by C. E. Murphy
Lara, shrill, cried, “Then why doesn’t he stop?” and Aerin gave her a hard smile.
“Because he must press on until he’s certain I’m dead. He’ll have no excuse to invade otherwise.”
“He’d kill you for the chance to invade?” Lara whispered, suddenly numb. She had simply not considered the possibility, but Aerin showed no surprise as she looked to Dafydd.
“Pass me quickly, Dafydd. Go now.”
Dafydd gave one grim nod and caught Lara’s right arm. Pain staggered her, a guttural cry tormenting the air, and he released her again. Lara dropped to her knees, catching herself with her left hand, but jarring her body hard enough to shoot sickness through her. Her elbow collapsed, bones and muscles useless as water, and she put her forehead against the floor, unable to move further.
“I thought you said you were all right!”
“I said I’d live.” The tiniest whisper of humor went through the correction, though it did nothing to push back waves of pain. Concentrating on a different worry helped: “Dafydd, what’s Aerin’s element? How can she stop the ice?”
“Stone.” Worry flattened his voice. “Stone endures. Cold can be drawn into its center.”
Lara lifted her head the few inches she could manage, face tight with horror. “Stone cracks, Dafydd.”
“Hence the necessity for your escape to come sooner rather than later.” Aerin managed a degree of amusement, though the edges of her voice broke apart. The air around her was thick with slush now, swirling against her in grasping patterns. Ice built up around her feet, working to encase her shins, but even as she worked to draw it in, it pooled out, encroaching on the chamber floor. Every breath Lara drew was colder, a welcome relief in subduing her throbbing shoulder, but increasingly dangerous in terms of their survival. “You saved my life, Truthseeker. Let me save yours.”
“I didn’t save it so you could kill yourself an hour later!” Lara made it back to her knees, though she cradled her right arm. Letting it dangle hurt too much. She’d thought when she faced the nightwings that she was becoming a warrior, but a warrior would have to face pain better than she could.
“I told you.” Aerin smiled again, ice cracking around her mouth. “The Drowned Lands are deadly to the Seelie. I think it was never my fate to leave them.”
“Enough.” Warmth rushed the chamber. More than warmth: genuine heat swept from behind Lara toward the entrance. It splashed against Aerin in a visible wave, steam hissing and the sharp scent of warmed metal billowing off her. Ice turned to drizzles, and in seconds she stood in a pool of water. Violent pops echoed around the room, like glaciers calving, and Aerin shuddered from the bone outward. Her armor shattered, blackened fragments falling to the stone floor in a rain of metallic music. She stood among them, not daring to move for long moments before she, like Dafydd and Lara, looked at their savior.
A second man had risen from the biers, Emyr’s twin in everything but coloring. His sharp features were the same, dark gold skin lying so taut over bone that Lara was reminded, uncharitably, of face-lifts gone wrong. But there was more expression in this man’s face than surgery would allow. His thin lips curled with contempt, nostrils flaring as if the air he breathed wasn’t quite good enough for him. His gaze flickered across all three of them, distaste finally settling in fine lines around his eyes and mouth as he reached up to tie long straight dark hair back in a knot. “Emyr’s whelp, a mortal trinket, and a tainted warrior. What have I bothered to save, and at what cost? You.” He snapped at Dafydd, then pointed at the floor in front of him, commanding Dafydd forward. “Tell me what has come to pass.”
Dafydd, to Lara’s private horror, looked at her. Hafgan—because she had no doubt that of the dozen sleepers in the chamber, the arrogant Unseelie who had awakened was indeed their king—made his expression long with incredulity. Obviously he’d concluded Dafydd was the only one capable of relating a tale, or possibly was the only one worthy of a king’s attention.
Lara had never been especially contrary, but Hafgan’s readiness to dismiss her awakened enough affronted amusement to drown her burst of horror. She put her left hand in Dafydd’s and let him help her to her feet, not caring that it took several seconds to steady herself from her shoulder’s pounding. “I’m the reason you’re awake, not Dafydd.”
She might have said a hamster or a goldfish had roused him, from the Unseelie king’s disbelieving sneer. “Emyr and no other is responsible. There are no healers here, and passion is the only other tool that can waken a sleeper. Where is he?”
