Wayfinder

Seventeen

Lara’s gut clenched, breath gone like she’d taken a hit. Her shoulder throbbed once, but even that damage seemed limited compared to the shock bubbling through her mind. “Killed them?”

“And every line that carried the blood. It took time.” Hafgan smiled, narrow and sharp. “But we never thought to trace the talent in mortal lives. Perhaps I’ll rectify the error.”

“We?” Lara whispered, then shook her head, shock melting to angry confidence. “You wouldn’t stand a chance, hunting in my world. It’s too full of iron and weapons you wouldn’t recognize. Don’t threaten me, Hafgan. I already have the worldbreaking staff.”

Dafydd shifted, a small action that spoke of surprise, and only then did Lara hear her words as the threat they were. Hafgan’s face twitched, subtle admiration and acknowledgment of her challenge visible in the change. “The old ones were not like you. They would not dream of threatening, nor would they act on the threat if it were made. It would lack …”—he shifted his head forward, offering a reptilian intimacy—“sophistication.”

Prickles ran over Lara’s neck, a chill that wanted her to respond. To continue baiting the Unseelie king until something erupted, something dangerous and unstoppable. That was the staff again, eager for destruction, and Lara gritted her teeth against the impulse. “You seem to remember the old days a lot more clearly than anyone else.”

Hafgan waved idle fingers toward his bier. “The long sleep clears the mind. But I will not answer your questions, Truthseeker. Not here, not now. Let me rejoin the world and see my people, see my brother king, before we take that journey.”

Certainty pounded through Lara. She could force the issue, compel the king to answer; her power would stretch that far. But it would also make an enemy of one inclined that way already, and that wasn’t, as of yet, necessary. She glanced at Dafydd, who nodded almost invisibly. Then, trying to loosen her jaw, she looked back at Hafgan and offered a short bow, the best she was able to do. “Of course. Your majesty, you’re the only one of Unseelie blood among us. My understanding is that the Drowned Lands will welcome you more readily than it has us. We would be grateful if you would lead us out safely.”

“Grateful,” Hafgan murmured. “Not indebted? You choose your words wisely, Truthseeker.”

“I always have.” A flash of memory came to her: her first date with Dafydd, when she’d pedantically and thoroughly dissected his word choices for accuracy. Kelly called her a walking dictionary for the game, but Lara enjoyed it. Carefully selecting words had lent her a small sense of control over truth that was difficult to otherwise achieve, in a world of white lies and polite fictions. Smiling, she put the memory aside to focus on the Unseelie monarch again. “Will you lead us out?”

He said, “I will,” with unexpected grace, leaving Lara feeling as though she’d participated in a ritual without realizing it. Beside her, Dafydd relaxed incrementally, and she resisted the impulse to see if Aerin had done the same.

A moment later, as Lara fell into step behind Hafgan, it was obvious the Seelie woman had not. She waited for both royals and Lara to pass and took up the rear, despite the destruction of her sword and armor. Her shoulders were high and tension-ridden, and the look she gave Lara was full of warning. Discomfited, Lara nodded without being certain of what she was agreeing to. Caution, at the very least, though there’d been no lie in Hafgan’s voice.

Moreover, the city’s black glow had faded when they exited the healing chambers. It was once again as Llyr had granted Lara the ability to see it: in ruins, but no longer buried in sand, no longer worn by tide and saltwater. Brilliant color ran through the garden’s coral-covered walls, and the ceaseless sound of wind and sea rushed through the crevasses, gentle and relaxing.

Creating, perhaps, a false sense of security. Even without Aerin’s obvious stress, Hafgan’s blunt words hung in Lara’s mind: There’s the reason we killed them all. Emyr, Aerin, and others who had spoken of it had said the truthseeking talent, always rare, had died out. Assassination was certainly a way of dying out, though not usually what was implied by the phrase. For a moment Lara felt like the last dodo, only with the cognitive capability of understanding what had happened to her brethren. It made her want to run, to draw a protective shell around herself, but there was nowhere to run, not in the heart of the drowned city. Not when she was, for all intents and purposes, entirely at Hafgan’s mercy. Llyr had come to her twice. She didn’t expect him a third time.

The thought lost its tunefulness, unexpected sour notes crawling in. Glad for a mental occupation beyond worrying about assassination, Lara chased the falsehood down, breaking the idea into component parts. Llyr had come to her twice: truth. She didn’t expect him a third time: wavering truth. She didn’t expect him to rescue her a third time: truth. Curious, she pushed the concepts forward, looking for the boundaries of her truth-knowing ability. She expected to see him again: true. When this was over? True, the music of it startling with its strength. She slowed, trying to refine it further. When she was successful? Indifferent song, not well-played, not passionate in either direction, true or false. When she failed? The same unopinionated music, unable to offer assurance either way.

A low worried laugh broke loose. At least she would survive what was coming, if she could expect to see Llyr when it was over.

The ill-made music came again, promising nothing.

Leaving the sea wrenched water from Lara’s lungs the same way entering it had. Aerin, too, collapsed to hands and knees, choking and spitting up saltwater, until they lay curled next to one another, trembling with exhaustion. Water dripped over Lara’s face when she moved, her clothes and hair laden with it, and Aerin had fared no better. Dafydd, though, was dry and comfortable as he crouched over them, hands spread wide in useless distress. Hafgan, as unscathed by the ocean as Dafydd, stalked up the beach, ignoring them in favor of looking over the sheltered cove.

The sun had long since set, judging from the beach’s coldness and the dark of the horizon. Stars and a crescent moon’s light glimmered overhead, just enough to cast faint shadows of dark on dark. Hafgan became a sculpted piece of night when he stopped at the beach’s edge, the wind barely enough to stir his hair.

