Another round of servants marched into the gardens, carrying platters of food, and as Finn leaned back to allow them to take his empty dishes he surveyed the latest offering. More pastries, stuffed fruits dripping with dark sugar melting onto the tray, a steaming, suckling pig and fragrant salmon that made his mouth water as they passed it across the table to place it in front of him. He wondered where they’d gotten the pig, if they had imaginary farms in their vast, underground city below the city and once more he fretted the food in front of them wasn’t real food at all. He was going to be hungry again in no time at all; he just knew it.
“Go on, Finn, try the salmon,” the seer urged after finishing his explanation. “I do feel dreadful my servants didn’t see to your needs last night as I instructed. There was so much going on, everything was in disarray, but you have my word they will be severely reprimanded for not fulfilling the simplest of commands.”
“We made due,” he grunted, surging forward to try the salmon. “No need to punish anyone on our account. It’s just we were under the impression you were expecting us, actually.”
“Of course, and we have been expecting you, for quite some time, but certain circumstances have arisen and I regret to confess my visions have been clouded of late.”
Interesting, Finn thought. Had the elf gathered evidence from his thoughts, learning of their failed espionage attempt the night before?
“What do you mean, clouded?” Lorelei leaned forward in her chair.
“Exactly what I’ve said,” Gwendoliir sighed. “All my life I’ve seen everything so clearly, as if Alvariin herself walked beside me pointing out every path and every outcome as it unfolded, but something in the grand design has shifted. Where once I saw with great clarity, I now see only possibilities without conviction.”
“You mean you can’t see the future anymore?”
“I am afraid not,” and then as if he sensed her despair he added, “but I will do all I can to help you. I will tell you what I do know, what I have seen and what you will face when you reach Great Sorrow’s Peak.”
“How does that help us if you can’t trust your own visions?”
The Alvarii turned his steely gaze toward Finn again, and in his eyes the U’lfer saw how old he really was. There wasn’t a single line or wrinkle in his smooth, golden skin to tell his age, but his hair was the purest shade of silver Finn had ever seen and the seer’s eyes had witnessed the passing of ages.
Elves lived through several life-cycles. Vilnjar once told him when he was a boy there were some elves who lived through many ages, thousands of years, and while the greatest part of him didn’t like the idea of dying any time soon, he couldn’t fathom what it might be like to live thousands of years. How boring would it be to pass through several lifetimes, how out of touch one must feel with a world always changing while the accursed, everlasting Alvarii stayed the same. They kept the same traditions they’d upheld since the dawn of time, took charge over the keeping of history and passed it on to a world that just kept changing and changing too quickly for the elves to keep up.
How old was Gwendoliir, he wondered? How many life cycles had the seer passed through? Had he been alive when the rivalry between the gods shifted the flow of time and pushed them into a cycle of punishment? Surely he’d seen things, knew of the so-called mistakes made time and time again, as well as how they could be avoided. Perhaps he even knew which one of them was not meant to make it back, and for a moment Finn gulped against the tightening lump in his throat.
He already decided it wasn’t going to be him who got left behind. He wasn’t letting Lorelei go anywhere without him, and he certainly wasn’t going to die and leave her behind to face her task alone. He simply refused. Whatever it was they were going to face, he would stand against it and destroy it because that was his job. He promised to protect her, to stand in front of her as they faced untold enemies and keep her alive, but he was damned if he was going to die in the process.
“It will prepare you for what you must face, but beyond that I’m afraid you are on your own. I have spent many long hours in reflection since my sight began to cloud, praying to Alvariin for guidance, but her voice is silent. She offers nothing.” Lament filled his tone as he turned his gaze back toward Lorelei. “It is my belief our guidance in the past, the wisdom of those who’ve seen has been the gravest interference and so the gods work to cloud the vision of those who’ve seen. Perhaps they seek to end the cycle by allowing events to unfold as they must, or maybe there is some other purpose for their silence.”
