Honor Among Orcs (Orc Saga) (22 page)

Trees loomed as nothing more than immense shadows, wider than even the largest huts among the Vidthursar, and the air was no worse than crisp with nightfall. The bearskin made her sweat, but she did not remove it. She did not want to feel the warmth of Vana’s hand seeping into her skin, though she did not quite know why.

“Asvi is eager to see you,” Hjalli said, and then he was before them again, guiding them up a curving staircase, grown from the bark of one of the overlarge trees and long smoothed by use. “We expected you before now.”

“The mountain would only carry us as far as the Vidthursar village and the orcs there had need of my counsel.” The Vala’s hand tightened on her shoulder, but Arianna only reached out to steady herself against the trunk of the tree, offering nothing.

“Asfarth’s people?”

“The same,” Vana said. “His line sits in Council among them, still.”

“Asvi still weeps for her father.”

“As we weep for all those who were taken from us,” Vana murmured.

“And how do you like our cousins, Princess?” Hjalli asked, sparing Arianna a brief glance.

“I would have liked to stay with them.” Hjalli’s back stiffened slightly, his head beginning to turn before he stopped himself and Arianna smiled. She had not thought to surprise him. “The Vid-Gythja was very kind to me.”

“You don’t find them hideous?”

“I find them beautiful.” Bolthorn especially had been beautiful, even scarred as he was. Her heart ached. More beautiful because of the scars, maybe. Because of the strength which survived so much pain. Until now. If they opened her chest, would they find a scar on her heart? No. That wound was too fresh. She would just bleed and bleed and bleed.

Hjalli looked fully at her then, not quite managing to hide his confusion. She pressed her lips together, her fingers trailing over the rough bark of the tree as they climbed. It was a strange reassurance to know the elves did not quite understand everything. Or perhaps it was only because she was human. Broken, now, without Bolthorn. She wasn’t sure she understood herself. Certainly she was not sure of the course Vanadis had set her upon. Or Vanadis, at all, despite how highly Bolthorn had spoken of her.

An arch of branches marked their arrival, and Hjalli held back a curtain of shimmering gauze. Vana’s hand slipped from her shoulder when they were inside, and she went at once into the arms of another elf, with golden hair gleaming like sunlight in a cascade reaching all the way to her waist.

“Asvi.” The Vala’s voice was so warm, it made every exchange Arianna had ever had with her suddenly unfeeling and cold. Vanadis pulled back, smoothing hair from the other woman’s face. “You are well?”

Asvi laughed, the sound like bells. Even in the simple warmth of the fire, she glowed. “You worry so, Mother. Of course I am well, and Hjalli too. What else would we be?”

Mother.
But if Asvi’s father was Vidthursar...

Then Asfarth had been Vana’s husband, once? Before he was orc, to be sure, for Asvi’s skin carried no hint of grey, and her green eyes matched her mother’s, without reflecting the firelight. And what of after he had become orc? Had Vanadis given Asfarth other children? Half-blood children? She must have, for his line to have continued among the Vidthursar.

“It is only that I see so little of you, in my mind you are still the child I left behind.” Vana turned then, the warmth still in her smile. “Arianna, this is my daughter Asvi. While you remain in Tiveden, she and Hjalli will see to your needs. They will teach you everything you’ll require.”

“If there is anything we might offer you, you need only ask,” Asvi said kindly. “I’m sure you’re anxious to find your bed, but I’ve hot water for a bath, if you wish.”

A bath. She nodded, too exhausted suddenly to speak. And she needed to be alone, to think and understand. To be heartsick in private.

Bolthorn, I tried. I tried to do as your brother asked. I tried to stay with the orcs. I tried to be strong, but I am not certain I have not done more harm than good.

She followed Asvi to the bathing room, curtained more privately than the entrance to this strange dwelling. Where the orcs had carved and hewn, the elves seemed to have taught the living tree to grow in the shapes and forms that pleased them. Even the tub, grown of the same rich redwood as the rooms themselves, was so beautiful she feared to touch it, but the water was warm and the grime and stone dust of forest and mountain floated away. If only it could wash her spirit free of the stain of blood as well.

There is only one way, now
, Bolthorn’s voice murmured in her thoughts.
Remember this.

Arianna sighed and closed her eyes. She would always remember him. How could she not? Even among the elves, there was nothing she wanted more than the sound of his voice, the whisper of his breath against her ear.

Remember Fossegrim, Arianna.

She sat up, sloshing the water in the tub, spilling it over the rim.

Fossegrim?

The river bottom sparkled with rainbow reflections, the unmuddied waters clear enough to see the quartz shining in its bed. It was amazing, really, how many places the quartz went, more reliable than the mountain passages, and more willing to change its course. Much like the river itself.

