C. Brittain - Voima

“No!” All three spoke at once, Hadros and Kardan and Arane, then became flustered, rewrapping their cloaks against the cool of the evening air, meeting neither her eyes nor each other’s.

“Why are you all so sure?” she asked, looking in surprise from one to another. “Is there something you have kept from me?” When they all shook their heads emphatically she added, “Both the Weaver back home and the-well, a creature of voima we met seemed to suggest that, that… that I was his sister and for him to love me was incest.”

“Like the old stories?” asked Hadros, recovering first. He shot Queen Arane a look, thrust out his chin, and went on. “It wasn’t my secret but I don’t mind telling it. He was born at Arane’s court, though I brought him home as a tiny baby to raise in my own castle. Roric was the son of Arane’s serving-maid and, I think, me.”

“Oh, dear.” The queen put her graceful hands over her face, and the jewels on her rings winked in the firelight.

“ Your son?” said Karin in bewilderment to the king. This changed everything. “But why would anyone do to his son-” She stopped, not wanting to get into that issue now. She whirled toward Kardan. “Tell me,” she commanded, her eyes intense in the shadows, “is there any chance that a baby born to Arane’s serving-maid could have been fathered by you?”

He was flustered but certain. “No. No chance at all. I have never lain with any woman at Arane’s court.” He paused uncertainly. “I can swear on steel and rowan if you like.”

Karin looked questioningly toward Arane but the queen had turned her head away. Roric had said he knew for certain he was not Hadros’s son-and had he not said Arane herself told him?

Someone else, then, had also enjoyed the favors of the queen’s maid, though the queen had managed to make Hadros believe the baby was his to ensure him a good upbringing. Whosever son he might have been, he was not the son of King Kardan.

Roric’s father was another man. She did not know how relieved she was to learn this until she found herself throwing her arms around her own father, just on the edge of sobbing again.

Queen Arane rose briskly, pulling up the hood of her cloak. “The girl is exhausted and drained,” she said firmly. “She can tell you the rest of her story in the morning. What she needs now is sleep, which she can best have in my tent.”

Before Karin could protest, the queen had her by the elbow and was propelling her across the camp. Now that she had begun telling her tale she would have been willing to continue, but there seemed no chance of that. “Well, goodnight!” came her father’s voice, belatedly and behind them.

Karin entered the queen’s tent resignedly, ready to be tucked back into the blankets where she had slept that afternoon. Her life seemed rather empty and pointless, now that she knew the lords of voima would not let her rescue Valmar. It would be best perhaps to let others make the decisions for her until the baby within her quickened and gave her again a reason to live.

But the queen put the lantern between them and sat on her cushions, eyes glittering. “Now, Karin. I want you to tell me how Roric died.”

“King Eirik had captured Valmar, there in the Wanderers’ realm,” said Karin slowly, wondering why Arane did not want the kings to hear this. “Roric freed him, but Eirik was such a short distance away that we had very little chance of escape. Roric pushed Valmar and me into, well, a tunnel that led to safety.” There would be time enough to mention their brief visit to Hadros’s court. “Roric guarded our backs, and there he was killed.” She was almost able to say it calmly now.

“Did you see him die?” asked the queen sharply.

“No, but he would have come behind us if he had lived, and he did not.”

“I would not yet give up hope of him,” said Arane very quietly. “But if he is gone he died to save his beloved and his foster-brother. I shall commission a bard as soon as I am home to put it into song.”

When the queen did not speak again Karin asked, “Is there a reason you did not want Hadros to hear about his death? Were you afraid it would reflect dishonorably on Valmar?”

But the queen did not answer her question. “You know I only ever spoke to Roric once as an adult, after he left my court where, it is true, he was born. Tell me: did he carry any charm?”

“He had a little bone charm, cut in the shape of a star. He was told it was in his blankets when he was found-though I gather now he was not a foundling?”

Still ignoring her questions, Arane reached into her belt pouch and pulled out something that she placed on Karin’s palm. It was a star-shaped bone charm. “Did it look like that?”

Karin stared at it. “He gave you his charm?” She tried to remember if she had seen Roric thumbing it, as he had so often, in the period between when they had been reunited outside Eirik’s castle and when Eirik and his men had slain him. She could not remember.

Arane smiled slowly and sadly. “This is not Roric’s. But you have answered my question. This in your hand is the twin of the charm that I sent with him, all the meager powers of voima that I dared give him. For you see, Roric was my own son.”

Just when Karin thought she had become calm she found herself weeping wildly again. She had not felt entirely sure of Hadros’s story, but this- This she believed.

“Oh, Karin,” Arane said, stroking Karin’s hair as she lay with her face in the queen’s lap. “It seems very long ago, but I too can remember how miserable and how wonderful it can be to be young, to feel intense love and great sorrow without the experience to deal well with either…”

“If he was your son,” Karin brought out, trying to overcome her tears, “why did you send him away? And which man fathered him?”

“He was called No-man’s son, I understand,” said the queen slowly. “And even if he had lived I would never have wanted him to know his father’s name. He was not Hadros, not your father, only a man who may never even have known he had fathered a son but whom I loved very much…”

This, thought Karin miserably, was what Arane had suggested to her back when they had first met, that as long as a queen was very discreet she could enjoy an occasional man in her bed. But she had also spoken of jealousies and rivalries-had Roric’s father been killed by some other would-be suitor of the queen, even before the baby was born? Perhaps it was better not to know.

“The Witch told Roric he could never know his father’s name,” she said through her tears. She had not mentioned the Witch before, but it did not matter. “But it-she-also said that having the name, having the answer, would take away Roric’s goal of trying to live up to an image of a glorious father.”

“Well, Roric cannot know his father’s name now,” said the queen reasonably. “And I had never intended to tell him. The man I loved came to me in secret, and I have always honored his secrecy. He gave me these two little charms before we parted for the last time, and I thought his son should have one, but no other information.”

Karin felt a sudden horrible suspicion. “Roric’s father-” she said between tight lips. “Was he perhaps King Eirik?”

Arane managed her tinkling little laugh. “No, Karin, I can reassure you quite certainly on that point. I knew Eirik, of course, from meetings of the All-Gemot over the years, and he was somewhat dashing in his youth in a rather coarse way. But you should give Roric’s mother credit for better taste than that!

“King Hadros,” she went on, “in spite of an edge of uncertainty, has always assumed that Roric was his. I did not wish to tell him otherwise, though of course that meant he could not know that Roric was born to a queen, not to a serving-maid. My little deception assured that Roric would receive much the same training and advantages any son of one of the Fifty Kings might receive-though Hadros’s fatherly methods may be rougher than most! If Roric is indeed dead, I would appreciate it, Karin, if you never told Hadros the truth yourself.”