by C. E. Murphy
And more years: Aerin grew into her beauty, becoming austere with it. Dafydd lost much of his playfulness, though compared to the sword-bearing woman always at his side, he still seemed open-hearted and ready to laugh. Their opposites suited them everywhere from political arenas to the bedchamber, and through time marked in the citadel architecture and growth of trees rather than the mere counting of years.
Oisín, glimpsed now and then, went from a young man to an old one, and then to the ancient blind sage she had met, and he, Lara recalled, had claimed to have been old for eight hundred years, but young a very long time before that. Like Oisín, the Seelie lost vitality as they aged, though it showed in different ways. Aerin’s beauty became ever more remote; Dafydd’s warm golden skin became moon-touched as the endless scenes turned more and more to night instead of day. But through it all, Aerin walked with Dafydd, even up to the last minutes when he nocked and pulled the arrow meant to take Merrick ap Annwn’s life. Even when, disgraced, he worked the worldwalking spell, and left the Seelie court behind.
Chilly fog released her with a shock. Lara’s breath steamed on the air, but warmed immediately. Aerin turned to her, green gaze discomfited, and Lara shrugged despite the pain.
“Llyr said this path would lead safely to the healing chambers. He also said it would show me things I probably wouldn’t want to see. I wish you hadn’t gone through the wrong door, Aerin. I’m tired of battles I didn’t really have to fight, and I don’t know what more we’ve got to face.”
“Perhaps you would find consolation in knowing that I, too, have seen things I would have prefered not to.” Aerin turned away, fog thinning with her motion. “But this is the end of our journey, Lara Jansen. Look.”
A small chamber lay before them, littered with exquisitely carved tombs. Almost a dozen bodies lay atop them like stone effigies, resting in silent repose for eternity.
Closest to the entrance, closest to where they stood, Dafydd ap Caerwyn lay like the others, waiting patiently for a breaking of the world.
Aerin breathed, “Dafydd,” but remained still, as if ice still held her. Lara jolted forward, relief hammering in her chest so hard it dwarfed the pain of her injury. There was nothing visibly wrong with him, but then, there hadn’t been when Ioan had taken him from her, either. He had only—only!—burned up the power that sustained him in Lara’s world, leaving him a paper shell. Fragile, yes, but not physically damaged.
Some of the frailty had gone from him. His skin looked healthier, no longer dried and ready to crack. There was luster to his hair instead of the golden strands being strawlike and dull. But beyond that, he might have been dead, with no sign of breath in his body, no flicker of movement behind his eyelids. Nor did his Unseelie garb lend him any hint of life: black and silver were too harsh for his coloring, even when the chamber’s soft green light was accounted for.
“How do we wake him up? Them up?” There were others in the room, after all, though she’d barely looked beyond Dafydd. One of the others had to be Hafgan, the Unseelie king, and by all rights he was the more important of the two. Annwn’s fate rested with him; Dafydd’s survival bore no such burden.
No, Lara thought. Only her own fate lay with the elfin prince. Much less important, and yet.
Aerin made a small, nonplussed sound. “I would not know, Truthseeker. The invocations to awaken someone from a healer’s sleep are known only to the healers. No one else can work them.”
Lara barked a tiny laugh. “We don’t have invocations like that at all, unless you want to count people in movies yelling, ‘Nooo!’ and ‘Live, damn you! Live!’ ”
“Does it work?”
“Only in stories that end happily ever after.” Tightness caught her throat. “And I don’t know if this one ends that way. Besides, in the movies those scenes usually follow something violent or tragic. Nobody just comes across a body and starts shouting for it to live.” She fell silent, realization creeping up before she whispered, “I’m wrong. We do have a magic spell to awaken the dead who’ve been resting peacefully. Except it only works in fairy tales.”
“And what, Lara Jansen, do you imagine this to be?”
“You people keep saying that.” Lara pressed her eyes shut, trying to reduce pique. “Which doesn’t even make sense, since you don’t call yourselves fairies.”
“No, but your folk do. It may have been long since your world and ours collided, but stories linger on. What is this spell?”
“Love. The greatest power known to man. True love’s kiss,” she clarified, and backed away from Dafydd to gesture Aerin at him.
The Seelie woman stared at her without comprehension. Lara set her teeth together and repeated the motion, sharp and small. “I saw you two when we crossed into the chamber. You’ve been together for hundreds of years.” Mistruth jangled and she said, “Thousands,” through her teeth, settling the sour music in her mind.
“And what,” Aerin asked after a bitter silence, “do you think I saw, Truthseeker?”
Confoundment rose in Lara before understanding came. “… me?”
“And Dafydd, with all the vitality and joy in life I remember in him restored. Perhaps I’m wrong, but my ego will be far more salved by coming second than by acting first and being found wanting.” Aerin turned away, slender body held rigid enough that her armor, so well-fitted, suddenly looked uncomfortable.
