Wayfinder

Ten

“Do you have a plan?” Aerin’s question, only slightly less welcome than the encroaching sunrise, shook off any hope Lara had of stealing another few minutes’ sleep. The most she could do was refuse to move, buried in her blankets, while she struggled to turn half-sleeping thoughts into coherent words.

“We’ll go into the ruined city,” she finally answered. “So many people died there. Seems like a good place to hold rites of passage. I wonder if we both have to pass. Should’ve asked Ioan.”

“The quest is yours, Truthseeker. It’s the hero, not his companions, who has to prove himself.”

Lara pushed up on an elbow, throwing blankets back so she could glower blearily at Aerin. “Are the Seelie completely unfamiliar with the concept of reassurance?”

“No, but you would hear the falsehood in my voice.”

Lara groaned. “I never thought I’d miss the little white lies people tell each other. All right.” She climbed out of bed, shaking dirt from the blankets and rolling them up again as tightly as she could. Aerin watched with professional disinterest, only nodding when Lara’s attempts to repack met her approval. A brief glow of delight warmed Lara. She wasn’t an outdoorsy camping type like Kelly, so successfully packing gear was an accomplishment worth taking pride in. It was the little things, Kelly often said, and Lara found herself in agreement.

Aerin tossed her a chunk of dried meat, followed by a piece of even drier bread, then swung her own pack up onto her shoulders with well-practiced ease. Lara watched, eyebrows furrowed as Aerin checked the pack’s hang and shifted a canteen of water to her hip for easy access. “The city’s half a day’s walk if we’re quick.”

“I doubt I’m quick.” Lara eyed Aerin’s longer legs, then crouched to pull her own pack on and copy the placement of a water canteen. “Too bad we couldn’t bring the horses.”

“We might have ridden through the ghost fields undisturbed yesterday afternoon, had we had the horses.” Aerin’s tone suggested it was entirely Lara’s fault they’d been deprived. She set out with long strides, quick enough that irritation spurted through Lara. She could match Aerin’s pace for a little while, but would end up exhausted and slowing them down that much more if she responded to the Seelie woman’s machismo. It took active determination to not run and catch up, but Lara settled into a pace she could maintain, gnawing on salty meat and chalky bread. Food that would last forever, probably, though she wouldn’t want to live forever if it was all she got to eat.

The earth underfoot was unfamiliar: clots of dirt and poking stones rather than the smooth paved streets she was accustomed to at home. It smelled better, though, fresh and warming with the sunrise, without patches of gum and worse to navigate. The backpack, this early on, wasn’t onerous, though a few hours of carrying its bulk would exhaust her shoulders. It would take as little time for her calves and feet to become weary from walking on soft, shiftable ground, but as long as she didn’t give in to Aerin’s silent challenge, she would be fine.

Within an hour Aerin slowed to an amble, waiting for Lara to catch her, and then matching Lara’s gait. “You’re smarter than I thought.”

Lara laughed out loud. “That’s what we’d call damning with faint praise, Aerin. You’re half a foot taller than I am. I couldn’t keep up even if you weren’t trying to make me look bad. Your shoulder’s not bothering you,” she added awkwardly.

Tension thinned Aerin’s mouth. “Not since the drowning. I inspected it while you … communed … with the dead. It appears to be healed.”

Lara glanced into the sunrise at their backs, mountain shadows still lush with black this early in the morning and the meadows at their feet blue with first light. There was no hint of the sea that had risen to swallow the land, not from where they were; not with Llyr’s gift of vision riding them. Lara touched her temple thoughtfully. Most glamours gave her headaches, but nothing in her perception wavered or bent the way glamours did. He couldn’t, she thought, have actually changed their reality, but the perfect presentation of a drowned world without any hints to it being a lie sent a shiver down her spine. Llyr’s power vastly outstripped the Seelie and Unseelie magic users she’d met. She turned back to the path they were on, subdued, and asked, “The waters?”

Aerin scoffed. “Deadly to my kind.” Her certainty, though, had vanished. “A gift from Llyr, perhaps.”

“Llyr, whose waters they are,” Lara said quietly, but didn’t press it further. Aerin grunted in relief and pulled a few steps ahead to discourage talk.

The city in front of them grew incrementally closer, clear gold sunlight picking out details invisible from the fields. There were places where the obsidian towers were shattered, though time and tide had worn their sharp edges smooth. Others had never broken, but were still dulled; what Lara’s eye wanted to finish as crisp curving lines were gentle and rounded, having long since given up their architect’s conceit. Low city walls grew up from the earth as they drew nearer, all of them banked with earth. Lara imagined they would be buried in sand, if she could see the city as it truly was.

A chime rang, warning, and for the first time her vision wavered. The air thickened, light filtered by gray-blue water and filled with new elements: a school of fish, and kelp brushing against her skin as it grew up from the ocean floor. Breathing became more difficult, her chest aching, and her ears popped as the pressure against them increased. The chime sounded again, louder this time, and distorted by the poor conductivity of the sea. Lara stopped where she was, eyes crushed shut, and rebuilt the image of earth, not sand, encroaching on the city walls. Whispered, “Llyr’s vision is a gift. A truth from a long time ago. I accept it.” She twisted her arm back, feeling for the staff pinned in place beneath her pack, and felt a faint electric shock as her fingers brushed against the ivory rod. “Llyr’s truth is the truth of the moment. Without it we’re all lost to the ocean floor. I accept it.”

