by Voima
He found himself walking faster and faster and glanced at Eirik to see how he was taking it. But the outlaw king now looked thoughtful and was muttering to himself. “So they do not attack the living. Perhaps a living man could become their leader.”
Roric stopped and turned around. “Why are you following us?”
“I thought you might need a guide,” croaked Gizor.
“And where will you guide us?” asked Roric. “As you must know,” making himself chuckle, “Hel has to be vaster than the earth itself to hold all those who have ever died, and living men would not want to wander its halls forever!”
“I can take you to the lords of death,” said Gizor expressionlessly.
“So the dead will guide the living if asked,” muttered Eirik as if in calculation.
“Then take us there!” cried Roric. He had already spoken once to Death, but it was either find something different among these endless halls or else lie down himself until he too faded away.
Gizor went before them, shuffling, and more and more of the dead rose as they passed and closed ranks behind them, continuing that faint mutter that had become like a conversation where one could not quite catch the words.
Again they walked through halls that all seemed the same, glowing with the same faint light, for a distance and a time that seemed to stretch out endlessly. But it was not unchanging now, for as living men passed through more of the halls of Hel more of the dead broke from their apathy to follow them. And then they turned a corner and saw a gigantic chamber before them.
Its ceiling was high, its spaces vast. It was wide enough that in the center spread a sunless sea, and on the shore stood a dark tower, its windows not squares of light but of even deeper darkness.
Gizor and the rest of the dead fell back as Roric and Eirik continued warily forward. As they approached the tower they could see within its darkness a mist just a little denser than mist should be. Shining in it were two points of light like coals almost burned out.
Eirik dropped to his knees. “I serve you, lord,” he said as though the words were wrenched from him. “I have always sent men to you, and now I come myself.”
“With a little help from me,” muttered Roric.
Faint and cold behind them, from all the passages they had traversed, came the muttering of the dead who had seen the living walk by. Gizor One-hand and the other shadowy shapes massed together. “You come here alive in blood and breath,” said the voice from the mist, colder than any of the voices of the dead. “You have brought life to Hel where life has never been.”
When Eirik did not answer, Roric said to the glowing eyes, “I warned you what would happen if you tried to take over the realms of voima. For we are more than living mortals—we are mortals who have walked where only the immortals go.”
“You are the only power that all must obey in the end,” Eirik was still murmuring.
Roric ignored him. He stood with a hand on his hip, and a line from an old story flashed through his mind, “The hero faced down the lords of death themselves.” But he was not a hero, and in spite of his own bold words the one to whom all came in the end could never be faced down.
“The dead should fade, forgotten.” Again the voice in the coils of mist sounded uncertain. “If they did not, Hel itself would not hold them all.”
“And I have started to waken them?” said Roric. “And does this”—he held high his charm—“bring a hint of voima even to the dusty halls of death? Shall I test more fully the effects of the Wanderers’ singing sword?”
“The dead . . . cannot wake. They must not wake.”
Too bad Eirik didn’t have his lyre, Roric thought. This would make a good song. “You hear them. You see them. They are waking now. Is two living men too many for you?”
“You do not want it, mortals,” said the voice from the mist, expressionless and cold. “You would not want the dead to become animate again, to rise from their burial mounds in mortal realms. If the dead do not stay dead, then the balance will be overturned and the earth shall collapse from too many of the living. One living man would not destroy the balance—I should be able to restore it. But two . . .”
“Then listen to me!” Roric cried. “I shall leave, so that they may fade again, all those whose stories do not burn in story and song.”
“You cannot leave Hel,” said Eirik, turning on him, and his eyes too had turned to coals.
“Just watch,” said Roric. “First I ran from dishonor, when I knew that love and honor could not be found together. Then I determined to run no more, to fight dishonor by giving my life in battle. When you would not take it, Eirik Eirik’s son, I came here living. And I have discovered something. There may be honor in how one dies, but the real honor is in living one’s life as well as one can, until fate spells the end. There is no honor to be found in fleeing from failure to death.”
“Then what do you want?” growled Eirik.
“Life itself. All the powers of birth, growth, and love. I thought to find them in the realms of the lords of voima, but I found that even those lords can only guide and reflect that which comes from mortal life. And I shall not find those powers here. Love and birth come only to mortals who still live beneath the sun, but who know that they are not immortal and must seize life while they can.”
“All the burial mounds in the world,” said the voice so deep and so low he felt the words as much as heard them, “lead to this tower.”
“Then one should also be able to climb back the other way,” said Roric as confidently as he could. He backed away from the tower, looking around for some way that might lead out of here. “Outlaw! Are you coming with me?”
“No,” said Eirik quietly, almost in a mumble, then, “No! I was cast out, made a renegade, with all men’s hands against me. The woman I could have loved if she had given me a chance rejected me—and not even for another man, but for no one.” He lifted his head proudly. “But I have a power here that all the Fifty Kings cannot match. If there is no dying in Hel—as you and your friend Valmar made clear is not the case in the Wanderers’ realm!—then I have found the only way for mortals to become immortal. Only here, in the court of the forces of darkness, shall all men and women yield to me in the end!”
