Karin had never told anyone, not even Roric, about the faeys.
She slipped out of the hall very early in the morning, an hour before the maids would rise to stir up the fires for morning porridge. The room was still completely dark. Hadros and his sons snored peacefully in the other cupboard beds as she went on slow silent footsteps across the hall, finding her way by feel to the great door. She always kept the bolts oiled, and they slid back effortlessly. The hinges gave the faintest creak as she swung the door open, but the note of the snores did not change.
Roric, she knew, would also be asleep, up in the men’s loft with the king’s warriors and housecarls. She hesitated for a moment as she pushed the door soundlessly shut behind her, with a disquieting image of him quietly knifed. But even Gizor would not dare an attack among so many men.
She pulled her cloak around her against the pre-dawn cold and hurried across the courtyard to the apple tree that spread its trellised limbs against the outer wall. They would assume she was in one of the other buildings in the castle when they woke to find her gone from the hall. She had been climbing this apple tree since she was small, and it would still-just-hold her.
She scrambled upward quickly, pausing at the top of the tree to free her cloak from a twig on which it caught. The last ten feet she went by toes and fingers, but the sandstone was soft enough that she had been able to chip away holes over the years. Then she went lightly along the top of the wall toward the back of the castle, where an oak branch stretched near. Since Hadros had won the war with her father, he had neglected such things. She seized it, scrambled, and worked her way down the tree until she was low enough to jump.
The faeys would want to know she was going to become queen.
The long grass brushed dew against the skirt she had hitched up while she climbed, and roots caught at her feet. She never liked to come out while it was still fully night, for fear of meeting the troll, but if she waited for sunrise the faeys would be gone. She hurried in the opposite direction from the cliff, darting between trees whose shapes became clearer and clearer as the sky lightened above her.
But she was in time. As she came over the last rise, she could see their lights still burning with a cold green glow. Many of the faeys had already gone into the hill, but others lingered in the dell. She paused above them, pushing back the hair she had not taken time to braid, and whistled three times.
They ran around in panic for a few seconds as they always did, as though they never could remember they had taught her that whistle themselves. But then they spotted her and poured up the hillside to meet her.
They came up to her knees. They leaped and frolicked like puppies, crying, “Karin! Karin!” in shrill voices, snatching at her skirts and all trying to get closer to her than the others.
Even miserable she had to laugh. “Yes, yes, I’m coming to visit you! I have news you’ll like to hear. Yes, I’ll tell you when we’re all inside.”
For ten years, the faeys had been the only ones with whom she could be not a princess, not a hostage, not even a woman, but only herself, Karin.
They poured back down the slope into the dell and gathered up the lights. She went on her knees to crawl into the hillside behind them. The stone swung shut, closing them in.
In all the years she had been coming here, she had never liked this disorienting moment when natural light was abruptly gone, leaving them all illuminated only by the faint green light that put weird shadows across their features. She took a deep breath and shut her eyes, then carefully opened them again.
It always became better in a few minutes. The faeys brought out wild strawberries and honeydew from the bees and ate happily, apparently not noticing that she was not eating hers.
“Yes,” said Karin. “I told you I have something to tell you. I’m going to become a queen.”
“A queen! A queen!” the faeys cried in delight. “And will that pleasant young man you told us about become your king?”
“I don’t see how he can. But I love him, and I don’t want to marry anyone else.”
The faeys gave her more strawberries as though that would solve her problems and finally noticed she was not eating. She ate a few to make them happy.
“And that’s not all,” she continued. “I shall have to leave here, go back to the kingdom where I lived when I was little.”
This caused consternation. “But how could you go away? That would mean you’d leave us! Don’t leave us, Karin! Maybe we could come with you!”
She looked at them between exasperation and affection. She had stumbled across the faeys when wandering at twilight the first summer she had come to Hadros’s kingdom, within a week of when her younger brother had died. She had not then been much taller than they were, and the faeys had since told her she was the first mortal they had successfully tamed.
“If you came with me,” she said, “you’d have to leave your dell. The trip is too long for a single night, and much of it is by ship.”
They had not thought of this. They conferred urgently among themselves for a moment, then announced, “Then you’ll have to give up being queen! That way you can stay here and still marry that nice young man.”
They gave her arm and hair reassuring pats, happy to have solved her problem so easily. Karin shook her head. She had come hoping the faeys might have some ancient wisdom to offer, but years of visiting them should have made her know better.
“The king here would like me to stay, I think,” she said.
“There! What did we tell you? You know you wouldn’t want to move away from us!”
