by Lisa Smedman
Doriantha, however, did seem to care how Larajin was faring. From time to time she doubled back to point out the best path through a thicket or to lend a steadying hand as Larajin tried to cross a stream on a narrow log. When Larajin lagged behind, Doriantha appeared at her side, giving her a drink from her waterskin. Even so, the pace was so rapid that Larajin’s strength began to flag once more as the afternoon wore on. With every step, she prayed it would be the last one necessary to take her to the Tangled Trees.
The elves seemed to be in a hurry to get there. Larajin could guess why. They feared retribution, once the humans discovered what they had done.
When they’d crossed Rauthauvyr’s Road, Larajin had caught a glimpse of the aftermath of their attack on the caravan. It hadn’t been a pretty sight. The elves had smashed the cargo and left the bodies strewn on the road for the crows to pick at. Larajin had nearly tripped over one sellsword whose body was so pincushioned with arrows that Larajin suspected the elves had used him for target practice as he lay dying. After that, she’d averted her eyes, not wanting to see any more bodies. She’d been glad once they were across the road and into the woods once more.
She’d felt no pity for the sellswords, only revulsion at the brutality of the elves’ attack. The only one whose fate she cared about was Dray—the poor dupe. Not only had he fallen for Enik’s ruse, he’d also had the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. She hadn’t seen his corpse as the elves hurried her across the road, but there was little hope that he had survived the attack.
She whispered a prayer for his soul, hoping whatever god he’d worshiped had taken pity on him. Dray was only a merchant; he hadn’t deserved to be slaughtered with the rest of them. Once the Foxmantles learned of this atrocity their wrath would know no bounds. Not even the deepest shadows of the Tangled Trees would provide a hiding place for Doriantha and her band.
In contrast to their callous indifference toward the humans they had killed, the elves had shown a reverence for their own kind. Despite their rush to get away from the road, they had tarried long enough to gather up the bones and weapons from the tomb that Klarsh had unearthed. They packed these gruesome relics along with them still—probably carrying them home for reburial, Larajin guessed.
Struggling through the forest behind Doriantha, Larajin wondered if she was doing the right thing in following the elves. Doriantha’s band had done Larajin a favor by saving her from Enik and his men, but that aid was only coincidental. What sort of reception would Larajin face once she reached the Tangled Trees? Judging by the attitudes of these elves, it wouldn’t be the homecoming Larajin had naively imagined, back in the comfort of Stormweather Towers.
As darkness descended on the forest for the second time since their journey began, the elves at last stopped to make camp. They gathered clumps of pale green moss that hung from tree branches, long and lacy as an old man’s beard, and formed it into nestlike pillows. They splashed their sweaty faces in a nearby stream, stretched their muscles, and ate a cold supper of leathery slabs of dried mushroom and a cold paste made by adding water to a powder of dried fish. Then they sank cross-legged onto the moss, weapons within hand’s reach on the forest floor beside them, and sank into the meditative state unique to elves, known as the Reverie.
As Doriantha settled down beside her, Larajin fought to keep her eyes open just a little longer. A question burned inside her, one she’d been wanting the answer for ever since they’d set out but had no time to ask.
“Doriantha,” she said, “you said I looked nothing like my brother. Did Mast—” She paused, and amended what she had been about to say. In the woods, she was a servant no longer, answerable only to herself. It didn’t feel right using the title “master,” anymore. “Did Thamalon the Younger or Talbot ever visit the Tangled Trees?”
Larajin could see little of Doriantha’s face, save for the dark line of the tattoo across her nose and cheeks, and the glint of her eyes. It was impossible to tell what her expression was.
“The names you mention,” Doriantha said quietly, “are these the children of Thamalon Uskevren?”
“Yes. He has two sons and a daughter.”
“Full-blood human?”
“Yes, all three.” Larajin yawned, blinking sleep-heavy eyes.
“They are only half-sister and half-brothers to you, then.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “No, I was speaking of your twin.”
