Wayfinder

by C. E. Murphy

  Regret made a sharp place in Lara’s heart. “Not any more than you could. I’m sorry.”

  Disappointment, but not surprise, etched itself across the woman’s face. Lara could see conflict in her eyes, an uncertainty as to whether she should have them detained, and Lara gave a quick nod toward the door, hastening Kelly and Dafydd out before the doctor made a decision. The dreadful noise of a full glamour at work slid through her mind as Aerin slipped past as well, leaving Lara the last to abandon the room full of hesitant hospital staff. Dafydd scrubbed his hair forward, covering his ears, and hunched his shoulders, head down as they hurried for the elevators and for escape.

  Seconds later, Dickon Collins’s voice followed them: “Hang on. I’m coming with you.”

  Hesitation ran through every visible member of their group, but Aerin, through what sounded like gritted teeth, said, “Let him. I cannot maintain this glamour long enough to argue, Truthseeker.”

  “I don’t think I could stop him anyway,” Lara muttered, and Dickon slipped through the elevator doors as they began closing. He folded his arms over his chest, making him more of a wall than usual, and turned a hard look on Dafydd.

  “What’d you do in there?”

  “I did nothing,” Dafydd said with more light amusement in his voice than Lara thought warranted. “Dickon, my old friend, if you insist on accompanying us, perhaps I could walk in your shadow, as it were, while we escape this place.” He lifted his eyes deliberately, showing Dickon his unglamoured countenance, and spread his hands in rueful admission. “Frankly, without your help, I’m uncertain we’ll leave here unmolested.”

  Dickon’s jaw clenched, face turning a fiery red brighter even than his hair. “You have a hell of a lot of nerve, Kirwen.”

  “I do, and yet you’ve chosen to join us, so I’m forced to determine my nerve will not go unanswered. Please, Dickon,” he added more quietly, and for the first time Lara saw strain lining his ageless face and darkening his amber eyes. “I need your help.”

  “Reg is going to live?” Dickon’s gaze went to Lara, who felt a pang of guilt as he ignored Kelly entirely. Not that Kelly had the truthseeking skill that Lara possessed, but a handful of days ago they’d been a couple, planning to wed. To see Kelly so thoroughly dismissed hurt Lara, even if she understood.

  And the only answer she had wasn’t quite enough. “I think so. He made it this far, and he’s stabilized now.”

  “You only think so?” The elevator doors dinged open behind Dickon, revealing three or four people who automatically moved forward, then startled and fell back again, exchanging glances with each other and at Dickon’s broad back.

  Lara shrugged. “I’d promise it was true if I knew it was, Dickon. If he’s strong enough, he’ll live.” That had rung true when Aerin said it, but whether the detective had the strength to rally remained unknown.

  Dickon scowled. “He’s tough.”

  “Then he will live,” Aerin snapped from nowhere. Dickon flinched, then grunted as Aerin shouldered past him as a blur of headache-inducing light and color in Lara’s vision. She ran to catch up with the Seelie woman, making apologies to the people waiting outside the elevator as they were brushed aside by something they couldn’t see.

  Or could half-see, Lara feared, by the time she and Aerin reached the front doors. Aerin knelt off to one side, glamour flickering in and out around her like an ancient film as the others caught up to them. “I’m sorry, Truthseeker. I lack the strength of Rhiannon that flows in Dafydd’s blood. We must find shelter very soon.”

  “I’ll get my car.” Kelly ran for the parking lot, but Dickon’s voice stopped her before she’d taken more than a few steps.

  “My Bronco’s right there.” He strode toward an oversized vehicle in one of the nearest available parking spaces, Dafydd in his wake. Aerin surged to her feet again, hurrying after them. The vestiges of her glamour fell away entirely before they reached the Bronco, but not by much: Dafydd sprang into it and turned to catch Ioan as Aerin thrust him forward, then crawled into the SUV herself. Lara caught a glimpse of them all through the lightly tinted windows. At a glance they were unearthly in their beauty, but not quite inhuman, not with the windows just slightly marring their visibility. Her knees buckled, relief at the momentary reprieve, and within seconds she and Kelly joined the Seelie and Dickon in his vehicle, both human women crowding into the front seat. Lara put the staff behind her and said, “Don’t touch that,” to the three in back.

