Lisa Smedman - Heirs of Prophecy

“Was he raised by wild elves?” Larajin asked.

“He was.”

Larajin nodded to herself. It made sense. Of course her twin would look more like a wild elf. If he had been raised among them, he would wear their clothes, style his hair the way they did, perhaps even have marked his face with those fearsome-looking tattoos.

“If the wild elves raised my brother then why…?” Larajin paused, and cleared the catch in her throat with a soft cough. “Why was he kept and I given to my father?”

“From what I understand, that was a mistake. A woman of our people was found to wet-nurse your brother, but she didn’t have milk enough for two infants, as well as her own. The human wet nurse was to have been only a temporary measure.”

“Yet she became my mother,” Larajin whispered. “Or rather, the woman who raised me. Her name is Shonri Wellrun.”

Doriantha had paused to peer through the darkness at Larajin. “Perhaps it was not a misunderstanding on your father’s part, after all,” she mused. “Perhaps Thamalon Uskevren saw how human you looked and decided to keep you.” She shrugged. “Whatever the reason, there are some who feel he committed a grievous sin. They believe that those who share a womb must never be sundered-that great ill comes of it. Of course, there are others who take a broader view, that your father was only playing his part in pushing the wheel of fate along its preordained path.”

“What of our mother?” Larajin asked, uncomfortable with all this talk of destiny. “Tell me about her.”

“Trisdea was a famous warrior. One of our most accomplished archers. At a young age-she was just seventy at the time-she distinguished herself at the battle of Singing Arrows. When the fletch tally was taken at the battle’s end, her arrows were found to have felled nearly a hundred of the enemy.”

Larajin listened with rapt attention. That battle, according to the history books, took place nearly five centuries ago. Doing a quick calculation, she realized that her mother had been more than five hundred years old when she’d given birth to her. For the first time, Larajin realized the implications of having elf blood in her veins. She herself might have a life span double that of a human: two centuries or more. She suddenly felt very young, indeed.

“What did Trisdea look like?”

“Her hair was copper-red, and she wore it loose upon her shoulders. Her eyes, brown. When she was angry, or in battle, they darkened to the color of smoldering coals. When she was in prayer, they grew lighter, to the shade of blond wood. She was quick in her movements and nimble with the bow, but her stubbornness would make a boulder look fickle.”

Larajin thought her mother was everything she could have hoped for: noble, proud, and free-a wild elf, with windblown hair and tattooed cheeks.

“What else can you tell me about Trisdea? Did you know her well?”

“Everyone knew of her,” Doriantha answered obliquely. “Trisdea was also renowned as a cleric-one might say infamous. She studied among the moon elves, and learned from them the worship of Angharradh of the three faces. That belief is rare in the Tangled Wood. We pay homage to each aspect separately, as a goddess in her own right.” She raised a hand, and ticked off the goddesses on her fingers. “Hanali Celanil, who sent the tressym to aid you; Aerdrie Faenya, lady of air and wind; and Sehanine Moonbow, mistress of moonlight.

“Trisdea tried to persuade the elves of the Tangled Trees to worship all three goddesses in a single form but was not successful. Even her stature as a great warrior was not enough to sway our clerics. She clove to this notion stubbornly until the day she died, though she must have realized its futility. We wood elves worship in the old way and are slow to change.”

Larajin nodded, realizing that she must have inherited her stubborn streak from her mother. Like Trisdea, who had refused to divide her devotions, instead worshiping three goddesses in a single, triune form, Larajin had chosen a difficult path. She balanced her devotions, giving praise in what she hoped was equal measure to both Sune and Hanali Celanil.

Having heard Doriantha’s story, she now wondered if, like Angharradh, the two goddesses she had chosen to worship were a single whole-two sides of the same coin. One with a human face, the other with the face of an elf.

“Is my brother Leifander also a cleric?” she asked.

Doriantha nodded. “He pays homage to Aerdrie Faenya, queen of the winds. He’s a skinwalker.”

“What’s that?”

“He can shift his form from elf to bird and back again.”

Larajin nodded, savoring the wonder of it. She tried to imagine how riding the winds high above would feel but could not. If her twin could fly, no wonder she had not seen him on Rauthauvyr’s Road. She said a quick prayer for his safety, bidding the goddesses to protect him on his journey south and his return to the Tangled Trees.

A realization came to her then. In five hundred years of adulthood, her elf mother could have given birth to many children.

“Do I have other brothers and sisters?” Breathlessly, she awaited the answer, imagining an entire clan of relatives waiting for her in the Tangled Trees, soon to be met.

“Only one,” Doriantha answered. “A sister, who was born and grew old many years before you and Leifander came into this world. Her name was Somnilthra, and she was a great seer. She foretold many things during her time among us. She prophesied that Trisdea would die, were she to bear children again, and her prophesy rang true. Trisdea was much too old to be going through the rigors of childbirth-impossibly old to have become pregnant, some said. Somnilthra also foresaw-”

Doriantha stopped abruptly. Larajin waited, but the silence only lengthened.

“What?” she prompted at last.

“I am overstepping myself,” Doriantha said. “I forget that some stories are not mine to tell. Suffice it to say that Trisdea did not heed her daughter’s warning and now lies buried in the Vale of Lost Voices in a tomb befitting a warrior of her stature.”

Larajin let this go without further comment. Instead, she mused over all she had just been told and started to see a pattern. Her mother worshiped the triune goddess, of whom Hanali Celanil, the goddess Larajin prayed to, was one aspect. Her brother Leifander worshiped a second aspect of the triune, the winged goddess Aerdrie Faenya, and Doriantha had said that their elder half-sister, Somnilthra, was a seer, gifted with foresight by the gods.

“Was Somnilthra a cleric, too?” Larajin asked.

Doriantha nodded. “She worshiped the Lunar Lady, goddess of dreams.”

Larajin was puzzled for a moment. The elves seemed to have a dozen different names for each god and goddess.

“Sehanine Moonbow?” she guessed.

“The same.”

There it was: a pattern, woven into all four lives. A mother who worshiped three goddesses in one-and three children, each drawn to one of that goddess’s aspects. What other strange and unseen patterns were the gods weaving through her life? Larajin could only wonder.

“You spoke of Somnilthra in the past tense,” she added. “Is she dead?”

Doriantha placed a palm over her heart. “She has entered eternal Reverie. She dreams in Arvanaith.”

Arvanaith. Larajin had read about it in one of the books in Stormweather Towers’s library. It was said to be a final resting place-a heaven-that the souls of venerable elves slipped away to when their time on this earth was done. From all accounts-all of them hearsay, since the author of the book was human-Arvanaith was a beautiful place, a paradise where an aged soul prepared for its eventual return to this world. Larajin wondered if half-elves journeyed there too when they grew old and died. She prayed to Hanali Celanil that it was so.