Sorrow's Peak (Serpent of Time Book 2) (45 page)

His
people.

It was always such a strange turn of phrase in his mind. Hodon used the very same expression when he’d partitioned Bren to deliver his call for aid, claiming it would be better received by the Alvarii if it came from one of their own.

Another painful reminder that Brendolowyn didn’t have people of his own.

“She only said darkness was coming, and we must prepare. That the Light of Madra would see us through.”

Gwendoliir tightened his lips, as if there was a great deal he would like to say on the matter, but decided he was better off remaining silent.

“And so she shall,” Jonolov nodded agreement. “I assume you have means to deliver word to your people of our coming?”

“I will send my raven as soon as we leave Nua Duaan, Sire.”

“Excellent,” the King Under the City nodded. “Now, we have questions regarding the Light of Madra,” he began, allowing those words to hover in the air for a time.

“Perhaps it would be best to ask them of her,” Brendolowyn broke the silence. “I am sure she would delight in taking audience with you. She has many questions of her own.”

Ignoring his statement, Jonolov went on, “How much does Lorelei know about the events that have transpired since she escaped into the Edgelands?”

“Almost nothing,” he shook his head. “Hodon sent world north, into the Edgelands asking for an alliance with the U’lfer, just as we have asked the Alvarii…”

“But there are no U’lfer left to receive that missive, or grant alliance,” Gwendoliir interrupted.

“What do…? I don’t understand.”

“King Aelfric’s men, led by Trystay of Hofft marched into the Edgelands and set fire to the villages while the people slept. Very few were left alive, and those who did manage to escape…” His words trailed into thoughtful silence, the air between them momentarily leaden with sorrow over the loss of so much life. “Well, let us just say there will be no aid forthcoming from the northern U’lfer because the U’lfer are no more.”

“That is…” There were no words for the devastation, only a silent sense of grief.

“There were already so few wolves left. If the Light of Madra fails in her task at Great Sorrow’s Peak…” Jonolov allowed the severity of that failure to hover between them for several minutes before finally going on. “I am sure I do not need to reiterate the importance of her task to the survival of
your
people.”

“We are well aware of the severity of the circumstances should she fail.”

“And are you prepared to do whatever it takes to ensure she does not fail?”

“Absolutely.”

“Even though you have personally failed in previous cycles to do what needed to be done?” It was Gwendoliir who asked that question, his hard eyes narrowed across the table in the most disturbing manner. Brendolowyn felt as though he sat before them naked and exposed, all his flaws and shortcomings visible, ripe to be picked apart like rotting fruit from an unproductive vine.

The shame of those failures was never far from his mind, but whenever brought into the light by another they felt all the more intense. As though he’d physically committed those acts only moments ago, and the guilt was still fresh in his soul.

“I will not fail again,” he assured them.

“Good,” the King Under the City nodded once. “It is my understanding the girl is…” Pausing, he seemed to be searching his mind for the right words. “Undereducated seems a fair enough term,” he decided. “Her naïveté about the world, about the things King Aelfric has done, is in desperate need of shattering.”

“She is coming to understand the man who raised her was not all she believed him to be, though their relationship was always tense. She knows now he withheld the world and the truth about who and what she was from her in hopes she would never be the wiser.”

“He did the very same thing to her sister, but a plan is already in effect to see that web of lies unspun.”

“I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about. What does her sister have to do with all of this?”

“More than you could possibly imagine.” The seer’s grave tone rippled with unspoken prophecy, and for a moment Brendolowyn felt that severity shudder through him like the breaking fever of a passing sickness.

“The reason we held you all at bay when you arrived on the outskirts of Port Felar, the reason I was unable to accept you to discuss this matter last night...” Jonolov paused, not sure how to put the words he had to say into proper phrases.

It was Gwendoliir who finally picked up the scattered pieces of dropped thought, explaining, “Princess Mirien of Leithe was in this city when you arrived on the outskirts of Port Felar. Brought here by an escaped slave from King Aelfric’s court by the name of Pahjah several days ago.”