  Dickon came around to the driver’s side and climbed in, hands working against the steering wheel as he stared at the three alien beings arranging themselves in the Bronco’s backseat. For a long time, no one spoke, until Dafydd finally asked, “What made you change your mind?”

  “I’m not sure I have. You said you couldn’t heal,” Dickon said accusingly. “How’d you stabilize Reg?”

  “It is not a healing, but a joining with the earth to offer him strength and stability. Lara, why do I understand this man? He speaks your language, not mine.”

  “Oh, sure, a joining with the earth,” Dickon said under Lara’s, “I don’t know. Maybe our magics working together did something.”

  “Or perhaps your world, in accepting Aerin’s magic, has also granted her the understanding of your tongues. If one of us spoke a third language, we could test the theory,” Dafydd offered. Lara felt disbelief cross her face and bit back a protest as Dafydd grinned. “I know. It doesn’t work that way.”

  His deprecation filled with sour tones and Lara shook her head, smiling, too. “Except magic might. I’m grateful for it, anyway.”

  “Tengo un poquito de espanol,” Kelly said. “Tu comprendes, Aerin?”

  “Of course I understa—” Aerin broke off, staring at Kelly before a smile flickered across her own features.

  “Interestingly, so do I.” Ioan opened his eyes again, though he looked as weary as before. “That would be more than the earth’s gift. I think the Truthseeker has it right: mortal magic and immortal come together to clear away the difficulties of language. I gather I am in your debt,” he added to Dickon. “I will in some way repay you.”

  Dickon muttered, “Great. Can you make me forget any of this ever happened? Kelly, what—” He thumped his head back against the Bronco’s headrest, fingers still white around the steering wheel. Eventually he said, “What’s going on,” like he knew the question was inadequate, but couldn’t come up with a better one.

  “Reg is going to be all right,” Kelly said in a low fierce voice. “I can’t undo any of this, Dickon, but he’ll be okay. I’m really sorry to have gotten you involved.”

  “You didn’t. David did. He just didn’t tell me.”

  “For which I, too, am sorry. Dickon, this is my brother Ioan and my friend Aerin.”

  “You’ve mentioned them. You forgot to say they were elves!”

  “Actually, the brother I mentioned would have been Merrick. Ioan and I have been estranged, for lack of a better word. And I could hardly explain their heritage without explaining my own,” Dafydd said apologetically.

  Dickon glowered at him in the rearview mirror. “Which you could’ve done any old time.”

  “We should have this discussion somewhere else.” Lara cast a nervous glance at the hospital. “They’re going to notice sooner than later that Ioan’s not in his room anymore.”

  “So you were up to no good.” Dickon sounded vindicated.

  Kelly gave a stiff shrug. “I’m not going to apologize for causing a scene, if that’s what you’re expecting. If you can just drive us over to my car we’ll get out of your hair.”

  “Kelly, you’ve got a twelve-year-old two-door Nissan. They won’t all fit.”

  “I’m hardly leaving them with you.”

  “For Christ’s sake, I’m trying to help—”

  Lara interrupted. “Will you take us to Kelly’s apartment, Dickon?” and he shot her a scowl.

  “Yes. Okay? Are you happy now, Kel? Your truth-hearing friend will tell you
I’m not lying. Unlike some people I know. Where are you parked?”

  Kelly tightened her jaw in a way Lara recognized as trying to prevent tears, and whispered directions to her Nissan. When they reached it, she jumped out of the Bronco and held up a hand to stop Lara. “I’d rather you went with them.”

  “You don’t trust me?” Injury lashed through Dickon’s voice, though Lara thought Kelly’s distrust was at least a little justified.

  Kelly obviously felt it was more than a little, her eyes flashing with anger as she looked past Lara toward her ex. “You’re the one who couldn’t handle any of this less than a week ago, Dickon. You’re the one who walked out. So no, I really don’t trust you even if Lara says you mean it. You might change your mind. Just drive them to my apartment, and then maybe we can talk.”

