Karin awoke before dawn. For a moment she could not remember why she was here, in her own bed. Were all the events of the past few months a particularly vivid dream?
She sat up and remembered. Last night, the arrival at Hadros’s castle, the unsuccessful struggle to hold off wild despair, Valmar’s attempts to comfort her, were all very vague. But the image of Roric guarding their retreat was vivid. He had wanted to die.
She gulped once, but all the tears had been cried out of her and her sorrow had settled down to a burning ache. With blood-guilt on him and the guilt of incest, no future left for him here in mortal realms, he had saved her and Valmar by letting Eirik’s men kill him. All that was left of him was the song Valmar had said they would make for him.
But where was Valmar? In the pre-dawn dimness she could just make out the shapes in the hall, and she did not see him anywhere. Karin pulled on her shoes and went to the door, which was unbolted. She seemed to remember Valmar driving out the others and bolting it when she had begun to weep last night. A thoughtful gesture-the castle’s mistress should not be seen to break down so completely.
But was she this castle’s mistress? She opened the door and looked out into the quiet courtyard. She had ruled here for years, and if she married Valmar she would again.
The thought that now that Roric was dead there was nothing to keep her from becoming Valmar’s wife came as a sharp blow, threatening to destroy her aching calm. She took a deep breath and stepped into the courtyard, thinking that she should build up the fires in the bath house-she and Valmar could both use a bath.
Then she saw that the great gates were ever so slightly ajar.
Valmar had gone, then. He had returned to help Roric once he had gotten her home to safety. Men might fight against each other, but they were united in trying to keep the women out of their fights.
She squeezed through the gate and began to run. The sun was not yet up, and there might still be time to reach the faeys’ burrows before they retreated underground. The eastern sky was yellow; at least so far mortal realms were still functioning as they always had. Her feet kept stumbling, and she had to throw up her arms against low-hanging branches that appeared abruptly out of the dimness before her, but she never slowed her pace until she tumbled, gasping for breath, into the faeys’ dell.
It was not too late. Their green lights still burned as she gave through parched lips the triple whistle to tell them she was there.
“Karin! Karin!” They clustered around her, tugging at her skirts. “We don’t understand! Why didn’t you tell us last night how you’d gotten into our burrows? Where did the other young man go? Are you going to marry him instead of Roric?”
For a second she relented and sat down, squeezing their hands and patting them on their heads. They had been her friends for years when no one else had been. But then her need to know overtook her again. “Did Valmar come back here? Yes, the man I was with last night. Is he here? Did he go back into the Wanderers’ realm?”
In spite of the faeys’ insistence that there was no door from their burrows into the realms of voima, they reluctantly admitted that Valmar had appeared in their dell a few hours earlier, had pushed by them to crawl back into the tunnels, and had not reemerged.
“We think he’s been swallowed by the earth,” said the faeys confidently. “But you won’t be, Karin, if you stay with us. It’s time for us to go inside now. Do you want some raspberries?”
“Don’t do anything to close the rift,” she said, accepting a handful of berries and stuffing them into her mouth. She immediately began to crawl deeper into the tunnels, the way Valmar must have gone.
When Dag and Nole found them both gone in the morning, she thought, swallowing the berries, they would wonder if they had ever really been there, or if their appearance after dark and disappearance by dawn meant that they were wights from Hel, allowed in mortal realms only to announce their own deaths.
Karin dismissed all thoughts of what the people in the castle might think. She had enough concerns of her own. If Roric was dead, she wanted to bring his body back from the realms of voima, and after having braved so much to save Valmar she was certainly not going to let him go off alone into danger with some thought of protecting her from it.
She crawled rapidly into darkness, keeping her head down, until the sounds of the faeys’ high voices faded away behind her and before her came the rhythmic splash of waves.
Waves? What had happened in the realms of voima? The smooth surface under her hands was bone dry. Karin paused for a moment, then shrugged and pushed on.
And felt a cold, salty wave break over her. Struggling, she kicked out, finding nothing but water-no tunnel, no floor or ceiling. She tried to swim, fighting in the direction which seemed to lead upward.
She emerged, streaming and spitting water, in the surf by a rocky shore. The sun was just rising, chasing shadows down the slopes of high mountains. She splashed forward, found a footing, and came ashore dripping wet. Before her a dark cave led into the rocks. She was back in Eirik’s kingdom, back to the spot where she and Roric had dived into the sea and into the realms of voima.
No use hesitating now. She spun around and dove back into the surf.
Again salt water closed over her head, and when she got her feet under her and surged back to the surface the dawn light still lay across the steep slopes of the Hot-River Mountains.
She pulled herself up out of the waves. With water pouring off her, she scrambled into the sea-cave. Maybe the Witch of the Western Cliffs could help her find Valmar.