“But he will want me to marry his son, rather than Roric, the man I love.”
For a reason she could not understand, there was immediately further consternation among the faeys. They jumped up, knocking over their bowls, and several darted off down the tunnels while others started making little piles of pebbles in the dim green light.
“What’s happening?” she asked in a minute when no one seemed about to tell her.
One looked up from a pile of pebbles that kept falling over every time he tried to balance another on top. “Is your Roric- Is he sometimes known as Roric No-man’s son?”
“That’s right,” she said with a frown. “He was found at the castle gates when he was a baby, no more than three months old. The queen had pity on him, especially since she had no children of her own yet-or so I’ve always heard. He was brought up as King Hadros’s foster-son and became one of his warriors, but he is a man without family.”
“Should we tell her? You tell her. Don’t you think she’ll be upset if we tell her? We don’t want to upset Karin. But queens have to deal with upsetting things every day.”
“What’s going to upset me?” she almost shouted.
“Oh, nothing!” the faeys cried together. “Nothing at all! Just something we heard, but it must have been another Roric altogether. Nothing to do with you!”
She rose to her knees, as high as she could go in the cramped space. “If you do not tell me at once,” she said resolutely, “I shall leave here and never visit you again.”
There was a horrified silence, then several spoke up, although hesitantly. “Well, it’s probably nothing serious. But maybe it’s better if- We may have been mistaken, of course…”
“Tell me plainly,” she said grimly, “and tell me at once.”
Only one dared speak now. “We’ve heard- That is, someone said- We’ve heard the Wanderers want him.”
This was so unexpected she sat down abruptly on her heels. “But why would the Wanderers want Roric?” she asked in wonder.
“Well, you know,” said the faeys unhappily, “even you mortals must realize- Even for the lords of voima, fate does not always go well. Or for faeys!”
“Yes, I know the faeys have their problems,” she said absently. “But- But could it mean they need him because of who he is?” Her face lit up in the green glow of the lights. “Could he really be a son of a Wanderer all this time?”
“What?! Why would you even think that? Don’t think that! It’s not right for mortals to have such notions!”
It had been a nice idea for about two seconds.
“They want him because he is a mortal, but one who has no ties with other mortals!”
Then they don’t know about me, she thought. This was disconcerting; it was almost as bad to think that the Wanderers could have important gaps in their knowledge as it would have been to think that they were watching all the time.
“What use would they have for a mortal?”
“Maybe he can help them,” said one of the faeys slowly. “We sense the time of upheaval is coming, the time even creatures of voima fear
… Soon we may have to seal our burrows against the outside world; sometimes we have to seal them for hundreds of years. Would you like to stay inside with us when we do, Karin?”
She deliberately ignored this, not sure what upheaval the faeys could be talking about and certainly not wanting to be sealed up anywhere for the rest of her life. “But how did you find out about Roric? Do you speak yourselves to the Wanderers?”
“Not us! No, not us! Even the Wanderers don’t come into our tunnels! Only faeys and mortals we invite. And we only invite you!”
“Then who told you?”
Here their answers were so contradictory, so confused, that it was at best a guess that they might have learned this from the Weaver.
“And what do the Wanderers want with him?” she tried a third time.
But either the faeys really did not know, or the prospect of telling her was even worse than her threats not to see them again. After a few minutes, agreeing somewhat reluctantly than she would indeed come visit soon, she crawled out, back into the dell, and pushed the stone shut immediately behind her, knowing the faeys would all be huddling far back in their tunnels until the threat of direct sunlight was gone.
She adjusted her cloak around her and hurried back toward the castle. She had to speak to Roric as soon as she could get him alone, to discover if he knew anything of this. For some reason she was still reluctant to tell him about the faeys, though he was certain to ask how she came by the startling information that the Wanderers wanted him.
Had he in fact already met a Wanderer himself? His eyes had looked strange yesterday morning when she found him at the stables, but anyone who had escaped death and ridden all night would be wild-eyed, even without a conversation with the lords of voima.
There might still be some things, she thought, that he felt reluctant to tell her, as she kept the secret of the faeys. They had had, both of them, to learn control, to use caution in a castle where they were at the same time family members and outsiders. She passed the little valley where an oak’s low-spreading branches made a hidden bower. It was here, three weeks before, that she and Roric had lain together for the first and only time, wrapped up in both their cloaks, laughing and kissing and pledging eternal love to each other.
Their future together had looked so hopeful then, and Roric had been so sure that Hadros, who had been a father to him his whole life, would raise no objections. That hope had lasted until last week when he had finally decided the moment right to raise the topic.
