by C. E. Murphy
Relief ricocheted through Lara’s heart, then turned to dust as Dafydd ap Caerwyn collapsed into insensibility.
She barely knew she moved, and though she wanted to go to Dafydd, a different need sent her elsewhere: to the worldbreaking staff, lying alone and abandoned just out of Dafydd’s insentient reach.
Power cascaded through her as she scooped it up, turning her body rigid with pain and excitement. The staff sang, an unholy shriek of exultation: its very purpose was chaos, and it had been bound too long by an order. Released, that power could do what she needed it to: defeat the nightwings and save Dafydd. Save her world, perhaps, and the truth of that burned through her until she lifted the staff and drove it into the earth.
The world cracked, rivulets of light slicing out from Lara and bashing into the ground. She heard it more than saw it, an endless tumult of bells, as though she’d been caught in a tower as the church below tolled out a greeting to the first light of morning.
Asphalt tore beneath her, a long jagged line opening up. Music poured out, rising into the sky, and the rip followed it, splitting apart earth from heaven. It rushed toward a vanishing point, toward the ball of fire just over the horizon, like a road reaching for the roof of the world.
Oisín’s voice danced through the music, whispering “Truth will seek the hardest path.” Lara, staring at the ripped hole in the world, thought she’d never seen a path that looked harder. She jolted forward, forcing her knees to unlock. Her ankle bent to the side, a reminder that she wore strappy sandals. She scrambled forward regardless, afraid that if she paused, the shredded earth would close again, and whatever answers lay on the road before her would be gone forever.
A nightwing screeched, the sound harsh against truth’s music. She swung with the staff, and the nightwing exploded on impact. Lara ducked as another flew in, and felts its claws snag at the back of her dress. She would have to start wearing sturdier clothes than her favored linens and silks if she was going to live under constant attack. Leather, at least, or perhaps Seelie armor, simply as a matter of course.
She recognized the calm, wry idea as panic’s close sister, something irrelevant to focus on so her fear seemed less important. She threw herself forward, feet clumsy as she tried to clamber up the path of light and music soaring into the sky.
Shock jolted her heart as hard as the ground jolted her foot as she slammed downward through the path. Lara tumbled forward through insubstantial light, catching herself on her hands and rolling to gape in offense at the shining road that wouldn’t support her weight. A nightwing backwinged above her, falling like a bird of prey, and brilliant gold from the sunrise glittered just at the top of her range of vision. At least she would die with the light in her eyes, if she had to die at all.
She was looking for a phrase, a way to shape truth, to save herself, when a black-clad warrior spilled down the path of light and eviscerated the nightwing as he passed.
Watching him, Lara knew she’d never really seen someone fight before. The battle with the Unseelie had been too busy, too crowded, for her to watch any one person, and her other encounters with violence—mercifully few, excepting the past week—had been either brief or laden with magic, neither of which allowed for a man with a sword to do what he did best.
He was Unseelie; he had to be, if the armor of hammered midnight meant anything. He wore a helm, obscuring his face even if his back hadn’t been to her, and the blade he used was liquid gold in the sunrise. The nightwings came to him like moth to flame, drawn by a likeness or by the path of light he’d entered on. They came to him, and they died.
There was no pattern, but there was grace and surety of movement to their dance. He seemed to know where they would strike from, always twisting or stepping away. Flame, weak in the morning light, washed off his armor when they spat it. At that, a handful of them scattered, screaming defiance, then rushed at each other, colliding in a spatter of dark above the ruined highway.
A single creature rose up where there had been many, and others retreated to dive into its blackness. It contorted as they crashed together, gaining strength and size until it became a sinuous black serpent, winged and fork-tongued and spitting fire. Clawed feet burst out of its chest, and it coiled its tail beneath itself and used it to spring forward. Lara screamed and skittered backward, but the Unseelie warrior met the creature with a leap of his own.
