C. Brittain - Voima

She was rapidly reaching the end of what she could guess easily and was wondering desperately what she could say had happened next; maybe the castle by the salt river had been burned by enemies, requiring the move to this mountain hideout. But the woman’s hands closed around her neck, ending either the need or the ability for further speech. “How did you know this? Did he tell you?” she said hoarsely, as though the words were dragged from her.

Karin put a hand up as though casually and worked a thumb between her own neck and the woman’s palm. “Don’t be surprised,” she said when she could breathe again. “I told you I had keen sight. I tell you this only to demonstrate my abilities to you so you will understand what I shall next tell you. I also know, with my same sight, that there is near here a doorway into the Wanderers’ realm.”

Wigla had lowered her hands, and Karin heard her shuffling her feet, though whether in embarrassment or suppressed anger she could not tell. “The Wanderers do not come here,” she said in a surly mutter. “There’s nothing but death-and the dragon.”

Karin did not like this repeated mention of a dragon. “Then I see more than you do,” she said with an attempt at confidence. “But this I can tell you, and I think you will agree. If I leave here, to find my lover-whom Eirik’s men left behind when they captured me-and then to find the door into the realm of voima, then I shall not be here. And he makes your life an agony as it is-I do not need very keen sight to see that! How much more agony would it be to see him constantly comparing you to a younger princess-especially since that princess spurns him?”

“We had already been on the edge of being outlawed for years,” Wigla said, still in that mutter. “A life of raiding grows thin, as you’ll see if you stay here. What are you suggesting instead?”

Karin found herself glancing over her shoulder, wondering if Eirik too might be up early and coming to see his woman-or women. “Let me out of the castle,” she said. “Then I’ll be gone. Tell Eirik I escaped in the night, tell him it’s his own fault for not posting better guards.”

The woman scowled, then abruptly made a sound that might have been a chuckle. “I think I can find things myself to tell him.”

“Then you’ll let me go?” asked Karin, trying not to sound as eager as she felt.

“Maybe,” said Wigla, almost reluctantly. Dawn was advancing rapidly, and Karin could now see the green eyes glinting fiercely. “Tell me first how you expect to find this doorway to the Wanderers. I am not at all sure whether to believe you, Princess.”

The Mirror-seer had better be right about this, Karin thought. “The doorway is hidden,” she improvised, “only open or even visible at certain times. There is only one person who knows how to find it, and that is the Witch of the Western Cliffs.”

For a long moment Wigla did not answer, and Karin wondered wildly if she herself might be called a witch. But when she answered it was almost agreeably. “Well, if you and your keen sight can find her, maybe you will find this doorway. But she may demand more than you care to pay!”

“Oh, I can pay,” said Karin airily, keeping imminent despair from her voice. Her fingers closed over the broken necklace in her belt pouch with the sick feeling that it would not be nearly enough.

“Then come,” said Wigla. For a moment she smiled, a slow, almost sardonic smile, that Karin tried to persuade herself was an expression of sympathy and understanding. Then she turned and led the way down the corridor, stepping carefully, almost soundlessly.

Karin decided that when she emerged on the mountainside she would determine south from the sun and try to find her way back down to the river.

That is, unless the dragon was real and found her first.

”Yes, of course we were running from you,” said Roric in an expressionless voice. They had paused in their climb and leaned against the rocks while the dogs tried to pick up the scent again. The two kings were on either side of him, not exactly holding him captive, not exactly letting him walk freely.

“Valmar left to join the Wanderers before I reached your kingdom,” Roric said to Kardan. “When I appeared there-with you, Hadros, right behind me-Karin feared you would not believe us. That is why we had to go after him immediately, before you could stop us, before you could tell us we were only chasing old stories.”

“This doesn’t sound to me yet like an excuse for stealing a ship,” growled Hadros. “You’ll keep the Gemot occupied for days.”

But Kardan interrupted. “What were you chasing?”

“We had to rescue Valmar, of course.” Roric did not tell them he had let Karin persuade him he could also best preserve his own life in flight. His honor was already in tatters as it was. “The Weaver said there is a door to the Wanderers’ realm somewhere here in the Hot-River Mountains.”

“And you believed him?” demanded Hadros.

“I certainly believe in the Wanderers’ realm,” said Roric quietly. “After all, I’ve been there.”

“And why should you go there safely, but not my son?”

Roric turned to face Hadros fully. He really did not resemble the solidly-built king, he thought-being his son had been nothing more than a brief dream to help him overcome Gizor. “It’s all changed now. I never met the real Wanderers. Valmar may have, but according to the Seer they plan to send him to Hel…”

“And maybe Hel is the best place for you, ” said Hadros, mostly under his breath. “I’ll tell you one thing, Roric. After we rescue the princess-we know they won’t have killed an attractive young woman like that-we’re going straight home so you can face the Gemot. No fooling around here looking for doors into the land of voima.”

They were interrupted by the abrupt baying of the dogs, who seemed to have found Karin’s scent again. All of them hurried after the sound, up a steep little path almost hidden behind a boulder. Roric kept trying to look ahead, to see the fortress where they would have her, but saw nothing but bare stone.

Karin, Karin, he thought, seeing her smile in his mind’s eye, her russet hair half hiding her eyes as she laughed at something he had said. If he thought of her this intensely then surely her spirit must hear him, and she must give him some indication of where they had her hidden. But he reminded himself that even when she lay in his arms it was hard to know her thoughts-so much harder therefore now, when he was not certain, in spite of the reassurances they all kept trying to give each other, that she still lived.

The morning had started clear, but thin high clouds came out of the west to filter the sunlight and chill the wind. Roric’s muscles all ached from his fight with Gizor, and climbing and knocking against the rocks caused several wounds again to start bleeding. Loose stones underfoot kept turning, threatening to strain an ankle or, worse, to crush a foot.

Sometimes they seemed to be following a path where stones had been arranged to form steps leading up narrow defiles barely as wide as a man’s shoulders, but at other times they scrambled over lichen-grown boulders that gave no sign that anyone had ever come this way. At every turn where there seemed more than one way to go, the kings sent some of their men in each direction. Very quickly Roric lost all sense of direction, seeking only to find a way upward. Kardan and Hadros started quarreling about which direction was best, and after a few minutes started resolutely in opposite directions. The dogs’ voices echoed so that it was harder and harder to tell where they had gone.

Roric dragged himself up onto a high dome of rock and suddenly realized that he was alone. Without even meaning to he had eluded both kings and all their warriors, who must be scattered now over several square miles of rock.