“Did the Wanderers tell you they created those creatures of the third force?” the young woman asked Valmar.
He had been dozing, her head on his shoulder, and it took a few seconds for her words to reach him. But then he rolled around to look at her, propping himself up on an elbow. “Created them? No! But- They told me they wanted them overcome. I don’t believe you.”
She smiled at the irritated note in his voice. “If you had asked, they would have told you. I do not lie.”
“You are still trying to distract me from serving them,” Valmar replied, removing his arm from around her waist.
“Whose idea was it to go deep into the woods as soon as we met again and to remove our armor?” she said with a teasing light in her eyes. “But think of this, Valmar Hadros’s son. When we met before, they never scolded you, did they? So you continued to serve them. But now you serve me as well.”
“I cannot serve you and the Wanderers both,” he said warily, sitting up now.
“The last time we met you said you would not fight against them,” she said, sitting up herself. The sunset was behind her, shadowing her features. “Do you not realize that in fighting those beings at the top of the hill you will be fighting the Wanderers’ own creation?”
Valmar, feeling weariness, shame, and a renewed desire for her, said only, “The lords of voima told me that they do not create.”
She laughed at this and put out a hand to touch his knee. “And they do not. Or if they do, it is only creatures like those, mockeries of men, hollow beings with no backs.”
Valmar went still, his objections frozen on his lips. Her words made sense at last of something the Wanderers had told him which had made no sense at the time, that their attempts at creation were now hastening their end. He did not want to be arguing with this woman anyway-he wanted to be holding her close, kissing her, feeling her muscular body against his. Or else he should be pushing her aside, rising with his eyes fixed on the path of honor. “The man I saw, just a little while ago,” he attempted. “He had a back.”
“Or wanted you to think he did. In the lands of voima it is easier to mislead a mortal’s eye than in mortal realms.”
“And do you create?”
She smiled saucily at him. “I would have thought you knew that. Women create life within themselves. Men can create nothing.”
He leaned his chin on his fists, considering. He still, when he could be calm, was not sure what to make of this lady of voima, who seemed both to be a human woman and to be possessed of a detachment and wisdom he felt could not have come in just a few more years’ maturity than his. “Women need men to create life,” he said with a frown, wondering as he spoke if even something so basic might be different here in the land of endless sunset. Then, “Have you ever borne children?”
She went sober, shaking her head.
“Is that because you have separated yourself from the lords of voima?”
When she did not answer at once, Valmar started reaching distractedly for his clothes, slowly coming to the horrible realization that he had lain with a woman meant for the Wanderers. They could not have known, before, where he had gone for so many hours, but what explanation could he give them now if he did not fulfill his mission, led astray by this woman never intended for him?
“Or they have separated themselves from us, ” she said quietly when he had nearly given up on receiving an answer.
“Who are you?” he demanded, pausing in tying his laces.
Again she answered very quietly, sitting with her arms wrapped around a naked knee. “We are the Hearthkeepers. We stayed behind when the Wanderers left us. It is now almost the end of their fated rule, the time we should overthrow them, except-” She paused for a moment, and when she went on it was almost as though she was changing the subject. “We have voima within us, certainly, but if our full powers were going to return I would have thought to see them by now. Sometimes I even wonder if we’ve made a mistake…”
She seemed so sad suddenly, so vulnerable and unlike an immortal being, that Valmar put his arms comfortingly around her. But a thought teased at him. He did not think he had ever gotten any of the serving-maids with child, but might he have done so with this lady of voima?
Rather pleased with this idea, he gave her another hug, less comforting and more passionate.
She turned in his embrace to look at him. All her laughter and teasing were gone. “Originally I was sent,” she said, “to lure you from your allegiance to the lords of voima, to make you serve us instead. But I have changed my mind, Valmar Hadros’s son. I do not want you to fight for the Hearthkeepers against the Wanderers, any more than I want you for fight for them against us. I only want you all for myself.”
“I cannot be all for you,” he said, stroking her arm and trying desperately to remember why he could not. “The path of honor is higher than the path of love,” he added after a moment.
Her eyes flashed at him, and the corner of her mouth twitched. “I do have to remember that you too are, after all, a man.”
Before he could answer, he heard a clanging, of swords against shields, not a quarter mile away.
“We know you’re in there, Valmar Hadros’s son!” came a booming voice. For a horrible second he thought it was the Wanderers, then knew it was not. “We’ve surrounded this woods and we’re coming for you. Surrender yourself! Since you would not be our friend as Roric was, you shall take you to our manor as our enemy!”
The woman sprang up and went for her armor and sword. “We’ll compromise,” she said with a grin, “we’ll both fight these beings for your lords of voima, and also be together.” She had her clothes on in seconds, and was sliding on her mail and stamping her feet into her boots. “I’ve already seen how you do against me. Now we’ll see how much a mortal can do against hollow creatures who want him dead.”
PART III: Realms of Voima