by C. E. Murphy
Maybe that was why humans had so little magic. Maybe their need to explore and investigate had trumped their inner gifts, forcing them to try and absorb more than their minds could handle. Her hands were pressed over her eyes, holding her lids shut, and still she wanted to see. Anyone weak enough to give in to all the glory magic could show them might well have ruptured with it.
Lot’s wife, she thought again, and had an agonizing spike of sympathy for the woman that manifested in a lingering headache.
“Okay,” Kelly said breathlessly. “Okay. Stay there a second. I think David’s coat is still in the backseat. I’ll make you a blindfold? Will that help?”
“Yes.” Relief cracked the single word. “Yes, please.” Barely a minute passed before Kelly tied Dafydd’s coat over Lara’s eyes, arms wound around her head and the back dangling over her face. Almost none of his scent remained in the fabric. “I can’t really breathe.”
“It’s a modern Middle Eastern look,” Kelly said. “I think it suits you.” She flipped the coat back over Lara’s head without loosening the blindfold. “Better?”
Lara drew a shaky breath, grateful for the physical inability to open her eyes and take in a world stripped to its essence by truth. “Much. Thank you.”
“No problem.” Kelly slipped her hand into Lara’s and tugged her gently upward. “Can you navigate?”
Rough-woven white cloth spread out behind her eyelids, the black mark across it jagged and unfriendly. It made a schism in the otherwise pure tones of music, off notes drawing her as strongly as true ones ever had. It was exhausting, and she’d only held on to that much power for a minute or two. “As long as I don’t have to get myself into the car, yes.”
“That much I can help you with.” Kelly guided Lara into the Corolla, buckling her seat belt with motherly efficiency, then hurried around to the driver’s side. “The staff’s in the backseat. Lead on, Quixote.”
Lara turned her head, stymied in giving Kelly a dirty look. Just as well, she thought; with the truth burning in her gaze it might do Kelly physical harm. “That’s two literary references inside of ten minutes. What did you do while I was gone, study the classics?”
“No, I studied them in college, but come on, how often do you get a chance to reference Pinocchio or Don Quixote in real life? I’m just seizing the opportunities you’re presenting.”
The car eased forward, startling without vision to accompany motion. Lara squeaked and fumbled for the handle above the door, curling her fingers around it. “I guess I’m glad to be of service. Not seeing where I’m going is really freaky, Kel.”
“Maybe, but it makes perfect sense.”
“It does?”
“Sure. You’ve heard the phrase ‘blind truth,’ haven’t you? Now,” Kelly said over Lara’s groan, “which way do we go?”
“Lara lara bo barra don’t fall asleep in the car-arra, me my mo marra, Laaaaa-ra. Wake up, Lara.”
“I’m awake!” A half truth: despite the textured white brilliance behind her eyelids, only Kelly’s singing kept Lara on the edge of consciousness. She was confident they’d reached mountain roads, at least. For a while the car had rattled over gravel, barely enough to keep her awake. But gravel had turned to near-silent, if bumpy, grass as they’d traveled onward, and the quietness had let her drift again. “I’m sorry. The blindfold is making me sleepy. And my head itches.”
“Well, you’re in luck. We have reached the end of the road, and I mean that literally. There’s a mountain in front of us. If we need to go up it, we’re doing it on foot. Mountain climbing blind and in high heels. That should wake you up.”
“Or kill me.” Lara tugged the blindfold carefully, then tightened it again. “I don’t think I can take it off without going crazy. I’m still seeing white and hearing whole orchestras. I feel like an overstuffed sausage.”
Worry came into Kelly’s voice, distorting its usual music. “Maybe you should let go of the power.”
Lara shook her head. “I’ll lose him if I do.”
“Blind, high-heel mountain climbing it is, then. When this is over we’ll start a school for athletic businesswomen. At least you can use the staff as a, er. Well. Staff. You know what I mean. A walking stick.” Kelly helped Lara out of the car and got her the staff before adding, “This is a terrible idea, you know?”
