The faeys woke them shortly before dawn. “Come with us, Karin. Wake up, make her wake up. She has to come with us! It’s not safe to stay here. There are dogs in the woods. Sunlight is dangerous!”
She and Roric allowed themselves to be squeezed into the tunnels before the faeys pulled the stone into position. With both of them inside, the space seemed even more closed-in than usual. She took deep breaths of the stale air and tried to remind herself of the alternative to being here.
“Maybe we should just stay here all day,” suggested Roric. “By nightfall, we should be fully rested-we will have to be if we’re going all that way on foot. And they should have called off the hunt in these woods by then.”
“You can stay here with us as long as you want, Karin,” said one of the faeys, giving Roric a sideways look as though not entirely sure whether to include him in the offer.
“And where are you going on foot?” another asked. “Are you not happy here?”
“There are mountains far to the north of here,” Karin said, “mountains that conceal an entrance to the Wanderers’ realm. We have to go there to rescue someone.”
“Where does she get these ideas? It must be from Roric! She said she wants to marry him. But he just escaped from the Wanderers! Why would he want to go back? Maybe he should go back by himself and she can stay here!”
“Wherever Roric goes, I go,” she said loudly, over their high voices.
Roric grabbed her arm abruptly, surprise and joy on his face. “I hear a horse.”
Karin, startled, listened. “I hear it too.”
Echoing down the tunnels came the faint sound of a whinny, a thud as of hooves. The faeys were seized with consternation. “A horse? A horse! There can’t be a horse in our tunnels! Why is a horse here? It’s all Roric’s fault!”
“Could it be the way is open again to the Wanderers’ realm?” he asked in delight. He started to jump to his feet, banged his head, and crawled instead, Karin right behind him. “This would certainly be easier than trying to find some way hidden in the Hot-River Mountains,” he called back over his shoulder.
The way quickly became dark, and the stone floor and walls were cold to her hand. “It is!” cried Roric. “It’s Goldmane!”
Karin wondered briefly to herself if he had been this pleased and excited when he reached her father’s kingdom and saw her there.
The passage became a little wider here, and they crawled to either side of the stallion’s head. The faeys had followed them, though keeping their distance, and there was just enough faint green light from their lanterns to see Goldmane.
He was sprawled out, legs extended. He had his head up, and his eyes were wild. The ceiling here was too low for him to stand, and the wall beyond him was completely solid.
Roric stroked the stallion’s nose and rumpled his mane. “Did you come through on your own to help us, boy,” he asked affectionately, “or did they push you through that one-way door of theirs back into mortal realms?”
The horse’s eyes rolled, but he became somewhat calmer. “I used to think,” said Roric, “that if we had access to the Wanderers’ knowledge then many aspects of mortal life which seem to make no sense would become clear, but I now think they are even more confused than we are.”
Karin clenched her fists. Her heart beat inside her chest as though its space was too tight. The closed-in, trapped feeling was growing stronger. “Roric,” she said. “We cannot stay here all day. We must leave now. ”
Goldmane evidently agreed. He whinnied again and tried ineffectively to kick his way free of the imprisoning tunnel.
“We can’t have a horse in here!” the faeys announced from a safe distance.
“Good,” said Roric. “Help me get him out.”
It seemed that there could not possibly be enough space to shift the stallion, yet somehow there was. The faeys came forward first hesitantly, then more bravely, then with happy boldness once they realized the horse would not hurt them. With Goldmane scrambling himself along, and the faeys behind him pushing, they worked him slowly toward the entrance to the tunnels.
“What do you think, Karin?” Roric asked. His stallion’s nose was now against the stone that closed the tunnels, and he seemed to smell the open air beyond. “Do we wait until nightfall, with both Goldmane and the faeys more and more unhappy, or do we rush out into what may be the middle of the hunt for us? The dogs will have had no trouble tracking us to the dell.”
She closed her eyes and opened them again. For the last ten minutes she had had to concentrate on her breathing to keep it from becoming wild gasps for air. “We go,” she said unsteadily. “I know you’ll be able to fight free of whatever is out there.”
Roric grinned and kissed her quickly. “At least we’ll have the advantage of surprise,” he said. “Gizor will never expect us and a horse to come out of a hillside!”
The faeys retreated back out of range of the feared sunlight. Karin put her shoulder to the stone, then stopped and looked toward them, feeling suddenly guilty. “Thank you,” she called, “thank you for sheltering us, and,” she paused for a second, “if I do not see you again, for always being my friends.”
“Good-bye,” they called tentatively, then, “What does she mean, if she doesn’t see us again? Is she going to her kingdom now? But she said her kingdom was beyond the sea! Roric is making her do it!”
