C. Dale Brittain (11 page)

Valmar would be worried.
 
She put her hands on either side of her mouth and shouted.
 
“I shall pass the night up here!
 
I’ll see you tomorrow!”

Again she listened but heard no reply.
 
Maybe he had already gone.
 
But she could not climb down in the dark.
 
This looked, she thought uneasily, like a good place for a troll, and not even the semi-domesticated one who lived under Hadros’s bridge, whom Roric at least had dared face.

She settled herself stiffly against a rock so that her back was protected, then realized how cold it was growing.
 
On the hilltop the wind blew steadily, with a bite as though it reached her fresh from distant ice fields.
 
If she fell asleep up here she might not wake.
 
She pushed herself to her feet and groped until she found a fairly broad expanse of smooth granite on which to spend the night pacing.

# * # * # * # *

Long, long ago, before your grandfather’s time or great-grandfather’s time or even
his
great-grandfather’s time, there was no glory or honor on the earth.
 
The earth was ruled by women, and their only thought was for their children and for their children’s safety, even when those children were grown, even when those children had become men and yearned for adventure and far places.
 
The men were at most allowed to travel to market, to hunt bears who had threatened the flocks, to fish on the deep and dangerous sea, but never to go to war.

And in those days there was one young man named Laaiman, brave and glorious, whose mother kept him from everything but taking care of the cows.
 
But one day, coming home from pasture, he saw something shiny lying in his path, something made of steel, long and sharp with a handle that just fit his hand.
 
It was a sword, but he had never before seen one.

He left the cows and went to the Weaver who lived in a cave nearby to ask him what it was.
 
And when he had burned an offering, and the Weaver had woven its web, he was told, “It is the sign.
 
The end of women’s rule has come.”

Laaiman did not know what this meant, but the Weaver would say no more, and as he left sealed up the entrance to the cave.
 
And that night there was blood on the moon, and wolves howled all around the cow barn, and in the morning came blizzard snow though it was midsummer.
 
Snakes writhed in the sea and fish on dry land, and all the women went into labor and brought forth monsters.
 
And beings appeared who had never been seen before, like tall and shining men whose faces were concealed—Wanderers, they called themselves, lords of voima.

Then mortal man rose against man, and Laaiman, the only one with a sword, defended his manor and his mother and sisters against the other men.
 
The Wanderers applauded him and gave him greater strength yet, so that he could conquer all others even when other men too began to make swords.

And when Laaiman had conquered a kingdom and won himself eternal fame and honor, he saw a woman crossing his fields, walking lightly on the very tops of the barley stalks.
 
She was slim and dark-haired, with eyes like the deepest night.
 
A woman of voima, she named herself, made for the pleasure of the Wanderers.
 
But he took her into his own bed, and on her he fathered a race of great men, of heroes, and of kings.

CHAPTER THREE

1

The ale horn came down the table again, and Roric drank deeply before passing it on.
 
The ale here tasted even better than Karin’s brewing, and as far as he could tell he could drink any amount without it going to his head.

His companions, however, had already reached the stage of laughing for no reason, shouting good-naturedly but incomprehensibly, and struggling for possession of an ale horn that always had enough left for one more drink.
 
They were all slightly bigger than he was, and all had the disconcerting trick of becoming blurred and shadowy if he looked at them directly.
 
They now seemed to be competing in boasts, who would do the most now that they had a mortal with them—but exactly what they intended to do with him remained unclear.
 
Two took their boasting to the stage of jumping up and seizing each other by the neck.
 
But they stopped their squabbling to cheer when a well-endowed young woman with a strangely vacant expression rose and began to dance.

Roric shrugged off his unease, forcing himself to relax and enjoy this feast.
 
He had stayed constantly alert, constantly watching, in the three days—if indeed it was three days—while the person who might be a Wanderer had led him across a startlingly lush and beautiful countryside, but led him furtively.
 
They had kept behind the tall hedgerows, plunged deep through woods that seemed to glow green, galloped the other direction if surprised slipping past the barns.

When he had left Valmar, fervent to take his fate into his hands, he had not anticipated spending long hours and days crossing a rich realm, trying not to be seen.
 
But when he demanded to know where they were going the other had only said, “Do heroes ask questions when they go to meet their fate?
 
You will know soon enough.”

In this land Goldmane seemed tireless, able to gallop for hours, and he could ride almost indefinitely.
 
At first it was like being in the heart of a tale, galloping wild and free far, far, beyond the narrow fields of Hadros’s kingdom, the wind whipping and singing around them.
 
But in the tales the heroes were always galloping
towards
a glorious goal.
 
When this being had first appeared riding up to the mares’ pen, he had seemed terrible, a force before which trees and clouds must bow abashed.
 
But someone who could have stepped out of a nightmare in mortal realms was in contrast here timid and easily frightened by even the most trivial threat.

