by C. E. Murphy
“And yet it must be done,” Dafydd broke in.
Lara gaped at him and he sighed. “If Ioan leads the Unseelie army, a fair number of our own people will refuse to fight unless they have a banner of their own. The choices are myself or my father, and I’m the more expendable.”
Music chimed, giving weight to what he said. Lara folded her arms under her breasts. “I know you believe that’s true, but—”
“And,” Dafydd said, more strongly, “if Ioan’s hand was the one that directed mine in slaying Merrick, then it is my wish to meet him on the field and exact the price from his flesh.”
“And what if it was?” Lara snapped. “What if he does it again? You’re not going to be much of a banner to the Seelie army if you suddenly turn around and start hacking at them.”
“I’ll be prepared against it this time, Lara. It’s much more difficult to bespell someone who is prepared for you.”
“So, what? You’re going to ride up to him and say, ‘By the way, Ioan, did you possess me and make me kill Merrick?’ Do you really think he’s going to openly confess to murder?”
“Of course not,” Emyr said softly. “Which is why you’ll be riding at Dafydd’s side.”
Lara, wearing armor that had been fashioned for her while she slept, glowered at Dafydd’s shoulders around the edges of her fine, lightweight helm, and wished herself somewhere, anywhere, else. It had no effect: magic wasn’t that accommodating.
She had argued, partly from fear, partly from dismay, partly from barely knowing which end of a sword to hold, until the glint of exasperation in Emyr’s eyes had turned to a wall. She didn’t remember being sleepy, but one moment she’d been arguing and the next he’d said, “You must rest before dawn,” and she had known nothing after that until an already-armored Aerin awakened her and strapped her into moonlit armor of her own.
She had been fed, put on a horse, she was told, bespelled: she literally could not fall off unless the animal died beneath her. Aerin had shoved her hard a couple of times to prove it true, and split a wicked smile when Lara, sullenly, had pointed out that she could hear the truth in the explanation and didn’t need to be pushed around.
Now she scowled at Dafydd, honing anger so it would outweigh fear. He had come to her once she was on horseback, wrapping an armored hand around her equally armored calf: metal, light as this stuff was, did not make for easy intimacies. “I do need you,” he’d said quietly. “I would not kill my brother without knowing for certain that my actions were just, and there is no one but you who can tell me that.”
Lara had bit her tongue on the question “Is that all you need me for?” and had instead glared down at him. Even sick with terror, her face overheated and her hands cold, it was hard to be angry with him, especially seeing him prepared for war.
The bright pale armor could have been worked moonlight, for all she could tell: it was that light, and that beautiful. Even in the coming dawn its shadows were blue and purple, intricate designs etched into it whispering stories of the night. The fanciful idea that the Seelie were a night people had caught her, and had stayed with her as she watched the men and women around her armoring up and taking saddle. They were so pale, so fragile-looking, as though daylight took their strength and the night returned it.
Dafydd was no different, and clad in armor he seemed both dangerous and delicate, a description Lara was certain he wouldn’t appreciate. She wanted, against all sense, even against understanding, to send him to safety, even if she herself had to face a battle to keep him from it.
Warring music rang through her head, mocking her dramatics as half-truths and reigniting her pique. “You could capture him,” she’d muttered. “Bring him back to me to question.” It was an argument she’d tried the night before, and had sullenly conceded when Dafydd pointed out there was no guarantee of catching Ioan.
“We might,” Emyr had said, in a tone that had put her instantly on edge, “if I were to use a greater magic.”
Lara, through her teeth, had said, “But I disrupt your greater magics,” and Emyr had given her a beneficent smile that managed to be a falsehood all on its own.
“And so you must be as far from me as possible, and you will be of the most potential use at Dafydd’s side.”
It was almost immediately after that that he’d bespelled her to sleep.
Dafydd hadn’t forced the point again, had only squeezed her calf—she could tell from the scrape of metal against metal, rather than feeling pressure—and mounted his own horse, leaving her to frown at his shoulders and wait for the signal to ride.
