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“Dawk Waiduh,” said Mist. The child sat in a chair a few feet away, near the long table. She held her doll in her lap and she smiled proudly at Brit. “Pwince Vawbwand. Dawk Waiduh.”
Sif gave a nervous laugh. “Children. The things they say…”
“What is a Dawk Waiduh?”
“Dawk Waiduh!” Mist insisted, as if Brit wasn’t getting it right.
“She means Dark Raider, I think,” Sif said, too casually, giving the gray skirt an extra shake, then turning to hang it on the line.
“Yes!” Mist was beaming again. “Dawk Waiduh.”
Brit vaguely remembered hearing stories of the Dark Raider—way back when, at her mother’s knee. Ingrid had made it a point that her California-raised daughters should know the myths, the basic history and at least some of the customs of the land where they were born. “A legend, right? A masked hero, all in black on a rare black Gullandrian horse.”
“That’s right,” said Sif. “A legend. It is said that the Dark Raider is reborn to the people in troubled times to save them from corrupt men and tyrants without honor.”
Dressed all in black, Brit was thinking. Both times Brit had seen her brother—those times that everyone kept insisting never happened—he’d been dressed in black. And that first time, well, hey, guess what? He’d been wearing a mask. She said lightly, “And the correlation between my brother and this legendary figure?”
Sif laughed again. “None that I know of—except in the mind of my two-year-old daughter.”
Brit laughed, too. Then she looked at Sif sideways. “So tell me—seen the Dark Raider around the village lately?”
Sif blinked. Trapped, Brit thought. Hah!
And then, a gossip’s gleam in her eye, Sif admitted, “I must confess, there have been… stories.”
Brit leaned a little closer to Asta’s daughter-in-law. “Tell me.”
Sif waved a hand. “Oh, just rumors. Tall tales. An old man from three valleys over, attacked in the forest by thieves. He claimed the Dark Raider rescued him. And then there have been reports of a number of incidents involving renegades—you know about the renegades?” She must have seen by Brit’s expression that she didn’t. “You’ve been told that, in Gullandria, troubled youths are sent north, to our Mystic communities?”
“Yes.” Just a month ago Brit’s sister Liv had arranged to have a certain seventeen-year-old boy sent to the Mystics in hopes they might be able to help him change his ways.
“Sometimes,” said Sif, “those difficult boys run away from us. They live wild, causing trouble whenever they come upon other people. We call them renegades.”
Brit brought her hand to her injured shoulder, remembering the boy with the crossbow in Drakveden Fjord.
Sif was nodding. “Yes. The boy who shot you was a renegade.” Brit had a few questions concerning that boy, but she didn’t want Sif straying too far from the subject of the Dark Raider. Sif went on, “There have been stories of renegades stealing from local villagers, or groups of them coming in from the wild to wreak havoc on good folk. In a valley to the east of here, one renegade group is said to have staged a small reign of terror, threatening innocent people, killing livestock, breaking into longhouses when the owners were gone.”
“And the Dark Raider stopped them?”
“Yes. The story goes that he caught them, one by one, that he took them where they could cause no more harm.”
“And that would be where?”
“The Mystic village northernmost in all the Vildelund. We send the most incorrigible young ones there, to be shown—more forcefully—a better way.”
“The boy who shot me—did Eric have him taken there?”
“I believe so. Yes.”
“And the Dark Raider himself… if it’s true he’s returned, where would he be living now?”
Something happened in Sif’s pretty face—a mental turning away. A retreat. Brit knew she was thinking she had said too much. “Eric would be the one to speak to of this.” Asta’s daughter-in-law bent to the pile of clothes, took out a nightgown, shook it and turned to hang it. “We must finish the laundry now.”
Brit didn’t press her further. She figured she’d gotten about as much as she was going to get from Sif, for the time being, anyway. And yes, it was all vague stuff. But it was vague stuff that matched up with what her own eyes had seen: a masked man in the fjord with Eric; her brother, in the longhouse, the same height and build as the man in the fjord, wearing the same black clothing.
And Eric warning him, “She sees you. She knows you. You shouldn’t be here. Not without the mask….”
Now Sif spoke of an old legend come recently to life.
Was it totally crazy to imagine that her brother might have taken on the guise of the mythical Dark Raider? Not the way Brit saw it.
What better way to keep the fact that he still lived a secret from his enemies than to wear a mask?
Chapter Four
Another day passed. And another after that.
Brit’s impatience was growing. She had come to the village for a reason. And since that one conversation with Sif Saturday afternoon in the washhouse, she hadn’t moved a fraction of an inch toward her goal.
No one would talk to her. Not about Valbrand, anyway. The mention of his name brought long silences and significant looks. And then whoever she’d asked would answer that she already knew everything they knew on the subject.