As the broken pieces fell into place in his mind, Bren felt the darkness inside him shift, a certain nausea stirring in his gut that spoke of ill-tidings and far darker things than he’d imagined before. “Pahjah,” he whispered, “she was Lorelei’s nursemaid when she was a child. She’s spoken of her often. And her sister,” he shook his head in disbelief. “But how… Why? Why not reunite them? She is terrified for her little sister.”

His questions were ignored. “The girls’ mother, Ygritte, and the nursemaid have been working closely with the Resistance since the day Ygritte was forced to watch her husband’s execution. The queen would do anything to avenge the death of the man she loved, including offer her own flesh and blood. She gave Aelfric’s daughter over to our cause while the child was still in her womb, and once we were certain Lorelei was on her path we sent for the girl.”

All the unspoken horrors that came with his confession made Bren’s skin prickle with chills. Lorelei spoke so fondly and so often of her little sister; she would not find strength to carry on if something tragic befell the girl.

“She… You haven’t hurt her, have you? She isn’t…?”

“Dead?” It troubled Brendolowyn how easily the man across from him laughed while saying that word. “No, she’s not dead. Far from it. She’s been taken to the Isle of Dorayne to live among the Sacred Sisters. She will be taught the very thing her accursed forebear denied her.”

“Magic?”

“Precisely.” Jonolov’s grin was disgustingly smug.

“But to what end?” he stammered.

“By the time she has finished her training, she will be a formidable weapon the likes of which Mennesefth will be unprepared to face.”

A hundred recent memories rolled through his mind, recollection of the fondness with which Lorelei spoke of her Alvarii nursemaid, of the limitless trust and firm belief the woman who raised her from a nursling was flawless and wonderful. But all the while the woman she looked up and held reverently in her memory, had been weaving both her and her sister into an unfathomable plot against the king.

He was disgusted, a reaction that surely showed on his face, but the council of three before him didn’t even seem to notice. Jonolov barely gave him time to process what he’d said before he went on.

“Lorelei cannot know…”

“That the Alvarii are using her sister, whom she cares more for than she does about anything else in this world, as a weapon against her own people?”

“Well, when you put it that way it sounds very sinister, but I can assure you we have no intention of allowing Princess Mirien to come to any harm in the process. By the time she’s finished her training with the Sisters she will be more than just a weapon. She will be one of the most powerful sorceresses to have ever walked this world.”

“A force powerful enough to bring about the Enil Tidaan if the need arises. If the Light of Madra does not do her part to break the cycle and summon the serpent.” Gwendoliir’s voice was grave, unwavering in its conviction on the matter, but Jonolov Silver-Tongue was not about to shed further light upon the subject unless he absolutely had to.

“You mean to bring about the End Times if Lorelei fails to summon the serpent?” he gasped in horror.

The three Alvarii across from him regarded one another, a silent language spoken through stares alone passing between them before Jonolov confirmed his deepest fear. “In the event the cycle remains unbroken, due to your foolishness or some other misstep along the path, we are prepared to do whatever it takes to end this cycle once and for all.”

No wonder the seer’s vision was clouded. The Alvarii already altered events.

“We, the elders of both the Alvarii and Ninvarii nations, grow weary of this world, its repetitious cycle and the lack of power in our hands to change things. It is the first time in the history of our existence we have been able to agree on anything.”

“You’re working with the Ninvarii?” Such a thing was entirely unheard of. Ninvarii and Alvarii philosophies and cultures were so vastly different from one another, they rarely, if ever, banded together. The world really was on the verge of collapsing in upon itself if that were true.

He saw confirmation in Gwendoliir’s eyes, but Jonolov Silver-Tongue was not about to concede to such a purposefully wrought atrocity so easily. The King Under the City narrowed a calculating stare over Brendolowyn, the itching of a malevolent grin curling the corners of his mouth before it disappeared behind his raised hands.

“Such a weapon will only be employed in the event Lorelei cannot break the cycle, of course,” he finally said. “If she succeeds in breaking the cycle, Princess Mirien of Leithe will be little more than a means to an end, a turning of the tide in the coming war against Mennesefth. She will sit upon her father’s throne, not only sympathetic to our cause, but ready and willing to stand against any who oppose Alvarii freedom.”

