C. Dale Brittain (54 page)

“Probably plotting a war against someone,” muttered Kardan, realizing that it could not have been too many years later that Hadros had found an excuse to attack
him.

“As I recall,” said Hadros, as though rather surprised at the memory, “I had been going to invade her kingdom.
 
She invited me for a parley, and she talked me out of it.
 
Hard to say how …
 
Well, I stayed in her castle for a week that winter,” he continued after a brief pause, “and she thought I might be lonely and cold, so she sent her maid each night to make sure my bed was warm.
 
Thoughtful of her—and a very sweet maid.”

“And then?” Kardan demanded when Hadros seemed to slip away into pleasant reminiscences.

“Well, it was close to a year later when I was again back that way.”
 
Hadros was only a dark shape, lit from behind by the watch fires.
 
“I did not see the maid this visit; I was only there the one night.
 
But Arane took me aside and asked me a favor.”

“And the favor?” asked Kardan, already knowing the answer.

“She said there had been a baby born in her court, a little boy.
 
Bright red face when I first saw him and a shock of black hair, and yelling as loudly as any grown man.
 
He deserved a good home, she told me, said he was of a lineage that should not be brought up with the children of the housecarls.
 
A baby was the last thing I needed at that point.
 
But I took him home.”

“And that was Roric,” supplied Kardan when the other king fell silent.

“He fought me even then,” Hadros said quietly.
 
“Small enough to fit in my two hands, but he kicked and yelled all the way across the channel and home again.
 
Poor little chap didn’t have anything to eat for two days, though we dripped water in his mouth so he wouldn’t be too thirsty—I tried him on ale but he wouldn’t swallow it.
 
As soon as we got to the castle I had him put to the breast of one of the serving-maids who had just borne a babe of her own.
 
And my wife liked him.
 
He would quiet for her when he wouldn’t for anybody.
 
I didn’t want it generally known that I had been weak enough to agree to carry a screaming baby all the way home with me, and it didn’t seem right to have everyone know he was mine when my queen was still barren.
 
So I put out that he had been a foundling, a little baby lying in front of the gates when we came up the hill from the harbor.”

“Your queen must have known the real story.”

“I suppose she did.
 
I suppose a lot of people did.
 
But she accepted what I told her and started taking him into our bed.
 
The old women had told her that sometimes sleeping with a baby will make a woman conceive.
 
Maybe it did work, but it took a while.
 
He slept with us for several years.
 
He never screamed much after I had him home, but he kicked.
 
Once he was asleep he slept hard, nothing would wake him.
 
But let me tell you what I almost told those old women:
 
if you want your wife to conceive, the wrong way to do it is to have her lying every night curled up around a sleeping babe.”

“So Roric is your son,” said Kardan in wonder.
 
“Did Queen Arane send something with you, some token perhaps you had left with her maid, so that you would be sure?”

“No, and that’s the strange thing.
 
There was a little bone charm wrapped up in his blankets, but it was nothing I’d seen before.
 
Arane certainly wanted me to think the baby was mine, and the timing was about right.
 
But if she had her maid entertain all her important visitors, the lass may not have been sure herself.”

“But you do
know
that Roric was born to the queen’s maid?”

“Well, who else would the mother be?
 
The queen would never have been concerned over an ordinary servant’s brat.
 
And she has asked me over the years, not every time the Fifty Kings met but several times, how he was getting on.
 
But she would never answer
my
questions about him, and she did not want to see him herself at the All-Gemot.
 
I’m sure her maid was happy to hear he was brought up as my foster-son.”

Kardan lay down and started again trying to make the pebbles a comfortable bed.
 
He had another question, one he was not sure how to ask.
 
At last he said, “If you think Roric is your son, why did you try to have him killed?”

“He wouldn’t listen to me,” said Hadros sleepily.
 
“He has little room for mistakes, but he keeps making them every time he ignores me.
 
Haven’t you ever wanted to kill
your
own sons?
 
But that’s right, they’re dead already.”

Kardan gritted his teeth but did not answer.
 
He still could not always tell when the other king was making a joke.

“Besides,” Hadros continued, “I did not in fact want him dead, even if I did suggest something of the sort after drinking all evening.
 
Gizor took me a little too literally!
 
But Roric’s always infuriated me.
 
Maybe he picked up a little of my temperament in those years of sleeping with me; I infuriated my father too.
 
But his telling me he wanted to marry Karin pushed me over the edge.
 
Even if he is mine, he’ll never inherit anything from me, so he has to make his fortune on his own.
 
Even aside from wanting to send your daughter back to you a pure maiden, not tied to a man without kin who would acknowledge him, I didn’t want Roric to be slowed down by a woman while he’s still young.
 
Though I must say, these last few weeks suggest that if anything the princess has speeded him up!”

“So you might allow them to marry after all?”

“Her decision rests with you now, Kardan.
 
But young Valmar—if we find him again—does think he’s betrothed to her.”

“If he’ll have her now,” said Kardan slowly.
 
He settled down and soon heard Hadros begin to snore, but his own mind was too active to let him sleep.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

1

A hand on Roric’s shoulder woke him.
 
He was on his feet with his sword in his fist almost before he had his eyes open.

But then he saw who had touched him.
 
