C. Dale Brittain

by Voima

  Either that, or security by its very nature was only to be found in tiny pockets in the midst of danger.

  Someone was standing just outside the tunnel. He stood quietly, silhouetted against the moonlit sky, a sword in his hand.

  The faeys were instantly gone and their light with them, fading away back into their tunnel without a sound. Karin remained on hands and knees, just back from the entrance, considering. Whoever it was, he did not seem to notice her. He shifted, raising his head as though listening, then again took his waiting pose.

  Her choices were to retreat with the faeys, she thought, spending perhaps many more days in their tunnels, or to come out and face whoever this was. If it was one of Hadros’s men, she should be safe with him. Eirik was a different consideration. But would Eirik be waiting quietly outside a faeys’ tunnel?

  She could not stay underground forever, in spite of dragons and renegade kings. She felt at her belt, then remembered her knife was gone. Shaking her head, she rose to her feet anyway and came out of the tunnel.

  And saw as he whirled toward her that it was Roric. She almost collapsed with relief as his arms went around her.

  “The lords of voima be praised,” he murmured after a moment, drawing his lips back from hers. “I didn’t dare hope the Wanderers would save you.”

  “I saved myself,” she said a little testily, even while pressing herself close against him. “The Wanderers had nothing to do with it. The last one I’ve seen is the one who took Valmar.”

  “There is one here, up on the mountain. But did the raiders harm you, Karin?” kissing her scraped forehead.

  “No—all my wounds came from escaping the dragon. I think their leader was planning to ransom me, but his woman helped me escape.” She would tell him later about Eirik and Wigla.

  “How did you get into the crevice?”

  “I crawled in,” she said in surprise. “There are faeys in there, large faeys. How did you find me?”

  He still held her to him, rocking slowly back and forth. “I was fairly high up, watching. I saw you appear this morning, then saw the dragon coming. I was much too far away to do anything—by the Wanderers, Karin, you can’t know how terrible that was! But I marked where you disappeared, and when the dragon moved off—I didn’t know even creatures of voima could be that enormous!—I found the way to bring me here. When I discovered no blood and none of your clothing or hair, I even hoped you might have crawled into this crevice.”

  “Then why did you not follow me?”

  “I’ve always said there is voima about you, Karin,” he murmured, his lips in her hair. “I could see the crevice, its smooth walls, its flat sandy floor, but I could not enter. It was as though the air in the entrance had turned to glass. My only hope then was that you were there, that you were safe, and that somehow you would come out to me.”

  Karin looked in surprise at the shadowed crevice, then shrugged. The faeys had always had the ability to protect themselves but she did not have time to think about them further. “And the others?”

  “The dragon ate somebody—I think one of Hadros’s men, though I was too far away to see. I can understand someone allowing a troll to live under his bridge, Karin, but to keep a dragon as your doorkeeper!”

  “They give honor to the lords of death,” she said in a small voice. The person eaten could have been herself. But whoever it was, if it was one of Hadros’s warriors she had known him. The days when she had managed the king’s household, making sure the food was prepared and the ale brewed, seemed so distant they could have happened to somebody else.

  “The dragon seemed to satisfy its hunger with just one man,” said Roric. He drew back and looked at her in the moonlight. “This has been your expedition from the beginning, and if they ever make a song of it you will be at the center. Your own voima protected us as we came north, and then you here escaped both raiders and a serpent. At the moment all I have is my sword and you—I don’t even have my horse, not that he’d be much use now. So you tell me. Your father and Hadros must still be looking for you. Do we go home with them—Hadros intends to bring me up before the Gemot to answer for the blood-guilt on me—or do we keep on trying to find Valmar?”

  “Find Valmar, of course. We haven’t come all this distance to let him be sent to Hel.”

  “Well,” said Roric with a low chuckle, “at this rate we may be seeing him there soon.”