But the passage down which she and Roric had come had disappeared. She groped wildly in the darkness, finding what she thought was the entrance, but if so the air had turned to stone. Pounding on it only bruised her fists. The Witch was talking to someone else-or did not want to see her again.
Slowly she turned, emerged from the cave, and made her way along the shingle, walking in the waves half the time, shivering from wet and cold without even noticing. Gulls wheeled overhead, calling sharply. The sun rose slowly higher. The salt water dripping from her hair down her cheeks could have been tears, but she had no tears left.
But there was still her father. At the thought of King Kardan she lifted her head. He had been so happy to see her when she came home from Hadros’s kingdom, and she had given him nothing but worry ever since. Then she remembered that he might be Roric’s father as well as her own. If so, he had a right to know that his last son was dead.
Someone had spotted her. She heard a shout that was not the gulls and looked up to see a warrior, perched high above her, signaling to someone. Eirik’s men? she thought, freezing. But it was someone she recognized, one of Hadros’s warriors.
It was nearly evening before they would answer her questions or even let her speak. Men, she thought disgustedly, with the energy that came from sleeping most of the day and having had hot food again. But Queen Arane was just as insistent as the kings that she rest.
“We haven’t seen this King Eirik or any of his men,” said Hadros, “or for that matter anyone for the last three days. I was ready to start for home, little princess, but your father insisted we wait in case you were still alive. He’s almost as stubborn as you are! Glad of it,” he added gruffly.
The sun was sinking over the western sea. When she looked at the sunset, long ribbons of red-tinged clouds seemed to carry her hundreds of miles across the waves toward the dying sun. The moon climbed the sky behind her. She had not yet tried to say anything about the sun setting in the realms of voima.
“And where have you been all this time, Karin?” asked Queen Arane, gently in spite of an irritated undertone in her voice. “Both your father and foster-father have been almost mad with wondering and waiting. We waited even when hope was dulled and gone-your father saying it was too late to begin again.” As the sun set, the long shadow cast by the burial mound of the slain warriors melted into the general darkness.
“We were in the Wanderers’ lands,” Karin said slowly, deciding to keep the story as simple as possible, “Roric, Valmar, and I.”
“They keep on giving us the same story about the Wanderers,” commented Hadros, half under his breath. “At this rate we’ll have to believe the lords of voima really might be interested in people like us.” Karin could see her father consciously keeping himself from asking questions.
“I escaped from King Eirik,” she went on, “the outlaw king who attacked you here, then Roric and I escaped from the dragon.” It did sound in her own ears like one of the more fantastic of the old tales. “Then he and I went through a doorway the Wanderers had opened- But that door is closed now.” But the Wanderers had let Valmar back through before closing it, she thought. Men again, acting together against the women.
“Eirik and his men followed us into the Wanderers’ realm,” she continued, “and Valmar was already there.”
“Then that’s why the outlaw wasn’t in his castle,” muttered Hadros.
“We stayed in that realm for a little while. Then, although I do not entirely understand how it happened,” which was true, “the lords of voima wanted me back in mortal realms. Valmar, as far as I know, is with the Wanderers.”
“And Roric?” That was Queen Arane.
“Roric,” she gulped and went on, her voice steady, “Roric is dead.”
Karin forced herself to lift her eyes to meet those of the two kings and the queen. All looked startled and, she thought, sorry, but that might only have been sympathy for her. Well, the time for subtlety was long past.
When she trusted her voice again, she said, “Yes, even in the realms of voima mortals can die. I loved him. He was the lord of my heart and my body. And I hope I am carrying his child.”
She had expected Queen Arane to give her a reproving glare, both for her frankness and for allowing herself to be with child at all. But the queen’s look was distant and strangely expressionless. King Kardan reached out impulsively toward his daughter, as though to draw her in like a little girl, but he stopped.
Once Karin had begun there seemed no reason not to continue. “Now that he is gone it may not matter-but it does matter to me and to our child. Was Roric my brother?”
“No!” All three spoke at once, Hadros and Kardan and Arane, then became flustered, rewrapping their cloaks against the cool of the evening air, meeting neither her eyes nor each other’s.
“Why are you all so sure?” she asked, looking in surprise from one to another. “Is there something you have kept from me?” When they all shook their heads emphatically she added, “Both the Weaver back home and the-well, a creature of voima we met seemed to suggest that, that… that I was his sister and for him to love me was incest.”
“Like the old stories?” asked Hadros, recovering first. He shot Queen Arane a look, thrust out his chin, and went on. “It wasn’t my secret but I don’t mind telling it. He was born at Arane’s court, though I brought him home as a tiny baby to raise in my own castle. Roric was the son of Arane’s serving-maid and, I think, me.”
