C. Dale Brittain (14 page)

Karin kept her eyes cast down.
 
“Quite sure.
 
There was a time, a few days ago, when I wondered—
 
But no.”
 
She did not look up, regretting bitterly now that she had asked the queen to come.

“You could try to win Hadros around with clever words,” said Arane.
 
“I must believe that in the years you have lived in his court, a woman of your wit has found ways to do that.
 
Tell him, for example, that you are already pledged to someone else, someone far away—perhaps even this rival you mentioned—and that you need the king’s help to cover your shame.”

“I think I already tried that,” said Karin gloomily.
 
“It was of no use.”
 
She did not dare add what she now thought fiercely, that with Roric she had hoped to be an equal, part of a couple who trusted each other and spoke openly to each other, and that even without Roric she did not want to be a woman who directed the men around her with wiles and manipulation and never affection.

“You are making it very difficult, Karin, for me to help you!” said Arane with an exasperated laugh.
 
“You are sure you could not make the best of the situation at this point by marrying young Valmar?”

“I am sure.”

“How did you come to do something so heedless as spend the night with him?”

Karin wished again that she had not asked the queen for counsel.
 
She had no more good ideas than she had had before, and another of the Fifty Kings now knew she had not spent last night peacefully sleeping in Hadros’s tent.
 
“We had not so intended,” she said quietly, thinking now only how she could ease Arane away.
 
“But dark overcame us before we could get down.”
 
That, she commented to herself, was an understatement.

“You perhaps could tell King Hadros that you and Valmar spent the night with me,” suggested the queen, as though having been asked for advice she could not leave without finding
some
way to save the situation.

“No, although I thank you,” said Karin, shaking her head and keeping her eyes down.
 
As she had asked herself all last night while pacing the rocky hilltop, and as she awoke today, she wondered where Roric could be if not with the Wanderers—and what they could now possibly want with
her.
 
“I think the only way this could easily be resolved would be if Hadros were to die.”

Queen Arane started back.
 
“Karin, my dear!
 
I know I counseled you not to be squeamish, and that you are feeling somewhat desperate, but—
 
Do you not think this might be somewhat too drastic a step?”

Karin stared at the queen in horror.
 
“I did not mean I planned to kill him!
 
I was merely saying that while he is alive—
 
I was just explaining that …
 
He is almost my second father!”

“Then your first father had best beware,” said Arane briskly.
 
She rose and gave Karin her hand.
 
“I doubt we shall meet again before the end of the Gemot.”

A page appeared as she started across the hall to escort her out to where her bodyguard was waiting.
 
Karin, looking after her, felt a laugh rising in her chest that was almost a sob.
 
She had after all discovered a way to get rid of the queen.

4

“The Wanderers in your world bring death and life.”

They sat in an apple orchard, the fruit so thick overhead that the leaves were almost hidden.
 
Roric had been surprised when they reached the orchard to see no green and no rotten fruit among the long grass under the trees.
 
But several in their band had taken sticks and began beating the branches, and after the downed apples lay on the ground for several minutes the flesh softened and the skin split.
 
Roric wiped a hand on the grass after accidentally leaning on an apple and getting his hand covered with sticky fermented pulp.

“Are you trying to tell me,” he asked slowly, “that in this world
mortals
bring death and life?”

The man did not answer.
 
He only turned on Roric a face shadowed and without detail, then looked away.

They had paused in their riding, stopped for the night except that there was no night.
 
But most of the band had eaten, traded a few songs and stories, and curled up under the trees to sleep.
 
Now only Roric and this man, this being, were left sitting up, while the sun hovered low in a sky without a sunset.

Roric was not sure whether to believe anything he might say; but he still felt he had a better chance of getting a reliable answer out of him than any of the others.
 
He wondered if this sense was only a result of having been in his company longer than any of the others’.

“If you will not tell me that,” Roric said after a few minutes of silence, “then perhaps you can tell me who constitutes the first two forces, since you say you are the third.”

This the man apparently thought he could answer.
 
“The first are those you call the Wanderers.
 
The second are those who oppose them.”

“But do you not oppose them yourselves?
 
Who are you riding to war against if not the Wanderers?”

“We fight
both
sides.”
 
The man suddenly drew his dagger and threw it, as though playfully, past Roric’s ear.
 
It lodged in the trunk behind him.

He jumped involuntarily, then reached back as calmly as he could and pulled it out.
 
He weighed it in his hand, then looked up with a forced smile.
 