“I know.” The ivory staff was cool in Lara’s hands, like it had been after she shut off its power from shaking the earth. That was good: she was certain its power was part of what had stripped the world down to its barest essentials, and she still had the headache from that.
“Okay. I just wanted to make sure it was clear. The first bit’s not so bad. We’ll go slow.”
“We’re going to have to!” Even using the staff as a walking stick, the earth under Lara’s feet seemed eager to reach up and grab her. She set a reluctant pace made somewhat smoother by Kelly’s quick warnings of “Root, hole, branch!”—though the last proved to mean “duck” rather than “step up,” and Lara clobbered her forehead against sturdy lengths of wood twice before Kelly started saying “Duck!” instead.
“Log,” though, meant something to climb over. Kelly went first, grunting. “There’s a kind of pit on this side, so you’ll have to slide farther down than you think you will. Give me your hands.” She guided them down to its softening surface, and Lara leaned there for a moment, testing it with her weight and trying to listen beyond the music in her mind. The discordant tones veered to their left, pulling the threads she’d envisioned that way as well.
“I can’t see and it makes me feel like I shouldn’t talk,” she said after a moment. “Or maybe I’m just paying too much attention to my feet to try. We’re going to have to stop more often so I can see which way to go. We have to go left a little.”
Kelly drew in an unhappy breath. “Are you sure?”
Lara lifted her blind gaze, an eyebrow arched under the weight of Dafydd’s coat. Kelly muttered, “Yeah, yeah, okay, of course you’re sure. It’s just that it gets rougher pretty fast over there, Lar. The angle goes up and it gets rockier instead of woodsy. Maybe we should look for a way around. Go up a ways from where we are and see if it smoothes out.”
“You go.” Lara climbed over the log and sat on it. “It’ll take three times as long if I go up, and if it turns out there’s no way around we’ll have to come back down. At least if you go up we’ll know, and if it’s clear you can come get me.”
“You want me to leave you sitting blindfolded in the middle of a mountain forest?”
Lara managed a wan smile. “We’re probably far enough off the beaten path that the only person who’s likely to find me is the guy we’re after. That’s sort of a good thing.” Rueful truth ran through everything she said, thinning out some of the weighty song still dominating her thoughts. “We’re closer than we were. Maybe we’re close enough that I can let some of this power go and still track him. I’ll try while you’re looking for a path through, okay? It gives us both something to do.”
“All right,” Kelly said unhappily. “But yell if you need anything at all, will you? Even if you just don’t like being alone down here.”
“I will,” Lara promised. “Go on. I’ll be fine.” She forced her shoulders to relax as she listened to Kelly scramble up the hill, then turned her attention to the raw music pounding through her mind.
She had barely loosened her hold on it when Kelly’s scream ripped the air.
Thirty-Five
Magic ripped loose of Lara’s grasp, music drowned beneath the sound of Kelly’s terror. She yanked her blindfold off, tears flooding her eyes at the day’s sudden brilliance, but her feet were already carrying her forward with no care for safety or sight. The ground seemed even more treacherous as her vision returned; Kelly had made light of its difficulty without quite lying about it. Lara scrambled upward, putting weight on the staff despite its look of fragility. She stepped on her dress skirt repeatedly, its fullness proving more impediment than her heeled sandals.
In frustration, she seized the fabric and pulled it up gracelessly. No one was there to see, and all that mattered was she reach Kelly.
A vast boulder, deposited on the mountainside by glaciers many millennia past, blocked the way. Lara shot a glance off to the left, wondering how difficult that path had been, if conquering a fifteen-foot rock was the preferable choice. Packed earth made a ridge along it, leading slowly upward and reminding Lara of the pitched stone road that stretched down to the Unseelie city. That was good, she thought: any parallels to the Barrow-lands meant they were closing in on their quarry.
Dissonance thundered through the thought. Lara shouted, a raw sound of frustration as she tried to push the music away. Lies had never been comforting to her, but for once she craved their solace. Parallels with the Barrow-lands were coincidence, nothing more, but she wanted them to have meaning. She drove herself up the ridge, stepping on her skirt again as it escaped her grip. Stitches tore at the waist, making it sag further, and she wished she had the strength to simply rip the whole thing free. Deliberately destroying clothing—that was a thought she’d never imagined having.
