Wayfinder w-2

by C. E. Murphy

  And its music was relentless. Like the earth’s song, it rang in deep tones that stretched so far that Lara couldn’t hear a beginning or an end to even one note, much less the entire symphony. Only divinity could sing that song. Lara shivered, pulling her gaze from the sky to study the world around her.

  Familiarity struck a hard chord of surprise within her. She stood on an ocean shore, silver-gray water idling in an elegant cove. Behind her, green mountains rose. There were no roads, no signs of farmers or civilization, but the valley was unquestionably the hidden home of the remaining Unseelie people.

  A woman walked out of the sea, water streaming down her shoulders and turning to soft flowing robes of shimmering blue. Slicked-back hair dried with each step, until it crackled full and white and fell well past her hips. Aerin’s hair had been like that, only somehow less so, as if this woman’s were the ideal, and everyone else’s a modest shadow.

  This woman. As if there was any doubt that she was Rhiannon, Llyr’s daughter and goddess of Annwn. She was slightly less alien than her father, but by comparison to her, the elfin races’ exotic features seemed as blunt and thick as humans. She was porcelain to their stoneware, so beautiful that Lara’s heart ached to look at her.

  “None of us are here,” Oisín’s disembodied voice whispered, rich with sorrow. “We can only observe, and change nothing. Remember that, even when you would act.”

  Time sped forward, Rhiannon exploring Annwn. At first she was clearly pleased, but as she explored, loneliness came over her. She returned to stand at the ocean’s shore like the little mermaid forbidden her home. In time she picked up a white sliver of shell from the beaches and split her palm open.

  Where drops of blood fell, Annwn’s people sprang up. From sea-pale to earth-dark, they grew fast and tall and strong, denizens of the earth and of Rhiannon’s blood. Two among them were easily recognizable: Hafgan and Emyr, who laid eyes first on Rhiannon, and then on each other. Ice and fire snapped through the salt-laden air, and a rivalry was born that had not yet found its end.

  Rhiannon cast aside her slivered shell, and took no notice when Emyr and Hafgan both stooped for it, nor when they broke it apart and each secreted a piece safely away, physical symbols of the day of their creation.

  Time rushed forward again. Rhiannon’s children multiplied and spread across the land. Rhiannon’s mother Caillech sent rain and warmth to soften the land as Kerne, god of the earth, taught them the ways of agriculture and of shaping stone and wood to build their homes. Others of the old gods passed through Annwn as teachers, then faded away.

  Rhiannon herself worked among the Seelie and flitted between Emyr and Hafgan like a butterfly from flower to flower. She saw nothing of the dark looks they exchanged, though many of the Seelie over whom she ruled did.

  One by one, over centuries, over millennia, the elders, the first of Rhiannon’s blood, died. There were accidents, there was weariness, there were fights between individuals that turned to doom, until almost none of them were left. Emyr and Hafgan survived it all, growing in power, growing in loathing. Rhiannon wandered to the mortal world and back again, bringing dalliances and lovers with her as she came and went.

  Through it all, their jealousy grew. So did the citadels that were their individual homes: Emyr’s in the forests, and Hafgan’s at the sea, each of them like a peacock preening its feathers to attract the mate they both wanted. They were all still Seelie, vibrant and healthy as they lived and loved among each other, no one trend of coloration setting them apart.

  Rhiannon opened a worldwalking spell and was gone; gone long enough that it became a lapse, then a gap, in the fast-forward history of the world. Hafgan and Emyr each blamed the other for her disappearance, though she’d been inconstant ever. For the first time a schism was born between forest and shore-dwellers. Emyr’s forest-folk claimed the name “Seelie” for themselves, degrading Hafgan’s faction to the “Unseelie,” the unreal people. Individual dislikes became periodic skirmishes between groups. The land responded, encouraging one or the other. Lara heard confusion in its music, its uncertainty as it looked for a master with the strength and gentle confidence shown by Rhiannon.

  By the time Rhiannon returned with a handsome mortal poet at her side, the rival kings had developed a taste for power.

