C. Dale Brittain (20 page)

Valmar kept thinking of the strangeness of the raven-messages.
 
Who had sent them?
 
Roric himself, King Hadros, or someone else entirely?
 
Raven-messages were by their very nature brief, so if one had more than a few words to convey one needed more than one bird, but one of these messages and not the other had been addressed to both of them.

He did not like to say anything to Karin, who looked forward to seeing Roric with a joy that bordered on pain.
 
Her face was openly eager, and her eyes looked right past him to the ocean beyond.
 
But the message to beware of Roric suggested that something important had changed.
 
Had he come back from the Wanderers’ realm with no back?

Three ships came into the harbor that day, but none of them bore Roric.
 
As the sun grew lower, Karin’s eagerness became mixed with misgiving.
 
She stared at the waves, rough under a strong wind, and kept murmuring about the Cauldron Rocks until Valmar realized that that was where her older brother’s ship had foundered.

She would not return to the castle that day even for meals, but ate the bread and cheese Valmar arranged to have brought to them while standing on the headland above the cove, straining to see into the distance.
 
She was dressed like a queen in gold brocade, but under the imperious façade lay the terror of a girl whom Valmar longed to take in his arms and comfort.

But he did not dare.
 
He knew that her expression had nothing to do with him.
 
The moon was rising, when at last he took her by the elbow.

“Karin, listen to me.
 
No more ships will arrive tonight.”

She turned toward him sharply, as though she had forgotten his presence, then clutched at him for support.
 
“Do you think—
 
Do you think—”
 
He could sense all the questions she could not ask:
 
did he think Roric’s ship had gone down, did he think Roric might have fallen overboard during the crossing, did he think Roric had been knifed in the night?

“I think he will be here tomorrow, or perhaps the next day.”
 
He had both his arms around her, his beard in her hair, and rocked her gently as though she was a child.
 
“You know there are not nearly as many merchant ships that cross the channel as there are that stay on this side,” he murmured reassuringly.
 
“None of the ships we saw today came from the north.
 
And you know that with the sea this rough the ships will postpone their crossing anyway.
 
It may take Roric a few days to find a ship coming here—I doubt my father will lend him his!
 
Or he may have to take passage to another of the southern kingdoms, then ride over here.”

“Then he may already be back at the castle!” cried Karin.

“No, no, of course not.”
 
Her face was clear and pale in the moonlight before him.
 
“You know they would have sent word.
 
But you have already frightened your father enough.
 
Come back home now, and be yourself again.”

“I could do it in Hadros’s court,” she murmured, mostly under her breath.
 
“Why cannot I do it here?”

They walked slowly back toward the castle.
 
She shivered without a cloak, so he wrapped his around both of them.
 
His arm went around her shoulders, and hers around his waist.
 
The west darkened, but the eastern sky was light where the nearly full moon floated.
 
He could feel her breath warm against his neck, her softness against his side.
 
This, he thought, was how lovers walked.

What was he going to do?
 
If Roric was suddenly here, he would have trouble explaining that he was merely supporting her as a solicitous little brother, yet he would not care to have his foster-brother furious with him.
 
He might be able to conceal his feelings from Karin, but could not imagine
him
fooled.
 
If Roric appeared tomorrow, their brotherhood could be broken forever.
 
Would Valmar have to fight him, either kill him or be killed himself?

Anyway, Karin loved Roric, not him.
 
This was terrible, he thought, tightening his grip around her.
 
One point however was clear.
 
In the last few days he had changed his mind.
 
He would much rather marry her than Dag or Nole.

They had walked over half the way back to the castle and could see its lights beckoning them when Valmar abruptly stopped.
 
Karin stumbled and caught herself with both arms around his waist.

There was a third person on the path beside them.

He wore a broad-brimmed hat that hid his face from the moonlight.
 
“I have spoken with the others, Karin Kardan’s daughter,” he said conversationally, as though his presence there was unsurprising.
 
“We can indeed use you.”

Karin clutched at Valmar.
 
“It’s the Wanderer,” she hissed.
 
“The one I met on Graytop.”

He stood frozen, unable to move, while the Wanderer tilted his head as though looking toward him.
 
“You are a long way from home, Valmar Hadros’s son.
 
Have you perhaps been outcast?”

But Karin did not give him a chance to answer.
 
She broke away from Valmar to whirl on the Wanderer, her fists on her hips.

“Do not come here,” she said in a low, furious voice, “picking out mortals you think you can use like someone picking out apples at a market stall.
 
You may think you want me, but I have no use for you!”

