He left his sister behind and torn their family apart, but what choice did he have? Eornlaith’s demands had been many as she lay dying. Remember the old ways, honor their ancestors, keep faith in Llorveth, hold their family together, and above all others she made them both promise to watch after Finn and keep him safe.
Surely that took precedence over keeping their family together, didn’t it? But inside he knew Rue was right. Finn was of age, and reckless as he might be a day would come when the two of them would have to let their little brother live his life so they could do the same. Maybe he was wrong, but it didn’t feel like that time had come just yet. Finn was going to need him out there, wherever their road was taking them. Rue could handle herself.
But would she ever forgive him if they did meet again? She’d spit at him, the glare in her eyes promising without words she would never forget what he was doing. Knowing his sister it wouldn’t be long before she joined them in Rimian, and not because she’d been exiled, but because she’d run off after them. Exile was an unlikely possibility for his sister. Rue liked to play it tough, almost as tough as Finn sometimes, but she also suffered from Vilnjar’s devotion to her duties. She was valuable to their people, a skilled huntress and a female of breeding age they had been trying to force into settling into motherhood for seven years. A cold trickle of fear shuddered through him, as he realized he’d left her vulnerable, and though there was that whisper of certainty reminding him Rue could take care of herself, it did very little to lessen his guilt.
The pack was close on their trail, probably only about a half mile behind them and it wouldn’t be long before they caught up if Lorelei kept carrying on like a child. After everything that transpired in the short time since she’d woken, Viln almost forgot she was little more than a child. She hadn’t told them her age, but he was still guessing she was no older than sixteen or seventeen.
Princesses, he rolled his eyes. Pampered, spoiled, completely lacking in logic or reason. He couldn’t even begin to imagine how she was going to fare if they actually made it to Rimian. The girl was lucky she’d made it as far as she had.
Lorelei was just a tiny little thing, and tossed over Finn’s shoulder she kicked every chance she got, throwing out vacant threats someone her size would never be able to hold good on against the massive wall that was his brother. Her rage didn’t slow Finn down. He actually seemed to enjoy the fiery flare of her temper, occasionally answering her with laughter and assurance that she could do whatever she wanted to him once they were someplace safe. He might even enjoy it.
Finn moved quickly, as if he carried no more than his own weight. Eventually, though it felt like hours had passed, she tired herself out, and for that Vilnjar was grateful. Thirty minutes of kicking, growling and screaming was all it took to wear her out and she succumbed to weary sobbing, occasionally muttering unintelligible phrases only Finn seemed to understand.
He was so patient with her, so…
Viln struggled to find the right word to describe the sudden changes his brother had undergone in the last five days, but he was at a loss. All he knew was that Finn was different; something in him had changed when he found her. His mate.
He still didn’t believe it, even though he could clearly see their bond with his own eyes. The U’lfer had lost so many of their own during the War of Silence that the bond between souls was rarely found at all. Vilnjar never found it, probably never would if what Rhiorna said to him were true. Most of his generation would die alone because their mates had been killed, or they’d never been born at all. Remembering the unbreakable bond his mother and father shared and seeing Finn with the girl evoked a sense of relief within him. He was probably better off not finding his own mate, but that didn’t make him any the less sad at the prospect of never experiencing what lay ahead for his brother.
The mate bond was eternally binding, conjoined comfort through life and beyond in Llorveth’s eternal hunting grounds the U’lfer ascended to upon their death. Two hearts that beat as one, the emotional bond between mates was instantly recognized when they found one another, and though Lorelei seemed to confirm she felt something strange and unrecognizable, she hadn’t quite figured out those feelings had something to do with Finn. It would be different for her because she was only a half-blood, wouldn’t it?
Vilnjar hadn’t thought much about the mate bond in his adult life, resigning himself early to the fact that he would probably never experience the kind of love his parents had shared. There had been a lot of U’lfer who’d taken spouses from outside their race, who fell in love in their travels. There had been a lot of half-bloods running around, but he’d been so young when their world began falling apart and he’d never had much time when he was older to comb through the annals in the library for information about half-blooded U’lfer. What would have been the point it that, anyway? None were permitted entry into the Edgelands, and the U’lfer were not allowed to leave. The half-bloods that had once been a scarcely tolerated part of their everyday lives had all but disappeared during the war.
Now he wished he’d spent more time thinking about the half-bloods, about the men and women who’d once been spouses, their offspring. His parents had not fallen into the prejudice frame of mind, and many of his childhood friends had been half-blooded U’lfer. A dozen or more faces flashed through his memory, their names a whisper, but when he blinked they were all gone but one. Lorelei’s half-brother, the boy who’d been like Vilnjar’s brother before Finn came along.
Glancing over at him, Finn hadn’t stopped grinning since he’d tossed her over his shoulder, but it was the girl Vilnjar found himself staring at. The familiarity of her face was jarring, the likeness she shared with long dead and forgotten ghosts of his past disconcerting. More because he hadn’t thought about Logren in a very long time, and his absence from thought suddenly riddled Viln with guilt. He’d blocked so many of those memories, so much of the darkness from his childhood, but just looking at that girl’s face brought them roaring to the surface again.
