As Doriantha settled down beside her, Larajin fought to keep her eyes open just a little longer. A question burned inside her, one she’d been wanting the answer for ever since they’d set out but had no time to ask.
“Doriantha,” she said, “you said I looked nothing like my brother. Did Mast-” She paused, and amended what she had been about to say. In the woods, she was a servant no longer, answerable only to herself. It didn’t feel right using the title “master,” anymore. “Did Thamalon the Younger or Talbot ever visit the Tangled Trees?”
Larajin could see little of Doriantha’s face, save for the dark line of the tattoo across her nose and cheeks, and the glint of her eyes. It was impossible to tell what her expression was.
“The names you mention,” Doriantha said quietly, “are these the children of Thamalon Uskevren?”
“Yes. He has two sons and a daughter.”
“Full-blood human?”
“Yes, all three.” Larajin yawned, blinking sleep-heavy eyes.
“They are only half-sister and half-brothers to you, then.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “No, I was speaking of your twin.”
Exhausted as she was, it took Larajin a moment to fully appreciate what Doriantha had just said. When she did, she sat up, all thoughts of sleep having fled.
“I have a twin brother?” she exclaimed.
Rustling noises told her that she had disturbed some of the other elves with her outburst. She could see Doriantha shaking her head and gesturing for silence, but she didn’t care. The news was amazing, almost impossible to believe. She wondered what her twin brother looked like. Was he, like her, struggling with the question of whether he was elf, or human, or something in-between? Or had he known of his mixed heritage all along?
A stray thought stopped her cold.
“Doriantha,” she whispered. “Is my brother still alive?”
Doriantha glanced around. “Please-you must keep your voice low. Some of the others might understand what you say.”
Larajin nodded, and Doriantha went on. “As far as I know, your twin is still alive. He was hale and hearty, when I last saw him several days ago.”
“Where is he now?”
“As to that…” Doriantha paused, and in the starlit darkness, Larajin saw her shrug. “I only know that the druids sent him to do their bidding, far to the south.”
“South? To the Dales-or do you mean Sembia? How long ago?”
Dread coursed through Larajin as she remembered the wild elves who had defended her eighteen months ago in the Hunting Garden. Had her twin brother also run afoul of Drakkar and been charred to a gruesome corpse by the wizard’s dark magic?
Doriantha tilted her head back to peer up at the sky through the thick tangle of branches overhead.
“He left within the moon,” she answered at last.
“Less than a month ago, you mean?”
Doriantha nodded, then added, “He didn’t tell me his destination. The druids forbade him to speak of it. You can, perhaps, think of a reason why.”
After a moment’s thought, Larajin guessed the answer: the impending war. Her twin brother had gone south to Sembia then, probably as a spy, since, like her, he could no doubt pass as fully human. She prayed that he hadn’t ventured into Ordulin and been sniffed out and beaten by the mob.
She shook her head at the irony. All the while she had been heading north, to the Tangled Trees, her twin had been traveling in the other direction. For all she knew, they might have passed each other as strangers on Rauthauvyr’s Road.
“Tell me more about my brother,” she said. “What’s his name? What does he look like?”
“His name is Leifander, and as I said before, he looks nothing like you. His hair is a similar color, but his eyes are a different shade of hazel. He’s broad-shouldered, and tall, and looks … much more like the people of the forest.”
“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.