She’d even gone so far as trying to get some small shred of information out of the children—and okay, that was kind of pitiful. But she was getting desperate.
They told her they’d seen Valbrand. That he came sometimes to visit—and that at night he turned into the Dark Raider. She almost got her hopes up, almost dared to imagine she might be getting somewhere.
But then the little darlings proceeded to tell her they’d also seen Thor in the sky, throwing his hammer, and Freyja riding through the clouds in her cat-drawn chariot.
So much for asking the kids.
Finally, on Tuesday, a week and a day after her plane went down, as she was sitting at the breakfast table with Asta and Eric, she decided she’d had about enough of getting nowhere. She looked across the table at the man who had carried her out of Drakveden Fjord.
Those haunting eyes were waiting, as usual. Over the past few days, she was constantly glancing up to find him looking at her, his gaze both measuring and intent.
Now he wore the strangest expression. Expectant and yet wary. As if he already knew what she would say.
“I would like to speak with you alone please—after breakfast if that’s all right.”
He nodded in that regal way of his. “As you wish.”
And Asta beamed, as if the thought of the two of them speaking alone after breakfast just tickled her pink. “Well,” the old woman said. “At last.”
Now, what was for Asta to be so thrilled about? She had to know that they’d be talking about Valbrand.
Whatever was up with her, Asta couldn’t get out and leave them alone fast enough. She had the table cleared and their breakfast bowls draining in the wooden rack on the counter in record time. “I’ll be at Sigrid’s,” she announced breathlessly as she grabbed her heavy shawl from the row of pegs by the door. Brit gave her a puzzled look and a wave as she went out.
The door clicked shut, and it was just Brit and Eric, facing each other across the plain wooden table.
“Well then.” Those green-gray eyes looked at her probingly. “You have something to say to me?”
Something to say? Oh, you’d better believe it. She had a hundred questions, at least. Was it possible he was finally ready to fork over a few answers?
Jorund, the agent from the Gullandrian National Investigative Bureau she’d befriended, had warned her about this. “He’s a Mystic through and through,” the NIB special agent had cautioned. “Plays it close and tight. You’ll have trouble getting anything out of him.” But, hey. What did Jorund know? Hadn’t he told her any number of times that she was chasing shadows, that her brother had met his end out there in the ocean, off the coast of Iceland somewhere? He’d been wrong on that count. Brit would prove him wrong about Eric, too.
She hoped.
Brit folded her hands on the table and leaned toward the silent man across from her. “You—and everyone else around here, as a matter of fact—keep claiming that my brother is dead, that I never saw him. Not here. Not in the fjord…” She let her voice trail off. Hey, who could say? Maybe he’d actually volunteer something. He didn’t. “Well, okay, just for the sake of moving on, let’s say that you’re telling me the truth.”
He nodded again. It wasn’t an answer—but she hadn’t really asked any questions. Yet.
“Okay, then, Eric. So let’s go back aways.”
“Back aways.” He looked amused.
She quelled the urge to raise her voice in frustration and explained evenly, “That’s right. If you won’t admit my brother’s alive, then will you tell me what you do know? Tell me what you found out, after he went missing. Tell me what you learned when you went searching for answers to what had happened to him.”
“I learned nothing. Except that he is truly dead.”
“Got that. But how did he die?”
“I’m sure your father must have told you.”
“He did. But I want you to tell me. Please?”
He studied her for a long moment, then shifted on his bench and rested his forearms on the table. “The truth about Valbrand is exactly what His Majesty, your father, has told you. Valbrand went a-Viking—in the modern-day sense of the word, anyway. Every prince who plans to put himself forward as a candidate for the crown in the next kingmaking must accomplish such a journey. It is tradition. A holdover from the old days when kings themselves went a-Viking, when, as the old saying goes, ‘Kings were made for honor, and not for long life.’
“Thus, Valbrand set out with a trusted crew in an authentic reconstruction of a Viking longship, from Lysgard harbor to the Shetland Islands, and on to the Faeroes. From there, he made for Iceland. Somewhere in the North Atlantic, he encountered a bad storm. During that storm, your brother was washed overboard, never to be seen again.”
“And you know this for certain because?”
“I tracked down the survivors of the storm and spoke with them, in person. They told me what everyone already knows. I heard their stories and each one corroborated the one before. It all fit together and it all made sense. As I have told you time after time after time, I now have no doubt at all that Valbrand’s death happened in a storm at sea.” He leaned closer across the table. “There. Are you satisfied?”
“Never.”
He made a low sound in his throat. “Freyja’s eyes. When will you abandon this witless hope that you’ll somehow find a dead man alive?”
Witless, huh? She was leaning forward, too. She leaned farther. They were nose to nose. The air between them seemed to crackle and snap. “I’ll have you know that your own father—and mine—sent me here to try to find out what really happened to my brother.”