A splash and a gasp, and crisp autumn air, rich with fallen leaves and harvest fruits, filled the lungs.

An elf pushed back the wide brim of his hat and grunted, leaning over the side of his boat for a better view. His hair was white with age, his eyebrows bristling and overgrown, but the arm that reached into the water to haul up his net was strong enough. Same old elf, unchanged as ever, and as ever, unsurprised by what the river offered in place of fish.

“Not quite the catch I had in mind,” the elf said, his bright blue eyes wrinkling at the corners with a smile that did not reach his lips. “I suppose the Ancestors mean to see me sweat blood for the sins of my youth by sending the results on to haunt me.”

He sat back, studying his prize. His prize shrugged in return. The quartz may have been obliging, but traveling by such a road was exhausting work. The ache ran deep. Sleep, first. It had to be sleep first, to think straight.

The elf snorted and adjusted the brim of his hat against the glare of sun off the water. “Fishing was getting old anyway.”

Vanadis was gone before the sun rose, and Arianna, restless with too little sleep and the first true dawn she had seen in weeks, gathered the light wool cloak in place of the bearskin, and slipped outside as the first rays of sun spilled through the trees, turning everything to gold.

She sighed, turning her face to the nearest patch of sunlight, arms outstretched to drink it in like so many raindrops. Her gaze fell upon another set of stairs, grafted into the trunk and leading higher into the canopy. For once, she did not hesitate.

Up and up, winding around the tree, broken here or there by a single branch, reaching for its neighbor. She climbed until her legs ached, her neck craning back to see the top, one hand clutching the rough bark for balance, and then, at last, the leaves parted. A cloudless sky, the purples of night fading into brilliant blue, and the sun orange-red on the horizon, more beautiful than she had remembered possible.

A soft chuckle sent her heart racing, and she turned to see Hjalli, balanced on a branch behind her. He stepped off it, landing so lightly that the leaves beneath them did not so much as flutter. “Asvi was sure you would sleep well into the morning.”

“I haven’t seen the sun for weeks,” she admitted, turning back toward its light. She did not even need the cloak, it was so warm against her skin.

“Just think, if you had stayed with the orcs, it would have been weeks still before it rose again.”

She closed her eyes.
Trust no one else…
No one, but Fossegrim, Bolvarr had said. But it hadn’t been Bolvarr’s voice in her thoughts last night. Bolthorn, calling to her, reminding her, but how? Surely the elves would know if anyone would. Could he hear her, now?

“I’ve never understood it, myself,” Hjalli said. “The elves who leave all this beauty behind. And the orcs for company. How can you look upon them and see anything but ruin?”

“It never occurred to me, I suppose,” she said cautiously. “At first, I only thought he was a warrior of some kind. A knight, bruised and beaten, but a knight.”

“Are humans so hideous?”

She pressed her lips together, glaring at the sun. “As you see.”

“You are no orc, Princess. Not so beautiful as an elf, but nor are you broken and twisted, grunting and growling like a pig.”

Her jaw tightened. “Even an elf would grunt and growl under the whip. It does not make them animals!”

He laughed again. “I see. So it is pity that moves you so? I suppose that much is understandable. But for an elf to throw eternity away in exchange for such a life…”

“I would have given my life for Bolthorn,” she said, her hands fisted so tight her nails dug deep into her palms. “I would give it still, now. Not for pity, but for love. Surely even elves must understand that.”

She didn’t wait for his response. Hjalli had ruined even the sun for her with his company. Better to have stayed in darkness than listen to his venom, so prettily phrased, and she had lived long enough in her father’s court to know sneering when she heard it, no matter how polite the tone. She slipped past him to the stairs, and left him behind. Down and down, not pausing when she reached the arched branches of Asvi’s home. Surely the river could not be so hard to find, and Bolvarr had told her it must be Fossegrim, at the river.

She was beginning to understand why.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Tiveden was like nothing she had ever seen before. In darkness, the looming shadows had been imposing, but looking up, the branches might have been clouds. In daylight, she could see the trees for what they were, giants scraping against the sky, scraping even the clouds from the sky to hold their milk-white bounty within open arms.

A shower of needled leaves fell around her, and she struggled to see through the fog above. A branch swayed, leaving three others quivering still behind it, but whatever had leapt between them hid within the mist. On the other side of the mountains, she might have thought it only a squirrel or a bird, but here—she did not want to meet the animal that could shake the leaves from the branches of these trees.

She walked on and on, until the puddles of sunlight became ponds and burned away the fog. The air was still crisp with autumn but not cold, and she had no need again for her cloak. Did the elves even have true winter in Tiveden? She would learn soon enough, she supposed, if she stayed.

