They stripped, steamed, and scrubbed off the grime, taking turns with the bundle of birch twigs. Kardan thought that the queen seemed much more interested in pleasantries and intrigue than in giving them answers, and, in spite of his earlier certainty, she really did not appear to have Karin with her. Somehow, he did not know how, Arane had taken the initiative away from them.
She kept the initiative all through dinner, serving them from the platter with her own hands, bringing out a honey-colored wine for Kardan, telling them amusing stories of little incidents at her court. Kardan noticed that she never once mentioned her nephew, the prince who had drowned at the same time as his own son.
“So you can assure us,” said King Hadros at last, in much better humor than he had been in two hours before, “that you have no idea where the princess or my son have gone?”
“No idea at all,” she said, her blue eyes wide and innocent. “You can ask anyone at my court, and they will all give you the same answer.”
“What is our next alternative then, Hadros?” asked Kardan. “Back to your kingdom?”
“Faster and more likely than spending any more time sailing up and down this side of the channel.”
“This is fascinating,” said the queen, leaning her elbows on the table to look at them, “a princess running away with her true love, but you are not sure who that true love might be.” For a second, Kardan thought she knew more than she had said, but it was too late to try to learn it from her. “And even a sense in it of the lords of voima! This is the sort of tale I love to hear.”
“It’s not a tale,” said Hadros brusquely. “This is real.”
“ Everything becomes a tale once it has happened,” said Queen Arane, still smiling. She looked from one to the other with a calculating expression. “You are both widowers, and have been for some time. My request therefore may sound the slightest bit scandalous, but with the two of you there to watch each other, scandal should not be a concern.”
“What do you mean?” asked Kardan dubiously, fearing he knew.
She smiled even more widely. “When you cross the channel again to search for the Princess Karin, I shall accompany you.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
1
“Lie,” said Roric roughly. “Tell them some plausible story. Are not women better at manipulation than men?”
“But if this manor had a message from Hadros to intercept us-”
“They will never have heard of Hadros or Gizor, much less of us. I don’t even know whose kingdom we are in now. Hadros cannot realize where we are going, and he will not have sent ravens to every manor and farm in every direction!”
“But the Mirror-seer may have told my father we were headed north to the Hot-River Mountains.”
“Just do it,” said Roric irritably. “I don’t know about you, but after three days of hard riding, with nothing to eat but berries and that one rabbit, I intend to take food by force if they do not give it to us. I had thought you wanted fewer people dead.”
Karin gave one final glance at his face and slipped off Goldmane’s back. The stallion was breathing hard, his nostrils pink, but overall he seemed to be bearing up well under the burden of two riders. Roric however had said in disgust that the horse had run far faster in the Wanderers’ realm.
For one moment, Karin found herself wondering what it would be like to be fleeing with Valmar instead of with Roric. But she dismissed the thought. If she were with Valmar, if he had not left with the Wanderer, if Roric had not crossed the channel to find her, she would still be in her father’s castle.
She straightened her shoulders and walked firmly up the rise toward the manor. They had come into a country where high fells loomed over slopes striped by meandering stone walls, a country of unexpected valleys and of very few people. In the blue distance were a line of mountains that might be the Hot-River Mountains, though Karin tried not to calculate the discouragingly large number of days before even Goldmane’s speed could take them there. The buildings here were on a bare hilltop, open to the wind, though in the dip below the trees grew thick and green.
As in Hadros’s castle the hall was stone and the outbuildings were of weathered oak, but the outbuildings were roofed with green turfs, and the manor was surrounded not by a stone wall but by a palisade. The gate to the courtyard was open, and dogs swarmed around her, barking, as she crossed it toward the main hall. Two tow-headed children peeked at her from the hall’s doorway then darted away again.
A housecarl, slouched against a building, leered at her. She glanced down at herself, at her once elegant dress now ripped and filthy. At least she must look slightly better than Roric, with his unshaven beard and a look in his eye that had become progressively fiercer the last three days.
A woman with a milk pail hurried out to meet her and drive off the dogs. “Could you please help me?” began Karin, in a note of weariness and pleading that was not feigned. She was hungry and thirsty enough to snatch the milk from the woman’s hand, but she restrained herself. “I have been driven from my home and am fleeing for my life.”
The woman looked at her steadily a moment. Her eyes were a pale blue, sky-colored, disconcerting in the unblinking intensity of their gaze. But she nodded then and spoke calmly. “Help me carry the rest of the pails into the dairy and tell me what has happened.”
Karin shook off the strange sense that this woman might already know who she was, and followed her. Roric was right; they could not possibly have received a message from Hadros or Gizor One-hand at this isolated manor.
The two women took the pails of warm milk into one of the out-buildings, where they poured them into the pans for the cream to rise. Karin had done the same thing so many times, so many mornings and evenings in summer, that she had to catch back an unexpected gasp of homesickness. It was far too late, she told herself, to yearn for the days when she had been mistress of Hadros’s household.
“I live-or used to live-on a royal manor down on the channel,” she improvised, “in King Hadros’s kingdom.”
If the name meant anything to the woman, she gave no sign.
“Three-no, I mean five-days ago, raiders came and attacked us, firing our house and driving off our flocks.” No use drawing attention to how fast Goldmane could run. “All the men were killed, and both my parents.” She let her homesickness come out as a small sob. “I barely escaped with my life, accompanied by one warrior. This is the first time we have dared stop.”
The sky-colored eyes watched her as she spoke, and Karin feared she was about to be denounced as a liar, but the woman only shook her head sadly. “They say there have been fewer warriors raiding the last ten or twenty years, more peace among the Fifty Kingdoms, but I fear that time has come to an end with the change so imminent now. I knew that war and raiding had started up again in the north this spring, but I did not realize it had yet reached so far south.”
She covered the milk pans, and the two came out of the dairy together. “Is that your warrior?” the woman asked thoughtfully, turning her intense blue gaze down the hill toward Roric. He still sat on Goldmane, the muscles standing out on his arms and his sword swung rather obviously at his side.
“Yes,” said Karin, quickly and with assurance. If she had not known him she would have been frightened by him. From this angle his profile looked like a hawk’s, and he appeared to be looking into a rather ferocious distance. “I trust him completely.”
Surprisingly, the woman was willing to be reassured. “I shall talk to my husband when he comes back with the sheep,” she said, leading the way into the hall. The same housecarl was still leering at Karin, but the woman sent him away with a sharp word. “But I think we will let you stay here tonight.”