They came together in a clash, armor and cartilage rattling. Fire gouted over the knight’s head, the monster’s flesh absorbing his sword’s blow. Absorbing in part, at least: a howling nightwing fell away and the whole of the thing became fractionally smaller. Lara, wide-eyed, sought her crowbar and found it lying almost directly beneath the conflict, alongside Dafydd’s too-still body.
Sickness grabbed her belly, but she pushed onto her hands and knees, crawling forward as the battle fell to the side, both combatants requiring the earth for leverage. They struck again, metal shrieking as the giant nightwing’s claws dug into armor, but a second wounded nightwing fell away. Lara closed her fingers around her crowbar and edged closer to the fight, swinging with both it and the staff when one of the smaller monsters came close. Her hands were icy, so thick she could barely feel either weapon, but she would not leave their rescuer to fight the amalgamated nightwing by himself.
He was the answer to her determination. How, she didn’t know, but she had no doubt that she’d called him. That the staff had torn her world asunder and ripped open a road between the Barrow-lands and here because she had spoken truth. She’d promised their little army would find a way to defeat the nightwings without paying a cost in Dafydd’s life, and a chaos magic had responded. The earth still rattled and shook around them, and she no longer knew if it was the staff’s work, or the battle with the nightwings.
One came too close to her and she rose up on her knees, smashing it against the asphalt. Kelly, sounding miles away, let out a triumphant shout and tore toward the fight, joining Lara in crushing slices of midnight the warrior hacked off the larger beast.
They were mindless, Lara thought, driven only to destroy. They weren’t by nature cooperative, not from what she’d seen in the earlier battles, and yet they had twice now joined together to make a single creature more dangerous than they were individually. Something had to be guiding them, using creativity and cleverness to turn many small demons into a single vast one.
She whispered “Amazing grace” and turned her gaze from the falling bits of monster to the larger one still battling the Unseelie warrior. Song settled in her blood, focusing her power to know truth, to hear it, to see it, and their master came clear.
He rode the giant nightwing, ghostly expression full of the mixed concentration and glee of a bronco rider. His features were smooth, beautiful as all the Seelie were, but looking on him made her eyes hurt, as if she was looking at something that both was and wasn’t there. She dropped the crowbar and clawed her hands around the staff, trying to draw more of its strength into herself so she might see more clearly, but that, it seemed, was not one of its gifts. Only destruction, and perhaps healing. No amount of pouring herself into the song, seeking truth, would alter that.
The nightwing changed shape as she struggled to see its master more clearly. New heads sprang up as the knight cut pieces away, until it was a hydra, all heads and almost no body. Kelly still smashed the injured nightwings with her tire iron, and finally the warrior struck one head off and a new one didn’t arise. A second head fell, and the rider’s face contorted with rage. He glanced up, seeking escape. Lara bellowed, “No!” with all the energy she had left, and for an instant he met her eyes and froze.
Then the hydra leaped forward, striking directly at her. Lara fell back, swinging with the staff, but the black knight was there, skewering the hydra’s breast. Ichor sprayed out and another head fell before the thing dissolved into a handful of weak and broken nightwings. Kelly jumped on the closest ones, pounding them into the asphalt, and the Unseelie warrior dispatched the last two or thre
e with less vigor, if no less thoroughly. Lara collapsed onto her elbows, wheezing with relief as their rescuer stood still a long moment, clearly searching for any further danger.
Then, breathing hard, he pulled his helm off and Ioan ap Annwn turned to offer Lara a hand up.
Thirty-Three
“What are you—” Lara fumbled the words, tongue too big for her mouth as she stared up at Ioan. He was gore-spattered, black smears across his golden skin, and he bared his teeth at her half-asked question, though his extended hand remained steady.
“I have been trying to follow you for hours. The worldwalking spell is difficult even for an adept, and I have very little practice with it. It was only when I heard your call for help that I was able to open a door at all. Will you stand?” He spoke with impatience so polite Lara hardly recognized it. She put her hand in his and he drew her up, then brought his sword to the ready as Kelly approached with the tire iron gripped in both hands.
“Lara, who is this? What’s going on?”
