“It is not the world that is awful, my lady.”
“It’s no wonder the All-Creator is so enraged with us all. We’re truly dreadful creatures, and these last few days I’ve found myself wondering if we even deserve to live at all.”
“Not all of us are dreadful creatures. Some are born with hearts made of pure gold, and though they may be few and far between, it is to those souls we owe the most. Were it not for them, I fear Heidr would have done more than simply try to teach this world a lesson.”
And for a long time all three of them sat with the half-elf’s sage words, turning them over and over in their minds as the harsh winds grew crueler and the dark clouds gloomier overhead. It wasn’t even midday when the first drizzling pellets of ice began to fall from those black clouds, pelting exposed skin like bee-stings and tangling into the hair of their horses’ manes and tails. With the darkness and rain came the overwhelming exhaustion they all seemed to feel, and when Finn turned to look at both his companions from the confines of his hooded cloak, he saw he wasn’t the only one who felt like falling off his horse and taking a nap right there in the snow.
But no one complained, and no one suggested they stop until the pelting rain mixed with a haze of fog and snow that made the road in front of them impossible to see. Brendolowyn stopped, staring out into the vast swarm of mist and freezing rain spreading out before them. He lifted a hand above his eyes and shook his head before walking his horse in front of them to keep them from moving forward.
“There’s no sense carrying on,” he declared. “We aren’t like to get very far as the fog thickens. I recommend we call it a day, set up camp and wait out the storm.”
“Wait it out?” Finn asked. “Isn’t this the norm?” And if it was, how much good would it do to wait things out if they were going to be stopping every time they couldn’t see more than a few feet ahead of them.
“The norm? Not entirely. The weather itself is not unnatural, but when the fogs roll in, as they are, we’re more like to get lost and find ourselves on the opposite side of the coast. I’ve no qualms about traveling through the rain and snow, but the fog will do us no good, and it could tack unnecessary miles onto our journey.”
“You know this land better than I.” Shrugging, Finn dismounted and the horse seemed to shudder relief as he slid to the ground beside it. He gathered its reins and held them in gloved hand, waiting for further instruction.
Truth be told, he was glad they were stopping. He was tired and cranky, and though he’d spent much of the day snacking on dried strips of venison, it wasn’t filling. He wanted something hot, something that would warm his belly and his body, but more than that he wanted to sleep.
“How far are we from Dunvarak?” Lorelei asked. “It can’t be past midday yet, can it?”
Lifting his hooded gaze toward the dark sky, the half-elf scanned the clouds until he placed the sun behind them. He squinted and stared for a few moments, then shrugged his shoulders. “Not more than an hour past midday. We left the fields beyond the wall about fifteen or so miles back.”
“Fifteen miles,” she muttered. “It seems so far, but not very far at all really.”
“It’s not far,” Finn assured her. “Not when we’re traveling away from the place we need to go, then doubling back to follow the coastline. If we only travel twenty to thirty miles a day it’ll take us five days to get to the coast. Probably another five or six days to get to the Valley of Sorrows.”
“One cannot control the weather,” Brendolowyn pointed out.
Smug, Finn shrugged up a shoulder and said, “I don’t know, the mages in Dunvarak seem to be doing a fine job of controlling the weather. You’re a mage,” he pointed out. “Can’t you at least shift the fog?”
“Of course I can shift fog,” he countered, a hint of offense in his tone, “but this fog is thick. I can tell that much from simply looking at it, from watching it reach like greedy hands to draw us into its depths. Shifting it would do little to no good at all if the only thing waiting on the other side was more fog.”
“I am tired,” Lorelei intervened before a full-scale argument could break out between the two of them. “So tired I don’t know how much longer I can stay aback my horse.”
“Did you sleep at all last night, Princess?”
“I told you this morning at breakfast I didn’t sleep. Logren and I were up all night, drinking, talking, sitting in the temple. I’m surprised I haven’t fallen off yet and just let myself be dragged through the snow.”
“That is reason enough for me to set up camp and get some rest,” Brendolowyn decided.
