C. Dale Brittain

by Voima

  He wandered out of the hall, picking up a piece of cheese and eating it distractedly as he went—at least food was still real to him. “But the troll could see me,” he thought.

  How far did this extend? Would others still be able to feel him? Would a sword still cut him?

  He followed the warriors and housecarls up the ladder to the men’s loft. Someone bumped against him in the dark and said, “Excuse me.” So he could still be felt then, even if not seen.

  Exhausted and shaken, he stretched out in the straw. Invisible, he would have to stow aboard a ship across the channel in the hope that once there he could find Karin and her kingdom even though no one would hear when he asked directions. But what good would it do him to be there, the silent and unseen observer, if Karin and Valmar really were in love?

  He awoke to the sound of his name. “Roric! What are you doing here?”

  He sat up abruptly. Early morning sun came through the small window. One of the warriors who had accompanied King Hadros leaned on his elbow next to him. “I didn’t see you last night! Did you come back while we were gone? Did you really meet the Wanderers?”

  “Can you see me?” Roric demanded.

  “Of course I can see you,” with a laugh.

  So he was back. The lords of voima only knew what had happened to him, but at least it was over. He jumped up. “I have to talk to the king, find out more about this marriage between Valmar and the Princess Karin.”

  “I can probably tell you more than Hadros is likely to.” Roric sat down again slowly. “You know he always treated the princess very delicately, as though even her ears were made out of glass. Not that he minded her doing all the work to direct his household! But she seems to have decided to take matters into her own hands as soon as she was out of the kingdom. I’d heard, of course, of sovereign queens with a whole string of lovers, who still profess their purity and keep serious suitors dangling, but I’d never believed it before.”

  “But what happened?” asked Roric through cold lips. This could not be Karin they were discussing.

  “The second night we were there, she took young Valmar with her on a ride up into the hills and did not come back until the next morning. I saw them when they returned, and I don’t think there can be much doubt what happened,” with a chuckle.

  Roric kept his hand from his knife by sheer will.

  “I think King Hadros moved fast to make sure his son wasn’t just one more in a string of lovers, by getting her to agree to their marriage. But I don’t think he’s made a formal offer to her father yet; that’s why we have to go back in a few weeks. If you come along, you’ll see for yourself.

  “But what about you?” the man added. “Was that really someone with no back? And where did you go?”

  But Roric was no longer there. He went down the ladder in one long jump and strode across the courtyard. Since Valmar was not yet of age, he had not yet sworn himself to him, and no oath would keep him from killing him.

  Roric had almost forgotten his own voyage to the Wanderers’ realm in the news about Karin, and he was not prepared for the stunned face Hadros turned on him when he interrupted the king in the middle of his porridge and beer.

  “No, of course I did not run away,” he said quickly. “I’ve been in the land of the Wanderers, though it turned out it was not a Wanderer who summoned me. But I intend to leave this kingdom now to cross the channel, and I ask to be freed of my loyalty to you.”

  The king stared at him as though he had not understood a word, then very slowly began to smile. “Both Valmar and Karin tried to persuade me you had gone with the Wanderers, that the lords of voima might really take a personal interest in people like you and me. Perhaps I should have believed them.” He reached out abruptly to clap Roric on the shoulder. “How does it feel to be a warrior of voima out of the oldest tales?”

  “No, you do not understand,” said Roric. “One thing I did learn in the land of the immortals is that they are not creatures of honor and glory—or at least not the ones I was with. I never spoke with the Wanderers themselves. There is much more purpose in life here as a mortal than there could ever be in that realm.”

  “Are you sure you were not hiding in the woods this whole time?” asked the king with a gleam in his eye, as though not quite daring to believe him.

  “No, of course not! I shall tell you all about that realm some day—the fields are rich with grain, and the sun never sets. But right now I am going to Kardan’s kingdom.”

  “Of course you can accompany me when I go in a few weeks. I need to start assembling suitable betrothal gifts.”

