Sorrow's Peak (Serpent of Time Book 2)

by Jennifer Melzer

  Exhausted as he was after the long and arduous climb up the mountain, he’d slept fitfully himself, tossing and turning, listening to the strange silence of the place Brendolowyn claimed must have once been an old dwarven temple used to make sacrifice and offering to Dvergen. The rotting bridge that would lead them into the mountain swayed on fraying rope, creaking and moaning like the ghosts of men who no longer walked the world. It was an unsettling sound, and more than once he found himself lifting head to scan the moonlit ridge for signs of shades closing in on them.

  There was nothing. Only memory remained in that place.

  Returning his attention to Lorelei, he found a slow smile twitching at the corners of his mouth. Since he met her, he memorized all the details of her face. Every freckle, the upward turn of her dainty nose, the full, pouting curve of her lips and position of her cheekbones. He didn’t know if he could take his memories of her with him to the afterlife, but he’d like to see someone try and stop him from remembering her when he got to the Eternal Hunting Grounds.

  Would she meet him there one day? Even though they hadn’t recognized their mate bond in a physical sense? He knew there was far more to being mated than joining two bodies together, but sometimes it still terrified him. Had his father felt that kind of fear when he committed himself to Rognar’s cause? Did Deken worry he wouldn’t be able to find Eornlaith in Lohaloth?

  He didn’t want his life to be over so soon. There were still so many things he wanted to do, and he wanted the chance to do them with her. She had a long road ahead of her beyond Great Sorrow. She was meant to uplift and empower an entire race of people, slay a time-devouring serpent and save the world, and he needed to be with her when she did those things. He wanted to stand beside her, fight with her until the very end, but more than anything else he wanted to settle down and make a home with her, watch her belly one day swell with his child.

  Simple things, really, but he wanted them nonetheless. He never before imagined a future in which he would be someone else’s father, never thought he’d want that kind of life. With her though… He’d give up everything for a chance at simplicity with her by his side, for a place to call home and a life together.

  He could promise her he wasn’t going to die, assure her they would have their time together to bond and connect, to explore one another in the way they were meant to. It was something else entirely to keep a promise like that.

  “You will wish you’d slept come sunrise.”

  The mage’s quiet voice startled him from his complicated reverie, and then he jerked away from Lorelei so suddenly he was surprised she didn’t wake. He sat up, scanning the camp until his eyes rested on Brendolowyn, half-perched on his elbow and staring into the fire. Finn had been so consumed by watching Lorelei sleep, he hadn’t noticed he wasn’t the only one awake.

  “You’re one to talk,” he pointed out in a gruff whisper. “Don’t mages require rest to maintain the balance of their delicate energies, or something like that?”

  “Something like that.” He didn’t have to see Brendolowyn’s face to know the half-elf was smirking at him from across the shadows. It was a look he’d seen often enough since they’d met, he could conjure it almost as easily as Lorelei’s smile from the depths of his mind. He hoped he didn’t take that memory with him to the afterlife. “Though I rarely sleep,” he went on to confess, as if Finn had asked for explanation. “I maintain my energies well enough, but they are never quite at their full capacity because I have difficulty surrendering to sleep.”

  “Well that doesn’t make me feel confident in your abilities to keep the princess safe.”

  “I know you may struggle to believe this, but she is far more capable of caring for herself than either of us are willing to admit. She will walk out of that mountain with or without us. Horns of Llorveth in hand, she will move on to the next task she must face, but the only way it seems she will succeed with what comes next is with you by her side, so perhaps it would be in your best interest to at least try to sleep.”

  “You said she showed you things… when she saved you. Am I really supposed to die?”

  “You’re not supposed to, no, but you have died. Time and time again since the beginning of the cycle.”

  “Because of you?”

  “Because we weren’t able to set aside our differences, and in the end I failed to protect you.”

  “Then why are you even here?”

  “She believes it is necessary. I have some role to play and I must be here for the cycle to move forward.”

  “What exactly did she show you?”

  “That is none of your concern.”

  “I think it kinda is, considering you keep killing me, or whatever it is that happens.”

  The half-elf hesitated, a hitched breath expanding his lungs before he exhaled a sigh. “She showed me a dark future where not even the brightest glint of her light was enough to save us.”

  “A future I was not a part of?”

  “Because of my failure to protect you, yes.”

  For a long time Finn said nothing, his brain working through the minimal details before he arrived at a conclusion he’d suspected all along, but could never quite will himself to embrace. “You loved her,” he declared in a harsh whisper. “In this other life where I don’t survive this, you loved her. You… love her now.”

  He heard Brendolowyn swallow, the logs in the low-burning fire popping just seconds after, as if he’d somehow used his magic to cover up the sound. “And I suppose that future version of her loved me in her own way, but I am not her mate and we were never meant to be.”

  “That’s why you let me die?” Finn was flabbergasted, stunned into sitting upright and glaring across the dull orange light of the dying fire. “Because you wanted her for yourself?”

