Sorrow's Peak (Serpent of Time Book 2)

by Jennifer Melzer

  A rumbling voice sounded in her mind, its baritone reminding her immediately of her brother. “My daughter,” he said, “I have longed to look upon you since you were little more than a flutter in your mother’s womb.”

  Her mother’s hand slipping through the veil was so close, she could almost touch it, but she was afraid to reach for it, and with the last syllable of her father’s voice still echoing in her mind, she took a tentative step back before that hand could touch her.

  “Mother,” she shook her head, “Father, how are you here?”

  “Come, Lorelei,” Rognar said inside her mind. “There is something we must show you.”

  Again, she could feel her head moving back and forth, denial coursing through her as she retreated further from the reaching hand. “No,” she declared. “This is some trick, some magic from the monster we face in the mountain.”

  But the reaching hand gripped the fabric of Lorelei’s tunic, curling and bunching like a fist around it and dragging her stumbling through the barrier. She absorbed the magic, felt it falter and dwindle at her back, and then her mother’s essence was all around her, the familiar scent of her perfume—lilac and summer berries—filling her senses and overwhelming her to tears.

  Along with that essence, a series of images flashed through her mind. Pahjah and her mother in conversation, the pact between two women to save a mother’s children at all costs, Pahjah’s freedom and Mirien, Lorelei’s little sister, passing one last desperate look at Ygritte before Pahjah gripped her sleeve and drew her away. She saw her mother pacing the floors of her confinement, the long tail of her dressing gown swishing across the floor, the occasional brief glance at her own reflection in the mirror. The reflection was pale, the dark circles beneath her eyes a telling tale of sleeplessness, hunger, woe. The Alvarii servant who brought her last meal to her prison, protected by a host of guards. A note flashed as she lifted the bowl, four words scrawled across a stained bit of parchment: Free yourself, my queen.

  She watched her mother eat that slip of parchment, then drink down the soup quickly, as if she feared she’d lose her nerve. Bits of liquid dribbled down her chin, spilling onto the front of her white silk dressing gown. Her vision blurred, no, not her vision, her mother’s vision, as she realized she was her mother. She was seeing these images through her mother’s eye, and those eyes were blinking heavily, the world beyond the lids darkening as she faltered with dizziness that sent her crashing to the floor.

  A jolt of pain as she cracked her head on the hard stone, and then there was only darkness.

  Lorelei tried to withdraw from the vision, from the lifting of spirit, the beckoning howl of the wolf drawing her essence to the window, where she escaped the prison that had been her life all those years she was married to Aelfric.

  “Rognar.”

  “Ygritte,” the wolf called out to her. “Come, my love. The cycle has begun anew, and never will we be parted again.”

  Then, and only then, did her mother withdraw her vision from Lorelei’s mind, the wisp of spirit diminishing, reforming into the recognizable memory of her mother before her and hovering in the space beside the ethereal wolf that was her father.

  Her parents were… no. It was too much.

  Throat tight, the muscles contracting against a tidal wave of confused emotion rising inside her, the only sound to escape her was a strangled gasp.

  Ygritte was… dead.

  “No,” she murmured through strangled cords.

  The woman had always been a mystery, and yet she was still her mother. In that brief flash of memory she’d come to know her in a way she’d never done during their seventeen years together.

  Lifting wavering ethereal hand, she felt the scarcest whisper of a touch upon her cheek, swiping through the tears she hadn’t realized dripped down her cheeks.

  “Don’t cry for me, my little love,” her mother whispered. “Rejoice for me, for I am now free.”

  “But…”

  There were no words. Her mind still believing the whole charade was in some small part a trick, some elaborate hoax plotted by the enemy they faced in the mountain, but when her father lifted the clawed paw of his hand to the other side of her face, the gentle and affectionate touch of both her parents filled her with such grief there was no way the intensity of the emotion could be a hoax.

  Lorelei closed her eyes, allowed the memory of that moment, of the only time in her life she’d stood before both of her parents, felt their love pouring through her from across a veil of time and memory. It would haunt her for the rest of her days, filling her with love and sorrow until she felt as though her body would burst and send her essence spiraling up to join the stars in the sky above.

  Gone was the anger she felt upon learning her own father offered her to Heidr before she was ever born. He had no choice. Her soul was never hers.

  “You are the everlasting symbol of our love,” her mother said. “You are our triumph over all that fought to destroy what we had.”

  “But if I’m destroyed… If Finn dies…”

  The wolf wavered before her, dwindling until a man stood in its place, lingering so near her mother they were practically one essence. Even as the trees at their backs were visible through them, she felt a great sense of relief to look upon the man who brought her into the world. As everyone said her brother was his image rebranded, and Lorelei did, in fact, have his eyes. No wonder her mother faltered every time they came face to face, turning her stare away when she spoke to her own daughter. What pain it must have brought to find the man she loved staring back at her.

  But she could have, in some small way, celebrated his memory by loving the daughter they brought into the world. A momentary twinge of regret and bitterness welled in her heart, making it difficult for her to breathe.