The narrow ridge switched back as it reached the boulder’s edge. Softer ground had been cut away, making a skinny V between the mountain and the half-unearthed stone. Kelly couldn’t be too much farther ahead. It had been mere moments between her departure and her screams. Lara ran, staff in one hand and her damnable skirt hitched up in the other, and burst through the end of the switchback.
It opened onto a raw expanse of earth that had once been the site of a river or a landslide, with rocks strewn about it in awkward chunks. Dozens of tall thin stones stood at skewed attention, like bowling pins knocked partially aside, and innumerable round stones the size of beach balls lay among them. Kelly hid behind one of the taller rocks, arms curled over her head. Relief soured the panic in Lara’s stomach and she ran forward, waving. “Kelly! Come on!”
Kelly dropped her hands, face stricken with dismay. “Lara, no! Watch out!”
A round rock as large as those settled among the tall ones came flying down the riverbed. It bounced, shattering smaller stones into shrapnel, and spun on its axis to veer toward Lara. She shrieked and ducked, the rock flying overhead. It bounced once more, then crashed into a ravine a little farther down the mountain. Heart hammering, Lara straightened to gape after it, and Kelly’s warning shout came a second time. “Get down!”
Another rock came smashing down toward her. Lara shrieked again and ran for one of the standing stones. A third rock bashed its top off, sending dust and shards over her, and she stuffed her hand in her mouth to keep from crying out again.
“It’s—” The thunder of another stone rushing toward them drowned Kelly’s words and ended in a shuddering crash that shook the earth. “Fuck,” Kelly bellowed, “that one hit my pin. It’s ninepins, Lara. We’re the pins.”
Bewildering truth shot drumbeat rhythms up Lara’s spine. She stuck her head out from behind her rock regardless, trying to meet Kelly’s eyes. “Who the hell’s throwing the balls?”
“I don’t know! Giants!”
“There’s no such thing as giants!” Half a dozen stones came smashing down toward them, giving the lie to Lara’s assertion, for all that it rang true in her mind. She flinched back, staring as another one flew overhead and bounced into the ravine. “It’s got to be him.”
“He’s a giant?!”
“No! I mean, I don’t think so!” Lara pressed her spine against her standing stone, then dared another glimpse toward Kelly. They were separated by no more than twenty feet, with one of the pin-stones offering shelter between them. “Stay there!”
“Like I was going to go anywhere!”
A giggle rose up and gave Lara the nerve to launch herself into a run, aiming for the nearby standing stone. A hailstorm of smaller rocks exploded down at her, pebbles pelting her arms and ribs as she ran. One, a fist-sized rock, connected solidly with her thigh and she stumbled as bone-deep pain bloomed. The rest of the stones rattled off the ninepin rock as she rolled into its lee. Kelly’s voice broke over the last clattering of stone: “Are you okay?”
The ache in her leg was dull but comprehensive, setting her whole body off-kilter so she wanted to both curl over the injury and to throw up. Lara put her hand against it, gasping, and managed a weak “Yeah” in response.
Kelly’s silence was filled with another rattling of stone, at the end of which she said, “You’re still a terrible liar, Lar.”
“No, I’m okay. I’m just …” Lara exhaled like the ache would rush out on her breath, then inhaled again deeply. “That hurt.”
“I’ll come the rest of the way to you.” Before Lara had a chance to protest, Kelly burst out from behind her rock, running pell-mell across scattered stones. She slid behind the ninepin rock seconds before another round stone came rolling down the hill to batter their protective wall. “You shouldn’t’ve come after me, you idiot. But thank you.”
“You sounded like you were dying! Why didn’t you just turn around and come back?”
“Look.” Kelly nodded toward the switchback and Lara pushed herself up to peer at it.
