C. Dale Brittain

by Voima

  “You are halfway back,” said the Seer, his face turned away from her. “When you reappear at sunrise, you shall be fully returned to the land of the mortals.”

  “Roric?” said Karin tentatively, but if he answered she could not hear his voice.

  “Listen to me, Kardan’s daughter,” said the Mirror-seer then. “I have seen more than even a Seer can safely see. If I tell you this now, I shall be unable to tell you anything more for a long, long time, if ever. It is your choice—difficult information now, or many small seeings in the years to come.”

  “We may not have years to come,” she answered. “Tell me what you know, and tell me plainly.”

  But the Seer did not speak at once. He sat on the dock, Karin beside him, and water dripped from him onto the planks. He seemed to be trembling, either from the effort of his seeing or from chill. She could feel exhaustion stinging the backs of her own eyes. This night already seemed to have lasted years, and it was not over.

  “No one can choose their fate,” he said at last, so low that she had to bend close to him. “Not even the Wanderers. Their realm of endless day must sometime move toward night, only to be reborn if new powers take control.”

  “I knew it,” said Karin between her teeth. “I knew they had no ultimate strength.”

  “But they do,” said the Seer, even more quietly. “Mortals cannot choose not to die. Although the Wanderers cannot avoid their fate, they have a way to alter it . . .”

  Karin thought about this for a moment. “What would happen to mortal realms if the Wanderers died?”

  “If no one replaced them—then chaos like the chaos out of which the earth was originally formed.”

  “But there are other beings of voima! Won’t you still be here?”

  “Voima persists even without the lords of voima. The change has come before. I believe—I hope—that someone will take over—the same Wanderers reborn, those who now challenge them, or even, perhaps, those others that took Roric No-man’s son. The Wanderers’ realm should not be an empty night for long. But then— Mortals may still burn offerings, but the answers they will receive will be very different . . .”

  There was another long silence. “But what do the Wanderers want with us?” she asked at last. “And why do they want outcasts?”

  The Seer shifted as though unwilling to answer, but when he spoke it was louder than anything he had said so far. “There is only one solution for the present Wanderers if they want to reverse their fate. And that solution is in Hel.”

  “But there are no Wanderers in Hel!”

  “Exactly. It is reserved for mortals. That is why they need a mortal: to go there, to find what they need, to bring it back.”

  “And that is?”

  The Seer shifted again, and she thought he was shaking his head, though it was hard to be sure. “I am not an ordinary mortal. I do not know.”

  “Well,” said Karin abruptly, determinedly, pushing herself to her feet. “I for one am not going into Hel on behalf of the Wanderers. And I will not let them send either Valmar or Roric. None of us will sacrifice the rest of our lives for them. You say the Wanderers want a mortal to bring something to them, but that person would come back as a wight, without a body.”

  “That is possible,” said the Seer colorlessly.

  “There is one thing you still have not told us,” she said, standing over him now. “How can we find the Wanderers, get into their realm to rescue Valmar? Will I still find that Wanderer on Graytop, the one who told you to send me there?”

  “He will not meet you there again,” said the Mirror-seer, still in that distant, expressionless voice, confirming her guess that he had been instructed to send her there.

  “Can we reach their realm through the faeys’ burrows?”

  “There is only one path you can take, Karin Kardan’s daughter, only one route mortals may now pass unaided. And that is far to the north of here, far beyond the channel, in the mountains of the hot rivers.”

  “The Hot-River Mountains?” said Karin thoughtfully. “They are indeed far to the north. In fact— I think there is a king there who was outlawed at the All-Gemot. How will we find the right place in the mountains to enter immortal realms?”

  “When you find it, you will know it.”

  “That is not an answer.”

  The Seer rocked back and forth in the damp pool his wet drapes had made around him on the dock. “Then ask for the Witch of the Western Cliffs when you reach the mountains. She will direct you to the doorway. And that,” he added in a louder voice, “is the only way you will reach the Wanderers, and the only answer you will have from me.”

  She stamped her foot abruptly on the planking. “It is not the only path to the Wanderers’ realm. But I see it is the only path they intend to let us take. Are they still testing our ability and resolve? We shall certainly go there, go there at once, but only to recover Valmar from being persuaded to offer his own life for beings whose fated end has already come.”

  She turned, took two steps, and turned back. “Thank you,” she said gravely to the Seer. “If I ever become sovereign queen here, unless the world is changed beyond recognition, I shall ensure that you have the respect and the comfort any Seer would want. Roric?”

  She held out her hand to emptiness, and someone or something took it. If this was not Roric, she thought grimly, if something else had climbed out of the lake and taken his place, then she would find out at dawn.

  Karin kept stumbling on the dark, uneven track as they went back down the valley. She had not eaten all day and was almost unbearably weary. When they had ascended, her own footsteps had been the only sound; now there was the sound of another set of feet beside hers.

  “I think we shall be at the harbor shortly before sunrise,” she said. “We cannot stop for conversations with my father or with Hadros. As long as they are uncertain what has happened to any of us, that uncertainty will bind them together—I hope.”

