard to kill him, if the outlawed king would fight with desperate, inhuman strength. But he would not even know him if he met him.

  When Valmar finally slipped away, he noticed that many of the attendants who had accompanied the kings had also left the proceedings, and even two men he was fairly sure were kings themselves stood some distance off, talking to each other. No one paid him any attention as he went up to the castle.

  It was a castle like none he had ever seen, its smooth walls reaching high above his head, towers on every corner. Pennants snapped from the towers, and all the stones were whitewashed. There was a moat where swans glided, seeming to ignore him pointedly. A guard in livery as elegant as his own best clothing stopped him at the bridge.

  “I would like to see the Princess Karin. Tell her— Tell her it’s her little brother.”

  When he was escorted a few minutes later across the bridge and into the courtyard, he was amazed to see that
everything here seemed built of stone, and built connecting with everything else. There was nothing like the cluster of weathered oak buildings that surrounded the stone hall at home. He was led up a long stair, through a narrow room, back outside, and up another set of stairs before reaching the great hall.

  Karin was sitting in a window seat, reading a book he recognized, a book she had made herself by sewing together sheets of parchment. In it were written, in a firm though childish hand, the favorite tales she had heard as a little girl. She had told him once that she had made it before coming to Hadros’s kingdom, not realizing that many of the same old tales would be told there as well—and also not yet realizing, she said, how much different tales, or even different versions of the same tale, might contradict each other. She read it now with a frown and her full concentration, as though hoping in it to find certainty.

  Valmar had not been sure of his welcome, but at the sound of his step Karin sprang up to meet him and took his hands as though she had last spoken with him much longer ago than yesterday. She sat him beside her in the window, from which they could look out at the tents spread across the fields between the castle and the river. He looked at her carefully, expecting to see her somehow different inside the elaborate gold dress. But she was still his big sister.

  “I’ve wanted to talk to you for days,” he said. “Everyone heard about the—the man Roric went with, and you know Roric told me it was a Wanderer. But he said something else too.”

  Karin bent closer, her gray eyes so intense he had to look away.

  Now that it came to it he found it unexpectedly hard to say. “I should have told you this before, but, I don’t know, I didn’t like to say it before Father and my brothers. Roric said to tell you he would always love you.”

  Karin sat back slowly, her hands folded and her eyes closed. “Thank you, Valmar,” she said after a moment.

  He had expected more reaction from her. “Did you already know he loved you?”

  She opened her eyes and smiled with just the corners of her mouth. “Yes. I already knew.”

  “Well, I did not,” said Valmar, then stopped himself when he realized he was sounding petulant. After a brief pause he went on, “I know he is not really our brother, but I was still very surprised—we’ll probably all marry someone someday, but I think I had assumed it was someone we had not yet even met. I don’t want to say it’s not right, but . . .”

  Karin was still smiling, this time at him rather than at her thoughts, as though pleased with him. Valmar remembered what else Roric had said, that he should take care of Karin if he himself married her, but decided this could not have been part of the message.

  “Did he say anything else?” she asked.

  “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.”