The mountainside had closed, no hint of the passageway visible. Lara, incredulous, said, “That’s not even possible, is it?” and Kelly laughed.
“Lara, hon, we’re well on our way to six impossible things before breakfast. We—eep!” Rock shattered over their heads, the top of their standing stone exploding under the impact of another thrown stone. “We can’t stay here.”
“No, I mean, it’s really not possible.” Lara scowled at the blank mountainside, searching for a way to see through what she was certain must be illusion. Truthseeker was better suited to words, she thought, to hearing and speaking the truth. Seeing it was too complicated, the human mind poorly constructed for truth’s visual tricks. She clutched the staff, frantic to call its power to help herself see through the impossible, but it remained cold and quiet in her hands. Like it resented the limitations she’d put on it and was punishing her for it. The thought was absurd, but there was no hint of mistruth to it, and Lara found herself staring at the staff in bewildered distrust.
Kelly caught her arm, shaking her from half-formed thoughts. “I know it’s not possible, but that’s not stopping it from happening! That rock that hit you … can you run?”
Lara rubbed her thigh again, residually aware of the ache there. “Yeah, I’m fine. It’s a bone bruise. A week from now after I’ve forgotten what happened it’ll turn purple.”
“If you can manage to forget what’s happening I want your therapist’s phone number. Come on, maybe we can get over the edge of the ravine and it’ll protect us.”
“No, we need to go up.” Lara peeked around the edge of their rock, then yelped and flinched back as another barrage came rolling down the mountain. “It feels right, and besides, that’s where the stones are coming from. I’m going to get this guy even if I have to fight giants.”
“With what?”
Lara pushed herself up. “With the truth.”
“Oh, good. You’ve got a truth shield, then? One that’s going to keep enormous rocks from flattening us?”
“Sort of.” Lara closed her eyes, listening not for the next rumble of stone, but for the music that was a part of her. The nightwings had strained at that tune, making it ugly, though she hadn’t recognized that until the third encounter. But it meant something; it had to.
It meant that, like the breach between worlds that had let them through, they weren’t a true thing. They undoubtedly existed, but like a flaw in cloth, a woven bit gone wrong. It pulled at everything else, warping it the same way an out-of-tune piano warped a song.
There were no giants. Not in this world, not now, if there ever had been. Lara clung to that as a truth she could be certain of, and it hummed comforting agreement. “There aren’t any giants, but giants are throwing the stones.”
“What?” Kelly half-swallowed the question, letting Lara ignore her. Musi
c trembled, unable to fuse there aren’t any giants and giants are throwing the stones into a cohesive whole. One couldn’t be true without the other, and the first part carried more weight.
“There aren’t any giants to throw the stones. I want the stones to stop.”
Shocking silence surrounded them, as alarming, in its way, as the rockfall had been. Lara crowed triumph and swung around the edge of their standing stone to glare defiance up the mountain. “They’re an illusion. That must be his talent.”
“An illusion?” Kelly surged to her feet, gesturing at herself. Scrapes lined her hands, her shoes were dusty, and a bruise was forming on one cheekbone. “That’s a hell of an illusion, Lara. Packs a lot of punch. And the nightwings sure as hell weren’t illusions! How’d he make them if he does illusions?”
“The nightwings were something else. I mean, Dafydd knew what they were, so it’s got to be a spell the Seelie can work as a general rule, cutting away pieces of the night sky to make an attack beast. And anything can hit hard, Kelly. Air can hit hard.” Lara began picking her way up the riverbed, gaining speed as her certainty grew. “That’s got to be it. You can’t see the air, but it’s got presence. His talent must be giving it form, making it real.”
“Air’s one thing, but those were rocks!”
“No.” Lara turned around, catching Kelly’s hand and nodding toward the passage they’d just climbed. “Look.”
The ninepins stones still stood, rickety and tall in the ancient sluiceway. But they grew up out of flattened stones, grass working its way between the cracks. There were no lumps of round stones to be seen, though dust still settled where they’d crashed into the earth. “Look,” Lara said again, softly. “He stopped holding his concentration, so they disappeared.”
