“And what message was that?”
“Stay away,” he murmured softly and then he sucked his lower lip between his teeth to gently gnaw upon it. Finn never drew his eyes away from the girl on the healer’s table, only stood as if wrapped in some spell that went well beyond the tingling hum of healing magic.
“Stay away,” Viln repeated, nodding bitter understanding. “Do you have any idea what you have done, Finn?”
“She would have died out there, Viln.”
“And I suppose it never occurred to you death was her fate,” Viln pointed out, “and you interfered. You’ve shed blood this night, brother, and maybe that blood wasn’t human, but there will be repercussions, no doubt. Consequences we all must face because you decided to be a hero. They are already plotting to cast you out.”
“Let them cast me out then.”
“No one is casting anyone out of my land.” The unexpected rasp of Rhiorna’s voice intruded upon their conversation. “Not tonight.” She didn’t even look back at him when she asked, “And tell me this, Vilnjar the Strong, what know you of fate?” Her healing hands hovered over the girl’s face, tendrils of swirling white magic passing from her body into the girl. The wound on her forehead was deep, the blood clotting thick and black around the edges as tiny red droplets trickled over her temple and dripped onto the clean sheets beneath her. “Tell me what you know of this girl.”
“Nothing.” He drew his shoulders back, conflicted in his conviction when he realized Rhiorna did know something about that girl.
“That’s right,” the wise woman whispered, bits of spittle flecking her lips as she spoke. “You know nothing.”
“And I don’t suppose you would be so kind as to enlighten me then, wise seer?”
Rhiorna finally turned her head in his direction, and when her eyes met his, Vilnjar felt his heart thump an extra beat inside his chest. They were no longer white and blind, but the vivid shade of hazel he remembered from the years before she lost her power to speak and see, all-powerful, all-seeing and with the very wrath of Llorveth himself burning in the irises. Even the age seemed to have melted from her flesh, and though he could hardly believe what he was seeing, Rhiorna the Seer was almost young again, restored by whatever magic the coming of that girl had inspired.
Vilnjar shrank back, abashed by nothing more than a look. His humbled stare lingered on his boots until she started to speak again.
“This girl, this wonderful, beautiful girl is one of ours. A lost wolf among the sheep, but she is lost no more. Finn has brought her home to us just as he was supposed to do.”
Finn never did anything he was supposed to do, and as if he could hear his brother’s thoughts, the young wolf smirked over at him, a childish, self-righteous display that made Vilnjar want to crack him upside the head.
“I knew it.” Finn returned his attention to the girl on the table. “I knew she was one of us. I could smell it in her blood.”
Taking a tentative step toward her, Vilnjar attuned his senses and breathed deep. Jasmine, white lavender flowers, sweat and blood with a lingering hint of fear; nothing animal, nothing U’lfer… but wait. Yes, there it was, just beneath the surface, almost as if hidden, but how could that be? Every living U’lfer on the face of Vennakrand was present and accounted for within the confines of their wooded homelands, and there had not been an exiling since the Edgelands Proclamation. It wasn’t possible.
“Oh, but it is possible, Vilnjar.” He could almost feel Rhiorna inside his mind, sifting through his thoughts like grains of sand through her fingers. “You forget that those of us with pure blood were not the only like us to walk this world before the War of Silence.”
“A half-blood,” he murmured.
“Not just any half-blood. This is the child of my brother, Rognar and his beloved wife, Ygritte. She has been chosen by Llorveth himself to set the U’lfer free.”
Viln stumbled back two steps, his head swimming with that simple revelation.
Every child of the U’lfer knew the story of Rognar and Ygritte, bringers of the War of Silence that cut the U’lfer off from the rest of the civilized world. Elders told it as a cautionary tale to warn children against the dangers of giving into the beast within. For the U’lfer had once been many, and with no land to call their own, the restless warriors among them wandered far and wide across the lands raging, warring, pillaging and savagely tearing apart anyone who sought to stand in their way.