There was a momentary silence.
 
“This outlook will certainly make things more difficult,” the man then said dryly.
 
“Would you like to tell me why?”

“
That
is why!
 
Because you do not know anything!
 
You make us pay a terrible price, but then do not even give us the little information we ask for that price!”
 
Her voice was shaking, but she still had it under control.

Valmar remembered his wild surmise of what that price might have been.
 
If she was already Roric’s even more truly than he had thought, that meant—
 
He did not know what it meant, except that he could never ever tell her now what he felt.

“I had thought I did you a favor,” commented the man, “rather than exacting a price.
 
And I think you tell the story wrongly—the woman was not visited by a lord of voima, but by a lord of death.”

Karin gave a half-choked cry, almost a scream.
 
Valmar tried to take her arm, but she shook him off.

“I must say,” added the man in the broad-brimmed hat, “that your absolute commitment to what you believe helps make you appealing to us.
 
Since we do not take mortals against their wishes, it certainly is irritating to have that stubbornness turned against us …”

Karin managed to answer, coherently if furiously.
 
“Lords of voima, the great, terrible beings to whom we burn offerings!
 
And all you do is try to make us carry out your will, without any ultimate power or knowledge of your own.”

“It bothers you that we are not all-powerful, that even we are governed by fate?
 
I would have thought a mortal would be flattered to be asked to help at all.”

“I doubt if you have any powers at all!” Karin shot back.
 
“I am going to live here on earth, then go to Hel when I die, and never associate with anyone but other mortals!”

“Oh, we have powers all right,” said the other, sounding amused.
 
“I had assumed you would prefer not to see them.”

And abruptly the ground beneath their feet was gone, and they were suspended in the air over a pit of orange flames and molten rock.
 
They swung ever so slightly back and forth, as though suspended by a thread no stronger than cobweb.
 
A belch of hot gas broke through the lava, then suddenly the road was again solid beneath them.

Valmar and Karin clung to each other.
 
But she had not changed her mind.
 
“Try to frighten me all you like,” she got out between chattering teeth.
 
“Ever since I saw you on Graytop I have not been mistress of myself.
 
I do not belong to you, and I will not belong to you.
 
I am Roric’s alone!”

“By the way,” said the other, “I meant to tell you.
 
You were asking about Roric No-man’s son.
 
He was spotted in our realm.”

“And again you do not know the real truth!” she said triumphantly, though the tears were pouring down her cheeks.
 
“He is back under the sun, and he is coming to me even now!”

They still had not seen the man’s face.
 
He turned his back toward them and addressed his remarks to the sky.
 
“You certainly have courage and will, but as I say we force no one to our bidding.”

He began then to walk away, and as he walked it seemed that his feet did not touch the road, but rather that he walked on moonlight.
 
He grew smaller and smaller as he strode on the moon’s rays up over the headland.

Valmar stared immobile after him.
 
Karin had shoved him away, sobbing hard, when he tried to put his arms around her again.

And suddenly Valmar began to run, pounding back down the road toward the harbor.
 
Moonlight washed all around him.

The man stopped and turned toward him.

“Wait for me!” Valmar cried.
 
“I’m coming with you!”

CHAPTER FIVE

1

“No, of course I am all right,” said Karin to her father.
 
She tried to stay out of the direct light to hide the tear streaks on her cheeks, but he had already seen them.
 
“I am only upset because Valmar has left.”

“Left!
 
But where has he gone?
 
Has he returned home already?”

At this rate, she thought, swallowing the sobs before they could break out, she could give lessons to Queen Arane.
 
“He has always wanted adventure, I gather, and when we were coming home from the harbor just now we ran into someone—someone I had known before—who gave him an unexpected opportunity.
 
He had to take it immediately.”

“But to leave so suddenly—
 
And I was growing fond of the boy—”
 
He tipped up her face toward his with one finger under her chin, as Hadros sometimes did.
 
“Karin!
 
Are you sure he did not have some kind of accident that you are trying to conceal from me?”

“No!
 
I told you, he simply left!”

“Well,” said King Kardan in wonderment, “I do hope he will be all right.
 
What shall I tell his father?”

“I shall write to Hadros myself, next time there is a messenger or a merchant going from here to the northern kingdoms.”

She turned to retreat to her room, glad now that she had her mother’s private parlor.
 
But her father took her arm.
 
“Karin, I can see you are terribly upset.
 
Are you quite sure you had not set your heart on this boy?”

“Quite sure,” she said, meeting his eyes with an effort of will.