by C. E. Murphy
“The healing waters,” Aerin said slowly. “I would not have dreamed they would welcome me, much less a mortal, and yet …”
“We’re both better.” Lara prodded her shoulder, exploring undamaged skin. She hadn’t so much as noticed the pain evaporating. Being pain-free was normal, not remarkable, though now she remembered everything she’d done since reaching the beach: catching herself as she collapsed, reaching for Dafydd, pushing up to sit on her heels. Ordinary actions, except in light of having been dizzy with injury and blood loss not so very long before. “Who, um. Is it Llyr? Is he a god of healing as well as the sea? I feel like I should … thank someone, and my God doesn’t seem exactly appropriate here,” she said awkwardly. “I’m not sure He’d even hear me.”
“Oh, he would.” Dafydd pulled a moue. “Faith crosses boundaries. If not, your exorcism would have no power.”
“Nor your songs.” Aerin touched her hair, then let her hand fall. “Llyr is not our god of healing, but the waters are his. Thanks to him would not go unappreciated.”
Lara bowed her head, narrowly avoiding making the sign of the cross as she murmured thanks not only for her recovery, but for the help the sea god had offered her. Both Dafydd and Aerin were looking at her curiously when she lifted her gaze again, but neither spoke. “Ioan,” she said firmly. “If he can’t scry Emyr in time I’m afraid the Unseelie city will be wiped out by morning. I don’t know where the village they brought him to is, but I think I can find it focusing on him. Like I did with the staff back in Massachusetts,” she said to Dafydd, which earned her a faintly puzzled nod.
“I remember,” he said after a moment. “Just not … clearly.”
“You were sick.” Dying, truth’s music wanted her to say, but for once Lara quenched it, happier with chicanery. “Anyway, I can do it, but I don’t think we’ll be fast enough on foot. Aerin, do you have any idea how far we are from the horses?”
Aerin shook her head. “No, but they’ll come at my call.”
“All right, good. If you’ll call them …” Lara turned back to the dunes Hafgan had climbed, drawing breath to call him as well.
Only grass and shadows moved on the low beach hills. Hafgan was gone.
Aerin pierced the air with a long whistle, higher than a seagull’s call. Lara flinched, then caught Dafydd’s hand briefly, drawing his attention to Hafgar’s disappearance before climbing the dunes herself. Dafydd followed after, leaving Aerin to make a sound of disgruntlement that deepened into concern as she realized who they sought. She scrambled up the hill behind them, coming to stand so that Lara was dwarfed between the two Seelie. They all focused on the distance before glancing at one another. Dafydd and Aerin’s gazes sailed over Lara’s head and she straightened her spine, adding the last possible fraction of an inch to her height. Dafydd, looking like he was trying not to, cracked a smile.
“Little mortal,” Aerin said with such solemnity it became amusement. Her vantage point was a few inches higher than Lara’s, making her that much taller still, and she laughed when Lara bared her teeth. “You stand as tall as Oisín. Are you a giant among your people?”
“Oisín’s short, for a man in my era. I’m not a giant. I’m not short, either.” The last came out defensively. Even the smallest of the elfin adults Lara had seen stood four inches taller than she, and there was no obvious disparity between men and women in height.
Aerin grinned, holding a hand up for peace, then turned her attention back to the landscape. Humor draining away, she said, “The stones say nothing of his passage, Truthseeker. He may be lost to us.”
“Why would he do that?” Answers came unbidden before either Seelie had time to respond, and Lara lifted her own hand in turn, stopping whatever they would say. “Because Emyr’s out there and Hafgan’s got issues with him, if nothing else. Because he doesn’t owe us anything. Because—”
“He owes you his wakening,” Aerin disagreed, but shrugged in general acknowledgment. “Still, his element is heat, not air. I should be able to track him through the earth.”
Lara blinked at the taller woman, suddenly appreciating the breadth of possibilities granted by an affinity for stone. “You must be a fantastic hunter.”
Aerin fixed her gaze on the distant mountains, enough strain in her neck to suggest she deliberately avoided Dafydd’s eyes. “I have always captured what I sought, yes. But Hafgan is connected with this land. He can, perhaps, persuade it to show no signs of his passing.”