  This was becoming as frustrating as trying to talk to the beings of the “third force.” “I am going now,” said Roric as distinctly as he could. “I would prefer you to release me from my oath before I go so that I can swear myself to Karin’s service, but if you do not I shall go anyway.”

  “And why are you so eager to go there now?” Hadros asked suspiciously.

  Roric was not about to tell the king he intended to kill his oldest son, but at this point he scarcely cared if he guessed. “Because I love Karin.”

  “Out!” roared the king to the others in the hall, who had been following the conversation with intrigued expressions. “All of you, out!” They fled in panic, and Hadros jumped up to slam the door after them.

  The hall was dim now, lit only by the smoke-hole and the small windows up in the eaves. Hadros sat down again, favoring one leg and breathing hard.

  “You came to me with this nonsense last month. I told you then to forget the whole idea, that Karin would not wed a fatherless man.”

  “And you were furious enough,” said Roric, still standing, his hand on his hilt, “that you told Gizor you would not mind if I was dead.”

  Hadros started to jump up again, then changed his mind. “Threatening you has not, it appears, taught you sense,” he said with steely calm, but then for a second Roric thought he smiled. “Sit down so we can face each other at eye level.”

  When Roric sat down cautiously at the far end of the bench, the king continued, “You are my sworn man, and I am your sworn lord. Gizor overreacted to something I said in anger. Let us not allow that princess make either of us kill the other.”

  “I love ‘that princess.’ You tell me a man without a father should not aspire so high, but she loves me herself. A princess can marry any man she chooses.”

  King Hadros was still breathing hard. “Maybe you did not hear,” he said quietly, as though not wanting his words to carry outside the hall. “She has taken Valmar for her lover.” Roric shut his eyes for a second to try to stay calm but did not interrupt. “I could not allow Valmar, any more than you, to speak to her while she was still a hostage here, because it was my responsibility to send her home to her father as pure and unfettered as she came to me. He paid the tribute faithfully each year, and I do not war on girls.

  “But now— Now that she is a royal heiress and home again, she can make her own decisions. She has many better men to choose from than a warrior without kin. And she has chosen my son.”

  Roric clenched his fists. “If you told him— If you told him to take her by the strong hand, then even if I am your sworn man, I—”

  King Hadros snorted, and Roric caught again that very fleeting, very strange expression, almost as though the king was pleased. “Not at all. I think it was her idea. Forget her, lad! Do not waste your strength thinking of women. Think instead of this.

  “Valmar can afford to marry young. He shall be king here someday, unless that new bride of his leads him such a merry chase that I outlive him! But you, Roric, you cannot tie yourself down. You have grown into the most formidable of my warriors, but you need to use that power to win a realm for yourself. You know you have the strength and the voima within you to be as good a lord as most of the Fifty Kings.”

  Roric glanced at him from under his eyebrows; Hadros looked concerned now, even fatherly. “Wisdom, they say, is for old men,” Roric said slowly,
“but action is for the young. But I can’t just act as a housecarl or even dependent warrior after you brought me up as your foster-son, and I also can’t act like a man with a family behind him. So what do you wisely recommend?”

  “There are always thrones to be won by the valorous,” said Hadros. “Several of the Fifty Kingdoms sent no one to the Gemot this year, and I am sure even now there are second sons preparing their warships to see if the region might be ready for a new lord.”

  “I had thought,” said Roric bitterly, “that the lords of voima might have a place for me.”

  “That too,” said Hadros quickly. “Now, if you want a ship of your own the best I can do is lend you one of mine, and I’ll let you have a few warriors. How would you like Gizor One-hand?”

  Roric stared for a moment, then started to laugh. “Are you still trying to get me killed, or is this one more challenge by which I prove my manhood? No, Hadros,” rising to his feet, “if the Wanderers still want me they will be able to find me, and if they do not I see no reason to attack an unsuspecting kingdom. I simply do not believe you that Karin loves Valmar rather than me. Tomorrow—no, today—I shall leave for Kardan’s kingdom to see her myself. I would prefer you to release me from my loyalty to you first.”

