King Kardan stood on top of the burial mound, a fresh-cut rowan twig and his dagger in his hands. The last time he had stood like this, ready to swear an oath to the massive, black-bearded king who waited at the foot of the mound, his wife had been under his feet but all his children had been alive. Now both his sons were buried here, and he did not know if his daughter still lived beneath the sun.
He slowly slit the twig lengthwise, letting its red sap run out on his palm, then touched the dagger point to his finger. He squeezed out a drop of blood and closed his fist, mixing it with the rowan sap. From here he could see the headland above the harbor, but he was too far away to hear the sounds of his ship being readied for sea.
“I swear on rowan and steel,” he said loudly and clearly, “that I have not harmed in any way Valmar Hadros’s son, that I have not ordered any harm done to him or had word of any. If I lie, may the lords of death take me living into the depths of Hel.” The wind whirled his words and carried them far away.
When he descended from the mound, making his way carefully down the steep incline, King Hadros slapped him unexpectedly on the back. “I believe you, Kardan. You swore to me truly ten years ago, when you swore you would pay the tribute faithfully and raise no open or hidden revolt against me.”
Kardan nodded, resenting the deliberate reminder that for ten years he had been a tributary king. “If we do not find Valmar,” he said stiffly, “even though I did not harm him, I shall of course pay you compensation. He was here in my castle under my protection.”
Hadros rested a hand on his shoulder, and his eyes flashed from beneath heavy eyebrows. “I shall take no compensation for my oldest son. If he is safe, well and good. If he is dead, his killer shall pay the blood-guilt with his own blood.”
He still had his hand on Kardan’s shoulder, either in fellowship or as a veiled threat, as they started slowly back toward the castle. “Now,” he said, “tell me more of what your daughter said of Valmar’s disappearance.”
“ You do not believe such stories?” asked Kardan in surprise. “All she said was that he had left with a Wanderer, one who had often been seen on Graytop over the years-where in fact no Wanderer has ever been seen. I know some of your beliefs and practices are different north of the channel, but even you cannot believe that the lords of voima ever appear in the flesh to mortals.”
“I would not have believed it a short time ago,” the other king said very quietly, “but Roric went to their land and returned again.”
Sensing a gap in Hadros’s confidence, Kardan asked quickly, “Who is this Roric, anyway? Where did he come from? And what assurance can you give me that he has not kidnapped my daughter at your orders?”
Kardan expected the other king to reply heatedly, but when he answered it was still in that ominously quiet tone. “Roric is my foster-son, raised in my court; he was found at the castle gates as a baby. If he has kidnapped Karin it was certainly not at my orders! You should know I do not war on women.”
He took his hand from Kardan’s shoulder to pull a ring from the pouch at his belt. “I gave him this when he reached manhood and we swore our oaths to each other. I ordered him, just the other day, to forget Karin, not to come here. He threw his ring at my feet, defied me, and came anyway.” Hadros chuckled grimly. “Maybe the only reason I did not run him through on the spot is because I would have done the same at his age.”
“You must know him well,” said Kardan, hearing the desperation in his own voice and scarcely caring. The two kings had stopped walking to face each other. “What will Roric do to her? You have, what is it, another two or three sons besides Valmar? Karin was all I had left.”
Hadros smiled, suddenly and surprisingly. “You fear the lad will hurt her? Not very likely.” He turned to walk again; there was a slight limp in his gait. “Roric first asked, it must be two months ago now, for my permission to woo her. I refused it, of course. But she told me she intends to marry him-he must have spoken to her anyway.” He watched Kardan’s face as he spoke, and smiled again, although with tight lips. “She never said anything to you about that, eh?”
“No.” Kardan looked straight ahead as they walked. They were almost back to the castle now. Karin intending to marry Roric! If he had appeared suddenly last night, he must be the unexpected assailant whom his guards had almost said was a wight, and she must have decided at once to go with him. But why had she said nothing to him?