“Then we forget about him for a while.” Lara’s voice hardened. “The truth is, we know where he’s likely to end up. Right now Emyr probably thinks you’re dead and has no warning that Hafgan’s on the way. Finding Ioan and scrying Emyr is our best chance to avoid a catastrophic battle. We’ll worry about Hafgan later. Aerin, the—”
The sound of surf, soft enough before to have been unnoticeable, intensified abruptly, the earth rattling with it. Lara reached for the staff, making certain it hadn’t come unstrapped from her back, then turned to the beach, still afraid the weapon had somehow triggered a tsunami. They couldn’t run: there was no ground high enough within reach, even if they were as fast as the Seelie horses.
It was those horses that pounded down the shore, their striking hooves making the rumble under Lara’s feet. They slipped between moonlit shadows from one step to the next, only half existent in the world as Lara saw it, and were at the dunes in impossibly little time. One came to a full halt, the other dancing around it. Each touch of its hoof to earth sent another jolt deep into the ground, shaking Lara where she stood. She had never seen them run when she wasn’t astride, but that they struck the earth hard when they returned from their shift through space rang true with her. The Seelie army must have nearly shaken trees from their root beds as it rode. Impressed, she nodded toward them, then shot an abashed smile at Aerin. “The horses, I was going to ask.”
Aerin made a fluid gesture as though she’d conjured them, then slipped gracefully down the hill to catch and calm the prancing beasts. Their tack was gone, left somewhere else along the beach, but the Seelie woman leapt onto her horse so easily it was clear she didn’t feel the lack. Lara, alarmed, watched Dafydd do the same, and followed him down the hill muttering, “Remember that I’d never ridden a horse before coming here?”
He gave her a hand and pulled her onto the horse’s back with enough finesse that for a moment even she thought it was her own agility making the move. Wisdom caught up, though, and she blurted, “Aerin?”
“Feel the earth,” Aerin said smoothly. “Feel it rise through the horse’s legs, feel it embody you, feel the connection between you and the beast and the land. You cannot fall, when you are one with the horse.” It was the enchantment she’d used before to stick Lara in place. This time, though, Lara felt a hint of what she meant, a tenuous bond between herself and the horse and the ground below. The how of the spell suddenly came clear to her, Aerin’s stoneworking talent making that union between three separate things, and Lara’s confidence in it increased tremendously. Aerin gave a satisfied nod, then hi-yah’d! the horses up the dunes as Lara, clinging to Dafydd, closed her eyes to search for a true path to Ioan.
It was easier each time she did it, even considering the delicacy that had been necessary to create the path to the tomb in the Drowned Lands. Ioan was a vital figure in her thoughts, details of what she knew about him tumbling into place. Passionate in protecting his people, even in protecting those who weren’t quite his anymore, like Dafydd. Willing to go to immoral lengths to find help. Lara’s own kidnapping was proof enough of that. A skilled warrior with no evident fear. A man dedicated enough to the life he’d been given to undergo physiological changes that would make him truly one of his chosen people.
There was far more, certainly, that she didn’t know, but that was enough. Each element she remembered added a piece to the symphony: the warrior, drums; the protective nature, a lonely note from a trumpet. They came together, weaving a ball of music and light that hung in Lara’s mi
nd as it gathered strength, then ricocheted across the countryside in a blaze. “Roadways,” she said aloud. “Please follow the roadways.”
Song gurgled as it twisted around, returning to Lara and seeking another path. She said, “Back down the beach, back to where we left the horses,” into Dafydd’s shoulder, and heard a trill of impatience enter the symphony as the riders wheeled and drove their animals back the way they’d come. “Does your lightning have a personality?”
“Short-tempered but easily assuaged,” Dafydd replied without a hint of seeming to think the question strange. “Impatient, impulsive, callous. There’s no softness in it. Why do you ask?”
“Because the truthseeking music is starting to make commentary. And the staff has all along,” Lara added more softly. “It wants to be used. It wants to destroy.”