Karin scraped the last of the porridge out of the pot and sat down to eat at the opposite end of the table from King Hadros. “I went for a walk,” she said shortly when he looked a question at her. Her firmly set jaw and lowered eyes kept anyone else from speaking to her.
The king’s sons were discussing the horses. It was the season to bring the mares and the young foals in from pasture, to introduce the foals to humans and rebreed the mares, and almost time to start breaking the yearlings for riding. She listened absently to their conversation as she finished breakfast and braided her hair.
“We’ll have to see how well the foals came out this year,” said Valmar with a laugh. He was the king’s oldest son, two years younger than Karin, and had red hair and dark blue eyes with lashes that had always seemed to her too long for a boy. She still thought of him as her little brother, even though in the last few years he had shot up from boyhood to young manhood. Though most men stayed clean-shaven until marriage, he had managed to grow a somewhat patchy beard. “And we’ll have to see if the mares will be satisfied to be covered by an ordinary stallion this time. I’m afraid Roric’s troll-horse may have sired some of this year’s crop!”
His younger brothers, Dag and Nole, laughed too, then glanced toward her as though recalling her presence and stopped abruptly. They all knew better than to say anything that could possibly be considered crude or lewd in her presence, but King Hadros did not seem to have noticed.
Valmar rose. “Coming with us, Father? Or is your knee still bothering you?”
Karin looked up sharply at that. The king sat with one leg extended straight out from the bench. “Oh, my leg is fine,” he said easily. That was the leg, she recalled, that he had broken in the fall last year-or was it the year before? “But perhaps I shall let you go ahead and catch up with you.”
His three sons clattered out, taking the housecarls with them. Karin stood up with a swirl of her skirt, thinking that she would work in the weaving house; it did not require much concentration, once the pattern was established, and the tension burning inside her needed an outlet. The maids would be impressed at how fast she threw the shuttle today.
But King Hadros motioned to her. “Come here, Karin. I would speak with you.”
He smiled when he spoke, and she went somewhat reluctantly to sit beside him, looking at him steadily. Hadros was no taller than she but twice as wide, all of it muscle. He had little white scars all over the backs of his hands and arms and a long one on his cheek, which just barely did not reach his eye. Ever since she was fully grown, she could usually manage to talk and smile him into being agreeable.
Today she was less sure that she could control herself. This was the man, she thought, who had ordered Roric murdered.
But the man she saw now was the one who had taught her to ride, the man who had given her the direction of his household when the queen had died and she was still only a girl herself. She had known him both in riotous good humor and in black rages, especially when he had sat drinking long with his warriors. It was Hadros who, when she had first started developing a woman’s body, and one of the housecarls had made a remark to her so coarse that she had been another year older before she understood it, had seized the man by the neck and smashed him to the floor with such force that he died. But at some point, almost without her noticing, Hadros had developed lines in his tanned face and gray in his hair. And she had never before not known him to lead when they brought in the foals.
There were voices and the sound of hooves in the courtyard. She glanced through the open door to see that Roric, riding Goldmane, had joined the king’s sons. His rather ferocious good looks, straight dark eyebrows over deep-set eyes, a muscled body always in motion, usually made her heart turn over, but today she felt more irritation than anything else. In the one glimpse she had of him he appeared carefree, and he did not glance at all in her direction. Could he have forgotten already?
“I had not realized your leg was bothering you again,” she said, turning back to the king.
He shrugged. “I have not spoken with you for nearly two days, Karin,” he said, “since I had to tell you about your brother. By now I hope you have adjusted to the news.”
Oh no, she thought. Here it comes. He’s going to ask me to marry Valmar-or even himself.
Instead he smiled and tucked a finger under her chin. “So sober, my little princess.” He had not called her that in years. “I know you realize this makes you heiress to your father’s kingdom. The All-Gemot of the Fifty Kings will be held at his castle this year. Would you like to accompany me across the channel?”
This was not at all what she had expected him to say. The All-Gemot, she thought wildly. She had contemplated it during the long hours two nights ago when she had sat up, dressed, in the dark, listening to the restless tossing from the king’s bed. If Gizor and his thugs had killed Roric, she would have found some way to accuse Hadros before the Fifty Kings.
She had not known the All-Gemot would be held in her own father’s kingdom. She tightened her lips. They had sent her out a prisoner, a little girl, someone less important than Hadros’s offer of peace. But she would be coming home a woman and a future queen.
