In the morning they all crossed the fields and splashed through a brackish stream to the royal burial mound.
Karin’s earliest clear memories were of when her mother had died and been put into it. The grass had long since grown over the spot where they had sliced into the mound for her, and also the spot where her youngest son, whom she had died bearing, was buried six years later. But the earth was still fresh where Karin’s drowned older brother had been buried.
Valmar stood back with the royal attendants, but Karin and her father climbed up to the top, twenty feet above the ground. Standing there, swaying slightly, she had to squeeze her eyes shut for a moment to regain her composure. She had not been back on the mound since the old queen’s funeral. For a moment the soft mud that lay over her brother’s body was the fresh earth where her mother was buried, and Karin was not a proud young woman, a future sovereign queen, but a very frightened little girl.
King Kardan lit a small fire with tinder he had brought with him. Once it was burning, the small orange blaze licking and popping in the ocean wind, he laid in it a strip of silk, a twig from the rowan in the castle courtyard, and three gray hairs from his own head. Karin hesitated a second, remembering that she had told Valmar she would burn no more offerings to the Wanderers, then glanced at her father’s profile and reached up to pull at her own hair.
As she laid the strands across the fire, she was not sure if she was offering them to the Wanderers, to the dead older brother who had seemed oddly unsaddened when she left as a hostage, as though just as happy not to be going himself, or to her living father, whose pain and loss were so visible on his face that she had to look away.
After a minute, Kardan reached out to squeeze his daughter’s hand. She forced herself to meet his eyes. He was no longer looking inward, at his loss, but directly at her, and it struck her that she was now all he had left. Standing on the mound where her ancestors had been buried since time out of memory, standing above their very bones, she felt the full weight of their tradition fall on her. When the dead were gone, it was up to the living to remember them, to honor them, to carry on all that they had begun.
Her mother and both her brothers were now in Hel where all mortals went, the brave and the honorable, the depraved and the cowardly, venerable grandfathers and babies who had lived no longer than to take one breath.
People did not return from Hel except in the oldest tales, but then beings without backs also did not appear to mortals except in those stories. Even so, those who had died peacefully or in accidents should not walk again if suitably buried. She had heard somewhere when very young, probably something the serving-maids had said that she was not supposed to overhear, that one could reach Hel by digging into a burial mound. But if so there must be more involved, for all castles and manors had large mounds into which new graves were dug every generation.
The stories had never given a clear picture of Hel, though she had the impression that it was a murky and confused land, where one’s memories and even identity slowly disappeared. But on one point all the stories were explicit.
There were no Wanderers in Hel.
2
Roric picked his way through the oak woods. It was an overcast night and hard to see, but the cold damp air was exhilarating. He sucked it into his lungs as he proceeded slowly in the direction of the castle. He did not know if the Wanderers would try for him again, since the “third force” had reached him first this time, or how King Hadros would react to his return, but very soon he would see Karin again.
He smiled in the darkness. He could understand why Karin had never told him about the faeys. He and she had come to trust each other so recently, and had had so little time for conversation in the short weeks since they had first declared their love for each other, that she might not have felt easy in telling him about these foolish friends from her childhood. But he had a message for her from them. They were becoming worried because they had not seen her in a long time.
He stopped, a hand against the rough bark of a tree, listening. Something was moving across the ground ahead of him, something heavy. It rustled the grass and twigs and made a curious spongy sound as it came. He drew his sword, slowly so as to make no noise, and put his back to the tree.
And then the clouds above him lifted for a moment, and the moon shone down on the oak woods, several days short of the full.
Crouched on the hill before him was the troll.
Mostly head and mouth and long powerful arms, with a small soft body that it had to drag along when out of the stream, it lay on the hill looking at him with eyes bigger around than ale horns. “What have you done with my horse, Roric No-man’s son?”
Its voice was deep and indistinct, soft like its body but packed with menace like its teeth.
Roric turned his blade so that the moonlight flashed on it. “Get out of my way, troll, unless you wish to test my steel. I have no time for riddles and games of chance tonight.”
The clouds obscured the moon again, and Roric could hear the troll laughing. Its laugh was much worse than its voice, wild, irrational and threatening. But something else was wrong. The moon had been just past the full when he galloped away from Gizor and the manor, and he could have sworn that was only a week ago, not nearly four weeks. How long had he really been gone?
“You should know mortal steel will not be much use against a troll here, ” came the soft dark voice again.
“It will slow you down if you intend to eat me.”
“No, not tonight, Roric No-man’s son. I caught a deer last week, and I am still feeding nicely. Did you never wonder why I didn’t eat that horse?”
Roric had been about to rush past. Now that he knew where the troll was, he should be able to get by it and on to the castle well ahead of it. The troll was certainly dangerous, and no children had ever been allowed out of the castle alone after dark, but it moved slowly enough that Hadros had never felt it a threat worth rousting out from under his bridge. Rather, he left it there as an additional guard to his castle.
But instead of hurrying away Roric went still, judging the troll’s position by its snorting breath and the squishing sounds it made when it moved. It might know something he should have known himself long ago. “Goldmane is in the realm of the Wanderers,” he said slowly. “Is that where he came from originally?”
At the time, two years ago, he had not questioned where the troll had acquired the horse. All he had seen as he stood by the troll’s bridge at twilight was the magnificence of the stallion. It had seemed unsurprising that a creature of voima like the troll should have it. All that was surprising was that the troll had been willing to engage in riddles and a game of dice for Goldmane-the dice had come back to his hand wet and sticky from the troll’s-without insisting that if Roric lost he should be eaten on the spot.
And now that he thought about it, he had beaten the troll rather easily. It must surely have known the old riddles about the egg and about the creature that goes on four legs, then two, then three.
The troll chuckled. “I am not sure if the one who sent you your horse originally will have time or attention to send you another now that you’ve lost him, especially with the change is coming.”
Roric moved along the sandy hill a short way to keep his distance, thinking hard. The trolls of the Wanderers’ realm, the “third force,” must already have had their eyes on him two years ago and deliberately given him his horse. It was Goldmane, he thought with dismay, who had taken the bit in his teeth and gone through the stone gateway out of Hadros’s kingdom while he was still hesitating. If he could not trust the stallion, he was back to his own voima and the little bone charm.