  The king rose stiffly, glaring. “Valmar is my son and heir. You are pledged to him through your pledge to me. And I do not release you from anything!”

  “Then I forswear my loyalty to you!” He tugged at the ring Hadros had given him when they first swore their oaths to each other, the ring the Weaver would not take. This time he got it off. He held it in his hand for a second, breathing hard, then hurled it at the king’s feet. “And I defy you as an untrue lord!”

  Roric slammed out of the hall and rushed toward the stables, half expecting Hadros to shout for his warriors. But there was no sound behind him.

  Also no Goldmane in the stables. He saddled one of the geldings as rapidly as he could. No time to go back to the loft for his small store of possessions. The knife the Weaver had returned to him should buy him passage if he could find a ship going to Kardan’s kingdom.

  He galloped through the courtyard, hooves echoing, out the gate, down the hill and across the troll’s bridge. This was a fast horse, one of the fastest in the kingdom after his stallion. But there was no sign of pursuit.

  Twenty miles along the coast was the little market port where Hadros sold his horses every year. There should be a ship in the harbor there, Roric thought, willing to take him. A mile from the castle he saw a raven perched in a tree, watching his approach with its head cocked to one side. Roric pulled up hard. He would send Karin a raven-message if the bird would carry it. It would take him at least two days’ traveling to reach her, and if she had turned to Valmar in despair, thinking him gone forever, he wanted to let her know he was coming.

  He whistled to the bird, trying to remember just what one said when speaking to ravens.

  3

  Valmar and Karin walked by the seashore. She was restless all the time now, and Valmar walked or rode with her wherever she went, but if she knew herself what was wrong she was not able to tell him.

  King Kardan, Valmar thought, did not yet seem to realize that his own father was busy planning their wedding. Karin had not spoken of it again, and it seemed too impossible to be real. But last night he had surprised himself into wakefulness from a dream of lying in her arms.

  It was only the sudden change from his father’s court to this castle, he told himself, only the unusualness of seeing Karin dressed like a queen, that made him think of her as other than his sister. And it was the same change that had made him begin to think there might be more to life than the future his father had laid out for him, that his attempt to run after Roric had been more than the folly of a boy. At this rate he would soon want to be like King Thaar in the old tales, he thought, riding out to protect Karin from a dragon—except that no one had ever seen a dragon in this part of the world.

  Karin looked out to sea; the north coast of the channel was too far away to be seen. Valmar looked instead at her, her great gray eyes, the angle of her cheekbones, the fine blond hairs around her forehead which were too short to be worked into her braids and blew back in the breeze. If she too had dreams, they were certainly not of him.

  “Look at the ravens,” said Karin. “I wonder what they’ve found.”

  A pair of ravens hopped along the strand, giving harsh cries and disturbing the gulls. Their jet-black plumage stood out among the light-colored sand and pebbles. They stayed just ahead of the waves that broke rhythmically against the shore. But there was nothing obvious washed up on the sand to attract them.

  And then one of the ravens spoke. “Karin,” it said.

  The word came out all sharp-edged and harsh, but it was certainly her name.

  “It’s a message!” Valmar cried. “It must be a message from—” But here he stopped. His father, he knew, was one who spoke to ravens, but this was a strange way to send word to his foster-daughter.

  But she had already rushed forward and dropped to her knees on the wet sand, heedless of her dress. “Yes, I am Karin,” she said, looking from one raven to another.

  One spoke: “Karin. Roric is coming.”

  And then the other: “Karin. Valmar. Beware of Roric.”

  Then with deep caws the birds rose, almost in her face, and flapped away, back over the dark, foam-dotted waves of the channel. A single black feather drifted down to the wet sand.

  Valmar hurried to Karin and helped her up. “Was that one message,” he asked, “or two?”