He blinked and looked away. It was not the time for dwelling on the past. He had to focus on keeping his brother alive, for Finn had not been named mad and reckless without good reason. Amidst the spatter of blood still painting his face, he did look quite mad, but mad and reckless as he was, his penchant for going outside the norm would probably save their lives.
That was a hard thing for Vilnjar to admit to himself. All Finn’s life he’d followed his brother around cleaning up his messes, and whenever he got the chance he skipped ahead to lay down as much padding to cushion any falls he might make along the way. Usually it blew up in his face; Finn did what he wanted. He always had. He supposed in a way that was his fault. After their mother died, he’d suffocated the boy, trailing after him like a mother hen and dictating every minute of his life in order to keep him safe. It wasn’t long before Finn’s overbearing personality reared its head along with enough cleverness to keep him one step ahead of big brother. If anything could be said for being overprotective, it made his brother more cunning and clever, forcing him to look for stealthier ways to keep from getting caught.
That stealth and cunning would likely save their lives.
What was he doing there? He wasn’t needed, no matter how often he told himself it was his duty. It had been Finn who initiated the attack on the guards. Finn set them free from their binds and now Finn was guiding them away from the trail and reminding Viln every so often to cover their tracks behind them. Finn didn’t need taking care of; he never had.
“Oh thank Llorveth for small favors.” Finn breathed a sigh of relief that drew attention to the princess’s silence. Vilnjar was so deeply embroiled in his own mind, he hadn’t even noticed she’d stopped sobbing. “I thought she’d be heavier when she finally gave into sleep, but without all that kicking and screaming she’s so much lighter.”
“It’s at least two days to Rimian from here.” He fell into step beside his brother and glanced over at the unmoving heap of clothin
g jostling against Finn’s stride. “And that’s without stopping. You really think you can carry her all that way without a break?”
“If I have to.”
“She’s not going to sleep the entire trip, Finn. Maybe we can find a place to take shelter and rest. You can talk some sense into your princess while I try to divert the trail and throw the hunters off our scent. It will give us a little more time to try and figure this whole mess out.”
“I haven’t been down this far in a while.” He hiked her weight up a little higher and she jounced like a rag doll, her loose limbs dangling and bouncing against his body as he moved. “Rue and I got caught down here once when we were hunting, a huge storm, rain so thick you could break through it with a sword. We took refuge in a cave about ten miles outside of Breken. Could be bears in there now, but bears got nothing on me.”
Vilnjar laughed. “Bear would be a good way to cover our own scent, even if they’ve vacated the cave. Do you think you could find it again?”
“Sure, but do you think it’s a good idea to get behind them? They aren’t going to stop looking for us until they get to Rimian, and if they’re waiting for us when we get to the border…”
“We may be able to take another route, head in through the mountain pass along the coast. It’s about twenty miles west of the main road, and bitter cold, but it would be worth the extra miles to get them off our trail.” He hesitated for a minute, trying to imagine his brother carrying Lorelei through the icy mountains over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Graceful as he was for a man his size, not even Finn could pull it off. “But we could only do that you could convince her to walk into Rimian on her own two feet.”
“I just need her to trust me.” He said those last two words with extra emphasis, like an angry man trying to make a point, and then he sighed. He looked down at Vilnjar, a flare of frustration hidden in his eyes. “If I can convince her to trust me, she’ll walk of her own free will, but that’s not going to be easy. Someone did something really awful to her, Viln, just before I found her. And if I were her, I wouldn’t hand my trust out very easily either.”
“What do you mean?”
He shook his head and turned away. “Something drove her into our land, something so wrong…”
“So she was running the night you found her. From what was she running?”
“If she wants you to know, she’ll tell you, but winning her trust is going to take everything I have. And right now I have to start by keeping her secret until she’s ready for it to be known. Either way, I need you to promise me something, Viln.”
“Finn, there’s enough going on as it is. Now is not the time for promises.”
“Promises are always made under the most inconvenient circumstances, Viln. You know that.”
“What would you ask of me?”
“I need you to promise you will get her through the mountains and into Rimian to safety, even if something happens to me. You’ve got to get her there and teach her the old ways. Rhiorna was very specific about that.”
“About teaching her the old ways?” The thought of something happening to Finn made him uneasy, and he trembled a bit to shake off the shivers of bad omen. “Nothing’s going to happen to you, Finn.”
“Probably not. Rhiorna said I had to stand beside her until the end, so that gives me hope, but on the off chance something does happen… I mean, you never know. Seers have been wrong before. Just promise you’ll get her there safely, Viln.”
Safety. That was an illusion if he’d ever heard one.
“Getting us through the mountains won’t be the problem.” At least that much was true. Vilnjar didn’t know the road well, but he only needed to close his eyes to visualize the maps decorating the walls of the main hall. He’d spent enough time staring at them during long, boring council meetings during which Cobin went on and on about maintaining their sanctuary and safety. He could see the brown line trailing through the hand-drawn trees leading up the mountain pass. All he had to do was find that road and they were as good as crossing the border into the tundra.