A ripple of agreement washed through the staff, strengthening her belief. Sunlight slowly warmed her back again, the air thinning and becoming easier to breathe. Her ears popped again, compression releasing, and after long seconds she dared open her eyes and drag in a ragged breath. The Drowned Lands were once more as Llyr had offered them: not resplendent in their heyday glory, but ruins that could be walked through as tourists might.

Aerin stood a few yards ahead of Lara, facing her with wide eyes. “What in Rhiannon’s name was that?”

“That was my power trying to kill me,” Lara said hoarsely. “Us. Are you all right? I never heard you swear before.”

“It’s not an oath one voices around the king.” Aerin patted herself down, a jackrabbit pulse visible in her throat. “I am well. I thought for a moment I would drown.”

“You won’t.” Lara forcibly put the thought out of her head and thrust a finger toward the city. “Let’s go. Time’s wasting.”

Of all the visible city walls, the gates had come through closer to unscathed than anything else. Coral grew up over them, not in the astonishing colors of tropical waters, but in cooler yellows and grays and bleached whites that looked dead when not immersed. It prickled and reached out and up, making an imposing barrier between the farmlands and the city itself. Glimpses of shaped stone were visible beneath it, but time had long since hidden away whatever carvings might have once graced the city’s entryway.

Sitting in front of the gates were a pair of young men, rattling dice cups at one another and throwing down bones against the earth. They both had the Unseelie look to them, dark hair and gold skin, though they looked sun-browned rather than as if they’d leeched color from the earth itself. Lara slowed a dozen yards away, exchanging astonished glances with Aerin. Together they edged forward until the youths—though why Lara thought they were young, given the unaging aspect of all the elfin peoples—glanced up, then scrambled to their feet in a fit of embarrassment. One cried “Halt!” as the other scooped up a spear with a gleaming metal head.

Lara murmured “Do you really use that word when you’re standing guard?” to Aerin, who snorted.

“No strangers come to the Caerwyn citadel. We say very little at all when standing guard.”

“I am called Evrei,” the guard who’d spoken before said. “This city is guarded by my brother Evrawg and myself. Who goes there?”

Lara began, “My na—” and was cut off by Aerin’s interruption: “You guard a dilapidated hunk of coral. Why should I not go over the wall?”

“Certain doom lies that way,” Evrei said pompously. “Only one of the doors behind me leads safely into the city.”

“There are no doors at all,” Aerin protested. Evrei took one step back as the other youth—Evrawg—rolled his eyes and took a confidential step forward to murmur, “Of course not. He’s lying. Can’t trust him, you can’t.”

Lara put a hand over her face, trying not to laugh. “Aerin—”

“We have no time for this, Lara!” Aerin’s sword was in her hand when Lara looked up again, her expression set as she advanced on the guards. “We’ll pass with your leave or without it, but it’s your own heads you’re risking.”

Evrei pressed into the coral with an elbow under the sounds of Aerin’s threats. The delicate stuff crackled, dust sheeting to the earth as two arches gave way within it. The silvered path they’d been following split, each new road leading through one of the doors, city ruins visible beyond their shadows. Aerin hissed from the back of her throat, a feral sound of accomplishment.

“Evrei, which door—Aerin, don’t!” Lara ran forward, grabbing for Aerin’s backpack as she stomped through the closest door. She missed and skidded to a stop on the door’s threshold. Aerin vanished between one step and the next with no footprints, no sound, no flash of color to say she’d once been there.

Lara’s gut filled with bile. Never mind that Aerin had carried most of the food: more important, Emyr would scry for her at sunset, and find nothing. Nothing, or worse, the doom promised by Evrei. The Unseelie city stood in danger now, unless Lara could get her back.

Her, or the two royal scions resting somewhere in the Drowned Lands. Lara dropped her chin to her chest and cursed. Evrawg, brightly, reassuringly, said, “Ah, she’ll be fine. Nothing to worry about! Go on after her, why don’t you, and see for yourself?”

“Because you’re the brother who always lies.” Lara turned from the doorway, feeling as if her pack had grown twice as heavy in the past minute. “Evrei, which door is the safe one?”

He pointed to the door Aerin hadn’t taken, a trace of sullen pout marring his mouth. “How did you know? We didn’t even get to say that one of us always tells the truth.”

“I’m a truthseeker. You couldn’t trick me if you wanted to.” Lara sighed. “But if it makes you feel better, I’ll ask the question the right way. Which door would your brother tell me to take?”

Evrei pointed to the door Aerin had disappeared through, though the pout still pulled at his lips. “You’re only supposed to ask one question.”

“Evrei, I could have asked if the sky is blue or if grass is green. You can’t lie to me.” Lara hefted the pack on her shoulders, scowling at the doorways. “ ‘Truth will seek the hardest path.’ Shit. Aerin, when I catch up to you …”

The threat unfinished, Lara stalked through the door leading to certain doom.