“No.” She shook her head almost furiously, hoping the movement would dislodge the pounding from her ears. “I’m not afraid.”
“I didn’t think you would be.” The woman grinned, the feral reality rising once more in her eyes. “Come inside, and I will tell you not only what the gods want you to hear, but what your people need for you to hear.”
The air within the seer’s tent was heavy with the smell of burning charcoal and incense, and though the overwhelming scent immediately reminded her of temple, the perfume was vastly different. It made her eyes sting and tear and her nose felt as stuffy as if she had a winter cold. Tendrils of smoke billowed from the censers, spiraling toward the ceiling and joining with the thick cloud already mingling overhead.
There was a small, round table with two chairs facing each other, and in the center of that table was a blue velvet bag. A worn set of painted cards fanned out across the space beneath that bag in a dark but colorful display of images the likes of which Lorelei had never seen.
“What’s inside that bag?” she asked.
“The bones of Llorveth.” The woman circled around the edge of the table and gripped the back of the chair before tugging it out and sitting down. “Do you know of Llorveth?”
“He is the Lord of the Wild Hunt.”
“Yes, Llorveth is the father of my people, our people.” She nodded, and then with a graceful hand she gestured toward the empty chair opposite her. “The spirit of Llorveth guides and speaks to the U’lfer, and I, Rhiorna, am his listener. For many years he has whispered of you, his lost wolf among the restless sheep. Do you wish to hear what he has to say to you, Lorelei of Leithe, Daughter of Rognar and Ygritte?”
“My… my father’s name is Aelfric,” she insisted, still lingering at the edge of the chair. “He is the king.”
“That is the first truth Llorveth would have you hear. The name of your father,” she paused a moment, the dainty nostrils flaring wide as she drew breath in through her slightly upturned nose. “Your true father was slain by the silver sword of the king who’s claimed you as his own daughter, and his name was Rognar and he was my brother.”
“I don’t understand.” The words felt strange and cold inside, her child’s mind grappling desperately with a truth she was too young to understand. She could feel the world around her spinning and spinning, and when she shook her head she nearly lost her footing because she felt so dizzy and strange. “Aelfric is my father.”
“No,” she shook her head, the furious waves of her brilliant hair whipping around her face like fire. “But you must go on believing that lie until the time is right. It is Llorveth’s wish, so when you leave this place you will forget my face, my voice, the silent burden of truth our god has given you to carry. Inside, you will know that you are more than this,” she held her hands out to the tent, but her fingers wavered, and Lorelei’s eyes felt blurry, her head strange. “Know that truth must remain buried deep until the three moons rise over the Edgelands and the hounds of deceit chase you home to your people, for one day you will lead them to salvation.”
Lorelei couldn’t breathe, and her head felt like it was floating away from her, drifting off her shoulders and into the clouds of smoke that hovered near the shadowy crest of the tent. She felt like she was spinning in a field of cotton flowers, arms out as the clouds in the sky above her swirled and swirled into a gaping vortex. She was going to fly away if she didn’t find her feet, soar into the infinite blue, into the warmth of the sun where she would swim in its fire forever. Somewhere in the distance she heard a familiar voice calling out her name. Frantic with worry, the pitch rang in Lorelei’s ears, making her feel sick in her stomach.
“You must go now, little wolf, but know that we will meet again. I will be waiting for you to come home.”
“Lorelei!” The terrified sound of Pahjah’s voice stirred her from the trance-like state that held her swaying on her feet within the crowd.
She felt cold, as if her very blood had turned to ice inside her veins, and the colorful swarm of eager bodies that pressed in around her didn’t even seem to notice she was there. There… where was there? A heavy hip shoved her backward, and it was all she could do to keep her legs from giving out beneath her. If she fell they would trample her into the mud, never even look down as their feet pounded her tiny body into the earth until it was broken. The panic of being lost gripped her so tight she could barely breathe.
“Lorelei, where are you, child? Answer me!”
“Pahjah.” Her own voice sounded so small and helpless as she croaked out that single word in a desperate plea to be found.
“There you are!” The hand that grabbed her was not unkind, but it squeezed into her shoulder like a desperate claw, jerking her back to the safety of the moment. “Where were you? I was worried sick, girl! I’ve been looking everywhere. And where’s your shoe? I swear you children will be the death of me.”
She threw her arms around her nurse and squeezed so tight it hurt her chest and arms, but she didn’t care. She didn’t know why, but she never wanted to leave the comfort of Pahjah’s loving embrace again.
“Oh Pahjah,” she whimpered. Tears flooded her cheeks beneath the stifling mask she wore. “I was so lost,” she cried, burying her face deeper into Pahjah’s skirt, “so afraid.”
“I’ve got you now, little one. You’ve been found, and there’s nothing to fear.”
Her sister hugged them too, and for a moment the three of them just stood there among the bustling crowd clinging to one another as if for dear life.
“I think Lorelei needs a glass apple to make her feel better, Pahjah.” Mirien began to withdraw, and though Lorelei couldn’t see anything but her eyes peering back from behind the masks that hid the royal children from the world, she knew her sister was smiling. “Could we get glass apples, now, Pahjah? Please?”
