Harbingers: A Novel of Lasniniar

Chapter Six

Chapter Six

Waking Nightmare

Iarion watched as Barlo stood over Silvaranwyn. The elf woman was seated with her back resting against the enormous tree that housed the Quenya, her eyes closed. Barlo gave Iarion a backward glance over his shoulder. In the shifting light of the Quenya, his brown eyes glinted violet. He turned back toward Silvaranwyn without speaking. His sturdy arms slowly rose above his head, his fingers gripping the haft of his ax. Silvaranwyn remained motionless, unaware of the doom that awaited her.

Iarion tried to call out to her, but his voice stuck in his throat. He tried to throw himself at Barlo to tackle the dwarf, but his body remained frozen in place. An endless scream echoed in his mind...

“Iarion!”

Iarion gasped as a familiar hand gripped his shoulder and shook him. His golden-flecked sapphire eyes flew open. He nearly shouted as he saw Barlo looming over him with a concerned frown.

“Are you all right?” Barlo asked. “You were muttering in your sleep.”

Iarion blinked. “I was, ah, having a bad dream.”

He rose into a seated position in his bedroll. The peaked canvas roof of Barlo’s tent above him reminded him where he was.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” Barlo pressed. He stroked his long, brown beard as he took in his friend’s appearance. “No offense, but you look pretty awful.”

Iarion ran his fingers through his tangled, white braids. He gave Barlo a rueful look. “Can you blame me? Silvaranwyn is dead, and now we’re on the run.”

Barlo’s expression turned sober. “I know.” He sighed. “Everything’s gone horribly wrong. But we need to keep going. We can’t let any of the elves catch us, or I’m done for. And the Unborn still want the elves to hand you over. If we can find a place to hole up for a while, maybe we can figure out this mess.”

Iarion didn’t answer. They had gone over this before. There was nothing more to say. Silvaranwyn’s death was terrible, but Iarion couldn’t stand by and let his people kill Barlo in turn, never mind what they would do to him.

He climbed to his feet and packed his things. He didn’t even bother to eat anything. He had been in a numb fog since the night he and Barlo had returned to Lasniniar from Felara’s realm beyond the Void.

Barlo took down the tent and soon they were on their way again, trekking eastward across the featureless grassland of the Adar Daran with Melaquenya falling into the distance behind them. The early spring breeze was cool against Iarion’s skin. He allowed Barlo to steer their course, trailing after him at a much slower walk than his usual pace. It didn’t much matter to him where they went. His haunted memory of Silvaranwyn’s broken form would follow him.

The details of the nightmare Iarion had woken him from nagged at him. According to Barlo, Silvaranwyn had come out of her communion with the Quenya and lashed out at him with its magic in her confusion at seeing him standing before her, alive. Barlo had no choice but to defend himself.

The dwarf was Iarion’s closest friend. Iarion had arrived in the glade only moments after Silvaranwyn had fallen. He had no reason to doubt Barlo’s words. But try as he might, he couldn’t seem to banish the mental image of Barlo cutting Silvaranwyn down in an unprovoked attack. He shook his head to himself as he walked, the tall blades of grass rustling faintly against his legs.

I must be in shock...

He had gone through quite a bit over the past several days. First, he had been unwittingly enchanted by Felara to believe Barlo had never been reborn after the dwarf had died facing the Khashada. Then, with the help of Barlo’s wildcat companion, Golhura, he had learned from the ghost of Barlo’s dead wife, Narilga, that he was still alive and somewhere beyond the realm of Lasniniar. It hadn’t taken him long to figure out that Felara was to blame. He had long considered the Unborn woman a friend, but he knew she was slightly obsessive where he was concerned.

He had used the boon the cat goddess Bastet had granted him to travel to the Void, and found his way to Felara’s Realm. Felara had taken Barlo there and used her magic to make him forget everything about himself and where he had come from. Once Iarion finally found him, it had taken some fast talking to get him to remember.

I thought our problems were finally over...

Iarion had thought that Felara had taken Barlo and enchanted everyone to believe he was dead as part of a mad ploy to eliminate the person who was closest to him. Lodariel was his mate, and Iarion loved her dearly, but he shared no other bond with her. The anchor bond that lay between him and Barlo had been forged over a series of lifetimes together. Perhaps with Barlo out of the way, Felara thought she could get closer to Iarion.

And like a fool, I fell right into her trap.

With both Iarion and Barlo trapped inside her realm, Felara revealed this had been her plan all along. Barlo had been the bait to lure Iarion into her grasp. She claimed she only wanted to protect him from the rest of the Unborn, who sought to kill him. And perhaps that was true. But Iarion wasn’t about to spend the rest of his days in some fairyland while his mate, friends, and the rest of the Free Races of Lasniniar fought and died in a war against the Unborn that had started over him.

It had taken some creative thinking, but with the help of one of Felara’s own subjects—a flying horse named Telanadil—he and Barlo had escaped and returned to Lasniniar. They were finally home.

