C. Dale Brittain (37 page)

King Hadros said nothing more for a moment but grunted and pulled off his jerkin, now black with the shape-changer’s blood.
 
He ran a thumb thoughtfully beneath his jaw while looking at it.
 
“You know, Kardan,” he commented, “you’ve now saved my life twice in two days.
 
I should have given you better terms on that tribute, ten years ago.”

Kardan had started to reach for grass or leaves to wipe the blood from his sword, but found himself sitting on the ground.
 
He fought the impulse to collapse further.
 
He looked up at Hadros instead and for a second found himself grinning.
 
“You should warn a man before inviting him along on one of your little trips,” he answered.
 
“You certainly provide all the excitement a young man could ask for, but I may be getting too old for this game.”

2

The Wanderers gave Valmar a sword that sang.

It sang wordlessly but gloriously whenever he pulled it from the sheath, a song that drove straight to the heart with chords of courage, heroism, and undying glory.
 
He discovered that if he loosened the peace-straps and kept it drawn even just an inch or so, it would sing to him as he rode.

Across seven rivers, across seven mountain passes, he rode the chalk-white stallion the Wanderers had given him.
 
The wind was in his hair and the glare of the sun in his eyes.
 
Black trees stood etched along the high ridges against an unending red sunset.

Neither the decaying algae at the fords nor the mountain fruit trees with their fruit all shriveled could detract from the mission he followed.
 
The stallion seemed tireless, carrying him easily up and down hill.
 
With the sunset before him and a never-repeating song of glory accompanying him he lost all track of time, stopping neither for food nor for sleep, until he saw the dark pine woods which concealed the third force.

Valmar pulled up the stallion then and found a place to settle down behind a hedge, where he hoped no one would spot him.
 
He had not paused at any of the manors he passed, cutting around their fields with his mind already miles ahead.
 
But he was now very suddenly weary and hungry.
 
His heart hammered inside his armor, as he realized it had been doing for hours, even days.

He sat with his elbows on his knees, looking critically at the pine woods.
 
It ascended a steep hill, and at the top of the hill, hidden behind the trees, should be the manor of the trolls.
 
He had been told very little about the third force, other than that they were hollow, incomplete creatures who were distracting the lords of voima as they struggled to preserve their power; Valmar himself had decided to call them trolls.
 
He had not forgotten the being who had summoned Roric.
 
There was little to distinguish this from many other woods he had passed, but the Wanderers had told him his stallion would take him there, and he had kept track of the rivers and mountains he had crossed.

His mission was to destroy this third force.
 
Not to kill them, apparently, he thought as he took out and munched the bread and cheese he had brought with him.
 
His stallion tore at the grass but kept shifting his location, as though finding the grass sour wherever he was.
 
In this land everyone, except of course Valmar himself, was immortal, and would remain immortal unless death reached the realm.
 
But the Wanderers had told him he had great powers, great enough, it seemed, to weaken those opposed to them.

He was not sure how much the lords of voima truly wanted this force destroyed, and how much this was a test to see if he was strong enough and able enough to serve them.
 
After what had seemed weeks, even months of practicing, he felt eager to serve the lords of voima, to be found not wanting.
 
He put a tree between himself and the sunset and fell asleep.

When he awoke someone was bending over him, someone massive but with a face strangely blurred so that he could not quite see it.

He sat up fast, the singing sword already in his fist, but the being stepped back, showing him empty palms.
 
“Greetings, Valmar Hadros’s son!” he said.
 
“Welcome to our home!
 
You need not lie on the ground out here when we can entertain you within!”

Valmar rose slowly to his feet.
 
For just one second, the foot in the grass next to him looked as though it was cloven, but then its outline too became blurred.
 
“Why should I trust you when I cannot see you?” he asked cautiously.
 
This must be one of those he had come to fight, but by greeting him in so friendly a manner this being had kept him from immediate attack.

“Your friend trusts us,” said the other, slightly less blurred now.
 
Whoever he was, he looked human within the misty outlines.
 
“Roric No-man’s son.
 
He is our friend too and eats in our hall.”

“Roric?” asked Valmar, startled but not yet lowering his sword.
 
“But Roric is back under the sun.
 
We heard raven-messages that he was coming.”

“Of course he is under the sun,” said the other cheerfully, “
our
sun.
 
Or do you mortals call that something else?”
 
This he seemed to find hilarious.
 
He turned his back then on Valmar, apparently quite unafraid of him, and started walking into the woods.
 
“Come, if you want a more comfortable bed and better food and ale.”

Valmar slowly slid his sword halfway into the sheath, then picked up his pack and saddle and took his stallion by the reins, preparing to follow.
 
Could Roric have returned here in the time he was gone?

His sword was still singing, quietly now.
 
The other stopped and turned back sharply.
 
“Do you
mind
making your sword stop that infernal singing?”

“I’m sorry, I like its song,” Valmar started to say, then stopped.
 
“No.
 
I will not bother you with the voice of my sword, given to me by the Wanderers, nor will I come to your hall with you.
 
I am your enemy, and I shall not eat your bread.
 
I am sworn to serve the lords of voima.”

