by Voima
He did not want to do anything to take the joy from her face, but he could not help himself. “When you put your arms around me—even before you saw it was me—did you think it was Valmar?”
She frowned in what looked like genuine surprise. “Valmar! Why should I embrace him?” She smiled and took hold of him by the ears. “I have dreamed of you every night, Roric.”
“Everyone in Hadros’s court is preparing for your wedding. And the king told me— He told me you and Valmar had become lovers.”
She drew back and frowned again. “And you believed him? But I forget. You have been gone so long, you do not know what has been happening. I climbed at twilight to the top of a high peak near here to try to find a Wanderer.”
Now he frowned. “And did you find one?”
“Yes.” She shivered a little. “I was trying to find where you had gone.”
He reached out and put his arm around her waist. The strange land where he had apparently passed more than three weeks was much less interesting than mortal lands. “Did he tell you where I was?”
“He did not know. But you are here now!” she added with a new smile. “What did you find in the Wanderers’ realm?”
But he had not forgotten his question. It came out harsher than he intended. “Tell me, and tell me now, if you have taken Valmar for your lover.”
She closed her eyes. “You are the only person I can trust, Roric. Please do not doubt me. In Hadros’s court I could keep myself in control, allow my emotions out only when it was safe to do so. Here, I do not know why, maybe it is all the memories of my childhood, maybe it was meeting the Wanderer, maybe it is because I have been so worried for you.
“But I am in much greater danger, I realize,” she went on, “than I ever was at home. I did not know then how much King Hadros shielded me. And yet, when firmness and courage are called for, I have constantly been on the verge of breaking down. I wanted Valmar with me because he was my only link with the world I have known for the last ten years, and because I could trust my little brother.”
“You have not answered my question,” he said very quietly.
She tightened her lips for a second, but the joy was still in her eyes. “I was starting to tell you. I spent the entire night on the peak where I met the Wanderer. When I returned, Hadros assumed I had spent the night with Valmar. But of course Valmar no more intends to marry me than I do him, and although he remained here in the castle when Hadros went home, so far we have kept any word of this foolish marriage bargain from my father. I can swear to you on steel and rowan, Roric, if you are still unwilling to believe me, that no one has lain in my arms but you.”
She looked at him seriously, but a smile tugged at her mouth. “If the situation had been as you feared, who would you have killed first, him or me?”
He laughed then and crushed her to him. But he could not resist asking, “You are sure he did not intend to father a child on you while he was here, to make you surely his?”
“Of course not!” For a second a very strange expression flitted across her face, but she turned it into a smile. “In fact Valmar has left— But I can tell you all that later,” kissing him hard.
“In that case,” said Roric, “are your maids likely to come disturb you? Perhaps I should try fathering a child on you myself!”
Karin put her head out of the room just long enough to tell the maids that she felt ill and would not see anyone all day. Late in the afternoon she and Roric lay on the tumbled sheets, letting the warm air from the open window wash over their skin, talking.
“So Valmar has gone now to the Wanderers’ realm,” said Roric in wonder. “If they could not get me, and you too refused them, maybe they were happy to take whatever mortal was willing to come with them. It is a strange realm, Karin. Here mortals try to create a life, a story, that will live on beyond them, but the immortals, at least the ones I met, have no honor . . . Maybe it will be different for him.”
“My father is concerned about him. He would not believe me when I told him where Valmar had gone. For a moment I even feared he thought I had done away with him myself, but he has said nothing more about it.”
“Are you sure he is not planning your marriage to Valmar himself?” said Roric with a laugh. “May he not think you have found a way to rid yourself of an unwanted suitor, especially with me appearing so soon afterwards?”
She did not laugh in return. “Even if my father does not think I shoved Valmar off the headland, I fear King Hadros may think so.”
Roric’s face went sober. “I defied Hadros before coming here. The sea was too rough for a ship the size of his, but he may soon be after me. It will indeed be hard to explain Valmar’s absence, especially since I think Hadros guessed I intended to kill him.”
She took his face in both her hands, and her eyes were teasing. “Hadros did send a raven to tell us to beware of you. But you would not really have done that, would you? Killed your foster-brother, violated all your honor, because of jealousy?”
“Hadros himself,” he replied somewhat distantly, “tried to tell me that love conflicts with honor.”
3
As sunset came, they dressed and combed themselves, preparing to go out. “You may not grow invisible this evening,” Karin said hopefully.
But Roric shook his head. “I have thought that each evening since I emerged from the faeys’ tunnels.”
“I hate to have you spend all night outdoors,” said Karin, “but this time of day, right after sunset, is the only time that I will be able to smuggle you out of the castle. I can think of no way to explain your presence here to my father unless he first meets you walking up at sunrise from the harbor.”
“It will be a warm night,” said Roric with a smile, “and besides, you may want your sleep.”
When the sun touched the horizon, Roric began to fade. Karin clenched her fists, then threw herself into his arms for a final kiss.
“You do realize,” Roric said just before his voice became inaudible, “you will still be able to feel me.”
