Valmar saw firelight flickering ahead of him in the tunnel. Eirik’s men? he wondered. But he heard no sound, none of the outlaw king’s boisterous conversation, not even the snores he would have expected if they were all asleep. He crawled on as quietly as possible, his sword’s scabbard dragging behind him.
He came into a dimly lit chamber where something enormous and bulky reclined by the fire. His hand closed around his hilt. Against the far wall was a complicated web woven of string, but it looked as though it had been slashed in several places, for broken ends dangled. Beyond the web was an enormous mirror which seemed to reflect something other than this room. The bulky shape shifted and human eyes glinted at him. “Do not fear me, Valmar Hadros’s son.”
Valmar emerged from the tunnel and rose to his feet. “Are you the Witch of the Western Cliffs?” he asked cautiously. He made himself let go of his sword hilt. Karin had told him a little of the Witch. “And if you are, am I still in mortal realms?”
He had not been able to get any detail of the witch’s shape. She-or it-turned away from him, toward the web, and began slashing. It was impossible in the dim light to see if the witch was using a knife or fingernails. More rents opened, and more bits of string dangled down.
“You are in mortal realms, but not for long,” said the voice almost cheerfully. “You humans have given me an idea.”
“Humans? An idea?” Valmar found his fingers twitching and clenched his fists. He had come back to rescue or to avenge Roric, not to become caught in the webs of creatures of voima.
“Roric No-man’s son and Karin Kardan’s daughter,” said the witch in a matter-of-fact tone. “They are very unlike, with different goals, different purposes. In a mortal lifespan, there is no way they could ever possibly come to understand each other fully. Yet they love each other. They do not need complete agreement. They have learned through facing desperate dangers that even creatures as different as men and women can act together.”
The witch was speaking as though Roric was still alive. Valmar fought down shameful disappointment. He should be delighted his foster-brother lived. Karin was not his even if Roric was dead.
But a witch in mortal realms might not know what had happened in the realms of voima. “Are you creating desperate dangers in ripping your weaving?
“You humans gave me that idea too,” the witch continued, glancing quickly at him. “There are too many knots, too many tangles accumulated over the years. Roric No-man’s son deals with tangles by trying something desperate and bold. Karin Kardan’s daughter does not lose track of the final goal, no matter how difficult the way. The first of the dangers to the realms of voima were those men who went through the rift, being taunted by Roric. At his example, I then sent a dragon through. When a dragon settled at my door many years ago, I had not realized the potential advantages!”
“The Wanderers and Hearthkeepers fought the dragon together.”
“They worked together for a short time, it is true. But it will take more than that for our children to join together permanently. They have known all along that without someone to guide and instruct you mortals, you will lose order and direction, return to scattered and violent bands roving through the forest as you once were. But even that danger has not been enough to make them stop their attempts to circumvent the other’s power. I need something even more desperate.”
“Then what do you intend?” asked Valmar.
“The outlaws and the dragon in the realms of voima were an excellent distraction while I prepared what I do now. I am unmaking. ” The voice was harsh and booming, all its cheerful quality gone. A shiver went up Valmar’s back. No matter how strange and slow this witch might seem, if Karin was right it had given birth to the chief of the Wanderers. “We made the realms of voima for them to live in, and most of us, the makers, built ourselves into the very fabric of those realms, asleep. But now I who was left to watch am waking them. If they awake-and if our children do not ease them quickly back into slumber-then the very substance of immortal realms shall crumble.”
Valmar was swept with a horror that made his whole body go stiff. “And what will happen if immortal realms are destroyed?” he brought out between frozen lips.
“Then all the powers of voima will be destroyed, and all order in mortal realms will go with them.”
“You would destroy all you created-” For a moment he clenched his sword. But then those eyes, human and more than human, met his and the strength went out of him.
“We were not the creators of mortal lands any more than the Wanderers were. But yes. We no longer rule earth and sky, but we can still destroy. This is not a game. The danger would not be truly desperate if it was not real.”
“Then what do you want me to do?”
