by C. E. Murphy
They encountered the staff instead. Heat flashed against Lara’s back, blister hot, though soothing water struck as quickly. Behind her, though, a shriek rent the air, its pitch so high and loud that black light fell apart. For brief seconds the world was as Llyr had commanded it to be: warm skies above, a silvered pathway beneath Lara’s hands and knees. She scrambled forward, gaining her feet already in a run, and managed a dozen steps before the light changed again. Before the air grabbed at her again, holding her back, while the infuriated creatures following after were able to surge forward, quick with the gift of water. But they only darted around her, reaching, snapping, snarling, none of them risking the staff she carried.
The towers were abruptly before her, their black-light emissions unaccountably welcoming, as though Lara had become one of the remnants of Unseelie magic. Doors, half real, half built of shimmering light, rose three times her height, abstract blue-on-ebony carvings reminding her of the staff’s design. Relief burned her eyes and tightened her chest. Within the towers lay safety, a truth that reverberated through her bones. She shoved the doors in, grateful they moved easily, though sand swirled up in a dance as they opened. Lara pushed the doors closed behind her, then hobbled a few steps beyond the sand cloud. Not one of the seaborne creatures followed her, as if the half-magic doors construed a genuine barrier to the sea. Breath sobbing in her chest, Lara glanced upward to whisper, “Thank you,” with the hope that she had passed through the worst of the wrong door’s dangers.
A black swatch dropped from the ceiling.
It slammed her to the ground, sand washing up around them to make the creature difficult to see. A tail whipped toward her face, a vicious barb barely missing her eyes, and it lifted a long limb and struck downward, making eddies of sand.
Lara surged sideways, out from under the worst of its weight. She rolled and the thing pounced after her, landing on her backpack and shaking it hard enough to rattle her teeth. The instinct to curl up protectively warred with the impulse to run, and in the moment of hesitation the thing collapsed on her, wrapping multitudinous legs around her ribs and hips. A clatter sounded by her ear, a chitinous warning, and she had a sudden vision of a spider severing her spinal cord.
She flung herself forward, fingers dug in the sand until she was on her feet and running for a wall. The air supported her wrongly, offering waterlike buoyancy, but she was grateful: in normal atmosphere the beast’s weight would have kept her pinned. Grunting with effort, Lara spun at the last moment and slammed her back into a wall with enough force that the monster riding her squealed and released her. Black ichor popped from it, drifting through thick air. The thing slithered to the ground, then shook itself like a dog as Lara backed off.
Spider, crab, stingray; there might once have been some kind of taxonomical name for the thing, before dying Unseelie magic had corrupted it into something else. It had six legs, not eight, and a plated spine that curved over broad wings and bled down to a lashing tail. Bulging eyes were set far apart on a flat head, but its mouth protruded, pincers snapping together almost too fast to see. The sound was primitive, reaching into the back of Lara’s mind and speaking of danger.
“I exorcise thee, unholy spirit.” The words, whispered, were comforting, though Lara was unsurprised when the many-legged thing didn’t flinch. Nightwings were made purely of magic, and in the Barrow-lands were susceptible to the rituals of Lara’s faith. But this chimera contained too much of animals that had truly existed. Magic might have re-formed them into one, but an exorcism wouldn’t banish a nest of spiders, either. It took more mundane means.
The chimera rippled its wings, lifting up, slower than before but still quick and graceful. Blood floated from it as it pumped its wings and gained height. She tipped her head back, hair wafting around her face the same way blood followed the chimera.
It beat its wings down in two sudden rushes and was gone, black against the black distance of the tower ceiling. Alarm spurted through Lara, hands going cold and core tight as she searched the darkness for warning of its next attack. Scraps of song ran through her mind, pieces of music she’d used as spell-magic in her own world. They could perhaps be used to tear the chimera back into its component parts by calling up the truth of what it had been: “Amazing Grace” had given her the ability to see clearly, and had ripped apart nightwings as they attacked.
