and collapsed in agony.
For the lord of voima had not meant her buckle. And she had not known until that moment that she had been with child.
CHAPTER TWO
1
Across the meadow, into the forest, through the tangle of the alder thickets, Roric followed the rider. The other’s horse went effortlessly through the densest underbrush, and Goldmane followed.
It disturbed him that he could not see the rider clearly. Maybe it was the sun’s glare, or the speed they were going, or the thin blue mist that rose from the boggy soil under their horses’ hooves, but when Roric looked at him directly all he could see was a shadowy outline.
And yet he had seen his face, thin and yellow, dark eyes within enormous bony eye sockets burning like the last coals on the hearth on a winter’s dawn. If it was a Wanderer who had sat and talked with him outside the manor’s guesthouse, this could not be the same one.
They came up from the boggy lowlands at last, their horses scrambling on the thin soil that overlay a steep rocky hill. Roric looked around, thinking they could not have come so far so fast. This hill marked the western boundary of King Hadros’s kingdom, and even by road and sea it should have taken a full day to reach here, yet it appeared that only an hour had passed since the rider appeared at the mares’ pen.
“Where are we?” he called to his companion. “Where are we going?”
The other did not answer or even acknowledge that he had heard. Roric looked ahead, toward the top of the hill, and saw two lichen-spotted standing stones that he could never before recall seeing, leaning together as though to form a gate.
The rider went straight through. Goldmane made to follow, but Roric held him back for a moment, looking off toward the distant sandstone escarpment that rose over Hadros’s castle. Whoever this person was, he seemed able to move space and time.
But then the stallion jerked his head against the bit and followed through the gateway of the standing stones.
And emerged into a world Roric had never seen.
2
The sea wind blew in Karin’s face, stinging her eyes and whipping her hair. She took a deep breath of clean salty air and abruptly felt awake for the first time in ten days.
It had been like a dream during a bad fever, events rushing at her too fast, incomprehensible. She must have slept during that time, but she could only picture herself working, or else lying fully awake in bed, longing achingly for Roric. She had prepared for the trip to the All-Gemot with no conscious memory of having done so, packing her clothes, making sure that Hadros and Valmar had their own finery, choosing what herbs to include in her medicine chest, preparing food to take, instructing the maids on what would need to be done in her absence.
When Valmar had tried to talk to her about a person he said could not possibly have been a Wanderer, when the king raged so that the men went to their loft immediately after dinner without drinking with him, she went about her chores with her face placid and her eyes devoid of any expression.
Now she seemed suddenly aware of herself again, the skin on her cheeks, the way her cloak tugged at her shoulders, the feel of the smooth railing under her hands. For ten days she had been constantly busy, constantly moving, but all at once there was nothing to do except watch the sailors and the sea. She ran a finger along the broad links of her gold necklace; it had been much too heavy for a child, but her father had given it to her to wear when she went to Hadros’s castle, and she would wear it coming back.
The king joined her at the railing. The ship ran with its red sail taut, rising up on the long swell that had come across hundreds of miles of empty ocean to the channel, then sliding into a trough rimmed by waves that seemed they must surely sink the ship in the next second. But the ship always rose again, the foam white under its bow, and the lines creaking overhead.
She looked at Hadros thoughtfully. He too looked almost himself again. While she emerged from a fevered dream, he was waking up from a furious nightmare.
“Be glad I did not let you marry him, little princess,” he said with a visible effort at good humor. “You would not want to be coming home to your father to tell him you had married a man who ran at the first challenge.”
“He did not run,” she said, then wondered if she had already said this. If so, the king had apparently not heard it.
“He ran from me, to save his skin if not his honor,” said Hadros, looking grimly out across the waves, “and he had best not come back with a wheedling tale in search of forgiveness.”
Karin wondered if this was an admission by the king that he had indeed intended to have Roric killed-even if he had regretted his intent. If he did run, Hadros, she thought, it was so he would not have to kill you. “The Wanderers want him,” she said, “and no one can refuse a summons from the lords of voima.”
“Do you actually believe the boy’s story?” he asked with a frown. “Valmar should try to be more consistent with the stories he concocts.”
“Of course I believe him,” she shot back. Valmar was up in the prow. She had a vague memory of him looking miserable, but now he eagerly strained to see the distant line of land ahead. “All the housecarls-your younger sons-support his story.”
“Crazy stories,” growled the king. “Glad he’s gone.”
Karin thought without saying that Hadros did not seem glad he had driven Roric away. Instead she said, “Do not think of Roric as someone who ran. Think of him as someone who has gone to use his strength and his courage to win renown for himself.”
And who went without saying farewell.
“The lords of voima do not appear to mortals except in the old tales,” said the king, “and then only to great heroes.” He was no longer frowning but instead looked uneasy, as though he had been using his fury to avoid thinking about something disturbing. “A person with no back,” he muttered. “There are plenty of creatures of voima walking this earth…”
“Did you ask the Weaver?”
Hadros did not answer for a moment. Waves slapped against the side of the ship, and white spray danced in the air. “I went to his cave to burn an offering before our voyage, of course,” he said at last. After another long pause he added, “Weavers have never been known for answering questions they did not want to answer.”
The Fifty Kings were encamped in the broad meadow before her father’s castle. Tents of linen, of elk hide, or of silk stood side by side, their lines tied to the same posts. Rough men like Gizor One-hand and graceful warriors with curled hair and delicate stilettos hanging from slender hips met and talked while their masters waited in their tents for the Gemot to begin, or else went with hoods pulled up for quiet conversations with other kings.
Next to the royal tents was another encampment, this one of merchants. “There have always been peddlers,” King Hadros commented, “but this is the first time I have seen an entire fair next to the All-Gemot. Perhaps it is because recently the Fifty Kings have met north of the channel, where fewer merchants trade.”
Late in the afternoon, he took Karin through the tents to meet a woman who was one of the Fifty Kings.
“So this is the heiress who has been gone so long,” said Queen Arane, beckoning her into the tent. Hers was one of the silk ones. Her bodyguard she told to wait outside.
King Hadros greeted her as though they were very old friends, though Karin had never heard him mention her-but then he had already given familiar slaps on the back to kings of several kingdoms she had not even realized existed.
At first Karin thought the queen young, for her unbound hair was a deep chestnut, and her figure as she rose
