by Voima
The loudest voice was that of the woman with the dark curling hair. “When the new sun rises, which it shall do very soon, our time will come. Since fate has ended your rule, we must be fated to take again the direction of earth and sky. Now that the last of the mortal men are gone from here, there is little more for you to do but retreat to your manors, because if you do not yield willingly you will be forced to yield at the point of the sword.”
“And you always complained that we encouraged mortal men in violence.” It was the deep, slightly ironic voice of the Wanderer who had first brought Valmar here.
“In which case,” she answered briskly, “there is nothing you can say against us if we use your own weapons to reimpose our vision of the world.”
Valmar could now see all of them in the last of the light, the lords and ladies of voima sitting on the ridge top looking off toward the east. They all seemed battered from their fight with the dragon. There was a great scar in the earth nearby, as though it had opened and closed again.
He hesitated, wishing irrationally that Karin was here. How was he supposed to reconcile the rulers of earth and sky before earth and sky themselves were destroyed? The last daylight was fading behind them, but there was no hint of dawn in the east in spite of the Hearthkeeper’s confident prediction that the new sun would rise very soon.
“I do not like your inviting a mortal woman to join you,” said another of the Wanderers. “We have always been equally matched with you in numbers.”
Valmar counted quickly. So far no one had noticed him. There were twelve Wanderers but thirteen women, including, he realized with a start, the tall, green-eyed woman who had been with King Eirik. “I have no intention of returning to a world that includes mortal men,” said Wigla firmly.
“Were you Wanderers suggesting that I instead should return to my husband and children in mortal realms, to bring the number back down to twelve?” asked one of the Hearthkeepers. “He will be protected by the powers of voima, and my children will lead long and happy lives even if they are still fated to die. But why should I not stay with my sisters and rule over mortals and over you? After all, there have been even lords of voima who have visited mortal women in disguise! If I care to I can still visit my husband, who already knows well who I am.”
The ground suddenly heaved and swayed under them. Valmar lost and regained his balance. “And I cannot say I like these earthquakes,” commented the leader of the Wanderers.
“You men just didn’t do enough to make our world firm while you were ruling it. As soon as our powers return, we will end these problems. I must say, I thought we would feel them returning by now . . .”
Valmar stepped forward. The immortals, with their full powers either eroded away or not yet come to fullness, were entirely capable of being surprised.
All spun around to face him. “You said you had sent all the mortal men back!” one of the Hearthkeepers started to say accusingly, but Valmar did not want to hear any more of their bickering.
“I come,” he began and found his voice cracking, which it had not done for several years. “I come,” he tried again, “from the one called the Witch of the Western Cliffs.”
Everyone stared at him, but he could not afford to be overcome with awe or shyness now. He had pledged himself to serve the lords of voima, and if saving them meant forcing them into something they had not wanted, he would still do it. Besides, he would not merely be saving the Wanderers: he had to save his younger brothers, back in mortal lands, and had to save Karin.
“I come to warn you,” he said, high and clear. “The reason for the earthquakes, the reason none of you have your powers now, is because the Old Ones who made this realm in the first place are now destroying it.”
A storm came rumbling across the plain while he spoke, spitting rain, and came up the ridge to drench all of them. He wiped wet hair away from his eyes with one arm and stared at the immortals. They had to listen to him.
“Valmar!” It was one of the Hearthkeepers, his Hearthkeeper, and she sounded both delighted and calculating as she shook the rain from her hair. “We never thanked you properly for showing us that even immortals can be wounded and made weak. We shall be able to use this knowledge as soon as the new sun rises.”
“You aren’t listening,” he said desperately. “The sun is not going to rise!”
“The Witch sent you to threaten us?” said the leader of the Wanderers sharply. Then for a moment his face, no longer overpowering but still thoughtful and wise, smiled a little. “You have always tried to serve us truly, Valmar Hadros’s son—in spite of these women!—but you are too easily influenced.”