“Your will is stronger than its.” Determination, if not strict accuracy, filled Dafydd’s voice. “Lara …”
She pushed her nose against his shoulder and said, ruefully, “This still isn’t the time.”
“Perhaps not, but I’ve greeted Aerin more enthusiastically than you, and that was hardly my intention. I feel … rushed. As though I daren’t stop moving, for fear events will overwhelm us. And I barely know what’s happened this past season or more!”
Something popped in Lara’s chest, making breathing easier. “I feel the same way. And you’re forgiven. I got a kiss, and she didn’t.” It was petty, but his acknowledgment in how he’d received Aerin made all the difference.
“You kissed me,” Dafydd said firmly. “A favor I intend to make up for later. Now, Lara … can you tell me what I’ve missed?”
She said, “Turn left where the road forks,” instead, as the pathway behind her eyelids veered that way. For a moment she dared open her eyes, glimpsing the roadway. Texture and color set it apart from the fields alongside it, even in the moon’s scant light. A thrust of bright music lay over the road itself, not illuminating it in any real-world way. The combination made her dizzy. She closed her eyes again, grateful that she rode with Dafydd and had no need to guide the horse herself.
“I don’t know most of what’s happened here,” she said then. She sketched out the details of Dafydd’s rescue by Ioan and Merrick’s reappearance, the latter of which made the Seelie prince’s posture tense so much their horse whickered in agitation. “I followed him back to the Barrow-lands, through his worldwalking spell, but I got thrown out of time again. He’s here somewhere, Dafydd, I’m sure of it. Hiding in the waters, maybe, although I thought he might come after us while we were in the city and he didn’t. Thank God,” she added with feeling, then exhaled and brought her attention back to the matter at hand. “The farmers who attacked us saw two Seelie warriors, and Ioan’s no longer fair.”
“Can you seek him the way we seek Ioan now?” Dafydd relaxed a little, though there was still strain in his body.
Lara shook her head. “Maybe once we stop moving. I’d need to concentrate more than I can when we’re jolting.”
“Jolting?” Dafydd sounded offended and Lara laughed.
“I’m not used to horses, Dafydd. Right, turn right up ahead. We’re almost there.” The streaking light in her mind was resolving, becoming a steady bright point. “Can you see a town?”
“Village lights. There’ve been one or two others along the way. You’re certain this is the right one?” The question was more impressed than suspicious; Dafydd had never doubted her, not since he’d recognized her gift.
Lara pressed a smile into his shoulder, then peeked over it to catch a glimpse of torches glowing in the near distance. “If it’s not, my power has gone horribly awry. That looks like real fire.”
“It is,” Aerin called. Lara startled, having not realized the Seelie woman could hear them over the horses’ hooves. Aerin dropped her horse into a walk to make conversation easier as she nodded toward the village. “Our light spheres are easy to maintain, but they’re a constant slow draw on magics. They must use fire for most light in this valley, or one of us would have discovered them long since.”
“You hunt down magic use? You can do that?” Whether they should was another topic entirely, one Lara wasn’t prepared to broach.
Aerin shrugged. “Not as a matter of course, but it can be done. It’s why we hide our citadels behind glamours, to make them less vulnerable. So if there had been a long constant draw of power here, in a valley near the Drowned Hundred … yes. Someone would have investigated, and Emyr would have—”
“Taken action,” Lara volunteered as a shiver spread over her skin. Emyr was not a nice man. Neither had Hafgan been nice, and it was easy enough to see how two leaders of such arrogance could drag their people down paths of unthinking cruelty. Ioan at least seemed less dedicated to the concept of his own superiority, and Dafydd was entirely diffident by comparison to his father. Maybe it was their relative youth, but it seemed to Lara the Barrow-lands would be better governed by the sons than the fathers.
“Yes.” Aerin sounded pleased by the phrase taken action, and Lara cast a helpless glance toward the heavens before leaning around Dafydd to better see the nearing village.
Not only the torches danced in her vision. Even with the truthseeker’s path guiding her, the whole of the little town flickered in and out of her sight like Brigadoon. Heat banded her skull, warning of an oncoming headache. “I hate glamours.”