  They scrambled westward across the rock scree, their way lit by the shifting and deceptive blue light of the moon. It has hard to tell distances, to distinguish between a hole and a shadow, and Roric was more awkward on a steep surface than she in spite of his much greater strength. But they gradually worked their way up and down boulders, paths, and crevices until they reached a vantage point from which they could see the stars glinting on the uneasy surface of the sea.

  They sat for a moment on the rocks, catching their breaths and looking at the moon. “Wigla—the woman who helped me escape from the raiders’ fortress—seemed to know about the Witch of the Western Cliffs,” said Karin. “So she must live somewhere near here.”

  “Your Mirror-seer then directed us truly,” commented Roric, which she herself did not yet entirely believe. “Where would a witch live? In a cave?”

  “Look!” said Karin, pointing onward. Just a short distance beyond them, near where the stone scree dropped away in cliffs to the sea, was a spot of light. It looked like firelight, from a fire deep in the rocks, and from it thin smoke was rising.

  “That wouldn’t be the raiders again?” asked Roric cautiously.

  “No, no,” said Karin confidently. “Eirik’s fortress is far behind us. It must be the witch’s cave.” She jumped to her feet, then added slowly, “I hope we have what she wants us to pay her.”

  The moon was sinking, but there was still enough light for them to scramble the last quarter mile toward the red glow. When they reached it they discovered they were looking down something of a chimney, a gap in the rocks through which they could see a fire burning far below.

  “There must be an entrance somewhere near here,” said Karin, smiling to herself when she realized she was thinking of the Witch of the Western Cliffs as being something like one of the faeys. “Let’s try over there; it looks like another opening.”

  This opening did not really resemble a doorway, but at least it was not a chimney. “Should we just go right in?” said Roric, peering in. A tunnel led downward at a sharp angle. They could just see a light glowing faintly.

  Karin felt gripped by a sudden strange reluctance, but she pushed it forcibly away. This was no time to let her dislike for closed passages influence her. “Yes!” she said, not giving herself time to hesitate. “We’ll go right in.” She crawled determinedly forward, Roric at her heels.

  As they left the outer world behind, she expected to come almost immediately face-to-face with a witch, but instead the passage led them down into a broad room, burrowed out among the rocks. At the moment it seemed empty, in spite of the fire at this end. It was so tall and so wide that the far side was lost in darkness.

  But there was a faint sound from the far side, not a voice, almost a rumble. Roric looked at her questioningly. This was no time for cowardice, she told herself. She took his hand for reassurance and started forward toward that sound. But they had walked only a short distance when she stumbled.

  They were wading through piles of something small and hard, pebbles, she thought at first until she reached down to pick one up. It was a gold coin.

  They both stopped then to look around. In the fire’s faint light they could see they stood on top of an entirely unexpected and almost unimaginable heap of treasure. There were precious stones here, both in worked jewelry and unset, heaps of coins, golden helms, swords gleaming through half-decayed leather sheaths.

  Could this be Eirik’s treasure house? she wondered. But even a renegade, outlawed king who commanded treasure like this would not have to run for long.

  And the next thing she saw
was a human bone.

  The sound from the far, dark side of the room became louder. Whatever was there seemed to have heard their approach and be coming to meet them with a combination of rumbling and rattling, laid over a steady scrape.

  “We may be visiting the lords of death even sooner than we expected, my sweet,” said Roric, low in her ear. “This isn’t the cave of any witch. This is the dragon’s lair.”

  4

  “Did the Wanderers tell you they created those creatures of the third force?” the young woman asked Valmar.

  He had been dozing, her head on his shoulder, and it took a few seconds for her words to reach him. But then he rolled around to look at her, propping himself up on an elbow. “Created them? No! But— They told me they wanted them overcome. I don’t believe you.”

  She smiled at the irritated note in his voice. “If you had asked, they would have told you. I do not lie.”

  “You are still trying to distract me from serving them,” Valmar replied, removing his arm from around her waist.

