C. Dale Brittain (25 page)

Valmar sat back on his heels, daring to look up for the first time.
 
“I am yours to command.”
 
Strange conflicting feelings whirled through him:
 
the way he always felt listening to the old stories of glory and death; his thoughts of Karin; his admiration for Roric, who too had been here; and his desire to make his father think well of him, all the feelings burning and swirling into a sensation that could have been a mighty song of trumpets.

“But we do not command,” said the Wanderer.
 
“Come, and you shall meet the others.”

The sun did not set but remained frozen just above the horizon, though as the clouds blew across the sky an ever-changing display of gold and scarlet lit up the west.
 
They went on foot, the Wanderer—as Valmar could not help but think of him, though he must have a different name here—slowing his pace to Valmar’s.
 
When he asked how far they had to go, he always had the same answer, “Not far.
 
Not very far.”

They traveled through shaded dells and open meadows, along the edges of woodlots and by pastures where the flocks regarded them querulously.
 
At first Valmar thought this a perfect land, one of endless abundance and fertility, but then he started to see the gaps:
 
shocked hay mildewing where it stood, birch trees broken so that unshed leaves were dying, pear trees whose fruit was rotting even before it ripened.

These were the sorts of setbacks every farm of every kingdom had to deal with in mortal realms, Valmar told himself, and should therefore not seem worrisome.
 
But somehow they did.
 
For the lords of voima
any
weakness or rot was a sign that their powers were beginning to wane.

He squirmed as he realized that the Wanderers must have been listening to the very conversation in which he and Karin had spoken of them as being without knowledge or power.
 
How could he have been so foolish?
 
Maybe they only had gaps in their knowledge, if indeed they had any, because of this imminent onset of night.

He would stand with them, then, he thought resolutely, stand with them against those who wanted to replace them, even if it was a doomed cause.
 
People who glittered and who filled him with an awe beyond fear, though at the same time trying to reassure him,
must
be in the right.

He startled himself by wondering if Karin—or even Roric—would agree.
 
Roric had been here, but had come back.
 
Had he let down the Wanderers, even rejected them?
 
Or had they somehow rejected
him
?

But he had not seen Roric, Valmar reminded himself; he was not even sure he
was
back except that the ravens had said so.
 
There might be many purposes and plans here, of which Roric was involved in one set and he in another.

He thought about the being without a back, whom he had seen so briefly, who looked neither as this Wanderer had when he appeared on the headland, nor as he appeared now.
 
And Valmar tightened his jaw as he wondered if Roric might be on one side and he on the other.

The hall where he was taken was enormous, glorious, its ceiling so high it seemed there must be clouds beneath it, its benches all cushioned and its tables laid with silver.
 
Hammered silver bosses decorated the beams, and the upright timbers were all painted blue.
 
The other beings there were nearly indistinguishable from the one he had first met, tall, glowing white, with faces so noble and wise he could barely look at them.

They set him on a high bench where he felt like a child and brought him food, roast beef, fried onions, soft cheese, a white loaf with honey, and an ale horn that never became low no matter how much he drank.
 
He was so excited it was hard to eat, but he was, he realized, very hungry.
 
Horizontal sunlight poured through the hall’s open doorway.
 
The tall white beings stayed at the far end of the hall as though not wanting to distract him from his dinner.

When at last he had eaten his fill and pushed the silver plate away—he noted with some surprise that no maid came to take it, that everyone here, both lords and servants, appeared to be men—the Wanderers gathered around him.
 
There seemed to be about a dozen of them, though they were hard to count since he could not look at them directly for more than a few seconds.

“You may wonder, Valmar Hadros’s son,” began one of them, “why the immortals would want a mortal’s assistance.”

“I did wonder,” he said after a brief silence, in which he realized they really were waiting for his answer.
 
His heart beat almost ashamedly loudly, as it had the first time he had prepared to face Gizor with a real sword in his fist rather than a wooden sword, or the first time one of the castle maids had kissed him.

“You have to understand,” the being continued, “that our realm is not exactly like mortal realms, although of course patterned after them.
 
And one difference is that mortals are not meant to come here, and thus individual men and women, if they do come, are much more powerful than they are at home.”

“If I have to understand,” said Valmar hesitantly, “I’m afraid I don’t.”

“Well,” said one of the Wanderers, whose slightly amused tone made him think it was the one he had met originally, “you might be surprised to learn that here you have destructive powers of awesome proportions.
 
A land modeled on that of mortals might be destroyed by mortals—and the beings in it.”

“So is the onset of night caused by mortals?” he asked.
 
If he could just slow his heart, he thought, he might understand all this better.
 
They were counting on him, the immortal lords of voima were counting on him, and he could not fail them.

“No,” very quietly.
 
