“I am not planning to marry Valmar or any other king’s son,” she said, meeting her father’s gaze levelly. “And that is why I want him to stay. His very presence will keep away other offers for at least the summer-I saw the way the Fifty Kings eyed me when they realized I was now your heiress. But I have become fond of Valmar as a brother. At Hadros’s court we were children together.”
Everything she said was true, but she still thought bitterly that this was a stratagem worthy of Queen Arane.
King Kardan smiled understandingly. “You and your own little brother used to be inseparable. I remember the two of you racing around underfoot, telling us you were trolls one moment and heroes the next. At the time, I thought it just as well that you were no longer here when he took ill and died…”
The evenings were long, and after dinner Karin and Valmar walked in the meadow before the castle. Beyond the meadows, beyond a narrow oak wood, they could catch glimpses of the channel, dark blue in the fading light, and the wind that rustled their hair was tinged with salt. Only the trampled grass of the meadow and the blackened scars of fire-rings showed that the All-Gemot had been held here. Even the merchants had sold the last departing kings final gifts to take home to their families, packed up their booths and left.
“I don’t understand why you’ve spoken to my father as you have,” said Valmar at last. Karin could hear in his voice an effort to be mature and detached fighting with boyish irritation. “He now assumes that you and I shall soon marry.”
“It already seemed like a good idea to him,” she said. She turned away from him to look up the valley, past the lake, invisible from this angle, where the Mirror-seer lived, toward the peak of Graytop. “Our children, his grandchildren, would rule two kingdoms.”
“But you encouraged him!”
“Would you rather let him think you’d raped me?” she said in exasperation. “Or have him announce to my father that I had been carried off by the strong hand to become your concubine? Youthful love can be rectified by marriage; youthful violence cannot. I’m sorry, Valmar, I’m no more pleased about this than you are, but I was very tired and it was all I could think to say.”
“But have you told him you love Roric?”
“I told him. Especially since Roric is gone, he did not think it mattered.”
Valmar took her hands and turned her toward him, looking down at her as though he had never seen her before. For a second, watching his expression, she feared that she had insulted him deeply by rejecting so readily the idea of marriage with him. But after a moment he laughed loudly and tossed her hands away. “It’s useless. You’re my big sister! I would be just as content to marry Dag or Nole as you!”
“Yes, but your father doesn’t want you to marry your brothers.” For a second Karin started to smile, but only for a second.
In the morning they all crossed the fields and splashed through a brackish stream to the royal burial mound.
Karin’s earliest clear memories were of when her mother had died and been put into it. The grass had long since grown over the spot where they had sliced into the mound for her, and also the spot where her youngest son, whom she had died bearing, was buried six years later. But the earth was still fresh where Karin’s drowned older brother had been buried.
Valmar stood back with the royal attendants, but Karin and her father climbed up to the top, twenty feet above the ground. Standing there, swaying slightly, she had to squeeze her eyes shut for a moment to regain her composure. She had not been back on the mound since the old queen’s funeral. For a moment the soft mud that lay over her brother’s body was the fresh earth where her mother was buried, and Karin was not a proud young woman, a future sovereign queen, but a very frightened little girl.
King Kardan lit a small fire with tinder he had brought with him. Once it was burning, the small orange blaze licking and popping in the ocean wind, he laid in it a strip of silk, a twig from the rowan in the castle courtyard, and three gray hairs from his own head. Karin hesitated a second, remembering that she had told Valmar she would burn no more offerings to the Wanderers, then glanced at her father’s profile and reached up to pull at her own hair.
As she laid the strands across the fire, she was not sure if she was offering them to the Wanderers, to the dead older brother who had seemed oddly unsaddened when she left as a hostage, as though just as happy not to be going himself, or to her living father, whose pain and loss were so visible on his face that she had to look away.
After a minute, Kardan reached out to squeeze his daughter’s hand. She forced herself to meet his eyes. He was no longer looking inward, at his loss, but directly at her, and it struck her that she was now all he had left. Standing on the mound where her ancestors had been buried since time out of memory, standing above their very bones, she felt the full weight of their tradition fall on her. When the dead were gone, it was up to the living to remember them, to honor them, to carry on all that they had begun.
Her mother and both her brothers were now in Hel where all mortals went, the brave and the honorable, the depraved and the cowardly, venerable grandfathers and babies who had lived no longer than to take one breath.
People did not return from Hel except in the oldest tales, but then beings without backs also did not appear to mortals except in those stories. Even so, those who had died peacefully or in accidents should not walk again if suitably buried. She had heard somewhere when very young, probably something the serving-maids had said that she was not supposed to overhear, that one could reach Hel by digging into a burial mound. But if so there must be more involved, for all castles and manors had large mounds into which new graves were dug every generation.
The stories had never given a clear picture of Hel, though she had the impression that it was a murky and confused land, where one’s memories and even identity slowly disappeared. But on one point all the stories were explicit.
There were no Wanderers in Hel.