“Is that what they told you?”
She scowled at him. “What do you mean, is that what they told me? Why else would I be here?” He was looking at her strangely again, frowning, his head slightly to the side. She reminded him, “And just in case you’ve somehow forgotten, my plane was sabotaged. And then there was that juvenile delinquent with the wicked-looking crossbow. Sif called him a renegade. Are you sure about that? Are you sure he wasn’t someone sent by whoever messed with my plane, to finish me off in the event I managed to crawl out alive?”
Now he wore a patient look. “The boy was a renegade. One of a small number of ill-behaved young ruffians who roam the Vildelund committing murder and stirring up mayhem whenever they get the chance.”
“So you’re saying it was just the Gullandrian version of a random drive-by shooting? Oh, puh-lease. If you think I buy that, I’ve got a statue in New York harbor I can sell you.”
He seemed very sure. “The boy is a renegade. I spoke with him myself, before I sent him to the northernmost village where he’ll receive the discipline and teaching he so obviously needs.”
“How did you manage that?”
“Manage what?”
“Well, you had me to drag out of there—and a wounded renegade to send to the north. I’m just trying to figure out how one man accomplished all that.”
“I was not alone. There were other men with me, men from the village. They took him north.”
“I didn’t see any other men—well, except for my brother, all in black, wearing a mask.”
“Your brother is dead. He wasn’t there.”
“He was. You and him and no one else.”
He shrugged. “The men were there, whether you saw them or not. And it’s unfortunate that your plane crashed. But it doesn’t mean the plane was sabotaged.”
“It was a fine plane in perfect working order. No way it would have gone to zero oil pressure out of nowhere like that.”
“Perhaps there was something wrong with your oil gauge—and as for why my father sent you here, we both know the reason. You have only to look as far as the medallion you wear around your neck to know the intentions of my father and yours.”
Brit stiffened. She felt for the chain at her neck and dragged the medallion out into the light. Her fingers closed around the warm, comforting shape of it.
“What are you talking about? Your father gave me this for luck, to keep me safe from all evil, he said.”
Eric was wearing that odd expression again—that sort of bemused half frown, his head tipped to the side. “You really don’t know, do you?”
“What?” she demanded. He went on looking at her. She said it again, louder, “What?”
And then, at last, he told her. “That medallion is mine. My father gave it to you so I might know you as my chosen bride.”
Chapter Five
Should she have known? Probably.
“I see you have been… misled,” he said softly. Brit only clutched the medallion and stared. Very patiently he went on, “We Mystics cling more closely to the old ways than do the people of the south. For us marriage is, first and foremost, an alliance between families. In the past millennium or so, it’s been the custom for the father of the groom to present the future bride of his son with a special pendant—a marriage medallion that was wrought of silver in the first months after the son’s birth. Each medallion is different, because each was made specifically for one treasured infant son.”
He paused for a moment, his gaze holding hers. Then, as if he could see it, though she still had her hand wrapped around it and he continued looking right in her eyes, he said, “A circle in quadrants, a ribbonlike creature, twisting and twining over the whole—the world serpent, perhaps, that coils at the roots of the guardian tree, holding together all the nine worlds. Four animal heads—snakes, dragons, rams? Perhaps. Or perhaps these are creatures of fancy, of myth. And at the center, the symbol for Saint John’s arms—like a cross, with four equal sides, each coiling and turning into the next. St. John is said to keep its bearer safe from all evil, did you know?”
She had, of course. Medwyn had told her—that much. But no more.
Eric said, “The medallion you wear used to hang on the wall above my blankets when I was an infant. As a child, I wore it against my flesh. When I turned eighteen, I gave it to my father—to be returned to me only around the neck of the woman I would wed. You.”
It came to Brit, suddenly, why she hadn’t figured it out before: she hadn’t wanted to know. She’d been so proud and sure that her father and his grand counselor believed her—believed in her. That they’d seen her purpose and her determination to find her brother, or at the very least, to learn the truth of his death. She’d allowed herself to believe that they respected her quest—and yes, damn it, it was a quest.
But apparently, only to her. To them—to her father the king and Medwyn and this too-attractive man sitting opposite her, she was only a woman. And to them, as to far too many men, Gullandrian or otherwise, a woman was to be taken seriously in only one context.
In relationship to a man.
“Let me get this straight.” She kept her voice low. Moderate. Controlled. “Medwyn and my dad sent me here to marry you? I was almost killed in a plane crash, my guide died, I was just about finished off in a… a hike-by shooting, and you’re trying to tell me it’s all for the sake of wedding bells?”
“It is of great importance, whom you marry. The fate of our country may hang upon that choice.”
