“Go back to Logren’s, Finn,” she hissed, her amber eyes wide and wild with unspoken threat.
“No,” he trembled refusal and shook his head.
“Fine, don’t.” She spun on her heel and marched back up to the door she’d been preparing to knock on.
While she lifted her hand, her knuckles rapped softly on the wood and Finn stood in the middle of the street feeling stupid. The undercurrent of that jealousy still pumped his blood furiously through his veins and the throb of her fury moved right along with it. When he turned his head and found a woman with her young son staring at him, he must have looked like a monster because the woman gripped the boy’s shoulder, scowled at him and quickly made away.
He wanted to rage, to tear the clothes from his body and rampage through the street like a little wolf during his first transformation, beyond the gates and into the snow until he found some troll or goblin to take his frustration out on. The beast itched under his skin, the hairs on his arms rising and prickling, breath growing ragged in his throat, but then a sudden shift in Lorelei’s rhythms alerted him.
Fear… It tingled through her blood and the anger he felt immediately melted away, replaced by an overprotective urge to rush to her side and protect her from whatever it was she was afraid of. Snapping his head towards her, her knocks grew more frantic, open palms slapping at the door as she stretched onto the tips of her toes to peer through the dusty window and into the house.
“Yovenna.” The sound of her voice echoed through the street, raising more attention than their argument had and drawing a few onlookers. “Yovenna!”
The anxiety she felt rose quickly, spreading through every part of her as she hammered, her calls rising louder, drawing more attention from people on the street. Finn rushed toward her, gripped her by the shoulders and moved her aside, peering in through the smoky window and seeing what frightened her. The interior of the house was dark, little more than a faint glow from dying embers illuminated the chair beside the hearth, a pale hand dangled slack over the arm of the wooden rocker. Every ounce of rage he’d felt just seconds before went cold inside him, replaced by the sudden realization that beyond that door waited death.
Had she seen it? Was the pale white hand lingering there what prompted her fear.
Lorelei battered at him from the side, trying to shove him out of the way, her emotions conflicted between fright and the stubborn anger she didn’t want to let go of just to spite him, but he turned into her, gripped her arms and calmly said, “Back up,” before lifting her off her feet and moving her away from the door.
Finn gripped the handle to hold it tight, then backed up an arm’s length to brace himself for the impact.
“What are you doing?”
He didn’t answer, just drew in a deep breath and barreled the hard edge of his shoulder into the wood. It splintered under his force, but it took another heavy hit to break away from the lock that held it fast. The shattered remnants of the old woman’s door creaked open and Finn stumbled into her dusty home. It smelled musty, damp like old breath, but sweet like lingering smoke and old herbs hanging to dry in the rafters. For a moment Finn just stood in the doorway, blocking Lorelei from the hard truth that awaited her and ignoring to the throbbing pain in his shoulder.
Lorelei pushed past him, the hard end of her heel digging into his foot as she flew frantically into the house calling out the old woman’s name as she stumbled by.
“Yovenna?” She crouched down in front of the seer’s chair and gripped her slack hand. Lifting it to her face, she curled the stiff fingers inside her own and said the woman’s name again. “Finn,” she looked up at him, such desperation and fear in her eyes as she squeaked, “she’s so cold.”
He didn’t feel comfortable entering the dead woman’s home, his uncertain emotions tangled with Lorelei’s as he scanned the dark interior. He barely knew the seer, but his princess had shared a bond with the old woman and her heartache now filled him completely. Like pins and needles burning beneath the skin, her emotions were all he could feel. So much anguish and confusion, fear and anger, all of it rolling inside her like a spiked, lead ball and he experienced it just as deeply as she did.
The people on the street began to move closer to the house; Finn could hear their curious, cautious chatter at his back. It wasn’t long before someone grew bold enough to push past him and into the house. Another followed, and another until a host of strangers stood around the Light of Madra and watched her weep over the body of the old woman who’d told her she was meant to save the world.
But Lorelei didn’t seem to see them; she only looked to him, her desperation for comfort reaching his heart.
“What happened here?” Brendolowyn edged into the house beside him, looking for answers, his sharp, wild lavender eyes wide with unspoken accusation that faded the moment Lorelei spoke his name.
“Bren, we just came to see her, I told her yesterday I would…” Her voice wavered, tears slipped down her cheeks as she shook her head. “I don’t know what happened. We just found her and she was…” She couldn’t bring herself to say the word, her little heart breaking and her soul aching in such a way that he could almost perfectly hear her thoughts.
So much death.
In her life there had been so little of it. Somehow Aelfric and her mother managed to spare her from that much, but in the last weeks it had been everywhere she looked, often tied to people set on her path in order to guide her in the right direction. She may not have known Yovenna very well, but she loved her all the same—had looked forward to knowing her better, learning all of her secrets in time, time she no longer had on her side.
Both men started toward her, but the self-conscious reminder of the argument they’d had outside gave Finn pause. He stopped to let her go to Brendolowyn, but it was his waist she threw her arms around, his chest she buried her face in, her whole body trembling against him as her slow tears rose into long, fretful sobs that hitched her shoulders.
