Edgelanders (Serpent of Time)

by Jennifer Melzer

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The red-haired woman didn’t walk toward her bed, so much as she glided. Her soundless feet carried her to the edge where she lingered for a moment to study Lorelei with the most intense golden eyes she had ever seen. Reaching out to smooth the crumpled blankets with her hand, the woman sat down on the corner of the straw-stuffed mattress and reached her hand over to rest atop Lorelei’s thigh.

  “You must be terrified, and after everything you’ve been through I don’t blame you, but I swear to you that you have nothing to fear, child. You are as safe here as you would be in your own mother’s arms. For now, anyway.”

  Obviously, the woman knew nothing of her mother. Ygritte had more or less just stood back and let her husband hand their daughter over to a fiend who wanted to kill her. Weren’t mothers supposed to sense when their children were in danger? Weren’t they supposed to see through monsters like Trystay?

  Still holding that cup of water in her lap, she lifted it to her lips and sipped slowly, more to avoid speaking than to quench her thirst. How could she say there was nothing to fear? She was being held prisoner in a savage village run by werewolves, had been chased there by a pack of rabid hunting hounds at the command of her crazy, warmongering fiancé, who, incidentally, had plotted to kill her so he could silently invade her homeland under the guise of grief.

  If all of that was nothing to fear, she didn’t want to ever stand face to face with actual terror.

  Lowering the water again, her gaze hesitated on the hand that rested over her leg. It was an old hand, wrinkled and mottled with brown spots that faded and smoothed into freckles as they traveled the length of her long arm. She wore a collection of stone and metal bangles that clanked together when she moved her hand and a single ring, an oval, red amber stone set in an intricately carved gold band on her middle finger. The patterns edging the tapering metal depicted a vivid scene, and as she squinted to better inspect it, a series of chills rippled through her from head to toe.

  A horned stag charged a woman with her arms open wide, feet dangling off the ground and hair blasting back from her head.

  Her dream. It was the image from her dream. She blinked and she could see it again, as if it was painted on the backs of her eyelids, or forever burned there by the massive surge of energy when the stag charged into her. She absorbed its very essence in that dream; she and the beast were one.

  She trembled, opened her eyes again and finally lifted them to meet with the vibrant gaze of the woman sitting next to her.

  “I am Rhiorna.”

  “The seer,” she murmured. “I remember you spoke to me at the market faire when I was seven years old. You told me you were Llorveth’s listener and he’d been whispering a truth you said I must carry hidden inside me until…” Murky memory swarmed through her mind like thick mist on a damp morning. “Until the moons rose over the Edgelands and the hounds of deceit chase me home to my people. That was what you told me.”

  Lifting her hand to Lorelei’s face, her gentle fingertips smoothed over the pulsing wound on her forehead before lowering affectionately to rest on her cheek. “I feared the blow you took would block the memory of that day from rising to the surface.”

  “I always thought that was just a dream.”

  “Truth always finds us in our dreams, and perhaps you did relive those memories while you slept over the years, but I can assure you our first meeting was no dream.”

  “Who are you?” Her question begged more than just a name as reply. The woman before her was more than just a seer, more than just a distant memory. She was… family.

  “Your true father, the man who sired you, not the man who raised you as his own, was my brother,” she confessed without hesitation.

  “My true father?” Lorelei shook her head, not sure she understood.

  Rhiorna ignored her question at first. She cleared her throat, narrowed her eyes, which shone like precious amber stones in the lamplight illuminating the healing room, and wet her lips with the tip of her soft pink tongue.

  “It is against the law for the U’lfer to leave the Edgelands,” she began. “Did you know that?’

  Shaking her head, Lorelei pinched her lips together tight and waited to hear why.

  “I took a great risk the day I journeyed to Leithe to find you, and an even greater risk drawing you from the crowd to plant that spark of truth in your mind so you might be prepared for the things you must now face. It was a heavy price I paid for the power to see your future, and even heavier, I’m afraid, for the power to seek you out and share it with you, but Llorveth himself saw it done. That alone should show you just how important you are to your people.”

