Edgelanders (Serpent of Time)

by Jennifer Melzer

“I am, thank you.” Her throat felt tight and achy, as if all the muscles were clenching to suffocate her. “Whoever would have thought a simple bath could do so much good.”

  They took several steps in silence then, Lorelei playing over every word she’d just spoken and scrutinizing it painfully inside her mind. Did she sound a complete idiot? Did he even care? He must be so clever; he would have to be very clever in order to be a mage. Clever and completely dedicated to his craft. That kind of dedication spoke volumes about the kind of man he was, how steadfast he must truly be.

  “You are to come along with me on my journey, with Finn and me, I mean?”

  She swore she felt him tense at the mention of Finn’s name, and the part of her that felt the U’lfer’s heartbeat and emotions thought good. Served him right. He shouldn’t be so attractive and appealing with his velvety, rune-embroidered black robes and striking eyes and delicate elven features. Her attention shifted to his mouth, much more tightly drawn than Finn’s pouty, full lips, she thought, almost hard and completely serious. Even when he smiled, it was a very serious smile, only his eyes lighting up to show the true lightness of his spirit within.

  “Yovenna has seen this, yes,” he nodded and then steered her left, onto a street she hadn’t been down yet.

  It was a quieter neighborhood, the shadows of the buildings making it seem as if they were venturing into an almost dark, forbidden place in the city. When she lifted her gaze she saw the looming towers of the Lyceum at the end of the road, which she’d seen rising high above the city walls as they made their way toward Dunvarak. She had only seen it from far under cover of darkness when they arrived. Standing so near it the curiosity within her perked and she found her stare lingering on the building as they walked. “I have been preparing for this journey for a very long time. As your companion, I will not fail.”

  “You have been a student of magic for a long time,” she changed the subject, not even wanting to acknowledge his promise not to fail her.

  “My mother was the priestess of our village.”

  “Til Harethi,” she said, delighting in the shine of his eyes when he realized she’d remembered where he came from.

  “That’s right, my lady. My mother was the priestess there, and she said I came into the world doubly blessed, the gift of my father’s U’lfer blood enhancing the magic she passed onto me.”

  The part of her that didn’t want to find herself attracted to the mage immediately pointed out that he was bragging, a truly unattractive characteristic, but then how could she hold that against him and not Finn, who seemed to brag every time he opened his mouth. To make it even more difficult to judge him for it, when she glanced up at him he looked away from her almost humbly, as if he was ashamed of how quickly he’d thrown out colorful words to make himself look better in her eyes.

  “Do you know any magic, my lady?”

  “No,” she shook her head. “My fa—King Aelfric does not trust magic. In fact, his father had all of the Alvarii in Leithe collared to prevent them from practicing that which comes most naturally. The lyceum in Rivenn has been a forbidden place for as long as I can remember.” She’d barely finished speaking when she jumped back in to assure him, “I do not share Aelfric’s opinions, of course. I always asked my nurse to teach me about magic, but she did not dare for fear of invoking the king’s wrath. She used to say she wouldn’t dare give me the power to set anything around me on fire, that only the gods knew what havoc I would wreak with access to that kind of knowledge.”

  They laughed together, and Lorelei took great pleasure in the lightness of the sound. She enjoyed talking to him, and not just because he was familiar, or because he reminded her of Pahjah in some way that made her long for home. She didn’t feel pressured when she was around him, not in the same way she did when near Finn.

  “Not that she could have taught me much anyway, as she was collared.”

  “Of course,” he nodded. “There are things I could teach you,” he went on, “as we travel to find the Horns of Llorveth. Simple spells like the ones I will eventually teach Roggi if he ever learns to sit still long enough to learn them.” The soft sound of his laughter was like music, dwindling into the distance before fading into the morning. “How to make fire, for instance.”

  “I think I would like to know magic one day,” she agreed, but before Brendolowyn could say anything else about teaching her the things he knew Yovenna stepped off her porch, her bent back straightening as she walked out to meet them.