“Yovenna’s visions seemed quite clear.” Lorelei folded her hands atop the table and stared down at her fingers. “And Rhiorna’s as well, though they did not share much. I’d hoped…”
“That I would fill in some of the gaps?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry to disappoint you, child, but even if I was able to do so, I would not. I could not. It is a seer’s curse to know, to carry the future on his shoulders and walk through its weaving without touching a single thread.”
“Then why give seer’s such a gift at all?” Brendolowyn wondered aloud. “Why bless them with glimpses of the future if that is not the way events are meant to play out?’
“Ah, that is the question, is it not?” For a moment Finn thought the seer wasn’t going to provide an answer to his question, but simply muse over the depth of it before changing the subject, but then he wet his lips. His tongue darted thoughtfully across them just before he drew a hitching breath that lifted his broad shoulders a little closer to his ears. “Perhaps they show us in hopes we will maintain the purity of the path, or perhaps it is a test of sorts. I once thought I knew, that I understood what they would ask of me, but now I just don’t know.”
“So we came all this way for nothing? We’d be halfway through the Valley of Sorrows right now if we hadn’t stopped here.”
“Finn…”
“No, your companion speaks true, I’m afraid. There is not much I can tell you about your path, but I do know of the monster that lurks below the mountain.”
“And the Tid Ormen? Can you tell me much about that?”
“Yovenna told you of it?”
“Not much, only that I’m meant to wake it and eventually slay it so time can move forward again.”
“Then she’s told you far more than I would have, than I could have. I know only what was written, and though it is true I once glimpsed it rising from the sea I have no awareness of the events that woke it from the continual habit of its mindless chase.”
“Yovenna said changing the course would wake the serpent, but if meddling with the events wakes the serpent, what’s to prevent the All-Creator from interfering?”
The false sun bearing down upon them momentarily blinded him so he had to lift a hand to his brow in order to see the elf clearly. He wanted to look at the seer’s face, see if he was holding anything back when he provided her with an answer.
“Time after time, I have made it my life’s work to understand the prophecies and the cycle,” Gwendoliir began, “and it is my personal belief Heidr wants the cycle to end just as much as his children do. The sacrifice required to set events in motion would show him we are ready to move forward…”
“If he wants the curse to end, why doesn’t he just end it?” Finn asked. “I mean, if he’s all powerful, he could do that, right? It’s his curse. Why doesn’t he just take it back?”
From over his left shoulder, Finn heard Brendolowyn snort laughter, which he didn’t even bother trying to politely hide. The half-elf seemed to bask in moments he thought made Finn look stupid, especially if Lorelei might have noticed.
“I’m most certain he could do just that, after all it was he who wove the serpent and set the curse in motion, but the question remains, does he believe we are ready to move forward? Does he think we have learned our lessons?”
Gwendoliir allowed those thoughts to linger in the sunlit garden for deeper contemplation, during which time Finn felt Lore
lei’s emotions tangle like a fiery ball in the deepest part of her stomach. Confusion, doubt, anxiety and simple, unadulterated fear. She was thinking about how unlikely it was she, of all people, would ever be able to do what these seers all seemed to agree she was meant to. That unlikeliness was coupled with a heaping layer of guilt over the fact that the greatest part of her wasn’t even sure she wanted to try living up to everyone else’s expectations of her.
He didn’t need a soul connection with her to feel those emotions. He would have felt the same way if their roles were reversed and it was him in her shoes, shoulders weighted down beneath the expectations of a world she wasn’t even sure deserved to be saved.
Shaking his head of thoughts too deep, he watched as she closed her eyes beside him and was surprised at how powerful the connection between them was for the briefest flicker of a moment. He glimpsed what she was seeing with her mind’s eye and felt the freedom she longed so desperately for to his very core.