“Is this then your guest-gift to me?”

The man snatched it back.
 
Too bad—it had what looked like gold inlay on the blade.

“The lords of voima, they call themselves,” said the man suddenly and in what Roric thought were bitter tones.
 
“They are proud and self-righteous, roaming earth and sky, watching over mortals, shaping their own land in imitation of mortal lands—
 
Men, they call themselves, yet I in the form of a stallion have begotten colts on all of them!”

“How do they treat you when they are not mares?” asked Roric carefully.
 
This was an insult they used at home, and he could—he hoped—discount its validity, but he had never heard such an insult hurled at the Wanderers.

“They ignore us, scorn us, laugh at us, treat us as beneath their notice.
 
They
say
they created us, but if we are their creation you would think they would show us more respect.”

No question about it.
 
The man was feeling bitter.

“Did they not create all those who live here?” Roric asked carefully.

“Well, they
shaped
it all, as they put it.
 
But we are all they have ever created completely:
 
the third force, the only beings besides the two major forces to have individual thought and will.”

“And those who oppose the Wanderers?”

“They only wish to replace the old lords of voima with new ones—themselves.”

“And where does that leave you?” asked Roric, trying to sound sympathetic.

The whole situation had a quality of a dream, or of a story told about someone else.
 
Somewhere in this beautiful and frustrating land there had to be glory for a fatherless man to seize, but it was rapidly growing harder to believe in it.

“We still have our own voima,” said the being, sounding crafty now.
 
“And even your Wanderers are not fated to rule forever.
 
We disrupt them whenever we can.”

“Including capturing a mortal,” provided Roric, “and sending him to attack the Wanderers.
 
Will my steel overcome them when yours will not?”

“You were not captured, Roric No-man’s son.
 
You came willingly.”

But I did not know where you were taking me, he thought—and still do not.
 
If he now accompanied these beings willingly, it was because he had not seen an alternative since they arrived here.

He got no more useful answers out of the man.
 
A short time later Roric lay down himself to sleep, under a different tree from everybody else.

Sleep did not come easily.
 
He lay on his back, an arm across his eyes to shield them from the sun.
 
He thought of Karin, picturing her going about her daily activities directing Hadros’s household, hoping she was not worried for him.
 
Then he tried to picture a “third force” where he had always expected there to be only one.

There had always been creatures of voima abroad in the world, trolls, dragons, hollow beings without backs, faeys—although he had never seen any of these but trolls, unless the strange green light in the dell he had seen only once, when out walking in the evening, had indeed been faeys.
 
There might well be more creatures of voima here in the Wanderers’ realm, beings who did not share in their full power although they were immortal themselves, creatures of spite or tricks or dangerous sullenness.

He rolled over sharply and looked toward the sleeping war band, half hidden in the grass.
 
It had always been disquieting that he could not see them properly, even with his charm in his hand.
 
They had been too timid, too foolish for him to fear them here, but at least one of them had terrified all of Hadros’s housecarls.
 
What were they really like?
 
Valmar had gasped out something about someone with no back, and although he had paid no attention at the time, he now wondered what the boy might have seen that he, expecting a Wanderer, had not.

He rose to his knees, considering saddling Goldmane again and slipping away while they all slept.
 
But if they wanted him, he had little doubt they would be able to catch him, and if he ran he did not know where he would go.
 
“And even a man without a father should know he cannot run from fate,” he growled to himself.

But then he smiled a little as he lay back down.
 
If he lived to see mortal realms again, he would have a tale that would take several nights’ singing to tell.

They came quietly up out of a valley, not talking, not blowing their trumpets, and saw a large manor house in the distance.
 
Again there was no sign of the masters.
 
But the war band spread out, forming a large half circle.
 
They communicated by hand signals, keeping silence.
 
Helmets were secured and spears readied.

Roric unfastened the peace-straps on his sheath and glanced back down the valley.
 
“Look,” he said suddenly.
 
The man next to him turned on him with the beginning of an irritable exclamation, then stopped when he saw what Roric had seen.

Coming up the valley behind them was another war band.

These riders were sharp and vivid, no shadows here.
 
They were clad all in steel from which the sunlight flashed.
 
They seemed small and slender in comparison with his own band, but there was nothing small about their spears.
 
A white banner without device floated above them.
 
Horned helmets completely covered their faces.

They had spotted him.
 
They reined in their horses, then the rider in the lead raised a horn and blew.