Then she pushed, and the entrance stone rolled easily away. Goldmane kicked his way through the opening, and they went with him, out of the hillside into almost blinding daylight.
The stallion scrambled to his feet. Karin, blinking hard against the sun, pushed the faeys’ stone back into a position. “Good-bye, Karin!” she heard faint calls from within. A piercing whistle split the air.
“They’re here! I found them! Gizor! I found them!”
Roric vaulted up onto his stallion’s back. There was shouting in the near distance and a single warrior standing at the edge of the dell. She reached out and Roric grabbed her arm to pull her up behind him.
They were still trying to find their balance on Goldmane’s bare back when a pack of dogs came boiling into the dell, and the spaces between the trees that ringed it were suddenly full of armed men.
Roric yelled to his horse, and Goldmane sprang forward. Just one warrior barred their way on this side, and he leaped back as Roric swung his sword. Then the stallion was scrambling out of the dell and up onto the hillside beyond. As he shot under low-leaning oaks, Karin ducked down, clinging desperately to Roric.
Behind them was frenzied barking and a shouting that might have had words, though none of them made sense. But in the midst of the men galloping after them was a wagon, and in it a bandaged warrior whose naked sword was held left-handed.
Roric shouted again as Goldmane reached the road and began to run even faster. He turned his head slightly to look back at their pursuers, quickly being left behind. She could see fierce triumph on his face.
The wind brought tears to her eyes and tore her hair loose from its braids. She pressed herself against Roric’s back as the stallion’s long, smooth gait seemed prepared to eat up the miles. Only a short distance before them was the sandstone cliff, and the steep road leading up away from the fields and woods directly dependent on the king.
But gathered where the road began to climb were a group of mounted men and men on foot, mostly armed housecarls, the sunlight bright on their spear points.
Roric leaned forward, brandishing his sword. “Hang on!” he yelled to Karin. For a horrified moment she thought they were going to try to run right through the men before them, and in the blur of faces she saw the king’s two younger sons.
At the last second Roric jerked his stallion’s head around. Goldmane half reared, then started to run along the base of the cliff, all the mounted men on their heels. She looked over her shoulder to see Gizor’s group a quarter mile back, some of the riders already leaving the road, cutting across to try to intercept them.
Again Roric wheeled his stallion. Clinging desperately to the mane while Karin clung to his belt, he turned again toward the road, shot within two feet of the startled pursuers’ horses, and raced for the way up the sandstone cliff.
Now that way was barred only by a handful of men on foot, but among them were Dag and Nole.
“Oh, no,” thought Karin, squeezing shut her wind-blurred eyes. “Not them too.”
All but one of the warriors jumped back involuntarily as the stallion bore down on them. But Dag came forward, lifting his spear. Goldmane reared, almost losing his riders, and came down with iron hooves flailing. As the king’s son leaped away, Roric leaned over and knocked the spear from his hand with a well-aimed sword blow.
And then the stallion found his feet again, sprang through the scattered foot-soldiers, and attacked the slope before him. A few spears came up behind them but fell short. Twice Karin thought she was about to slide off the horse, but Roric reached his right arm back to her, the sword still in his fist, and clinging to it she was able to stay on.
At the top of the cliff, just before they entered the woods, Roric pulled up the stallion to look down. No one had pursued them up the narrow road, not even the dogs. But Gizor, lying bandaged in the wagon, a tiny figure far below, waved his sword at them and shouted. His words were carried away by the wind.
“He knows no horse can catch Goldmane, even with two of us on his back,” said Roric. Sweat was pouring off him, and his chest was rising and falling, but the stallion seemed only slightly winded. “But the next time we meet, it will be a fight to the death.”
“How did you do it?” Karin asked in a small voice. “Unarm Dag without having to kill him?”
He laughed a short hard laugh. “He was trained by Gizor too. When you’re on foot with a spear against a horseman, always go for the horse’s eyes. But I knew he didn’t want to hurt Goldmane, and in that second of hesitation the horse reared and attacked him. And while watching the hooves he had no attention to spare for me.”
He slid his sword back into its sheath. “We’d better put a few more miles between us and the castle, in case they follow us anyway-and I wouldn’t be sure Gizor won’t have another ambush waiting up ahead. So far the only reason you and I are still alive, my sweet, is that none of these warriors besides Gizor, much less Dag and Nole, want to see you dead, and some of them are even hesitant about killing me. We all know each other too well. When everyone is hesitating and trying to find a way toward peace, the most ruthless person wins-and Gizor, whether he’s my father or not, is the most ruthless person I know.”