Running unfettered, miles of endless open road in front of her. The idea itself made her feel comforted, until she looked over her shoulder and realized there was a rabid pack of expectations on her heels, a fiery serpent rising on the horizon to swallow her up and send her back to the beginning again and again and again.
Those anxiety-inducing thoughts were abruptly cut short by the continuance of Gwendoliir’s summation.
“The Tid Ormen was meant to teach us all a lesson, to roll each and every one of us through the same cycle of events until we figured out what we were doing wrong. The children of the gods, as well as the gods themselves are meant to learn this lesson, but each time we return to this point in the cycle of events we prove to the All-Creator we are not yet ready to move forward. We have failed to learn the lessons from the events we continue to repeat.”
“How is any of this my responsibility?” That was the real question from the start. The inquiry none of those so-called seers seemed to want to answer. “Why does this fall to me? What makes me so special?”
Finn could think of a thousand things that made her special, things she’d probably never even thought of herself, but instead of saying so he lowered a forkful of food uneaten to the plate in front of him and waited for Gwendoliir to answer her question.
For a few moments the elf said nothing. He surveyed the food on his own plate as if he’d just seen it move and wanted to catch it in the act before it walked off the table. He then reached for his cup and took a long, thirsty drink, the sound of his tactless gulping making Finn look matter-of-factly in Lorelei’s direction, as if to point out he wasn’t the only one who drank as if he were dying of thirst.
She didn’t acknowledge his eyes on her, but instead focused all of her attention on Gwendoliir, waiting for him to shed light on her dark curiosities.
When he did not speak, Lorelei told him, “Yovenna said I was chosen, not just to return the Horns of Llorveth and restore the wolf-spirit to myself and others like me born of two souls, but to slay the Serpent of Time. Why? Why me?”
“You,” Gwendoliir began after another lengthy pause, during which Finn found himself leaning across the table to stab his fork into an orange cream cake thick with sugary, rich white frosting. “You were the byproduct of a love this world has not seen for an age or more. Your mother and father…” Another pause, this one thoughtful, as though he were choosing his words carefully. “Your parents’ love was a ripple in the curse. Two people, born of different worlds, Rognar would have torn the heavens from the sky to save Ygritte and his unborn child.”
Finn felt something inside her flutter, an awareness she’d never experienced, but before she could grasp it, the elf went on.
“Rognar and Ygritte were betrayed by the U’lfer Council of Nine, in much the same way the other gods betrayed Llorveth and Madra. Because of Rhiorna’s foresight, Rognar knew the betrayal was coming. Rhiorna tried to convince her brother to take Ygritte and run, insisting Llorveth had shown her a path to their freedom and safety, but your father was a proud wolf, and he was weary of wandering.
“He wanted a place for his men, for their wives and children, and he knew in his heart there was no turning back from that which had already begun. Aelfric would never stop the fight, no matter where they ran. They had wives and children, and all they wanted was a place to call their own.
“When Rognar sat down with Rhiorna, it was not Llorveth he sought council from, but a higher power. The highest power of them all.”
“The All-Creator?”
The old seer’s face stretched into a grin that showed his true age for the first time since they’d met him. Wrinkles and lines momentarily appeared beside his mouth and at the corners of his long eyes; he was ancient as time itself.
“Yes. He sought council with Heidr. He made all the proper sacrifices, performed a ritual there are very few who walk this world still remember.”
“Did it… work?”
Nodding slowly, Gwendoliir brought both hands up to the tabletop and folded them together in front of his plate. “It did.”
“How do you know all this? Rhiorna never…”
Lifting his hand to stop her from going on so he might explain, she cut short her words and gave him her full attention so he could continue.
“Rhiorna was more than just a seer. She was once a powerful sorceress, more powerful than even she seemed to know herself. She was able to perform the ritual, to connect Rognar with the All-Creator, but her memory of the events that followed were lost to her, as though it never happened at all. She woke from the trance afterward to find her tent empty and her brother already gone, into the betrayal that would put him face to face with King Aelfric and once and for all bring an end to the battle between the U’lfer and the children of Foreln.”