“Yes,” she said gravely. “I would very much like to accompany you.”
“There are a few sovereign queens already among the Fifty Kings,” he said. “And I’m sure you know it is not always fifty anymore. Last year I think there were sixty-three in attendance, including several from those little kingdoms up north-though it was quite an act of courtesy to call them kings!”
“How soon will we leave?” Roric might be among the warriors to accompany the king-or Hadros might use the opportunity to try again to have him killed here at the castle while his own hands stayed clean. She wondered if there was any way to ask the king to bring him along.
“Ten days. And you will want to bring your finest clothes. I am sure you remember the standards those kings south of the channel set for themselves! We will not be thought another little upcountry kingdom.”
She had not considered that, and for a few seconds she ran in her mind through the fine clothes stored in the bottom of her chest-the red silk dress she had worn when she came here had not fit for nine years. She did recall that, when she first arrived, this court had seemed crude, unrefined, but she had already been ready to hate everything about it. She could scarcely remember her own mother, who had died when her younger brother was born, but now that she thought about it she was quite sure the queen had not worked in the weaving house or done her own brewing.
“And the All-Gemot will be an excellent opportunity to announce your betrothal to Valmar.”
Karin took a sharp breath, then bit her lip. He had brought it up when she had almost forgotten to fear he would.
The king smiled at her as though he had just offered her a treat. “I could not of course urge Valmar on you while you were a hostage here. No man could say that King Hadros made war on girls. But once you are home you shall be able to make your choice freely. You two have spent a lot of time together ever since you were children-I helped make sure of that. By now you must know he’ll make you a fine husband.”
It was his expectation that she would be delighted at this generous offer that made her answer hotly. “Valmar? But why should I marry him? The beard can’t hide it. He’s nothing but a stripling boy!”
She stopped, seeing his surprise and, yes, disappointment. Whatever she wanted to argue with King Hadros about, it was not the manliness of his oldest son.
But where she had expected hot words in return, he said quietly, “He is still young, Karin. Perhaps you would prefer to wait a year or two. There has mostly been peace of late among the Fifty Kings, and even the upcountry bandits and southern booty have provided less opportunity for boys to be hardened into warriors. Most of the ships now on the channel are merchants’ ships, not war ships. I had already killed three men in combat when I was Valmar’s age.” She thought he was finished, but then he added, almost under his breath, “Of course, there are some, like Roric, who do not need war to make them men.”
She clenched her fists until the nails bit into her flesh. “And he is the man,” she said in a voice that she was dismayed to hear tremble, “that I shall marry.”
Again she expected a hot answer, but Hadros only went perfectly still for ten seconds, then turned to look at her gravely. “He did not say he had spoken to you already…”
She caught herself just in time from shouting, “And would that have made any difference in your ordering him killed?” Instead she kept her fists clenched at her sides and asked as evenly as she could, “And how can you possibly object to my marrying him?”
“You have always been a princess, even before your brother died. You were a hostage, but I intended to treat you as though you were my own daughter, and no man without a father could marry a daughter of mine.”
“ You’re his father just as much as you’re mine.” She spoke in a low, intense voice. No one else was in the hall, but there might be highly interested maids outside the open doorway.
He pulled out his dagger and started trimming his nails, not looking at her. “Don’t be childish, Karin,” he said, and it was only the faintest unsteady note in his own voice that kept it from being patronizing dismissal. “You know I never formally adopted him, even though my queen loved him, even though the lords of voima had not yet granted us sons of our own. He is my sworn man, but I would as soon see you married to Gizor One-hand.”
“Well, small chance of my wanting that!” she said, trying desperately to laugh. She started to ask why then, if he never intended to adopt the baby found at the castle gate, he had had his own wife raise him, but she closed her mouth without asking.
Hadros glanced at her from the corner of his eye. “And Roric is too young to marry anyone,” he said slowly.
“He’s five years older than Valmar!” she thought but did not say.
“He could still carve out a lordship for himself, maybe in the upcountry, maybe somewhere along the coast. My own grandfather won this kingdom in war, and even in these more peaceful times-and maybe especially in these more peaceful times-there is room for a man of courage to rise high through his own strength. I would not see him shackled to a wife and a fancy southern kingdom.”
Karin slowly digested what this implied of the king’s attitude toward his own oldest son. At last she said, very quietly, “But Roric could be fated to die in his first battle as easily as to win renown.”
“And I,” said the king, just as quietly, “would rather see him dead than wasting the strength within him.” He rose abruptly to his feet. “I had better see how those lads are getting along with the foals.”