2
Roric picked his way through the oak woods. It was an overcast night and hard to see, but the cold damp air was exhilarating. He sucked it into his lungs as he proceeded slowly in the direction of the castle. He did not know if the Wanderers would try for him again, since the “third force” had reached him first this time, or how King Hadros would react to his return, but very soon he would see Karin again.
He smiled in the darkness. He could understand why Karin had never told him about the faeys. He and she had come to trust each other so recently, and had had so little time for conversation in the short weeks since they had first declared their love for each other, that she might not have felt easy in telling him about these foolish friends from her childhood. But he had a message for her from them. They were becoming worried because they had not seen her in a long time.
He stopped, a hand against the rough bark of a tree, listening. Something was moving across the ground ahead of him, something heavy. It rustled the grass and twigs and made a curious spongy sound as it came. He drew his sword, slowly so as to make no noise, and put his back to the tree.
And then the clouds above him lifted for a moment, and the moon shone down on the oak woods, several days short of the full.
Crouched on the hill before him was the troll.
Mostly head and mouth and long powerful arms, with a small soft body that it had to drag along when out of the stream, it lay on the hill looking at him with eyes bigger around than ale horns. “What have you done with my horse, Roric No-man’s son?”
Its voice was deep and indistinct, soft like its body but packed with menace like its teeth.
Roric turned his blade so that the moonlight flashed on it. “Get out of my way, troll, unless you wish to test my steel. I have no time for riddles and games of chance tonight.”
The clouds obscured the moon again, and Roric could hear the troll laughing. Its laugh was much worse than its voice, wild, irrational and threatening. But something else was wrong. The moon had been just past the full when he gallope
d away from Gizor and the manor, and he could have sworn that was only a week ago, not nearly four weeks. How long had he really been gone?
“You should know mortal steel will not be much use against a troll here, ” came the soft dark voice again.
“It will slow you down if you intend to eat me.”
“No, not tonight, Roric No-man’s son. I caught a deer last week, and I am still feeding nicely. Did you never wonder why I didn’t eat that horse?”
Roric had been about to rush past. Now that he knew where the troll was, he should be able to get by it and on to the castle well ahead of it. The troll was certainly dangerous, and no children had ever been allowed out of the castle alone after dark, but it moved slowly enough that Hadros had never felt it a threat worth rousting out from under his bridge. Rather, he left it there as an additional guard to his castle.
But instead of hurrying away Roric went still, judging the troll’s position by its snorting breath and the squishing sounds it made when it moved. It might know something he should have known himself long ago. “Goldmane is in the realm of the Wanderers,” he said slowly. “Is that where he came from originally?”
At the time, two years ago, he had not questioned where the troll had acquired the horse. All he had seen as he stood by the troll’s bridge at twilight was the magnificence of the stallion. It had seemed unsurprising that a creature of voima like the troll should have it. All that was surprising was that the troll had been willing to engage in riddles and a game of dice for Goldmane-the dice had come back to his hand wet and sticky from the troll’s-without insisting that if Roric lost he should be eaten on the spot.
And now that he thought about it, he had beaten the troll rather easily. It must surely have known the old riddles about the egg and about the creature that goes on four legs, then two, then three.
The troll chuckled. “I am not sure if the one who sent you your horse originally will have time or attention to send you another now that you’ve lost him, especially with the change is coming.”
Roric moved along the sandy hill a short way to keep his distance, thinking hard. The trolls of the Wanderers’ realm, the “third force,” must already have had their eyes on him two years ago and deliberately given him his horse. It was Goldmane, he thought with dismay, who had taken the bit in his teeth and gone through the stone gateway out of Hadros’s kingdom while he was still hesitating. If he could not trust the stallion, he was back to his own voima and the little bone charm.
But it was also Goldmane who had carried him away from the horned warriors and had brought him home.
And he had something else he needed to know. “When you say my steel will harm you but little here, do you mean it would do greater damage in the Wanderers’ realm?”
The troll did not answer his question and did not even laugh. “Be proud of your association with the Wanderers if you like, Roric No-man’s son,” it said indistinctly. “But be careful wandering these hills at night if I am not well fed.” It gave a booming belch, and then it did chuckle again.
Roric made a wide circle around it, his sword still in his hand. Ahead of him through the trees he could see faint lights from Hadros’s castle. Soon he would learn if he had really been gone for close to four weeks-or, he thought grimly, even for several months.
An oak tree around the back of the castle reached a branch toward the top of the wall. Roric scrambled up it, as he had many times since he was a boy, coming home after the gates were already shut and not wanting to have to knock and explain himself. With luck, he would find Karin before he had to talk to anyone else.
Hadros had neglected things like the oak branch since the end of the war, he thought with a hard smile as he dropped inside the wall. If he had been a scout for an invading army he would have had the gates open for his companions in no time.
Even in the dark, he knew the castle like he knew his own skin. He slipped across the courtyard, hearing the voices of maids and of housecarls from the hall. Flickering firelight came through the open doorway. He was slightly surprised, because normally the maids did not sit with the warriors and housecarls in the evening, instead retreating to the weaving house or the bake house. He glanced in both in search of Karin and found them dark and empty. In the bath house, even the stones were cold.