It came with the clarion sound of horns, both in truth and in her mind. She had never imagined there might be a purity in riding to war, but the music of the calling horns told her there was. They lifted her, tightening her chest with anticipation, even enthusiasm, and brought unexpected fierce tears to her eyes. It was the being part of something that did it, she thought: the purposefulness of their actions becoming larger than any one rider. For a brief, bewildering moment she felt connected to a legacy older than history.
Then her horse surged forward and she flailed, keeping in the saddle only through the spell that stuck her there. Anticipation failed in the face of panic and horror. She was human, and this wasn’t her fight, even if she’d known anything about making war.
The avenue outside the citadel broadened as the Seelie army thundered out, widening to encompass the breadth of their front lines. The forest itself receded, responding to their need, and there were suddenly miles of clear land before them, leading down into the heart of valleys Lara hadn’t even known existed. In the far distance she could see a dark wavering mass: the Unseelie army, for now nothing more than a blot on the land.
The sun jolted through the sky, rising too fast and making the time it took to reach the Unseelie army shockingly brief. Certainly briefer than the speed of armored horses could allow for, and Lara thought of Dafydd’s explanation that the beasts took the easiest route, one that somehow slipped through the edges of time. In a way, it was good: it gave her less time to think, less time to be afraid. She couldn’t reach exhilaration again, not even with the sound of hooves pounding and armor rattling in her ears. It needed a sound track. She had never seen anything like what she participated in now except in film, with rising music to bring the audience where the director wanted.
That idea sustained her until they crashed relentlessly into the Unseelie front lines.
The heat was terrible. The sun hadn’t yet reached its zenith, but bodies and horses were already wet with sweat. Lara’s breath came hard, tightness squeezing her chest so each gasp felt like it brought too little air to her lungs. Dafydd had left her buried in a contingent of men and women whose duty was to protect her, and had surged ahead, Aerin at his side, to meet the enemy. A lunatic part of Lara resented that: she wanted to be where the Seelie woman was, fighting as Dafydd’s equal, though she knew perfectly well that in this matter, she was not.
He moved like he’d been born to the sword; like he knew the mechanics of fighting as well as he knew the act of breathing. Aerin was faster yet, smoother and more certain with her blade. Through flying dirt and blood and the surge of bodies, Lara saw the white-haired woman cast a concerned glance at Dafydd.
That, Lara thought, was entirely unfair. It had been a century, in all likelihood, since Dafydd had worked with a sword. Even immortals must lose their edge, if they had no need or chance to practice. She fought off the urge to press closer to Dafydd, to scold Aerin for her disapproval, not that she had a chance of breaking through the tightly bunched guards around her.
They moved even more beautifully than Dafydd did, if she could ignore the results of their actions. There were never fewer than two on all sides of her, though she could tell the riders and horses shifted places as black-armored Unseelie rode against them. Lara clutched a sword in her hand, feeling absurd, but there was no chance of using it as her guards’ blades glittered and darkened in the sunlight. For whole minutes
at a time she was aware of nothing but them, of nothing but trying to stay in their midst.
Dafydd was closer than she expected, when a moment’s lull in the battle gave her a chance to look up. His face was pulled in a grimace, worse even than the weariness beginning to mark her guard. For a few long seconds she was arrested by him, watching without care to the resurgence in fighting surrounding her.
There was a thickness in his body, a deadly slowness and weight to his arms. Even Lara, who knew nothing at all of fighting, could see that attacks he should have blocked scraped off his armor. Frustration contorted his features, and he lifted his gaze to catch hers across the field. Relief shattered across his face and he wheeled his horse toward her, abruptly moving against the tide of battle.
The weight came off him, his sword arm moving more easily, and a vicious joy lit his eyes. Lara saw herself through his eyes, stiff and awkward on her horse, holding an unfamiliar sword in an iron grip, and could hardly blame him for riding to her side. Maybe truthseekers of legend could make a reality in which they remained safe through their will alone, but she had nothing of that power.