Lara looked over her shoulder at Aerin, who hadn’t yet moved from the circle of fragmented metal. She shook her head at Lara’s querying eyebrow, and Lara turned back to Hafgan. “Probably preparing to destroy your hidden city.”
Hafgan took such a quick step forward Lara didn’t realize he was within striking range until Dafydd inserted himself between them. “Hear her out, majesty. She is a truthseeker.”
And mortal, Lara wanted to add, and easily annoyed by elfin highhandedness. She’d worked at a bespoke tailoring shop in Boston, where suits were made without patterns, custom-fit to those men and women who could afford them. Many of them had been as autocratic as the elfin kings were, but none of them irritated her so much. Maybe it was the power she wielded in the Barrow-lands; maybe, despite its unfamiliarity, she felt it garnered her some respect.
Mostly, though, at home, she was paid to deal politely with the powerful and pompous. She was in the Barrow-lands as a favor to Dafydd, and had vastly less reason to ignore bad manners. They’d wanted her help, not the other way around. “That was Emyr’s scrying spell you just melted. He was trying to talk to Aerin to make sure we were all still alive, but it went wrong. We all owe you our thanks for stopping it.”
“Mine especially,” Aerin muttered. Lara swallowed laughter, unreasonably pleased that Aerin was as ungracious as she.
Hafgan looked between them and at Dafydd before settling on Lara again. She had the impression he’d chosen his battle by saying, “I have never heard of a scrying spell ‘going wrong.’ ”
“Have you ever tried working one underwater?” Lara winced at even asking, but there was no corresponding flex in the air, no loosening of the spell that let them breathe and speak.
Hafgan glowered at her. “I have never worked one at all, not such as Emyr does. It is not in my element.”
“Then trust me: it went wrong. The Drowned Lands corrupt magic, maybe even incoming magic.” Lara liked that idea more than the thought that Emyr might sacrifice Aerin to his war, but there was equal truth in both possibilities. “And—”
And the staff she carried was probably making it worse. Lara caught those words behind her teeth, looking for something else to say instead. “And that’s why I’m here. Ioan, your successor, asked me to find out the truth of Annwn’s past. Emyr’s memory is unreliable, even when he tries to remember. I need both of you to reconstruct the histories.”
“Why?”
“Because if Ioan’s right, if the Seelie did choose to drown these lands, then your people have been treated appallingly, and I want to try to set it right.”
“And if we brought it on ourselves, arbiter? What then? Will you leave us in our drowned home without another care?” Hafgan focused beyond her. On Aerin, Lara thought for an instant, but he said, “Will you use that staff to finish what was begun, if it is all our own fault?”
“The thought hadn’t even occurred to me. No. Trying to fix what’s wrong isn’t contingent on one side being evil and the other being heroes. The Barrow-lands are dying, and maybe I can help. That’s enough by itself.”
“Then what does the history matter?”
Lara quirked an eyebrow. “I just want to know the truth.”
Hafgan gave Dafydd a sour look. “There, whelp. There’s the reason we killed them all.”
Lara’s gut clenched, breath gone like she’d taken a hit. Her shoulder throbbed once, but even that damage seemed limited compared to the shock bubblin
g through her mind. “Killed them?”
“And every line that carried the blood. It took time.” Hafgan smiled, narrow and sharp. “But we never thought to trace the talent in mortal lives. Perhaps I’ll rectify the error.”
“We?” Lara whispered, then shook her head, shock melting to angry confidence. “You wouldn’t stand a chance, hunting in my world. It’s too full of iron and weapons you wouldn’t recognize. Don’t threaten me, Hafgan. I already have the worldbreaking staff.”
Dafydd shifted, a small action that spoke of surprise, and only then did Lara hear her words as the threat they were. Hafgan’s face twitched, subtle admiration and acknowledgment of her challenge visible in the change. “The old ones were not like you. They would not dream of threatening, nor would they act on the threat if it were made. It would lack …”—he shifted his head forward, offering a reptilian intimacy—“sophistication.”