“It’s not just a threat. She—it—told me that unless the two of you come together—completely, reunited—it will be impossible for you to put immortal realms back together. And if the realms of voima are gone, there will not be much hope for mortal men and women.”
He finally had their attention. All of them jumped up. “We fought the dragon together,” said the curly-haired Hearthkeeper. “They held the dragon imprisoned with the powers of voima while we used our swords on it. We can all work together again for just a little longer and stop this.”
“That won’t be enough,” said Valmar despairingly. “Before the Witch sent me here, she—it—made it clear that only if you join together completely, neither ever trying again to overcome the other, will you be able to stop the unmaking.”
“This sounds—” one of the Wanderers said but never had a chance to finish. A mile away, a volcano exploded in the middle of the plain.
Wind rushed up the ridge, stinking with sulfur. The earth trembled as molten rock, glowing orange with heat that could be felt from a mile away, bubbled out of a rapidly growing cone. Rain turned to steam in an instant and boiled up in great clouds, lit orange from below. Hot ash settled glowing just a little lower on the ridge, igniting the wet grass. Trees swayed and toppled around them as the earth shook again, and the limestone heaved its way out of the earth.
The lords and ladies of voima, scrambling to keep their balance, conferred rapidly, and several held out commanding arms. Nothing had any effect. In the light of the molten rock, in the trembling of the earth, Valmar seemed to see giants coming awake, sitting up, tossing back the blankets of grass and earth under which they had slept. A cracking and roaring was loud in the distance, as though the solid earth itself was being broken off and cast out into nothingness.
He was not just a boy to whom the warriors did not have to listen. “You have no choice,” he shouted over the roaring of the earth. He seized the closest Hearthkeeper by the arm and dragged her to him. He recognized her when she smiled, eyes bright as mirrors even in the near-darkness.
But she was not for him. “You won’t be any longer a woman who might love a mortal,” he gasped. “But I cannot try to hold onto what we shared.” For a second he went still, meeting her eyes. “I did love you.” With his other hand he snatched at the arm of a Wanderer.
He had never before dared even brush against them, but he had no time for awe. All of them, even Wigla, he pulled and pushed together into a tight, dripping group. Mortal muscles were effective against immortals who had lost their powers. “You were once one!” he cried. The lava was pouring toward them and the volcanic cone had already risen higher than this ridge. “You must know how to unite your powers again!” He kept trying to push them close together, make them hold hands, make them embrace each other, but they remained a group of separate, frightened people who had always thought they were immortal.
What else could he do? What else had the Witch meant him to do? “You were created as one! Remember that creation! Humans somehow find a way for very different people to work together, even if not in full agreement: men and women, old and young, men who are enemies, the honorable and those who love. What mortals can do the mortals must be able to do! We shall still reverence you—if we still exist!”
And then, as the shaking of the earth beneath them became so intense it w
as hard to keep his feet on the wet grass, there came a change. Where he forcibly held their hands together he felt jolts, shocks as though touched by lightning. They were all forming a circle, a circle of twenty-four lords and ladies of voima and of two mortals, himself and Wigla. He forced reluctant hands together until they were all united, alternating men and women, the curly-haired Hearthkeeper beside him. Joined in hand, joined in thought, they turned their powers on the disintegrating realm around them.
Racing through his mind came images that he knew were not his, yet seemed joined in him. He saw himself striding high on a mountain, watching the mortals far below. The mortals he could see clearly in spite of his distance from them, and he seemed to remember himself hearing their requests and tasting their offerings, holding out an arm to bring them new hope through the forces of voima. Then he was riding, unseen, in the prow of a ship cutting through a storm on a dark night, where the men fought desperately and courageously to save the ship and each other. And most strangely of all, he seemed to remember lying with his own weight on top of him, his legs wrapped around his own waist, and realized he was partaking in the Hearthkeeper’s memories.
