Perched upon the boy’s tattooed shoulder was Hrafn, who crawked the moment she noticed him. Brendolowyn immediately spun around, and Lorelei watched the features of his face smooth at the sound.
The bird croaked again, his long-beaked head jerking upright as he squawked at his lifelong companion, and when he spoke, his voice was filled with an almost childlike excitement.
“Hrafn, I was so worried about you.” It took only two long strides to carry him to the edge of his own barrier, and when he reached it he knelt down so he was at eye-level with the messenger. Tilting his head to study the boy, he spoke to the bird, noting, “I see you’ve made a new friend in your travels.” Hrafn responded with a throaty purring sound. “Hello, little one. I am Brendolowyn.”
“The one who calls a storm of ravens,” the boy nodded. “My master knows you.”
“And what is your name?”
“Alanuuin,” he said. His small mouth twitched, but his expression wasn’t quite a smile. “I am the eyes of Gwendoliir, the seer in the city below the city. Through me, he sees you and knows you are who you claim to be.” His bright gaze flitted beyond Brendolowyn’s shoulder then, intense eyes staring into her as he said, “And she is the one they will call the Light of Madra.”
“I am Lorelei,” she said as she arrived at the mage’s back.
It bothered her sometimes that not a single person she’d met since her escape from Trystay’s plot seemed to want to call her by her name. Finn was always calling her Princess and most times Brendolowyn respectfully called her my lady. Even the people in Dunvarak rarely referred to her by name. All she wanted was to be herself. Lorelei. Plain and simple, but even she knew there hadn’t been anything plain or simple about her life since the day she happened upon Rhiorna in the market faire when she was seven.
And it didn’t seem likely her life would be plain or simple anytime soon, either.
Her gaze fixed on the collar around the boy’s neck, she arrived to stand beside Bren. “Yovenna the Voice sent me to meet with your seer. She said he could tell me more about the guardian of Great Sorrow’s Peak.”
“Yes,” Alanuuin nodded. “He knows of this guardian, and he has been expecting you. To reach him, we must travel many miles away from the city gates to enter the tunnels and backtrack into our city.”
“Tunnels?” She hadn’t forgotten the city was below the city, but she hadn’t given much thought to how they would reach that underground place until that moment.
“To access the city below the city, we must travel through the waste tunnels that flow beneath.”
“Waste tunnels?” she wrinkled her nose.
“Now’s not the time to get squeamish, Princess.” Finn stretched to his full height, as if bent on intimidating the boy who’d come to guide them. Alanuuin barely even acknowledged the broad-shouldered, giant behind her.
Lorelei ignored him, asking the boy, “When can we leave?”
“As soon as you are ready.”
Nodding, she turned to Bren and asked him to lower the barrier so their guide could rest while they packed up camp. He did as she asked, and though Hrafn immediately flew from the boy’s shoulder to reunite with his mage, Alanuuin did not step into the camp, nor did he sit down. He simply stood in the same place, waiting and watching with those large, intense eyes.
Lorelei could feel his stare on her as she flitted around the camp, helping Finn take their tents down, packing away pots and utensils.
The U’lfer edged into her from behind and leaned down to whisper in her ear, “Do you trust this kid?”
“I don’t trust anyone anymore, but we don’t exactly have a choice, do we? The two of you are bent on talking with this seer…”
“I’m not bent on anything except both of us coming back alive.”
“All three of us, you mean.”
“Yeah, sure, all three of us. But maybe you’re right. Maybe we don’t have to meet with this seer. We could brave Sorrow’s Peak blind and probably have the same luck.”
“What about the dragon?” She widened her stare, her lashing sarcasm making him roll his eyes.
“I’m just saying, Princess.”
“We’ve already said we’ll go, and besides, there are things I never got to ask Yovenna before she died. Things about my path and what’s expected of me. Maybe this Gwendoliir will have answers she wasn’t able to provide.”
“I doubt it,” he shrugged. “I’m starting to think knowing everything before it happens takes the fun and adventure out of life.”
“That’s one opinion.” She turned back to the contents of her pack.
He grunted and backed away, seeing to his own pack. “All I’m saying is sometimes mistakes are meant to be made. Knowing what’s out there, maybe it’s helpful and maybe it’s not, but…”
“But what? Twenty minutes ago, you didn’t want to go blind into this, and now that I’ve accepted we should, you’ve changed your mind again. I swear, Finn, sometimes you just argue with me for the sake of argument alone. Can’t you just… I don’t know… make an effort to not contradict every single thing I say?”
Momentarily abashed, she turned over her shoulder to look at him. His full lips tightened into a scowl behind days of patchy beard growth that made him look so much older and more weathered than he actually was. Bowing in mockery, the last words he said before they set out were, “I am ever at your command, Highness.”
So much for giving up on the game, she thought. Nevertheless, she didn’t let his sarcasm get under her skin. She shoved past him and didn’t talk to him again for several hours.