Prickles ran over Lara’s neck, a chill that wanted her to respond. To continue baiting the Unseelie king until something erupted, something dangerous and unstoppable. That was the staff again, eager for destruction, and Lara gritted her teeth against the impulse. “You seem to remember the old days a lot more clearly than anyone else.”
Hafgan waved idle fingers toward his bier. “The long sleep clears the mind. But I will not answer your questions, Truthseeker. Not here, not now. Let me rejoin the world and see my people, see my brother king, before we take that journey.”
Certainty pounded through Lara. She could force the issue, compel the king to answer; her power would stretch that far. But it would also make an enemy of one inclined that way already, and that wasn’t, as of yet, necessary. She glanced at Dafydd, who nodded almost invisibly. Then, trying to loosen her jaw, she looked back at Hafgan and offered a short bow, the best she was able to do. “Of course. Your majesty, you’re the only one of Unseelie blood among us. My understanding is that the Drowned Lands will welcome you more readily than it has us. We would be grateful if you would lead us out safely.”
“Grateful,” Hafgan murmured. “Not indebted? You choose your words wisely, Truthseeker.”
“I always have.” A flash of memory came to her: her first date with Dafydd, when she’d pedantically and thoroughly dissected his word choices for accuracy. Kelly called her a walking dictionary for the game, but Lara enjoyed it. Carefully selecting words had lent her a small sense of control over truth that was difficult to otherwise achieve, in a world of white lies and polite fictions. Smiling, she put the memory aside to focus on the Unseelie monarch again. “Will you lead us out?”
He said, “I will,” with unexpected grace, leaving Lara feeling as though she’d participated in a ritual without realizing it. Beside her, Dafydd relaxed incrementally, and she resisted the impulse to see if Aerin had done the same.
A moment later, as Lara fell into step behind Hafgan, it was obvious the Seelie woman had not. She waited for both royals and Lara to pass and took up the rear, despite the destruction of her sword and armor. Her shoulders were high and tension-ridden, and the look she gave Lara was full of warning. Discomfited, Lara nodded without being certain of what she was agreeing to. Caution, at the very least, though there’d been no lie in Hafgan’s voice.
Moreover, the city’s black glow had faded when they exited the healing chambers. It was once again as Llyr had granted Lara the ability to see it: in ruins, but no longer buried in sand, no longer worn by tide and saltwater. Brilliant color ran through the garden’s coral-covered walls, and the ceaseless sound of wind and sea rushed through the crevasses, gentle and relaxing.
Creating, perhaps, a false sense of security. Even without Aerin’s obvious stress, Hafgan’s blunt words hung in Lara’s mind: There’s the reason we killed them all. Emyr, Aerin, and others who had spoken of it had said the truthseeking talent, always rare, had died out. Assassination was certainly a way of dying out, though not usually what was implied by the phrase. For a moment Lara felt like the last dodo, only with the cognitive capability of understanding what had happened to her brethren. It made her want to run, to draw a protective shell around herself, but there was nowhere to run, not in the heart of the drowned city. Not when she was, for all intents and purposes, entirely at Hafgan’s mercy. Llyr had come to her twice. She didn’t expect him a third time.
The thought lost its tunefulness, unexpected sour notes crawling in. Glad for a mental occupation beyond worrying about assassination, Lara chased the falsehood down, breaking the idea into component parts. Llyr had come to her twice: truth. She didn’t expect him a third time: wavering truth. She didn’t expect him to rescue her a third time: truth. Curious, she pushed the concepts forward, looking for the boundaries of her truth-knowing ability. She expected to see him again: true. When this was over? True, the music of it startling with its strength. She slowed, trying to refine it further. When she was successful? Indifferent song, not well-played, not passionate in either direction, true or false. When she failed? The same unopinionated music, unable to offer assurance either way.
A low worried laugh broke loose. At least she would survive what was coming, if she could expect to see Llyr when it was over.
The ill-made music came again, promising nothing.