  “Llorveth,” the whisper of his name lingered on her tongue. “The father of your people…”

  “Not just my people, but yours as well.”

  Ignoring what she said, Lorelei continued. “I dreamed of him too. That carving.” Lifting her hand, she curled her fingers around the woman’s wrist and drew it down to inspect the carefully crafted details of her ring. “I dreamed this picture.” She traced her fingernail over the pattern, the images flashing through her again, that surging power roiling through her veins.

  “Did you now?” she remarked, withdrawing her hand back into her lap. Her bracelets jingled and clinked with the movement, echoing strangely inside Lorelei’s foggy mind.

  “Only it wasn’t a picture. I was running toward the stag and we became one in a flash of light.”

  “Did he speak to you?” Rhiorna leaned forward with eager desperation, her hand still clasped in Lorelei’s and for a moment the girl swore she could feel her trembling. “It’s been so long since I’ve heard his voice, had his guidance. Tell me what he said to you…”

  Lorelei shrank back a little, the overzealous flare in the seer’s eyes raising every one of her inner alarms. “I should be the one asking questions. Clearly I am here because of you and I want to know why. What do your people want from me?”

  “In truth?” she asked, leaning out to look at her. That spark of madness ebbed and she drew in a deep breath. “In truth my people will want nothing from you, especially once they find out who you are. The sooner they are rid of you, the happier they will be.”

  “Because I am Aelfric’s daughter?”

  Rhiorna laughed, an abrupt and startling sound that sent chills rippling through Lorelei’s body. “You are not Aelfric’s daughter, though your ties to the tyrant king will definitely frighten them. They’ve spent the last eighteen years trying to hide from who they are. Isolating all that remains of the U’lfer here in the Edgelands, pretending we are just as human as the people beyond our borders. Growing crops, raising animals, only allowing small bands of well-trained wolves to hunt beneath the full moons to ensure we have enough meat. They fear the beast that lives inside us all, and once they find out who you are, they will do everything in their power to push you out of this land just as fast as you were chased onto it.”

  “Why?”

  “What do you know of our people?”

  “The U’lfer are shape-shifters, wolves who can disguise themselves among the rest of us by shifting into human form. Wolves in sheepskin, Master Davan always said.”

  “Is that what they teach the children of Leithe these days? That we disguise ourselves so we can move among you undetected? Old grandmother, what big teeth you have… All the better to eat you with my dear!”

  Cackling like an old crone, Rhiorna rocked with waves of amusement, but Lorelei didn’t think she was all that funny. It was several minutes before she finally regained her composure with a long, loud sigh.

  “Even in your father’s time, we never disguised ourselves, never sought to be anything more or less than what we are. We are wolves, yes, but King Aelfric’s laws have taken even that away from us. Your father and his men changed everything, your father more than anyone, and all because he loved a woman that belonged to someone else.”

  “What know you of my father?”

 
; “A lot more than you, I’m afraid. You don’t even know his name, do you?”

  Grasping at snippets from her dream conversation with the seer, it felt strange to speak the truth; the words felt wrong in her mouth because she didn’t even know if they were true. As long as she had been alive, King Aelfric had been her father. He’d governed and shaped her, planned and dictated every moment of her life until the moment he auctioned her off to the highest bidder in the name of a peace that would never come. All those times she said she hated him, had screamed in her rooms until her throat was raw because he wouldn’t even grant her permission to train with the armsman so she knew how to wield a blade and protect herself. All her life she swore under her breath that she would have given anything to have another father, a simpler father who actually loved her, but even on the rare occasion that her mother descended to calm her, she would stroke the tears from her face and comb her fingers through her hair as she said, “He is your father, Lorelei. He is our king and we must obey his wishes.”

  “Rognar,” she said almost smugly. “My father’s name was Rognar and he was your brother.”