The lava glow lit up the sky. More memories that were not his, more images of immortal power flashed through his mind, of helping a woman in childbirth, of encouraging a man in glorious battle, of guiding the sun and rain of mortal lands, of lying with a chestnut-haired woman who wore a jeweled pendant on her forehead. He could see the immortals moving, writhing, growing closer and splitting apart. Jolts still passed through him as he tried to force them back together whenever the circle threatened to split. If any of them spoke he could not hear it over the roaring of wind and cracking earth.
Then, abruptly, they pushed him away. The powers of voima surged between them, restored at last, stronger than any mortal could bear. All of them seemed to grow and to glow with their own white light, and he had to squeeze his eyes shut against their faces.
Valmar staggered backwards. Then, with their memories still fighting for prominence inside him, he raced through driving rain for the waterfall. These beings, these enormously powerful lords and ladies of voima, turned toward the volcano, but his only thought was somehow to get back to mortal realms if they even still existed.
Stones had cracked off the cliff leading downward toward the pool and the cave that had—twice—led to the earth he knew. He slid more than climbed down, bumping bruisingly as he went. More stones had fallen from the roof of the cave, but the passage still seemed clear. He pushed into it, trying to keep from thinking the thoughts of the rulers of earth and sky, trying to think only of crawling down this passage before it fell in.
The earth quivered again and more of the roof collapsed. He was past the pool now, feeling in heavy darkness for the way to safety. His hands found only solid rock with no way past.
He heaved himself up into a tiny opening between ceiling and wall, bracing himself and holding up his arms as, with another shudder, more stones broke loose. A flying shard caught him on the temple, and he knew no more.
2
Karin screamed as absolute darkness covered the earth. She clung to Queen Arane, feeling her knees turn to water in sheer animal terror. And from the yells around them she was not the only one.
The only voice that was not one of fear and horror was the stallion, whinnying as though in recognition.
The darkness might only have lasted a half minute, but afterwards, when she thought back to it with chills walking down her spine, it seemed that it might have been much longer, that there had been a period outside of time when there was no thought, no event, and no light.
Abruptly the moon was back. It shone down from a cloudless sky as though it had never been gone, lighting up the salt river and all the dripping wet men along the bank—and the person stepping out of the burial mound.
Just for a second, there seemed to be a faint fluttering, of a wight emerging shadowless into moonlight then disappearing into the mound again. But the person who came forward, shaking the taint of earth from him, was Roric.
Karin tore herself from the queen’s clutching hands and began to run. Even dead he was Roric, and she loved him.
He felt reassuringly solid as she threw herself, gasping, into his muddy arms. She could understand now the stories of the women who offered anything to have their men back.
He was laughing, loud, joyous laughter to sparkle in the moonlight. She had not known the dead could laugh. “I am no wight but alive, Karin,” he said, holding her to him, his embrace not cold but warm around her.
“I thought you were gone,” she said, sobbing now for no reason at all. “I thought you had died to save Valmar and me. But, oh, Roric,” pausing to kiss him hard, “I have learned you are not my brother.”
3
He opened his eyes with only the vaguest idea who he was.
He was a Wanderer, watching as men rode into battle in search of the glory that he encouraged in them. He was a Hearthkeeper, tending the tender shoots in the barley fields, sitting unseen by women as they rocked their babies. And he was a king’s son, born to rule at some vague future time that seemed it would never come.
He turned over his memories while delicately rubbing his temple and looking around. He was in a cave, not far from the entrance, and outside it was morning. He heard bird calls and water splashing. He was jammed into a tiny crevice among fallen rocks, all his clothing damp, but he felt well-rested and comfortable, with none of his joints stiff, and the bruise on his head the only wound on him. His clearest memories were of a childhood in a yellow sandstone castle set in oak woods above the sea. But were these his own memories, or was he a ruler of earth and sky who had acquired some of the memories of the mortal who had brought Wanderers and Hearthkeepers together?
He worked his way out of the crevice and stepped toward the pool. Perhaps his reflection would tell him.
