Sorrow's Peak (Serpent of Time Book 2) (8 page)

“Sometimes quick thinking is the difference between life and death.”

“Sometimes, yes,” he nodded, “but other times so much more is required, and it’s not that I’m incapable of thinking things through. Most of the time I just choose not to, but you…” As he paused, he shook his head, the braids jostling against his cheek and shoulder with a whisper. “You think about everything, even when you’re threatening rash actions… like putting swords in people who don’t do as you ask them to.”

He laughed, remembering her threat on his life when they first met beneath Great Sontok.

“I wouldn’t have really done it, you know.”

Still laughing, the wheeze of his amusement became a choking cough and he doubled over on the bench in such a dramatic way she actually slapped him on the back. The whack only made him laugh harder, and before long the silliness caught on and she was laughing too. Shoulders together, they howled and rocked with amusement until the absurdity wore thin and both grew sober with the seriousness of events stretched out before them. Laughter became long, loud sighs as they pushed their backs into the bench behind them and both stretched their legs toward the statue in the center of the room.

“All I’m saying,” he finally said, “is you will do what needs to be done. Maybe it won’t be easy, but you will see it done because the gods would not have given you such a task if you weren’t able to carry it out.”

“But I haven’t been able to carry it out if everything Yovenna said is to be believed,” she insisted. “I’ve done this before, apparently many times, and each one of them I have failed.”

She watched from the side as her brother’s face distorted with curiosity before turning to look at her. “What do you mean?”

That prickling she felt beneath her skin stirred again, an odd numbness spread through her body until it rested at the base of her skull, making her neck feel tight with tension. Her brother did not know about the Tid Ormen, the time serpent thrown against the world in the All-Creator’s rage, nor that the tasks set for her by the gods went well beyond retrieving the Horns of Llorveth. She hadn’t told him, and neither had Brendolowyn. She’d asked him not to, but she just assumed told her brother everything.

Logren nudged her with his elbow when she didn’t answer, stirring her from her thoughts and forcing her to look at him. “What do you mean?”

She started to shake her head, fully intent on saying it was nothing, but the look in his eye stopped her. “I don’t know if…”

“Don’t you dare,” he warned in a severe tone she imagined their father might once have used on him as a boy. “Don’t even try to back out of it now that you’ve said it.”

“It’s just a story,” she shook her head. “Something Yovenna said about Heidr after the fall of Llorveth. He was so enraged by the atrocities committed by his sons and their children, he wove a serpent from time and then threw it at the world. The serpent, it’s called the Tid Ormen by the elves, chases its own tail, spinning against the cycles of time and causing our world to relive the same events again and again and again until one day we get them right and end the cycle.”

“Go on,” he urged. His face was hard, every line and wrinkle in the skin visible as he turned to look at her.

“Yovenna said it is my task to slay this serpent and shatter the cycle so we can move forward again.”

If he wasn’t sober before, those words did the trick. All the lines in his face deepened, especially the crinkles around his eyes, which squinted with disbelief as he stared. “I thought you were to take back the Horns of Llorveth.”

“Oh, I am,” she nodded. “But somewhere along the way I’m meant to do something that changes the time cycle and wakes the serpent. Once it’s woken, it is up to me to slay it and shatter its hold on our world so we can move forward again.”

For a long time her brother said nothing. Eventually he leaned back again, stretched his shoulders wide and then let them hunch inward again with a sigh. “Who else knows about this?”

“I told Finn,” she shook her head. “I went to Brendolowyn to ask if he knew of it. Yovenna knew, and maybe the seer I’m supposed to find in Port Felar, I don’t know.”

“Hodon has no idea,” he muttered. “At least I don’t think he does. Why wouldn’t she tell him?”

“I don’t know,” she shrugged, “because it’s not his task to worry about. Retrieving the horns, that affects everyone in the city, but this whole business with the serpent…”

“Affects people all over the world!” Logren brought his hand up, stroked it through the hairs of his beard and mustache and tightened his lips. “This explains so much, and it changes everything, Lorelei...”

“Not really. It is what it is, and nothing more. There’s still a lot I don’t understand.”