  It was in their eyes—in the way they watched her—and in the way the deference they’d once shown was now frayed. They were the last of the old ones, the last born direct of Rhiannon’s blood, and there was no one but their queen and goddess to hold their ambitions in check. But her attention was all for the blue-eyed mortal who told tales of love and rue.

  Bit by bit, Hafgan and Emyr slipped away from her.

  Time slowed suddenly, events now unfolding at a pace that made words and motivations comprehensible. Hafgan and Emyr stood at a forest’s edge, green growing up behind Emyr, the distant sea cool and protective behind Hafgan.

  “She is lost to us,” Hafgan said.

  “She has never been ours. The land is lost to us while she remains. Which do you want more, Hafgan? The woman or the crown?”

  There was no need to respond: the answer was in Hafgan’s eyes. “Then she must be contained,” Emyr said. “She has no children birthed of her own body, and only we two left born of her blood. Together we can control her. Forget the poet. She will marry us, one or the other, and the other will ask for another wife of Llyr’s blood. For the good of the land, which is weaker than it was when Rhiannon’s children walked it with her.”

  Hafgan looked thoughtful. “The truthseekers will never allow it.”

  “The truthseekers,” Emyr said, “can be removed. A little time, a little patience, and I see no reason why they should stymie us. Rhiannon will be too charmed with the idea of birthing a child of her own to notice. One of us will be its father, and with the union we’ll bind her power to ourselves.”

  “No. Not ourselves. I won’t give you that advantage, if she should choose you.” Hafgan palmed the sliver of shell from so long ago, blood still red and visible on its edge. “From the sea as she is, and wetted by her blood. Bind her to this, and we have a bargain.”

  Emyr reluctantly drew his own bit of shell and laid it alongside Hafgan’s. For the first time in millennia, they sealed together again, a single white shard streaked with ancient blood. “It’s not enough to contain her.”

  “It will be.”

  Once more, time leapt forward, hissing through decades as the rival brothers secretly, subtly, hunted down the truthseekers who were their world’s arbiters of justice. Their deaths were violent; the abrupt end to their songs shocking Lara each time, though she couldn’t look away.

  At the same time, elsewhere, Rhiannon dallied with Oisín and flirted with the brother kings, until she was drawn away from the mortal poet by the enticing prospect of a child of her body. It was Emyr’s bed she came to, perhaps inevitably; he had more of Llyr’s pale look of the sea than Hafgan did, for all that he had made his realm the forests. Wedded, blissful, in love, Rhiannon gave herself up to the idea of bearing children, and Lara had a startling, piercing understanding of the elfin goddess’s innocence. She had created a world capriciously, peopled it out of loneliness, left it time and again in search of new amusements. Through none of it had she become other than what she was: a child of the sea and earth, dedicated wholly to the moment, never thinking beyond the now.

  Hafgan and Emyr were not so limited, and with each year that passed, they made her a little more their queen, and a little less their goddess.

  It took the hindsight of centuries passing in moments to see it happen. To see how Rhiannon’s radiance faded until she looked like one of the Seelie: exceptionally beautiful, but not heartbreakingly so. To see how her concern for the land became ever-more entwined with concern for the child growing within her, until that son was born and her attachment to Annwn became an attachment to him. With each small change, a little of what she was slipped away.

  And Emyr gathered it, weaving it,
commanding it, holding it in his palm. Shared it, year in and year out, with Hafgan. The shard passed from one brother to the other, and Rhiannon faltered and shrank and became less than she had been. Lara’s heart pounded like a racehorse’s as she leaned against time’s constraints, desperate to warn Rhiannon of her fate.

  Oisín did, even at the time. Still young, still handsome, but importantly, mortal and able to see treachery in a way that the stagnant Seelie could not. Rhiannon’s fondness for him never faltered, but neither would she hear the prophecies he made, and he was helpless then as Lara was now, watching a goddess crumble.

  Níamh came from the sea early in the brothers’ plot, wedding Hafgan as Rhiannon married Emyr. She was fair and bright, like sunrise on the sea, and there was less of her to begin with than there had ever been to Rhiannon. Merrick’s birth was her ending, and had perhaps been so since the moment she left the waters.