Exhausted as she was, it took Larajin a moment to fully appreciate what Doriantha had just said. When she did, she sat up, all thoughts of sleep having fled.
“I have a twin brother?” she exclaimed.
Rustling noises told her that she had disturbed some of the other elves with her outburst. She could see Doriantha shaking her head and gesturing for silence, but she didn’t care. The news was amazing, almost impossible to believe. She wondered what her twin brother looked like. Was he, like her, struggling with the question of whether he was elf, or human, or something in-between? Or had he known of his mixed heritage all along?
A stray thought stopped her cold.
“Doriantha,” she whispered. “Is my brother still alive?”
Doriantha glanced around. “Please—you must keep your voice low. Some of the others might understand what you say.”
Larajin nodded, and Doriantha went on. “As far as I know, your twin is still alive. He was hale and hearty, when I last saw him several days ago.”
“Where is he now?”
“As to that…” Doriantha paused, and in the starlit darkness, Larajin saw her shrug. “I only know that the druids sent him to do their bidding, far to the south.”
“South? To the Dales—or do you mean Sembia? How long ago?”
Dread coursed through Larajin as she remembered the wild elves who had defended her eighteen months ago in the Hunting Garden. Had her twin brother also run afoul of Drakkar and been charred to a gruesome corpse by the wizard’s dark magic?
Doriantha tilted her head back to peer up at the sky through the thick tangle of branches overhead.
“He left within the moon,” she answered at last.
“Less than a month ago, you mean?”
Doriantha nodded, then added, “He didn’t tell me his destination. The druids forbade him to speak of it. You can, perhaps, think of a reason why.”
After a moment’s thought, Larajin guessed the answer: the impending war. Her twin brother had gone south to Sembia then, probably as a spy, since, like her, he could no doubt pass as fully human. She prayed that he hadn’t ventured into Ordulin and been sniffed out and beaten by the mob.
She shook her head at the irony. All the while she had been heading north, to the Tangled Trees, her twin had been traveling in the other direction. For all she knew, they might have passed each other as strangers on Rauthauvyr’s Road.
“Tell me more about my brother,” she said. “What’s his name? What does he look like?”
“His name is Leifander, and as I said before, he looks nothing like you. His hair is a similar color, but his eyes are a different shade of hazel. He’s broad-shouldered, and tall, and looks … much more like the people of the forest.”
“Was he raised by wild elves?” Larajin asked.
“He was.”
Larajin nodded to herself. It made sense. Of course her twin would look more like a wild elf. If he had been raised among them, he would wear their clothes, style his hair the way they did, perhaps even have marked his face with those fearsome-looking tattoos.
“If the wild elves raised my brother then why…?” Larajin paused, and cleared the catch in her throat with a soft cough. “Why was he kept and I given to my father?”
“From what I understand, that was a mistake. A woman of our people was found to wet-nurse your brother, but she didn’t have milk enough for two infants, as well as her own. The human wet nurse was to have been only a temporary measure.”
“Yet she became my mother,” Larajin whispered. “Or rather, the woman who raised me
. Her name is Shonri Wellrun.”
Doriantha had paused to peer through the darkness at Larajin. “Perhaps it was not a misunderstanding on your father’s part, after all,” she mused. “Perhaps Thamalon Uskevren saw how human you looked and decided to keep you.” She shrugged. “Whatever the reason, there are some who feel he committed a grievous sin. They believe that those who share a womb must never be sundered—that great ill comes of it. Of course, there are others who take a broader view, that your father was only playing his part in pushing the wheel of fate along its preordained path.”
“What of our mother?” Larajin asked, uncomfortable with all this talk of destiny. “Tell me about her.”
“Trisdea was a famous warrior. One of our most accomplished archers. At a young age—she was just seventy at the time—she distinguished herself at the battle of Singing Arrows. When the fletch tally was taken at the battle’s end, her arrows were found to have felled nearly a hundred of the enemy.”