Finn brought his arms around her, one hand rising into the braids of her bright red hair as he lowered his head and whispered, “It’ll be all right, Princess.”
It was a stupid thing to say, a bold untruth that often left the lips of others when they didn’t know what else to say to those in mourning. He’d heard it so many times when his mother died, and while he’d longed desperately to believe at the time that those promises would prove true, Finn’s life was never the same after Eornlaith drew her last breath.
Everyone was looking at him, but none more prominently than the mage, whose smooth brow furrowed in sadness as he finally glided past them and knelt in the place where Lorelei had been just moments before. Finn watched him reach down for the seer’s hand, his long fingers curling around hers as he lowered his head, brought her hand to his lips and softly whispered words to her in his native tongue.
Soon the house was filled with people, the overwhelming press of their bodies backing the two of them into a corner until finally Lorelei couldn’t take it anymore. She pulled away from him and wiped her damp cheeks on the back of one hand while still clutching the sleeve of his shirt in the other.
Peering tentatively over her shoulder in the direction of the body, she softly muttered, “I want to go home.”
And she didn’t mean back to Logren’s. He could feel it in her; she didn’t know what she meant. There was no home for her to go back to anymore, and that unspoken knowledge only served to deepen her grief.
“Let’s go outside.” He slid his arm along her back and guided her toward the door.
More people were coming, word of the Sacred Voice of Dunvarak’s death traveling through the city like wildfire and bringing Hodon and Logren from the great hall, Vilnjar tagging behind them looking as solemn as if he too had felt some deep connection to the seer and now suffered her loss.
“Is it true?” Logren asked his sister.
Lorelei drew her lower lip between her teeth and nodded quickly, her large round eyes threatening to spil
l another river of tears if she confirmed it aloud. Her brother reached out to take her arm in his hand, quickly drawing her against his chest to comfort her. His own eyes stared beyond her into the house where the city’s people gathered around the body.
Vilnjar followed Hodon into the already crowded house, blocking Finn’s view, but it was probably for the best. Lorelei was finally backing out of Logren’s arms, and he excused himself to go inside, leaving them alone on the street.
“I wish I could take you, Princess,” he said to her. “Home, I mean.”
She reached between them and took his hand, her small fingers wrapping around his and squeezing, “Yovenna said that wherever I go from this day forward, I am already home. My home will always be with me.”
He got the feeling she was saying something so much more profound than he could possibly understand, but he liked the way she said it. “Do you want to go back to your brother’s?”
Following her gaze toward the house again, from the corner of his eye he saw her nod her head. “I feel like I am only in the way here.”
“Come on.” Tugging his fingers from hers, he lowered his arm over her shoulder and together they walked away from the house.
*****
At sunset the people of Dunvarak gathered in the streets in front of their houses, all of them bundled in heavy furs and cloaks to follow the priests through the streets and beyond the walls to say their final farewell to Yovenna the Voice. The youngest child in each family held aloft a torch, which the priestess leading the procession lit as she passed, singing as she walked.
It was a solemn song that bid the children to light the way into the darkness and beyond so the old woman’s spirit could follow into the afterlife.
The pyre grounds were outside the city, in a frigid field filled with dancing snow squalls and fierce winds that tore through their clothes and prickled the skin beneath like tiny teeth.
Finn stood beside Lorelei feeling out of place and guilty because he had no tears to shed for a stranger, but then she reached down between them and curled her gloved fingers around his before leaning her shoulder into his arm for comfort. He didn’t feel the cold anymore, not with her so close to him, but he did allow himself feel her emotions. Her confusion and anger, her fear of the unknown things that lay ahead for her, things she selfishly thought Yovenna could have further illuminated for her to make her path less terrifying. But more than all of that he felt her sorrow, as one more person in her life was taken away from her just when she was starting to feel like things might actually make sense.
He didn’t hear the words the priest spoke, but he didn’t have to. They were the same ones spoken at every funeral he’d ever attended. The countless elders who’d passed on in his lifetime, his mother… He’d only been a little boy then, but he still remembered how bitter the wind felt the day it carried Eornlaith’s spirit to join with Llorveth and his father in the eternal hunt.
“She hunts with Llorveth tonight,” Finn said softly, turning his head down to look at Lorelei as the people in the village began to depart. Her eyes were red-rimmed, but no tears dampened her cheeks, not until he said, “Her wolf spirit is free to run.”
She actually smiled a little, that thought comforting her as a single drop slipped down her cold face and dripped off her chin when she nodded. “Soon all of our spirits will be free.”
Beneath the surface he felt the wolf in Lorelei for the first time, faint, but tentatively rising from the quiet depths of her soul and stretching into the prospect of finally waking. It frightened her a little, and she drew the edges of her fur-trimmed cloak closer to her body as if they could warm the chill she felt from within. He didn’t know what the Horns of Llorveth would do for her and the wolves of Dunvarak when they finally found them, but the beast inside her was fierce. A wolf to be reckoned with, a commanding leader who would have no trouble gaining followers wherever she went.