“I may be an outlaw too,” said Roric, in a voice he deliberately made loud and cheerful to echo through the halls of the dead, “but I know a woman who loves me. If not her lover anymore, I can still be her brother and do all within my strength to ensure her happiness.”
“You shall return here!” said Eirik harshly. “I shall be alive, a spot of color and breath and living blood, serving the all-powerful forces, when you come down gray from the mound where they put you.”
“Of course I shall return,” said Roric. “If life was valueless because short, it would have no meaning at all. If we thought only on the end that fate ordains, of the destruction of even the immortals, none of us would seek love or renewal. But before I see you here again, I—though not you—shall have been alive.”
Eirik looked at him a moment, an expression that might really have been a smile on his scarred lips. “I won’t need this sword any more,” he said suddenly, unbuckling it. “Take it back to the Wanderers. Tell them to send me my lyre instead! If I could make my songs for the dead here, maybe I could put a little life in their eyes.”
The dark misty shape swirled for a moment, as though concerned about maintaining the balance with even one living man here if that man was King Eirik. “I’ll see what I can do about the lyre,” said Roric with a grin.
But how was he, in spite of his bold words, going to get out of here and back to mortal lands? Suddenly Gizor One-hand stepped forward.
“I shall help you, Roric,” he said, his voice almost animate. “Someone who returned living from Hel would have his song sung for a thousand years—and they will also long tell the tale of the dead man who helped him. You can return via my burial mound. The way is above you. Jump.”
Jump? Roric looked up
without seeing anything but a distant gray roof, but he had to trust Gizor’s word for it. He buckled on the singing sword and sprang upwards, on legs that suddenly seemed enormously powerful. Gizor jumped with him, pushing from behind. He grabbed for a handhold on the ceiling far above the sunless sea and tower of death. Over him a passageway opened, a passage leading upwards, and he kicked his way into it. He looked down between his feet for a last glimpse of the outlaw king. Then he turned away, thinking no more of Hel to which fate would still one day destine him, but would not yet. He thoughts were of Karin and her love.
The climbing was straightforward, even easy at first. Gizor was close at his shoulder. Roric went fast, his hands gripping first rocks, then soft earth. Constantly the passage opened before him.
But then the climb gradually became harder. Time slowly began to have meaning again, and he thought he had climbed two hours, three hours. As he rose out of Hel hunger and weariness assaulted him, and he thought with a grim smile that this must be a sign he was returning at last to mortal realms. The air here seemed thick and sour, leaden in his gasping lungs.
The passage up which he climbed ended abruptly. He paused, waiting for it to open again before him. But he now seemed surrounded by solid earth.
He turned to Gizor for suggestions, but he had faded again as they climbed and was now only the faintest of outlines, without even a face. Roric knocked at the solid earth before him with his fists, but the dirt was mixed with rocks and sand and packed hard. “Thank you for bringing me here,” he said in case the wight could still hear him, for he did not want to be ungrateful although it was hard to sound sincere.
While he hesitated, breathing shallowly the fetid air that surrounded him, the entire earth trembled under him, and the roof of the tiny space in which he stood swayed and swayed again, threatening to collapse. He threw his arms protectively over his head, but the swaying ceased in a moment. He began digging wildly with his bare hands at the earth, and then heard a sound, the first living sound that had reached him: the muffled scream of a stallion. Then the earth again began to sway.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
1
Valmar saw firelight flickering ahead of him in the tunnel. Eirik’s men? he wondered. But he heard no sound, none of the outlaw king’s boisterous conversation, not even the snores he would have expected if they were all asleep. He crawled on as quietly as possible, his sword’s scabbard dragging behind him.
He came into a dimly lit chamber where something enormous and bulky reclined by the fire. His hand closed around his hilt. Against the far wall was a complicated web woven of string, but it looked as though it had been slashed in several places, for broken ends dangled. Beyond the web was an enormous mirror which seemed to reflect something other than this room. The bulky shape shifted and human eyes glinted at him. “Do not fear me, Valmar Hadros’s son.”
Valmar emerged from the tunnel and rose to his feet. “Are you the Witch of the Western Cliffs?” he asked cautiously. He made himself let go of his sword hilt. Karin had told him a little of the Witch. “And if you are, am I still in mortal realms?”
He had not been able to get any detail of the witch’s shape. She—or it—turned away from him, toward the web, and began slashing. It was impossible in the dim light to see if the witch was using a knife or fingernails. More rents opened, and more bits of string dangled down.
“You are in mortal realms, but not for long,” said the voice almost cheerfully. “You humans have given me an idea.”
“Humans? An idea?” Valmar found his fingers twitching and clenched his fists. He had come back to rescue or to avenge Roric, not to become caught in the webs of creatures of voima.
“Roric No-man’s son and Karin Kardan’s daughter,” said the witch in a matter-of-fact tone. “They are very unlike, with different goals, different purposes. In a mortal lifespan, there is no way they could ever possibly come to understand each other fully. Yet they love each other. They do not need complete agreement. They have learned through facing desperate dangers that even creatures as different as men and women can act together.”