Rognar the Conqueror, they called him, because his lust for blood and power had driven the best among them mad with greed, and in his lifetime more than half the U’lfer were lost in his struggle for power. Rognar thought to build himself an empire and the throne upon which he would sit would be crafted from the bones of his enemies.
They say he first saw the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen in a field of flowers, mourning the sorrows of her life. Ygritte, she was called, and the flow of her waving hair was the color of honey gleaming in the sunlight. Infatuated from the moment he first laid eyes on her, Rognar embraced the girl, brought her into their folds and promised to take away the sadness in her heart. The wary among them did not welcome her as openly, but Rognar was not a man to be denied, and so they stepped back and let him take her has wife, but Ygritte belonged to another.
When her human king discovered they had taken her in, King Aelfric of Leithe rallied his men and his allies and crashed down upon the U’lfer like a storm. Hundreds of villages wiped off the face of the map as if they’d never even been there at all. Men, women and children burned alive in their homes, and all in the name of Ygritte.
When the U’lfer finally had enough of death, they stole Ygritte from Rognar’s tent and marched her onto the battlefield beneath a white flag of surrender. They turned Rognar, his men and his accursed woman over to the king. Deken, Vilnjar’s father had been among Rognar’s men, and after all were executed and Ygritte named Aelfric’s queen, the council signed the Edgelands Proclamation, which confined all that remained of their people to that tiny strip of land they now called home.
In the end there were those who bitterly mocked Rognar’s name, the man who sought to give them a kingdom they could call their own, but the price they’d all paid for that miniscule strip of land had cost them everything.
“But… Ygritte…” those words fumbled through his lips as if he’d lost control of his senses. “She is queen in Leithe now… That means this girl… Oh no,” he gasped, taking two steps back, as though that little bit of distance between himself and the girl would stop the inevitable. “She will bring war to our lands, tear apart everything the council has fought to rebuild for the last fifteen years. Finn, what have you done?”
“I saved her.”
“He brought her home to us,” Rhiorna said. “Where she belongs, where she should have been all along.” Withdrawing her hands and her magic from her conjoined efforts with the healer, she turned and stalked toward him. “And you must make your decision now, Vilnjar the Strong, the decision to stand with her or against her, but know this: If you stand against Llorveth’s chosen, you will know his wrath and there is nothing I can do to spare you from it.”
“But she… And this… madness. We cannot…”
“We can,” she told him. “We must, for the children of Llorveth cannot survive in isolation and denial. Without the freedom to be who we are, the U’lfer will be no more. What will it be, Vilnjar? Where will you stand?”
He looked between Rhiorna and the strange girl, his wary stare falling then to his brother. Finn had not even taken his eyes from her, as if he couldn’t look away if he tried. His throat felt so tight when he tried to swallow, he swore he was choking.
“You have until she wakes to decide,” Rhiorna said. “Until then, what you’ve learned here tonight cannot leave this room. Do you understand me?”
He wanted to shake his head, to protest and stop that madness before it could burn out of control and tear everything they’d worked so hard for apart, but he was powerless when he looke
d into Rhiorna’s eyes, silenced by the never ending stream of power he saw there, and so he nodded, and whispered, “Yes.”
It had been two days since those words had been spoken, two days since Mad Finn the Reckless had brought war into their hall and held her like a broken doll toward the healers and begged them to fix her. And in those two days his brother had not left that girl’s side for more than a minute. Rhiorna’s protection kept Cobin from imprisoning him, but even that could not hold out forever.
Their tiny village of Drekne was in a state of chaos, people gathering in the hall looking for guidance and truth about the outsider among them, the wrath her very presence would bring down upon them all. There was talk of fleeing, heading south to avoid the king’s men, who must surely already be on their way. The council did their best to calm the people, promising answers as soon as they had them to give and assuring all that war was not coming, their children were safe.
