by C. E. Murphy
It seemed a lifetime ago that Lara had made suits and coats for similar men in her own world; arrogant with wealth but always hungry for compliments. It helped that Merrick had been clever, that his plans were well-laid and his deceptions layered, so that truth could align with what she needed to say. “And now you have Emyr and Hafgan both where you need them to be. Resting here, where they’ll lie undisturbed and unawakening while you rule. It’s only Rhiannon’s sons in the way now.”
“I was her son, too,” Merrick insisted, full of childish defiance. “She died saving me. Who would do that for another than her own son?”
There was enough conviction, enough truth, in his voice to draw Lara up. She cast a glance at the supine Hafgan, wondering: no one had mentioned his wife, or Merrick’s mother. “Níamh died birthing him,” Ioan murmured on cue.
The name struck Lara like a gong, music reverberating through her. A professor of Irish studies had mentioned her as another queen of fairyland, a thing Lara had never thought to pursue. “Who was she?”
“Rhiannon’s sister. Another of Llyr’s daughters, but not the goddess of Annwn. She came to us after Rhiannon made this world, and lived in it as her sister did.”
Lara, unwisely, said, “No wonder they hated you,” to Merrick. “To cost them Níamh and Rhiannon both, no wonder they hated you. And no wonder you’re looking to make your own mark,” she added hastily as his expression blackened. “You have nothing else, do you? Only your own worth, which needs to be proved to fathers and cousins who see you as nothing more than the vessel which took their wives and mothers.”
Clanging objection slammed through the words, making her head hurt more, though the truth she spoke was, Lara thought, very close to the one Merrick believed. The rage and hurt on his face spoke to that.
She stepped aside with as careless a gesture as she could make. “They tell me truthseekers were the arbiters of justice in Annwn, once upon a time. This is my arbitration, then: defeat Emyr’s heir in single combat, and I will name you king over all these lands.”
Dafydd gave her one shocked look, and then Merrick cast Aerin away and came toward him in a swarm of swords.
Thirty-three
Lara shrieked a useless protest as two blades glittered in Merrick’s hands. She’d seen the sword at his hip, but not the long dagger on the other, where Aerin’s slumped form had hidden it. Bad enough that she’d thrown Dafydd into combat against one blade when he didn’t have one in hand himself, but two seemed egregiously unfair.
Dafydd flung himself to the side, rolling through soft dirt to come up with the blade he’d discarded. Merrick was there in an instant, raining downward blows as Dafydd struggled to regain his feet. Merrick scored a glancing scrape against Dafydd’s forearm and he swore, giving up trying to rise and instead hatchet-kicking the side of Merrick’s knee. It popped and he gave a shriek as loud as Lara’s, dropping his weight to the other knee. Dafydd rolled up, and for the space of a breath they fought on their knees, too close to do much more than batter one another with their sword hilts. Dafydd punched Merrick in the diaphragm with his free hand, then skittered back, regaining his feet as Merrick wheezed.
Lara slipped around the outer edge of the chamber, kneeling at Aerin’s side to check her breathing. She did, shallowly, and her color was returning. Ioan shot Lara a sharp look from beyond the contestants, and she nodded, earning mixed relief and chagrin from the elder Seelie prince. He worked his way around the room from the other direction, moving slowly so he would distract the combatants as little as possible.
Merrick surged to his feet again, though he limped on the left side now. That was the side he carried the dagger on, too: less reach and more vulnerability, Lara thought. Dafydd saw it as well, and feinted, but no more than that. Merrick brought the dagger up in an effective block, and Dafydd fell back again, nodding as though the entire action had been a test. He dropped his guard as he did so and Merrick lurched forward, driving his sword toward Dafydd in a desperate thrust.
Dafydd leapt aside, nimble enough to remind Lara that Dickon had once commented on his unearthly grace. With a sweeping step, Dafydd rebounded off the side of Emyr’s bier. He crashed on top of Merrick, body weight bearing the other man to the ground, then slammed an elbow against the back of Merrick’s neck. Merrick roared, driving himself upward, but Dafydd was gone again, this time running for the chamber’s far side. He vaulted Emyr’s bier and disappeared, then came up again armed as Merrick was: a short sword in one hand and a long dagger in the other.
