stood out among the light-colored sand and pebbles. They stayed just ahead of the waves that broke rhythmically against the shore. But there was nothing obvious washed up on the sand to attract them.
And then one of the ravens spoke. “Karin,” it said.
The word came out all sharp-edged and harsh, but it was certainly her name.
“It’s a message!” Valmar cried. “It must be a message from-” But here he stopped. His father, he knew, was one who spoke to ravens, but this was a strange way to send word to his foster-daughter.
But she had already rushed forward and dropped to her knees on the wet sand, heedless of her dress. “Yes, I am Karin,” she said, looking from one raven to another.
One spoke: “Karin. Roric is coming.”
And then the other: “Karin. Valmar. Beware of Roric.”
Then with deep caws the birds rose, almost in her face, and flapped away, back over the dark, foam-dotted waves of the channel. A single black feather drifted down to the wet sand.
Valmar hurried to Karin and helped her up. “Was that one message,” he asked, “or two?”
But her face was joyous, transformed. “Roric is coming! That means he’s safe!”
“But the other raven said to beware of him!”
“It must only have meant to watch for him. Valmar, he’s coming!” She startled him by hugging him hard, then took his arm to walk back to the castle.
“So he’s returned from the land of the Wanderers-or wherever he has been,” said Valmar. “Do you think he’s won treasure there?”
“I don’t care,” said Karin, still smiling so widely everything she said came out as a laugh. “I just want him with me again.”
“It will be good to see him,” Valmar agreed. With Roric here-although he did not say this to Karin-this plan to have him marry his big sister would all be forgotten. He told himself he would be glad for that.
Karin turned suddenly. “I cannot return to the castle. I must go down to the harbor. He may be crossing the channel even now!”
Valmar held her by the arms until she looked up at him. “Karin,” he said quietly, “it’s time for dinner. I don’t know if you’ve noticed these last few days, but your father is worried about you. That’s part of the reason I’ve always been with you-to keep him from sending his warriors along to watch you. Do you want him asking Queen Arane to come analyze what is wrong?”
“No, no, of course not,” she said with a laugh, but she looked yearningly toward the harbor as he steered her back home.
But at first light she went down to the harbor alone, not waiting for Valmar, not saying anything other than that she would not be back all day.
King Kardan took Valmar aside. “This may sound curious coming from her father, lad,” he said, striding back and forth in the middle of his hall, hands behind his back and his eyes down. “But I no longer feel I know my daughter. She grew into a woman in the years she was away, and I cannot hug her or tease her back into good humor the way I might have ten years ago. I had expected her to be joyful to be home again.”
“Oh, I’m sure she’s happy to be here,” Valmar stammered.
“She may have been at first,” said the king, shooting Valmar a quick glance. He had the same direct gray eyes as Karin. “But since we went to the burial mound-or even since that second day she was here, during the All- Gemot, when she went on that long ride with you and suddenly decided to spend the night in King Hadros’s tents again-she has been distracted, uneasy… I would have to call her miserable.”
Valmar actually agreed but did not want to say so.
Kardan put a hand on his shoulder so that Valmar had to join him in his restless pacing. “She told me she thinks of you as her little brother.”
“I am not her little brother,” Valmar startled himself by thinking. “I am going to be her husband.”
“She seems more content to be with you than with anyone else,” said the king, who fortunately could not read his thoughts. “Do you understand why she is miserable? Can you stay with her, cheer her as you may?”
An unexpected vision of how he might cheer her flashed through Valmar’s mind. He pushed it firmly away. Karin had been too distracted to sense his changing feelings for her, and he hoped to hide them from her forever.
“I think she misses our foster-brother,” he said. “His name is Roric; he was brought up in Hadros’s court along with the rest of us. But he should be coming here shortly to see her, and then I expect she will be more content to settle down. You see, he was away from the castle when we left for the All-Gemot, and she never had a chance to tell him good-bye.”
“Curious,” said Kardan. “She has never spoken of him.”
“You see,” added Valmar in what he hoped were friendly and confidential tones, “she doesn’t like to speak to you too much of life in Hadros’s court. She’s afraid you’ll think she considers it more her home than this, her real home. But I’m sure in a few more days- And especially once she’s seen Roric-”
The king nodded slowly. “Then if she is waiting for this Roric at the harbor, I hope he comes soon.” He slapped Valmar on the back. “You are a good little brother, lad. And when you are twice as old as you are now, I am sure you shall be a worthy successor to your father. At least I will not need to worry on my deathbed of a renewal of war between our kingdoms!”
Valmar kept thinking of the strangeness of the raven-messages. Who had sent them? Roric himself, King Hadros, or someone else entirely? Raven-messages were by their very nature brief, so if one had more than a few words to convey one needed more than one bird, but one of these messages and not the other had been addressed to both of them.
He did not like to say anything to Karin, who looked forward to seeing Roric with a joy that bordered on pain. Her face was openly eager, and her eyes looked right past him to the ocean beyond. But the message to beware of Roric suggested that something important had changed. Had he come back from the Wanderers’ realm with no back?
Three ships came into the harbor that day, but none of them bore Roric. As the sun grew lower, Karin’s eagerness became mixed with misgiving. She stared at the waves, rough under a strong wind, and kept murmuring about the Cauldron Rocks until Valmar realized that that was where her older brother’s ship had foundered.
She would not return to the castle that day even for meals, but ate the bread and cheese Valmar arranged to have brought to them while standing on the headland above the cove, straining to see into the distance. She was dressed like a queen in gold brocade, but under the imperious facade lay the terror of a girl whom Valmar longed to take in his arms and comfort.
But he did not dare. He knew that her expression had nothing to do with him. The moon was rising, when at last he took her by the elbow.
“Karin, listen to me. No more ships will arrive tonight.”
She turned toward him sharply, as though she had forgotten his presence, then clutched at him for support. “Do you think- Do you think-” He could sense all the questions she could not ask: did he think Roric’s ship had gone down, did he think Roric might have fallen overboard during the crossing, did he think Roric had been knifed in the night?
“I think he will be here tomorrow, or perhaps the next day.” He had both his arms around her, his beard in her hair, and rocked her gently as though she was a child. “You know there are not nearly as many merchant ships that cross the channel as there are that stay on this side,” he murmured reassuringly. “None of the ships we saw today came from the north. And you know that with the sea this rough the ships will postpone their crossing anyway. It may take Roric a few days to find a ship coming here-I doubt my father will lend him his! Or he may have to take passage to another of the southern kingdoms, then ride over here.”
“Then he may already be back at the castle!” cried Karin.
“No, no, of course not.” Her face was clear and pale in the moonlight before him. “You know they would have sent word. But you have already frightened your father enough. Come back home now, and be yourself again.”
“I could do it in Hadros’s court,” she murmured, mostly under her breath. “Why cannot I do it here?”
They walked slowly back toward the castle. She shivered without a cloak, so he wrapped his around both of them. His arm went around her shoulders, and hers around his waist. The west darkened, but the eastern sky was light where the nearly full moon floated. He could feel her breath warm against his neck, her softness against his side. This, he thought, was how lovers walked.