“Good.”
“And on the incredibly off chance something happens to you along the way, I will get her to Rimian safely and teach her everything I know.”
“Thank you.”
“Rhiorna said she is your…”
“Don’t,” Finn stopped him. “Don’t say it out loud. We don’t know if she’s really sleeping or just faking so she can eavesdrop, and it’s not for us to tell her who she is and how we are connected to each other. She has to figure that out on her own.”
“Right,” Vilnjar nodded. Rhiorna had said that too. “It would seem there is a great deal our savior needs to figure out on her own as all of this take shape.”
Hours earlier, when daylight still brightened the world and there had been an eerie sense of hope in his soul that he could spare his brother from the council’s decision to exile him, the word savior had seemed laughable. He still wasn’t sure she was a savior, but he’d seen enough in the last few hours to convince him there was something special about the girl. She was important, and he would do what he could to keep her safe. For his brother, for Rhiorna, for Llorveth.
“She can do it.” Finn said confidently. “She’s confused now, and scared. So scared, I can feel the fear trembling through her blood, but underneath it all she is incredibly strong. She just doesn’t know it yet.”
Viln hated the idea of putting all his faith in a stranger, a girl who was barely old enough to call herself a woman, but he understood now why Rhiorna had kept silent all those years. The truth about their future was bleaker than the U’lfer could have ever imagined. Day to day they clung desperately to the council’s promises that through diligence and denial they would one day rise again to stand on their own two feet. Lies even he wanted so strongly to believe in, he couldn’t break free from them, but the council and everything they stood for was a lie.
He saw that now. Denial of the spirit was killing them, and if they didn’t find a way to embrace all the things they’d refused for the sake of their own survival, their people would die out completely. Already there were so few of them, no mates, no bonded pairs to produce offspring. One by one, they would fall to old age and circumstance until the children of Llorveth were little more than a story the other races of Vennakrand told around their nightly fires.
But Rhiorna said there was hope, that the tiny, spoiled princess tossed over his brother’s shoulder would lead them to salvation. He only hoped, as Finn claimed, she was strong enough to carry the weight of an entire race before they reached extinction.
Vilnjar had his doubts.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Through the long hours of the night, they traveled. Lorelei slung like a heavy sack over Finn’s shoulder, Vilnjar doing his best to cover their tracks behind them as they moved. His brother wasn’t much of a ranger, but his efforts to disguise their path surprised even Finn. As the brightest of the three moons disappeared into the horizon as if the golden fingers of the sun were drawing it down to rest its weary head, Finn located the game trail that led into the cave where he and Rue had spent that long ago downpour.
Bear scent lingered at the mouth of the cavern, but it was an old smell that told of bears long moved on and away from that perfect hiding place. He felt relieved, though only a little. Their plan to throw the hunters off their trail and head further west to make their way along the coast was risky. The hunters tracking them were highly skilled killing machines, trained to hunt, stalk and find weaknesses to exploit before they attacked.
Lorelei was their greatest weakness and it wouldn’t take much to determine that. She remained still and quiet through the night, but she wasn’t asleep for long. He could feel her rhythms shift and change, the quickening pace of her heart when she startled from troubled dreams and found herself still uncomfortably nestled against his shoulder, the near frantic upskip of her heart as the severity of their situation seemed to dawn on her.
She
didn’t fight him anymore; at least there was that. He’d been serious enough in his boast about carrying her the entire journey if he had to, but in truth he really wished he wouldn’t have to. She was a liability so long as she refused to listen to reason, and that meant he had to work extra hard to keep her safe.
For the moment her weight was barely noticeable, but even with a short rest, she would bog him down when it was time to move on, increasing their chances of meeting with the hunters tracking them on the road at their backs.
Moving off the road and heading west temporarily threw the hunters off their trail, but it would only be a matter of time before they picked up their scent again, even if Vilnjar did an outstanding job of covering their tracks.
Viln inspected the cave first, reporting back that it was thankfully empty. Finn carried Lorelei inside and lowered her gently onto the cold, damp stone before scanning the interior to make sure there was enough ventilation to start a fire. Enough light leaked in from the entryway to illuminate the interior, which only spanned about twelve feet across and went back almost fifteen. The ceiling was lower than he remembered, and Finn had keep his head and shoulders down while moving around inside to keep from cracking his head on the stone.
Kneeling over her, he regarded her thoughtfully before crawling his heels backward to look her in the eyes. She cleared her throat and looked away, her dirty face smudged with dirt and specked with dried blood. Pinching her lips into a scowl, she seemed to regard the silver chains on her wrists, which she held against her chest as if their nearness brought her comfort. She shivered inside her cloak, her brilliant amber eyes rimmed in dark circles of exhaustion as she purposely avoided meeting his gaze.
“If you promise to behave, I’ll take those chains off.”
She made no such promise, only asked, “Where are we?”
“An old cave.”
Edgelanders (Serpent of Time) Page 19