They must, Roric thought, be covering scores, even hundreds, of miles a day, and yet the countryside did not change.
 
The entire time he watched for landmarks so he would know his way back again, yet as the miles disappeared behind them he became less and less sure he could find the way.
 
There were plenty of distinctive features, steep hills overlooking bright lakes, the clustered outbuildings of manors, rocky outcroppings that looked to his eye as though they should have castles on them although they never did, wide rivers with meadows on either side of the ford; and yet these features seemed to repeat themselves endlessly with very little variation.

It was like the countryside he had always known and yet different:
 
larger, much greener, with no weeds among the grain, no stones pushing up in the hay fields, no marshy thickets in the bands of trees between manors, no tumbledown buildings on those manors, no biting insects—and no sunset.
 
Every hill they climbed, every valley they entered glistened as though seen through freshly rain-washed air, yet no rain fell.
 
When they paused in their riding to sleep, it was warm enough that he was comfortable curled up under a tree without even a cloak to spread over him.

It was late spring—or had been—yet here the wheat was nearly ripe, the lambs well grown, and the rowans in the manor courtyards hung with swollen red berries.
 
He had the disconcerting sense that perhaps here it was
always
summer, for none of the manors by which they slipped had the woodpiles that should by this season be readying the dwellers for the sharp bite of winter.

In late August, when all nature seemed to have forgotten colder weather except for the sea-ducks whose mournful calls marked the end of summer, Roric had often thought that it would be good if winter were not fated, had wished idly that each day could continue as warm as the day before.
 
But here he began to think the lash of snow and the killing frost might in themselves be purifying, that without them lushness would blossom into over-ripeness, and then into rot.

They saw a number of housecarls and maids, usually in the distance, but no one who could be the great folk who must live in those well-tended manors.
 
And on the second day of riding, he realized what else was missing:
 
there were no fairs and no market towns.
 
It was as though all these fine manors were self-sufficient, that the folk who owned them spent their days inside tooling the leather or hammering the iron or spinning the wool, so that none need go to market and buy.

Not until they reached this hall had his companion relaxed his vigilance.
 
The manor was built on top of a steep rise, hidden beyond a pine forest.
 
After a short ride among the trees they passed under a wooden gateway, and the trees immediately began to thin out.
 
And once past the pines and up a sharp slope they had found verdant meadows and spacious stone buildings.

Others then had come running to meet them both.
 
The buildings, at least, remained solid when he looked at them.
 
The manor’s fields were bursting with grain; its cows, larger than Goldmane, were heavy with milk; and the ale horn never needed to be refilled.

Everyone had seemed delighted to meet Roric.

At first, he had thought the being who summoned him must be a chieftain, even a king, until he had refused to answer questions.
 
Then he decided this was a warrior like Gizor One-hand, sent to bring him here, and asked nothing further.
 
But when he arrived the band of men who greeted him still included no one who seemed to be the leader.

Roric cut his meat with the knife he had tried to give the Weaver and glanced toward the open doorway.
 
It was late afternoon, motes of dust dancing in horizontal ruddy rays, but it had seemed late afternoon the entire time he was here.
 
The beef was so tender the juices ran down his chin.
 
He wiped them with his sleeve and wondered if this was Hel.
 
If so, it was unlike he had ever imagined; for this kind of Hel he and Karin should have been dead together months ago.

But he had never heard, even in the oldest tales, of a man looking on Hel with living eyes.
 
He would have thought it was the Wanderers’ realm into which he had stumbled, except that they had traveled so furtively.
 
They might instead be somewhere in the far southern lands, even beyond the realms where landless men sought booty.
 
If so, if he got home again, he would take Karin, take a ship and a few good men, and return here to make a kingdom for himself.
 
Karin and he between them would make sure their men did not over-ripen into softness.

In the meantime, these people had not yet told him why they wanted him.

It was not the next morning, because there was no morning here.
 
But he had slept and wakened when one of the slightly indistinct men—he might as well think of them as men—came to find him.
 
As they went outside he hoped, feeling itchy for action, that at last he would be told why he was here.
 
But the other did not speak at once.

Birds chirped blithely as buxom maids finished milking the oversized cows and set them loose in the pasture.
 
Neither maids nor housecarls had yet spoken in his hearing.
 
Roric leaned on the fence and considered the disconcertingly misty person beside him.
 
He thought he was the same one who had brought him here, but it was difficult to be sure.
 
Last night in the hall, he and all the others had seemed so jolly almost to be foolish.
 
If these were the lords of voima, Roric thought with a half smile, it might explain why mortal life was often so disordered and hard to understand.
 
But his smile faded as he added to himself that here
he
at least was going to do all with his strength that fate allowed him.

“You said you wanted me,” he said.
 
“I have followed you without demur, but now that we are here I must know why.”