The trooper drew their attention by amending her question to, “What the fuck is going on?” He was crouched behind his open car door, a shotgun balanced in the rolled-down window, so all that was visible were wide eyes and a double barrel.
Lara sensed, more than saw, both Kelly and Ioan cede the right to answer by taking half-steps backward. The right to answer and the position of responsibility, she thought a little wryly, and stepped forward. “We’re the good guys.”
“You’re wanted for assault!”
Incongruous hope slammed through Lara’s chest. “Just assault? Detective Washington’s alive?”
The shotgun wavered as the trooper raised his head a few more inches, staring at her incredulously. “‘Just’ assault? That carries a fifteen-year prison term, lady! Whatever you did to him was bad enough that the whole damned East Coast is on alert, looking for you three.”
“We didn’t do anything to him. It was creatures like these ones.” Lara nodded toward the shriveling nightwings, then took a second look and swore. “They’re disintegrating.”
“Not entirely.” Ioan nodded at the largest of the nightwings, which twitched like a lizard’s tail, life gone but nerve impulses remaining. Its body changed shape more than withered as Ioan spoke again. “Whatever sustained them will be left.”
“Something sustained them?” Lara said horrified. Then, more urgently, she added, “Nobody’s going to believe any of this without a body. Do you have a camera, Officer? Ioan, can you, I don’t know, can you put a stasis spell on one of them or something, so it doesn’t disappear?”
Both men exchanged glances, but the trooper, looking like he wasn’t sure why, exchanged his shotgun for a cell phone and approached the largest dead nightwing to take pictures. He muttered, “The camera in the car will have caught the fight, too,” somewhat dubiously.
Lara shared his uncertainty: it seemed somehow unlikely that magical creatures could be caught on videotape. On the other hand, Dafydd had spent years as a TV weatherman, so maybe there was hope. “Ioan?”
He shook his head. “Any spell I cast would only last as long as I remained here, and I have no intention of staying to explain any of this. We’re weaker here, Truthseeker. Legend said we have always been. No one from Annwn stays in your world long, not if they can help it.”
“Fairy tales,” Kelly whispered. She’d knelt at Dafydd’s other side and looked up now, eyes shining with worry. “In fairy tales if the fair folk stay in our world it’s usually because they’re trapped somehow and aren’t strong enough to get away. Like Tam Lin except in reverse.”
“And it was mortal love that saved Tam when he rode back into this world with the queen’s host,” Ioan said. Lara looked between them, bewildered, though Kelly’s expression said she knew the story. “Had Janet come to Annwn to rescue him, she never would have been able to free him. We’re weakened by this world,” Ioan said again, “and Dafydd is weaker yet than he might have been, because his link to the Barrow-lands has been stolen from him.”
“How did you—?”
“Know? Because no denizen of the Barrow-lands would be so wasted unless he’s been cut away from the source of our power. Was it you?”
Lara nodded miserably. “I was trying to stop the nightwings from coming through a breach between the worlds. I closed it. I was afraid they’d take on a life of their own.”
“As they would have. Or stolen many, more likely.” Ioan frowned at the largest nightwing, which the trooper stood over, still filming. It had nearly reverted to shape, and bile rose in Lara’s stomach as she recognized the shape.
“It’s Officer Cooper. Oh my God.” Her hands went to her mouth, half shock and half holding back illness. “Oh my God. This is the man the nightwings … took refuge in. Hid in. Oh my God, Ioan, what happened to him?”
“They required a host. Sustenance, so they could survive. Their maker would have been able to control a man infested by them, Truthseeker. Not easily, perhaps, but in time, with such an infection, the purveyor of disease would inevitably dominate the host. And the host’s perception of himself as an individual being would have permitted the nightwings to act in concert the way we saw.” Ioan sounded admiring. “It would take a magic user of great skill to accomplish all this.”
“And a lot of innocent lives,” Lara snapped. Ioan had the grace to look slightly abashed, as Kelly slowly came to Lara’s side, looking down at the contorted dead man.