  “At last you’ve come to learn of that which lies on the road ahead,” she beamed, her crooked teeth gleaming with joy when she grinned and cackled like an old crone. “Thank you for bringing the Light of Madra to me, Brendolowyn Raven-Storm. You are a good soul.”

  He bent and kissed the old woman on the cheek. “I am at my best when I am in your company, old mother. Thank you for walking with me, my lady. Enjoy your visit.”

  The old woman looped her arm through Lorelei’s and tugged her toward the front door of her home. She watched over her shoulder as Brendolowyn made his way toward the Lyceum, glancing back at her and smiling just before Yovenna reached out to open the door.

  She didn’t know why, but his leaving made everything she was about to learn seem that much realer, her future more foreboding as she slipped into the old woman’s tiny house that smelled distinctly of old herbs that had been left too long to dry in the rafters and the wood smoke of the low-burning hearth.

  Lorelei took a deep breath and scanned the muddled interior. There were scrolls scattered among open jars of herbs across the old brewer’s table and a bucket full of unwashed tableware propped near the door, as if the old woman had been meaning to wash it, but never quite got around to it. On a spring morning in Leithe that bucket would have been buzzing with greedy flies, their tiny tongues lapping at the drying food caked onto the plates and bowls, and she wondered if they even got flies in Rimian.

  As her gaze came back around, she realized the old woman was staring at her, her eyes nearly white in the dim lighting of the house and making Lorelei feel incredibly uncomfortable.

  “Forgive an old woman for staring.” Yovenna reached out and took her hand, her cold, gnarled fingers clasping Lorelei’s as her other hand lifted to rest against her cheek.

  Her skin felt smooth as old leather, well-worn and comfortable, like a grandmother’s touch, and Lorelei closed her eyes to relish in the feel of it. It was the first true sense of comfort and safety she’d felt since leaving home, even if the woman in front of her was a stranger about to tell her things that would ensure she never felt safe again.

  “I have never seen you this young, my child. Not even in my visions of you. You are little more than a girl standing before me, and I suppose after all this time I was expecting the seasoned warrior I have come to call my oldest friend.” Yovenna patted her cheek tenderly and withdrew, guiding her by the hand toward a small table near the hearth.

  “Why did I choose you?”

  The old woman cackled and lowered herself with a bit of effort into the chair closest to the warmth of the fire. “I have often wondered that myself, an old prune like me is of so little importance, but choose me you did. Though I wasn’t this old when you came to me, we both knew the years would weigh heavy upon me before the time of our meeting came to pass.”

  The heat of the hearth radiating toward her was hardly enough to warm the chill from her bones. A tingling sensation followed the wary uncertainty that she had been in that chair before, sitting across from the old woman preparing herself for a great journey she had embarked upon an endless number of times.

  “I feel as though we have had this conversation before,” Lorelei muttered, her mind trying to wrap around the concept, but struggling with the notion.

  “Many, many times.”

  Yovenna cleared the phlegm from her throat and leaned back in the chair to make herself comfortable. She drew the tattered shawl tighter across her chest and held it there as if to warm herself
and Lorelei knew by this action that they were in for a long day, a long story. Suddenly all the things that felt important that morning, Finn, Brendolowyn, her confused heart, none of them seemed to matter anymore.

  “You’ve come to learn about the journey you must take, and of course, I will tell you what I can, but there is not much I can say to you without revealing things I am forbidden to speak of. I can tell you where you must go, of another seer along the way who might have prudent information to the tasks that have been designed for you, but each of us is limited in what we may reveal. It is the will of the gods, and violating their will…”

  “What would happen to you?” She tilted her head to study the old woman’s face, which even as she’d only just come to know it the night before, felt familiar to her eyes.

  “Were I to tell you too much? The end of the world, I suppose,” the seriousness of her tone was broken by a wheezing laugh that wrenched Lorelei’s tight, unsuspecting lips into an appreciative smile. “Though I guess we are coming upon the end of the world, the world as we have known it through the cycles of time anyway.”

