“Should have nothing to do with my heartbeat. What is going on?”
Vilnjar shifted uncomfortably at his brother’s back. “Yes, Finn, what is going on?”
Lorelei watched the muscles in his jaw tighten and then he turned a wide-eyed look over his shoulder to quickly answer. “Nothing.” That word escaped him too quickly, and for a flickering moment she swore she felt a surge of panic pass from him into her. But how could that be? How could the emotions of the stranger standing in front of her affect her so severely? Finn squeezed her hands gently inside his, and then let them go. He rose back to his full height. “Nothing is going on. She’s just been through a lot these last few days and you come marching in here talking about councils and punishments. Her nerves are probably frazzled, that’s all.”
Vilnjar ignored Finn’s little jab and focused all his attention on her. “Can I get you anything? Some water? Some food, perhaps? Have you eaten at all since you woke?”
“No, I haven’t.” She hadn’t even thought about her stomach, but the mere mention of food made it gurgle emptily inside her, the sound echoing through the silent temple like a boulder rolling down the mountainside.
“I will bring you something to eat.” He bowed his head toward her and marched back up the aisle to the doors in the back without another word.
Alone again, Finn stood facing away from her long after Vilnjar left, as if some part of him feared looking at her, worried she would see the truth he was hiding inside him. And he was hiding something; he knew what was wrong with her.
Lorelei cleared her throat, afraid to ask the question pressing on her mind. “It’s more than just my nerves, isn’t it?”
“Nah,” he drew that word out and spun back around to face her, a playful smile twitching at the corners of his soft, full mouth. “Probably not. I mean, just look at the circumstances that brought you here, and now some council you’ve never even met… a bunch of people who know nothing about you… they’re going to stand in judgment over you, and I know those people, and I’m afraid of what they’ll do to you, so I can only imagine how you must feel.”
“You don’t really seem afraid,” she noted, “not of your council, at least. Please, if there’s something wrong with me, if Rhiorna told you something, I have a right to know.”
“There’s nothing wrong with you, Princess.”
“Then what is it? What is going on inside me? Is it… the beast? The one Rhiorna says lies dormant inside me waiting for the right moment to awake?”
“Yeah,” he answered too quickly. “Yeah, I’m sure that’s it.”
Only he didn’t sound sure. That terrified her even more than the frightening notion that Finn knew exactly what was wrong with her, and it had something to do with him.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The bushy eyebrows of the guard outside her cell knitted together as Vilnjar approached, regarding him with unspoken authority. “I told you yesterday and the day before that and the day before that that Cobin said she is not to have any visitors, most especially not you or your brother.”
He stopped just short of the man, head tilted, face stern. “Need I remind you, Toklan, that not so long ago when your young son Theden was to be punished for hiding his transformations from the council, it was I who spoke on his behalf and lessened the punishment he was to receive significantly?” He hated that he had to use his position that way, to underhandedly get what he wanted through bribery and reminders of the things he’d done for the people in his community. He hadn’t done those things to obtain favors from anyone; he’d done them in order to make their people stronger. “She is my sister, and I would see her before the council meets tonight, make sure she knows the result of her carelessness so it is not a shock when they exile her brother this night.”
“Do you really think they’re going to exile him this time?” Toklan’s face lengthened with sadness, his demeanor shifting from stern to curious so fast he was almost an entirely different man.
“It is very likely,” he conceded with a solemn nod. “He broke the law, several laws to be exact, and not even my influence will spare him from the council’s punishment. Not this time.”
“Finn is a good warrior,” the other man lamented. “A little crazy, but then so was your father, as I remember it.”
“Well, I would spare him my father’s fate and see him exiled.”
“Exile may not be the same sentence your father received for aiding Rognar, but the result will likely be the same in the end.”
It was a sad fact, one that made him sigh and avert his gaze to the stone floor at his feet. “Nevertheless, I would see my sister, so she knows what to expect and does not cause any more trouble for herself than she already has.”