  “Very good, Princess. You do remember our conversation at the market faire, but I can see in your eyes that you don’t believe it. And why should you? Aelfric was there the day you were born. He rejoiced when the healers brought you swaddled in blankets and laid you into his arms for the very first time. He placed a golden circlet upon your head the day he and your mother the queen named you in the Temple of the Ladies and raised you up before the gods and everyone in his court.”

  “But he is not my father.” Lorelei hung her head, confused by the overwhelming amount of sorrow that revelation brought. All that time she’d wished he wasn’t her father; it actually hurt a little to discover he was, in fact, not. “He was never my father.” She’d felt it all her life, wished it more times than she could count, but hearing it made her sad. “Did he know?”

  “I’m sure he did. You look like your true father’s daughter, enough so that simply looking at you probably broke your mother’s heart.”

  Such a sad revelation, she thought, to realize why her mother never looked at her, never held her in her arms or told her that she loved her.

  “Your mother’s marriage to Aelfric was arranged when she was a newborn, her entire life carefully plotted and planned, and she never had any say in it.”

  How familiar that sounds, she thought.

  “The U’lfer,” she began, her voice almost dreamy as she spoke, “we used to be many. A warrior race that feared nothing. We had no land to call our own, so the restless among us wandered in search of a place to call home. We raided, sacked villages in the night, killed men and took their women and children to sell them to Orc slave traders at the edge of the sea. We salvaged their villages and moved in, making them our own.”

  “The U’lfer sound like parasites.” She regretted it the moment it left her mouth, twinging with guilt that forced her gaze away from the woman in front of her, but Rhiorna laughed again, that high-pitched, cackling sound that made Lorelei cringe where she sat.

  “How do you think King Aelfric’s lands became his? His father’s father, Ivaerkek II invaded and conquered Leithe, overthrowing the Alvarii king and placing himself upon the throne. He enslaved the Alvarii, outlawed magic…”

  “King Volfey was a tyrant.”

  “Was he?” Rhiorna asked, tilting her head thoughtfully and urging Lorelei with nothing more than her eyes to think that statement over. “Or is that what the royal historians would have you believe? What they’ve taught the children of Leithe in order to justify his crimes? Ivaerek’s bloodline has a long and bloody reputation for taking that which is not theirs. Your true father, Rognar the Conqueror, had grand visions of making himself a king in much the same way Aelfric’s forefathers crowned themselves.”

  “And that’s why he went after my mother?”

  “Went after her? No, child. Rognar did not pursue your mother. She ran away from Rivenn on the eve of her wedding to Aelfric. Where she was going, no one but Rognar ever knew because she was a shy, quiet little thing, and I think she feared the rest of us. The woman I knew seemed to be afraid of everything but Rognar. I’ve no doubt she was told the same stories you were as a child, that the U’lfer were savage, bloodthirsty beasts, and I suppose we deserved that considering the circumstances. My brother found her in a field of flowers just beyond the border of this land. She was weeping over a horse she’d run into the ground trying to escape her fate. He took her in, offered her asylum. She was here only a few weeks before Rognar took her as his wife, and then Aelfric’s men discovered her whereabouts and began their attacks.”

  Rhiorna was silent for a moment, allowing Lorelei to process the story she’d told, and then she picked up where she’d left off.

  “I don’t think Aelfric really even cared about your mother until she ran away from him, and when news spread that she’d aligned herself with our people and sought protection from Rognar, an outraged king rallied his forces and called upon every ally he had.” Rhiorna closed her eyes, as if she could still see that distant time so clearly. The corners of her mouth twitched downward with displeasure before her lips parted with a long exhale. “So many soldiers, so much blood… And my brother didn’t help matters much. Rognar held his men enthralled with visions of a kingdom to call our own, but as the battle raged on, our numbers dwindled. Rognar’s vision tore the best of us apart. Aelfric began attacking the small villages in the south, slaughtering defenseless women and children whose warriors had joined Rognar’s forces in the north.”

