The broad-beamed merchant ship came into harbor at dusk. It had been a difficult crossing, and indeed the wind had come up so briskly that most of the other ships setting out from the north shore of the channel had soon set back into harbor. Then they had been blown far off course and had reached the southern shore of the channel nowhere near where either Roric or the merchants wanted to be. They had had to beat against the wind almost an entire extra day to reach here, and only the size of this ship had allowed it to weather the waves. Roric’s arms and hair were caked with salt.
In the final light he could see someone standing alone on the headland looking down into the harbor, someone shining like gold in the dimness.
But she could not see him.
“Well,” said the captain, once they had secured the lines, “that castle you were asking about-” And he looked straight through Roric. He shrugged. “Gone already,” he said to himself. “Good thing I had him pay in advance,” and slapped the new knife in his belt.
And then Roric did go, vaulting over the gunwale, running up the road from the sheltered little inlet where ships made harbor.
Being invisible at night had been very difficult on the ship, where he had had to crawl in between boxes of cargo each sunset to conceal his fading away. He could emerge again once it was fully dark, but always with the danger of being stepped on by the sailors. But here, he thought, invisibility would be an advantage. He would stalk Valmar, learn what Karin really thought of this marriage Hadros had planned.
But seeing her standing on the cliff alone drove jealousy, at least temporarily, from his mind. She had gotten his raven-message, then, and must have been waiting for him through the long days of contrary winds on the channel. If she was waiting for him, did this mean she did not love Valmar after all?
She had now started back toward the castle and did not hear his feet coming up behind her. “Karin,” he said urgently, getting in front of her, “surely you can see me, even between sunset and sunrise.”
She kept on walking without any response, and he got out of her way. If she touched him without being able to see or hear him, she would be terrified. He could not see her face well in the twilight but it already looked anguished.
He went at her shoulder up to the castle, longing to take her into his arms and not daring. On either side he could just see armed men walking parallel to the road, watching her. She did not appear to notice.
He looked around in amazement at the size of the castle and the intricacy of the masonry as she walked through the great doors. The warriors came in behind them.
Karin went to speak to a gray-haired, richly dressed man who must be her father. Roric prowled the candle-lit hall, stepping quietly out of instinct even though no one would hear him, looking for Valmar, catching fragments of conversation from the others there but nothing about the prince. He kept expecting to be seen when someone looked toward him, and kept feeling when they did not that his very existence was only a creation of his own mind.
There was no sign of his foster-brother. Where could he be? This was like no castle Roric had ever seen, but it seemed Valmar ought to be here in the hall if he was in the kingdom at all.
Karin then took a candle and went up a broad stone staircase, Roric hurrying to climb beside her. They passed through a wide chamber with an enormous bed in the center, then into a much smaller room. He just managed to dodge in before she shut the door in his face.
Inside, she turned the lock, set down the candle, and stood for several minutes with her face in her hands. Then she slowly undressed, dropping her luxurious clothes carelessly on the floor, unbraided her hair, and got into bed. When she snuffed the candle he could no longer see her in spite of the faint moonlight through the window, but he could hear her softly crying.
Roric clenched his fists. The woman he loved was within a few feet of him, but she might as well be a thousand miles away. She was crying because of him but he could do nothing to comfort her. All that the strange Wanderers’ realm had earned him was the inability to touch the woman he longed for.
That is, he hoped she was crying for him and not for Valmar. He shook his head hard. Since he had defied King Hadros, and since the Wanderers apparently no longer wanted him, Karin was all he had left. Besides, he thought with a grim smile, if she was crying for Valmar it might be because that prince had already had a fatal accident.
After a minute he started rubbing at the caked salt on his arms. He had not seen a bath house in the castle, and although there must be one he did not want to leave this room to try to find it. But in the corner the moonlight showed him a pitcher and basin. He pulled off his own clothing and began to wash. It felt good to clean away the sweat and salt. Karin did not hear the splashing. He used her comb on his wet hair and crossed back to the bed.
She was asleep now, the deep sleep of exhaustion. The pale light had shifted and touched her smudged cheeks and the dark hollows under her eyes. But her breathing came evenly.
After looking at her a few minutes, Roric lifted the covers and slipped in. She gave a little snort but did not waken. He settled down carefully on the far side of the bed from her.
The linen sheets were startlingly luxurious against his skin. He had not slept between sheets since before he could remember, since- But then he did remember. He had been very small then; it was even before Valmar was born. He had slept with King Hadros and his wife in their cupboard bed, and he could just remember the reassuring bulk of the queen when he had wakened from a nightmare.
He lay back with his hands behind his head. He was exhausted from the journey, and in a few minutes he too was fast asleep.
Sometime in the night he awoke, wondering at first where he was. Karin’s warm back was snuggled against him. He rolled over, put his face in her hair and an arm around her, and went back to sleep.
He awoke again at dawn. Karin slept on, her eyelashes long on her cheeks, her russet hair spread across the pillow. At sunrise, ever since he had returned from the Wanderers’ realm, people could see him again. He gently pulled her to him and began to kiss her cheek.