“Of course we can.” Pahjah laughed, the sound catching in her throat as if she were choking back tears. She stepped back and lowered a hand to each of them.
Lorelei gripped tight, squeezing Pahjah’s fingers and swearing to herself she would never let go again.
As they slipped back into the crowd, she lifted her eyes toward the tent, toward a beautiful woman with hair like fire and the wildest eyes she’d ever seen. The woman smiled at her, nodded her head once, and then she slipped back inside her tent.
CHAPTER ONE
Lorelei was trapped. The cacophony of Trystay’s hounds bellowed at her back and the distant howl of wolves ahead rivaled the echo of their fury. They were driving her straight into the Edgelands, just a few more feet and she would trespass into U’lfer territory. Everything she learned about the U’lfer from Master Davan over the years suggested they didn’t take kindly to outsiders on their land, and she’d once overheard Cottar Ewland tell a terrifying story to the scullery maids around the kitchen fire about a distant cousin twice removed who’d been savagely torn apart by the wolfmen when his hunting pack chased a stag across the border.
“The bleeding beasts tore the poor fool limb from limb, and they gobbled up his dogs too. Not hide nor hair of anyone in the party left. Tragic story, that one.”
“They’re not supposed to embrace their beasts anymore, are they?”
“Without the king’s watchful eye on them, who’s to say they don’t break the law?”
“But Cottar, if that story had even a lick of truth to it, who survived to pass on the tale?”
The cottar didn’t have an answer, and Lorelei suspected even then he’d been making it up to keep the ladies entertained, but that didn’t keep her blood from freezing in her veins at that very moment. Every time she heard the looming bay of wolves growing nearer, she wanted to stop running and puddle into a heap of trembling despair in the dew-soaked grass beneath her feet.
She was going to die before that night was through. About that she was certain, but she would rather be torn to pieces by werewolves than die by Trystay’s wretched hand. All he needed was her dead body to ig
nite war, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of being the one who killed her.
The heartache of betrayal kept her moving.
Throat clenched to stifle the cry of distress lodged within her lungs, she swallowed hard against her own fear. There was no time to think about the cold hard facts, not a moment to give in to betrayal or fear of impending death, but the mind did not work that way, at least not Lorelei’s mind, anyway. Every time the fear of death rose to the surface for her to contemplate, it was tinged with rage.
Her own betrothed, plotting to kill her on the way to their wedding… while she was supposed to be asleep just a few tents away, no less. How had she not seen that coming?
Blinded, always blinded by the prospect of excitement and adventure, and even though she’d hated her father for practically auctioning her hand in marriage off to the highest bidder in order to maintain peace in his lands, the moment she saw Trystay she’d almost forgotten why she was so angry with her father in the first place.
Beautiful, he was so perfect and elegant and graceful… And he liked her the moment he first laid those brilliant green eyes upon her from the other side of the courtroom.
So nervous, she could barely breathe, by the time she reached her father’s throne her head was spinning. Her corset was too tight and she’d fainted like an absolute idiot, but when she woke the first pair of eyes she’d seen had been his, her prince, her handsome, perfect prince, and he’d been smiling down at her.
“Don’t try to move, Princess,” he murmured softly as he cradled her head in the palm of his hand like she were some breakable doll he had to protect. “The bodice of your gown was too tight, but your mother is loosening it now so you can breathe.”
There was no time to feel ashamed or embarrassed, not that Lorelei even really knew the meaning of either word anyway. Trystay turned his head over his left shoulder to call out for assistance and the curling locks of his silver-blond queue rustled with the movement. All she could think about in that moment was how badly she wanted to reach out and run her fingers through those curls to see if they were as soft as they looked.
Idiot. It was the only word that made sense in retrospect. A bubble-headed, gushing fool who thought love was the answer to all her prayers. She’d actually believed in that spiraling moment of stupidity that Trystay was the freedom she’d been longing for, the one thing that would spirit her away from her father’s tyranny.
“Water, someone bring the princess water.”
When he held the goblet to her lips, those intense, beautiful eyes of his never left her face. Trickling cool refreshment onto her parched tongue, all her righteous indignation faded. All the speeches she’d prepared for the court, for her father, about a woman’s rights to choose her husband, were lost in the emerald light of his perfect gaze. Trystay was everything the faerie tales spoke of, the handsome, charming prince come to whisk her off to some foreign land and raise her up on a pedestal for all to worship and adore.
His people would love her, he whispered that night when he sought her out in the tower garden to make sure she was all right. It was scandalous, and oh so wrong for the two of them to be alone that way, but it felt like some grand adventure, a bit of control over her own destiny that her father could never take away from her. And when Trystay kissed her cheek that night, promising her a life she would never regret, Lorelei practically melted into his arms with a dreamy sigh.
Ladies help her.
She’d been so blind and stupid, and now she was going to die.
