knots, too many tangles accumulated over the years. Roric No-man’s son deals with tangles by trying something desperate and bold. Karin Kardan’s daughter does not lose track of the final goal, no matter how difficult the way. The first of the dangers to the realms of voima were those men who went through the rift, being taunted by Roric. At his example, I then sent a dragon through. When a dragon settled at my door many years ago, I had not realized the potential advantages!”
“The Wanderers and Hearthkeepers fought the dragon together.”
“They worked together for a short time, it is true. But it will take more than that for our children to join together permanently. They have known all along that without someone to guide and instruct you mortals, you will lose order and direction, return to scattered and violent bands roving through the forest as you once were. But even that danger has not been enough to make them stop their attempts to circumvent the other’s power. I need something even more desperate.”
“Then what do you intend?” asked Valmar.
“The outlaws and the dragon in the realms of voima were an excellent distraction while I prepared what I do now. I am unmaking. ” The voice was harsh and booming, all its cheerful quality gone. A shiver went up Valmar’s back. No matter how strange and slow this witch might seem, if Karin was right it had given birth to the chief of the Wanderers. “We made the realms of voima for them to live in, and most of us, the makers, built ourselves into the very fabric of those realms, asleep. But now I who was left to watch am waking them. If they awake-and if our children do not ease them quickly back into slumber-then the very substance of immortal realms shall crumble.”
Valmar was swept with a horror that made his whole body go stiff. “And what will happen if immortal realms are destroyed?” he brought out between frozen lips.
“Then all the powers of voima will be destroyed, and all order in mortal realms will go with them.”
“You would destroy all you created-” For a moment he clenched his sword. But then those eyes, human and more than human, met his and the strength went out of him.
“We were not the creators of mortal lands any more than the Wanderers were. But yes. We no longer rule earth and sky, but we can still destroy. This is not a game. The danger would not be truly desperate if it was not real.”
“Then what do you want me to do?”
The witch turned around to face him. The web was now little more than tatters. “I cannot do this myself, Valmar Hadros’s son. I have tried. Someone needs to bring those two forces together. If the powers of voima cannot do it, then it will have to be a mortal. If you are no more successful than I have been, then immortal and mortal realms will collapse together.”
Valmar crawled back the way he had come. The witch had said he would emerge into realms of voima. He gritted his teeth with the sick feeling that he was being sent back to the faeys to get him out of the way.
But when he saw light before him it was not the green of the faeys’ lanterns but the gray of twilight after the sun has set. There was a faint, steady splashing, the sound of a small waterfall. The voices he heard were hoarse, rough, and certainly not those of the faeys.
“That berserker sent the princess this way.” “Suppose this is just another path down to Hel?” “Then we’ll rejoin our king even sooner than we thought. But even Hel has to be better than what these people keep claiming is the Wanderers’ realm.”
Valmar rose and stepped forward by the pool, his sword drawn.
His abrupt appearance panicked the outlaws. They stared at him, eyes wide in the dimness. There were not many left of the once proud and desperate group of renegades who had followed Eirik into the sea and out of mortal realms.
And without their leader the courage had gone out of them. Valmar spoke in his deepest voice. “This tunnel may take you to your kingdom if that is your wish. Pass by me quietly, your swords sheathed, and I shall not harm you.”
The tunnel was only wide enough for one to pass at a time. The warriors edged by him, eyeing him warily. Valmar wondered without much interest if they would emerge in Hadros’s kingdom-in which case Dag and Nole might have an adventure of their own to tell about-or in the Witch’s cave. He considered asking them what had happened to Roric but did not want to hear the answer. When several had passed it occurred to him that they might rush him from both directions, but without Eirik they had no one to plot and only wanted to get to safety.
The last of the outlaws disappeared down the tunnel. For a moment, looking after them, he thought he saw daylight and two lichen-spotted standing stones leaning together, but when he blinked the image was gone. He shrugged and turned away.
Valmar went by the pool and out into evening. He had to find the Wanderers and warn them.
He sheathed his sword and scrambled up beside the waterfall. At the top of the cliff he paused, blinking and trying to see, then started walking along the ridge in the direction the Wanderers and Hearthkeepers had taken to fight the dragon. After a short distance he made out something huge and streaked with black, sprawling across the rocks for dozens of yards.
For a second he thought it was the witch again, grown to enormous size. Then he realized it was the dragon. It was dead, lying in its own black blood, its mouth sagging open and the tongue loose over the needle teeth. So the lords and ladies of voima too could kill, he thought grimly, even in their own realm. He was just wondering how to locate them, before the last of the witch’s web was unmade, when he heard voices.
The loudest voice was that of the woman with the dark curling hair. “When the new sun rises, which it shall do very soon, our time will come. Since fate has ended your rule, we must be fated to take again the direction of earth and sky. Now that the last of the mortal men are gone from here, there is little more for you to do but retreat to your manors, because if you do not yield willingly you will be forced to yield at the point of the sword.”
“And you always complained that we encouraged mortal men in violence.” It was the deep, slightly ironic voice of the Wanderer who had first brought Valmar here.
“In which case,” she answered briskly, “there is nothing you can say against us if we use your own weapons to reimpose our vision of the world.”
Valmar could now see all of them in the last of the light, the lords and ladies of voima sitting on the ridge top looking off toward the east. They all seemed battered from their fight with the dragon. There was a great scar in the earth nearby, as though it had opened and closed again.
He hesitated, wishing irrationally that Karin was here. How was he supposed to reconcile the rulers of earth and sky before earth and sky themselves were destroyed? The last daylight was fading behind them, but there was no hint of dawn in the east in spite of the Hearthkeeper’s confident prediction that the new sun would rise very soon.
“I do not like your inviting a mortal woman to join you,” said another of the Wanderers. “We have always been equally matched with you in numbers.”
Valmar counted quickly. So far no one had noticed him. There were twelve Wanderers but thirteen women, including, he realized with a start, the tall, green-eyed woman who had been with King Eirik. “I have no intention of returning to a world that includes mortal men,” said Wigla firmly.
“Were you Wanderers suggesting that I instead should return to my husband and children in mortal realms, to bring the number back down to twelve?” asked one of the Hearthkeepers. “ He will be protected by the powers of voima, and my children will lead long and happy lives even if they are still fated to die. But why should I not stay with my sisters and rule over mortals and over you? After all, there have been even lords of voima who have visited mortal women in disguise! If I care to I can still visit my husband, who already knows well who I am.”
The ground suddenly heaved and swayed under them. Valmar lost and regained his balance. “And I cannot say I like these earthquakes,” commented the leader of the Wanderers.
“You men just didn’t do enough to make our world firm while you were ruling it. As soon as our powers return, we will end these problems. I must say, I thought we would feel them returning by now
…”
Valmar stepped forward. The immortals, with their full powers either eroded away or not yet come to fullness, were entirely capable of being surprised.
All spun around to face him. “You said you had sent all the mortal men back!” one of the Hearthkeepers started to say accusingly, but Valmar did not want to hear any more of their bickering.
“I come,” he began and found his voice cracking, which it had not done for several years. “I come,” he tried