Her arms went around his neck even before she opened her eyes. Then she abruptly gasped and pulled back, realizing this was no dream, and her eyes flew open.
He watched her expression from two feet away: dismayed shock that there really was a man in her bed, then recognition and disbelief, and abruptly a joy that made her glow as brightly as the early sun. She threw herself on him and kissed him passionately.
In a moment she turned her lips from his, and he loosened his grip enough that she could lean back and look at him. “Roric! I’ve been waiting for you for so long…” Her smile covered her entire face, and her eyes were so intense he could barely meet them. “How did you come here?”
“I came in on the last ship into the harbor last night. You did not see me, but I followed you back to the castle.” He would explain later his invisibility at sunset. “I slipped in here with you during the night.”
She laughed and kissed him again. “My father will not be pleased with his guards! He knows I have been awaiting you and will be happy to meet you, but for you to come in unseen! It is good we are not at war if the watchmen are so careless.”
He did not want to do anything to take the joy from her face, but he could not help himself. “When you put your arms around me-even before you saw it was me-did you think it was Valmar?”
She frowned in what looked like genuine surprise. “Valmar! Why should I embrace him?” She smiled and took hold of him by the ears. “I have dreamed of you every night, Roric.”
“Everyone in Hadros’s court is preparing for your wedding. And the king told me- He told me you and Valmar had become lovers.”
She drew back and frowned again. “And you believed him? But I forget. You have been gone so long, you do not know what has been happening. I climbed at twilight to the top of a high peak near here to try to find a Wanderer.”
Now he frowned. “And did you find one?”
“Yes.” She shivered a little. “I was trying to find where you had gone.”
He reached out and put his arm around her waist. The strange land where he had apparently passed more than three weeks was much less interesting than mortal lands. “Did he tell you where I was?”
“He did not know. But you are here now!” she added with a new smile. “What did you find in the Wanderers’ realm?”
But he had not forgotten his question. It came out harsher than he intended. “Tell me, and tell me now, if you have taken Valmar for your lover.”
She closed her eyes. “You are the only person I can trust, Roric. Please do not doubt me. In Hadros’s court I could keep myself in control, allow my emotions out only when it was safe to do so. Here, I do not know why, maybe it is all the memories of my childhood, maybe it was meeting the Wanderer, maybe it is because I have been so worried for you.
“But I am in much greater danger, I realize,” she went on, “than I ever was at home. I did not know then how much King Hadros shielded me. And yet, when firmness and courage are called for, I have constantly been on the verge of breaking down. I wanted Valmar with me because he was my only link with the world I have known for the last ten years, and because I could trust my little brother.”
“You have not answered my question,” he said very quietly.
She tightened her lips for a second, but the joy was still in her eyes. “I was starting to tell you. I spent the entire night on the peak where I met the Wanderer. When I returned, Hadros assumed I had spent the night with Valmar. But of course Valmar no more intends to marry me than I do him, and although he remained here in the castle when Hadros went home, so far we have kept any word of this foolish marriage bargain from my father. I can swear to you on steel and rowan, Roric, if you are still unwilling to believe me, that no one has lain in my arms but you.”
She looked at him seriously, but a smile tugged at her mouth. “If the situation had been as you feared, who would you have killed first, him or me?”
He laughed then and crushed her to him. But he could not resist asking, “You are sure he did not intend to father a child on you while he was here, to make you surely his?”
“Of course not!” For a second a very strange expression flitted across her face, but she turned it into a smile. “In fact Valmar has left- But I can tell you all that later,” kissing him hard.
“In that case,” said Roric, “are your maids likely to come disturb you? Perhaps I should try fathering a child on you myself!”
Karin put her head out of the room just long enough to tell the maids that she felt ill and would not see anyone all day. Late in the afternoon she and Roric lay on the tumbled sheets, letting the warm air from the open window wash over their skin, talking.
“So Valmar has gone now to the Wanderers’ realm,” said Roric in wonder. “If they could not get me, and you too refused them, maybe they were happy to take whatever mortal was willing to come with them. It is a strange realm, Karin. Here mortals try to create a life, a story, that will live on beyond them, but the immortals, at least the ones I met, have no honor… Maybe it will be different for him.”
“My father is concerned about him. He would not believe me when I told him where Valmar had gone. For a moment I even feared he thought I had done away with him myself, but he has said nothing more about it.”
“Are you sure he is not planning your marriage to Valmar himself?” said Roric with a laugh. “May he not think you have found a way to rid yourself of an unwanted suitor, especially with me appearing so soon afterwards?”
She did not laugh in return. “Even if my father does not think I shoved Valmar off the headland, I fear King Hadros may think so.”
Roric’s face went sober. “I defied Hadros before coming here. The sea was too rough for a ship the size of his, but he may soon be after me. It will indeed be hard to explain Valmar’s absence, especially since I think Hadros guessed I intended to kill him.”
She took his face in both her hands, and her eyes were teasing. “Hadros did send a raven to tell us to beware of you. But you would not really have done that, would you? Killed your foster-brother, violated all your honor, because of jealousy?”
“Hadros himself,” he replied somewhat distantly, “tried to tell me that love conflicts with honor.”