The mage used magic to tether the horses while Lorelei and Finn began unpacking the tents to set them up. There were only two tents, one of them a gift from the merchant in Dunvarak for the Light of Madra and her mate, the other belonged to the mage. Finn hadn’t thought much about sleeping arrangements, having just assumed before setting out they would sleep the way they’d done in Logren’s camp, curled up together with a mountain of furs between them. Of course, that was before his beast grew intolerant of being pushed aside and told to wait for her to come to him.
Being so near her made him feel like there was fire coursing through his veins. It was painful to the point of cruel at times, and he could never let her see his pain. He needed to take control of himself.
While they set up the tents, Brendolowyn began moving widdershins around the perimeter, raising a barrier to keep the heat in and enemies out. The bird perched still as a statue on the mage’s shoulder, as if he weren’t a bird at all, but an extension of his magic-user, and the image made Finn shudder. It was such an unnatural thing, keeping a bird around like that. Walking everywhere with it preening feathers over his shoulder.
Shaking his head, Finn ignored the sound of gibberish passing across the other man’s lips and focused on securing tent stakes in the frigid sheet of ice beneath the snow. He supposed it wouldn’t matter much, once the barrier was up. It would block the wind and keep the tents from blowing away.
Tents raised, the mage was still muttering incantations and drawing spirals of blue-tinted white energy from the air that danced and joined together at his command. Finn hunkered down across from where Lorelei knelt, trying to make a fire. Finn reached in to scoop the tinder she’d been working with. He rearranged it into a loose nest to catch the sparks before holding his hands out and nodding for her to strike the flint toward the center.
“You should just let the mage start fires. I’m sure it’d be nothing for someone of his skill.”
Gods, he sounded bitter, worse was he knew it and did nothing to stop the words from fumbling through his lips. His attitude was doing very little to soften her mood toward him; if anything it was hardening her. He could almost feel it, as if she were lifting a barrier around herself not unlike the one the mage was raising to protect their camp.
The tinging crack sounded, sparks jetting forward, only briefly touching the dry tinder. “The barrier is more important than getting a fire started.”
“You wouldn’t think so come the late hours of the night, when the wind is fierce and fire is your only source of warmth.”
“Or would I think so, as I watched trolls circle in around our nice warm fire and debate which one of us would make a finer meal?”
Finn snorted and watched her strike the flint again, sparks flying into the dry nest of twigs and needles. An orange ember caught and he cupped that ember in his hands. Lifting it toward his lips, he blew it brighter until it caught and spread, a small, but steady flame leaping and dancing to life in the exhale of his breath.
“Fair point,” he conceded. “But still… There are other things you could do. Fire is…”
“A man’s work?” Her brow furrowed, mouth tightening as she said the words.
Finn’s eyes darted skyward, his breath leaving his lungs as he shook his head. “I was just going to say fire is a pain in the ass, that’s all.”
“It’s good to know how to get one st
arted though,” she shrugged. “You seem to have no trouble with it.”
“Princess, I’ve been starting fires since I was old enough to strike flint to steel.”
“And just because I haven’t, doesn’t mean I shouldn’t know how to do it.”
“No, it doesn’t, I just thought…”
“You just thought to do it for me, instead of letting me do it myself. You know, I’m not completely useless, Finn. I can do a lot of things, maybe not as quickly as you, or even as efficiently as you, but I can still do them.”
“I know,” he wilted. “Princess, I just wanted to help.”
“You can help by not calling me princess.” Wiping her hands together, she rose from her crouch and walked away, leaving him to tend to the flame she’d been so bloody adamant about starting.
Watching after her, he shook his head and sighed. It was already feeling like a long journey, and they’d barely even left Dunvarak.