  She pictured Hadros flying into a rage and running her father through in the middle of his own hall. A gasp of horror almost escaped her, but she closed her mind against the image. If it was going to happen, it had already happened, and she could not find out without exposing Roric and herself to new danger.

  “We could flee to Queen Arane’s court,” she said thoughtfully. “I think the queen would take us in—she even asked about you when we first met. But that would do nothing to save Valmar.” She realized she kept waiting for Roric to make some response, but she alone would have to make this decision.

  “No, we will have to find some way to cross the channel. There may be a skiff down at the harbor that you and I could sail alone. We have to get up north, have to rescue Valmar before he reaches Hel—if the Wanderers have not sent him there already. Bringing him alive to his father is also the only way to rescue you. We could try to explain that there was not enough time between when you left Hadros’s court and Valmar’s disappearance for you to kill him, but he will not be interested in dates and times. The only thing that will interest him will be his son . . .”

  She was so tired it was hard to think clearly, but suddenly she laughed. She heard the sound of her laugh disconcertingly loud, almost wild again, but still she smiled.

  “I know how we can cross the channel,” she said to the presence beside her that she hoped was Roric. “We’ll steal Hadros’s ship!”

  He pulled her to a stop, and she felt hands on her shoulders. “No,” she said firmly, “it is no use arguing with me. I cannot hear what you say. And this will work! Come on.” But she did not start walking at once. Instead she asked, against her will, “Are you sure you are Roric?”

  For answer he took her in his arms and kissed her. She laughed again as he released her, this time in relief. “If you are not Roric, I think I like you even better! Now, we must make haste to be there before Hadros sails again.”

  She gave his hand a tug and began to walk. “Men worry too much about rule and honor. I like my kingdom, like its lu
xuries—the food is better than Hadros serves, and no one expects a princess to toil! But I will cheerfully give it all up to save you.”

  Karin hurried down the track with new energy, her slippered feet finding a sure footing. No longer was she bound by the generations who lay in the burial mound, or by the necessity to hold herself in check in a court where she was an outsider. She and Roric together were fleeing for their lives, and she smiled as she squeezed his hand.

  The darkest part of the night had passed and the eastern sky was lightening toward yellow when they came down the harbor road. Roric was still invisible. “Wait here behind these bushes,” Karin told him, thinking that men really were much easier to deal with if they could not raise objections. “As soon as the sun rises come join me. No one should observe you regaining visibility. We want the sailors to obey us, not fear us as dead wights from Hel.”

  She straightened out her clothes as well as she could by the half light and took the narrow road down to the edge of the sea. She would know in a moment whether Hadros had told his men why he had suddenly decided to come here, or whether, as she hoped, he had given the orders but no explanations.

  One longship, its dragon prow unmounted, lay upside down and covered with a tarpaulin on the shore. Another ship, its awnings spread, floated on the tide. The sleepy men guarding it heard her approach and jumped up. They recognized her after only a second in spite of her rich clothing.

  She scanned the men on board surreptitiously as they woke and came to greet her. “Are you coming home then, Karin?” one asked eagerly. “The maid you left in charge knows nothing of your herb chest, and spends all day screeching at the other women. And we have had but poor fare since you went away!”

  There were only a few warriors here with the seamen. Hadros must have taken the rest with him to the castle and spent the night there—which suggested, she thought with hope, that the king and his men had not gotten into a fight with her father and his much more numerous guards, or the survivors would have fled.

  “Is the king ready to sail?” asked another seaman.

  She did not answer but instead made a show of looking around. “Is Roric not here?” she asked carefully, watching their reactions.

  But they only seemed puzzled. “Don’t you mean Valmar? Is Roric here too? He was home for less than a day before he left again.”

  The edge of the sun was just peeking over the horizon. “Hadros sent me to sail home with you now,” she said clearly. “Take down the awnings and prepare to set out at once. The king will be detained at my father’s castle for some weeks, busy with affairs of the All-Gemot.”

  “Or arranging your marriage!” said one man slyly, but the others shushed him.

  “Roric said he would accompany me,” she continued, deliberately ignoring this remark. “He was going to meet me here.”

  Even if they rescued Valmar from the Wanderers, even if they all lived past the change of the world the Seer could not describe, she did not know how she would escape this marriage, which kept seeming more and more imminent until even Roric half believed in it. If Valmar had already descended into Hel for the Wanderers, this would no longer be a problem. But allowing him to die was no solution, even if Queen Arane might have thought it one.

  Direct sunlight now came rippling across the sea. The sailors were loosening the awnings from the pegs. Karin cupped her hands and turned toward the headland. “Roric!” she shouted. “Are you up there? We are ready to sail!”

  And he appeared, himself, solid, coming down the steep road in long leaps. “We must leave at once,” she said, even before he reached the shore. “Sails up! Oars out!” By the time Roric reached the narrow quay and vaulted into the ship, the sailors were releasing the mooring lines.

  “Just in time,” he said in her ear as they came out past the shelter of the headland, and the wind bellied out the red sail. “I saw a group of people heading this way from the castle. Another five minutes and they would have had us.”