And then Barlo had killed Silvaranwyn.

It seemed impossible. Part of him kept hoping this was some kind of terrible dream, and he would wake up in his hut with Lodariel. Nothing had felt right since they had returned. His own sisters had turned against him when they found him in Melaquenya. It felt as if the entire world had gone mad.

“You’re still blocking your link with Eransinta?” Barlo asked, jarring Iarion from his thoughts.

“Yes,” Iarion said. “I don’t want anyone finding us any more than you do.”

He had always tried to keep a bit of distance between himself and his mother. Yes, they had been twins in one of his previous lives, but Eransinta had a tendency for clinginess. His death in his incarnation as her brother had driven her mad. When he had been reborn as her son, she had no intention of losing him again. Meanwhile, Iarion had lived an entire lifetime of several millennia without a connection to her or the Quenya. He was used to wandering unfettered. Blocking her out now was no difficulty.

Thinking about his mother made him suddenly remember a previous journey he and Barlo had made—the first his mother had allowed beyond the borders of Melaquenya in his new life as her son.

“Do you remember that terrible first trip you took me on?” he asked Barlo. “We were supposed to be going to Dwarvenhome, but then we got cut off by those ogres.”

Barlo snorted as he waded through the grass. “I’ve been trying to forget. You never told your mother about what happened, did you? She’d skin me alive.”

Iarion’s lips twitched. “You mean for that leaky, moth-eaten tent you had us sleep in in the middle of a storm, or for offering food that was unfit for consumption?”

“Dwarven baking is an acquired taste,” Barlo huffed. “Besides, I worked really hard on that pie.”

Iarion paused midstride with a frown. Barlo turned back to look at him.

“What?” The dwarf c****d his head with a frown.

Iarion opened his mouth to say something, and shook his head. “Nothing.” He continued walking. “I’m just trying to wrap my head around the idea that anyone would want to eat something that tasted that bad, and make you explode from both ends. Must be a dwarf thing.”

“We are known for our hardy constitutions.”

Iarion’s sluggish thoughts churned. Why had Barlo said ‘pie’ when it had been a cake? Barlo had been trying to make something for Narilga’s birthday and had wanted to test it out first—a good call on his part. Iarion always used any opportunity he could to tease him about it. It seemed unlikely that Barlo would have forgotten.

It’s an easy enough mistake to make, I suppose...

“Barlo, where are we going?” he asked for the first time since they had fled the forest. “We seem to be headed in the same direction as the seaside caves those ogres lived in.”

“That’s right,” Barlo said. Iarion shot him a startled look. “Well, we can’t exactly go to Dwarvenhome, can we? Everyone there thinks I’m dead, and someone might want to hand you over to the Unborn—and that’s assuming they haven’t already heard the news about Silvaranwyn. Ogres are the least of our problems. Besides, some of those caves were empty.”

“I suppose that’s what I get for leaving a dwarf in charge,” Iarion said with a sigh. As Barlo’s friend, he had spent more time in caves than most elves—Earth Elves aside, of course—but that didn’t mean he enjoyed it. “You know, it’s strange Felara hasn’t shown up yet. You’d think she would have noticed we’ve left her realm by now.”

“Maybe she’s busy with other things,” Barlo said with a shrug. “She seemed pretty confident we wouldn’t be able to leave.”

“So you’re not worried?” Iarion asked with a note of surprise. Barlo was hardly Felara’s biggest fan. Even before his abduction, he had spoken out against her to Iarion several times.

“What’s the point in worrying about it? Like I said, we have enough on our plate right now without borrowing more trouble.”

On the one hand, Barlo’s words were the soul of practicality—a dwarven trait that Iarion had always admired. But on the other hand...

Barlo’s one of the most suspicious people I know. How can he not be worried?

Iarion knew he might be overthinking things. Nothing seemed clear or straightforward anymore. Barlo might be his best friend, but ever since Iarion had found him standing over Silvaranwyn with his ax in his hand, he almost felt like a stranger. Iarion looked down at the grass surrounding them in an attempt to spot Golhura so he could take comfort in the wildcat’s solid presence.

Golhura was nowhere to be seen. The only movement in the grass was from his and Barlo’s passage.

Iarion cast his thoughts back in an attempt to remember the last time he had seen Golhura and failed.

“Barlo, where is Golhura?”

“Oh, she’s probably gone off to hunt,” Barlo said with a wave of dismissal. “I’m sure she’ll catch up with us later.”

Iarion’s brow furrowed. Golhura was an expert tracker. If she had gone off to hunt, like Barlo said, she would be able to find them again. But the wildcat’s absence triggered a surge of uneasiness deep in the pit of his stomach. He did his best to apply reason to the situation.

Golhura was more than capable of taking care of herself. Besides, there had been no sign of a struggle around their campsite. The only way the wildcat would have left them would have been of her own volition. The realization startled a more disturbing question from Iarion’s swirling thoughts.

Why would Golhura leave?