But too much clarity of sight would shatter the remains of Llyr’s magic, a risk she couldn’t afford. She reached over her shoulder, curling her fingers around the ivory staff. It was a bad choice, of that she had no doubt. But it was also her only weapon, and the chimera was quicker than she.
“I’m not any good at this,” she whispered without knowing to whom she made the protest. “I barely know which end of a sword to hold. I don’t know how to fight.”
The chimera fell on her again, and there was no more time to worry.
Black light retreated under the staff’s white flare as Lara thrust it upward, catching the chimera’s belly. Its weight staggered her as the blow struck home. Lara braced herself and flung it toward a wall as hard as she could.
The air’s peculiar buoyancy worked in her favor, supporting the chimera over a greater distance than she could have thrown it herself. It hit with more force than she expected it to, Llyr’s spell doing its part as well. Lara ran forward to strike at the sea monster again as it slithered down the wall. Its many legs went slack with the second hit and, heart pounding, she put a hand on one of its wings, less eager to kill it than wisdom might dictate. Impatience and a sense of danger surged through the staff: its bent for destruction was far greater than hers. Lara throttled it back as she explored the chimera through touch.
Her fingers made an impression on the wing, black softness oozing between them as though she’d put her hand into a bucket of thick warm grease. Lara’s gorge rose and she pulled back, then gritted her teeth and slid her hand up to the creature’s insectoid spine. Fragments of the exoskeleton were broken, sharp edges discharging small clouds of dark blood. Its long tail twitched, not quite threatening; she thought the thing was semiconscious and reacting on instinct. The staff hummed, a soft impression of discontent, but didn’t fight her again as a louder music sang in her mind.
Deep hollow atonal howls, like sea conches turned to sour instruments; that was the chimera’s song. It wasn’t a true thing, in much the same way the gash between Annwn and her world wasn’t true. They were things not meant to be, even when magic forced them to exist. It would be better to return the beast to what it had been than to kill it. That, after all, was what she hoped to do with the whole of Annwn. If she could bring the staff under her control to save the chimera, it boded well for the healing of the lands.
The stingray looked like the largest part of the whole, its broad wings and long tail and even its small protruding eyes dominant in a way that its scuttling legs and pincer mouth weren’t. Lara pressed her hand deeper into the greasy wing, holding the idea of the conch shell’s music in her mind and searching for anything within the chimera that resonated.
A hint of unadulterated music teased at the edge of her consciousness. Lara whispered encouragement, sending out a thread of her own song to guide it. Just a thread: her power could still be her undoing in the heart of the drowned realms.
The chimera’s tail lashed, suddenly full of life again, and scored a blow against her cheek. Icy pain cut to the bone, shattering her focus.
The staff, though, was prepared: heat and light roared from it eagerly, smashing into the chimera. The staff itself moved, dragging Lara with it so the weight of her body was behind the blow. It—she—skewered the chimera, strength enhanced by the staff’s will, and a shot of glee ricocheted from it. Blood erupted from the chimera, discolored red-purple hanging in the air as the beast screamed and thrashed, long tail whipping about in spasms of desperation and pain.
Black light exploded in the tower, fighting against the staff’s corrupt white. Shards of ebony, already fragile, shook and c
ollapsed with magic’s impact, as if the strike that had brought the chimera down also recoiled through the city walls. As if the staff were trying to finish what it had begun so long ago, and latent magic in the Unseelie citadel was fighting back.
Lara yanked the staff free of the chimera, horror blinding her as much as the clashing light did. She’d meant to control the thing, not be controlled by it. Someone, in making the stave, had invested it with far too much will of its own. Rhiannon had been a goddess indeed, if she could dominate its power. For a hopeless moment Lara wondered how Oisín had managed for the long years he’d carried the thing.
Eagerness leapt in it again, sucking at Lara’s flash of despair, rushing back up that emotion, trying to find lodging in Lara’s mind. She yelled, raw sound that hurt her throat, and very nearly threw the ivory weapon against the wall trying to rid herself of it.
