The note was piercing, sending the blood pounding in Roric’s ears.
At last, he thought.
After days of inaction, it had finally begun.
Every horse in both parties reared and charged toward the other.
And he was among them, standing in the stirrups, his hair tossed back, his sword in his fist and bellowing.
But as he and the horned warriors rushed together he wondered for a second if he was on the right side.
The two bands met like waves crashing together.
Screams of horses and the clang of steel on steel surrounded him.
Goldmane raced in the lead, and he struck out again and again, using his sword to deflect blows aimed at him.
His own strokes bounced off shield and armor.
All around him was an unfocused blur.
He had no attention to spare for his companions.
It felt as though the entire horned band were attacking him personally.
All he could see were swords and spears aimed at him, as he ducked a javelin, parried a sword stroke, seized a spear and jerked it out of one warrior’s hand one second and thrust it against another the next.
He was still untouched, but as he whirled to face another blade the back of his mind asked, as though mildly curious, how long he thought this could continue.
In the distance came another horn call.
This one was different, poignant, almost melancholic.
The people at the manor, he thought, had joined the fray at last.
And at that note the fighting fizzled out.
Warriors fell back on every side, and no one met his strokes.
In a few seconds the clang of steel on steel had ceased.
He looked around wildly, his own sword still upraised.
He saw no fallen men, only both sides turning to run.
And Goldmane ran too.
He had never felt his stallion go this fast.
First in the middle of the group of galloping steeds—from both war bands, he thought, though it was hard to see with the wind in his eyes—then in the forefront, then out before all the rest.
Shouts blew back down his throat, and hard tugs on the rein were of no avail.
The stallion had the bit between his teeth, and he ran effortlessly, leaping streams and hedgerows until it seemed he was flying, only putting down a hoof occasionally to guide them on their mad course.
Roric clung like a bur to the saddle, his eyes almost blinded and a fierce smile on his lips.
“Well, I’d like to know where you learned a trick like that,” said Roric to his horse.
He sat with his elbows on his knees while the stallion, unsaddled and unconcerned, grazed peacefully beside him.
“Could you always run that fast, but you just never bothered before?”
Goldmane had finally begun to slow, and Roric had gotten the bit away from him at last.
He tethered his horse firmly to a tree in a little meadow on top of a ridge, but the stallion showed no more interest in speed.
“The troll should have known better than to let you go,” Roric added appreciatively.
They were completely alone.
He had not seen anyone of either war band for hours.
“Tell me,” as the stallion continued to tear off mouthfuls of grass, “were those trolls we were with?
I hope you knew what you were doing this time.
Did you recognize whoever we were fighting against?
Were they Wanderers, or whoever the ‘second force’ might be?
And were we really in danger of our lives, either from the horned band or from the manor, or did it just feel that way?”
Goldmane lifted his head, looked at Roric quizzically, then returned to grazing.
“And I really would have questions for you,” said Roric, “if you started to answer me.”
He rose to his feet and laughed, slapping his horse on the shoulder.
“You’re almost as informative to talk to as the man who brought me here.
Wait for me.
I’m going to get some water.”
A narrow, muddy trickle came from a spring and cut through the meadow, and while Goldmane had lapped it up, Roric hoped that if he followed it a short distance he would come to a pool or at least a place where it ran a little deeper.
He followed the trickle with the conviction that he would not return to the people from whom Goldmane had carried him away.
Soon limestone rocks sprouted up through the grass.
The trickle took on force and size until it shot over the edge of a little cliff, its spray making tiny rainbows in the horizontal sunlight.
Roric went to his knees to look over the edge.
The cliff was less than twenty feet high.
Below the water shot into a hole like the mouth of a cave, but he could hear its splash so the hole could not be very deep.
He went around and found a way to scramble to the bottom of the cliff, then lowered himself carefully into the dark, damp crevice down which the water disappeared.
In a very short distance, he found the pool he had hoped for.
The stream splashed and whirled, then flowed away, broad and quiet, over dimly lit stone. Here the water appeared perfectly clear, so he drank, dipped his head to wash the grime from his face, then lifted water in his palms to drink again.
That was when he saw the light.
At first, kneeling with water dripping from his chin, he thought it his imagination, a green spark in the distance.
But it remained even when he moved his head.
He stood up slowly, listened without hearing anything but the waterfall, and walked forward cautiously, his hand resting on his sword.