  “Children?” The very thought of children falling beneath the feet of the man she’d spent the whole of her life calling father made Lorelei’s stomach churn, but Rhiorna hadn’t even heard her speak.

  “Everyone wanted a kingdom of their own, a place to call home, but the price was higher than any of them ever dreamed and the council began to turn from my brother and his grand ideas. What good is a kingdom without men to uphold and protect it? Without children to run free through the streets? But Rognar had already gone too far, and the only way out was to bargain with Aelfric using the very thing he’d come for.”

  “My mother.”

  “The council kidnapped her from her bed and marched her onto the field in surrender. In exchange for our freedom, they handed both her and Rognar over. Rognar and his berserkers were publicly executed in the very square where they hold the market faire in Rivenn every autumn. The Council of the Nine then sat down with Aelfric and his advisers to draw up the Edgelands Proclamation.”

  “I’ve never even heard of this Edgelands Proclamation.”

  “There are few beyond our borders who have. So few of us were left standing when all was said and done that King Aelfric thought it a fitting punishment that our puny rebellion would be stricken from the annals of history and forgotten. Of course, the lack of raids did not go unnoticed, but many believe the U’lfer have gone the way of the Dvergr or the Drakiiri. That none of us survived at all.”

  “But that’s… so cruel.”

  “War is a cruel mistress,” she agreed. “Once Rognar was executed and the threat contained, Aelfric laid the blame for the U’lfer rebellion…”

  “On the Alvarii,” Lorelei gasped.

  “He drew the attention away from the U’lfer, who under the terms of the Edgelands Proclamation became prisoners confined to this tiny strip of land, and focused on the elven rebellion. All the free U’lfer were rounded up and brought back here, where we barely exist at all anymore as little more than a shadow of what we once were. We are denied contact with the world beyond our borders and the Council of the Nine strictly governs our transformations based on the rules Aelfric dictated in their treaty agreement. A bare few are permitted to embrace the wolf spirit, trained hunting parties who prowl the Edgelands for food, but beyond that those spirits live in strangled silence beneath our skin. Strained, angry, longing always to be free.”

  Drawing in a deep breat
h, Lorelei’s lungs burned as she exhaled, the loose tendrils of her bright red hair fluttering against her cheek. Her head was pounding even harder than before, a thick wave of nausea and dizziness rolling through her. Her whole life seemed as if it had been deemed a lie in less than the time it took to blink her eyes.

  “What does any of this have to do with me?”

  “Everything, child.” Lorelei was afraid she was going to say that. “Don’t you see?”

  “No.”

  “You are balance, a child of not just man, but the U’lfer, and Llorveth has sent you…”

  “Wait a minute. I am not a werewolf,” she protested. “That’s the kind of thing a person would know about herself, isn’t it?”

  Rhiorna laughed, a gentle undulation of amusement as she reached out once again to lay her hand on Lorelei’s cheek. “But you do know. I have seen what you are to become, stood within the shadows of your dreams for all these years, watching, waiting. I have witnessed the running of your wolf spirit through Llorveth’s woods and in those dreams you run beside our god. Even now your wolf lies dormant, just beneath the surface, but soon she will rise and you will embrace her. I have seen this.”

  “No,” she shook her head, shoving the woman away from her.

  They were just dreams, beautiful dreams she barely remembered upon waking, but they weren’t real. It was her head. The blow she’d taken to the head had damaged her somehow; maybe she was still dreaming.

  “I’m not embracing anything.”

  “Llorveth has already embraced you,” Rhiorna said. “He is calling to you, Lorelei, even now. I have heard his voice in your dreams, in those distant parts of your mind that you refuse to acknowledge. But there is no denying the voice of a god.” She stood up then, her bangle-laden arm dropping at her waist with a jingling clatter. “Sooner or later, he will make himself heard. My bet is that the time is coming.”