“Then you are the little princess who went away as a hostage,” said the Mirror-seer. “Wait here.”
He ducked into his cabin while Karin and Valmar waited outside on a dock dappled by sunlight falling through the branches overhead. Back down the valley, they could just glimpse the white spires of the castle.
Valmar jumped when the man reappeared. He was draped completely in black, only his eyes showing through slits in the cloth, and he carried two mirrors.
Karin motioned Valmar back. She stepped forward herself onto the dock with the Mirror-seer, but he waved her away as well. Valmar shivered involuntarily. The Mirror-seer’s eyes through the slits were an intense sky blue.
The man first mumbled words so low they could not understand them, but as he spoke the breezes dropped, the insects and fish were still, and the lake itself became as flat and smooth as a mirror. Then he bent over the end of his dock so that he could see his reflection and positioned the two mirrors not quite facing each other. He moved them slightly, until Valmar caught a glimpse of tiny repeating figures. For a second, he thought one of the repeating figures in the reflection was different from the rest.
After several long, completely quiet minutes, the Seer moved the mirrors again, put his own head between them, turned them both on his reflection in the lake, and suddenly stood up.
“What do you see?” asked Karin urgently.
“I see a disturbance among the Wanderers,” the little man answered slowly. He reached up to pull the black cloth off his bald head. Valmar saw with a sudden shock that he was much thinner than he had been only a quarter hour before, as though his flesh had been consumed like a candle. “I might guess what this means, but I would prefer not to say…”
“I gave you a necklace worth twenty Mirror-seers’ hides,” said Karin fiercely. “I think you will say.”
He sat down on the dock, the mirrors face-up in slack hands. Valmar, looking at them, thought that now they reflected nothing, not even sky. “It is said,” the man answered after a moment, “that the Wanderers have not always ruled earth and heaven, that there were rulers of voima before them and will be others after them…”
“Even for the lords of voima,” said Karin as though she was quoting someone, “fate does not always go well.”
“An end is fated for everyone, not just for mortals,” said the Mirror-seer, giving her a quick glance.
“But where is Roric?” she demanded.
“I did not see him with the Wanderers.” He held up a hand against her protests. “I cannot say what that means. I can only tell you what I saw. And you have heard more from me than you will hear from any other Seer.”
None of this made any sense to Valmar. “Then if you cannot tell us where Roric is,” he put in, “we’ll have to find him ourselves. Even if you won’t tell us the fate of the Wanderers, you can certainly tell us where to find them.” When the man turned to stare at him, he fumbled at his cloak. “Would this clasp make the telling easier?”
But the Mirror-seer unexpectedly smiled, a wide crack in his pale face. “Save your jewels. I can tell you where a mortal is most likely to meet a Wanderer without consulting my mirrors.”
Karin interrupted. “And where is that?” she cried.
He went on speaking to Valmar as though he had not heard her. “But I warn you, that which you must offer the Wanderers themselves may be far more than a Seer or Weaver will ask you.” He then turned to Karin. “I am surprised, as princess of this kingdom, that you did not know. A Wanderer may often be glimpsed at twilight on the top of that bald hill at the head of the valley. How you reach him and what you say to him,” turning his back abruptly, “is your problem.”
“You don’t have to come with me,” said Karin as she and Valmar rode on up the valley.
“Yes, I do. Roric told me to take care you if he didn’t come back.”
She smiled suddenly as though very pleased. But she said, “King Hadros will wonder if you are not there at the end of the day’s meeting.”
“Will they not wonder in your castle?”
She stopped smiling. “Let them wonder. Let them imagine anything they like about you and me. I could not stay in my castle, not knowing what has happened to Roric, surrounded by those people and doing nothing.”
Valmar was momentarily disconcerted by the implications of what she thought people might imagine. But he said, “If fate does not go well for the Wanderers, I wonder if that means they are being attacked by people with no backs.”
The valley was narrowing, with little room for more than the track and a few firs beside the river under steep rocky walls. The water beside them dashed white over tumbled boulders. At first the tracks had led on either hand up out of the valley, toward villages perched on the hills above it. But now their path seemed little frequented, shaded and strewn with brown fir needles. Valmar, looking ahead, saw no pass, only the river cascading as a thin white line out of a cliff face.
Karin reined in where the path died out completely. “The Seer must have meant that hill,” she said, pointing. “It’s called Graytop. I came up here on a picnic once, not long before the war, with my older brother and our nurse. We decided we were going to climb it. I doubt if we made it more than a quarter of the way up.”
Valmar looked at it critically. The hill stood out, separated from the valley walls and higher. It rose sharply from the far side of the river, its lower slopes green, the upper slopes bare granite. “If you made it a quarter of the way up, you were doing well.”
“I have always been good at climbing,” said Karin with a small smile. She dismounted. “If the Wanderer comes at twilight, that should give me about two hours. I think I can make it up there in that amount of time.”
“How shall we cross the river?” asked Valmar.
“As I recall, a little way along the bank there’s a place where we scrambled down to the water. The river’s course is very narrow there-I could jump it even when I was eight.” She turned her eyes full on him. “But I am going alone.”
Valmar swung off his own horse and seized her by the hand. “I told you I have to take care of you! I couldn’t wait here quietly while you tried to climb-perhaps slipping-and then maybe met-”
She put her free hand over his mouth. “I cannot climb in my mother’s brocade dress, so I am taking these clothes off. I am quite sure,” and for a second her lips twitched in amusement, “that your father would not want you beside me as I went up the hill naked.”
The shock silenced Valmar for a second. He dropped her hand and stared at her, wondering if she could be serious. Then he said resolutely, “In that case, you can wait here and I shall go alone.”
“You have never been as good at climbing,” she said, unfastening her cloak and turning around while she started on the lacings of her bodice. “You can help me and Roric most by staying right here. If I fall, drag me out of the river and get me back to my father’s castle if I am still alive. If I do not return, try if the Weaver back home will give you a clearer message.”
“But why do you want to risk your life like this?” he protested.
“I love Roric. Now turn your back, or you really will have King Hadros furious with you.”
He turned his back obediently, hearing the rustle of clothing coming off. He considered trying to wrestle his big sister back onto her horse, tying her to the saddle and leading the animal back down to the castle. He would seize her with his own cloak, he decided, making it hard for her to fight back while also covering up a nakedness that he startled himself by beginning to picture.
And then he realized there was silence behind him. He spun around to see a slim figure, wearing only riding gloves and a shift caught up above the knees, springing across a narrow place in the river course and scrambling up the far side.
He slowly gathered up the clothes she had dropped and folded them neatly. There were two long, blond hairs caught in the hood of her cloak. He picked them up carefully, then pulled two of his own red hairs out with a sharp tug. He leaned several tiny fir twigs together and laid the hairs across them, then struck a spark with the flint and steel at his belt. The dry twigs caught at once. The hairs twisted as though alive as they burned.