Page 34 of Lake of Sorrow
“Because your voice is soothing. You should be honored that it lulled me so.”
“There was snoring.”
“A gentleman doesn’t point out if a woman makes noise in her sleep.”
“Once, there was drooling.”
Kaylina stuck her tongue out at him.
“To answer your question, yes, it’s one of several songs that I hum. The others are more calming—one is a lullaby. My brother’s tale is haunting, though parts are up-lifting. As you might have caught in between snores, it speaks of what the lake saw over the millennia of its existence, especially witnessing the history of man. The triumph part tells of when men first banded together to carve out a place for themselves against the Kar’ruk and the great predators that dominated the fertile coastal lands.” Vlerion turned slow circles, peering into the distant banks and surrounding forests for enemies as he spoke. “Our ancestors overcame great odds by merging their tribes and learning from each other. But later, once their enemies were at bay, they turned on each other. As you may know from your history books, the kingdom has risen and fallen numerous times. When men squabbled among men, all that they’d achieved disintegrated into chaos until outside threats imposed themselves, forcing humans to work together again. The song speaks of the cycles and of how it seems impossible for our kind to ever be content and achieve lasting peace among ourselves.”
Kaylina nodded, having gotten the gist from the lyrics. She hadn’t been entirely asleep.
“It is haunting,” she agreed. Or maybe depressing was the word. “I’m surprised it brings you calm when the beast encroaches.”
“It’s not so much because of the history or the lyrics but because my brother wrote it, and it has meaning to me. And it’s a lesson. On many topics. I’ll play it on the violin for you when we return to ranger headquarters so you can get more of a feel for the beauty of it.” Vlerion hesitated. “When it’s safe for you to return with me.”
Kaylina smiled at the thought of him playing, but, in a moment of fatigue-induced defeat, she wondered if it would ever be safe for her to return to the barracks with him. Even if she cleared her name, the beast remained a threat. Her failure to change the plant at the castle filled her with anxiety about lifting his curse. She’d been naive to think she could do what all the men in his family, generations of his ancestors, had researched and failed to do.
“I suppose if I’d thought about it,” Vlerion mused, looking toward the lake again, “I would have known the vegetation and mountains in the painting were local, not from a lake a thousand miles to the south, but I didn’t contemplate it deeply. I assumed it was a fictional depiction of the real Lake of Sorrow and Triumph.”
Movement at the corner of Kaylina’s eye made her spin, her hand dropping to her sling. No breeze stirred, but a vine twitched farther inland, dangling not from a branch but a large rectangular rock. There were numerous slabs of rock jumbled about the area, barely discernible due to moss and vines smothering them.
“Are those natural?” she wondered.
Vlerion followed her gaze. “There are Daygarii ruins in the preserve. Those might be some of them.”
“Did any of your ancestors ever visit them?”
The vine twitched again.
Vlerion squinted at it. “I cannot know all of my ancestors’ actions, but, as I said before, the rangers are not welcome in the preserve, so I’ve never come here. I doubt my brother did either.”
“Maybe there are clues in the ruins. Information the druids left behind that might share how to lift curses.” The thought pushed aside Kaylina’s earlier feeling of defeat and rekindled hope. “Did they have a written language?”
“I don’t know. A lot of humanity’s previous knowledge about the Daygarii has been forgotten. Some say the druids, before leaving our world, destroyed our records pertaining to their kind. The taybarri elders would be the ones to ask, as their people have long lives and genetic memories that can’t be destroyed except in death. The elders, however, only appear and communicate with men when they wish to do so. People who seek them out usually only find vacated tunnels and lairs.”
Kaylina wished she’d brought Frayvar instead of asking him to research newspapers in the city. Maybe if she found hieroglyphs or something else the druids had left behind, she could draw pictures to show him later. Except she hadn’t brought any paper.
“I’m going to take a look.” If she found something, they could come back later.
She’d only taken two steps before Vlerion gripped her shoulder to stop her.
“Even those who aren’t cursed are wise to avoid druid ruins. They did not like humanity.” He pointed toward the still-twitching vine.
“Don’t you think it’s worth the risk of looking if it could help you?” Kaylina admitted it was unlikely anything applicable to his curse could be found in a jumble of rocks, but if she could learn more in general about the ancient druids, might it not help her discover a solution for him?
“No,” Vlerion stated.
“No?”
“No.”
“But imagine…” Kaylina spread her arms, brushing off Vlerion’s grip, as if she were about to describe one of her visions about the success of her meadery. Instead of goblets of honey wine, she saw the druids. Oh, they were nebulous since she didn’t know what they’d looked like, but they moved about on the banks in a time when these ruins had been a seat of civilization for them, a place where they lived near and interacted with the wildness. “If this was a home for them, they might have kept records of what they saw and did, and who they were as a people. Some could remain. There could be libraries hidden here, libraries full of knowledge, and maybe ancient books all about curses—and how to lift them.”
“In that jumble of mossy rocks, a library.”
“Sure, why not?”