“How… how is it you know all this? I understand you are a seer, but…”
“By all rights, I should not know of this, but Rognar’s meeting with the All-Creator that day affected every race of Vennakrand. Your father made a pact with Heidr, or so it has been told by the other gods. Bloedd Verisaar, our people call it.”
“What is Bloedd Verisaar?”
“Blood sacrifice,” Brendolowyn spoke up, “the spilling of one’s own blood, the sacrifice of his life to Heidr in exchange for an end to the battle and a place to call their own.”
“You mean her father sacrificed my father…”
“Not quite,” the elf interrupted. “All those who followed him knew exactly what they were doing. But their blood was not enough. Heidr would give them land, but he could not promise lasting peace for the U’lfer. He told Rognar all those born of his blood would be protected, as would the children of the men who offered themselves in sacrifice, but the only way in which he could protect them was if he allowed a piece of himself to be joined with Rognar’s unborn child.”
“You… I…” She was stunned speechless. Unspoken terror drew her head back and forth in denial. When she made no sound, the old seer added further fuel the fire of her fears.
“Heidr wove the skein of your life from his own essence, Lorelei. From the same elements he used to craft the serpent that writhes against this world and keeps us all from moving forward.”
She didn’t believe him, and truth be told neither did Finn.
She was special, sure, and he had no doubt her destiny was meant to be the stuff of legends, but hearing it spoken aloud…
He found his own head shaking in denial, even though they had explanation for the first time since they’d heard tell of the white hand of Madra, the light reaching across the very fabric of time itself to spare the lives of those she loved. He didn’t want to believe it.
In the shady trees looming over the garden, strange birds made eerie music to accompany the pounding of her heart. Her thoughts were a scramble he couldn’t make sense of, only the briefest glimpses breaking through the melee of terror and denial.
“This is too much,” she finally managed. “Why…” she started, the rest of the words lost to that stran
ge birdsong for several minutes before she found courage to speak again. “Why would my father do that to me?”
“Place the weight of the world on your shoulders?” Gwendoliir asked.
It felt so much more severe than just the weight of the world. Her father, the creator of all things, they were asking too much of her. She didn’t need to say the words aloud. He could feel the circulation of a single thought rolling through her again and again and again.
It’s not fair. It’s not fair. It’s not fair.
Finn leaned back in his chair and thoughtfully contemplated all the things his mother told him about his father before she died. She never once mentioned Deken would want him to do anything other than fight any who might try and further oppress the U’lfer. All his life she’d told him to never forget the way of the wolf, to teach his mate and his children those ways.
“My father would never have sacrificed himself this way you’ve described,” Finn disrupted the lingering silence with that fact. “He was a fighter…”
“That is precisely why your father sacrificed himself, Mad Finn the Reckless. He fought with honor, as is the U’lfer way. He gave himself so you might live.”
“Rognar and his men were betrayed by the Council of the Nine. That is what my mother told me. They were handed over to Aelfric and slaughtered while their women and children watched so they might learn the error of the U’lfer ways, and while they were dying the Council signed away all of our rights and agreed to live under the yolk of Aelfric’s tyranny.”
Gwendoliir turned his gaze on Finn, his thoughtful eyes lingering until Finn couldn’t stand the feel of them on his skin. “I know this is difficult for you to believe, but your fathers were tired of war, and though the terms were not favorable for the U’lfer in any way, Rognar and his men knew what their sacrifice would yield. End to the slaughter, the burning of their villages… And for the last eighteen years the U’lfer have known peace, have they not?”
“Yeah, but…”
“It was not favorable peace, I know, and I am certain there are, or at least there were many who did not always agree with the sacrifices made by their warriors, but your people were spared. And they were given the land Heidr promised.”
Sorrow's Peak (Serpent of Time Book 2) Page 32