  “The world is going to end?”

  “No,” Yovenna shook her head. “Not end, at least not the way you fear. Tell, Lorelei, have you ever heard of the Tid Ormen?”

  Lorelei shook her head. “The…what?”

  Yovenna’s face lengthened, her mouth lingering open in disbelief for a moment. “You were raised by an Alvarii nursemaid, and she has never told you the story of the Tid Ormen.”

  “No. What is the Tid Ormen?”

  “The Serpent of Time,” she paused, as if waiting for some familiarity to flash across Lorelei’s face, and when it did not appear she cleared her throat again. “Those firstborn of Heidr’s children, the Alvarii and Ninvarii, who have seen the great cycles of life rise and fall and rise again, tell the story of the Tid Ormen, for they are the only who remember its coming.

  “After Foreln claimed Llorveth’s horns and the echo of Madra’s cries of despair finally reached the great father’s ears, Heidr was aghast to learn of the troubles his children and their children were causing in this world. Where he had always been gracious, understanding and kind, he became enraged with their ungratefulness for the gifts he had given them. From the strands of his anger he wove the Tid Ormen and set it upon the world to teach creation a lesson. Over and again the same ills would be wrought, the same angers incensed, the same wars fought because the great serpent of time flows against the rotation of our world, devouring its own tail and spinning the same lifetimes over and again until the lessons have been learned.”

  “Pahjah never told me this story.”

  “There are some who believe our seers come by our gift because we are the oldest souls, the souls who have lived again and again and again, so many lifetimes that we remember the details and the Creator of All Things permits us to speak of them in hopes that one day the cycle of suffering he set upon us would be broken and the world could move forward again. Perhaps because she too remembers fragments of the cycle, and she knew of the great deeds you would one day achieve, she also knew it was not the right time for you to know this story.”

  Shaking her head, Lorelei felt the braids of her hair jostle against her shoulders. “I don’t understand.”

  “You will, my child,” she promised wearily. “For you have come to me now to free the wolf spirit that lies dormant beneath our skins and to reclaim all that was taken from your father by the man who claimed you, but your true purpose in this world is far greater than you could ever imagine. The things I am about to tell you… I have carried them lifetime after lifetime, always waiting for the right time to speak them to you and only to you.”

  Yovenna paused, allowing the weight of that confession to sink in. She stared at Lorelei, her old, white eyes wide and terrifying, her dry, cracked lips trembling under unspoken words.

  “Tell me, old woman.” Her voice seemed a desperate whisper, the truth of her unspoken terror lingering in her words. “What is it I am meant to do?”

  “You asked me how it was possible that you were able to do the things these people here claim, how you saved your brother from the fires, how you came to me in a fevered dream on the Isle of Dorayne before you were even born,” she started, “and the reason you were able to do those things, Light of Madra, is because it is you who is meant to slay the serpent of time. You have been chosen to free our souls from the never ending cycle of this world.”

  Lorelei shook her head, part of her hoping to dislodge the weight of the responsibility from her shoulders, the other part wishing to wake. “I don’t… No.”

  Yovenna’s face softened in such a way that the wrinkles of her skin pooled in upon themselves, showing a truth about her age that could not be written on the body alone. Her agelessness went well beyond her body; the woman before her had seen lifetime after lifetime, and she remembered. It was a startling notion, one that made Lorelei shiver in her own skin and shy away from the many truths the woman in front of her was meant to speak.

  “What if I don’t want to be chosen?” she finally managed to ask.

  Again, Yovenna laughed, the wheezing sound tearing through her lungs and hissing through her teeth. “None of us wants to be chosen,” she chortled, “but that does not stop the gods from choosing us.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Something about the girl was different when she came through the door of Logren’s house more than hour after Viina cleared the table from supper and put the little one down for bed. Vilnjar sensed it immediately, and so did Finn, who stopped in mid-swallow and lowered his cup onto the table-top to stare at Lorelei.