They went down the great stairway to the hall side by side, but King Kardan, looking up surprised, saw only her.
“Yes, I feel better,” said Karin. Her voice in her own ears sounded calmer, less wild than it had for several days, and her father nodded almost with relief. “I shall take a short stroll in the evening air to clear my head.”
They unlocked the doors for her, and Roric stayed at her shoulder. As she went out the great gates of the castle, she saw two members of the guard following her. She stopped, then walked up to them.
“It’s your father’s orders, Princess,” she was told. “It is not safe for a young woman to walk alone.”
She had the vague sense they had followed her the day before as well, but yesterday was a blur. “Of course,” she said, “but keep your distance so I can enjoy a little solitude.” She returned to where she thought she had left Roric and had to stifle a startled outcry when he unexpectedly took her hand.
But she squeezed his invisible hand as they walked, trying her best not to remember any more of the details of the story about the daemon lover. It was another of the old stories about a woman who had lost her man. In this story the woman had longed for her husband so passionately that he had returned from Hel to her, but had returned as a wight, without his now rotting body.
Her feet found their way down the harbor road to the headland as they had ever since she heard the ravens’ messages. The western sky was still shot with scarlet, but the light was going fast. “Perhaps I should go back to the castle soon,” she started to say, but then she caught motion on the water’s dark surface from the corner of her eye.
She hurried to the edge for a closer look. The wind had dropped at last, and the ship, with lanterns hung on bow and stern, was coming into harbor on its oars as well as its nearly slack sail. Color had faded with the onset of night, so she could not see if the sail was red.
But she still recognized the ship well—she had come he
re on it. It was Hadros’s ship, and the heavily-muscled man who was first onto the shore, his shield on his arm and his sword in his hand, was King Hadros himself.
She started to run, not back toward the castle but directly inland. She still clenched Roric’s hand in hers. “I can’t face Hadros—I can’t!” She did not know where she was going, but there was no way she could explain to the king so that he would understand, at least not tonight, that neither she nor Roric had killed his son.
There was just enough light to show the startled guards closing in on her.
Karin tried to go faster but could not. “I can’t outrun them in these clothes,” she gasped.
Suddenly Roric’s hand was gone. She struggled onward, then heard a surprised cry behind her. She turned to make out a shape that seemed to be struggling with the air—one of the guards. He doubled over suddenly and dropped to the ground. The second guard ran up beside the first, his sword out, but there was a sharp clang, his sword was struck from his grip, and his head jerked backwards as he was knocked down by an invisible fist.
Holding up her skirts, Karin kept running, but she smiled as she ran. In a moment she felt a hand under her arm, supporting her, helping her to greater speed.
When they had passed beyond a hedgerow she paused to catch her breath. Moonlight and shrubs made crazy shadows around her. She firmly pushed away the thought that this might be someone else from the realm of the Wanderers beside her. “I hope you didn’t have to kill them,” she said, then realized he could not answer. “Squeeze my hand twice if you did.”
He did not squeeze at all. “Good,” she said. “When my father dies they will be my guards.”
She listened but heard only the ordinary sounds of the night: a chirping of insects in the meadow, small creatures rustling in the hedgerow, and in the distance the slow sound of waves. King Hadros had apparently not yet come up from the harbor.
Karin suddenly felt fully herself again, unafraid, able to assess dangers, able to plan. In fact, since Roric did not know where they were and could not speak, she had to plan for both of them. Would Queen Arane approve of this new method of manipulating men?
She smiled at this thought and started walking rapidly. In the darkness it was a little better; the solidity at her shoulder felt like Roric as long as she did not look toward him. “We have a head start,” she said. “By the time they realize in the castle that I have been gone too long, by the time those guards recover consciousness, by the time Hadros comes up from the harbor and demands to see his son, we will be well on the way to the Mirror-seer’s lake. They will not think to look for us there tonight.”
Her feet found the track that led up the valley. “As long as we are both gone, Valmar and I,” she said to the silent presence next to her, “it will be hard for King Hadros to start the war again on the presumption that Valmar was murdered here. Hadros and my father may even agree that they both were cruelly deceived by you, who first killed Valmar and then kidnapped me. But I am afraid the two of them will agree together that Valmar and I will have to marry if we can be recovered.”
She felt the tension in the arm that touched hers and laughed. “No, Roric, I really do not want to marry my foster-brother. He is better looking than you,” she added teasingly, “but I thought today would have answered all your questions about my intentions. By the time he returns from the Wanderers’ realm, I will have thought of something to change Hadros’s mind—women can always outmaneuver men if they want.”
But a thought nagged at her, driving away her laughter. The Wanderer had asked all three of them if they were outcasts. He might have been deliberately looking for someone with no ties because whoever went to assist the Wanderers against fate would not be coming back.
“You probably don’t know about the Mirror-seer,” she said to Roric because she did not want to think about Valmar. The track was beginning to rise, and they had to go slowly in the dark. “It was he who told me I would find a Wanderer on Graytop—but could not tell me where you had gone. Now that the Wanderers have their mortal he’s got to tell us more.”