The witch turned around to face him. The web was now little more than tatters. “I cannot do this myself, Valmar Hadros’s son. I have tried. Someone needs to bring those two forces together. If the powers of voima cannot do it, then it will have to be a mortal. If you are no more successful than I have been, then immortal and mortal realms will collapse together.”
Valmar crawled back the way he had come. The witch had said he would emerge into realms of voima. He gritted his teeth with the sick feeling that he was being sent back to the faeys to get him out of the way.
But when he saw light before him it was not the green of the faeys’ lanterns but the gray of twilight after the sun has set. There was a faint, steady splashing, the sound of a small waterfall. The voices he heard were hoarse, rough, and certainly not those of the faeys.
“That berserker sent the princess this way.” “Suppose this is just another path down to Hel?” “Then we’ll rejoin our king even sooner than we thought. But even Hel has to be better than what these people keep claiming is the Wanderers’ realm.”
Valmar rose and stepped forward by the pool, his sword drawn.
His abrupt appearance panicked the outlaws. They stared at him, eyes wide in the dimness. There were not many left of the once proud and desperate group of renegades who had followed Eirik into the sea and out of mortal realms.
And without their leader the courage had gone out of them. Valmar spoke in his deepest voice. “This tunnel may take you to your kingdom if that is your wish. Pass by me quietly, your swords sheathed, and I shall not harm you.”
The tunnel was only wide enough for one to pass at a time. The warriors edged by him, eyeing him warily. Valmar wondered without much interest if they would emerge in Hadros’s kingdom-in which case Dag and Nole might have an adventure of their own to tell about-or in the Witch’s cave. He considered asking them what had happened to Roric but did not want to hear the answer. When several had passed it occurred to him that they might rush him from both directions, but without Eirik they had no one to plot and only wanted to get to safety.
The last of the outlaws disappeared down the tunnel. For a moment, looking after them, he thought he saw daylight and two lichen-spotted standing stones leaning together, but when he blinked the image was gone. He shrugged and turned away.
Valmar went by the pool and out into evening. He had to find the Wanderers and warn them.
He sheathed his sword and scrambled up beside the waterfall. At the top of the cliff he paused, blinking and trying to see, then started walking along the ridge in the direction the Wanderers and Hearthkeepers had taken to fight the dragon. After a short distance he made out something huge and streaked with black, sprawling across the rocks for dozens of yards.
For a second he thought it was the witch again, grown to enormous size. Then he realized it was the dragon. It was dead, lying in its own black blood, its mouth sagging open and the tongue loose over the needle teeth. So the lords and ladies of voima too could kill, he thought grimly, even in their own realm. He was just wondering how to locate them, before the last of the witch’s web was unmade, when he heard voices.
The loudest voice was that of the woman with the dark curling hair. “When the new sun rises, which it shall do very soon, our time will come. Since fate has ended your rule, we must be fated to take again the direction of earth and sky. Now that the last of the mortal men are gone from here, there is little more for you to do but retreat to your manors, because if you do not yield willingly you will be forced to yield at the point of the sword.”
“And you always complained that we encouraged mortal men in violence.” It was the deep, slightly ironic voice of the Wanderer who had first brought Valmar here.
“In which case,” she answered briskly, “there is nothing you can say against us if we use your own weapons to reimpose our vision of the world.”
Valmar could now see all of them in the last of the light, the lords and ladies of voima sitting on the ridge top looking off toward the east. They all seemed battered from their fight with the dragon. There was a great scar in the earth nearby, as though it had opened and closed again.
He hesitated, wishing irrationally that Karin was here. How was he supposed to reconcile the rulers of earth and sky before earth and sky themselves were destroyed? The last daylight was fading behind them, but there was no hint of dawn in the east in spite of the Hearthkeeper’s confident prediction that the new sun would rise very soon.
“I do not like your inviting a mortal woman to join you,” said another of the Wanderers. “We have always been equally matched with you in numbers.”