They did not ride, but walked their horses. Finn led his gelding and her mare, while Bren took charge of his own black mare. It was a thoughtful thing, she realized. Finn always took on her part of the burden and left her almost entirely unencumbered. Maybe he thought she had enough weight to carry around, what with the whole world on her shoulders, and he wanted to alleviate as much of the load as possible.
She felt instantly guilty about their argument, but she didn’t say anything to him. One apologetic makeup with Finn per day was her unspoken limit. Surely he’d do something else to make her mad before day’s end, so she might as well save apologizing for a single conversation. Still, she stopped brooding about him and let her mind fill with all the questions she could ask the seer they were on their way to meet.
Would Gwendoliir have any answers for her at all, or would he simply fill her with more questions much like his predecessors? Rhiorna and Yovenna both pointed her in the right direction with little more than a nudge, but she was getting tired of just following the line of a seer’s finger toward the horizon. She wanted to feel a connection with her cause, to feel like she was doing it because she wanted to, not just because the seers told her to. She supposed somewhere deep inside her, in that dark place where her unawakened beast dwelt, waking her wolf was becoming important to her, but the greatest part of her was still so afraid.
She watched the walls of Port Felar rise on their right, looming over them even though it was still so far away. It blocked out the harbor for miles, but she could still hear the din of city voices mingling with the cry of scavenging gulls circling overhead. Eventually, those sounds faded, and the overwhelming city odors with them until she could scarcely smell their familiarity at all.
Their guide did not speak to him unless they asked him questions, and even then his answers were terse and unrevealing. Eventually she realized it was pointless to attempt speaking to him at all, so no one said anything.
It was late afternoon by the time she lifted her hand to her brow to study the sun’s position in the sky. She was nervous enough that she wasn’t hungry, even though she’d barely eaten half a bowl of watery porridge that morning. She refused Finn’s offer when he tried to share crumbles of cheese from their last wheel, but she had a feeling she was going to regret that long before they reached their destination. She was too nervous to eat, and though she knew it was foolish, she kept hoping the seer they
were traveling to meet would be kind enough to offer them food and rest, as well as answers.
The pines thinned, their rust-orange needles littering the ground reaching out to the sea beyond the cliffs. She saw white sails in the harbor, both arriving and departing as the sea birds disappeared into the water and came back up with wriggling fish clutched in the grip of their pouchy beaks.
The closer they grew to those cliffs, the louder the thunder of waves crashing against them grew. They were heading straight toward those cliffs, and Lorelei’s heart pounded harder in her chest as she realized there was nowhere to go but down once they reached them.
“There is a path cut into the cliffs, like stairs,” Alanuuin finally told them, gesturing with his hand in the direction they were traveling. “It will take us down onto the ledge. We can access the tunnel entrance from there.”
Only they were nothing at all like steps, Lorelei surmised with a grimace as they approached.
“Tether your horses here, and our rangers will come to fetch them, lead them to the passage on the other side of the city.”
“Maybe I could go with the rangers,” she suggested.
He didn’t reply, but went straight toward the edge of the cliff. Lorelei’s stomach lurched as she watched the lithe little boy skid down the craggy passage, bits of loose stone skittering over the edge and tumbling into the frothy sea battering endlessly at cliff face.
Brendolowyn reluctantly released Hrafn to hunt before he followed, and then Finn, but for a long time she teetered on the edge, her toes stretching to the very tips of her boots as she lingered behind, watching as everyone else made the descent. She stared at her own feet, the leather salt-stained and dirty grey around the toes, and tried not to focus on the dizziness that came from peering over the edge of so steep a drop.
“Come, Light of Madra,” Alanuuin called from the ledge. “It is not difficult, I promise.”
She didn’t believe him.
“There has to be another way.”
“The only other way is a cavern about twenty miles from this place. We would then have to double back to get to the city, and would likely not arrive until tomorrow. My master expects us this day.”
For a boy, he was very forthright and astute, as though he had several decades of experience on her and wasn’t about to let her petty fear of heights stand in the way of his mission to deliver her and her companions to his master.
And then, as if he meant to take the edge off of his scolding, he added in a gentle tone, “It only looks terrifying, but it is very safe.”
“I’ll stand right here, Princess.” Finn planted himself firmly at the bottom of the declining passage, like a rock that wouldn’t budge no matter what came barreling into him.
She muttered under her breath, combinations of words mingled with curses, and edged her toe along the dusty stones. She swore as she took the first step, she could feel the cliff crumbling beneath her foot, and then she was sliding, her boots skidding across jagged stone until she collided with Finn. Fortunately, he remained as solid as he’d promised, and the force of her body barely even budged him. His arms around her made her feel momentarily safe, and she clung to him, her fingers gripping the leather of his armor.
The wind on that cliff was precarious, rushing against them, whipping her hair into her face as she watched the Alvarii boy effortlessly draw back a rotting, wooden hatch from the gaping entrance into the underground world.
It was only a small bit of comfort to know she would not have to reclimb that cliff face to get back to daylight, but it seemed the nightmare had only just begun.
She may not have known much about the world, thanks to Aelfric’s insistence his daughters be taught the barest historical truths, but she did know about the underground Alvarii cities. She overheard Aelfric cursing them, but when she asked Pahjah if that was where her people lived, under the ground, her nurse told her such things were not to be discussed.