The way seemed much longer in the dark and on foot than it had in daylight and on horseback. The moon was well into the western sky by the time they topped the escarpment to see the lake’s surface calm before them, reflecting stars.
As she picked her way along the damp shore the calls of the frogs grew silent, and there were splashes as they leapt from shore to water, but behind her their song began again. The Mirror-seer’s house was a black, indistinct shape.
She stood hesitating on the dock before it, realizing he must be asleep, wondering if he could see anything with his mirrors in the dark. But this was no time, she told herself, for timidity. She lifted her fist and rapped boldly on the door.
There was a confused banging inside, while the frogs went silent again and a little wind sprang up among the reeds. Then through the small window she could see a candle come to life, and the door opened before her.
“Princess!” said the little round man in surprise, pulling disordered clothes more firmly around himself. His eyes were hidden by shadow. “What can have brought you here in the darkest night? And this?”
He turned toward the emptiness where Roric stood, holding up his candle. She turned too, eagerly, but saw nothing but the candle’s flickering flame.
“Then you are back in mortal lands, Roric No-man’s son,” said the Seer gravely.
“You can see him?” she asked urgently.
“Of course. And you cannot?”
He turned then, seeming to listen to something. “I understand,” he said soberly. “You were not with the lords of voima themselves but with a simulacrum of them. That is why your beard did not grow while you were there, and why in the realms under the sun you are only fully real when the sun is shining.” To Karin the Seer added, “My own voima allows me to see him. But there may be something I can do . . .”
“We need to find someone,” said Karin, “Valmar Hadros’s son. He walked out over the sea on moonlight to join the Wanderers.” She realized the Mirror-seer was tapping the fingers of one hand against his thigh and added hastily, “You can have this ring. It used to be my mother’s; I think it is very valuable.”
The Seer took the ring she handed him but did not look at it. “You will soon exhaust your father’s treasury with all these people you want to see, Princess,” he commented. “And you should know I cannot see someone no longer under the sun.”
“We do not need to see him,” said Karin, and from the way the Seer turned his head Roric apparently said something too. “But we need to bring him back from the Wanderers’ realm. King Hadros will kill somebody—maybe my father—unless we produce his son very soon.”
Again Roric seemed to add something, for the Seer said dryly, “Those who seek the Wanderers usually have deeper concerns than recovery of a horse.”
“If we cross the channel again,” said Karin, “and go to the stone gateway where Roric followed the—followed whatever the being was, will we be in the Wanderers’ realm?”
“There is no gateway there that mortals can pass unaided.”
For a second she could feel despair starting to mount. Coming here had been useless, at best a temporary delay until she had to face the two kings, whose men were even now doubtless searching the woods for her.
But she was not going to give up now. She set her jaw and asked, “I am not asking you to see anything by darkness. I only want information. Before you told me where to find a Wanderer. Now I want to find the rest of them—and the knowledge you tried to keep from me before.”
“I kept no knowledge from you,” said the Mirror-seer, but he seemed uneasy, and his turned his face away toward the lake.
“You told me that an end is fated for everyone, even the Wanderers. Now tell us what role they want all of us—Roric, Valmar, and me—to play as they fight against that end.”
For a moment the Seer played with the heavy ring, tossing it up and catching it one-handed.
The gold glinted in the candle light. Then suddenly he closed his fingers around it. “I am not doing this for a piece of jewelry,” he said. “But you are the heiress of the kingdom in which, after all, I have to live. The mirrors will sometimes show something different by night . . .”
He turned then abruptly and disappeared back into his house. Karin stood waiting on the dock, listening to the little waves against the shore. Although she strained to hear, there was no sound of pursuit from the castle. It grew colder, and Roric put an invisible arm around her shoulders.
In twenty minutes the Seer was back, completely draped with black cloth, so that at first the candle he held up seemed held by a disembodied hand. She pressed against Roric, either to reassure him or for reassurance herself.
“This is for you, Roric No-man’s son,” said the Seer, holding out another black cloth. Roric let go of her, and in a second the cloth had disappeared, although with the moon low virtually everything outside the range of the candle flame was invisible.
The Mirror-seer went to the edge of the dock and held up the candle so that its light was reflected in a dozen shining shards on the waves below. He held a mirror over the candle, then went perfectly still. He kept his eyes turned to the mirror, bringing his face closer and closer as the candle smoke gradually spread a dark stain over the glass. To Karin, waiting with indrawn breath and heart pounding, the Seer seemed to stand motionless for an hour.
Abruptly there came a loud splash, followed almost instantaneously by another. The candle light was gone, but something was thrashing in the water by the dock.
Karin froze in terror and uncertainty. “Help me out, Princess!” came a voice from the water, the Mirror-seer’s voice.
She knelt down and extended an arm over the black water. The Seer seized it so powerfully that she was almost pulled in, and had to brace herself to tug him out.
He came up all dark and wet. She could only make out a lighter gray spot that must be his face as she helped him onto the dock and he pushed back his drapings. A short distance down the shore there was further splashing, as though something very large was coming up on land.