“I could come with you,” he said. “Help Finn and Bren keep you safe so you can do what needs to be done.”

“You can’t, Logren. Yovenna said…”

“Yovenna said a change would wake the serpent. If I came with you, wouldn’t that be change enough?”

She didn’t like how eager he was to wake the serpent spinning against their world. The tightness in her neck yielded to the jellying effect of chills. Her shoulder shook against it, neck tensing again. “Logren, you can’t come with me. Your place is here. The people of Dunvarak depend on you.”

She remembered what Viina said to her in the bathhouse, about how little time Logren spent at home with his family, how agitated and restless he’d been waiting for Lorelei to come as the seer said she would. She thought about Roggi’s fretful tears just two days before, when he’d thought his father was leaving again. She’d felt so guilty then, because the boy was angry with her for going too, and terrified his father would leave with her. She couldn’t take him away from them, wouldn’t dare.

“Viina needs you and Roggi too. And if Aelfric sends men through the Edgelands, those men will eventually make their way south to Dunvarak in search of me. Who will protect your city? Everything you’ve built here…”

“This city protects itself. You heard me before. I am no mage. It is not my magic holding the world at bay, Lorelei.”

“Maybe
you
don’t hold this city together with magic, but magic can be broken, Logren. I come from a place where the very essence of magic has been collared and enslaved…”

“If you don’t want me to come then…”

“It isn’t that I don’t want you to come,” she insisted. “I hate that when the sun comes up I must leave this place and put miles between us again. I’ve only just gotten here, only learned I have a brother and a nephew. I don’t want to be parted from you, and I would give anything to have your sword to protect me, but I cannot take you away from those who need you more than I. Your family, Logren…”

“You are my family too,” he lamented.

“And I will always be your family now.” Lorelei reached her arm around his broad shoulders and drew him close to her. “I know you are here now, and I won’t ever let anything come between us again, I promise.”

Her brother tilted his temple into her forehead, a deflating sigh of defeat lowering his shoulders as he exhaled. “I just wish I could be there for you. I’m your big brother. It’s my job to protect you.”

“You are here for me,” she pointed out. “And you’ll still be here when I return with the Horns of Llorveth. We’ll worry about the serpent then. Maybe I will learn more about it from the seer in Port Felar. Right now, I just want to get those horns and bring them back to your people.”

“You may not know them well, but they are our people,” he corrected her. “Yours and mine.”

“Our people,” she agreed with a slow grin and a nod.

She didn’t know how long they sat that way, heads touching, the temple’s silence and one another’s company an eerie comfort against the overwhelming reality of the tasks ahead and the fact that in a matter of hours she would leave that place to do things she’d never imagined in her wildest dreams would be hers to do.

She was glad he’d taken her to the temple, glad she’d sacrificed an entire night’s worth of sleep before heading out into the world because she’d spent that time with her brother and though she’d been skeptical about the man upon first meeting him, she loved him now just as much as she loved her little sister. She knew that so long as the two of them lived, she would never be without family or a home. She only hoped the gods, in their infinite expectations of her, remembered to reward her by keeping both her brother and her sister alive and safe through the trials that lay ahead.

CHAPTER FIVE

The entire city of Dunvarak was awake with the dawn, gathered in the streets to see the Light of Madra and her party of two off on their journey. Finn was only asleep a few minutes, or so it seemed, when the sound of Roggi’s footsteps racing through the house brought him back to consciousness. He rolled and rumbled, almost forgetting he’d spent the night sleeping on the cramped pantry floor, wedged between mead barrels, sacks of grain and his brother. The aching of his lower back quickly reminded him and he stretched with a groan into the space his brother occupied during the night.

Vilnjar was already awake, and in the emptiness of the pantry Finn felt both agitated and momentarily afraid he’d slept through sunrise and gotten left behind. He dressed, tugged into his boots and stood up. After raking fingers through the loose tangles of his black hair, he stepped toward the door and realized parts of him were trembling.

Sleeplessness, he told himself, not fear, but on the inside he knew that was a lie.

