Any man could kill an outlaw with no bloodguilt falling on him. Valmar drummed his fingers on his belt and wondered if it would be hard to kill him, if the outlawed king would fight with desperate, inhuman strength. But he would not even know him if he met him.
When Valmar finally slipped away, he noticed that many of the attendants who had accompanied the kings had also left the proceedings, and even two men he was fairly sure were kings themselves stood some distance off, talking to each other. No one paid him any attention as he went up to the castle.
It was a castle like none he had ever seen, its smooth walls reaching high above his head, towers on every corner. Pennants snapped from the towers, and all the stones were whitewashed. There was a moat where swans glided, seeming to ignore him pointedly. A guard in livery as elegant as his own best clothing stopped him at the bridge.
“I would like to see the Princess Karin. Tell her- Tell her it’s her little brother.”
When he was escorted a few minutes later across the bridge and into the courtyard, he was amazed to see that everything here seemed built of stone, and built connecting with everything else. There was nothing like the cluster of weathered oak buildings that surrounded the stone hall at home. He was led up a long stair, through a narrow room, back outside, and up another set of stairs before reaching the great hall.
Karin was sitting in a window seat, reading a book he recognized, a book she had made herself by sewing together sheets of parchment. In it were written, in a firm though childish hand, the favorite tales she had heard as a little girl. She had told him once that she had made it before coming to Hadros’s kingdom, not realizing that many of the same old tales would be told there as well-and also not yet realizing, she said, how much different tales, or even different versions of the same tale, might contradict each other. She read it now with a frown and her full concentration, as though hoping in it to find certainty.
Valmar had not been sure of his welcome, but at the sound of his step Karin sprang up to meet him and took his hands as though she had last spoken with him much longer ago than yesterday. She sat him beside her in the window, from which they could look out at the tents spread across the fields between the castle and the river. He looked at her carefully, expecting to see her somehow different inside the elaborate gold dress. But she was still his big sister.
“I’ve wanted to talk to you for days,” he said. “Everyone heard about the-the man Roric went with, and you know Roric told me it was a Wanderer. But he said something else too.”
Karin bent closer, her gray eyes so intense he had to look away.
Now that it came to it he found it unexpectedly hard to say. “I should have told you this before, but, I don’t know, I didn’t like to say it before Father and my brothers. Roric said to tell you he would always love you.”
Karin sat back slowly, her hands folded and her eyes closed. “Thank you, Valmar,” she said after a moment.
He had expected more reaction from her. “Did you already know he loved you?”
She opened her eyes and smiled with just the corners of her mouth. “Yes. I already knew.”
“Well, I did not,” said Valmar, then stopped himself when he realized he was sounding petulant. After a brief pause he went on, “I know he is not really our brother, but I was still very surprised-we’ll probably all marry someone someday, but I think I had assumed it was someone we had not yet even met. I don’t want to say it’s not right, but…”
Karin was still smiling, this time at him rather than at her thoughts, as though pleased with him. Valmar remembered what else Roric had said, that he should take care of Karin if he himself married her, but decided this could not have been part of the message.
“Did he say anything else?” she asked.
“That was all his message-no, he also said to tell you that he had at last found a place for a man without a family.”
“Did he seem-happy to go?”
Valmar hesitated. “Not happy. But also not entirely grim. It was almost like-this may not make sense-like a fierce joy.” He fell silent a moment, remembering his own wild yearning, the ache akin to homesickness for something he had never seen, which had sent him galloping fruitlessly after them. “But, Karin! I can’t believe it really was a Wanderer. And why would he want to leave home anyway?”
“He has chosen honor over love,” said Karin, staring fixedly out the window. Every now and then, distant voices from the Gemot reached them.
Valmar sat thinking that any warrior should make that choice, but neither of them spoke for a moment.
“Are the Fifty Kings well occupied?” she asked suddenly, her hand closing on his arm.
“Yes, I think so. Your father read a list of all the cases they had to hear today, and they hadn’t gotten very far down it when I left-and then several people raised additional issues.”
“Good. Then no one will miss us. There used to be a Mirror-seer living at the lake just a short way up the valley.”
They took horses from the royal stables to ride south, up along the river. Karin had hurried straight from the hall to the stables and been polite only with a visible effort when the chief ostler had welcomed her and then carefully selected the finest and most suitable horses for the princess and her companion. She settled herself on a sidesaddle, which Valmar had never seen anyone use before, as they rode away from the castle.
Hills rose on either side of the valley, steep-sided and almost bare of vegetation. But the valley itself was lush and green. The road followed the river’s winding for three miles, then zigzagged up the side of an escarpment that formed a natural dam. Beyond a lake was tucked, brilliant blue and smelling faintly of mud.
“I know you’re supposed to be able to influence the lords of voima by burning them offerings,” said Valmar. “But what will you have to offer them to make them tell you why they took Roric?”
“In the old tales,” said Karin distantly, “the more desperate the request, the more precious the sacrifice. You may have heard the story of the woman who called on the Wanderers to restore her dead husband. One finally came to her while she was brewing and offered to restore her man, but demanded in return ‘that which was between her and the vat’…”
Valmar looked at his big sister in horrified surmise a moment but said nothing and forced himself to dismiss the thought.
The Mirror-seer was where Karin remembered, living in a tree-sheltered cabin on the shore. He was as round as a ball and completely bald, and he was fishing from the dock in front of his cabin when they rode up. Waterstriders made constant little ripples in the water by the dock, and the fish were coming up to feed.
“And you expect me to tell you the doings of the Wanderers?” he demanded, apparently highly displeased to be taken from his fishing. “Shall I also explain the workings of fate?”
“It would be most agreeable if you would,” said Valmar. He felt he ought to speak on Karin’s behalf, even though he had never met a Mirror-seer before.
But she interrupted. “I am the heiress of this kingdom,” she said, looking levelly at the round little man, “and would like to establish a close relationship with you.” She reached up slowly to unfasten her necklace. “A man named Roric No-man’s son has been taken away, perhaps by the Wanderers, and I would like to know if he still lives beneath the sun.”
The feel of the heavy gold links in his hand did much to restore the Mirror-seer’s good humor. Valmar, watching him, was surprised and a little relieved at how ordinary he seemed, not like the Weaver, who could have been any age or any gender and who always appeared just when one thought oneself completely alone.