Triumph scattered through her at the idea. Her fingertips spasmed, gripping the carvings at the last instant. The staff’s anger replaced its triumph: out of her hands, thrown against city walls filled with magic, it would be able to exact its will. Maybe not forever, but long enough to wreak untold destruction, until either its or the city’s remaining magics were burned out. Confidence sang in Lara’s mind, all the purity of tone she’d been unable to find within the chimera. The staff was too dangerous to let out of her hands, and even as her only weapon, too dangerous to use, either.
She clawed it back into her palms, strangling it again. Its light flickered, sullen response to her silent demand that it return to sleep. That was twice within the Drowned Lands she’d awakened it, and twice it had wrought ruin. It boded ill for the healing she hoped to accomplish, but she had learned something: without certainty, she couldn’t control the weapon. The stingray had looked like the greatest part of the chimera, but perhaps she’d been wrong. At least now she knew not to use the staff until she had learned all the pieces of Annwn’s history. She was a truthseeker: armed with the full truth, she would have the skill to wield it properly. Until then, it had the advantage.
It twisted in her hands like a living thing, patterns writhing and scratching. She whispered “No,” and though the sound was soft, it was filled with determination. She could quell the staff, if not use it; that would be enough, for now. Finally it went quiet, no longer struggling against her. Lara lowered her head, shoulders slumped under the weight of its magic and the more prosaic weight of her backpack.
There were still trials to pass, trials she had no proper concept of, and the two people she’d relied on were gone. Ioan was, she hoped, safe, but Aerin was either lost in the dark side of the drowned city or dead. And Dafydd lay somewhere in the Hundreds, hopefully healing from the magic-draining experiences on Earth, but just as possibly all but dead himself.
Tendrils of miserable certainty accompanied the last thought until Lara hunched over the staff, despair greater than the weight of magic or supplies. Her hopes of having passed through the citadel’s most dangerous gauntlet had been shattered with the chimera’s attack. It was a matter of time before she faced something she simply couldn’t escape.
Warmth crept from the staff, as subtle and encroaching as her misery. Lara laughed, sharp and bitter. The staff could see her through, and the cost would be less than her life. She had no chance of helping Annwn if she didn’t survive the Drowned Lands, and so, perhaps, had no choice.
Discord chimed through the last thoughts, a familiar warning. Lara opened her eyes, staring beyond the staff at the sand-littered tower floor. “Merrick tried that on me.” Her voice was hoarse and she coughed, then swallowed. “It almost worked, then. Trying to convince me that something I wanted to be true, was. Fool me once, shame on me.”
The temptation to use the staff as a walking stick touched her, encouragement to plant it against the floor and push herself to her feet. Lara made another bitter sound and climbed up on her own, shoving the weapon into its straps across her back. Impotent anger rushed from it, then settled, as if it trusted there would be a better time to test her again.
Alone and weary, but blessedly free from the staff’s influence, Lara tried to form a plan. She didn’t know enough of elfin architecture, whether there might be a hospital or holy place that would serve as a healing center somewhere within the city boundaries. At home, important buildings were traditionally located on hills, the better to dominate and inspire, but the towers themselves were the city’s highest structures.
Which meant they were the best chance she had for looking down and potentially locating any remnant sites where Dafydd and Hafgan might be resting. Not that she expected anything to be recognizable, not after so much decay, but it was a course of action, better than nothing. She left the chimera’s messy remains behind, pressing her fingertips against the wall as she made her way around the tower’s half-lit walls. The black light continued to glow—hard on the eyes, but it offered hints of how the tower and its passages had once looked. She ignored a hallway for a ruined door, the frame filled entirely by light. Sweeping carvings, perhaps echoes of the door that had stood there millennia before, had weight and presence. Lara put her weight against the light, moving it inward a few inches. Her imagination added the creak of ancient wood, but the sediment and fallen stone that stopped the door’s movement were real enough. She could get a thigh through, but not her torso. Not with the backpack on, at any rate. She peered through the crack at ruined stairs, supported by pillars and struts of light rather than stone, then twisted to gaze upward, trying to see how far they went. Wavering black-light shadows offered visibility to a few dozen feet. Lara muttered, then tried squeezing through again, half convinced that if she removed the pack, something would appear on one side of the door or the other to snatch it away and deprive her of all supplies while she slipped through.