The cold reality of their plot made his blood freeze in his veins.

“You speak of war on a scale the likes of which I cannot process…”

“Such a war cannot be avoided. Mennesefth have dominated this world far too long. Like a plague they spread their seed into soil they water with the blood of Alvariin’s children. Those of us who’ve felt the yoke of oppression choke around our throats… we must rise against Mennesefth and take back what is ours.”

“You speak madness,” he muttered.

Jonolov narrowed those calculating green eyes across the table, a strange grin drawing at the right corner of his mouth. “Madness? You are Bristalv, and so very young you cannot possibly understand what we’ve endured. You’ve seen no war, boy. You turn your nose up at the very notion of allying yourself with your own people, choosing to live among wolves.”

“I have no people,” he hissed. “And I have seen enough hardship in my short number of years to know fighting is never the answer. Even if you could drive back Mennesefth, which I doubt could ever be done, there will always be another race vying for their place. Urokaar, Trygvln…”

“We do not let our minds linger on the Great War,” Gwendoliir interrupted, “but if the cycle isn’t broken, that war will come.”

“We grow weary of this repetition. We are powerless to change it, as are the gods. Anyone who can hear the voice can attest to this, and it is those who’ve seen that guide our decisions.” Jonolov Silver-Tongue was no emissary of the gods, and yet there he spoke on their behalf.

“Your fehrestellje cannot even see,” he countered. “He confessed as much to all of us this morning.”

“I may no longer see the future, but I retain memory of things I once saw. We must end this, either by moving forward beyond the cycle, or shattering it entirely and bringing an end to all things.”

“A cataclysmic event…” he balked. “Wh… why are you telling me this?” He searched within himself for the sense of familiarity confirming he’d experienced the conversation in another life, but there was no trace of it. It felt… new.

“I have seen the things your Light of Madra showed you.” Gwendoliir’s voice was stiff and unyielding. “But she did not show you all, Bristalv. Perhaps a glimpse at that which she withheld will inspire you to play the part you were meant to perfection so none suffer on account of your selfishness.”

Before he could react the seer rose, his arm shooting forward and gripping Brendolowyn’s wrist. The moment the seer’s skin touched his, images began to flood through him like a nightmare from which he could not wake.

Desolation and darkness.The bloody light of a red sun disappearing between clouds heavy and black. Ashes fell like dirty snow across piled corpses felled upon a never ending battlefield. Alvarii corpses, Ninvarii, U’lfer, Men, Orcs, Kivtaryn… All the surviving races of their world, dead upon that field. Tattered standards snapped and rippled in the fierce, fiery wind rising with the serpent of fire come to swallow the memories of those who’d lived through it and send them back to start again.

In the distance a lone body loomed, a single, ominous silhouette illuminated by billowing flame. Together, hands clasped, two walked through the battlefield, toward the doom awaiting them. Lorelei turned her head to look over at him, her face smudged with ash and dust, skin carved with scars. He saw something in her eyes that made his heart wrench inside him.

Unfathomable distance, unspoken resentment for a past he had the power to change, but did not. There was love there, but it was hollow and wound tightly with something so unexpected it shattered him inside.

Hatred.

She hated him, just as much as she loved him because he let it happen.

Gwendoliir loosened his fingers and Brendolowyn withdrew his hand as if he’d been burned. Dizzy, he felt the magical energy of that vision swarming through him, receding but leaving its residue in his soul so he might pluck at the strands of a truth he didn’t want to face.

He knew it was what awaited him if he failed.

Love fueled by hate.

“That is the price you will pay if you make the same mistake you’ve made countless times, the price we will all pay for your refusal to allow her the one thing in this world she feels is worth living for.” The severity of the seer’s tone carved through the guilt of his conscience, provoking shame over actions he had not yet taken.

He attempted to block that memory out, but when he closed his eyes he could still see the accusation in her eyes, the resentment she felt toward him. He could still feel the burn of that world, as though he’d truly been standing in it, and he shamefully knew in his heart it was a world he saw in another life, another time. A world he willfully chose so he could have her, a world that suffered the consequences of his selfishness so he might revel in the power of her love and her hate.