  “Whose idea was it to go deep into the woods as soon as we met again and to remove our armor?” she said with a teasing light in her eyes. “But think of this, Valmar Hadros’s son. When we met before, they never scolded you, did they? So you continued to serve them. But now you serve me as well.”

  “I cannot serve you and the Wanderers both,” he said warily, sitting up now.

  “The last time we met you said you would not fight against them,” she said, sitting up herself. The sunset was behind her, shadowing her features. “Do you not realize that in fighting those beings at the top of the hill you will be fighting the Wanderers’ own creation?”

  Valmar, feeling weariness, shame, and a renewed desire for her, said only, “The lords of voima told me that they do not create.”

  She laughed at this and put out a hand to touch his knee. “And they do not. Or if they do, it is only creatures like those, mockeries of men, hollow beings with no backs.”

  Valmar went still, his objections frozen on his lips. Her words made sense at last of something the Wanderers had told him which had made no sense at the time, that their attempts at creation were now hastening their end. He did not want to be arguing with this woman anyway—he wanted to be holding her close, kissing her, feeling her muscular body against his. Or else he should be pushing her aside, rising with his eyes fixed on the path of honor. “The man I saw, just a little while ago,” he attempted. “He had a back.”

  “Or wanted you to think he did. In the lands of voima it is easier to mislead a mortal’s eye than in mortal realms.”

  “And do you create?”

  She smiled saucily at him. “I would have thought you knew that. Women create life within themselves. Men can create nothing.”

  He leaned his chin on his fists, considering. He still, when he could be calm, was not sure what to make of this lady of voima, who seemed both to be a human woman and to be possessed of a detachment and wisdom he felt could not have come in just a few more years’ maturity than his. “Women need men to create life,” he said with a frown, wondering as he spoke if even something so basic might be different here in the land of endless sunset. Then, “Have you ever borne children?”

  She went sober, shaking her head.

  “Is that because you have separated yourself from the lords of voima?”

  When she did not answer at once, Valmar started reaching distractedly for his clothes, slowly coming to the horrible realization that he had lain with a woman meant for the Wanderers. They could not have known, before, where he had gone for so many hours, but what explanation could he give them now if he did not fulfill his mission, led astray by this woman never intended for him?

  “Or they have separated themselves from us,” she said quietly when he had nearly given up on receiving an answer.

  “Who are you?” he demanded, pausing in tying his laces.

  Again she answered very quietly, sitting with her arms wrapped around a naked knee. “We are the Hearthkeepers. We stayed behind when the Wanderers left us. It is now almost the end of their fated rule, the time we should overthrow them, except—” She paused for a moment, and when she went on it was almost as though she was changing the subject. “We have voima within us, certainly, but if our full powers were going to return I would have thought to see them by now. Sometimes I even wonder if we’ve made a mistake . . .”

  She seemed so sad suddenly, so vulnerable and unlike an immortal being, that Valmar put his arms comfortingly around her. But a thought teased at him. He did not think he had ever gotten any of the serving-maids with child, but might he have done so with this lady of voima?

  Rather pleased with this idea, he gave her another hug, less comforting and more passionate.

  She turned in his embrace to look at him. All her laughter and teasing were gone. “Originally I was sent,” she said, “to lure you from your allegiance to the lords of voima, to make you serve us instead. But I have changed my mind, Valmar Hadros’s son. I do not want you to fight for the Hearthkeepers against the Wanderers, any more than I want you for fight for them against us. I only want you all for myself.”

  “I cannot be all for you,” he said, stroking her arm and trying desperately to remember why he could not. “The path of honor is higher than the path of love,” he added after a moment.

  Her eyes flashed at him, and the corner of her mouth twitched. “I do have to remember that you too are, after all, a man.”

  Before he could answer, he heard a clanging, of swords against shields, not a quarter mile away.