  “There is not time to linger on regrets, little girl,” Rognar said. “The gods alone know we spent our existence dwelling on them, our moments stifled by all we did or did not do, but there is more than the things we do. It is your power to make things right, and you must not let fear hamper your actions as you venture forth on this journey.” Both hands cupped her face, his broad grin rising as he touched her. “The things you do will set the world back on course and moving forward again, but we cannot linger here. You must come with us now so we can show you the way.”

  “The way? What way?”

  “A hidden path into the mountain,” her mother explained.

  “But Finn already found it.”

  “One path, yes,” she nodded, “but there is another. Hidden, unguarded, forgotten.”

  “Dangerous,” her father added.

  “How… how do you know of this? Have the gods shown you?”

  “Beyond this moment you cannot rely on the aid of gods, child. Even now we take great risk revealing ourselves to you,” Rognar told her. “The others have their own agendas, and it will not be long before even the gods seek to steer you from your path.”

  “But why? I don’t understand, Father.”

  “There is power within you to rival even the oldest among them. You are the Light of His Light.”

  “What does that mean? What am I, Father?”

  A reverent smile lit his face. “You are all.”

  His revelation terrified her, but there wasn’t time to dwell on fear because they each reached down and took a hand, drawing her to join them through the shadowed trees.

  Her bare feet scuffed across stone and dew-soaked grass, shuffling forward without thought as her mind raced through a thousand senseless revelations. Her guides spoke no more, simply led her onward for what felt like miles until they came to a hidden passage in the mountain marked by a star-shaped rune that shimmered and shone in the moonlight breaking through the clouds and dancing across the stone.

  “This is the way.” Her mother gestured toward the incline. “Follow this passage, preserve your mage’s energy for when you enter the mountain hall, for there you will need his protection.”

  “We
are with you,” her father said. “Always.”

  And then they leaned in together, each of them touching ethereal lips to her cheeks in a collision of strange light that sent her staggering backward in a daze. The next thing she knew a pair of frantic claws were dragging her from her stupor, spinning her around to face the pale light of dawn and a trembling black wolf with wide, terrified white-blue eyes.

  “Finn?” She took a startled step away, the sharpness of those claws cutting into the cloth of her shirt, piercing flesh and exposing bare skin to the cold kiss of the morning air. “What… What are you doing here?”

  Lorelei’s mind felt fuzzy and strange. She kept trying to make sense of the night before, but no matter how she tried to wrap her head around it, there was no sense to be made of it. Replaying Rognar’s words over and over in her mind didn’t make them any clearer.

  You are the light of His light. You are all.

  Finn hadn’t said much of anything to her since he’d shifted back into his skin. He stalked behind her, naked as his naming day, always two steps back and completely oblivious to his own exposure. She avoided looking at him, even when he barked at her in short, angry sentences.

  “What was I supposed to do?” he raved. “I wake up, you’re gone. And I mean, really gone. So far away I can only smell the barest hint of the trail you left behind when you took your little moonlit stroll. The barrier is down, you’re nowhere to be found…”

  “I said I was sorry,” she muttered, though she didn’t know why she was supposed to apologize. “I don’t know what more you want from me.” She hadn’t done anything wrong. “I didn’t mean for this. I thought I was…”

  The word never made it to her lips, but it was still lingering in her mind when he went on behind her, raging and frantic, terrified and confused. Had she finished her sentence, she would have told him she thought she was dreaming. How else could she have walked the path beside her dead mother and father?

  In the cold light of dawn that reality was almost more than she could stand in light of everything else going on around her.

  Her mother was dead.

  And the awareness that her little sister was out there somewhere terrified her. Mirien was scared and alone and there was nothing she could do to protect her from whatever strange plot her mother and nursemaid had been planning together all those years. No, she wasn’t alone… She was with Pahjah, and though that should have reassured her, it did not.

  “…supposed to believe you just sleepwalked four miles? In the dark? By yourself? Without shoes?” From the corner of her eye she could see his frantic hand gesturing in anger. “And you never woke up even as you cut your feet on rocks and only the gods know what else?”

  Glancing down at her bare, dirty feet, the distant pulse and ache she felt with every step was only going to be intensified by squeezing into her boots when they arrived back at camp. She wasn’t looking forward to that.

  “Yes,” she said. “That is exactly what you’re supposed to believe because that is what happened, Finn. I don’t know how. I only know why. They came to me, drew me with them to show me another way. That was where I woke up when you found me. On the unguarded path we’re supposed to take into the mountain.”

  “We’ll just see what Brendolowyn has to say about this.” His smug willingness to side with Bren against her was a shock, but she didn’t answer him. They said nothing more on the long journey back to camp, which took them almost two hours since she wasn’t wearing shoes and had to tread carefully to avoid further damaging her already tender, bare feet.

  In the distance, she spied their camp, Brendolowyn frantically pacing circles around the fire, looking helpless and sick with worry when he glanced up and saw them approaching, but unlike Finn he didn’t tear into her. He simply surged forward, took her by the shoulders to hold her out and look her over and then he hugged her with the greatest sigh of relief.

