C. Dale Brittain (55 page)

“Well, we already did,” he answered.
 
As he spoke, all the leaves on the tree by them suddenly fell together from the branches.
 
“We began our rule together.
 
But we had to leave them.
 
And since then they have been our foes, always eager for the end of our rule so that they may dominate once again, bitter that fate ordained the new day here that began
our
reign.”

“Were you fated to leave them?” asked Karin, brushing dry leaves from her shoulders.

“Perhaps it
was
the workings of fate, but it was the only decision we could make.
 
As a mortal woman, you may recognize some of the difficulties we had in associating with immortal women.
 
Our eyes were fixed on glory and honor, on wandering far, on ideas and discourse.
 
We sought to discover the secret of creating ideal things through thought alone, not merely reshaping the lumpish stuff of the universe we had inherited.
 
Yet
they
wished to stay in one place, to spend their time trying to guide you mortals, working to mold what is rather than create what is not, more interested in compromise than in deciding what is right, stressing the importance of feelings over reason …
 
Why, several Hearthkeepers have even left immortal realms over the long years to ally themselves with mortal men, and there is one here now who considers herself in love with a mortal.”

Eirik worked fast, Roric thought admiringly.

A quarter mile away a chasm appeared in the earth with a great rumbling.
 
Again the Wanderer held out his arm.
 
For several seconds nothing happened, then the chasm reunited with a smack.
 
He kept his arm extended for almost another minute before turning back toward them.
 
“That should keep it under control for a little while longer,” he commented.

No use being frightened of this, Roric told himself, staring with horrified eyes at the spot where the earth had split.
 
This realm was disintegrating rapidly around them, but if they were not safe with a lord of earth and sky they would be safe nowhere.

“I must apologize for these distractions,” said the Wanderer.
 
“It used to take only twelve of us to keep the realms of voima solid and functioning, with very little effort on our part—indeed, with most of our attention given to mortal realms.
 
Now, even with our best efforts I am afraid these lands may soon collapse around us.”

“Nothing you have said,” said Karin, getting her voice under control with an effort, “sounds like a reason to kill the women.”

“Perhaps not,” agreed the Wanderer, “although they have been planning for some time to hold us captive once our powers waned, and they may even now be planning to kill
us.
 
But I told you that only some of us intended to use death against them and that we were rethinking our plan anyway …
 
My own plan all along, which may still come about although there is very little time, was to die ourselves.”

Then even the lords of voima could feel despair, thought Roric.
 
He dared a quick look upwards, but the expression on the Wanderer’s face did not look like one of despair.

“You see,” he continued, “when the last upheaval came, the Hearthkeepers became weakened, stripped of their greatest powers, when the sun set, and when the new sun rose, while they were still weak,
we
took control.
 
If fate ordains the same pattern, then we ourselves shall weaken in the same way.
 
But I thought this time to use that weakness.
 
If we were not merely ourselves without our powers, but utterly destroyed, we might be reborn with even greater powers.
 
A seed dies in the earth and gives rise to a stalk of wheat.
 
A tree dies in the forest and gives rise to young and rapidly-growing trees.”

“A mortal dies,” said Roric, “and become a voiceless wight in Hel.”

“That of course was always the danger,” said the Wanderer dryly.

It was all very well, thought Roric, for immortal beings to play with the idea of death.
 
His heart rate had settled down to a steady, rapid pace.
 
He felt Karin’s arm against his as he concentrated on the little patch of grass between his feet.
 
No matter what these immortals did to each other, he himself, in a long time or a very short one, would end up in Hel.

And there was only one thing he had to do before then.
 
He had to get Karin safely home.
 
She had said they should both go to Hel, but this he would never allow.
 
Since she had made it clear she was not going without Valmar, then he would get his foster-brother home as well if there was still time before this entire realm collapsed.
 
Maybe if Karin and Valmar made it back to Hadros’s court safely the two of them would still marry someday—it would make Hadros happy and would not matter to him, as he would be dead.

“So are you going to try your plan,” he asked, “now that you think death may already be here?”

“As the time comes to try it,” said the Wanderer, still dryly, “it seems less compelling than it originally did.”

“You brought our foster-brother here,” Roric said quickly, “Valmar Hadros’s son.
 
If you do not need him now to go to Hel for you, then you can return him to mortal realms.”

Get Karin and Valmar out of here, he thought.
 
Get them out fast, before the sun goes, before the Wanderers decide to use a mortal to test whether death is really here.

“Perhaps you are right,” said the Wanderer slowly.
 
“We chose you, Roric No-man’s son, because you were already an outcast, so it would not matter what happened to you here.
 
Valmar Hadros’s son chose
us,
but perhaps we should not have let him do it …”

“Then let’s find him,” said Roric, jumping to his feet and pulling Karin up with him.
 
“Where is he now?”

“That,” said the Wanderer, “is something of a problem.
 
“We had sent him to fight against the hollow men, the ones I mentioned.”

The ones I thought for a while actually were the lords of voima, Roric thought.

“But he has broken all contact with us.
 
The Hearthkeepers are looking for him too.
 
He has captured one of them.”

Roric shot Karin a puzzled frown.
 