“Oh, dear.” The queen put her graceful hands over her face, and the jewels on her rings winked in the firelight.
“ Your son?” said Karin in bewilderment to the king. This changed everything. “But why would anyone do to his son-” She stopped, not wanting to get into that issue now. She whirled toward Kardan. “Tell me,” she commanded, her eyes intense in the shadows, “is there any chance that a baby born to Arane’s serving-maid could have been fathered by you?”
He was flustered but certain. “No. No chance at all. I have never lain with any woman at Arane’s court.” He paused uncertainly. “I can swear on steel and rowan if you like.”
Karin looked questioningly toward Arane but the queen had turned her head away. Roric had said he knew for certain he was not Hadros’s son-and had he not said Arane herself told him?
Someone else, then, had also enjoyed the favors of the queen’s maid, though the queen had managed to make Hadros believe the baby was his to ensure him a good upbringing. Whosever son he might have been, he was not the son of King Kardan.
Roric’s father was another man. She did not know how relieved she was to learn this until she found herself throwing her arms around her own father, just on the edge of sobbing again.
Queen Arane rose briskly, pulling up the hood of her cloak. “The girl is exhausted and drained,” she said firmly. “She can tell you the rest of her story in the morning. What she needs now is sleep, which she can best have in my tent.”
Before Karin could protest, the queen had her by the elbow and was propelling her across the camp. Now that she had begun telling her tale she would have been willing to continue, but there seemed no chance of that. “Well, goodnight!” came her father’s voice, belatedly and behind them.
Karin entered the queen’s tent resignedly, ready to be tucked back into the blankets where she had slept that afternoon. Her life seemed rather empty and pointless, now that she knew the lords of voima would not let her rescue Valmar. It would be best perhaps to let others make the decisions for her until the baby within her quickened and gave her again a reason to live.
But the queen put the lantern between them and sat on her cushions, eyes glittering. “Now, Karin. I want you to tell me how Roric died.”
“King Eirik had captured Valmar, there in the Wanderers’ realm,” said Karin slowly, wondering why Arane did not want the kings to hear this. “Roric freed him, but Eirik was such a short distance away that we had very little chance of escape. Roric pushed Valmar and me into, well, a tunnel that led to safety.” There would be time enough to mention their brief visit to Hadros’s court. “Roric guarded our backs, and there he was killed.” She was almost able to say it calmly now.
“Did you see him die?” asked the queen sharply.
“No, but he would have come behind us if he had lived, and he did not.”
“I would not yet give up hope of him,” said Arane very quietly. “But if he is gone he died to save his beloved and his foster-brother. I shall commission a bard as soon as I am home to put it into song.”
When the queen did not speak again Karin asked, “Is there a reason you did not want Hadros to hear about his death? Were you afraid it would reflect dishonorably on Valmar?”
But the queen did not answer her question. “You know I only ever spoke to Roric once as an adult, after he left my court where, it is true, he was born. Tell me: did he carry any charm?”
“He had a little bone charm, cut in the shape of a star. He was told it was in his blankets when he was found-though I gather now he was not a foundling?”
Still ignoring her questions, Arane reached into her belt pouch and pulled out something that she placed on Karin’s palm. It was a star-shaped bone charm. “Did it look like that?”
Karin stared at it. “He gave you his charm?” She tried to remember if she had seen Roric thumbing it, as he had so often, in the period between when they had been reunited outside Eirik’s castle and when Eirik and his men had slain him. She could not remember.
Arane smiled slowly and sadly. “This is not Roric’s. But you have answered my question. This in your hand is the twin of the charm that I sent with him, all the meager powers of voima that I dared give him. For you see, Roric was my own son.”
Just when Karin thought she had become calm she found herself weeping wildly again. She had not felt entirely sure of Hadros’s story, but this- This she believed.
“Oh, Karin,” Arane said, stroking Karin’s hair as she lay with her face in the queen’s lap. “It seems very long ago, but I too can remember how miserable and how wonderful it can be to be young, to feel intense love and great sorrow without the experience to deal well with either…”
“If he was your son,” Karin brought out, trying to overcome her tears, “why did you send him away? And which man fathered him?”
“He was called No-man’s son, I understand,” said the queen slowly. “And even if he had lived I would never have wanted him to know his father’s name. He was not Hadros, not your father, only a man who may never even have known he had fathered a son but whom I loved very much…”
This, thought Karin miserably, was what Arane had suggested to her back when they had first met, that as long as a queen was very discreet she could enjoy an occasional man in her bed. But she had also spoken of jealousies and rivalries-had Roric’s father been killed by some other would-be suitor of the queen, even before the baby was born? Perhaps it was better not to know.