Toklan looked away, struggling inwardly with his decision for several moments before finally yielding with a disgruntled sigh. “You have to make it quick, Viln. If Cobin finds out I let you in there, it’ll be my ass in that cell.”
“You are a good man, Toklan.”
“Yeah, yeah, just hurry up.”
He stepped aside, reaching for the keys on his belt as he turned to lead him down the corridor to her cell. It was dark, the torchlight yawned and stretched across the blackness as the door groaned open, making her squint and scrunch her face up in disgruntlement. The oily locks of her dirty black hair hung like strings, two wild blue eyes staring out from between them like she was a caged animal.
Seeing her like that made his heart ache in his chest, and he immediately went to his little sister, kneeling in front of her and drawing her into his arms. “Rue, are you all right?”
“I didn’t think they would ever let you in,” she muttered. “And then I thought you just hadn’t come because you were so mad you couldn’t even stand to look at me.”
“I was mad at you,” he admitted, stroking his hand through her hair, “but I was a fool for it. I should have put a stop to his going with you a long time ago. Letting him run wild has always brought us nothing but grief.”
“You couldn’t have stopped him.” She laughed a little, withdrawing from his arms to look up at his face in the dim light leaking into her cell. “He would have gone out on his own and gotten into even more trouble. It was better he had me looking after him.”
“The trouble he is in now is pretty severe.” He drew a breath through his nose that made his nostrils flare wide.
“Have they exiled him yet?”
“Rhiorna’s miraculous recovery has stayed their hand, but tonight they call council and when they find out who that girl is, there will be a reckoning.”
“Who is she?”
“If I told you, you’d never believe me.”
“I haven’t seen daylight in almost a week, Viln, and the only person I’ve had to talk to is myself. We’ve had some pretty interesting conversations, myself and I.” When he chuckled, a slow grin tugged the edges of her mouth upright. “At this point I’d believe just about anything.”
Cautiously turning head over shoulder, Toklan’s shadow lingered at the end of the corridor leading to her cell. He was far enough that a whisper wouldn’t reach his ears, but Vilnjar still felt wary. “Rognar’s daughter,” he whispered.
“Rognar,” Rue gasped in a hushed tone. He immediately shushed her with a glare that made her shrink back further against the wall. “The Rognar?”
“The one and only,” he nodded.
“What was she doing here?”
“I can’t even begin to guess, but Rhiorna doesn’t believe her coming was coincidence. She seemed to have been expecting her.”
“I noticed that.” She chewed the dry skin of her lower lip, head shaking as she tried to make sense of it. “But still,” she finally went on, “I never should have let him bring her here. Gods, I have felt nothing but stupid these last days.”
“Rue, you can’t blame yourself,” he comforted her, his hand lingering on her shoulder. “This is just Finn doing what he does best. And he’s finally pushed the council to the brink. Th
ey haven’t told me anything, but I’ve heard enough whispers to know that no matter what is said this night, our brother’s time here is up.”
“Is there nothing you can do to change their minds? You’re a councilman, Viln. The vote has to be unanimous.”
“Cobin has barred me from all council meetings, and threatened to remove me from my chair completely because he knows I’ll vote against them tonight.”
“He can’t do that!”
“He can do as he pleases,” he grumbled. “It is his council. It has always been so.”
“He will never survive out there on his own,” she lamented, shaking her head. “He is strong, but he’s impetuous… “
“Stupid to be more precise.”
“I was the one who took him hunting. If I can get them to exile me as well, I can look after him.”
“No!” he protested. “Cobin would never consent to your exile, no matter what you did. You are a valuable member of this community, Rue. A hunter and a female. Our people depend on you to feed them and eventually bring pups into the world.”
She lowered her head in unspoken defeat, her hair falling in to hide her face. “Still, this is all my fault. If they send him out there without someone to watch his back…”
“I will watch his back,” he interrupted. “I have already seen that the work I’ve committed myself to here is for nothing. Cobin will never embrace change. Our people will die out, and that is not something I can stand idly by and just watch happen.”