“So are we, so are we,” said the other hastily.
 
“Why do you want to be our enemy?
 
Roric
isn’t.
 
Come to our hall, and you can meet him.”

“If Roric is there,” said Valmar, not moving, “then tell him to come out and greet me.
 
Then I will consider your offer.”
 
The other started deeper into the woods, looking back over his shoulder several times, but Valmar did not follow.
 
Whoever this was, he appeared to have a back.

Valmar sat down again, and his stallion resumed grazing.
 
He had pictured himself coming on a war band of horrifying creatures, of sitting his horse with his singing sword upraised, defying them.
 
He had been going to tell them to trouble the lords of voima no more or else to taste his steel.
 
So far it was not as he had imagined.

But there was still much he could do as long as he did not make the mistake of accepting the invitation of food and a bed.
 
He saddled his horse slowly, carefully checking all the straps and buckles, then smiled at himself.
 
He was moving very deliberately as though waiting to see if Roric might come out to meet him after all.

He mounted then and settled his shield on his arm.
 
Even if these creatures of the third force were not a war band he could still defy them.

The stallion started forward, first at a walk, then, when kicked, at a trot and then a gallop.
 
The sword sang louder and louder as he raced along a needle-littered track through the dark pine woods and up the slope beyond.

A slim mailed figure, curly black hair escaping from under her horned helmet, leaped out in front of the white stallion.

3

The mountains had been growing closer for several days, but with agonizing slowness in spite of the speed of their horses.
 
“Gizor and Hadros may be on the king’s warship, paralleling our route by sea,” said Roric.
 
Goldmane and the spotted mare trotted side by side along a grass-grown path.
 
“A fast ship can do a hundred miles a day if the wind is right; even Goldmane can’t do that day after day.”

“You keep assuming they know where we’re going,” said Karin with a smile that was almost indulgent.
 
“Gizor must have waited to come after us until King Hadros returned home.
 
If the king sent out the arrow of war to the royal manors to raise an army before following, he may be over a week behind us.”

“We’ll find out soon enough,” he answered, not wanting to quarrel with her and making himself answer carefully to avoid doing so.
 
“I’ve never been this far north, but Hadros sometimes speaks of this area.
 
The war in which he fought when he was Valmar’s age involved two kingdoms up here.
 
Before we reach the mountains we shall have to cross an arm of the ocean that nearly cuts the peninsula in two.
 
If Gizor is ahead of us, that is where he’ll be.”

That took some of the complacency from Karin’s face.
 
“Then we will have fled all this way for nothing?
 
And we won’t reach the Hot-River Mountains and Valmar?”

“That is exactly what I mean,” said Roric, feeling darkly glad as he spoke to be able to change her mood.
 
But then he immediately was sorry:
 
far better to have her singing as they rode than giving him that look of supplication and despair.

She had seemed remarkably cheerful ever since they left the isolated manor, Roric thought.
 
She had dismissed his concerns over how the woman had known his name, saying that she herself must have let it slip, but he did not think so.
 
There was a satisfied look around Karin’s mouth that should not be there when they were running for their lives, leaving honor behind with every stride.

Though she had lain rigid next to him the first nights after they had left the faeys, the last few evenings she had fallen asleep in his arms with a faint smile on her lips, heedless of the dark clouds racing across the dark sky, the pattering amidst the leaves of tiny creatures, and the more distant creaks and calls that could have been anything from wolves to trolls.
 
Roric often lay long awake, listening to the noises and sometimes seeing, after midnight, flashes of light rippling across the northern sky.
 
But if Karin worried about whether they were outcasts, or whether she was behaving as a future queen should, it did not disturb her sleep.

When they rounded a hill and saw a little lake, shining like a jewel in the sunshine, and a house with a dock beside it, she said, “A Mirror-seer!” with delight.
 
They found the door standing ajar, but she did not seem bothered.
 
“I’m sure even Seers go places sometimes,” she said.

Roric however went inside.
 
The house was empty except for some old clothes and, in the back, the Seer’s mirrors.
 
When he held them out of curiosity to the light from the window, one mirror was empty, showing not even his own reflection, but in the other glass he saw a seated figure.

He was so startled he almost dropped the mirror, then looked unsuccessfully out the window for the source of that figure and back into the glass again.
 
Deep in the mirror, incredibly thin, with a cat curled up on his knees, sat the Seer.
 
He motioned Roric to silence, then seemed again to draw into himself.
 
Roric set the mirror down carefully and, when he found Karin lying on the dock trailing her hands in the water, told her only that the house was empty.

Even the second manor they reached had not appeared to disturb her as much as it disturbed him.
 
Like the first manor, this one was perched on a hill, but they had seen no smoke rising from the hall, and neither dogs nor housecarls came to meet them.

Roric approached cautiously, coming up behind the burial mound that stood part way down the hill.
 
It was late afternoon, and the mound’s long shadow lay across the buildings.
 
They needed more food, having eaten everything the woman had given them three days earlier, yet the silent structures could have concealed an ambush.
 
But the buildings all stood uninhabited, their doors open, their contents in confusion as though the people who lived here had fled something unexpected and unimaginable.