  She had been gone all day. They waited for her to return, the long hours of the day dwindling away, the sun passing west and slowly burying itself into the snow-capped mountains until the city of Dunvarak was almost as cold as it was dark beyond its walls. No one spoke, not daring to speculate what Lorelei was learning as she sat with the seer of Dunvarak, but it was certainly on everyone’s minds.

  They were all on edge, as if waiting for a truth that had been on the brink of revelation their entire lives, but when she entered she only asked, “Have I missed supper?”

  Viina and Logren regarded one another, the woman pursing her lips tight together as she withdrew from the table to fetch a bowl of stew and fresh crust of bread with honeyed butter for the Light of Madra.

  “You were gone long this day, sister,” Logren finally said, rising from his chair and gesturing for her to have a seat on the bench where he’d been sitting sullenly across from Finn. She surveyed the bench for a moment, and then drew up the hem of her dress to lift one leg over and settle herself into the seat. Viina laid the bowl on the table and gestured for her husband to pour the girl a drink, but Logren didn’t seem to catch her instruction. “Did the seer tell you of the journey ahead?”

  The quickness with which he dove into the business at hand annoyed Vilnjar. He’d barely given her time to hike up the hem of her long dress to sit down, much less breathe in the aroma of the steaming bowl of stew in front of her. She hadn’t even looked up at her desperate-for-attention mate, and when Viln glanced sidelong he saw his brother’s face harden with disappointment. He had a lot of growing up to do if he was truly going to win her favor, he thought, leaning forward and resting his elbows on the table to hear what she had to say. Obviously there were far more important things at hand than Finn being her mate; it was high time his brother started to realize that.

  “Your seer told me many things on this day,” she smiled up at Viina, a silent thank you, before clenching the spoon in her hand and dipping it into the steaming bowl before her. She ate with vigor at first, as if she’d spent the day starving and couldn’t fill her mouth fast enough to sate her ravenous hunger. Aside from the occasional pop of the logs in the hearth, for a time the only sound in the house was Lorelei eating, which she stopped doing as soon as she realized everyone was staring at her expectantly.

  “Oh, am I suppos
ed to tell you what those things were?” She asked, a bitter hint in her tone as she regarded her brother with narrowed eyes. “Very well then, I am to leave this place the day after tomorrow, before the sun even rises, and journey south to the coastline of Rimian. I will follow the coast east and head to the mountains far to the northeast of here, below the Fridayne Peninsula.”

  “Great Sorrow’s Peak?” Logren’s head shot up at the mention of those mountains. “The Horns of Llorveth are there?”

  “So the seer says,” she answered almost casually. Dipping the crust of her bread into the stew and nibbling at the dripping broth, her tongue swept out to catch it before it could dribble down her chin and then she bit off the end and chewed while her brother stared her in eager anticipation.

  When she didn’t answer, Logren asked, “Where? Our father led an expedition to Great Sorrow’s Peak while I was still in my mother’s womb, or so he bragged when I was no bigger than Roggi. Twenty warriors he took with him to search for Llorveth’s horns.”

  “I remember that story as well,” Vilnjar nodded. “My mother and father were both among his numbers, but they never found the horns.”

  “Perhaps they didn’t know where to look,” Lorelei shrugged.

  “And you do? Has the seer told where to find them?”

  His question seemed to annoy her, but she answered it anyway. “Yovenna says there is a great hall at the very peak of the mountain, an old Dvergr entryway nearly impossible to find. Only one blessed by the gods could find it. The Horns of Llorveth are somewhere deep within the mountain.”

  “Along with every manner of undesirable creature ever known to this world, I’ve no doubt.”

  “She says they are protected by some unnamed guardian,” she went on. “Yovenna also told me there is an Alvarii seer in Port Felar. If I can locate the man, he may know the nature of this guardian, but more than that she could not tell me. Whatever it is, it is something powerful and dangerous, I’ve no doubt. Lucky for me I will have a great warrior and a seasoned mage to watch my back while I’m getting these horns for your people.”