  “Whatever.” Dickon flinched when Kelly slammed the door, looking like he wished he could have done that, rather than her. He slid a sharp glance at Lara. “Do you trust me?”

  “Yes.” It seemed like there should be something else to say, an explanation or a platitude, but her wit deserted her and Lara was left to wait silently on Dickon’s response.

  Surprise, then churlish gratitude coursed over his features, and without another word he drove them to Kelly’s apartment.

  “You first,” Kelly said to him when they’d all reached that comparative safety. Ioan still faded in and out of consciousness, but he looked more comfortable sprawled on Kelly’s couch than he had in either the hospital or the Bronco. Aerin stood in front of him, arms crossed over her chest and a scowl dark enough to be a credible threat on its own marring her flawless features. Lara perched on the edge of a straight-backed chair from the kitchen, while Dafydd, beside her in one of the armchairs, was the only one in the whole room with an air of relaxation. It was a lie: Lara could see that in the jump of small muscles around his eyes and the unconscious tapping of a fingertip, but the performance made some difference to the atmosphere, which was dominated by Kelly and Dickon facing off at the doorway.

  “You came into Reg’s hospital room like you were going to have us all arrested,” Kelly went on, voice low with accusation. “Why’d you change your mind?”

  “The doctor said Reg had stabilized. He was dying, Kelly. I’ve been there most of the last four days, listening to the doctors, and nobody ever said anything about stabilizing. That was what they said the first day, critical but stable. After that they dropped the stable part and kept trying not to look too worried when I was around. So I want to know what the hell happened back there, and if David had something to do with it, at least that’s—”

  “Wiping the slate clean?” Dafydd asked, just loudly enough to be heard across the room. “It might make some amends, but it doesn’t forgive the sin of having lied to you about who and what I really am.”

  “Not that I would’ve believed you anyway,” Dickon said bitterly. Kelly’s chin came up in clear surprise at the admission, and Dickon left the door to sit across from Dafydd. Well across from him, Lara noted: the second armchair was on the long end of the coffee table, putting the two men as far apart as they could be within the confines of Kelly’s living room. Still, it was a gesture of willingness to talk that Dickon sat down at all.

  “There is that difficulty,” Dafydd agreed. “One of several reasons to keep the truth hidden. I came to your world to find Lara, Dickon. Lara or someone like her. A truthseeker, to help my people find a murderer in their midst. I’ve been looking a very long time, and I swear to you, I meant for none of this to happen. Detective Washington never should have been injured, and I’m given to understand one other man died. That was never my intent. I would have protected them, and healed Reginald Washington when he fell protecting all of us, if I could have.”

  “But you couldn’t because your fairy magic doesn’t work that way, except she”—Dickon pointed accusingly at Aerin—“managed.”

  “It was not a healing,” Aerin repeated impatiently. “That skill is not mine to own. I have a gift of earthspeaking, and even this iron-ridden world was willing to respond. Your de-tek-tiv shares the strength of the land he was born to for a little while, is all. It will lend him what he needs to recover, if he has the will for it.”

  “Yeah, well, what I get out of that is in the end Reg owes you his life, and regardless of how fucking weird this all is, he probably wouldn’t like it if the babe who saved his ass ended up on a dissection table for her troubles.”

  Aerin flicked a glance at Lara, obviously wondering if the magic that allowed them to communicate had interpreted Dickon’s words correctly. Lara wrinkled her nose, but nodded, and Aerin’s eyebrows darted up in dismayed comprehension.

  Dickon ignored the byplay, looking instead at Kelly. “And you. You can just run with all of this? Just like that? I don’t get it, Kelly. I just don’t.”

  “I’ve known Lara since we were freshmen in college.” Kelly sat down on the edge of the couch, trying not to disturb Ioan. “I thought she was kind of bonkers at first, because she was always so careful with what she said and always looked sort of pained when somebody said, like, ‘Oh I’m fine’ when you’d ask how they were. After a while I figured out she just always knew if somebody was telling her the truth, and that she never told lies herself. It’s hard not to believe somebody like that when you’ve known them for years, even when they’re telling you something preposterous. It’s not really that I just ran with it. It’s more that I’ve had a lot of time to get used to Lara, and that’s what I ran with. That and I still think I was right. There was no happy way out of what happened at the garage and wasting any time at all would have cost David his life. It’s what I tried telling you in the first place, and now even you came around to it.” She made a gesture at Aerin, then fell silent, rubbing the ring finger of her left hand.

