“Oh, we have powers all right,” said the other, sounding amused. “I had assumed you would prefer not to see them.”
And abruptly the ground beneath their feet was gone, and they were suspended in the air over a pit of orange flames and molten rock. They swung ever so slightly back and forth, as though suspended by a thread no stronger than cobweb. A belch of hot gas broke through the lava, then suddenly the road was again solid beneath them.
Valmar and Karin clung to each other. But she had not changed her mind. “Try to frighten me all you like,” she got out between chattering teeth. “Ever since I saw you on Graytop I have not been mistress of myself. I do not belong to you, and I will not belong to you. I am Roric’s alone!”
“By the way,” said the other, “I meant to tell you. You were asking about Roric No-man’s son. He was spotted in our realm.”
“And again you do not know the real truth!” she said triumphantly, though the tears were pouring down her cheeks. “He is back under the sun, and he is coming to me even now!”
They still had not seen the man’s face. He turned his back toward them and addressed his remarks to the sky. “You certainly have courage and will, but as I say we force no one to our bidding.”
He began then to walk away, and as he walked it seemed that his feet did not touch the road, but rather that he walked on moonlight. He grew smaller and smaller as he strode on the moon’s rays up over the headland.
Valmar stared immobile after him. Karin had shoved him away, sobbing hard, when he tried to put his arms around her again.
And suddenly Valmar began to run, pounding back down the road toward the harbor. Moonlight washed all around him.
The man stopped and turned toward him.
“Wait for me!” Valmar cried. “I’m coming with you!”
CHAPTER FIVE
1
“No, of course I am all right,” said Karin to her father. She tried to stay out of the direct light to hide the tear streaks on her cheeks, but he had already seen them. “I am only upset because Valmar has left.”
“Left! But where has he gone? Has he returned home already?”
At this rate, she thought, swallowing the sobs before they could break out, she could give lessons to Queen Arane. “He has always wanted adventure, I gather, and when we were coming home from the harbor just now we ran into someone-someone I had known before-who gave him an unexpected opportunity. He had to take it immediately.”
“But to leave so suddenly- And I was growing fond of the boy-” He tipped up her face toward his with one finger under her chin, as Hadros sometimes did. “Karin! Are you sure he did not have some kind of accident that you are trying to conceal from me?”
“No! I told you, he simply left!”
“Well,” said King Kardan in wonderment, “I do hope he will be all right. What shall I tell his father?”
“I shall write to Hadros myself, next time there is a messenger or a merchant going from here to the northern kingdoms.”
She turned to retreat to her room, glad now that she had her mother’s private parlor. But her father took her arm. “Karin, I can see you are terribly upset. Are you quite sure you had not set your heart on this boy?”
“Quite sure,” she said, meeting his eyes with an effort of will.
He kept hold of her arm, studying her face. At last he said in a low voice, “Would you like to tell me what really happened? I know there was something more.”
For a second she had the terrifying sense that he suspected her of having murdered Valmar, of having pushed him over the cliff. It was that fear that made her say, even though she knew he would not believe her, “Valmar went to join the Wanderers.”
He shook his head and turned his face away. “I hope that you can learn to trust me again some day,” he said, so quietly she barely heard him.
And then she remembered something the Mirror-seer had told her. “Listen, Father!” she said, wanting to take at least some of that heart-wringing bitterness from him. “You know there is a Wanderer often seen at Graytop at twilight! Well, it’s the same one, I believe, and he-”
But Kardan looked both puzzled and alarmed. “Karin, where have you heard these stories? In all the years I have been king here, within sight of Graytop, I have never heard of a Wanderer walking there, or at least never one visible to mortal eyes.”
2
The broad-beamed merchant ship came into harbor at dusk. It had been a difficult crossing, and indeed the wind had come up so briskly that most of the other ships setting out from the north shore of the channel had soon set back into harbor. Then they had been blown far off course and had reached the southern shore of the channel nowhere near where either Roric or the merchants wanted to be. They had had to beat against the wind almost an entire extra day to reach here, and only the size of this ship had allowed it to weather the waves. Roric’s arms and hair were caked with salt.
In the final light he could see someone standing alone on the headland looking down into the harbor, someone shining like gold in the dimness.
But she could not see him.
“Well,” said the captain, once they had secured the lines, “that castle you were asking about-” And he looked straight through Roric. He shrugged. “Gone already,” he said to himself. “Good thing I had him pay in advance,” and slapped the new knife in his belt.
And then Roric did go, vaulting over the gunwale, running up the road from the sheltered little inlet where ships made harbor.
Being invisible at night had been very difficult on the ship, where he had had to crawl in between boxes of cargo each sunset to conceal his fading away. He could emerge again once it was fully dark, but always with the danger of being stepped on by the sailors. But here, he thought, invisibility would be an advantage. He would stalk Valmar, learn what Karin really thought of this marriage Hadros had planned.
But seeing her standing on the cliff alone drove jealousy, at least temporarily, from his mind. She had gotten his raven-message, then, and must have been waiting for him through the long days of contrary winds on the channel. If she was waiting for him, did this mean she did not love Valmar after all?
She had now started back toward the castle and did not hear his feet coming up behind her. “Karin,” he said urgently, getting in front of her, “surely you can see me, even between sunset and sunrise.”
She kept on walking without any response, and he got out of her way. If she touched him without being able to see or hear him, she would be terrified. He could not see her face well in the twilight but it already looked anguished.
He went at her shoulder up to the castle, longing to take her into his arms and not daring. On either side he could just see armed men walking parallel to the road, watching her. She did not appear to notice.
He looked around in amazement at the size of the castle and the intricacy of the masonry as she walked through the great doors. The warriors came in behind them.
Karin went to speak to a gray-haired, richly dressed man who must be her father. Roric prowled the candle-lit hall, stepping quietly out of instinct even though no one would hear him, looking for Valmar, catching fragments of conversation from the others there but nothing about the prince. He kept expecting to be seen when someone looked toward him, and kept feeling when they did not that his very existence was only a creation of his own mind.
There was no sign of his foster-brother. Where could he be? This was like no castle Roric had ever seen, but it seemed Valmar ought to be here in the hall if he was in the kingdom at all.
Karin then took a candle and went up a broad stone staircase, Roric hurrying to climb beside her. They passed through a wide chamber with an enormous bed in the center, then into a much smaller room. He just managed to dodge in before she shut the door in his face.