Rhiorna gave them nothing, and for the moment the unexpected return of her voice and vision was the only thing holding the council from voting Vilnjar out of his seat so they could finally exile his brother without protest.
She had once been the most powerful voice on the council, and though years of silence had removed her from that seat of power, no one dared challenge her when she told them to leave the Reckless one alone. At least not yet.
Vilnjar could tell that challenge was on the verge. The people were scared; they wanted answers.
When he walked through the hall on his way to check on Finn and the girl that morning, Cobin’s embittered gaze followed his every step. Their eyes met for only a moment, but it was enough to tell him everything he needed to know.
It was only a matter of time before the council found out who the stranger in their midst was, and when they did all hell would break loose.
“I have seen this,” Rhiorna told him that first night in the shadowy silence of the corridor outside the healer’s room. “All of this and more, and they will not stand for a change so severe, but this is prophecy, Vilnjar. The very voice of our god whispered our future, the future of the U’lfer, into my ear and that future’s name is Lorelei.”
Chaos, war, the unleashing of the beast they had all worked so hard to master over the last fifteen years. No wonder Finn was drawn to her. She was the very essence of everything he’d ever stood for; she was freedom.
The simultaneous exhale of their breath drew his mind back to the moment and he cast a gaze in her direction.
He did know her face, though not because he’d ever seen her. He remembered her father, Rognar, from whom she’d garnered the fire-like auburn of her long, wavy hair.
Lorelei.
The knowing of her name did not lend any kind of peace or understanding. His hand stretched out toward her face, all traces of the briar scratches and bruises were gone and in their wake a smattering of freckles that made her look so innocent and pure he almost forgot for a moment that she was war incarnate, a force powerful enough to tear the U’lfer apart. The peaceful expression she wore reminded him of someone else, Rognar’s boy, Logren. Vilnjar once called him blood-brother and swore to stand beside him in much the same way his father promised his loyalty and his blade to Rognar. That little boy had disappeared the day the fires came, never to be seen again. It had been years since Vilnjar thought of Logren, and a momentary twinge of internal agony tightened around his heart.
Fingertip lingering over the deep gash that marred her forehead, she twitched a little beneath his touch and he guiltily withdrew. She would have a scar there when all was said and done, probably the first of many if she truly was who Rhiorna said. Everything about her, everything Rhiorna said should have driven him into a frenzied state of panic and alarm, and yet the underlying need to protect and keep her safe was the only thing he felt. Because he hadn’t been able to do that with her half-brother, but perhaps he could do that for her.
CHAPTER FOUR
In the beginning there was darkness, or maybe that was just part of the dream. A heavy cloak of pitch wrapped her within its protection while a great invisible beast carried her backwards through all the moments of her life. One minute she was running through the woods, and then she was standing in the shadows outside her prince’s tent listening to him plot her murder with the Ninvarii whore he’d been inviting into his bed each night since they’d started traveling to his home for their wedding. The moment shifted again and she was riding in the litter, Trystay reaching over to take her hand in his while he told her stories from his childhood and delighted in the sound of her laughter as he promised her the moons.
The caravan of soldiers moved backwards, marching as they carried her home again until she saw Mirien and Pahjah waving her into the courtyard instead of out of it. Her mother’s shadow lingered in the tower, long golden hair rippling and flowing unbound in the wind. Her father lowered the flag of celebratory mourning at not having lost a daughter, but gaining an incredibly powerful son and ally. Then she was standing in her final moment with her father, the king. There was something in his face she’d never seen before, so much pride in his eyes, such hope that she could actually feel the years of resentment she carried melting away when his strong hands lowered onto her shoulders just seconds before he drew her into his embrace.
“Every second of your life has been leading to this,” he said. “Make your father proud.”