Leaving the sea wrenched water from Lara’s lungs the same way entering it had. Aerin, too, collapsed to hands and knees, choking and spitting up saltwater, until they lay curled next to one another, trembling with exhaustion. Water dripped over Lara’s face when she moved, her clothes and hair laden with it, and Aerin had fared no better. Dafydd, though, was dry and comfortable as he crouched over them, hands spread wide in useless distress. Hafgan, as unscathed by the ocean as Dafydd, stalked up the beach, ignoring them in favor of looking over the sheltered cove.
The sun had long since set, judging from the beach’s coldness and the dark of the horizon. Stars and a crescent moon’s light glimmered overhead, just enough to cast faint shadows of dark on dark. Hafgan became a sculpted piece of night when he stopped at the beach’s edge, the wind barely enough to stir his hair.
He could hear them; could almost certainly hear them, but Lara fumbled for Dafydd anyway, weariness making her clumsy. “ ‘Why we killed them all’?”
He caught her hand, his grip strong and certain. Faint moonlight was far kinder to him than to Hafgan: he still looked vivacious, gold threads in his hair glinting silver under the night sky. “I don’t even know who ‘we’ are, Lara, much less if it’s—” He broke off, dismay creasing his eyes. “Much less if it’s true. But it is.” At her nod, his shoulders dropped. “I know nothing of it. Maybe it was an Unseelie vendetta, for the arbiters of justice allowing their lands to drown.”
“You believe that’s what happened?”
Dafydd shrugged. “All I know is the seas rose, Lara. A displaced people might find anyone to release their anger on.”
That was true enough in her own world, too. Lara released Dafydd’s hand, coiling up on herself again. Her chest ached, heavy with water, and a deep breath produced rattling coughs that took her breath. When she could move again, she sat on her heels and wheezed, “Can you work a scrying spell? We need to talk to your father.”
He turned his palms up, lightning dancing in them and casting sharp shadows against his face. “My element isn’t one for scrying with. I might call down a bolt from the clear night sky to distract him with, if I concentrated.”
Aerin chuckled, a low rough sound as she rolled onto her back. She coughed more delicately than Lara had, then pushed up on her elbows. Even with her hair a burned ruin and wearing nothing but the wet padded tunic and breeches that fit beneath her armor, in the moonlight she was beautiful. It liked her even better than it did Dafydd, her singed locks turning muted blue and her green eyes touched with yellow. “You would have to strike him with it to keep him from riding on the Unseelie, Dafydd, and then his guard would call it an attack, and ride in his name.”
“Your wisdom tempers my impulse, as always.” Dafydd dropped his head heavily betwe
en his shoulders, pale hair falling around his cheeks. “I suppose we ride hard for the battlegrounds, then.”
“It would be faster to find Ioan.” Lara twisted her hair over her shoulder, squeezing water out. Aerin and Dafydd both blinked at her, Aerin’s mouth slowly curving in a foolish smile.
“I suppose it would be. But now we’re four, and only one among us Unseelie.”
“But that one is their king. Not just the heir apparent playing the role to keep peace, but Hafgan himself. Will they know him?”
Dafydd raised a hand, begging patience with the gesture. “My brother is here?”
Lara exchanged looks with Aerin before speaking. “We had some trouble coming into the valley. Ioan was hurt and they took him to the village to be seen to by healers.”
“You had some trouble coming in,” Dafydd echoed. “Truthseeker, are you lying to me?”
“No!” Despite the vehemence of her protest, Lara dipped her head guiltily. “I’m not! But that … might be the edited version.”
“I didn’t know you could offer such a thing.” Dafydd’s smile was teasing.
Lara hunched her shoulders, grinning sheepishly at the sand. “I never used to. It’s just so much has happened.”
“Even the most honest among us might be tempted to edit,” Dafydd agreed.
Lara looked up again to find him still smiling, and to find Aerin’s gaze gone hard on her. Her impulse to return the banter retreated into discomfort. “What?”
“Does your shoulder no longer pain you?”
Lara clapped her hand against it, sodden padding releasing a wash of water down her chest from the impact. The flesh below, though, protested not at all. Astonished, Lara tugged at the wrappings, then thrust her arm out in a silent, childlike plea for help. Aerin leaned in to unwrap the bindings she’d put in place. Lara caught her breath with every pull, waiting for pain, but it never came. In moments, bare flesh was exposed, no hint of injury visible.