When it finally woke, none would dare ever challenge her, not even her mate.
She turned away from the pyre to begin the walk back to the city, but Finn lingered for a moment, watching thick black clouds of smoke rising to the sky, and he swore within them he saw tendrils of fading silver tangling, writhing along the columns and reaching for the skies.
“Llorveth, welcome her,” he whispered, and then he picked up his feet and followed Lorelei back into the city.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Lorelei expected Hodon to cancel the farewell feast to allow the villagers time to mourn their seer, but no such thing happened. Instead the procession from the funeral passed through the streets and made straight for the hall, people laughing and talking and eager to remember Yovenna with fond stories while they filled their bellies and dulled their senses with mead and ale.
It seemed cruel to ignore grief, even after her brother explained to her that the dead would not ask them to linger on sorrows, but celebrate the life they led and the deeds they undertook to make the world a better place to live in.
And Yovenna made the world a better place for everyone in Dunvarak. She brought the people in that city together and taught them how to be strong while she prepared them for the coming of their Light of Madra.
“In essence, she founded this city,” Hodon lifted his cup in her name, “and forever we shall honor Yovenna the Voice for bringing us together in this place, for sharing her vision, giving us hope, making us strong and showing us the way.”
“Hear, hear!” Cheers echoed back from the hall, cups clanking together, mead and ale sloshing onto tables before they drank to Yovenna the Voice for the first of many times to come that night.
She wondered if the people of Drekne sent Rhiorna off with even half the amount of grandeur Yovenna was given, though she knew in her heart they hadn’t. Rhiorna—sister of her birth-father, the aunt who’d come to her in dreams of a marketplace so long ago the memory didn’t even seem real anymore. It seemed even longer since she sat in front of the woman on the healer’s table and learned the truth about her parentage, of the people in the frozen south who waited for her to come and set their spirits free.
Little more than a week had passed, but it felt like a lifetime.
They were also there to see the Light of Madra off and celebrate the glories she was meant to bring them when she returned from her task. More than once a cup was raised in her name, which only served to make her blush and humbly lower her head, some part of her inside certain she was more than just a bit unworthy of the trust they put in her.
Come the early light of dawn, she, Finn and Brendolowyn would leave Dunvarak and begin making their way toward the coast in hopes of finding a ship to grant them passage to Port Felar, where she would meet with yet another seer and learn more things she could barely stomach knowing. For a brief moment, as she leaned back in her chair and scanned her eyes across the crowded hall, she actually found herself wondering if the elven seer in Port Felar would die after she met with him.
She seemed to have that effect on seers, being two for two. She wasn’t sure if she could live with the guilt of a third passing from the world, but Yovenna was insistent that she seek out this seer. Yovenna said the seer would not only guide her to the Horns of Llorveth, but tell her more about the guardian she would have to face when she reached the hall in Sorrow’s. He may even have answers to questions Yovenna herself had not been permitted to answer.
Throughout the celebration, people paid visit to wish her well on her journey. Some even brought offerings to her table, useful things they hoped would see her safely to and from her destination. Rations of dried beef and smoked pork for her to pack away into their satchels, bread, fruits and vegetables and small bags of coin that would surely come in handy. They brought clothing and furs to keep them warm and the stable master even gave to them three horses, an overwhelming gesture that made her heart feel both heavy and light inside her chest.
Finn sat to her left, feasting and drinking, talking to his brother and warily watching Brendolowyn, who’d taken t
he seat on her right, from the corner of his eye. He always looked away when he thought she was watching him watch the other man, a patch of shame coloring his cheeks a soft color of red beneath the light shadow of stubble that had grown in since shaving the day before.
The memory of their argument that afternoon seemed almost as far away as her time with Rhiorna, but the pain of his jealousy was still there, nagging beneath the surface and making her heart ache in ways she knew she didn’t have time to feel. Of all the things that lay ahead of her, all the tasks the world seemed to expect of her, the matters of her heart seemed as though they should be the least important, but they did not feel that way.
The truth was in her guilt.
As attracted as she felt to Brendolowyn, she felt guilty over feeling that way because she didn’t want to ever hurt Finn. Finn, who saved her life and accepted exile with open arms just to be with her. He brought her comfort when she was sure there was none to be had, and his very presence could be felt in the deepest part of her body so strongly that it was only a matter of time before she accepted the inevitable and let herself love him.
Reaching over almost absentmindedly, she lowered her hand over his and smiled at him when he turned to look at her with surprise. His hand was warm beneath hers, that almost unnatural heat from his body emanating into her skin and sending slight tingles of desire shivering through her.
She could feel Bren watching the gesture, the burn of his stare when she patted Finn’s hand and withdrew, leaning back in her chair and watching a colorful barrage of dancers take the floor in an interpretive story that had no words, only movements.
Edgelanders (Serpent of Time) Page 56