He could hear them; could almost certainly hear them, but Lara fumbled for Dafydd anyway, weariness making her clumsy. “ ‘Why we killed them all’?”

He caught her hand, his grip strong and certain. Faint moonlight was far kinder to him than to Hafgan: he still looked vivacious, gold threads in his hair glinting silver under the night sky. “I don’t even know who ‘we’ are, Lara, much less if it’s—” He broke off, dismay creasing his eyes. “Much less if it’s true. But it is.” At her nod, his shoulders dropped. “I know nothing of it. Maybe it was an Unseelie vendetta, for the arbiters of justice allowing their lands to drown.”

“You believe that’s what happened?”

Dafydd shrugged. “All I know is the seas rose, Lara. A displaced people might find anyone to release their anger on.”

That was true enough in her own world, too. Lara released Dafydd’s hand, coiling up on herself again. Her chest ached, heavy with water, and a deep breath produced rattling coughs that took her breath. When she could move again, she sat on her heels and wheezed, “Can you work a scrying spell? We need to talk to your father.”

He turned his palms up, lightning dancing in them and casting sharp shadows against his face. “My element isn’t one for scrying with. I might call down a bolt from the clear night sky to distract him with, if I concentrated.”

Aerin chuckled, a low rough sound as she rolled onto her back. She coughed more delicately than Lara had, then pushed up on her elbows. Even with her hair a burned ruin and wearing nothing but the wet padded tunic and breeches that fit beneath her armor, in the moonlight she was beautiful. It liked her even better than it did Dafydd, her singed locks turning muted blue and her green eyes touched with yellow. “You would have to strike him with it to keep him from riding on the Unseelie, Dafydd, and then his guard would call it an attack, and ride in his name.”

“Your wisdom tempers my impulse, as always.” Dafydd dropped his head heavily between his shoulders, pale hair falling around his cheeks. “I suppose we ride hard for the battlegrounds, then.”

“It would be faster to find Ioan.” Lara twisted her hair over her shoulder, squeezing water out. Aerin and Dafydd both blinked at her, Aerin’s mouth slowly curving in a foolish smile.

“I suppose it would be. But now we’re four, and only one among us Unseelie.”

“But that one is their king. Not just the heir apparent playing the role to keep peace, but Hafgan himself. Will they know him?”

Dafydd raised a hand, begging patience with the gesture. “My brother is here?”

Lara exchanged looks with Aerin before speaking. “We had some trouble coming into the valley. Ioan was hurt and they took him to the village to be seen to by healers.”

“You had some trouble coming in,” Dafydd echoed. “Truthseeker, are you lying to me?”

“No!” Despite the vehemence of her protest, Lara dipped her head guiltily. “I’m not! But that … might be the edited version.”

“I didn’t know you could offer such a thing.” Dafydd’s smile was teasing.

Lara hunched her shoulders, grinning sheepishly at the sand. “I never used to. It’s just so much has happened.”

“Even the most honest among us might be tempted to edit,” Dafydd agreed.

Lara looked up again to find him still smiling, and to find Aerin’s gaze gone hard on her. Her impulse to return the banter retreated into discomfort. “What?”

“Does your shoulder no longer pain you?”

Lara clapped her hand against it, sodden padding releasing a wash of water down her chest from the impact. The flesh below, though, protested not at all. Astonished, Lara tugged at the wrappings, then thrust her arm out in a silent, childlike plea for help. Aerin leaned in to unwrap the bindings she’d put in place. Lara caught her breath with every pull, waiting for pain, but it never came. In moments, bare flesh was exposed, no hint of injury visible.

“The healing waters,” Aerin said slowly. “I would not have dreamed they would welcome me, much less a mortal, and yet …”

“We’re both better.” Lara prodded her shoulder, exploring undamaged skin. She hadn’t so much as noticed the pain evaporating. Being pain-free was normal, not remarkable, though now she remembered everything she’d done since reaching the beach: catching herself as she collapsed, reaching for Dafydd, pushing up to sit on her heels. Ordinary actions, except in light of having been dizzy with injury and blood loss not so very long before. “Who, um. Is it Llyr? Is he a god of healing as well as the sea? I feel like I should … thank someone, and my God doesn’t seem exactly appropriate here,” she said awkwardly. “I’m not sure He’d even hear me.”

“Oh, he would.” Dafydd pulled a moue. “Faith crosses boundaries. If not, your exorcism would have no power.”

“Nor your songs.” Aerin touched her hair, then let her hand fall. “Llyr is not our god of healing, but the waters are his. Thanks to him would not go unappreciated.”

Lara bowed her head, narrowly avoiding making the sign of the cross as she murmured thanks not only for her recovery, but for the help the sea god had offered her. Both Dafydd and Aerin were looking at her curiously when she lifted her gaze again, but neither spoke. “Ioan,” she said firmly. “If he can’t scry Emyr in time I’m afraid the Unseelie city will be wiped out by morning. I don’t know where the village they brought him to is, but I think I can find it focusing on him. Like I did with the staff back in Massachusetts,” she said to Dafydd, which earned her a faintly puzzled nod.

“I remember,” he said after a moment. “Just not … clearly.”

“You were sick.” Dying, truth’s music wanted her to say, but for once Lara quenched it, happier with chicanery. “Anyway, I can do it, but I don’t think we’ll be fast enough on foot. Aerin, do you have any idea how far we are from the horses?”

Aerin shook her head. “No, but they’ll come at my call.”

“All right, good. If you’ll call them …” Lara turned back to the dunes Hafgan had climbed, drawing breath to call him as well.

Only grass and shadows moved on the low beach hills. Hafgan was gone.