Valbrand was a-good man. What a king he would have made.”
“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