There was enough light that he should be able to see. A drop of water fell from the cave ceiling, sending ripples across the surface. He knelt and leaned over, seeing the wavering outlines of a human shape. But whose face would he see? He waited for the ripples to subside. Just another moment and it would be smooth enough—
Another drop fell from the cave ceiling, and again the pool’s reflections dissolved into ripples. He waited again while the ripples subsided. But just before the pool was smooth enough to use as a mirror the ceiling dripped again.
He rose and walked toward the cave entrance. If he met someone he might be able to tell from their reaction who he was before they realized he did not know himself.
He should have emerged from the cave at the bottom of a little waterfall, but instead as he went forward he smelled salt spray. The splashing water he had heard no longer sounded like a waterfall but like waves breaking against the shore. As he stepped into sunshine the singing birds he had heard all became gulls, wheeling with sharp cries overhead.
Frowning, he climbed out of the cave mouth and started walking slowly along the shingle. He was quite sure he had never seen this stretch of coast before. Sunlight flashed on green waves and white foam. He had to walk carefully amidst great boulders, packed between with pebbles and wet sand.
He came around a boulder and saw a young woman sitting on a rock before him. Her hair, tousled by the sea wind, was black and curling, and the sunlight glinted in her eyes. She smiled, showing a row of sharp little white teeth. “Greetings, Valmar Hadros’s son.”
Then he was Valmar. His identity swirled for a second, then settled itself. He was the heir to the yellow sandstone castle, but he also knew that within him now, and for the rest of his life, was a fragment of the wisdom of the immortals. But she—
“You can’t be here,” he said. “You can‘t.”
“Why not?” She rose with an amused smile and came to take his hands in hers. She appeared younger than he remembered.
“Because you and all the other Hearthkeepers have been joined with the Wanderers, to rule earth and sky united. You must
have restored both mortal and immortal realms before they were unmade, or neither we nor this shore would even be here.”
“But I am not a Hearthkeeper!”
“Then what are you?” asked Valmar, trembling between fear and delight, hoping he knew the answer.
“I think I am a mortal.” She grinned up at him. “We were thirteen sisters, including the one who had just joined us. Only twelve of us could join in the new union to rule earth and sky. Since we had just told her she could be one of us, it would be hard to eject her from our numbers! The sister who had most recently been living in mortal lands had come back to rejoin us as the sun set in realms of voima, and she had no intention of leaving. That left me. I was, after all, the only one carrying a mortal child. Twins, actually!”
She laughed at his expression. “Are you not flattered, Valmar, that I left the realms of voima to become a mortal’s wife—even if I did take care to choose a man who had saved those realms from destruction?”
He crushed her to him, one hand around her small, straight back, the other plunged into her hair. He felt too full of joy even for desire. “If you are now mortal,” he was able to gasp at last, “be careful about daring people to cut off your head.”
She caught her breath as he held her a little away from him to look at her. “By the Wanderers!” she said with a laugh. “That is what mortals say, isn’t it?” she asked as an aside. “Since I have become mortal, your embrace is so strong it could keep me from breathing! And you haven’t even said yet you’ll have me.”
They sat down together on a stone, his arm around her shoulders. “It will be, how shall I put this, interesting to have you as a wife,” he said with a smile. “You won’t be like the queens of any other of the other Fifty Kingdoms.”
“Is that a problem?” she asked with a quick, sideways look. “You wouldn’t perhaps prefer to have—Karin?”
His eyebrows shot up. He had not known she even knew about Karin. But then—she had until very recently been an immortal. “No,” he managed to say in an even voice. “Karin is my foster-sister. I have given up any thought of making her mine. She would never think of me or treat me as other than her brother—not like you!” He pulled her to him, tickling her until she shouted with laughter. And he realized with his new wisdom as she tickled him back that he spoke truly: when he left Karin sleeping in his father’s castle he had put off any love for her other than a brother’s love.