Merrick’s gaze, comical with offense, snapped to Lara for an instant before he turned his attention back to Dafydd. Lara pressed her hands against her mouth, fighting down a frantic laugh. She’d forgotten the blade Hafgan had almost killed her with. The battle suddenly was matched, neither scion having the weaponry advantage.
“What were you thinking?” Ioan hissed at Lara’s elbow.
She startled, having almost forgotten him, too. “I couldn’t think of any other way to get him to let go of Aerin without killing her. I thought if I gave him a chance to get what he really wanted—”
“Did it occur to you Dafydd might lose?”
“Obviously not!”
They both fell silent, Ioan dragging Aerin closer to the back wall. The Seelie took a deeper breath, beginning to wake as Dafydd and Merrick met again. Lara knew too little about swordplay to follow their fight clearly: to her it was a rush of sound, full of its own music, and of brilliant flares as weapons scraped off one another and flashed again in fresh attacks. Neither of them scored marks against the other. The scrape on Dafydd’s arm was the only drawn blood.
Sudden quiet exploded through the chamber as the combatants dropped back, the only sound their harsh breathing. Frustration twisted Merrick’s face, and after a moment of panting he muttered, “We were always well-matched.”
“In arms skill. Not in duplicity. I could capitulate and you could fight Ioan instead.”
Hope leapt in Lara’s heart, not for Dafydd’s safety, but because Ioan was the superior swordsman. Merrick sneered. “The Truthseeker said to defeat Emyr’s heir. We both know Ioan forsook that role when he embraced the Unseelie path.”
“And yet you wore his guise to take the Seelie throne. I look forward to that unmasking, brother.”
Merrick’s lip curled again, and the respite was over, both princes coming at one another in a blur of motion that made the same kind of song that Lara had heard upon riding to battle with the Seelie army. There was a purity in combat, a focus that stripped everything else away. Kill or be killed; survive or die. It wasn’t beautiful, but it was honest, and a part of her wanted to rest inside that music, confident that its truth would hold her until the song’s violent end.
Closing her eyes to the battle, though, would make it no less real. Lara huddled uncomfortably against the chamber wall, the staff pressing into her spine, and stifled a cry when one of Merrick’s blades came alarmingly close to Dafydd’s throat.
Even watching intently, she almost didn’t see the blow that ended the fight, and even in reconstruction, she hardly knew how it had been done. Dafydd lost his footing on the soft floor, and in the same instant Merrick disarmed him, knocking the sword out of his hand. His remaining dagger simply lacked the reach: Lara could see that, and the gasp she drew in was cold with horror.
Merrick lunged, thrusting downward with his sword, and Dafydd twitched his dagger upward.
It slid easily into Merrick’s belly, just beneath the breastbone. Momentum kept him falling forward, but his grip went boneless and he dropped his own dagger, clutching his stomach instead.
Dafydd rolled to the side, avoiding Merrick’s collapse, and came to his feet with an expression of ancient sorrow.
Merrick, on his knees, said, “You’ve killed me,” in pure astonishment, and Dafydd watched him fall before murmuring, “In all likelihood, yes.”
Ioan, voice strange, said, “That was well done. I think I could not have done it myself.”
“What do you mean?” Lara’s hands were ice cold, so numb she could barely turn them into fists. “What did you do?”
“The slip was deliberate,” Ioan said, still with the note of strain. “It’s difficult to take a fall like that without making it obvious it’s a feint. Especially if you know your fight partner well.”
Sickness boiled up in Lara’s stomach, washing away the cold in a burst of heat. “Deliberate? I thought you were—!” She couldn’t say the word, not even after the fact, too afraid that speaking it aloud would somehow make it real.
Dafydd, less concerned with the power of words, said, “Dead? Yes. That was the idea,” as if it were all a remote theoretical exercise. Then his eyes pressed shut and he took a shuddering breath before throwing Merrick’s sword away. Lara lurched to her feet, crossing the small chamber in a matter of steps so she could crash into Dafydd’s arms and hold him.