As if in reminder to that cold, hard fact, every muscle in her body screamed in protest as her bare feet stomped the hard earth beneath them. She could barely feel the sharp stones biting into her soft arches anymore, only shocks of pain reverberating through her aching calves, into the stiffening joints of her knees and along the backs of her tight hamstrings. Sweat stung the hundreds of briar kisses that lashed her skin; blood and perspiration burned in her eyes every time she blinked. Only her tears provided temporary relief, but even tears made her eyes feel like someone had thrown handfuls of dust into them.
She could barely breathe anymore. Her racing heart felt like it was going to explode inside her chest, and when the wolves up ahead howled again, the rampant fear she felt nearly made her stop in her tracks. Maybe getting torn apart by savages wasn’t better than dying at Trystay’s hand.
Maybe she could appeal to him, fall to her knees before him and beg him to spare her…
No.
She was never going to beg, especially not from him. If she was meant to die, then so be it.
Gulping down her fears again she realized, as she followed the path of the moons’ light deeper into the tangled wilderness of the Edgelands, that it was a lot easier to express that kind of conviction than it would be to actually stand and face her death without blubbering like a baby.
She didn’t want to die. She was only seventeen. Just a baby, at least that was what her mother said when pleading with her father to give her one more year before he sent her off like some offering of peace to a distant, warring land. Until that moment in her life arrived, Lorelei always felt far too old for her years, always itched for the days when she would be grown and able to make decisions for herself, but even as she was free from her father’s iron fist for the first time in her life, she realized she would never have that power.
She was a daughter of kings, a princess bred and raised for the specific purpose of one day becoming a queen. Her decisions would never be her own. Her betrothed decided she would have to die in order to drive his father’s troops into Leithe in a false act of aid against the enemy. He would play the grief-stricken role so well as he laid her lifeless body at the foot of her father’s throne, blaming the underground Alvarii rebellion that had been weakening her father’s defenses for years.
In the end it would provide the kingdom of Hofft with the power they needed to establish themselves in Leithe so they could overthrow King Aelfric and yank the throne from underneath him. Just as they had been trying to do for decades.
Lorelei always said she hated her father, hated the way he used her and her little sister as peacekeeping pawns, but the thought of Trystay’s betrayal infuriated her. King Aelfric had been just as blind as his daughter when it came to the prince of Hofft, believing every deceitful word that flowed from his lips as he made promises of a life in which the king’s oldest child would never want for anything, would be worshiped and adored by the people of Hofft, who hadn’t had a queen since his own revered mother died in childbirth twenty-four years earlier.
Every word, every flattering utterance, every secret glance across the hall after the night he’d stole that kiss from her in the garden… all of it was lies. She would bet everything she had to her name, though it wasn’t much, that his father wasn’t really ailing either, and that it would be a long time before Trystay ever sat on a throne himself.
And she didn’t know what made her angrier, the fact that he mesmerized her entire household with lies, or that she’d been dumb enough herself to believe him.
Her entire life, every moment of freedom and independence was just beyond her reach, even the manner in which she would die.
No.
She shook her head defiantly as she ran, as if the very act of denial itself would make her declaration so. If there was only one decision, one choice she would make for herself in the final moments of her life, it would be how she died, and that death would not come at Trystay’s hand. He would never have that satisfaction, and her refusal to grant it made her feel temporarily smug and self-assured.
Pressing deeper into the thicket, she could barely see the graceful tendrils of light trickling through the canopy of interlaced branches overhead anymore. All three moons were full, a rare event and cause for celebration all throughout Vennakrand, but for Lorelei their brilliant conjoined light was both a blessing and a curse. The woods she ran through were so thick, not even daylight could pierce it, but when she was running through the occa
sional clearings the red dress she’d been presented to her betrothed in, the dress Trystay insisted she wear until they arrive in Hofft, made her stand out plain as day.
Turning her head over her shoulder, she nearly collided with a tree on her right, rough bark flaying the skin of her wrist, which she held out in front of her to keep from stumbling through unfamiliar, dark territory. She swallowed the cry stifled in the back of her throat and pushed off the tree.
She had to keep running.
From time to time she caught snippets of voices on the wind. Trystay, his soldiers. Every pounding step put their angry voices that much further behind her, masking their conversation beneath the rampant hunting dogs frothing at the edge of the forest.
Nevertheless, she clearly heard Trystay bellow, “I want that bitch’s head and I want it now. Go after her, or I’ll stick my blade in your belly and bait the beasts in those woods with your blood. Go!”
“Hounds!”
The barking silenced for a moment as the dogs awaited their next command. She was far enough away that she couldn’t hear the soldiers’ armor anymore, or the heavy slosh of tromping boots through the mud. Then the hunting pack was on the move again. The gnash of teeth and barking echo grew closer with every breath, the hounds swallowing their trepidation of the monsters in the woods and answering the furious whips of their masters.
Narrowing her blurred vision again, Lorelei muttered prayer to a god she’d never made offering to before in her life: Llorveth, Lord of the Wild Hunt. The edge of the land was his hunting ground, the U’lfer that lived there his children. If anyone could guide and protect her through the darkness of his woods, it was him, but why would a god of beastmen heed her prayers?
Edgelanders (Serpent of Time) Page 2