“You don’t like it that she didn’t tell you?” asked Hadros, in a tone of commiserating fellowship that seemed intended to drive home that he knew Karin far better than her own father did.
Kardan did not answer. The other king seemed willing to forget that they had once been sworn enemies, but he himself was not yet ready to become friends with the man who had defeated him ten years ago and who must now, somehow, be behind the disappearance of his daughter.
“Well, Kardan, I think there are things neither Valmar nor Roric has told me either.” Hadros shook his head. “By this time, I had expected-as had you-to be watching my sons and my young warriors reach manhood, with all the energy and courage I had twenty-five years ago, and all the wisdom I could give them now. It has not worked out quite as I hoped, but we may have to make the best of what we have. I fear you and I are too old, my friend, to start over.”
Inside, Kardan left Hadros seated in the hall with an ale horn while he went to change out of his ceremonial clothing. He was furious both with the king and with Karin, as well as with Roric, this foundling who had grown up to be one of Hadros’s warriors. How could she have deceived him like this, living here with her father in her own home, back in the kingdom she would someday rule as sovereign queen, saying nothing about the man she apparently hoped to marry?
“Why had you not fitted out your ship this spring?” Hadros demanded as he rejoined him. “If it had been in the water we could have followed them. Such a good ship is a shame to leave under the tarpaulins when the ice is off the channel! When I saw all you had ready were those little skiffs, I knew we could never catch my ship.”
“I was too busy preparing for the All-Gemot,” said Kardan testily, seating himself on the bench beside Hadros. He did not add what Hadros must surely remember, even if he feigned to forget, that he had had a longship in the water this spring, the ship which his eldest son and Queen Arane’s heir had broken against the Cauldron Rocks. “Unlike some kings I could mention,” he added, “I do not need a ship to go to war or raiding in the southlands every summer.”
“Most kings do not anymore,” agreed Hadros, looking at his ale.
“And I knew that if my ship was ready for sea, some young hothead among the retinues of the Fifty Kings might decide to steal it. At least it is still here, unlike yours!”
He also did not mention that ever since the end of the war sailing had made him queasy, so that several springs in the last ten years he had not fitted out a ship at all. Since that last desperate dash into the harbor and flight to within his walls, when Hadros had fired his ships and rounded up all the tenants who had not been able to retreat into the castle and threatened them with the sword, when his warriors had stood ready to put the torch to Kardan’s fields, and a quick inventory of the food inside the castle told them they could not feed everyone now there for more than a few weeks, he had not liked being out on the channel.
“But tell me,” Kardan said with a new thought, “who could have commanded your ship from my harbor? Would your seamen obey Roric in the assumption that he acted at your orders? Or would he have had to hold a knife to the captain’s throat?”
Hadros looked up sharply. “They might obey him and they might not. I had not told anyone I was furious with the lad, but since we did not keep our voices down some may have guessed.” He gave a grim smile. “You had not guessed yourself, before I told you, that I came here furious with him?”
“No.” This was something to consider later. “Would they sail wherever he said?”
“If he tried to take the ship by violence,” said Hadros darkly, “my seamen will have killed him by now. If they sailed with him willingly, it would only have been back to my kingdom. And the raven I sent this morning will mean there’s a welcome waiting for him.” His lips came back from his teeth in what looked very little like a smile.
“And Valmar?”
“Valmar my seamen would obey, taking him wherever he wanted to go. And,” Hadros added after a short pause, “probably your daughter as well.”
“Karin?” asked Kardan in amazement. “She would never steal your ship.”
“She is an active and determined lass,” said Hadros. “She may be your daughter, but for the last ten years she has been living with me. ” He looked at Kardan from under his eyebrows, seeming amused. “Where do you think they have gone? And are all three together, or only two, and which two?”
Kardan rose briskly, wanting to reestablish some authority in his own castle. “It will take all day for them to finish the caulking. Come with me, and we will consult the Mirror-seer.”