He staggered with the impact, but caught her and lowered his head over her ruined hair. “I’m all right. I believe you may have lost your mind, but I’m all right despite that. Mortal combat, Lara? What happened to my gentle tailor? I thought you would talk him out of his madness.”
Lara laughed against his chest, a shaky sound. “He would have killed Aerin if I’d tried. I could hear it in his voice. Aerin.” She looked toward Ioan and the Seelie woman, and Ioan gave her a brief, encouraging smile as Aerin took another sharp breath. Lara exhaled until her lungs were empty, then inhaled again to speak with relief. “There was only one thing he wanted badly enough to not kill her, and that was the crown. Dafydd, I’m so sorry. I know he was your—”
“Brother,” Dafydd finished. “In all ways that mattered. At least his death is a matter of clear battle now, rather than foul murder. Though I’m not certain simply producing a body will endear me to my people. They already think he’s dead by my hand.”
“Not dead.” Ioan had moved while they spoke, rolling Merrick’s unmoving form over. Red bubbles formed at the Unseelie prince’s mouth, and once silence fell, Lara could hear his short, wet gasps as Ioan said, grimly, “He lives, if barely. Dafydd?”
Dafydd looked to Lara, whose heart thudded heavily. “Why me?”
“Truthseeker, wayfinder, worldbreaker. Arbiter of justice. You said defeat me, and he has failed in that. You didn’t say kill or be killed, and so his fate must lie in the decision you now make.”
“Kill him.” Aerin spoke hoarsely, but without remorse. She pushed herself upright against the wall, feeling cautiously at her throat even as she threw a hateful look at Merrick. “He’ll never be anything but trouble.”
Truth, almost unquestionable, swept through her accusation. Only a note or two sounded off, one instrument among many in an orchestra, but it was enough to give Lara pause.
Not Dafydd, though; untouched by music, his shoulders dropped with weary acknowledgment “I’m afraid Aerin’s right. The ambitious rarely let failure stop them. His next game might be worse still.”
“Worse than attempted regicide, homicide, fratricide?” Lara ticked the crimes off on her fingers. “Worse than throwing the Seelie and Unseelie nations into war that could still wipe out both sides? The only thing worse would be if he succeeded. Right now there’s no chance of that, not with the condition he’s in. Put him on a bier.”
The elves exchanged nonplussed glances, Aerin’s expression bitterest of all. It was she who put the obvious into words, voice flat with disbelieving anger: “What?”
Lara shook her head, determination rising in the face of Aerin’s disapproval. “If I’m going to break a world and rebuild it, I’m not starting out with blood on my hands, not if I can help it. I don’t care how wrong he’s been. Maybe it’s not any better to put someone in a stasis chamber forever than it is to kill them, but maybe this place can heal his … soul,” she finished awkwardly. It was the wrong word for a people whose immortality was physical, not spiritual, but she didn’t have a better one.
Dafydd and Ioan looked at one another again, and Ioan turned a palm up, gesturing to Merrick’s body. “You asked the truthseeker for her justice. Will you now ignore it?”
Bemused, Dafydd said, “No,” and crouched to help Ioan lift Merrick onto one of the biers.
Lara’s shoulders unknotted as he came to rest. “Maybe it can heal the broken places inside him as well as his body. If not, at least here he can’t hurt anyone.”
“A gentler prison than your world offers,” Dafydd said. “I think we have very little time to seal this room again, else he’ll die despite our noblest efforts.”
“Great.” Magic objected to sarcasm. Lara winced an apology as she went to help Aerin up and nodded toward Emyr and Hafgan. “All right. Neither of them are dying. Let’s bring them up into the garden, and then we’ll break the world.”
Oisín awaited them in the garden, his genial presence so unexpected that Lara stumbled on seeing him. Humor flashed over Oisín’s wrinkled face. “I may be nimble for a blind man, but exploring caves and earthen chambers is more daring than I’m inclined to at my age.”
Dafydd laid Emyr out on the grass with a grunt, then looked up at Oisín with good-natured suspicion. “Are you sure you’re blind, Oisín? No one said anything.”