  “I don’t think I ever meant to let you die, no matter what the fractured memories she shared with me might suggest about those final moments before she became mine to care for, but I won’t lie to you, Finn. There is a part of me that loves her in ways I’m sure I’ll never understand. Unnatural and dangerous ways, and I fight against myself to silence it every single day. She does not belong to me.”

  “She doesn’t belong to anybody, really. Not even me. If I live through this, and we bond the way we’re meant to, I still don’t think she’ll ever fully be mine.”

  “She belongs to the gods, or so it would seem. To the world. It is a selfish thing for either of us to wish to possess her, and yet I cannot help myself. She saved me, and since the moment she reached her hand out I have loved her like no other.”

  Finn sifted through those words, trying to make sense of them and failing to put them together in the way the half-elf surely meant for him to. It made him jealous, insecure that though she told him she’d already chosen him in her own way there might still be a chance she’d change her mind.

  “What exactly did she save you from?”

  “Certain death. I was in the arena of Bok’naal when she held her hand out, seconds from a welcomed end to my suffering. In a flash of light she drew me from that place and left me on the frigid shores of this land. She reunited me with Hrafn, whom I thought was dead, and told me to find my father’s people in the west. Before she left me she showed me things, memories of that which could never be. Her memories…” He paused, head turning into the shadows as if to hide his already darkened face.

  “Why would she do that?”

  “Yovenna believed she left me with my failures, so I might not repeat the same mistakes, but I believe I fail you because of the memories. I fell in love with recollections that were never meant to be mine.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  Brendolowyn didn’t answer his question for a long time, during which he sat up, squared his shoulders and leaned toward the fire’s light so Finn could see his face.

  “I tell you this, Finn, because I want you to know that though some part of me longs for her in ways that are unnatural and wrong, I have r
esigned myself to the truth. She will never love me the way I love her. She does not belong to me and it is wrong of me to try and keep her for myself.”

  “She doesn’t belong to anyone…”

  “She is your mate, and for reasons I may never understand the fate of our world depends on the two of you together.” The fire cast eerie golden light across his face, lending a severity to his features that made Finn’s blood feel cold inside his veins. “I don’t like you,” he said, “I haven’t liked you since the moment I first laid eyes on you. Maybe it’s because of her, or maybe it’s because you’re arrogant, unrefined, inexperienced and over-confident in all the ways that get foolish young men killed for causes they can’t even begin to understand.”

  Parting his lips to make a snappy comeback, there wasn’t time to form clever enough thought to reply.

  “I know this because I was once like you, Finn. You may not think we have anything in common, that we are as different as day and night, but in that you would be wrong. I was young once, and by the standards of my people I suppose I still am, but years ago, before you were even born, I was young and stupid, cocksure and arrogant and I thought nothing could touch me, not even death. Perhaps I was right about death, though I couldn’t have known it at the time, but I learned rather swiftly there were worse things than dying, and I have a feeling you will learn this on your own soon enough.”

  That statement stiffened the muscles in Finn’s back; an uncomfortable tightness ached in him as chills marched along its curved length and settled at the nape of his neck until he couldn’t stop himself from shrugging them off.

  “I will do my best to keep you alive,” he promised, “but I don’t think you will thank me for that once all is said and done.” He shifted his demeanor, relaxing again as he gestured toward the pale grey of coming dawn illuminating the eastern sky. “There is little time before sunup. You should get some sleep while you still can.”

  “So should you,” he said, laying back on the hard earth and rolling onto his side.

  Only Finn didn’t sleep, and though the mage was silent, he suspected Brendolowyn didn’t either. Mind abuzz with the things he’d learned, Finn’s jealous heart rankled as he allowed his imagination to run away to a world in which he was dead and Lorelei belonged to the man who was meant to save his life.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Both her companions were already awake when Lorelei blinked her eyes open and struggled to remember where she was. She was getting used to waking up in strange places, the cold air teasing her skin as dampness set into her clothes and made them feel heavier than they should. Yawning and stretching awake, she rolled her head along the pack beneath her head and stared at the distant bridge between them and their destination.

  She expected to have nightmares about it, to dream herself falling endlessly through the air until her body collided with the rocks below, but she didn’t remember her dreams at all. She only slept.

  She stared at the bridge, watched its girth sway against the slow wind until Finn’s presence fell across her vision. He hunkered down beside her, holding a steaming bowl of unsweetened, boiled barley porridge. It was about all they had left of the provisions the Alvarii gave them before sending them on their way, and though she knew it would be bland and tasteless, she sat up and warmed her hands with the bowl before drinking it down.

  Brendolowyn stood overlooking the foothills below, his shoulders relaxed, but straight, and as though he knew what she was wondering Finn told her, “He’s been at it since before the sun came up. Meditating, or something.”

  “That’s probably wise,” she said quietly, filling her mouth with another squishy swallow of porridge. “We will need him at his best once we are inside Great Sorrow.”

  “Yeah,” Finn said curtly and followed her wandering eye toward the bridge spanning across the stone. Sensing the increase in her heartbeat just looking in the direction of that hideous construction of old rope and rotting planks of wood, he asked, “You think you’ll be all right on the bridge?”