Larajin listened with rapt attention. That battle, according to the history books, took place nearly five centuries ago. Doing a quick calculation, she realized that her mother had been more than five hundred years old when she’d given birth to her. For the first time, Larajin realized the implications of having elf blood in her veins. She herself might have a life span double that of a human: two centuries or more. She suddenly felt very young, indeed.
“What did Trisdea look like?”
“Her hair was copper-red, and she wore it loose upon her shoulders. Her eyes, brown. When she was angry, or in battle, they darkened to the color of smoldering coals. When she was in prayer, they grew lighter, to the shade of blond wood. She was quick in her movements and nimble with the bow, but her stubbornness would make a boulder look fickle.”
Larajin thought her mother was everything she could have hoped for: noble, proud, and free—a wild elf, with windblown hair and tattooed cheeks.
“What else can you tell me about Trisdea? Did you know her well?”
“Everyone knew of her,” Doriantha answered obliquely. “Trisdea was also renowned as a cleric—one might say infamous. She studied among the moon elves, and learned from them the worship of Angharradh of the three faces. That belief is rare in the Tangled Wood. We pay homage to each aspect separately, as a goddess in her own right.” She raised a hand, and ticked off the goddesses on her fingers. “Hanali Celanil, who sent the tressym to aid you; Aerdrie Faenya, lady of air and wind; and Sehanine Moonbow, mistress of moonlight.
“Trisdea tried to persuade the elves of the Tangled Trees to worship all three goddesses in a single form but was not successful. Even her stature as a great warrior was not enough to sway our clerics. She clove to this notion stubbornly until the day she died, though she must have realized its futility. We wood elves worship in the old way and are slow to change.”
Larajin nodded, realizing that she must have inherited her stubborn streak from her mother. Like Trisdea, who had refused to divide her devotions, instead worshiping three goddesses in a single, triune form, Larajin had chosen a difficult path. She balanced her devotions, giving praise in what she hoped was equal measure to both Sune and Hanali Celanil.
Having heard Doriantha’s story, she now wondered if, like Angharradh, the two goddesses she had chosen to worship were a single whole—two sides of the same coin. One with a human face, the other with the face of an elf.
“Is my brother Leifander also a cleric?” she asked.
Doriantha nodded. “He pays homage to Aerdrie Faenya, queen of the winds. He’s a skinwalker.”
“What’s that?”
“He can shift his form from elf to bird and back again.”
Larajin nodded, savoring the wonder of it. She tried to imagine how riding the winds high above would feel but could not. If her twin could fly, no wonder she had not seen him on Rauthauvyr’s Road. She said a quick prayer for his safety, bidding the goddesses to protect him on his journey south and his return to the Tangled Trees.
A realization came to her then. In five hundred years of adulthood, her elf mother could have given birth to many children.
“Do I have other brothers and sisters?” Breathlessly, she awaited the answer, imagining an entire clan of relatives waiting for her in the Tangled Trees, soon to be met.
“Only one,” Doriantha answered. “A sister, who was born and grew old many years before you and Leifander came into this world. Her name was Somnilthra, and she was a great seer. She foretold many things during her time among us. She prophesied that Trisdea would die, were she to bear children again, and her prophesy rang true. Trisdea was much too old to be going through the rigors of childbirth—impossibly old to have become pregnant, some said. Somnilthra also foresaw—”
Doriantha stopped abruptly. Larajin waited, but the silence only lengthened.
“What?” she prompted at last.
“I am overstepping myself,” Doriantha said. “I forget that some stories are not mine to tell. Suffice it to say that Trisdea did not heed her daughter’s warning and now lies buried in the Vale of Lost Voices in a tomb befitting a warrior of her stature.”
Larajin let this go without further comment. Instead, she mused over all she had just been told and started to see a pattern. Her mother worshiped the triune goddess, of whom Hanali Celanil, the goddess Larajin prayed to, was one aspect. Her brother Leifander worshiped a second aspect of the triune, the winged goddess Aerdrie Faenya, and Doriantha had said that their elder half-sister, Somnilthra, was a seer, gifted with foresight by the gods.