But where else would she go? The Vidthursar would not keep her, though now she understood more clearly why.
Asfarth’s people.
Vana’s own blood, perhaps, though Asfarth must be long dead now. Bolthorn had told her that Vanadis had taught the orcs to love again, and it all made that much more sense if she’d given Asfarth another child in the process.

Arianna had no trouble imagining her shock at the sight of her baby, judging by Hjalli’s opinions. Shocked enough to swear herself to the service of the Ancestors as a Vala, it seemed. But was the Gothi some great-grandson, bound to her? How much more powerful the voice of the Ancestors, when they still lived and breathed in your ear, no matter how far removed and thinned by marriage.

But what of the Hrimthursar? She had barely survived half a day so high on the mountain. How had Bolthorn truly hoped to keep her warm? She flushed at the obvious answer. The same way he had kept her warm in the cave behind the waterfall, in his arms, skin to skin if need be, drinking in his heat like sunlight, no matter how bitter cold the storm.

But Bolthorn was gone, and though his brother wished her to remain among the orcs, he had made it clear it was not safe to bring her back up the mountain in winter.

She paused, her path blocked by a fallen tree taller than even a dragon could possibly be long. Better if she had stayed with Hjalli long enough to look for the river before she had fled, or at least asked the proper direction. She followed the fallen trunk, hoping for some path she might climb over or around it. No, she decided at once. She did not want to ask. Not Hjalli, at least, or even Asvi. It was clear enough by now Vanadis had no intention of simply allowing her to return to the orcs, and Vana was no fool not to enlist her daughter’s help.

And if she could stop a war, prevent the deaths of more orcs, did she not owe that much to Bolthorn? Even if it meant a harder life for their child? A life without mother or father. Would Bolthorn want their child raised an orphan in exchange for peace for his people? She could see it no other way, though it was clear Vanadis had not wanted even to grant her child that much. But her people would think the baby some kind of monster, and she the consort of an evil power, cursed by the Ancestors. All the more so, if she returned to them with magic. Perhaps Vana meant it to be proof of her strength somehow, another means of convincing her people they must follow her, believe in her. Obey, or the monsters will come for your women, too?

The thought made her stomach twist into knots. There would be no peace, then. Not between humans and orcs. Only fear and then what? When the first of them rose up against her, and no monsters boiled up from the earth, what would come after that? If whatever magic the elves gave her was not strong enough, they would burn her to the stake, and her demon-child with her. But after all the trouble Vanadis had gone through to save her, she could not want to send her back only to die.

A tunnel had been wormed beneath the fallen tree, the earth packed hard as stone with use. She wrinkled her nose at the size of it, but dropped to her knees and crawled all the same. Dank and uncomfortable and something ran across her fingers. She bit back a shriek, pausing for a moment to breathe. Only a mouse, or perhaps some sort of centipede. Nothing worse, surely, and there was daylight streaming down from the other end. She crawled out, suppressing a shudder, and brushed the dirt from her skirt and hands.

Another shower of leaves fell into her hair, and this time, she could have sworn she heard a laugh. Her face flushed, but Arianna refused to look up. Let them laugh, whoever they were. If Hjalli was an example of his race, she didn’t want their good opinion, nor would she keep it once they knew why she had come so far.

She pushed through an overtall bush, thorns pricking her skin and catching in her hair, and then stopped abruptly on the other side, forgetting her anger altogether.

Arianna had found the river at last.

The water spilled slow and easy over the stone in a short fall, no higher than her hip, but above and beyond there was another fall, slightly larger, before the river curved back into the trees. She followed the current, glancing back once at the gentle cascade, so shallow she could see the layers of stone beneath, worn at different rates to break the water even further as it fell. Shallow and slow, the river bed matched the forest trees for size, bank to bank at least as wide as the immense redwoods were thick at this lazy bend, and the water was clear as glass, pieces of granite and quartz winking from the bottom in the sunlight. But finding the river itself in no way suggested she had located Fossegrim, whoever he was. And how she would know him if she did, without making it painfully obvious who she searched for, she was still uncertain.

Fish darted in the calmer waters, popping up to catch bugs off the surface in gulps, and turtles hunched in their shells, diving back into the shelter of the river as she passed. Bolthorn had left her with the impression that elves could charm animals, and she wondered for a moment if that was how they fished as well, talking salmon and trout into nets and traps. An unsettling thought when applied to her own arrival and the Vidthursar council. Maybe it hadn’t only been blood ties that had won Vanadis the right to Arianna’s future, after all. But charming people couldn’t be the same, and after what the orcs had suffered, surely Vanadis of all people would never insult them so utterly by trying.