And certain voices seemed to be missing. He stood close by the doorway into the hall, listening. He could not hear the king’s deep voice, which usually rose over all the other men’s. And now that he thought about it, he also did not hear Valmar or Gizor One-hand, though both of them might long sit silent on the bench in the evening. But he thought he heard Nole, the king’s youngest son, his voice high and excited.
As he hesitated outside the hall, he heard in the distance the sound of hooves. He slipped across the courtyard again to look out through the crack along the edge of the gate. A band of men, carrying torches that lit up the night, were riding up the hill toward the castle. Their harnesses jingled, and all of them had shields slung from their saddles.
And the man in the lead was King Hadros. Roric stepped back into the shadows with a smile as the king pounded his fist on the gate. He would let the king enter his hall before surprising him with his own return.
“I am home!” roared the king. “Open the gate!”
The housecarls poured out of the hall. “They’re home! They’re home from the All-Gemot!”
The All-Gemot. Roric had completely forgotten about it. It was still ten days or so in the future when he rode away, which meant he really had been gone under a month, not the entire summer. That at least was a relief. He wondered if he would have accompanied Hadros if he had been here; he had been among the king’s warriors at the All-Gemot the last few years.
The big gate swung open, and the king and his warriors came through. Gizor One-hand was among them. Roric mingled with the back of the crowd as Dag and Nole hurried forward to greet their father, and as housecarls took the horses and baggage. Roric thought it a little surprising that no one seemed to notice him.
“But where is Valmar?” he heard Dag ask. “And where is Karin?”
“They are in Kardan’s kingdom,” said Hadros. From his tone it was impossible to tell if he was pleased or not. “Karin will stay, because some day she will be sovereign queen there.”
“And Valmar?”
“I shall tell you when I’ve had something to eat. You!” to one of the maids. “Is there no one here who will offer a man food in his own home? Karin would have had something hot ready for us,” he grumbled, heading into the hall.
King Kardan. That was Karin’s father. Roric went into the hall with the rest, forgetting to keep himself hidden although still no one seemed to pay him any attention. She had told him, of course, that she was her father’s heiress now, something the faeys seemed to find very exciting, but it was like having half the castle suddenly disappear to have her gone.
Tonight he would not bother the king, hungry and tired as he was. But in the morning he would ask to be released from his oath of loyalty to him. Since Hadros had tried to have him killed anyway, he should be happy to have him go. Then he would go to Karin and offer himself to her as her warrior as well as her lover.
He tried uneasily to remember where Kardan’s kingdom was. He knew it was somewhere across the channel, but he had never crossed the channel in his life.
The king’s younger sons asked about Valmar again once Hadros and the warriors who had accompanied him had wolfed down bread and cheese and stewed mushrooms and had started the ale horn around for the second time.
“Well,” said the king slowly, leaning back on the bench with his elbows behind him on the table. “Valmar will stay in Kardan’s kingdom this summer with Karin. In a few weeks I shall return there with suitable betrothal gifts, and they shall be married after the harvest.”
There was a shocked silence. “I’ve gotten back just in time,” thought Roric.
The king’s younger sons were nearly as surprised as he was. “Did- Did
you decide for them, Father?” Dag asked at last, hesitantly as though fearing his father was about to choose a wife for him as well.
“No, although I am well pleased with their decision.” The king showed his teeth in a smile for a second. “It seems they had fallen in love themselves, something Karin, that sly lass, tried to keep from me. Valmar,” with a shrug, “was happy enough to fall in with her plans.”
“But she does not love Valmar!” cried Roric. “She is in love with me!”
No one appeared to hear him.
The maids and housecarls began talking at once about the upcoming marriage, until Hadros looked up with a frown. “Enough of this chatter. I shall not have those who serve the royal family engage in idle talk about us. Karin and Valmar will be married here and live here at least half the year, until her father dies. Or I,” mostly under his breath. “That is all you need to know.”
The men started drifting off toward the loft house, some of them still speculating-and once they were out of Hadros’s hearing, in language he would never have tolerated-about how far Karin’s and Valmar’s love had progressed. The consensus seemed to be that Valmar was quite a lad to have won the cool princess.
Roric went up to the king, who was yawning now and pulling off his boots. “I meant to wait until tomorrow to speak to you,” he said, “but I can wait no longer.”
Hadros looked straight through him and unbuckled his sword belt.
Roric leaned against the wall for support. No wonder no one had said anything to him. No one could see or hear him. He had returned from the Wanderers’ realm but returned in such a form that he might as well not be here.
He wandered out of the hall, picking up a piece of cheese and eating it distractedly as he went-at least food was still real to him. “But the troll could see me,” he thought.
How far did this extend? Would others still be able to feel him? Would a sword still cut him?
He followed the warriors and housecarls up the ladder to the men’s loft. Someone bumped against him in the dark and said, “Excuse me.” So he could still be felt then, even if not seen.
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