“People say as much with their breath and their feet as they do with their lips and faces,” the old poet replied. “I’ve had a long time to learn those languages. You’ve found the sleeping king?”
Lara gave him a questioning look. “Emyr, not Arthur. Even I know that mythology.”
“And I do not. Your sleeping Arthur must be a story from after my time, Truthseeker. Perhaps one day you’ll share it with me. For now, who else do we have here?”
“My father Hafgan.” Ioan put Hafgan on the grass beside Emyr, earning a groan for his efforts: Emyr slept, but Hafgan had only been injured, not sealed away in the chamber for healing.
Lara glanced toward the pathway they’d taken below the earth, unsurprised to see it filling itself in again, grass growing back over the door leading downward. Rhiannon’s magic, Ioan had said, and if so, it was more consistent, stronger even millennia after her death, than any other magic Lara had seen worked. It left behind no broken afterimages, no headache-inducing wrongnesses. Her will was made manifest, and Lara, disconcertingly, found herself accepting that the legendary Seelie woman was a goddess indeed.
“Ah.” Oisín stood and went to the two kings, kneeling between them. “Both halves of the whole. There is a story here, Truthseeker, if you wish to seek it out.”
Lara smiled, though it made the swollen bruise on her cheek hurt. “Storytelling’s your business.”
“And truthseeking is yours. Together we might tell a tale such as man has never known, and elfkind has long since forgotten.”
“I am desperate to hear that tale,” Ioan said in a low voice. “I’ve waited for it more years than I know how to recall.”
Oisín, with the grandiosity of a conductor, gestured to Hafgan. “Take his hand, then, and Dafydd, you take Emyr’s. Aerin, will you join us?”
Aerin crawled toward them and sat hard at Dafydd’s side, losing every evidence of grace as she did so. “I would be loathe to miss it.”
“Truthseeker?”
Lara joined them, sitting cross-legged like a tailor at Hafgan and Emyr’s heads. Oisín gave her a beatific smile that faded into sorrowful caution. “Now is the time to wield that staff, Lara.”
Heart pounding, Lara loosened the staff from its bindings. Its anticipation outweighed hers, churning her stomach until she was ill, but she held it out parallel to the ground, focusing on the blind man beyond its intricate carvings. “What now?”
Oisín wrapped his ancient fists around the ivory. Recognition leapt in the weapon
, a thrill of delight utterly at odds with anything else Lara had felt from it. Oisín smiled and whispered something too soft for Lara to hear, though the sense of it was a greeting, and then lifted his unseeing gaze to hers. “Place it across Emyr and Hafgan’s chests, Truthseeker, and do your calling. Seek answers from millennia past, and if you three would see and hear the story told, grasp the staff as well, when she puts it to them. Do not let go.” Urgency colored the old man’s voice. “Whatever happens, do not let go.”
Murmurs of assent met his demand. Lara held the worldbreaking staff aloft, waiting for the subtle change in Oisín’s grip that would say he was prepared to begin. After long seconds she felt a fractional relaxation of his muscles, and brought the staff down across Hafgan and Emyr’s chests in a smooth motion. Ivory warmed with excitement as the three Seelie laid hands on it. Lara seized that enthusiasm and gave it a focus, mutating the words of the prophecies she’d heard: “Truth has sought the hardest path for measures that will mend the past. If finders know the only way, tell me how worlds came changed at end of day.”
Gold ripped across the citadel, like the worldwalking spell turned the size of the land. The Barrow-lands folded around them, inverted, and spat them out its other side.
Thirty-four
“You are not here,” Oisín whispered in Lara’s ear, but he wasn’t there when she looked for him. She retained a reassuring grip on the staff, but she was otherwise alone under a healing sky. Gold leached away, leaving a growing streak of blue behind, as if someone wove fabric together at an impossible speed to create a picture and hide what had been there before.
There was a wrongness about the streak across the sky; a wrongness that she’d felt time and again with the worldwalking spell, only much greater. The worldwalking spell was a tiny breach, a tear that even she could put to rights if she wanted to. The magic stitching itself together above her was primeval in its strength.