CHAPTER SIX
The city did not come to a stumbling halt simply because the Light of Madra was gone. In fact, Vilnjar was given his first glimpse at life in Dunvarak from an almost pre-Lorelei advantage. Bustling bodies rushed through the streets with places to be and things to do. As if the three days she spent there threw the city so far behind schedule they had to work doubly hard to get back on track again. Even the children were focused on chores, rather than running idly through the cobbled streets chasing cats or playing pebbles on the walkway. Everyone had stout purpose, and as he followed Logren toward Hodon’s hall on the other side of Dunvarak, Vilnjar never felt more purposeless in his life.
They were meeting with the city’s overseer to attend to the final details of the missive Hodon was preparing to send north, to Galfon Wild-Heart. A hopeful plea for alliance Vilnjar still wasn’t sure would amount to much, he only agreed to assist with the writing of it because he owed his sister and his people that much.
There was hope and freedom to be found in Dunvarak, a chance for them to be a community again, to thrive and grow and restore all everything lost to them when the War of Silence stole their fathers and sons, burned their villages to ash and imprisoned them within the western border of Leithe, denying them their very nature.
Just thinking of his natural inclination made the wolf inside him stir. His recent embracing of the beast during their battle with the Hunters at the foot of Great Sontok made it more restless than ever. It longed for freedom from the restraint of his skin, to race beneath the moons, across the harsh and frigid landscape in search of prey to play with. The feeling, while not entirely new to him, was exhilarating, emboldening. It reminded him of the early days of his first transformations, though stifled as they were by the rigid hand of the council, when everything was new and exciting.
He’d known transformations, gave into them on the rare occasion out of necessity and nothing more, but never had he battled against another wolf while in that skin. It was terrifying, a mere glimpse of what it must have felt like to be his brother—who never shunned transformation, no matter how often he was threatened or punished for it.
And once he experienced freedom, he craved it the way some men craved overindulgence in intoxicating libations and dangerous herbs said to unleash the mind from the body and set the spirit free.
The wolf was always with him, not near as easy to ignore as it was just ten days earlier when life had been simpler. He could no longer pretend it wasn’t a part of him.
When a group of boys came running through the street, Logren didn’t stop them, even though they nearly barreled both men over as they pushed between them shouting, “Pardon me, excuse us.”
The same action just days before prompted the commander to assert his authority over them. He’d reminded them other people were walking, told them they needed to be mindful of their elders, but he just kept walking, head down, shoulders slumped and steps wavering as he took them.
The black rims of a sleepless night dug deep beneath his eyes and the stagger in his walk made Vilnjar wonder if his companion might still be a little drunk. Either way, Logren was clearly exhausted. Try as he might, Vilnjar couldn’t remember having ever seen Dunvarak’s commander actually sleep. He spent long nights in their camps draining cup after cup of mead and ale, and once they arrived in Dunvarak it’d been the same. He sat at the table long after everyone else retired.
It seemed travel, drink and exhaustion were finally taking their toll, and it was only a matter of time before Logren collapsed from it. He was a proud, stubborn man, who infuriated Vilnjar in ways not even Finn seemed able to accomplish, but when they entered the overseer’s hall he straightened his shoulders and tried to at least make himself look alert and presentable.
Until they sat down.
They were only there a few minutes before Hodon pushed the roll of parchment across the carved table, toward Vilnjar with a proud nod and half-grin. “I took your advice, wrote it as you suggested.”
Vilnjar studied the parchment roll on the table, his eyes darting across the thick, yellowed paper before he reached for and unrolled it to skim the words etched therein. A greeting, a reminder of his person and a humble confession all before the real reason for its writing. There was a warning and an invitation to join forces against the inevitability of war, and all of it was wrapped in the thinly-veiled promise of freedom to be the wolves they were born to be.
There was no mention of Lorelei or her quest to retrieve the Horns of Llorveth and awaken the wolf-spirits of the half-blooded U’lfer of Dunvarak. He did not address the fact that Finn and Vilnjar arrived, or Vilnjar himself oversaw and instructed the penning of the missive that would reach them.
It was probably better in the end, but it made Vilnjar more than a little uneasy for reasons he didn’t quite understand.