“It is our fated end approaching.
 
But a mortal can help us defeat those who are even now preparing to replace us when we are gone.”

“But even if you defeat some other immortals,” he replied with a frown, “will not fate still find you?”

They did not answer for a moment, as though uneasy themselves.
 
When one did speak at last, it was with no hint of amusement.

“A seed dies and is reborn as a stalk of wheat.
 
A mortal dies and is reborn as a voiceless, nameless spirit.
 
Some deaths are glorious, some are sad, some merely an empty end.
 
But because we are immortal we do not have access to Death, to its opportunity for a new beginning in a new form, which might with voima be molded into an even better form than before.”

“So what do you want me to do?” Valmar asked timidly, fighting his fear but fearing he already knew the answer.

“After you have helped us defeat the others whose presence has become so much more irritating with the approach of night, we would like you to do us a favor.
 
It is just,” with a brief pause, “the smallest favor.
 
We would like you to descend into Hel for us and find the lords of death.”

PART II:
 
Flight and Pursuit

CHAPTER SIX

1

“Tell the captain to put us ashore before we reach harbor,” said Roric quietly.

Karin, standing beside him at the rail, turned toward him in surprise.
 
The wind tugged at her braids, and the sailors were all bustling about now that they were within a few miles of King Hadros’s harbor.
 
The choppy salt water of the channel behind them was empty except for one small sail on the horizon.

“Surely
you,
Karin, in planning this theft, realized that Hadros would send a raven-message home,” he continued in an undertone, staring at that sail.
 
“Gizor One-hand may not be one to talk to ravens, but I expect they can talk to
him.
”

“But Gizor may have been with the king!” she protested.

“Then he sent his message to whichever warrior he left in charge, or even to Dag.
 
It doesn’t matter which.
 
Does you father have a blue and white striped sail on his warship, by the way?
 
As soon as Hadros realized we were gone, he sent a raven to tell those here to capture us when we landed—probably to hold
you
until your father arrived, but to kill me outright.”

Her eyes were wide.
 
“Would he try—again—to have you killed?”

“I defied him.
 
If that’s Hadros right behind us, he may have added the refinement to wait to kill me until he could watch.”
 
He smiled grimly.
 
“You and I may not have been outlawed yet, but we are already outcasts for stealing this ship, my sweet.
 
Your friend the Wanderer would be pleased.
 
Little blood-guilt will fall on our killers.
 
But the seamen for the moment seem ready to obey you.
 
Make up some excuse why we need to go ashore—Birch Point should be a good place.”

She gave him a last quick look and started toward the stern where the captain stood at the rudder.

But Roric reached out suddenly to catch her arm.
 
“Wait a minute,” he whispered.
 
“Can you see them?”

She stared toward Birch Point, now less than a half mile away, then abruptly dropped below the level of the rail.

“Good thinking on Gizor’s part,” said Roric in admiration.
 
“He guessed what I was planning to do and has his welcoming party all ready.”

Karin tried to tug him down beside her.
 
“But I only saw one man!
 
And I would not have seen him except for the sunlight reflecting from his helmet.”

Roric remained standing.
 
“They know we are on this ship, whether they spot us or not.
 
At this point, it is better if they do not know we spotted them!
 
You can be sure that the man whose helmet we saw was not Gizor himself.”

Karin pressed herself against him and he put an arm around her, to the evident interest of the seamen not too busy with the lines and oars to pay attention.
 
“Then what shall we do?” she asked in a low voice, no longer the determined woman who had first taken him to the Mirror-seer and then stolen this ship.
 
He held her tighter.

“Go ashore at the harbor as though in all innocence,” he answered, thinking rapidly.
 
“Gizor must feel I insulted his honor by escaping before, so he will be well prepared this time.
 
Because Hadros took many of his warriors with him, Gizor will not have enough for an ambush at every possible place.
 
He will—I hope—have left the rest at the castle, knowing there is little place to hide them at the harbor.
 
If we do not suspect an attack, he thinks, we will go straight to the castle and be captured easily there.
 
If we do suspect, we will make for Birch Point rather than the harbor.
 
We should have a twenty-minute headstart on them, maybe more.
 
The alder thickets and the bog will slow them down, and they will not have tried to take horses in there.
 
As soon as we hit land, we run.
 
It is not as though we had any baggage to slow us down!”

The entry into the harbor seemed to take an eternity, as the sail drooped, losing wind, and the sailors pulled at the oars.
 
The first approach to the dock was not quite on line; the captain, quietly cursing his own steering, had to have the seamen back water, away from the hidden rocks that guarded the harbor against those who did not know the line on which to sight, and tried again.
 
Roric kept his eyes on the shore until they ached, but he could see no motion through the trees.