  For the briefest moment, in the scant handful of years after Níamh’s death, Rhiannon recovered some of what she had been, as if her sister’s loss awakened the goddess within her. For a little while she was vivacious and full of laughter, fascinated by the boy she’d given birth to, doting on Oisín once more, and freshly delighted to find herself with child again.

  Emyr, though, was displeased, and Hafgan furious. That sparked the exchange of firstborn children, the exchange that led, on all paths, to Lara entering the Barrow-lands herself.

  In the distant past, Dafydd was born. Rhiannon faded again, Emyr working hard to strip away the energies she expended in giving birth so they could never return to her. The magics reminded Lara of the worldwalking spell, setting in motion things that were never meant to be, but which were made possible by the very godhead whose power they stole. The shell was as long as his arm now, Rhiannon’s bloodstain upon it still an indelible link between goddess and land.

  The ending came in a rush, for all that Lara knew Rhiannon had only scant years to live once Dafydd was born; that she would drown in the sea saving Merrick, and everything would change for Annwn.

  And it did, but not in the way Lara had imagined.

  Rhiannon rushed into the water she’d come from, determined to save her sister’s child. The sea was her birthplace, her home, and sudden raw strength roared through her, a reminder of what she’d been. Tumultuous song filled Lara until she felt like she might fly apart with it, but Rhiannon had no such fears. She gathered that power, remembering what it had been to be Annwn’s goddess, and still within the sea, she pushed Merrick to shore on a wave of compassion and rage.

  And there on the shore, at the edge of sea and sky and earth, Emyr drove the bloodied shell shard into sand; into the sea-laden earth at water’s edge, and worked a magic to put all history to shame.

  The pieces to make the spell were Rhiannon’s, not his. The sea her father, the sky her mother, the blood her own, and so it was the magic of Annwn itself that Emyr commanded. But Annwn had no will of its own, and could only be directed.

  Directed by a king, himself made of Rhiannon’s blood, who was the closest thing to the goddess herself the land recognized.

  Everything Rhiannon threw at the shore, her impotent anger, her desire to save Merrick, her memories of what she had been and what she might yet again be, came together at a single focal point. Emyr took them all in, draining Rhiannon of all the strength she might ever wield, and bound it in an item of power.

  Lara opened her eyes, finally recognizing the rage within the staff as the terrible fury of a goddess confined.

  Thirty-five

  The others awakened more slowly. Dafydd and the other Seelie had unforgiving eyes for the sleeping kings, but Oisín, like Lara, gazed at the staff, grief aging his lined face even more deeply.

  “You knew.” Accusation was beyond Lara. The best she could manage was soft horror, and that was enough.

  Pain spasmed across Oisín’s features, but he nodded. “I suspected. The staff would not—will still not—abide the touch of royal hands. That, I think, was what drowned the lands, far more than any intent on their part.” He made a small gesture toward the kings, and Dafydd stirred.

  “Then you didn’t see?”

  Lara’s stomach twisted. “See what?”

  “How Emyr raised the staff and unleashed its magic on the valley. He meant to destroy Hafgan’s court so Rhiannon’s power was his alone. No wonder we think of the seas as killing. They took Rhiannon and the valley all in the same day.”

  “No.” Lara shivered, looking around the gathering. “I didn’t see that. I woke up when I realized what they’d done to Rhiannon. I thought the lands had drowned before she died. I thought …” She trailed off, not really doubting the truth in Dafydd’s voice. History so old it became legend was hardly reliable, even for those who had lived it. Not even her magic could winnow falsehood from truth at such a remove. She was reminded of her world’s stories of Robin Hood, none of which had ever satisfied her. Neither could this world’s tales of drownings and retributions, not until now, with the story played out for all of them.

  “I almost remember.” Aerin’s eyes were closed, her voice faint and distant. “I do remember she went into the water after Merrick. I remember that the sea rose up and cast him out. I do not … quite … remember that it kept coming, only that we took to the horses quickly, and rode hard. Dafydd had seen only a handful of summers. He rode with me. That, I remember. How can I forget that which I was witness to?”

  “You were young,” Oisín answered. “Young, and lied to, and memories slip into fog as time passes by. You’re not to blame for forgetting, Aerin, though I, perhaps, am.”