“No wonder it took awhile for him to catch up with us,” she whispered hollowly. “Cooper would have been fighting for control over his own body.”
“And losing,” Ioan said without pity. “You’re fortunate he had the strength of will he did, else you might have been destroyed hours since. And you are equally unfortunate that there was such corruption in his soul that he was susceptible at all.” He fell silent a moment, looking at Cooper’s body. The police officer looked tortured, Lara thought, and as though he’d aged years in the hours since she’d seen him last. Black threads stained his skin, like the blood vessels were filled with poison, which wasn’t, she imagined, far from the truth.
Ioan finally turned his attention back to her. “You probably saved your world from an infestation, Truthseeker. And no wonder, then, that I had such trouble crossing over, with the path so thoroughly closed. Following you took everything I had, and even now I’m uncertain how it was accomplished.”
Lara curled her fingers around the staff she still carried, reluctant to suggest it as the source of power Ioan had sent her searching for, or as the conduit that had allowed the worldwalking spell to work again. He only knew that he’d wanted a weapon, not what it looked like, and she had no intention of giving it up. Instead, after a moment’s silence, she shook her head. “It doesn’t matter, does it? You came, and you saved us.”
“As I would now save my brother. I would return him to the Barrow-lands, Truthseeker.” Ioan’s voice cooled, as though he expected a challenge, and Lara for once found herself glad to meet that expectation.
“Why would I let you take him anywhere? As far as I know you’re the one who killed Merrick and started this whole mess.”
For a sudden moment she saw what Emyr might have looked like if he’d ever displayed a sense of humor. It cut through Ioan’s face, biting but true: “I have done no such thing. I have, indeed, done my best to protect him. He faced some manner of trouble on the battlefield, Truthseeker. That was why I usurped his power and thrust him back to this world in the first place.”
“You what? You laid the compulsion?” She hadn’t expected her suspicions to be confirmed so easily, but Ioan’s voice rang out over hers, strong and angry.
“No. I stole his power, Truthseeker, but not his will. I was watching you during that battle, through my silver pool.”
Lara, under her breath, said, “I thought scrying was an ice spell.”
Ioan, unexpectedly, interrupted himself to answer that. “Ice is only frozen water, and water is my gift. I was watching,” he
repeated. “To find you, but Dafydd rode close to you, and so I watched him as well. I saw him struggling with the compulsion, and I saw his lover bind him so he could drive himself away into the heart of the Unseelie army. I took the only path I could see to keep him safe. I wrenched his own magic away and forced the worldwalking spell he held at the ready to be cast, sending him back to your world. But he is dying now, Truthseeker. He will die if he stays here.”
Lara’s ears turned scarlet and she bit back a heated denial of the term Ioan had used for Aerin. He’d spoken only truth, and she knew it. Knew, too, that Aerin had been Dafydd’s lover, but she hadn’t allowed herself to put it into words, and was surprised how much they stung when voiced.
It wasn’t a sting she could allow herself to pursue right now. Not with the truth of Ioan’s words rushing over her. “Then, take me with you.”
Ioan made a sound outside of words, a breath of regret and helpless humor. “I can’t. The Barrow-lands will tolerate one passenger when the worldwalking spell is used, but I cannot force it to more. Much as I need a truthseeker, Dafydd is my brother, and dying.”
“I can’t just let you take him!” Fingernails on chalkboards, screeching untruth in her protest. She could; she would have to. Lara knelt and curled Dafydd’s hand in her own, squeezing like she could waken him by force of will. “How can I trust you?”
“You’re a truthseeker,” Ioan whispered. “Ask your questions, but do it quickly. He has very little time.”
Dafydd’s hands were warm in hers. That seemed wrong, when he was the one lying so close to death. Lara stared at him dry-eyed and, dry-voiced, said, “Did you, Ioan ap Caerwyn, called ap Annwn, by any action or inaction of your own, force Dafydd ap Caerwyn’s hand to murder Merrick ap Annwn?”