Given the chimera’s interest in her flesh, why a hypothetical thief would steal the pack was a question worth considering. The idea that the pack would go unscathed while she was attacked was hardly reassuring, but the black humor was welcome. Lara slipped the pack off, keeping it tight in one fist as she wedged herself through the crack. The stone that had supported the stairs was hip-high on the door’s far side, making room to force the door open only because of a still-sturdy ledge well above her head. Nerves jumped in her stomach and Lara turned back to tug at her pack, which compressed less easily than she had. She sat down in piles of stone, trying to shove the door a few inches further open with her legs. It grated, sounding very real for all its translucency, then gave suddenly.
“You’ve done well, Truthseeker, and yet you should not be here.” Llyr’s voice came from above her. Lara yanked her pack to her chest and jerked around to see him on the rubble above her, one hand against the door she’d been trying to move. He released it and another scrape sounded as it eased back into place. “Your companion chose foolishly. Why did you follow her, when you knew better?”
“What else could I do?” Lara asked, astonished. “I don’t know how I’m going to find her or Dafydd or Hafgan, but I couldn’t just let her go, could I? That wouldn’t be very … heroic.” The word came awkwardly, but she didn’t have a better one, not when it had been made clear that even Aerin regarded her journey as a sort of hero’s quest.
Remote humor flickered across the sea god’s face. He looked hollower in the black light, less robust and powerful than he’d been, though his hand was steady and strong as he offered it to Lara. His grip was oddly soft as he pulled her to her feet, as if the water of which he was made was nothing more than that, uncontained by a wrapper of skin. “A decision worthy of a trial itself, though not one set before you. I can offer guidance now that you’ve passed them, though little else, I’m afraid.” He turned to climb the stairs, leaving Lara at their foot, staring after him dumbfounded.
“Now that I’ve what?”
He tossed a mild look over his shoulder and Lara scrambled after him, swinging her pack on as she ran up the stairs. “I’m sorry, but … what? I didn’t pass any trials.”
“Compassion, cleverness, confrontation. A trial is not much of a challenge, Truthseeker, if it is announced before it proceeds. Anyone might make a wise decision when they know it is part of a test.”
Lara stopped again, bewildered, and after a step or two more, so did Llyr, who lifted a hand and counted off on his fingers. “Compassion. You might have fought the armies of the dead, but instead you embraced them, learned their stories, and swore an oath to return them to the memories of the living. Not even Rhiannon’s children have shown such empathy when they’ve traveled to the Drowned Lands. Then cleverness, for you outwitted the twins, even if you did then choose the dark door. And in confrontation you not only defeated the dread beast, but far more important, you mastered the staff.”
“Those weren’t—I didn’t know they were trials.”
“As I said, what use is a trial when you know that you face it? It is what you do when you believe yourself to be alone that truly matters.”
Embarrassment flooded Lara and she looked at her feet. “Those were … the doors, that’s an old riddle from home. It could never fool me. And the army …” She wanted to say I only did what anyone might do, but Aerin’s eagerness to fight proved that untrue. “I almost lost,” she finally said, instead. “With the staff. It almost had me.”
“Almost. But you triumphed, and I think perhaps you have also learned from the experience. Do not use it again in these lands, Lara Jansen. I fear a third time will be your undoing.”
Sweet music bubbled through his voice, tempered by something deeper and more sorrowful. Lara looked up, and he turned back from the step above, tall and alien and lovely. “And I fear it will be ours,” he finished at the silent question in her eyes. “The Drowned Lands tremble with its power, but my realm is vast enough. I have no wish to see the mountains clearly, Truthseeker. To me, they are beautiful in their distance. Come. From the tower roofs I may show you the path your companion has taken, and guide you to where your lover lies at rest in the heart of my sea.”