He was afraid of the journey that stretched for miles on his path. He was afraid of the things that journey would bring, including his possible death. He was only eighteen, had been eighteen just a couple of months, and before Lorelei came barreling into his life like a runaway doe on the chase, he’d been fairly certain he had a long and healthy, overwhelmingly boring life ahead of him.

Suddenly the future was uncertain, a future he only wanted to spend with her, and there wasn’t a single boring day in sight.

Everyone was at the table when he emerged from the pantry. Lorelei and her brother laughed as Roggi danced slowly in front of them with a spoon dangling precariously from the tip of his nose. Vilnjar sat with both hands curled around a steaming mug of kaffe from the carafe in the center of the table. Viina perched at the edge of the table, arms folded across her chest as she smiled and shook her head. Even the half-elf made his way to breakfast, though it was some consolation the dark circles under the mage’s eyes looked about as deep as the ones Finn felt beneath his own.

At first no one seemed to notice he’d even entered the room, then the boy spotted him and excitedly darted out to meet him, the spoon clanging across the floor as he romped. “Finn, I thought you were going to sleep forever.”

He laughed, reaching down to tousle Roggi’s hair. The boy threw his arms around Finn’s legs and squeezed, holding on tight and laughing even when Finn started to walk while he was still clinging.

“I didn’t even know it was time to wake up,” he confessed upon reaching the edge of the table. He bent and scooped Roggi against his chest, feeling lighter despite his troubles when the boy circled his arms around Finn’s neck and gently squeezed.

“I was just coming to wake you,” Lorelei told him, avoiding his eyes when she spoke. “Just as soon as Roggi was done showing off his magic skills. I’ve never seen anyone who can balance a spoon from their nose like that in my life.”

“I practice every morning,” Roggi said matter-of-factly.

“Imagine the things you could do if you practiced your meditations every morning,” Brendolowyn interjected. “Why, you’d be a full-blown war mage by the time I came back from this journey.”

Wriggling impatiently in Finn’s arms, he lowered Roggi back to the floor. “Don’t worry, Uncle, I will practice every day, and when you come home again we will duel.”

Everyone laughed. It was light and strange, and though he wanted it to uplift him, it was difficult to do little more than fake amusement. He was tired, still disconcerted by the fear he was hiding just beneath the surface, but if they all wanted to pretend it was just another ordinary day, who was he to burst their bubble?

Their odd merriment continued through breakfast, and though he tried several times to catch her eye during that short, last meal in Logren’s home, Lorelei said very little to him and avoided eye contact almost entirely. She looked rundown, as though she hadn’t slept at all, and his ego prompted him to wonder her sleeplessness was somehow his fault.

When they broke from the table, everyone scattered to dress and make ready for departure. He managed to corner her near the washing basin as she was lowering her dirty dishes into the sudsy water so Viina could clean them after they left. She turned and took his plate, her hand momentarily brushing across his fingers as she reached for it, but she never looked up at him.

“You’re mad at me now?”

“What?” She shook her head, as if she wasn’t there until he spoke to her and the sound of his voice drew her back from some far-off place. “What are you talking about?”

“You’re mad,” he repeated. “At me, because of last night…”

“Mad at you. What? No, I’m just really tired, Finn. I didn’t sleep at all last night.” Lowering his plate into the basin, she turned back around slowly and surveyed the space between them as if trying to find a way around him to escape. “Logren and I stayed up drinking all night, then sat in the temple for hours talking.”

“I didn’t sleep much either.”

“I’m sure we’ll pay for that mistake by mid-morning.” Her shoulders sunk as she exhaled. “Right now I’m waiting for my second wind to kick in, but I’m not sure it’s coming at all.”

A few silent moments passed. He could hear Roggi’s voice in the other room, belligerently shouting about the color of the trousers his mother wanted him to wear and how unfair it was he couldn’t dress himself. The distraction gave her the opportunity she’d been searching for, and she moved to duck around him, but he reached down to take her hand. Her skin was wet, the water from the wash basin cold and soapy as it dripped down her arm and into a small puddle at her feet. It was slippery enough she could have pulled away, but she didn’t try to.