This did not sound like Valmar.

The Wanderer suddenly rose to his feet with a swirl of glowing white garments.
 
“I did try speaking to the one you call my mother, Karin Kardan’s daughter.
 
The suggestion there was to try to learn something from the two of you, but it seems that your only wish is to be home again.
 
The best we can do at this point is to gather up all you mortals and return you to your own realm, so that we may face the fall of night and the rise of the Hearthkeepers without being distracted by you.
 
I shall try to find Valmar Hadros’s son as well as the others.”
 
He gestured with a white arm.
 
“Climb that ridge, and wait for the rest.”

Roric wiped the sweat from his face as the being strode away across the landscape, where all the shadows were now heavy and black.
 
Did the lords of voima really intend to send them all back?

“He said nothing,” said Karin determinedly, as though trying to convince herself, “about us being brother and sister.
 
He
would have known, Roric.
 
It therefore cannot be true.”

“The Wanderers don’t know everything,” he said.
 
“And when a change like this is taking place in the immortal realms, a little incest among mortals would not bother them.
 
It does, however,” taking her hand, “matter to
me.
”

“Then don’t take my hand as though you were still my lover,” she snapped, pulling it away.
 
“Let’s get up on the ridge and wait for Valmar.”

She kept coming back to Valmar, Roric thought.
 
He stopped himself just in time from asking sarcastically if the man she called her little brother mattered more to her than he did.
 
Karin was only snapping at him, he thought, because she was so frightened.
 
Besides, it would be best now if Valmar mattered to her more than he did.

There was no way he could pay the blood-fee to Hadros, no way he could again be Karin’s lover.
 
He had run from his loss of honor, but there was only so long a man could run.
 
And fate would come to every man whether he tried to evade it or faced it bravely.

The only way to salvage anything of honor was to end his story in glorious battle.
 
Now all he needed was an enemy to fight.

2

Something or someone was approaching Valmar’s hill, still half a mile off but moving rapidly.
 
He shaded his eyes, squinting into the distance at what looked like a group of people on foot.
 
“Would those be your Hearthkeepers,” he asked, “coming to find you?”

When she did not answer at once, he turned around to see her looking out in the opposite direction.
 
“I don’t think so,” she said quietly, then came to stand next to him.
 
She leaned on his shoulder, following the direction of his pointing hand.
 
“They would be on horseback.”

He looked back then in the direction she had been looking.
 
Against the crimson of the sunset were what appeared to be signal fires on the hills.

“Do you feel strong enough to ride?” he asked.

She laughed, her eyes glinting.
 
“Were you planning to ride into the ambush the Hearthkeepers are preparing for us, or go meet those people on foot?
 
From this distance they look like mortals.”

It took a second for this to penetrate.
 
“Mortals?
 
What would mortals be doing here in the realms of voima?”

“Perhaps the same thing that
you
have been doing, Valmar Hadros’s son?” she suggested in a tone that made the blood all rush to his face.

“The Wanderers told me I was the only mortal here,” he said stiffly.

“The rift that allowed you to pass,” she said, “may be widening as their power wanes.
 
I have already seen signs of their weakening.
 
Have you noticed the thunderstorms along the ridges?
 
We
never allowed such things here.”

He expected such things had happened as well when the Hearthkeepers’ rule came to an end, but he did not say so.
 
“Let’s go meet the mortals.”

As he saddled the stallion he asked himself why he chose them.
 
He had lost his honor, betrayed the trust of the lords of voima, entangled himself with an immortal woman, and become so hopelessly lost in an alien land that his life of a very short time ago, growing up as the royal heir in a court where his big sister looked after him, could have been the life of someone out of an old tale.
 
Mortals, whoever they were, however they had come here, were a link with the past he had lost.

He rode down the hill, the woman perched on the saddle behind him, to meet what he could now see were several dozen armed men and one woman, tall and black-haired.
 
The sight of the white stallion seemed to startle most of them, who staggered back, but one wiry man with a scarred lip watched him approach, hands on his hips.

“If you’re a lord of voima, I’m not impressed.”

“I am not a Wanderer,” said Valmar gravely, “but a mortal like yourself.
 
How did you come to these realms?”

“Is that you inside the helmet, Roric No-man’s son?” the man asked suspiciously.
 
He made a strange motion with one hand, a sort of beckoning behind his back.

Valmar removed his helmet.
 
“I am Valmar Hadros’s son,” he said.
 
“And you know Roric?”

“Never heard of you,” said the man dismissively, then hesitated.
 
“Hadros’s son?
 
A King Hadros who fought in the north years ago, when he had first come into his kingdom?”

“Yes, that’s right!” said Valmar eagerly.
 
“You know him?
 
And you know Roric?”

“Hadros thought he was a better war leader than he really was.”
 
The man made the same motion with his hand again.
 
The woman behind Valmar drew in her breath through her teeth, and he looked up to realize that the warriors had them completely surrounded.

Valmar whipped out his sword, which immediately began to sing.
 
The stallion danced under him, turning as he looked to see if there was an easy way out of the circle of enemies—there was none.
 
“Why this attack?” he shouted as the men moved in slowly, their own blades ready.
 
“You have not even challenged me!”