  “Yeah, great, I’m the one who didn’t want to run away from a crime scene and somehow I end up the asshole in this scenario.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Dickon—”

  Dafydd sat forward, interrupting Kelly with an uplifted palm. “We could spend hours throwing accusations and recriminations around, but I’m afraid we don’t have the time. I very much doubt Merrick has been sitting idle in the hours we’ve been gone.”

  “Assuming it’s only hours,” Lara said. “Does the worldwalking spell automatically tie time together, or is that a separate component decided by the spellcaster, like deciding what buttons to use on a suit?”

  Regret hit her unexpectedly. Less than a month ago in her personal timeline, she’d been given the opportunity to create a wardrobe for a client at her boss’s tailoring shop, a chance that would have made her a master tailor in her own right. The client’s suits had all been determined by the beautiful antique ivory buttons he’d brought in, salvaged from his own grandfather’s suits a century earlier. Someone else would have completed Mr. Mugabwi’s wardrobe, because the scant weeks of her own timeline had been well over a year in the mortal world. There were things she would never get back, no matter how the undertakings in the Barrow-lands played out.

  Dafydd fluttered his fingers as if trying to pluck the answer out of the air. He looked exotic and prosaic all at once, an elfin prince sitting comfortably in Kelly’s living room, and despite the flash of regret, Lara smiled. There were things she would never have discovered, either, had she not risked stepping between worlds.

  “It doesn’t bind the timelines together automatically, no. When I cast it to come here it was my will that let a decade pass for every day in the Barrow-lands. When I brought you there the first time, it was my intent to bind them more closely, so you would lose almost no time to the travel. But left on its own, without a deliberate concept of how much time should or might pass, it’s desperately arbitrary, Lara. Oisín hadn’t been in the Barrow-lands so very long when he first left us, but hundreds of years had passed in his native Ireland.”

  “Your idea of ‘so very long’ and mine might be very different,” Lara pointed out. “Either way, I fo
llowed you back to Annwn less than half a day after Ioan brought you home. Whether Merrick meant for it to be or not, it was still six months there. We’ve spent most of a day here now. If it’s been another six months …”

  “Then it’s possible the power balance has shifted entirely.” Dafydd turned his hand up in a familiar gesture: Lara had seen him call sparks of lightning between his fingertips that way before. This time, though his brow furrowed with concentration, nothing happened, and he closed his fingers again, loosely. “And I now lack the power to open the worldwalking spell myself.”

  “It had to be done,” Aerin protested roughly. “You would still be caught there, or—”

  Dafydd shook his head, stilling her objections. “It’s commentary, not accusation, Aerin. Lara’s opened a worldwalking path once. Perhaps she can do it again.”

  “The Barrow-lands are a lot more receptive to magic than this world is, Dafydd. I don’t know if I can breach the walls if I start on this side, not unless I use the staff.”

  For a moment everyone, even Dickon, looked toward the ivory staff propped in the corner of Kelly’s living room. Out of Lara’s hands, it was nothing more than an ornate and beautiful art piece, but the memory of its eagerness to be used sent a shiver over her skin. “There’s Ioan,” she said without much hope, and everyone looked from the staff back to the sleeping prince.

  “Even if he were conscious, I think the magic would be his undoing,” Dafydd said quietly. “The Barrow-lands are not forgiving, and I fear what they might take from him in return for the magics.”

  “There lies your problem, brother.” Ioan spoke without opening his eyes, though his voice was stronger. “You, as always, seek the magic of the Barrow-lands, which by their very name we know to be the lands of the dead. I will call on the magic of Annwn.”

  Dafydd, after a moment’s long silence, turned to Lara and with utmost sincerity gathered her hands, kissed her knuckles, and, dismayed, asked, “Do I sound that pretentious?”