Valmar counted quickly. So far no one had noticed him. There were twelve Wanderers but thirteen women, including, he realized with a start, the tall, green-eyed woman who had been with King Eirik. “I have no intention of returning to a world that includes mortal men,” said Wigla firmly.
“Were you Wanderers suggesting that I instead should return to my husband and children in mortal realms, to bring the number back down to twelve?” asked one of the Hearthkeepers. “ He will be protected by the powers of voima, and my children will lead long and happy lives even if they are still fated to die. But why should I not stay with my sisters and rule over mortals and over you? After all, there have been even lords of voima who have visited mortal women in disguise! If I care to I can still visit my husband, who already knows well who I am.”
The ground suddenly heaved and swayed under them. Valmar lost and regained his balance. “And I cannot say I like these earthquakes,” commented the leader of the Wanderers.
“You men just didn’t do enough to make our world firm while you were ruling it. As soon as our powers return, we will end these problems. I must say, I thought we would feel them returning by now
…”
Valmar stepped forward. The immortals, with their full powers either eroded away or not yet come to fullness, were entirely capable of being surprised.
All spun around to face him. “You said you had sent all the mortal men back!” one of the Hearthkeepers started to say accusingly, but Valmar did not want to hear any more of their bickering.
“I come,” he began and found his voice cracking, which it had not done for several years. “I come,” he tried again, “from the one called the Witch of the Western Cliffs.”
Everyone stared at him, but he could not afford to be overcome with awe or shyness now. He had pledged himself to serve the lords of voima, and if saving them meant forcing them into something they had not wanted, he would still do it. Besides, he would not merely be saving the Wanderers: he had to save his younger brothers, back in mortal lands, and had to save Karin.
“I come to warn you,” he said, high and clear. “The reason for the earthquakes, the reason none of you have your powers now, is because the Old Ones who made this realm in the first place are now destroying it.”
A storm came rumbling across the plain while he spoke, spitting rain, and came up the ridge to drench all of them. He wiped wet hair away from his eyes with one arm and stared at the immortals. They had to listen to him.
“Valmar!” It was one of the Hearthkeepers, his Hearthkeeper, and she sounded both delighted and calculating as she shook the rain from her hair. “We never thanked you properly for showing us that even immortals can be wounded and made weak. We shall be able to use this knowledge as soon as the new sun rises.”
“You aren’t listening,” he said desperately. “The sun is not going to rise!”
“The Witch sent you to threaten us?” said the leader of the Wanderers sharply. Then for a moment his face, no longer overpowering but still thoughtful and wise, smiled a little. “You have always tried to serve us truly, Valmar Hadros’s son-in spite of these women! — but you are too easily influenced.”
“It’s not just a threat. She-it-told me that unless the two of you come together-completely, reunited-it will be impossible for you to put immortal realms back together. And if the realms of voima are gone, there will not be much hope for mortal men and women.”
He finally had their attention. All of them jumped up. “We fought the dragon together,” said the curly-haired Hearthkeeper. “They held the dragon imprisoned with the powers of voima while we used our swords on it. We can all work together again for just a little longer and stop this.”
“That won’t be enough,” said Valmar despairingly. “Before the Witch sent me here, she-it-made it clear that only if you join together completely, neither ever trying again to overcome the other, will you be able to stop the unmaking.”
“This sounds-” one of the Wanderers said but never had a chance to finish. A mile away, a volcano exploded in the middle of the plain.
Wind rushed up the ridge, stinking with sulfur. The earth trembled as molten rock, glowing orange with heat that could be felt from a mile away, bubbled out of a rapidly growing cone. Rain turned to steam in an instant and boiled up in great clouds, lit orange from below. Hot ash settled glowing just a little lower on the ridge, igniting the wet grass. Trees swayed and toppled around them as the earth shook again, and the limestone heaved its way out of the earth.
The lords and ladies of voima, scrambling to keep their balance, conferred rapidly, and several held out commanding arms. Nothing had any effect. In the light of the molten rock, in the trembling of the earth, Valmar seemed to see giants coming awake, sitting up, tossing back the blankets of grass and earth under which they had slept. A cracking and roaring was loud in the distance, as though the solid earth itself was being broken off and cast out into nothingness.