“Vilnjar,” she started to protest, “you cannot give up on the work you’ve done here. Cobin is an old wolf,” she went on, “and sooner or later the hunt will call him.”
“Rue, I made a promise to our mother.”
“You promised to see him grown, Vilnjar. As much as I hate the thought of him out there alone, you cannot watch after him forever.”
“I know this isn’t easy for you, but…”
“But nothing, Viln. You can’t just leave. You bring hope to our people.”
“Hope none of them truly want to embrace. Ruwena,” he paused, choosing his next words carefully. “I have to do this. I promised Eornlaith I would look after him until he was able to take care of himself. That day will likely never come.”
“And what about me?” She swallowed hard against the emotions she felt. Ruwena liked to pretend she was tough, but Vilnjar knew better. He knew her better than anyone, and when she blinked he knew it was to hold back the tears swelling in her glassy eyes. “We are a family, Viln, all three of us. We are all we have. You would just leave me here. Let me come with you.”
“No.” Reaching out, he cupped her face in his hands and leaned forward, gently kissing her forehead. “Our people need you here.” She jerked her face from his gentle touch and turned her eyes downward, into the dirty hands folded in her lap.
“Is that an order then, brother?”
He knew she wasn’t going to take it easily, that she would probably never speak to him again if they did manage to come face to face once more. The sad part was he really didn’t know if they ever would. No one knew what lay to the south, beyond the mountains in the frozen tundra of Rimian, no one but Rhiorna. Would she tell them? Even if she did, would he believe her? Resting his hand on her shoulder, he felt her muscles stiffen against his touch. “That is an order, Rue.”
As he rose to leave her cell, she refused to look up at him. He stared down at her for a long time, wanting to embrace her, hold her close like he’d done so many times when they were frightened little children, and promise her everything would be okay, but they both knew that was a lie.
“You know I love you,” he told her, but the eyes she finally raised to meet his gaze said she knew no such thing.
“Just go.”
It was with heavy heart that he made his way up from the dungeon. He’d nearly forgotten he’d promised to bring their guest something to eat, and then on his way to the main hall kitchens he spied Rhiorna ducking into the quiet room beside the temple. By the time he reached the doorway she was in silent meditation, sitting with her legs crossed beneath her skirts, her hands folded in her lap and her large eyes closed. He thought he saw her lips moving, as if in silent prayer, but he couldn’t be sure.
The transformation her appearance had undergone in the last few days was remarkable. Every curl of her wild red hair shone like copper in the hanging glass lanterns dangling in a circle around the room from the low beams in the ceiling. She was Priestess again, majestic and beautiful as he remembered her looking when he was little more than a pup. Timeless, ageless, surreal. For a moment he forgot why he was there, his head tilting in admiration of her rare beauty and the power emanating from her very presence.
She knew he was there, he could sense her awareness with every part of him, the dormant beast within perking its ears from where it crouched in the corner of his being as if it had been summoned to rise and stand guard. Clenching his jaw tight against the sudden impulse to let the distant, but familiar waves of transformation wash over him, he balled his fists at his sides and exhaled so loud he half expected her to scold him for disrupting her meditation.
Good, let her scold him. He had a few choice words of his own to share with her regarding the spell she’d obviously put on his brother. Finn was a man grown, well, as grown a man as someone like Finn would ever be, and maybe it was none of his business, but the eight years of his life he’d dedicated to overseeing the well-being of his youngest sibling gave him the right to make it his business. If his brother were somehow involved in whatever plot Rhiorna was cooking, Vilnjar had a right to know.
As hard as Finn continued to push against his guardian for the freedom to make his own choices, he was barely eighteen. Leaving the boy to his own devices was easier said than done; letting Finn do what he wanted would probably get him killed. He had always been a free spirit, even before their mother died.
Finn came into the world three days after their father was executed in Rivenn. Red-faced and screaming with the fury and vengeance of their people, every moment of his young life had been dedicated to freeing them from their own self-imposed oppression. His mother, Llorveth keep her soul, filled his head with grand delusions of a past no longer viable to the survival of their people, and those delusions made him both righteous and reckless.