  “I guess we’ll find out,” she shrugged. “We came all this way, it would be a waste of time to turn back now.”

  “I don’t think we could turn back, even if you wanted to. It was treacherous enough coming up. I doubt there’s a safe way back down the mountainside from here.”

  “You’re probably right,” she sighed.

  “I will mark that on the calendar. It’s not likely to happen again anytime soon.”

  She didn’t want to go forward, didn’t want to get inside the mountain and fight some monster unlike anything she’d ever imagined in her wildest dreams. Perhaps that was why the ghosts of her parents sent her up the hidden side passage. Because there was no turning back from what she needed to do. Any other path would have been too easy to flee from.

  “Did you sleep okay?” Finn asked. The tenderness in his voice was unexpected, not to say she hadn’t come to see a tender side of him he liked to pretend wasn’t there.

  “Well enough, I guess.”

  “And… how are you feeling today? That whole thing with your parents, learning about your mom…”

  She didn’t know how to answer because she honestly didn’t know how she was doing. The entire journey up the side of the mountain the day before hadn’t given her much time to think about anything but the next rock she needed to grab onto, the strain of pulling all her weight upward reach after grab after reach. Some inexplicable strength kept her going, denied her the occasional impulse to look down over her shoulder. Every time the urge rose, she felt a slight warmth at her throat, subtle heat from the amulet she wore around her neck, and though she didn’t want to think too hard about that either, she couldn’t help but wonder if her father had somehow been protecting her from tumbling to her death.

  Her hands still hurt from the cut of stone into her palms, the scrapes along her wrists and arms stinging and pulsing in mild reminder if she thought hard enough about that treacherous journey. Glancing toward the bridge again, she would have to find other things to think about to get across it, something to distract her mind from the terror that would surely grip her senses every eking step across the dangerous, swaying monstrosity.

  “I haven’t thought much about it.” But it was always there, in the back of her mind, tucked into a place she was starting to keep things she didn’t want to deal with.

  She’d left home thinking it wouldn’t matter if she never saw either of her parents again, believing her own mother wouldn’t miss her or ever make the journey to Hofft to see her daughter once she was married. At the time she thought it didn’t bother her. She and her mother were never close, but it all felt so different knowing the woman was dead. The way she’d thought about it at the time felt childish in retrospect. In light of the fact that she’d never see her mother again, her last glimpse of Ygritte in the castle tower meant something different now whenever Lorelei called it to mind.

  Her mother knew, perhaps even long before Lorelei was to be sent away, she would never see her daughter again.

  She wondered what other things her mother knew. If she was aware of her husband’s deal with the All-Creator… Did she know Lorelei wasn’t normal? Was that why she’d stayed away?

  Steering the subject away from things she wasn’t ready to talk about with anyone, not even Finn, she confessed, “I worry about my little sister. You know? I don’t know where she even is, whether she’s safe, or not...”

  “Princess, you don’t even know if what you saw was real. It still could have been some trick, we don’t know.”

  “No,” she shook her head. “I know, Finn. I can feel it. My mother is dead.” And there’s nothing I can do to change that. “My sister, she’s out there somewhere and I might never see her again.”

  He didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing and she was actually kind of glad. Usually he seemed to have something to say about everything, but for once he knew there were no words.

  He lowered his arm across her back, restin
g it across her shoulders to draw her nearer to his chest. She was grateful for the comfort, for the instinctual way he reached for her, and for a long time they sat in the dull grey light of the early morning sun waiting for Brendolowyn to finish his meditation.

  The bridge wasn’t long, but it didn’t have to be a long trek in order to be terrifying. Less than a quarter of the way across the splintered and timeworn planks of wood stretching over a seemingly endless ravine, Lorelei decided she couldn’t walk it. She dropped carefully onto her hands and knees, shuddering as the boards moaned under her weight, and insisted upon crawling to the other side with both eyes squeezed tight so she couldn’t see the ravine below.

  It took far longer than it should have, each forward movement followed by a gulp and a whimper as the ropes dangerously swayed in the open air. The wind rocked the bridge. Every step her companions took made her feel as if the world was falling out from underneath her, but all three of them made it to the other side, unscathed and relieved there were other ways out of the mountain if they actually survived. It might take a while to find them, but she would die inside the mountain before she crossed that bridge again.

  For several minutes after scrambling onto the flat, stony outcropping, she collapsed upon the cold rock and laughed until she started to sob. Neither Finn nor Brendolowyn seemed to know how to react, and while she curled up on her side, half-choking, half-giggling maniacally, the two of them gave her space and time to compose herself again.

  Lorelei rolled onto her back after what felt like an emotional eternity and stared at the cloud-dappled sky until the first cold drops of rain splashed her cheeks and brow. By the time she sat up and looked around the landing a slow drizzle darkened the stone, making it slick and damp beneath the worn tread of her boots.

  Finn lingered nearby, arms crossed and staring in the direction Brendolowyn went, but when he heard her rising, he turned around to make sure she was all right. Grinning as he started toward her, he announced, “You made it across. I think you could probably do just about anything now.”