Listening when she should not, she learned enough by the time she was twelve-years-old to discern the Alvarii Underground were the escaped rebel slaves who gathered to make her father’s life miserable. She always imagined their cities to be dark, smelly places filled with filthy, miserable people, always coughing and hacking with sickness and disease.
Judging from the appearance of the small, collared boy who’d come to retrieve them, her assumption was probably correct. A fact that further confirmed her suspicions was the gaping hole Alanuuin disappeared into, hand after hand passing downward as he lowered himself along the rungs of the slick, rotting ladder descending into a deep, black hole with only the barest hint of light shining from the bottom.
Finn went next, insisting upon going first in order to break her fall if she slipped on the rungs. She hesitated, watching the hole swallow him up, and then Brendolowyn’s hand lowered onto her shoulder.
“It isn’t long to the ground,” he assured her.
“But it’s so dark.”
“Probably for the best,” he grinned.
She stretched her leg inside, feeling with her toes until she found the first rung and then she began to descend. Bren waited until she was several rungs down before following. He closed the portal over them, the darkness all-consuming.
Coupled with her insane fear of heights, Lorelei grew instantly claustrophobic. Terrifying thoughts entertained her overactive imagination, images of the earth around and above them caving in and suffocating them all. She closed her eyes, not that it mattered much. She couldn’t see when they were open, and the dense, reeking air felt so heavy in her lungs it made her dizzy. Every breath was a punching fist, hammering her terrified heart between her ribs until they felt bruised and sore.
Sensing her terror and attuned to the increased panic of her heart beat, Finn called out to her. “Almost there, Princess.” His voice echoed through the tunnel, amplifying his reassurance. “Not much further,” he coaxed.
Were it not for the sound of his promises, she might very well have lost her mind, but he called out nonsensical jokes, laughing at them when she didn’t and making her feel almost foolish for being so afraid of that which she could not see.
She tried to look down, to judge the closeness of that vague and dirty light below, and then she heard a heavy thud, like books dropping to the earth. The force of Finn’s leap off the last rung made the whole passage rattle and she swore several bits of clumped dirt, stone and droplets of water fell from above her.
“I’m down here, Princess. You’re almost there, I promise.”
“How almost there?”
“Ten, maybe twelve more steps and you’ll be at the bottom. You could probably drop down now and I could catch you if you wanted me to.”
She ignored his offer. Ten more steps wouldn’t be so bad, considering how far she’d already come, but each one seemed to take a lifetime to achieve. Above her, she could hear Brendolowyn moving, slowly and carefully to avoid coming down on her tightly gripped hands.
Never in her life had she been so far beneath the ground. Not even during the occasional, forbidden game of hide and seek in the castle dungeon when she and Mirien were small. Miri was never afraid of the dark, always hiding in the most awful places imaginable and calling out from the obscurity like a disembodied spirit. Then she would laugh and call her older sister a chicken.
Perhaps Mirien should have been the Light of Madra. Maybe the gods chose the wrong sister for their job.
“Drop down,” Finn urged. “I’ll catch you.”
“No.” She squeezed her eyes tight and felt beneath her foot for the next rung. “I’m all right.”
“You’re doing fine, my lady,” Bren reassured her from above. “Take your time. You’re nearly there.”
“I think that’s the part the scares me.” A nervous laugh caught in her throat as her imagination ran away into an entire city, dark, dank, cold and wet. “I don’t like this being underground thing. Isn’t there another way? Maybe Gwendoliir could just meet me outside and talk to me there.
”
“My master has not been above ground in over thirty years,” Alanuuin called up to her, “and he has not foreseen himself above ground before his death.”
“How could anyone spend so much time underground? It’s not normal, especially for an elf. I thought the Alvarii loved the sun and nature and things that grow in its light.”
“They don’t exactly have much choice in the matter, my lady.”
Of course they didn’t. She knew that, but she was just so scared. What if their city collapsed while she was in it, and that was the reason the elven seer did not foresee his returning to the surface before the end of his life?
“King Aelfric drove my people underground,” Alanuuin said. “But we have made the best of a bad situation. I promise you Nua Duaan is not so dark and miserable a place as you might fear.”
“Nua Duaan?” Brendolowyn referred to the city by that name before, but she never asked the meaning of the words. “What does it mean?”
“New Day,” Brendolowyn said, his robes rustling as he took another step down the ladder. “Nua Duaan is nothing like you might imagine. It is filled with light, wonder and beauty beyond your wildest dreams.”
“You have been to this place many times before?” she asked, stretching her calf and searching for the next rung with the toe of her boot.
“I have. Hodon has sent me to treat with the Alvarii on many an occasion. Once we pass the gates and enter the city, you won’t even remember you are below the ground.”
She didn’t believe him.
Glancing upward, he’d kept his hood lifted, the darkness behind him completely shrouding the delicate but handsome features of his face. Only the sharp length of his nose gave evidence of his profile at all.
Sorrow's Peak (Serpent of Time Book 2) Page 27