He hated to say it, but Finn would be easy pickings for someone with an agenda, especially if that agenda included even a hinting promise at revolution and freedom. Whatever vision Rhiorna conjured to win him over to her cause had probably been simple, considering he wouldn’t need much in the way of convincing to follow wherever she led if she promised liberation, but it made him uneasy nonetheless.
As a boy he’d seen firsthand how a seer’s magic failed them all, and as he grew Vilnjar’s faith and interest in the practicality of the divine arts waned along with his trust in the gods. Healers had their place in the Edgelands, that was a given, but the presence of priests and seers felt contrived, the last clutch of a desperate hand clinging hopelessly to the rising future.
The return of Rhiorna’s voice only seemed to strengthen his negative image of the diviners. He may have only been ten the year his father died, but he still remembered how close Rognar had been to his sister, the seer. Rhiorna’s visions guided them all into battle with King Aelfric, and Rognar followed despite the obvious fact that the odds were never in their favor. The U’lfer were scattered, Rognar’s leadership skill strong among those few he managed to keep at his side, but those beyond the strip of land that became their prison were easy pickings and it wasn’t long before none remained to answer his calls for aid.
Now Rhiorna was manipulating his brother and Rognar’s daughter with her schemes. It made Vilnjar feel sick.
In accordance with the new laws formed by the Council of the Nine after the treaties were signed, as Rognar’s older sister Rhiorna should have been exiled, but she was their sole tie to Llorveth at the time and they’d spared her out of fear of angering their god. Seers we
re scattered all over the world, prominent in every race known to Vennakrand, but among Llorveth’s children they were few and sacred. Before the War of Silence women like Rhiorna were revered. King Aelfric’s men had seen fit to sack the temples first, severing the U’lfer from their god by murdering priests, acolytes, healers and seers without remorse.
When all was said and done, Rhiorna was the last priestess among them, and in those early days of reformation she’d been a valuable asset to the survivors and the council, making her way to the head of the Nine.
With Llorveth’s divine grace, the seer trained Edla in the healing arts and taught Groland all she knew about the origin of the U’lfer in the seven years before she lost her voice and vision. When she fell silent, Groland took her place in the temple and began steering them all as far away from the religious practices his people had taken part in since the dawn of their own birth.
It was a sad thing to see people turn willingly away from the truth, his mother said, but as time moved on and Vilnjar came into his own as a young man, he began to wonder if it wasn’t for the best. They would never get back what they lost because of Rognar’s foolishness, and many among them believed Rhiorna’s silence was a sure sign that Llorveth had abandoned them.
Superstitious as it seemed, the last thing the council wanted to do was further ire Llorveth by dishonoring the last living U’lfer who could actually hear his voice. Cobin kept her on the council to try and maintain some semblance of faith in their maker so the people wouldn’t lose hope, but her presence in meetings was a mere courtesy and nothing more. At least it seemed that way at the time. A feeble old woman sitting mute and hunched in her chair, staring blindly into the nothing… but Vilnjar knew now it had been some kind of act. She may have had no voice, but all those years she had been listening. Listening, learning, waiting in silence for the right moment to lift the veil of lies and rise to spout prophecy about a half-U’lfer princess from Leithe who would lead them all to salvation.
Lorelei.
The only things he knew for certain about Lorelei was that there was U’lfer blood in her veins. He could smell it when he stood next to her, and there was no denying Rognar was her father. Rognar had fathered many children in his travels, but Vilnjar remembered his son well. Logren, he’d been called, and the two of them were once closer than brothers. She reminded him of his old friend, the red of her hair, the brilliant amber sheen of her eyes, the soft fleck of freckle across her pale white skin. Behind those eyes he could see her beast, lulled to restless silence by the fact that it had no way to emerge, just the way her brother’s did in Vilnjar’s memories of him.
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