  “We know you’re in there, Valmar Hadros’s son!” came a booming voice. For a horrible second he thought it was the Wanderers, then knew it was not. “We’ve surrounded this woods and we’re coming for you. Surrender yourself! Since you would not be our friend as Roric was, you shall take you to our manor as our enemy!”

  The woman sprang up and went for her armor and sword. “We’ll compromise,” she said with a grin, “we’ll both fight these beings for your lords of voima, and also be together.” She had her clothes on in seconds, and was sliding on her mail and stamping her feet into her boots. “I’ve already seen how you do against me. Now we’ll see how much a mortal can do against hollow creatures who want him dead.”

  PART III: Realms of Voima

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  1

  Karin and Roric began to run, back the way they had come, slipping and almost falling in the piles of coins. Their feet could find no purchase. It was like trying to wade through surf-swirled sand—like a nightmare in which one struggled to move until wakened by one’s own kicks, but there was no waking here. The scraping and slithering behind them became louder, and the dragon’s hot breath blew on their hair.

  Karin clung to Roric’s hand, struggling to keep her feet, staring through blurred eyes at the fire burning at the side of the cave.

  Why should the dragon have a fire in its den?

  She caught her foot on a jeweled sword, half-buried in the coins, and fell, nearly pulling Roric down with her. “Go!” she gasped. “Go! One of us may still escape!” Wildly she thought that it would be better to be eaten in one gulp than pursued up the narrow passage down which they had slid into the dragon’s den.

  Not hearing or not listening, Roric stood over her, facing the dragon with his sword out. The long snout came toward them, slowly, very slowly. For a second Karin hoped that the mind behind the burning eyes was only curious, that the dragon was at the moment more interested in their presence than hungry.

  And then the enormous mouth opened, showing hundreds of needle teeth, and the forked tongue licked toward them.

  Roric’s armed darted out, and his sword clanged on the dragon’s scales with a ring like steel against steel. The scarlet nostrils flared and the jaw opened even wider. Roric stabbed toward the closest nostril, his full weight behind the sword.

  The blade bit home, and the dragon’s head jerked upwards, almost yanking the sword from Rori
c’s hand.

  In the seconds while the dragon bellowed in pain, Roric dragged Karin to her feet and almost carried her, not toward the passage down which they had come but toward the fire. Through tangled hair she thought she saw in the uncertain firelight a dark crevice in the rock wall next to the blaze.

  The dragon’s mouth behind them opened wider and the head darted forward, no longer moving slowly. Roric reached the wall a dozen feet ahead of the dragon’s teeth, threw her into the crevice, and dove in behind her.

  “Back! Further back!” he cried hoarsely, but she was already scrambling deeper into the crevice, for the rock here was burning hot and the dragon’s teeth snicked together just behind Roric’s feet.

  It tried to work its head into the crevice, hissing horribly. Roric kept pushing her onward. She crawled blindly as the dragon’s head blocked all the light from the firelit room.

  Suddenly she cried out, for the stone was gone beneath her hands. She reached back desperately, grabbing Roric’s arm, but could not regain her balance. For a second she teetered, the edge of the dropoff biting into her flesh. Then, pulling him with her, she tumbled down into a pit where no light penetrated.

  They landed hard on a sandy floor, and Roric’s sword clattered against the stone wall. They lay still for a moment, gasping for breath, waiting for whatever creature lived in this pit to attack them next. When nothing happened at once, they slowly sat up.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Are you all right?”

  They collapsed into each other’s arms, clinging to each other until the worst of the trembling passed.

  “I couldn’t have left you, certainly not to save myself,” Roric said quietly.

  She couldn’t answer, her face pressed against his chest.

  Above them they could still hear deep, angry rumblings from the dragon, but it did not seem able to follow. “If nothing’s broken,” said Roric after a moment, “let’s follow this passage a little further and see if we can find a way out. Maybe if we go slower we won’t have any more surprises like that one!”