Dafydd blinked over his shoulder at her and Lara made a face. “They give me migraines. I think the town is glamoured. Probably makes it harder for murderous Seelie to stumble across it.”
Injury entered Dafydd’s eyes and Lara pulled another face. “Sorry. That wasn’t fair.”
“I should think it was.” A woman’s voice came out of the darkness ahead of them and both Seelie reined up as the voice was followed by shadows releasing a familiar face: Braith, still bearing the scythe she’d threatened Ioan with earlier. Her red hair was almost black in the scant moonlight, and she looked older, grimmer, than she had by day. “That’s exactly why the town is glamoured. It’s one of our few means of defense, Truthseeker. We will not change that for your comfort.”
“No.” Lara pinched the bridge of her nose, ineffectively willing her headache to retreat. “I wouldn’t expect you to. But may we enter the village? It might be less distressing from the inside.”
“Who is your companion?” Braith obviously meant Dafydd; Aerin, she recognized and disdained with a single glance.
“Dafydd ap Caerwyn,” he said, unwisely in Lara’s opinion. In Aerin’s, too: she stiffened and moved her horse a step closer, for all that she no longer had either armor or weapon.
Braith’s grip on the scythe became more aggressive. “Emyr’s second-born.”
“The same. I bear you no ill will, and put myself in your power for the duration of our visit.”
A hostage to good behavior, in other words, though doubt spiked through Lara. The Unseelie in this valley had no reason at all to keep their enemy’s son alive, not when a degree of vengeance could be enacted with no one the wiser. She and Aerin stood as the only two witnesses, and aside from the staff, were unarmed. It would be the work of moments to rid the world of all three of them.
The staff rumbled anticipation through her. Whether it was for her potential demise or the possibility of battle, Lara neither knew nor cared. She slipped down from the horse to face Braith. “He means it. The truth is, he’d probably stay here forever just to keep things more settled between your two people, but that won’t accomplish any of the things you and I both want. Emyr would never accept Dafydd being left here, and I can’t learn what happened to Annwn without Emyr’s help.” Or without finding Hafgan again, but that was more than Braith needed to know, even if the lie of omission rang warning bells in Lara’s mind. “We’re running out of time, Braith. I need you to decide now if you’ll help us or not.”
Braith’s gaze slipped from Lara to the two mounted Seelie behind her. Lara checked the impulse to turn and investigate them herself
, feeling that doing so would undermine her own authority. Authority she’d taken on herself and, for that reason most particularly, couldn’t afford to erode. Aerin had seen her take up that mantle earlier and was likely to heed it, but Dafydd, a prince in his own right, might well choose to act outside the boundaries Lara outlined.
But he said nothing, and Braith, studying him, evidently saw no threat or disregard for Lara’s demands. After a long while she nodded, attention back on Lara. “All right. I’ll bring you to the healers.”
Even within the village borders, Lara’s vision flickered and danced uncomfortably. She accepted Dafydd’s hand up to horseback again, more comfortable riding with her eyes closed than struggling against the glamour that winked small houses and streets in and out of visibility. Neither of the citadels had affected her so badly, but neither of the citadels, she imagined, had such cause to hide. Truth jangled through that thought, wearying even in itself.
What glimpses she got when she dared peek through tangled lashes were of a comfortable little township, homes close together with fields surrounding them. The streets were cobbled, instead of the hard-packed earth that made up the roadways they’d followed through the valley. Their horses clopped over the changed texture with no concern, their footing as sure as ever. Lara, headache throbbing with every hoofbeat, wondered if anything at all disturbed the pace of beasts capable of traversing a half-dozen steps with each stride.
More than a few curious people looked out of windows or came out of doors to watch the little processional. Curious and often bitter, though Lara had the sense that it was the elders whose countenances bore the latter emotion. Others looked as though they’d never seen anything like Lara and the two Seelie, and whether their gazes lingered longest on her, or on their eternal enemies, she couldn’t say. They weren’t friendly, though. Hostility and caution burned in their stances, and after a minute or two Lara was happier to close her eyes against their stares, and ride unrecognizing of silent assault.