“The Witch told Roric he could never know his father’s name,” she said through her tears. She had not mentioned the Witch before, but it did not matter. “But it-she-also said that having the name, having the answer, would take away Roric’s goal of trying to live up to an image of a glorious father.”
“Well, Roric cannot know his father’s name now,” said the queen reasonably. “And I had never intended to tell him. The man I loved came to me in secret, and I have always honored his secrecy. He gave me these two little charms before we parted for the last time, and I thought his son should have one, but no other information.”
Karin felt a sudden horrible suspicion. “Roric’s father-” she said between tight lips. “Was he perhaps King Eirik?”
Arane managed her tinkling little laugh. “No, Karin, I can reassure you quite certainly on that point. I knew Eirik, of course, from meetings of the All-Gemot over the years, and he was somewhat dashing in his youth in a rather coarse way. But you should give Roric’s mother credit for better taste than that!
“King Hadros,” she went on, “in spite of an edge of uncertainty, has always assumed that Roric was his. I did not wish to tell him otherwise, though of course that meant he could not know that Roric was born to a queen, not to a serving-maid. My little deception assured that Roric would receive much the same training and advantages any son of one of the Fifty Kings might receive-though Hadros’s fatherly methods may be rougher than most! If Roric is indeed dead, I would appreciate it, Karin, if you never told Hadros the truth yourself.”
“All right. It doesn’t matter now anyway.”
“I hope you realize, Karin,” the queen continued, “that it is very hard to keep the reputation of a virgin queen if one is seen to suckle a babe! People may have suspicions, but without evidence suspicions are nothing. My household has always been very protective of me and very loyal, but there are limits to what even the most close-mouthed servants can keep hid. And of course I did not want Roric to grow up the target for a dagger-thrust from any man who hoped to win me and father his own sons on me.”
“Did you think never to see him again when you sent him away?” Karin asked dully.
“If he had lived, I would have told him, sooner or later, that he was my son. A little boy would be in too much danger from his relatives for me openly to declare him my heir, especially when he was a child born to a secret union, when I had never married the man before witnesses or with the consent of my kin. Someone like that the Fifty Kings would be very slow to accept! But a full-grown man, someone with the warrior skills of King Hadros, would have been different. Even as No-man’s son, such a man could still be chosen by my kingdom’s Gemot as the next king-and accepted by the other kings-if I had no obvious other heir and swore that he was mine.
“But your child,” continued Arane with the ghost of a smile, “will be the grandchild of a king and of a sovereign queen, a fine baby boy or girl to rule Kardan’s kingdom after him and after you. All you need now is a husband-the Fifty Kings will still be reluctant to recognize that the child of a woman who has never been wed may inherit royal rule. Of course, as long as you are married before the babe is actually born, you should be all right… I do not, from my own experiences, recommend out-fostering your child on someone else! Now, you said you thought that Valmar may still be alive-”
Karin could not stand it, the plotting, the maneuvering, all ready to begin again and this time around her. “No!” she cried, sitting up abruptly. “Roric is scarcely dead! I cannot start looking at once for a husband, planning whom to fool into thinking Roric’s child is his. I would rather-”
She never had a chance to say what she would rather do. There was a great roar outside the tent, not an animal sound but much deeper, a roar of sea and earth.
Karin and Arane scrambled out into the cold night air to see beneath a moonlit sky the Hot-River Mountains quivering as though shaken by an unimaginably enormous hand. The ground beneath their feet began to tremble and sway. As they clutched at each other the moonlight glinted on a giant wave racing up the salt river. It swept across the pebbled beach where the warriors of the two kings were sleeping and spun around the longship that had been hauled up beside them. Splashing and yelling, the men bobbed to the surface as the wave passed by. The few horses they had with them began to scream, and the dogs barked wildly.
“The end has begun,” said Karin in a very small voice.
They were not far from the burial mound where Gizor and the others were laid, built well above the waterline. Karin heard Hadros’s and Kardan’s voices shouting over the din, trying to find out how many men they still had and bellowing orders to secure the ship again.
But she paid no attention, for her eyes were riveted on the burial mound. It moved, but not with the motion of earthquake. One of the horses-Roric’s stallion, she thought-had broken loose and was striking at the mound with his hooves. It shook as though something-or someone-was coming up beneath it.
The wave, having bounced off the cliffs at the eastern end of the salt river, came pouring back, lower now but sending the men and supplies anew into swirling confusion. The stallion screamed again. The men, snatching their equipment out of the water, scrambled for higher ground. A number pulled at the ship’s mooring lines. Both kings climbed to the top of the burial mound to shout orders. They had not seen the shaking she had seen.
It came again. A great clod of dirt flew from the side of the mound, then another. The dogs went abruptly silent. And someone, black with earth, stepped from within the mound.
That was when the moon went out.