A being twelve feet tall, gleaming white in the glow of the sunset, bent over them, and his face—but Roric could not bear to look at his face.
 
He dropped his sword, grabbed Karin and held her to him, his head bowed and his body shaking all over.
 
He would have offered the lord of voima his service and his honor, but no one would ever again ask any of this from him.

“This may sound strange coming from one of those you consider lords of earth and sky,” said a voice, faintly ironic, above them.
 
“But I think we made a mistake.”

The Wanderers did not want people like him in their realm, Roric thought.
 
One of them—this one?—had originally said they needed him, but they had never wanted a man with unpaid blood-guilt and the curse of incest on him.

Off across the hills moved dark, scuttling clouds, flashing with lightning.
 
Roric looked at the storm so he would not have to look up at the lord of voima, then remembered that when he was here before there had not been any storms.

“We had never allowed mortals in our realm,” the voice continued.
 
“When we first opened the rift to make it possible for you to enter, we never expected that
other
beings of voima would use the opportunity to bring you here, much less that so many other mortals would follow.”

This was not what Roric expected.
 
So far it sounded as though the lords of voima were more disturbed over having King Eirik and his men in their realm than in the fact that he was Karin’s brother.
 
He tried lifting his eyes slowly, but one glimpse of the face, gentle, merciful, and burning with terrible power, made him stagger.

“We are here to help you,” said Karin in a high, clear voice.
 
Roric had not yet dared say anything.
 
“We understand you planned to send our foster-brother to Hel on your behalf.
 
Send us instead.”

Roric and Karin had finally fallen asleep clinging to each other, exhausted and in despair.
 
How long had they slept?
 
Long enough, Roric noticed, for the sun to slide still lower.
 
Well, they need not worry how long the night might last in the realms of voima—where they were going it was always night.

“We are rethinking that plan, too,” said the shining white being.
 
“We should have known after watching you all these years that mortals are unpredictable.”

Karin pushed back her tangled hair and looked at the Wanderer’s chest.
 
“Then tell us what you want us to do,” she said firmly—as though, Roric thought in admiration, she was chiding King Hadros for giving contradictory orders.

“Though it is not what we expected in immortal realms,” said the Wanderer, again in that faintly ironic tone, “you may have already brought death here.”

“At home,” Roric said huskily, “I would try to find a way to pay the blood-guilt.
 
I do not know what I can do here.”

“No, you have not brought death personally, Roric No-man’s son.”
 
The voice sounded, Roric thought, not as calm as when he had spoken to this being, or another like him, outside the manor guest house.
 
Instead the Wanderer seemed—distracted?
 
“Why don’t you sit down, so we can talk more easily?” he continued.

Off in the other direction from the storm, a mountainside suddenly burst into flames.
 
Orange fire went leaping up through the crowns of the trees, with a roaring they could hear even at this distance.
 
The Wanderer extended an arm sharply and the fire went out at once, but the wind brought the smell of smoke to them.

Roric and Karin settled themselves carefully at his feet, and he sat on the grass as well, still towering over them.
 
Roric’s heart was pounding as though it would burst from his chest.
 
The little things he and Karin had noticed yesterday, the small changes in this lush realm of voima, the swarms of flies, the sour milk, were intensifying as the sun came closer to disappearing.
 
And might some of this be due to his own presence here?

“We had thought a mortal would need to go to Hel for us,” the Wanderer continued, turning away from the scorched mountainside, “a mortal to ask a favor of the lords of death.
 
But it may be that you mortals already have death with you wherever you go.
 
We had not expected you could destroy that which we had created ourselves, or that you could make even an immortal bleed.”

The Wanderer was using “you,” Roric realized, not to mean him and Karin but mortals in general.
 
Maybe Valmar?—but Valmar would never have destroyed the Wanderers’ own creation.
 
Suddenly he grinned to himself through his failure and despair.
 
By bringing King Eirik here he seemed to have stirred up events even more thoroughly than he had intended.

“Now that you have death here,” said Karin almost reprovingly, although Roric could feel her trembling, “are you planning to kill the women so they cannot succeed you?”

“There had been some who thought to do just that,” said the Wanderer thoughtfully.
 
“I myself do not think it would either work or be desirable.
 
Fate is bringing the time of our rule to an end, but if the Hearthkeepers are gone that does not necessarily mean that we shall succeed ourselves.
 
We tried creating something of our own, sons to rule after us, but they ended up hollow, mockeries of us rather than true sons, and you mortals seem to have disposed of them anyway.
 
It might be if the Hearthkeepers were dead that
no
one would rule the realms of voima, leaving the land here in perpetual night, and dark and chaos in mortal realms.”

“Your mother said it would never work,” said Karin bravely.

“Oh,” said the Wanderer, then fell silent.
 
Karin squeezed Roric’s hand until her nails bit into his skin.

“Then if you have spoken to the Witch of the Western Cliffs, as you mortals call her,” the voice went on after a moment, “you know that the thought there is to try to reunite us with the Hearthkeepers.”

“Why don’t you just try it?” suggested Karin.
 
Her voice shook as she spoke, but she still managed a tone of calm reason.
 
Karin could talk almost anyone around, Roric thought in wonder.
 
Was she going to try it on the lords of voima?