Wayfinder

Three

“You must be mad.” Aerin spoke so pleasantly it took Lara a few seconds to hear the content of her speech, though it set dissonant bells ringing in her mind. “If Ioan ap Caerwyn holds Dafydd hostage, he would have long since sued for peace, or threatened his life to gain his ends.”

“Not if he sees destroying your people as the only way to save his own.” Lara spoke crisply, still hot with anger. Her magic wouldn’t allow her the comfort of an uncertainty: Dafydd will be all right only set more atonal notes chiming through her head. She wanted action, if only to burn off some of her fear.

Emyr, though, growled, “We are his people,” and turned again to his scrying pool. This time cold steamed from his hands before he even touched it, and his grip turned the water within to crackling ice. Lara sidled toward him, hairs lifting on her arms as his chill permeated the tent. He snapped, “Stand aside, Truthseeker. Your presence causes difficulties enough.”

It had in the Seelie citadel, but there had been another mortal there: Oisín, poet and prophet, whose magics were of a different kind from Lara’s own. Together they had disrupted Seelie magic without meaning to, a truth that itched at the back of Lara’s skull. Her world weakened the elfin people, and her magic, in conjunction with another mortal’s, disrupted Seelie power even in the Barrow-lands. Humans were bad for the Seelie, though what little folklore she knew suggested mortals were also tantalizing, even irresistible, to the fairy peoples.

Emyr would not, she imagined, appreciate being likened to a youth with a taste for bad girls. Lara hid a grin in her shoulder and stayed where she was, hoping her amusement wouldn’t bleed over and affect the king’s spell. Aerin took up a post half a step in front of Lara, further preventing her from moving forward, though she could still see the pool’s surface.

She had once triggered the scrying magic herself, a talent none of the Seelie had imagined might lie within her truthseeking skills. Then, images had awakened in the depths of the ice, carrying sound and color and life. Now Emyr’s power lifted ice upward, making frost-rimed sculptures across the pool’s surface. An interior garden, built wholly of metal and stone rose up. The ice wicked away color, but Lara could see it in her mind’s eye: marbled tree trunks with golden leaves, the vines entwining them made of emerald. They grew and sprawled around a pool, a few of the vines clambering over stone benches, though those details faded away as Emyr focused on the pebbled pathway leading into the garden. “I would speak with the Unseelie king.”

It took a long time, Lara thought. A long time for a man to step into shadows which, by rights, ice should be unable to show so darkly. He was a broad-shouldered form, nothing more; the hair he wore long masked any hope of seeing his features while he stood in shadow. “Emyr.” A note of curious mirth colored the other king’s deep voice. “Have you called to parley?”

“I have called to look on the face of the Unseelie king. When did you last step out of shadow when we spoke?”

“When did you last give me cause to? My people are relegated to shadows; why should I not contain myself within them when we speak? Is it not appropriate?” The Unseelie king’s sarcasm was unexpectedly wonderful to hear, its delivery so deliberate that even Lara, who had never been especially comfortable with irony, could enjoy the game he played with words. “You, lord of the shining citadel, stand in the glaring light, while I, master of the dark palace, remain hidden in gloom. Surely you cannot object to such figurative, if theatrical, stances.”

“I would see your face.” The words came out as clipped breaths of frosty air, individualized by Emyr’s precision.

Silence met his outburst, and then a dramatic sigh. “I gather, then, that the Truthseeker has returned. After so long, I wasn’t sure she would.”

He came out of the shadows as he spoke, changing the ice sculpture’s focus from the trees to himself. Even without color, he was very much as Lara remembered him: broader than Emyr or Dafydd, partly due to the cut of his clothes, but mostly thanks to a wider, slightly shorter frame. An ebony circlet set with rubies kept long black hair from his face. He was unquestionably more classically handsome than either his father or his brother, though now that he stood in proximity to Emyr, Lara could see more of the Seelie king in his eldest son than she’d remembered.

Pain twisted Emyr’s expression, betrayal so clear that it might have been a knife slicing across his face. A second image sprang up in the ice, this one, Lara thought, called from his memory, rather than any new visitor within the scrying spell.