She shook her head and continued on, following the widening river. One tree wide, then two, then three, with a sliver of island in the middle. The water began to pick up speed, the splash of fish and animals replaced with a dull roar farther off. Another water fall, and larger than the first. She hesitated at the edge of the drop, leaning carefully over, and breathing a sigh of relief when she saw stairs carved into the stone and earth. She kept her eyes on the steps, one hand on the rock at all times as she climbed down. The wet, mossy surface did not offer much in the way of comfort, but she willed herself not to tremble, not to think of her mother on the wall…

At the bottom of the stairs, she could breathe again, and see the beauty of the land without fear. The water was much deeper below, and once it stopped foaming from the fall, just as clear, with the same flashes of light from its depths. The immense redwoods gave way on the banks to smaller forms of greenery. Slender saplings with bare limbs, more like what she had seen during her stay with the Vidthursar, and a small dock reached out into the water, half hidden.

A rowboat rocked gently, drawn up and tied to the stone arm, redirecting the faster streams of water around its charge. Nets and poles lay in the bottom of the boat as if waiting or forgotten, but her first look of the shore gave her no sign of any hut or even a tree house like Asvi’s, just stone and earth and dead leaves. It was her second glance that found the worn ground, scattered over with needles and half-crumbled leaves. A path which she followed, wishing she had Bolthorn’s gift for making no sound.

Set back beneath the cover of the larger trees she saw the door built into a knot of roots and the not quite hill of what might once have been a fallen redwood tree. She bit her lip, wondering if she ought to knock, but the sway of branches overhead gave her pause. What if it was Hjalli, following her, spying for Asvi and Vanadis?

Well. If she didn’t ask for Fossegrim, they wouldn’t know she had been sent to find him. The sun was high, and she hadn’t eaten that morning, nor since. It would not be so strange to ask for hospitality, having lost herself in the woods.

Her stomach lurched as she looked back toward the river. Even if she followed it back to where she started, she’d never find her way to Asvi’s through the forest now, anyway. Certainly not by nightfall without a guide. In the depth of the trees, the towering redwoods all looked the same to her eyes. She wasn’t even all that sure which direction she’d come from anymore.

“Well?” a rough voice called, startling her. An elf with white hair stood inside the door, leaning heavily on a stick. “Are you just going to stand there in my yard, or have the courtesy to introduce yourself?”

He turned his back on her grumbling something about strays and Ancestors, leaving the door wide. If he wasn’t Fossegrim, at least he was kind enough to offer, and it was much better than trying to find her way back. Having to share a meal with Hjalli would have only made the food turn sour in her stomach.

She brushed the dirt from her hands, shook the worst of the leaves from her skirt, and followed him inside.

“Hungry?” he asked, not so much as glancing over his shoulder. “Shut the door behind you. The fool trees have ears, eh?” He raised his voice and leaned toward an open shutter. “You think I didn’t hear you, Hjalli? Get off my roof, boy!”

A patter of needles rained down and the old elf grunted, slamming the shutter closed. Arianna pulled the door shut more quietly, but not less firmly.

“That witch has spies everywhere, coming and going as she pleases in spite of her exile. Not that I should complain, and I wouldn’t if it were only that.” He dropped into a chair, the wood smooth and gleaming with age, and rested his stick near at hand. “Well, come in girl. I should have thought you’d take a few more days to find me, if you knew to come at all. Or did the shine of Tiveden and the beauty of the elves wear off before you got here?”

“It was nice to see the sun rise, at least.” But she hesitated still at the door. It wasn’t that she was shy so much as she wasn’t sure where he meant her to go. The room was cluttered with nets and rods, fish hung to dry from the ceiling, and books and scrolls and more books covering every surface, even the other chairs. She stepped forward, then back quickly when something cracked under her boot. Some sort of tackle, maybe. A curtain hung over a doorway farther back. Her fingers twitched and she smoothed her skirts.

“Ah,” he said. “Forgive me, of course, I’m not used to having company these days. Just clear a space. Not as though I won’t be needing it. Where one comes, the other is sure to follow just as soon as that mother of theirs finds out, and how I’m meant to keep them tucked out of sight the Ancestors only know.”

“Oh.” She pushed a net out of the way with her foot and began to stack the books neatly on a low table, rather than in the chair beside it. Fine leather volumes, musty with age and soft with wear. The house smelled like the king’s library, not that she’d spent all that much time inside it. As a hiding place it had been far too exposed and she’d only been taught how to read and write so she could spy on her future husband, whoever he was, and send reports back to the king, when the time came. To incriminate herself, most likely. Never for pleasure. But she didn’t recognize the script on the spines, anyway. Elvish, perhaps. Of course it would be Elvish.

“Oh, she says. Is that all?”

She looked up at the gruffness in his voice. His eyes crinkled at the corners and his lips twitched around the pipe in his mouth. She’d never seen anyone with eyes so deep a blue, and so bright. It wasn’t just the limp that made her wonder how old he was, but the way he looked at her, so steady and patient, as if he had eternity ahead and behind.