As he walked, the green light became brighter.
He ran a hand along the damp stone roof over his head, then stopped when it sloped rapidly lower.
But now he thought he could hear voices ahead of him.
“What’s that sound?
I don’t hear a sound.
Listen, that sounds like footsteps!
It’s just somebody outside.
No, I tell you, someone is in the tunnels and coming this way!”
The voices were high, almost squeaky.
He continued forward with a wondering smile, on his knees now.
“I don’t hear anything!
That’s because it stopped.
Do you want to go look?
All right then, I’ll look.
But you have to come too.
But you’re the one who heard the sound!”
Now he himself heard footsteps, light and quick.
He waited in the near darkness while the green light rapidly approached.
But he was not prepared for the shriek.
“A Wanderer!
A Wanderer!
They’ve come for us!
Flee while you can!
We can’t get out!
What can we do!?!”
He sat back on his heels to appear less threatening to the very short people who now ran in circles before him.
They had dropped their light, but it still burned, giving their faces, already distorted by panic, an unreal quality.
“I am not a Wanderer,” he said, not shouting for fear of frightening them worse but speaking very clearly.
“Who are you?”
“It’s not a Wanderer!
He says he’s not a Wanderer.
Is it a mortal?
But how did a mortal get in our tunnels?
Who are
you
?”
They were all around him now, jumping to get a better look over each other’s shoulders, pushing forward and then scrambling back if he shifted.
“I am indeed a mortal,” he said slowly, “but I have been in the Wanderers’ realm.
I followed a stream into the back of your cave.”
“There is no stream!
What does he mean, a stream?
Do you see a stream?”
And indeed the tunnel floor was dry.
He could not even hear the splash of the waterfall.
Goldmane!
He looked over his shoulder into blackness.
I’ve gone somewhere, he thought, I don’t know where, like stepping through that stone gate, and I’ve left Goldmane behind.
“Can I return to the Wanderers’ realm by going back?”
“No!
You can’t go anywhere!
There’s nowhere for mortals to go!
And if you really are a mortal, you should be here, in mortal lands!”
These were certainly not the mortal lands he remembered.
He looked at the excited group before him.
“Are you perhaps faeys?”
“Yes, yes, of course we’re faeys!
And we don’t like mortals here in our tunnels!
They’re too dangerous!
We’ve only ever tamed one successfully.”
“Then I shall bother you no more.”
He groped back the way he had come, on his knees, his head bent beneath the low ceiling.
But in twenty feet he reached a solid wall.
He turned around slowly.
They were clustered, watching him.
“We
told
you mortals can’t reach the Wanderers’ realm that way.”
“Then how can I?”
“You can’t!
We already told you that you can’t!
You have to stay here, or at least not
here,
but in mortal lands.
As soon as it’s dark outside we’ll put you out the door.”
And the lords of voima only knew where he would be when they put him there, without even his horse.
He might be a thousand miles from Hadros’s court and from Karin.
At least he seemed to be back in a land with sunsets.
He settled himself cross-legged to wait until evening.
But the faeys did not go away although they retreated a little down the passage.
“Maybe we could try taming this one,” someone suggested, but the rest shushed him.
Roric ran his thumb along his jaw, realizing that his beard had not grown in the week—or however long it had been—that he had been in the Wanderers’ realm.
“You haven’t told us your name,” another faey said boldly after several more minutes had passed.
There seemed no reason to hide his identity.
“I am Roric No-man’s son.”
“There!
I knew we should try to tame him!
But are you sure?
Suppose it’s a different Roric?”
He leaned forward.
“What do you mean?” he asked sharply.
“Do you know someone named Karin?
She’s going to be queen!”
# * # * # * # *
Long, long, ago, when the earth was new and men and women first came, blinking wide-eyed, out from the forests, there was life but no death on earth, and the Lords of Death waited without taking anyone.
The lords of voima brought birth and growth, but very soon the earth became crowded, for children did not replace their parents but were added to them, and even the insects and the birds and the trees constantly multiplied.
And at first humans were happy, thinking themselves eternal, knowing that fate could not touch them.
But then the wisest among them realized that all was not well.
Where there was no end for men to fear, there was no goad to complete any task.
Deeds were left ever undone, songs were left ever unsung, and there was neither growth nor change among men or women, only more and more persons, each like all the others.
The wise, and at last even the foolish, understood something was wrong, but none knew what to do.