relations were like between them before we were born. They have both long been numbered among the Fifty Kings. They had plans and wars-and alliances-for many years before we appeared and started thinking of them only as they affected us. Might I not have been a hostage left over from an earlier conflict? Or might not the war we remember have begun because your father-or, I should say, our father-objected to some aspect of how I was being raised?”
“My father would have told me,” she said against his shoulder.
“He may have intended to tell you, but remember, you were only home a short time, and he did not know I was your lover. Might this not be why Hadros refused to let us wed?”
“The witch would have told us!” Karin gasped.
“The witch wants to unite everyone, mortals and immortals alike. That is why I can never know my father.”
She was sobbing in good earnest now. She threw herself on him, giving him tear-soaked kisses. “I don’t care! I don’t care if you are my brother! I love you and don’t want anyone else! It’s too late anyway. We’ll stay here, Roric, and no one will ever know!”
He held her gently until her wild sobs subsided. “This goes beyond blood-guilt,” he said quietly then. “We are both cursed already, and the curse would be made far, far worse if we committed incest in full knowledge.”
“Then we might as well die,” she said, a little more calmly but in tones of black despair. “In the old stories, the brother and sister who did not recognize each other and became lovers threw themselves over a cliff. We’ll find Valmar and send him home, then you and I can go down to Hel together.”
“No, remember? The witch did not think that would work.”
“I wasn’t thinking of seeking death for the Wanderers,” she said in a voice lacking all expression. “I would seek it for us.”
4
The iron gates of the fortress resounded with the blows of the battering ram, but no one looked out from the narrow windows above or shouted defiance at them.
“Are you all dead in there?” King Kardan yelled up at the empty windows.
“Just cautious,” said Hadros, sharpening his knife. “They know we want Roric and the princess back again and are hoping we will pay well for them, so they hope to frighten us with this silence.”
The night before, after the terrible day in which they had not found Karin, lost Roric, lost one man to the dragon, and for a while thought they had lost a great many more of their warriors until the final one staggered into camp by moonlight, they had at last buried the dead. They had raised a great mound of earth, sand, and stones above the tide line and sung the funeral songs; the best songs were for Gizor One-hand.
“I should never have told Gizor I wished I was rid of Roric,” Hadros had said regretfully as the two kings rolled up in their blankets on the pebbled beach by the salt river. “I am getting too old to do things like that without thinking through the consequences.”
Kardan had not been sure whether to be more horrified at hearing Hadros say he had intended to kill his foster-son or at the black-bearded king expressing regret over anything.
Today they had started systematically hunting for the raiders, keeping careful watch for the dragon though it had not reemerged from its lair. “The old tales say dragons only have to eat once a week,” commented Hadros. Now, after a long day’s searching of the stony lower slopes of the mountains they had found the raiders’ fortress, but if anyone was home they were not answering the pounding on their front door.
“Nothing here to build ladders,” said Hadros, “but the stone is rough enough that some men should be able to climb up to those windows if no one’s defending them. Want to send a few of your lads, Kardan?”
But defenders appeared at last as two of Kardan’s men scaled the sides of the gate. They shot at the men from the narrow windows above, missing but sending them scrambling hastily down again, and bringing a flurry of answering arrows from the attackers.
“I could threaten to fire their fields,” said Hadros with a sudden grin. “That brought you out quick enough, Kardan, as I recall! But I haven’t seen any fields except those scorched ones across the river. They must live by raiding ever since their castle burned. A good life for a young man, but no life for someone who used to be one of the Fifty Kings.”
Kardan was not interested in how this renegade king might live. Karin must be inside the castle, and he would set her free if he had to rip it down with his bare hands. “Again!” he shouted at the men with the battering ram, and again the ram smacked into the wood and iron of the gate.
The defenders had disappeared from the windows again. Late afternoon shadows lay across the fortress before them. “They should be shooting at us,” said Hadros with a frown.
Kardan glared at him, wondering how the black-bearded king could be so calm about it all, could even joke when his oldest son had been snatched away to unreachable realms, and when the princess he had raised like a daughter was held captive by an outlaw.
But then he noticed that Hadros was still sharpening his knife. He had brought the blade to a fineness that could split a hair yet was continuing to stroke away with the whetstone, now removing half an inch of edge.
“Are they trying to make us uneasy by their silence,” said Hadros, “or are they really as confused in there as it seems?” But then he laughed grimly, and the blade snapped in his hands. “Maybe Roric and the princess are leading them a merry chase already! Gizor told us she has a handiness with a knife I’d never appreciated, and you told me Roric is good enough to defeat my weapons-master in a fair fight. I’ll back those two against any renegade king.”
“Again!” yelled Kardan, paying no attention. The frame around the castle gate was beginning to split. The men all shouted as the ram struck again and again. Nails burst out of the hinges. A narrow gap between the two halves of the gate appeared and grew wider with every blow. A final rush with the battering ram, and the gate burst open. The two kings’ men rushed through, swords upraised, shouting their war-cries.
Here at last they met resistance as wild-eyed armed warriors sprang in front of them. But the kings’ men outnumbered the defending warriors, who seemed strangely disoriented considering they were fighting for their own fortress, and they only had to kill two before capturing the rest with no loss of life themselves.
“I think it’s a trap,” said Hadros, looking around the dim and echoing hall. “Where are all the raiders who attacked us by the river? This was a defense with no heart in it and no mind behind it.”
Kardan was ready to rush wildly down the passages in search of Karin, but Hadros insisted they go slowly. Stepping quietly, looking around every corner before turning it, the kings and their men explored the fortress. The rooms were dug into the rock as much as built on it, and everywhere was comfortless, dank, and bone-chillingly cold. They pushed open the doors cautiously, sent one person ahead alone through every narrow opening with the rest tense and waiting for ambush, and jerked open every chest and every storage bin.
And at the end of the hour they had found a beautifully-made lyre, wrapped in rags, at the bottom of a chest; four women; two wounded men; and no one else in the fortress beside the warriors they had already captured.
“Where can they have gone?” said Kardan in despair, a question none of the people here seemed to want to answer. “Where can they have taken Karin?”
“They might be down at the river trying to fire our ship,” commented Hadros. “Queen Arane said she could direct the defense quite well by herself-should we go see how successful she’s been?”
Kardan shook his head. “Why allow us to take their mountain fortress just for the chance to destroy our ship? Unless they wanted to steal it and go somewhere!”
“It’s your daughter who steals ships,” said Hadros, but his eyes narrowed. “This renegade king-Eirik, wasn’t that his name? — may have decided to get out of here and start over again somewhere further from a dragon. In which case they really might have taken my ship.” He yelled to his warriors. “Come on, everybody, back down the mountain! Yes, we’re taking all the prisoners!”
It was twilight when they emerged from the fortress and full night by the time they found their way, dragging the prisoners and carrying the food and blankets-all the booty the fortress afforded beyond the lyre-down the twisting, narrow tracks to the river. All the way Kardan’s heart was pounding hard, as he imagined Karin being
