Truthseeker

Sixteen

Lara flung herself back, escaping Emyr’s grip. The images in the water ruptured in a burst of ice and fog, Ioan’s face lingering for a few seconds in the shards that fell to the floor. Dafydd stared at them, then jerked his attention to Emyr, and to the failed magic of the scrying pool. Lara, trembling, looked from man to man, and whispered, “What happened?”

“It shouldn’t have happened,” Dafydd said when it became clear Emyr would not speak. “The pool, the magic, they belong to the king, but he didn’t—” He broke off, staring at Lara again, then passed a hand over his eyes as if trying to pull composure together by hiding his face. “He had not yet cast the scrying spell, Lara. He couldn’t, with your presence pulling the warp and weft of the Barrow-lands’ magic.”

“Scrying spell,” Lara breathed. “That’s what that was? It was—It was like somewhere else came to life in the ice.”

“As you say.” Dafydd carefully didn’t look toward his father, but Lara did, and cringed at the coldness of his expression. “No one should have been able to awaken what is Emyr’s to command, Lara, least of all a mortal. And even if someone else had the power to awaken it, you shouldn’t have been able to call forth future visions.”

“Fut—Is that what that was?” Not for the first time, Lara thought it would be easier to take refuge in disbelief, but the strength and tenor of Dafydd’s voice brooked no room for lies.

“It was.” Dafydd crossed to the pool, staring into its waters again, and spoke more to Emyr than Lara, but more to himself than anyone else present, she thought. “Truthseekers could once predict a thing, and make it true through force of will.”

“The pool,” Emyr said icily, “is meant to show things that are, not what may be.”

“Is it so different?” Dafydd kept his gaze on the still waters. Lara retreated from them both, falling into silence in lieu of disappearing from their presence entirely. “Perhaps in a truthseeker’s hands it’s as easily a tool to show what will be. I wonder what it might have shown had Merrick lived.”

“You mean would it show him fighting for our people as Ioan has chosen to fight with the Unseelie?” Sarcasm ran thick through Emyr’s voice. “You would expect him to don our moonlight armor and fight at your side, and be betrayed should he choose otherwise. And yet I am betrayed that Ioan sides with his foster family.” He released the basin and stepped away more slowly than Lara had, expression too remote to be angry. “What have you done?” he said softly, and the question was for neither Lara nor Dafydd. It might have been for Emyr himself: he, after all, had sent his son away as hostage, and in so doing had, it seemed, given Hafgan a coveted second heir.

“You never saw Merrick as your son,” Dafydd whispered unexpectedly, hearing something in Emyr’s question that Lara couldn’t. “You never dreamed that Ioan might accept another as a father. He was a child, Father. He was a boy when you sent him to the Unseelie court. They were the family he knew. Yes, I would have expected Merrick to fight by my side, and so I can believe that Ioan might fight by Hafgan’s. That’s what he’s done. Why he’s done it.” Silence drew out before he murmured “I’m sorry” with such an ache Lara’s heart hurt to hear it.

Lara found her voice in the echoes of Dafydd’s speech, and pushed herself away from the wall, determined to understand more clearly. Emyr focused on her as she moved, and Dafydd made a short, awkward motion, like he wanted to warn her away from coming to his father’s attention. Too late: having captured it, she stood tall and met the monarch’s gaze. “Why wouldn’t you let me go, or let me talk?”

“Because when the pool is awakened only the spellcaster can guide or release the magic, and I had things I needed to see before you let it go.” There was no anger in Emyr’s voice, but his control, his containment, was worse. Dafydd, apparently liking it no more than she did, stepped forward a second time, almost putting himself between Lara and his father. Emyr gave him a withering glance, then looked back at Lara. “Speech travels through the scrying spell, and we looked on a day that has not yet dawned. You couldn’t be allowed to speak and perhaps affect that day through what you do not know of its making.”

“How do you know it was the future?” There was no doubt in either man’s voice, but hope flashed through Lara and died again at Emyr’s cold look.

“It could hardly be the past. I can assure you I have never yet seen my son ride against me in battle. And it could hardly be the present.” He gestured toward a window, where dark-leaved trees whispered against the night. “It was a day yet to come, and I do not thank you for showing me what it holds.”

His bleak gaze turned on Dafydd, pinning him in place. The Seelie prince shifted uncomfortably, casting his gaze downward. It struck Lara that she found it easier to meet Emyr’s eyes than his own son did, and wondered what it said that she could stand under his gimlet glares as calmly as she did.

“It seems you are my only heir,” Emyr said to Dafydd. “As such, you will ride with the army tomorrow.”

Dafydd lowered his head, shock whitening his face, but his whispered “Your will, my lord,” was nearly lost under Lara’s incredulous, “That can’t be a good decision!”

Emyr turned on her, angry enough that spots stood out on his cheeks, but she stepped into his space, frustrated beyond thoughts of caution. “Send your only heir onto the battlefield? Especially when, given that he’s now leading an army that I assume wants to wipe you out, Ioan is the most likely candidate for having murdered Merrick ap Annwn in the first place?”

From their expressions, it was clear neither of the men had considered the possibility, which did nothing to change the ring of truth Lara heard in her own words. “It wasn’t someone here,” she said, exasperated. “Not in the citadel, anyway, if you really did gather them all into the courtroom earlier. And you did,” she added, “at least as far as you know, you did. I’d have known if you were lying. But come on.”

She looked from king to prince and back again, hands opened in demanding supplication. “Aerin didn’t think a spell could be cast that would sunder someone’s will, but isn’t it starting to add up? You said you might be able to do it, right, Emyr?”

Too late she realized she should have used an honorific. Emyr’s expression, dark to begin with, blackened entirely. Lara ground “Your majesty” through her teeth, and judged she’d done very little to alleviate her error. It didn’t matter that much; the worst he could do was kill her, and it was far more likely he’d send her back home. “You thought you might be able to do it, because you’ve got greater scope to your power than most people do. Ioan is—was—your heir. Wouldn’t he have to have talent on the same level you do?”

Emyr nodded grudgingly. Buoyed, Lara went on. “And he’s been raised in the Unseelie court, which is where most of your court thinks that kind of magic would be condoned.”

“But why?” From another, the question might have been plaintive. From Emyr, it somehow bordered on a threat.

“Power. Sympathy for the people he’s been raised with. Even just trying to save his own hide. I don’t know. He’s your son.”

“No longer. Dafydd—” Emyr swung toward his son, dismissing Lara. Incensed, she stepped closer, almost daring to catch his sleeve. It wasn’t necessary: he went still, then turned his head toward her incrementally, clearly disbelieving her audacity.

“If I’m right, and I don’t know if I am”—Clarity rang in that, too: her talent couldn’t differentiate between reasonable possibilities and the genuine truth—“then Dafydd is the only thing standing between you and the Barrow-lands falling into Unseelie hands. It is not wise to put him on the field, Emyr.”

“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.