  He took the staff from Lara, resting it across his lap, fingers light on its carved surface. “I wasn’t at the ocean that day, but I recall that tremors shook the whole of the land until Emyr cast this away. My eyesight was failing by then, and I took it up, never certain of why its presence felt so familiar. I imagined it to be my Rhiannon, returned from the sea, but I am a poet. Pretty stories are my trade.”

  “I must have known Emyr had it when we left the shore that day. It always reminded me of my mother. Why did you refuse to give it to me?” Dafydd asked.

  “Because you were too young to stand against Emyr, and the staff would have asked it of you.”

  Lara gave Oisín a bemused look. “It doesn’t ask for anything.”

  “It would have, of Dafydd. Of her son.”

  “Ioan’s her son, too, and it was ready to burn through him and obliterate Boston!”

  “But we were right.” Ioan spoke for the first time, interrupting Oisín’s drawn breath. He gestured at the staff, though he made no effort to actually touch it. “Emyr drowned the Unseelie lands. My people have been done wrong by, Truthseeker. Will you help us now?”

  Lara, sourly, said, “Hafgan isn’t exactly innocent of wrongdoing himself,” but wiped her words and tone away with a movement of her hand. “It’s not your peoples’ fault, though. It’s these two. The kings who are the last of Rhiannon’s blood.”

  “Not the last. Ioan and Dafydd are as much her blood as any of the firstborns,” Aerin objected. “Give them their fathers’ crowns, if the Barrow-lands need kings.”

  Lara breathed a laugh. “Just like that? Depose Emyr, to whom you’ve been unswervingly loyal?”

  Aerin shrugged, obviously untroubled by the notion. “He has never deserved it. The dishonor is not mine, nor any of those who served him. No one will doubt the truth when you tell it to them, and minds will be changed. We don’t cling to the past. If we did, someone would have clear memories about Rhiannon’s fate.”

  “Is it that simple?” Lara asked with real curiosity. “Humans would complicate it. We’d question their loyalty, question the ambition of the sons who will become kings. We’d wonder if we’d been tricked. Somebody would form resistance cells, even if most believed the right thing had happened.”

  “There will be resistance and anger. We’ve fought for … ever.” Aerin smiled and Lara smiled back, hearing no mistr
uth in the phrase. “But no one will disbelieve you. Not with Dafydd’s return from the dead and with Emyr’s sleeping but living body here, and not with Merrick unmasked and alive. The evidence is in truth’s favor, even if we lacked a truthseeker to speak it, but we’re a people of magics, Truthseeker. With you to bear the news, there may be opposition, but there will be no doubt. Perhaps it’s an advantage we have over humans.”

  “Maybe it is. I’ll try,” Lara said to Ioan. “Of course I’ll try to raise the lands. I’ve said that all along. But what are we going to do with these two?”

  “Put them with Merrick in the chamber below. It’ll keep them out of trouble until we have a better idea.” Dafydd stood, gaze still grim as he studied the sleeping kings. Then he left the garden nook abruptly, and a few minutes later the entrance to the chamber cave open again. Ioan waved off Aerin’s help, carrying first Hafgan, then Emyr, to the biers below, and the four of them remaining walked together to meet Dafydd at the remembrance gardens’ entrance.

  “The citadel is still filled with Unseelie. Shall we play at prisoners again to make our escape?” Aerin sounded resigned, but Oisín made a dismissive noise.

  “The Truthseeker can open a way to the stables for us. No one will see us coming or going.”

  “The Truthseeker will what?” Lara’s eyebrows shot up, despite the serene confidence in Oisín’s voice. “Oisín, I only made a walkable pathway with the staff’s help!”

  “You made a very fine path out of the forest the very night I met you,” Oisín disagreed. “You need not cross chasms, Lara, only make a road from here to there visible to your companions alone. Or did you think following truth’s path would mean leaving us all behind? That would be lonely indeed.”

  Lara put both hands to her head, as if the act could physically hold in her feelings of astonishment. “I can make roads the people with me can see but no one else can?”

  Oisín pursed his lips. “A wayfinder would be of little use if she could not. I wonder at times if that’s how the very first roads between our world and Annwn were created, by wayfinders in search of new roads.”