  But her face was joyous, transformed. “Roric is coming! That means he’s safe!”

  “But the other raven said to beware of him!”

  “It must only have meant to watch for him. Valmar, he’s coming!” She startled him by hugging him hard, then took his arm to walk back to the castle.

  “So he’s returned from the land of the Wanderers—or wherever he has been,” said Valmar. “Do you think he’s won treasure there?”

  “I don’t care,” said Karin, still smiling so widely everything she said came out as a laugh. “I just want him with me again.”

  “It will be good to see him,” Valmar agreed. With Roric here—although he did not say this to Karin—this plan to have him marry his big sister would all be forgotten. He told himself he would be glad for that.

  Karin turned suddenly. “I cannot return to the castle. I must go down to the harbor. He may be crossing the channel even now!”

  Valmar held her by the arms until she looked up at him. “Karin,” he said quietly, “it’s time for dinner. I don’t know if you’ve noticed these last few days, but your father is worried about you. That’s part of the reason I’ve always been with you—to keep him from sending his warriors along to watch you. Do you want him asking Queen Arane to come analyze what is wrong?”

  “No, no, of course not,” she said with a laugh, but she looked yearningly toward the harbor as he steered her back home.

  But at first light she went down to the harbor alone, not waiting for Valmar, not saying anything other than that she would not be back all day.

  King Kardan took Valmar aside. “This may sound curious coming from her father, lad,” he said, striding back and forth in the middle of his hall, hands behind his back and his eyes down. “But I no longer feel I know my daughter. She grew into a woman in the years she was away, and I cannot hug her or tease her back into good humor the way I might have ten years ago. I had expected her to be joyful to be home again.”

  “Oh, I’m sure she’s happy to be here,” Valmar stammered.

  “She may have been at first,” said the king, shooting Valmar a quick glance. He had the same direct gray eyes as Karin. “But since we went to the burial mound—or even since that second day she was here, during the All-Gemot, when she went on that long ride with you and suddenly decided to spend the night in King Hadros’s tents again—she has been distracted, uneasy . . . I would have to call
her miserable.”

  Valmar actually agreed but did not want to say so.

  Kardan put a hand on his shoulder so that Valmar had to join him in his restless pacing. “She told me she thinks of you as her little brother.”

  “I am not her little brother,” Valmar startled himself by thinking. “I am going to be her husband.”

  “She seems more content to be with you than with anyone else,” said the king, who fortunately could not read his thoughts. “Do you understand why she is miserable? Can you stay with her, cheer her as you may?”

  An unexpected vision of how he might cheer her flashed through Valmar’s mind. He pushed it firmly away. Karin had been too distracted to sense his changing feelings for her, and he hoped to hide them from her forever.

  “I think she misses our foster-brother,” he said. “His name is Roric; he was brought up in Hadros’s court along with the rest of us. But he should be coming here shortly to see her, and then I expect she will be more content to settle down. You see, he was away from the castle when we left for the All-Gemot, and she never had a chance to tell him good-bye.”

  “Curious,” said Kardan. “She has never spoken of him.”

  “You see,” added Valmar in what he hoped were friendly and confidential tones, “she doesn’t like to speak to you too much of life in Hadros’s court. She’s afraid you’ll think she considers it more her home than this, her real home. But I’m sure in a few more days— And especially once she’s seen Roric—”

  The king nodded slowly. “Then if she is waiting for this Roric at the harbor, I hope he comes soon.” He slapped Valmar on the back. “You are a good little brother, lad. And when you are twice as old as you are now, I am sure you shall be a worthy successor to your father. At least I will not need to worry on my deathbed of a renewal of war between our kingdoms!”

  Valmar kept thinking of the strangeness of the raven-messages. Who had sent them? Roric himself, King Hadros, or someone else entirely? Raven-messages were by their very nature brief, so if one had more than a few words to convey one needed more than one bird, but one of these messages and not the other had been addressed to both of them.