Hodon was placing too much faith in the U’lfer need for freedom, when he should have been using Vilnjar’s willing presence there as leverage. They could do little else but try to appeal to their craving for freedom, but Vilnjar knew Cobin and the Council of the Nine too well to dismiss the unlikelihood the letter would even reach Galfon Wild-Heart. Its contents would never be conveyed to the people of Drekne.
Surely Hodon knew that.
His vision included an alliance with not just the U’lfer of the Edgelands, but with the free Alvarii hidden away in underground cities stretching below large portions of the continent of Leithe, if rumors were to be believed. Vilnjar didn’t know what was written in the letter Brendolowyn Raven-Storm carried to the King Under the City, but that wasn’t his business. Hodon only needed him to ensure his appeal to the U’lfer was well-worded and enticing enough to draw enough wolves south as possible.
War was coming.
And they were in desperate need of an army.
Though how Hodon knew for a fact they could expect such a war, Vilnjar did not know. A part of him fretted a return to the dark times that wiped out so many of his people. The U’lfer were an all-but endangered race, and another war could see the wolves to extinction.
Had Dunvarak’s seer whispered words of war into the overseer’s ear at some point before her passing, or was it a mere inevitability in the man’s mind?
Even without a seer’s confirmation, it seemed unavoidable.
Lorelei’s coming into the Edgelands was as a small stone trickling down the mountainside, warning of the avalanche to follow. She’d slighted a man meant to marry her for reasons Vilnjar was still not clear on. The king who’d raised her as his daughter was the same warmongering fool who’d put an end to so many of the U’lfer, including Vilnjar’s father. Lorelei’s mother, Queen Ygritte, brought fires of war when she escaped her arranged marriage and pledged herself to Rognar the Conqueror. The would-be Queen of Leithe married Rognar, and their union wrought a race-slaughtering war upon his people that nearly wiped them from the planet.
Such a slight would not be easily dismissed, and with Lorelei already gone from the Edgelands, who was left to pay the price if not the people who harbored her
there for that short time before they exiled her?
Hodon didn’t have to say any of those things for Vilnjar to know war was as inevitable as the snow threatening to shower beyond the magical barrier keeping Dunvarak snug and protected in the tundra.
War was on its way south. King Aelfric would not turn the other cheek and ignore the fact that the U’lfer broke the terms of Edgelands Proclamation by welcoming Lorelei onto their land, though their treatment of her could hardly be considered a welcome. They sent her packing as soon as she was healed and back on her feet. Cobin even sent Hunters after them, in hopes of exterminating all three of them before they even reached Rimian, and Vilnjar found himself still wondering why Cobin hadn’t just shipped her back to her own people as an offering of good faith.
Aelfric would not ignore any of those facts as he marched his men on Drekne and ordered them to burn everything in their path. He would come looking for his daughter, even though the girl was not his daughter at all, and when she wasn’t found there was no telling what he’d do.
It gave him chills as he contemplated it and leaned further across the table to reach for the letter again.
“We should send this today,” he noted. “The sooner it is in Galfon’s hands, the sooner he can get the U’lfer out of the Edgelands to safety.”
“I concur,” Hodon nodded. “Do you agree everything is in order? That it will appeal to his sense of reason?”
“If it does manage to reach him.”
“It will reach him and only him.” Hodon sounded so sure of himself, gesturing over his shoulder for a withered, one-eyed old man in black mage’s robes to step forward. Vilnjar nearly forgot the archmage was there, he stood so still and silent through their meeting, like a statue simply absorbing every word with feigned indifference. “I will sign and seal this, and Archmage Auden will work his magic so none but Galfon Wild-Heart can read its contents.”
“You can do that?” he marveled.
Vilnjar had never been fascinated with magic, or the things it could do. Generally, he found it to be the trickery of charlatans with an agenda that usually involved lightening the coin purses of anyone willing to partake in their displays of power, rather than a legitimate and useful practice, but the city of Dunvarak itself was changing his mind in its favor.
Sorrow's Peak (Serpent of Time Book 2) Page 8