Aerin crashed into Dafydd, her teeth bared as she jerked her chin at the black-clad warriors around them. The command couldn’t have been clearer if she’d spoken it in words: pay attention! Lara’s spate of envy at their shared battle skill, at Aerin’s ability to fight at Dafydd’s side, faded. She, truthfully, wanted to be safe and protected. Aerin’s strength in battle was admirable, not enviable.
Dafydd drew up, bewilderment etched across his face before he shook himself hard and nodded. Then he urged his horse forward again, toward Lara again, instead of back into fighting.
Aerin shouted loudly enough to be heard over the general noise, and cuffed him alongside the head. Armor or no, he swayed, and Aerin grabbed his horse’s bridle to haul the animal around, forcing Dafydd to face the Unseelie troops. He hesitated, and Aerin, clearly irritated, slapped his horse’s hindquarters and sent it leaping forward into battle.
One stride, no more. Then he pulled it around again, pushing himself back toward Lara, but now an expression of rage and fear strained his features. Lara heard panic strengthen his shout, and saw the name he cried was Aerin’s, not her own. And despite the need to reverse herself, despite the press of men, despite swords clashing and metal ringing all around them, Aerin was at his side in an instant.
He handed her his reins in an ungainly motion and spoke, words drowned out by distance and noise, but the tension in his body said speech wasn’t easy.
Aerin’s head came up and she shot Lara a sharp look across the field, then came back to Dafydd with an expression darker than Lara had ever seen. Nerves turned Lara’s stomach to a writhing mass and she urged her horse forward, forgetting the battle, forgetting danger. Her guard slowed her and she shouted wordless frustration, sound lost to cacophany.
She was still an impossible distance away when Aerin knocked Dafydd’s sword from his hands and severed his horse’s reins with her own blade. Lara, gaping, watched helplessly as Aerin wrapped the long strips of leather around Dafydd’s wrists, and leaned forward to speak in the Seelie prince’s ear.
He knotted his fingers in his horse’s mane and hauled it around to drive it forward with a kick.
Forward, into the heart of the Unseelie army.
Seventeen
“Dafydd!”
For an instant the battle went still, Seelie and Unseelie alike looking to the sky, as though Lara’s scream had come from far above. She had cried out the night before, looking into the scrying pool, and she wondered which had arrested the soldiers: her horror then, or now.
Aerin, undisturbed by Lara’s shriek, straightened in her saddle, watching as whatever she’d said drove Dafydd into the enemy’s waiting arms.
Rage turned Lara’s vision red. She forgot the men and women around her were meant to protect her; forgot that she knew nothing of swordplay; forgot everything except evidence of her own errors in Aerin’s actions. She didn’t know how Aerin had escaped the compulsion Dafydd had laid on the courtiers to answer, nor how she had missed the lies in the white-haired woman’s voice. Maybe, if a spell could force a man against his will, another could hide falsehood from a truthseeker, especially one as infantile in her talents as Lara was.
In the moment, none of it mattered. Her horse rushed forward, Lara’s fear forgotten as she stood in her stirrups and shouted.
She should have fallen off, but the magics Aerin had placed on her were to Lara’s benefit. She couldn’t fall, and she couldn’t be expected to do as she was doing.
That, then, was the only reason she scored a blow across Aerin’s kidneys at all.
Lara had seen others take hits that looked harder, but the moonlight armor screamed and bent under the force of her strike. Aerin whipped around, pain shattering beneath shock as she recognized Lara. Lara swung again, wildly, as momentum sent her past Aerin. The Seelie woman didn’t even have to parry to avoid it, but she lifted her sword to block a third attack as Lara hauled her horse around in a tight circle.
Metal scraped metal, Aerin drawing her blade down the length of Lara’s to tangle the guards. A quick twist wrenched the sword from Lara’s hand, and Aerin grabbed the edge of Lara’s breastplate, hauling her close. “What mortal idiocy drives you now, Truthseeker?”
Lara balled her armored fist and threw the first punch of her life at Aerin’s beautiful face.
Aerin’s head snapped back satisfactorily, blood pouring from her nose and upper lip. The nosepiece of her helm had caught the brunt of the blow: it was bent, and a cut leaked red down the bridge of her nose to mingle with the rest of the mess.