“Was Somnilthra a cleric, too?” Larajin asked.
Doriantha nodded. “She worshiped the Lunar Lady, goddess of dreams.”
Larajin was puzzled for a moment. The elves seemed to have a dozen different names for each god and goddess.
“Sehanine Moonbow?” she guessed.
“The same.”
There it was: a pattern, woven into all four lives. A mother who worshiped three goddesses in one—and three children, each drawn to one of that goddess’s aspects. What other strange and unseen patterns were the gods weaving through her life? Larajin could only wonder.
“You spoke of Somnilthra in the past tense,” she added. “Is she dead?”
Doriantha placed a palm over her heart. “She has entered eternal Reverie. She dreams in Arvanaith.”
Arvanaith. Larajin had read about it in one of the books in Stormweather Towers’s library. It was said to be a final resting place—a heaven—that the souls of venerable elves slipped away to when their time on this earth was done. From all accounts—all of them hearsay, since the author of the book was human—Arvanaith was a beautiful place, a paradise where an aged soul prepared for its eventual return to this world. Larajin wondered if half-elves journeyed there too when they grew old and died. She prayed to Hanali Celanil that it was so.
Yawning, she fought to keep her eyes open. Wind sighed through the branches of the trees that sheltered them, carrying the scents of loam and leaves. The soft moss she lay upon was a welcoming pillow that beckoned her to sleep. Beside her, Doriantha had settled again on her own bed, her stories seemingly at an end.
“How far is it now to the Tangled Trees?” Larajin asked, stifling yet another yawn.
“If we rise at first light, we’ll reach camp by tomorrow evening. Just in time for the Turning.”
Larajin was too sleepy to ask what that was. Instead she sank onto her mossy bed and drifted into an exhausted sleep, dreaming of the mother and sister she had never met—and of the brother she hoped to meet someday soon.
The first warning that they were approaching the elven camp came in the form of a snarl from the treetops, ahead and to the left. It was echoed a moment later by a loud yeowl, directly overhead. An enormous shape hurtled down through the tangle of branches, landing with feline grace no more than two paces ahead of Larajin. Round eyes glared at her, and sharp white teeth glinted in the moonlight as a giant lynx stared her down. Its tail lashed behind it as it growled and its ears
were flat against its head. Suddenly wide awake, Larajin froze, barely daring to breathe.
Doriantha spoke a sharp word in the wild elves’ tongue. Tail still lashing, the lynx gave Larajin one last baleful glare, then turned and padded obediently toward Doriantha. The elves behind Larajin laughed as Doriantha stroked the head of the lynx, which rubbed against her like a contented house cat. One of them nudged Larajin forward.
Angry at herself for being so frightened of what was obviously one of the wild elves’ pets, Larajin stumbled forward on aching feet, following Doriantha and the lynx. Ahead in the forest, she could see the dark shapes of tents sprinkled among the trees. They were round and squat, like mushrooms. Under the thick canopy of branches their brown leather would have been invisible from the skies above. While most of the tents were silent and dark, Larajin could hear low voices murmuring inside one or two of those she passed by, and the occasional giggle or moan that made would have made her blush, had she not been so exhausted.
After walking for a few moments more, she saw a small tent up ahead that was illuminated from within. A single figure moved inside it, casting a dark shadow on its strangely mottled walls, which glowed a bright, translucent green.
As they drew nearer to this tent, Doriantha paused and spoke another command to the lynx. It turned and leaped into a tree, climbing swiftly up its trunk. One of the elves protested the lynx’s departure, gesturing at Larajin, but Doriantha cut him off with a curt word. She spoke at length to the members of her patrol in their own language, and at last they grudgingly nodded their heads.
She turned then, to Larajin. “There is someone inside the tent who will want to meet you,” she said quietly, “an important person, a druid of the Circle of Emerald Leaves. Please do not give the members of my patrol any cause for alarm.”
