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.
Yawning, she fought to keep her eyes open. Wind sighed through the branches of the trees that sheltered them, carrying the scents of loam and leaves. The soft moss she lay upon was a welcoming pillow that beckoned her to sleep. Beside her, Doriantha had settled again on her own bed, her stories seemingly at an end.
“How far is it now to the Tangled Trees?” Larajin asked, stifling yet another yawn.
“If we rise at first light, we’ll reach camp by tomorrow evening. Just in time for the Turning.”
Larajin was too sleepy to ask what that was. Instead she sank onto her mossy bed and drifted into an exhausted sleep, dreaming of the mother and sister she had never met-and of the brother she hoped to meet someday soon.
The first warning that they were approaching the elven camp came in the form of a snarl from the treetops, ahead and to the left. It was echoed a moment later by a loud yeowl, directly overhead. An enormous shape hurtled down through the tangle of branches, landing with feline grace no more than two paces ahead of Larajin. Round eyes glared at her, and sharp white teeth glinted in the moonlight as a giant lynx stared her down. Its tail lashed behind it as it growled and its ears were flat against its head. Suddenly wide awake, Larajin froze, barely daring to breathe.
Doriantha spoke a sharp word in the wild elves’ tongue. Tail still lashing, the lynx gave Larajin one last baleful glare, then turned and padded obediently toward Doriantha. The elves behind Larajin laughed as Doriantha stroked the head of the lynx, which rubbed against her like a contented house cat. One of them nudged Larajin forward.
Angry at herself for being so frightened of what was obviously one of the wild elves’ pets, Larajin stumbled forward on aching feet, following Doriantha and the lynx. Ahead in the forest, she could see the dark shapes of tents sprinkled among the trees. They were round and squat, like mushrooms. Under the thick canopy of branches their brown leather would have been invisible from the skies above. While most of the tents were silent and dark, Larajin could hear low voices murmuring inside one or two of those she passed by, and the occasional giggle or moan that made would have made her blush, had she not been so exhausted.
After walking for a few moments more, she saw a small tent up ahead that was illuminated from within. A single figure moved inside it, casting a dark shadow on its strangely mottled walls, which glowed a bright, translucent green.
As they drew nearer to this tent, Doriantha paused and spoke another command to the lynx. It turned and leaped into a tree, climbing swiftly up its trunk. One of the elves protested the lynx’s departure, gesturing at Larajin, but Doriantha cut him off with a curt word. She spoke at length to the members of her patrol in their own language, and at last they grudgingly nodded their heads.
She turned then, to Larajin. “There is someone inside the tent who will want to meet you,” she said quietly, “an important person, a druid of the Circle of Emerald Leaves. Please do not give the members of my patrol any cause for alarm.”
Larajin glanced around her, and saw that several of Doriantha’s band had their hands close to the hilts of their daggers. One had even unlimbered her bow and was silently stringing it. Larajin started to raise her hands to demonstrate that they were empty, then thought better of it. The locket that hung around her wrist could be as effective as any weapon, if the goddess so willed it. She didn’t want to remind the elves of its presence.
Instead she nodded, and meekly followed Doriantha while the other elves waited behind. She could feel their suspicious eyes upon her back, all the way to the tent.
The mottled texture proved to be the result of the tent’s construction. The walls were stitched together from hundreds of overlapping leaves of every shape and size. From within came the sound of a woman singing in the wild elves’ tongue. Intrigued though Larajin was, exhaustion and the raw ache of her blistered feet made her wish that Doriantha had saved this introduction with whoever waited inside until morning.
Doriantha paused outside the tent and drummed her fingers against its taut leaf wall, then spoke a single word, “Rylith?”
It must have been the name of whoever was inside the tent, for the singing immediately stopped. Doriantha added something more, speaking quickly in the wild elves’ tongue. Larajin heard her own name spoken by the person inside, then Leifander’s. Doriantha shook her head and answered with an Elvish word Larajin understood: “No.”