Lara, still standing in her stirrups, shoved Aerin backward, snarling “Arrest her” to those nearest to them. The command broke their stillness, drawing their attention from the echoing cry that Lara had voiced both seconds and hours earlier. Within moments the sounds of battle roared around her again, chaos personified by glittering swords and splashing blood. The sun was in her eyes, blinding and somehow, gratifyingly, reducing her fear. Emboldened and not waiting to see if she’d been obeyed, Lara pulled her horse around a second time and sent it into the Unseelie battalion. Chasing Dafydd; chasing hope.
She broke through their defenses by speed and surprise, not skill, but it was enough. Surprise let her knock men aside with kicks and once with a bash of her fist, and that was all the time she needed. Time enough to see that, just beyond the Unseelie front lines, Dafydd’s silver-bridled horse stood empty-saddled and startled-looking amid surging black-clad warriors.
Dafydd was gone.
In defiance of what she saw, in defiance of what she was, a single thought hung in Lara’s mind: Dafydd could not be gone. It rang false, but it wouldn’t leave her. It wasn’t possible that he had disappeared. She’d seen no brilliant door open in the air, nothing to take him away from the Barrow-lands. But then, she’d seen very little, with the sun in her eyes, and the transition had taken hardly any time when Dafydd had brought her to his world.
There were suddenly dozens of Seelie around her, their bright armor splashing in a wave against the Unseelie dark. She remained unmoving, stuck in her saddle even as she recognized that they were protecting her. They were obeying Dafydd’s order, even though he was no longer there. She stared at the earth, half afraid she would see his slim body trampled beneath hooves and Unseelie feet, and then another thought struck her: that he’d become invisible. She redoubled her search of the ground, hoping for signs of such a thing—maybe footprints appearing in the earth—even as the larger part of her rejected the possibility. She had seen his magic. It was electricity, not the manipulation of light that might allow him to hide in plain sight. Perhaps others among the Seelie had that skill, but not, she thought, Dafydd ap Caerwyn.
Which led her back to the impossible: that he had vanished.
She was still struggling with that, searching for another answer, when an arrowhead contingent of Unseelie rushed through the surr
ounding Seelie army and fair-haired Ioan ap Caerwyn clobbered her alongside the head with a gauntleted fist.
Later, she thought she had not, quite, lost consciousness. Nor had she fallen from her horse: Aerin’s magic was thorough. Dazed, she’d been surrounded by Unseelie warriors, and they’d ridden through the army at an oblique angle to the fighting. The battle thinned, then suddenly turned to nothing, grasslands becoming forest as her escort picked up speed. By the time the ringing in her head—for once not born of truth or falsehood, but from simple, painful trauma—had faded, they were well beyond the battlefield, and she had lost any hope of finding her way back on her own.
Ioan was not among her captors. They were all dark-haired, their helms removed once they’d left the field behind. Three of the group were women; and a part of Lara was bemused they felt she required eight soldiers for escort. They had more faith in her than she did.
A crescendo came over her at the thought, piano chords pounding in her head. Truthseekers, she imagined, could be dangerous, if confronted at the height of their power. She had no doubt they knew what she was—why else take her at all?—but they wouldn’t necessarily know that her talents were meager.
That might be her sole advantage. Lara bit back questions, certain her armed guards wouldn’t answer them, and tried to bury fear under the strength of her magic as they rode. They left the forests behind, climbing upward, the land becoming less hospitable as they did. Lara built a vision of their destination in her mind’s eye: a granite citadel as imposing as the Seelie court’s home, cold and unfriendly as the barren mountaintops they strove for. A wall rose up in the distance, hinting that her imagination was true; impenetrable and unscalable, it drew her eye upward, searching for an impossible palace built at its farthest reaches.
There was no such thing nor, as they came closer, any hint of a path rising along its sheer face. Its foot was buried in darkness, and they were nearly upon it before Lara realized it was a chasm cutting hundreds of feet down into the rock.