It was a young man—a boy, really—with finer, longer features than Ioan possessed. Even in ice, his hair seemed wheat-pale, not the white or silver sported by Aerin and Emyr, but touched with sunlight. His eyes, like all Seelie’s, were light-colored, but less deep-set in his face than Ioan’s. The boy wore Seelie clothing: winged shoulders and light, fluting fabrics that wove in and out to make snug-fitting patterns against his torso. Despite the differences in coloration, Lara had no doubt this was Ioan as a child; Ioan as his father remembered him.

Ioan turned his attention from Emyr to the sculpture, then twisted away to gesture at the pool behind him. A third image rose from the water, as colorless and as vivid as the ice child Emyr had wrought. First the boy, and then a youth who bore a striking resemblance to Dafydd, though he wore his pale hair long and smooth, rather than the jagged rock-star cut that Dafydd favored. Still, the height of his cheekbones, the expressive mouth, and the slenderness of his frame all called Dafydd to Lara’s mind.

But then he changed, the image evolving more rapidly than Lara thought possible for its living counterpart. Though it was only water, it called darkness the same way Emyr’s ice scryings did, coloring hair to black and skin to a darker shade of pale. The water-Ioan lost height, shaping it to breadth, and his Seelie garb was put away for the heavier stuff worn by the Unseelie. Within moments the transformation was complete, leaving an almost-perfect echo of the Ioan whose image Emyr had called forth.

Almost perfect: the real Ioan wore the ebony circlet, where the younger version did not. The latter turned up his palms as if to say what else did you expect?, then fell away into the pool with a splash. The remaining image sought out Lara’s gaze. Despite the diminutive size demanded by the scrying pool, she found as much presence and command in his simulacrum as she had when she’d met him in person.

“Welcome,” Ioan ap Annwn said with genuine warmth. “Welcome back to Annwn, Lara Jansen.”

Emyr smashed the image to pieces with his fist.

Lara flinched backward with a yelp, and even Aerin’s hand went to her sword, as though the ruined vision might somehow prove a threat. Emyr’s harsh panting filled the tent, then disappeared as he stalked from the scrying pool to shove Aerin aside and catch Lara’s dress.

Or very nearly: his hands came together, grasping. Lara’s heartbeat shot up, fear and anger rising to the fore. She lifted the staff crosswise over her chest, making it a barrier between them. Eagerness thrummed through the ivory, as if Emyr were a recognized opponent. His hands splayed and his lip curled as he stilled his action. “How dare you—”

“How dare you,” Lara said incredulously. Her hands were icy, as though Emyr had caught them in his grip and called his element into play, but they gripped the staff with conviction. She could probably manage a single blow if she needed to: neither Emyr nor Aerin would expect her to respond physically to his advance. “I don’t care if you’re the king of Heaven. You don’t go around manhandling people.” Beyond Emyr, Aerin’s astonishment suggested that, as king, Emyr both could and did behave so aggressively. Offended at the idea, Lara spat air, not quite uncouth enough to draw liquid for the full effect. “You damned well don’t do it to me.”

Tension pulled at Emyr’s upper lip, like he’d smelled something vile and was just polite enough not to speak of it. But he withdrew a step, giving Lara her space and autonomy. She remained where she was, staring at him and glad that her hands still refused to shake. A month earlier she might have screamed if a man had come at her the way Emyr had just done. She might not have, too: society dictated foolish amounts of discretion in response to bad behavior, especially for women. But she could hardly imagine that she would ever have stood her ground, or thought of risking brute force against a larger adversary. The Barrow-lands, Dafydd, and her own burgeoning magic had lent her confidence she knew was growing, but coming up against it directly still surprised her.

Not quite as much as it surprised Emyr, perhaps. Lara lowered the staff by degrees, neither Seelie moving until it rested butt-down against the carpets again. “With all due respect, your majesty, Ioan’s probably the only one who has any idea where Dafydd is, or what kind of condition he’s in. Cutting off communications,” in a temper tantrum, she carefully didn’t say aloud, “wasn’t the most tactful thing you could have done.”

“With all due respect,” Emyr echoed flatly. “Truthseeker, I thought you were not given to embellishing your statements. I find that phrase difficult to believe.”