She backed out of the room and found herself standing in the garden beneath the moons the night she’d fainted in court. She stood beneath the moons thinking about her life, fretting over the fact that her father would never forgive her for ruining his one chance at an alliance with Hofft by embarrassing herself in front of the prince. Something inside her longed for freedom, for the chance to live her own life without the dread of disappointing her father. She wanted to run away, but then he came. He shouldn’t have been there, but for a fleeting moment she’d been so glad to see him, her handsome prince come to rescue her from her own fears. How overjoyed she was to discover his adventurous nature, his willingness to break from the rigid rules of courtship just to be near her.
“I had to see you.”
Trystay reached for her hand, even though touching her was forbidden until the contracts had been signed and she officially became his property. He drew her against his chest and squeezed her body tighter. His lips hovered over hers; the warmth of his breath rushed against her cheek as he turned his face downward and kissed her for the very first time. The feeling of warmth yielded into the fluttering sensation that she was falling, the reverse of fainting. It was like flying, her body lifting gracefully upright before rigidly stepping her way one blind foot after the other through a sea of wide eyes judging her every move as she marched backward through royal inspection until the red doors leading to doom closed in front of her and locked her outside the courtroom with Pahjah.
She paced in front of the red door waiting for her moment of doom and watching the sunlight spill like so much blood through the arched stained glass windows that edged the ceiling of the waiting room.
“Is this a dream?” The sound of her voice was small, echoing through the void and reverberating back to her as if purposely drawing attention to the overwhelming silence of that place. It was terrifying, and when she turned over her shoulder to look to Pahjah for the answers, she saw that she was lying in her own bed, Mirien snoring softly on the pillow next to her head.
Every argument with her father, every defiant act, every punishment, every lesson, they all played out before her, and she was part of it, but so distant. She was sixteen, fifteen, fourteen, thirteen, twelve, eleven, ten, nine, eight, seven… Seven and walking through the market faire. Pahjah’s hand slipped from hers as she ran to chase after Mirien. Alone, she stood alone, the crowd pushing her, moving her, shoving her further and further away from everything safe. Her shoe, she’d lost her shoe and then the woman was there, the beautiful woman with hair as bright and red as her own.
“Are you afraid to hear what the g
ods have to say to you, Princess?”
“No. I’m not afraid.” The moments were scattered, wavering and difficult to grasp. She didn’t remember them, but she was there and that woman was familiar too. So familiar. She had hair the color of fire, just like Lorelei.
“Do you know of Llorveth?”
“Pahjah says he is the Lord of the Wild Hunt.”
“Yes, Llorveth is the father of my people. His spirit guides and speaks to the U’lfer, and I, Rhiorna, am his Listener. For many years he has whispered of you, his lost pup among the sheep. Do you wish to know what he has to say to you, Lorelei of Leithe, daughter of Rognar and Ygritte?”
Swallowing hard against the tight ache of fear that lingered in her throat, she started to protest, to tell the woman Aelfric was her father, but the words that followed were different, and the voice that spoke them was no child.
“Speak to me, Llorveth,” she said. “I am ready to hear what you have to say.”
The moment was swept away like smoke on a swift wind, the market faire disappearing, the chatter of voices fading until all she could hear was the distant bay of wolves cradled in a chorus of night song. She was standing in a bright clearing, the light of all three moons pouring in through the jagged, reaching arms of a hundred leafless trees. Cold, damp air rippled through her dress, raising goose-bumps against her arms and legs. She reached up to warm herself, rubbing her hands swiftly over the bare skin of her arms while she waited for the god to answer.
And then she heard it. Under the slow current of the rustling wind through the scant dead leaves still clinging to the bare trees, a heartbeat outside her body.
Thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump.
It drummed from within the earth, reverberated through her as it rose to a steady gallop streaming toward her. She lifted her head and saw it, the luminescent spirit of a great stag riding straight toward her with its head down. Its vast and many horns spread as wide as her arms when she held them out to embrace the beast driving at her.
Edgelanders (Serpent of Time) Page 5
