Valmar ran into moonlight, the empty air churning beneath his boots. He kept closing his eyes against that brilliant whiteness, then opening them to take in its glory. He had run, it seemed, for many minutes, for hours, while the moon grew and grew, big enough to swallow him, the headland, Kardan’s kingdom, the sea, the entire earth. And the man who ran at his side, whom he did not dare look at, was also growing.
His eyes flew open again as he felt solidity beneath his feet and almost stumbled. The moon had caught fire.
But it was not the moon, he realized, as his feet slowed first to a walk and then to a halt. It was the sun, and he was running into a sunset that had set all the clouds around it ablaze.
They seemed to be in a meadow of grass and clover. Cows grazed on the far side, but they kept raising their heads and lowing uneasily. Everything, even the rank grass, was tinted pink by the sky.
Then Valmar turned to look at the being beside him.
He was white, brilliant white, so white the sunset did not touch him. He was more than twice the size of a man and arrayed in robes that glowed. The face he turned on Valmar was enormously solemn, enormously wise and noble, and yet there too was an almost friendly air if such were possible, a touch of good humor.
Valmar dropped to his knees. “My lord,” he stammered. He fumbled his sword free of the peace straps and out of the sheath, and held it up, hilt first, while keeping his head down.
“As I recall,” commented an amused voice above him, “you were going to ask no more of the lords of voima.”
“Lord, I did not know,” said Valmar, his face averted. He kept expecting to feel his sword taken from his hands, but it was untouched.
“You were going to make your life into the best tale your own strength and honor and manhood could create,” the other continued, “and all without asking anything of us.”
Valmar put a hand across his eyes. “Do not mock me now, Lord. I did not know-I did not know that you were the source of strength and honor and manhood.”
“In fact,” said the Wanderer, still sounding amused, “we pattern our honor on that of you mortals. Voima flows from life, not the other way around. But as you can see, our land is hastening toward night. And while you may have decided you would ask nothing more of voima, we would ask something of you. ”
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