He was not just a boy to whom the warriors did not have to listen. “You have no choice,” he shouted over the roaring of the earth. He seized the closest Hearthkeeper by the arm and dragged her to him. He recognized her when she smiled, eyes bright as mirrors even in the near-darkness.
But she was not for him. “You won’t be any longer a woman who might love a mortal,” he gasped. “But I cannot try to hold onto what we shared.” For a second he went still, meeting her eyes. “I did love you.” With his other hand he snatched at the arm of a Wanderer.
He had never before dared even brush against them, but he had no time for awe. All of them, even Wigla, he pulled and pushed together into a tight, dripping group. Mortal muscles were effective against immortals who had lost their powers. “You were once one!” he cried. The lava was pouring toward them and the volcanic cone had already risen higher than this ridge. “You must know how to unite your powers again!” He kept trying to push them close together, make them hold hands, make them embrace each other, but they remained a group of separate, frightened people who had always thought they were immortal.
What else could he do? What else had the Witch meant him to do? “You were created as one! Remember that creation! Humans somehow find a way for very different people to work together, even if not in full agreement: men and women, old and young, men who are enemies, the honorable and those who love. What mortals can do the mortals must be able to do! We shall still reverence you-if we still exist!”
And then, as the shaking of the earth beneath them became so intense it was hard to keep his feet on the wet grass, there came a change. Where he forcibly held their hands together he felt jolts, shocks as though touched by lightning. They were all forming a circle, a circle of twenty-four lords and ladies of voima and of two mortals, himself and Wigla. He forced reluctant hands together until they were all united, alternating men and women, the curly-haired Hearthkeeper beside him. Joined in hand, joined in thought, they turned their powers on the disintegrating realm around them.
Racing through his mind came images that he knew were not his, yet seemed joined in him. He saw himself striding high on a mountain, watching the mortals far below. The mortals he could see clearly in spite of his distance from them, and he seemed to remember himself hearing their requests and tasting their offerings, holding out an arm to bring them new hope through the forces of voima. Then he was riding, unseen, in the prow of a ship cutting through a storm on a dark night, where the men fought desperately and courageously to save the ship and each other. And most strangely of all, he seemed to remember lying with his own weight on top of him, his legs wrapped around his own waist, and realized he was partaking in the Hearthkeeper’s memories.
The lava glow lit up the sky. More memories that were not his, more images of immortal power flashed through his mind, of helping a woman in childbirth, of encouraging a man in glorious battle, of guiding the sun and rain of mortal lands, of lying with a chestnut-haired woman who wore a jeweled pendant on her forehead. He could see the immortals moving, writhing, growing closer and splitting apart. Jolts still passed through him as he tried to force them back together whenever the circle threatened to split. If any of them spoke he could not hear it over the roaring of wind and cracking earth.
Then, abruptly, they pushed him away. The powers of voima surged between them, restored at last, stronger than any mortal could bear. All of them seemed to grow and to glow with their own white light, and he had to squeeze his eyes shut against their faces.
Valmar staggered backwards. Then, with their memories still fighting for prominence inside him, he raced through driving rain for the waterfall. These beings, these enormously powerful lords and ladies of voima, turned toward the volcano, but his only thought was somehow to get back to mortal realms if they even still existed.
Stones had cracked off the cliff leading downward toward the pool and the cave that had-twice-led to the earth he knew. He slid more than climbed down, bumping bruisingly as he went. More stones had fallen from the roof of the cave, but the passage still seemed clear. He pushed into it, trying to keep from thinking the thoughts of the rulers of earth and sky, trying to think only of crawling down this passage before it fell in.
The earth quivered again and more of the roof collapsed. He was past the pool now, feeling in heavy darkness for the way to safety. His hands found only solid rock with no way past.
He heaved himself up into a tiny opening between ceiling and wall, bracing himself and holding up his arms as, with another shudder, more stones broke loose. A flying shard caught him on the temple, and he knew no more.