Lara gave him a pointed smile. “I assure you I meant it with every bit of respect appropriate to the moment, your majesty.” There were relatively few colloquial phrases she had been able to use throughout her life. With all due respect was one of them, because it could be invested with precisely as much respect as she felt was due.

Emyr made a sound that indicated he understood all too clearly what she meant. “Spoken in a child’s word,” he quoted, bitterly. “Changes that will break the world. What have you done to my people, Truthseeker?”

Guilt made a tight knot in Lara’s stomach before she banished it with indignation. “As far as I’m concerned it’s been barely a month since I first came here, Emyr. Even if you take the time that’s elapsed, it’s only been a year and a half.” She had, once again, become a time traveler. Skipping months at once, lurching from what had been a simple, linear life into the chaos of other lives moving on without her. At home, that had distressed her badly. Her attachment to the Barrow-lands was far less profound, and as she had left and returned in the midst of battle, worrying about a handful of disarrayed months seemed useless.

Useless except in terms of how Dafydd ap Caerwyn might have fared in those long months. He’d lived out the time she’d missed at home in jail, awaiting trial on charges of her kidnapping and presumed murder. Ioan, she hoped, would have treated his brother more humanely, but she couldn’t be certain of that until she saw him again. She made a fist, the staff’s reassuring carvings marking her palm. “Either way, I couldn’t have possibly affected Ioan’s choices. He decided to become Unseelie long before I came to the Barrow-lands. I may be destined to break your world, but you can’t lay that fracture on my head.” That was all you, she wanted to conclude, but had the wisdom to stop her tongue.

As a child wouldn’t. The prophecy Emyr had quoted sang through her mind in its entirety: Truth will seek the hardest path / measures that must mend the past. / Spoken in a child’s word / changes that will break the world. Finder learns the only way worlds come changed at end of day.

She was the truthseeking child, according to Oisín, the mortal poet who had first spoken the prophecy. A child by Seelie standards, who viewed her twenty-three years as inconsequential. And if she’d had doubts as to whether she might break or mend a world, the staff she now carried had clarified that: even on Earth, where its powers were muted, it had the strength to call up earthquakes and storms. Here, in the land of its making, she had every confidence it could destroy or create as its wielder desired.

God should have that kind of power, not Lara. She dragged in a steadying breath, then met Emyr’s eyes. “Is Ioan right, Emyr? Did you use the staff to drown the Unseelie lands? Is that what started your territory wars?”

“Ask Hafgan, if you would know what happened.” Emyr threw away the words with a sharp gesture and turned his back on her.

Exasperation flooded Lara. “I would, but he’s not here. You must’ve been there when the sea rose. Aerin? Were you?”

The Seelie woman stiffened and cast a discomfited glance at Emyr. “I don’t remember a time when the Hundred were not drowned, Lara. They may not have been, in my childhood, but …” She passed a hand over her eyes and shrugged. “The memories I have weigh in favor of them always being drowned. I remember swimming in the high tides with Dafydd and Merrick when I was a girl. I recall Rhia—” She broke off as Emyr hissed, and when she resumed again her voice was softer. “I recall the queen watching over us, and how she loved the waters.”

“Rhiannon.” Lara finished the name Aerin had not, and this time Emyr’s hiss was directed at her. She shook it off, more curious about the Seelie queen than concerned about the king’s anger. “Oisín mentioned her once. Even Dafydd barely remembers her. What … what happened to her?”

“She died,” Aerin said when it became obvious Emyr would not speak. “Saving Merrick, in truth. He swam out too far. The queen went into the water before anyone realized something was wrong. Merrick returned, but our lady …”

Lara put her fingers over her mouth, comprehension lurching through her. Ioan, so far as she could tell, had been embraced by the Unseelie king Hafgan, while Emyr had never warmed to his own adopted child Merrick. Now she understood why, and for the first time felt real sympathy for the Seelie monarch. It wouldn’t be easy for even a charitable man to forgive a child for costing a wife’s life, and nothing about Emyr had ever suggested he was of a lenient mind.

“Put her on a horse.” Emyr’s harsh voice cut across any thought of condolences Lara might have offered. “Put her on a horse, Aerin, and stick her there. We ride for my traitorous son’s head.”