  “Madra’s Light, Lorelei. I was worried sick about you.”

  “Wait until you hear where she was,” Finn snarled before ducking into the tent to put on clothes. Lorelei caught the briefest glimpse of pale, bare backside disappearing between the flaps and guilt surged through her.

  He was so angry with her, and she understood why, but couldn’t he have at least shown the same sense of relief as Bren?

  Disentangling herself from his embrace, she tilted her gaze upward to look at him, her stare settling on the violet pools of his eyes. So filled with concern and joy at her safe return, she didn’t understand why Finn couldn’t show the same amount of relief.

  “My mother and father came to me last night. They showed me another way into the mountain.”

  He blinked as if stunned, then shook his head and asked, “Wait, what?”

  “Go on,” Finn called from inside the tent. “Ask her all about it. It’s a riveting tale, if ever I’ve heard one.”

  “What do you mean they showed you another way into the mountain? Tell me everything.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  “It could be some trick.”

  Brendolowyn leaned forward to circle both arms around his knees. He felt cold, and it had nothing to do with the damp, autumnal air sweeping in off the coast. Without bothering to raise the barrier around their camp after Finn returned with her, the air moved freely, reminding him of just how cold it really was there.

  He hadn’t bothered working the magic to restructure the barrier around them after Finn brought her back to camp. If her story was to be believed and ethereal entities could reach right through it, there seemed to be no point in wasting his energies.

  She was convinced the spirits of her mother and father came to her in the night, drew her away from camp and showed her another way into the mountain. The strangest part was he believed her, or rather he believed she believed what she was saying. He wasn’t so sure it wasn’t some kind of trick.

  “Maybe it was the drakoren.”

  “No,” she refused, shaking her head and jostling her loose auburn braids across the delicate width of her shoulders. “It was my parents. My mother and my father, and they...” She turned her fierce stare on him, eyes narrowing so critically he felt an eerie wave of hostility cut through him before she shook her head and looked away again. “If the drakoren wanted to draw me away from camp, what was its purpose? Why didn’t it just kill me while I was alone and vulnerable?”

  “But your father is dead and your mother is back in Rivenn,” Finn interjected. “And unless you left out some important detail about her being a powerful sorceress or a necromancer, how could she have been here last night? And,” he went on, the edge in his tone still fierce and rimmed in rage, “don’t you think she would be smart enough not to lure you out of the one place you were safe for the time being?”

  “They were shades,” she explained. “My mother is… also dead.”

  There was a surprising lack of emotion in those words, and when Brendolowyn tilted his head into his shoulder, nudging his chin down his upper-arm almost casually, the intensity of his disbelieving stare made her uncomfortable enough to look away. Back toward the fire, she watched the slow, small flames lap thirstily at the dry morning air and hid her feelings in that veil of silence.

  “How do you know that?”

  “She showed me… things. Images, events. Not that it matters.”

  “Of course it matters. She was your mother, my lady.” He started to reach a hand toward her, intent on offering friendly comfort, but she immediately drew away as if he were a poisonous viper about to strike.

  “You say that like it should mean something to me, but it doesn’t. The woman gave birth to me, but beyond that, she wasn’t exactly a paragon of motherhood. Though if the things she showed me were true, I suppose that’s not quite right either. She sacrificed herself to keep my sister safe. I guess she just didn’t care much about being my mother… until now.”

  Brendolowyn felt like the world was yanked from beneath him, his stomach dropping and somersaulting inside as
he lowered a hand to the earth beside him and instinctively clenched dry grass. “Your sister? What do you mean?”

  “If it really was my mother, and not some trick, she plotted with our Alvarii nursemaid to remove my sister from the castle and hide her away from the king somewhere. I don’t know what their plan was, but clearly it was something they’d been trying to do for years.”

  Swallowing hard, it felt like a shard of glass lodged in his throat. “That’s…”

  “Ridiculous?” Finn offered.

  He was going to say remarkable, as hearing her say that nearly convinced him it was her mother who’d come to guide her, but he couldn’t agree with her and not tell her why. He’d sworn to Jonolov he wouldn’t tell her about her sister, that she’d been so close to the girl, and yet so far…

  “No, it’s not ridiculous, but to what purpose?”

  The U’lfer scoffed and turned his back on them both, staring out at the rust-colored hills crawling toward the rising mountain in the distance.

  “I can think of at least half a dozen reasons, and getting back at the man who killed my father is at the top of the list.”

  “I suppose anything is possible, but to trust the advice of a pair of shades…”

  “As I said, if they were going to kill me, wouldn’t they have just done it when I was alone and vulnerable?”

  She had a fair point, but he couldn’t just set aside the possibility that the drakoren was toying with them. Everything he’d read about the monster suggested it liked to play those kinds of games, thrived on wreaking havoc and panic. Lorelei, however, appeared remarkably calm for someone who’d just learned her mother was most likely dead, even if she did claim such news would hardly bother her. She was an emotional young woman. He’d seen it firsthand every day since he’d met her, and she was not acting like herself.