The witch was speaking as though Roric was still alive. Valmar fought down shameful disappointment. He should be delighted his foster-brother lived. Karin was not his even if Roric was dead.
But a witch in mortal realms might not know what had happened in the realms of voima. “Are you creating desperate dangers in ripping your weaving?
“You humans gave me that idea too,” the witch continued, glancing quickly at him. “There are too many knots, too many tangles accumulated over the years. Roric No-man’s son deals with tangles by trying something desperate and bold. Karin Kardan’s daughter does not lose track of the final goal, no matter how difficult the way. The first of the dangers to the realms of voima were those men who went through the rift, being taunted by Roric. At his example, I then sent a dragon through. When a dragon settled at my door many years ago, I had not realized the potential advantages!”
“The Wanderers and Hearthkeepers fought the dragon together.”
“They worked together for a short time, it is true. But it will take more than that for our children to join together permanently. They have known all along that without someone to guide and instruct you mortals, you will lose order and direction, return to scattered and violent bands roving through the forest as you once were. But even that danger has not been enough to make them stop their attempts to circumvent the other’s power. I need something even more desperate.”
“Then what do you intend?” asked Valmar.
“The outlaws and the dragon in the realms of voima were an excellent distraction while I prepared what I do now. I am unmaking.” The voice was harsh and booming, all its cheerful quality gone. A shiver went up Valmar’s back. No matter how strange and slow this witch might seem, if Karin was right it had given birth to the chief of the Wanderers. “We made the realms of voima for them to live in, and most of us, the makers, built ourselves into the very fabric of those realms, asleep. But now I who was left to watch am waking them. If they awake—and if our children do not ease them quickly back into slumber—then the very substance of immortal realms shall crumble.”
Valmar was swept with a horror that made his whole body go stiff. “And what will happen if immortal realms are destroyed?” he brought out between frozen lips.
“Then all the powers of voima will be destroyed, and all order in mortal realms will go with them.”
“You would destroy all you created—” For a moment he clenched his sword. But then those eyes, human and more than human, met his and the strength went out of him.
“We were not the creators of mortal lands any more than the Wanderers were. But yes. We no longer rule earth and sky, but we can still destroy. This is not a game. The danger would not be truly desperate if it was not real.”
“Then what do you want me to do?”
The witch turned around to face him. The web was now little more than tatters. “I cannot do this myself, Valmar Hadros’s son. I have tried. Someone needs to bring those two forces together. If the powers of voima cannot do it, then it will have to be a mortal. If you are no more successful than I have been, then immortal and mortal realms will collapse together.”
Valmar crawled back the way he had come. The witch had said he would emerge into realms of voima. He gritted his teeth with the sick feeling that he was being sent back to the faeys to get him out of the way.
But when he saw light before him it was not the green of the faeys’ lanterns but the gray of twilight after the sun has set. There was a faint, steady splashing, the sound of a small waterfall. The voices he heard were hoarse, rough, and certainly not those of the faeys.
“That berserker sent the princess this way.” “Suppose this is just another path down to Hel?” “Then we’ll rejoin our king even sooner than we thought. But even Hel has to be better than what these people keep claiming is the Wanderers’ realm.”
Valmar rose and stepped forward by t
he pool, his sword drawn.
His abrupt appearance panicked the outlaws. They stared at him, eyes wide in the dimness. There were not many left of the once proud and desperate group of renegades who had followed Eirik into the sea and out of mortal realms.
And without their leader the courage had gone out of them. Valmar spoke in his deepest voice. “This tunnel may take you to your kingdom if that is your wish. Pass by me quietly, your swords sheathed, and I shall not harm you.”
The tunnel was only wide enough for one to pass at a time. The warriors edged by him, eyeing him warily. Valmar wondered without much interest if they would emerge in Hadros’s kingdom—in which case Dag and Nole might have an adventure of their own to tell about—or in the Witch’s cave. He considered asking them what had happened to Roric but did not want to hear the answer. When several had passed it occurred to him that they might rush him from both directions, but without Eirik they had no one to plot and only wanted to get to safety.
The last of the outlaws disappeared down the tunnel. For a moment, looking after them, he thought he saw daylight and two lichen-spotted standing stones leaning together, but when he blinked the image was gone. He shrugged and turned away.
Valmar went by the pool and out into evening. He had to find the Wanderers and warn them.
He sheathed his sword and scrambled up beside the waterfall. At the top of the cliff he paused, blinking and trying to see, then started walking along the ridge in the direction the Wanderers and Hearthkeepers had taken to fight the dragon. After a short distance he made out something huge and streaked with black, sprawling across the rocks for dozens of yards.
For a second he thought it was the witch again, grown to enormous size. Then he realized it was the dragon. It was dead, lying in its own black blood, its mouth sagging open and the tongue loose over the needle teeth. So the lords and ladies of voima too could kill, he thought grimly, even in their own realm. He was just wondering how to locate them, before the last of the witch’s web was unmade, when he heard voices.