  4

  Valmar ran into moonlight, the empty air churning beneath his boots. He kept closing his eyes against that brilliant whiteness, then opening them to take in its glory. He had run, it seemed, for many minutes, for hours, while the moon grew and grew, big enough to swallow him, the headland, Kardan’s kingdom, the sea, the entire earth. And the man who ran at his side, whom he did not dare look at, was also growing.

  His eyes flew open again as he felt solidity beneath his feet and almost stumbled. The moon had caught fire.

  But it was not the moon, he realized, as his feet slowed first to a walk and then to a halt. It was the sun, and he was running into a sunset that had set all the clouds around it ablaze.

  They seemed to be in a meadow of grass and clover. Cows grazed on the far side, but they kept raising their heads and lowing uneasily. Everything, even the rank grass, was tinted pink by the sky.

  Then Valmar turned to look at the being beside him.

  He was white, brilliant white, so white the sunset did not touch him. He was more than twice the size of a man and arrayed in robes that glowed. The face he turned on Valmar was enormously solemn, enormously wise and noble, and yet there too was an almost friendly air if such were possible, a touch of good humor.

  Valmar dropped to his knees. “My lord,” he stammered. He fumbled his sword free of the peace straps and out of the sheath, and held it up, hilt first, while keeping his head down.

  “As I recall,” commented an amused voice above him, “you were going to ask no more of the lords of voima.”

  “Lord, I did not know,” said Valmar, his face averted. He kept expecting to feel his sword taken from his hands, but it was untouched.

  “You were going to make your life into the best tale your own strength and honor and manhood could create,” the other continued, “and all without asking anything of us.”

  Valmar put a hand across his eyes. “Do not mock me now, Lord. I did not know—I did not know that you were the source of strength and honor and manhood.”

  “In fact,” said the Wanderer, still sounding amused, “we pattern our honor on that of you mortals. Voima flows from life, not the other way around. But as you can see, our land is hastening toward night. And while you may have decided you would ask nothing more of voima, we would ask something of you.”

  Valmar sat back on his heels, daring to look up for the first time. “I am yours to command.” Strange conflicting feelings whirled through him: the way he always felt listening to the old stories of glory and death; his thoughts of Karin; his admiration for Roric, who too had been here; and his desire to make his father think well of him, all the feelings burning and swirling into a sensation that could have been a mighty song of trumpets.

  “But we do not command,” said the Wanderer. “Come, and you shall meet the others.”

  The sun did not set but remained frozen just above the horizon, though as the clouds blew across the sky an ever-changing display of gold and scarlet lit up the west. They went on foot, the Wanderer—as Valmar could not help but think of him, though he must have a different name here—slowing his pace to Valmar’s. When he asked how far they had to go, he always had the same answer, “Not far. Not very far.”

  They traveled through shaded dells and open meadows, along the edges of woodlots and by pastures where the flocks regarded them querulously. At first Valmar thought this a perfect land, one of endless abundance and fertility, but then he started to see the gaps: shocked hay mildewing where it stood, birch trees broken so that unshed leaves were dying, pear trees whose fruit was rotting even before it ripened.

  These were the sorts of setbacks every farm of every kingdom had to deal with in mortal realms, Valmar told himself, and should therefore not seem worrisome. But somehow they did. For the lords of voima any weakness or rot was a sign that their powers were beginning to wane.

  He squirmed as he realized that the Wanderers must have been listening to the very conversation in which he and Karin had spoken of them as being without k
nowledge or power. How could he have been so foolish? Maybe they only had gaps in their knowledge, if indeed they had any, because of this imminent onset of night.

  He would stand with them, then, he thought resolutely, stand with them against those who wanted to replace them, even if it was a doomed cause. People who glittered and who filled him with an awe beyond fear, though at the same time trying to reassure him, must be in the right.

  He startled himself by wondering if Karin—or even Roric—would agree. Roric had been here, but had come back. Had he let down the Wanderers, even rejected them? Or had they somehow rejected him?

  But he had not seen Roric, Valmar reminded himself; he was not even sure he was back except that the ravens had said so. There might be many purposes and plans here, of which Roric was involved in one set and he in another.

  He thought about the being without a back, whom he had seen so briefly, who looked neither as this Wanderer had when he appeared on the headland, nor as he appeared now. And Valmar tightened his jaw as he wondered if Roric might be on one side and he on the other.

  The hall where he was taken was enormous, glorious, its ceiling so high it seemed there must be clouds beneath it, its benches all cushioned and its tables laid with silver. Hammered silver bosses decorated the beams, and the upright timbers were all painted blue. The other beings there were nearly indistinguishable from the one he had first met, tall, glowing white, with faces so noble and wise he could barely look at them.

  They set him on a high bench where he felt like a child and brought him food, roast beef, fried onions, soft cheese, a white loaf with honey, and an ale horn that never became low no matter how much he drank. He was so excited it was hard to eat, but he was, he realized, very hungry. Horizontal sunlight poured through the hall’s open doorway. The tall white beings stayed at the far end of the hall as though not wanting to distract him from his dinner.