An awkward sting of empathy pricked at Lara. She wanted to be proven wrong no more than Aerin did, but if she was, it was only weeks, not aeons, lost to her. It seemed a fair trade, somehow, for the chance of embarrassment. Graceless, she lurched forward to press her lips against Dafydd’s before her own ego reasserted itself.
After a lifetime of immersion in it, she more than half expected truth’s song to rise up in a crescendo: a dramatic, moving sound track to accompany the scene. Instead its silence coiled around her, carrying darkness instead of the light she had recently become accustomed to. There was nothing, nothing, on the far side of sleep’s deadly veil. Not for him, at least. There were no dreams, no hopes of new life or old friends revisited, only an emptiness that went on forever. And for all its stillness, for all that the music had died, it was true. Annihilation lay beyond death for the elfin peoples, an utter ceasement of being.
Lara flinched back, breaking the kiss to gaze at Dafydd with bewildered regret. Regret for herself: neither Aerin nor Ioan had shown concern over the potential ends of their immortal lives, nor did she think Dafydd would. They had forever, or near enough to it, in the days they walked the earth. It was only Lara and her kind who left mortal bodies behind after a few short decades, and she had always found reassurance in the thought of seeing missing friends again. But her brief span of years—even if they could be elongated by staying in the Barrow-lands, as Oisín had done—would be all she ever had with Dafydd. There would be no eternal reunion in a spiritual homeland.
“So you better wake up,” she heard herself whispering. “Because if this is a limited-time offer, I don’t want to lose out on it. Live,” she added, now smiling. “Live, damn you. Live.”
Dafydd ap Caerwyn drew breath, and with that first breath, laughed.
Aerin gasped, a short sharp sound mixed with relief and sorrow, but only Lara heard it. Dafydd was still chortling, gaze coming into focus as he smiled at Lara. “You’ve been watching too many movies. ‘Live, damn you, live’? Was I—” His attention went beyond Lara, not so far as to Aerin, but simply up to the phosphorescent glow of the curved ceiling. “Lara, there are things I would like to say to you, but I suddenly think now is not the time. Sunrise,” he added in a measured voice, “seems to have taken on an unlikely tint.”
Lara lowered her head over his chest, biting back a tiny sob. “There are things I might like to hear. This has been …” She inhaled deeply and shook herself. There would be opportunities for talking later, when Aerin wasn’t in such close earshot, and until then there were innumerable things Dafydd needed to hear. She told herself that fiercely, then stead
ied her voice.
“You’re back in the Barrow-lands. In the Drowned Lands. You nearly died fighting the nightwings, Dafydd. Ioan opened the worldwalking spell and brought you back here to heal. That was …” Time’s broken passage left her at a loss for words, but she tried again after a few seconds: “Two mornings or six months ago, depending. Two mornings, for me.”
Dafydd went motionless, eyes still fixed on the ceiling. When he spoke, it was with careful neutrality. “And six months for the Barrow-lands? Does my home still exist in any meaningful manner, then, or have Emyr and Hafgan—Ioan—destroyed it in battle?”
“We have about a day to get back to Emyr before he obliterates the Unseelie.” Lara reconsidered her phrasing too late: Dafydd lurched to sitting, and finally saw Aerin standing in the chamber’s entrance. Delight swept his features and he surged off the bier to pull her into a hug. The words he spoke into her armored shoulder were unclear, but their sentiment was not: his gratitude for her presence knew no bounds.
Lara, lips pursed, glanced away, and was overly pleased when Aerin, wryly, said, “Not that I’ve lost faith, Dafydd, but I’m here at Emyr’s behest. And were it not for your truthseeker, he would ride on the Unseelie city tonight; my life is in her hands.”
“And your hair?” Dafydd touched Aerin’s burned locks. “What happened?”
“We fought a chimera,” Lara said into Aerin’s uncomfortable silence. “The only way I could think to defeat it was with a hymnal. It was hard on Aerin.”
Astonished gratitude lit the Seelie woman’s eyes as Dafydd spun to face Lara again. “A chimera? Lara, you must tell me everything. The nightwing battle, what happened? I remember—” Chagrin slipped into his words, slowing him, and he stood arms akimbo. “I seem to remember you throwing a crowbar at me.”
“A bar of crows?” Aerin’s eyebrows shot up, garnering a laugh from the two familiar with the mortal realm.
“A length of iron with one clawed end.” Dafydd made claws with two fingers. “Hence its name, I presume. You might have killed me, Lara,” he said with a bit more seriousness.
“You were already killing yourself. I was just trying to stop you from working any more magic. And it worked. Ioan came through a world-door and killed the nightwing. One two, one two, and through and through,” Lara said more softly, recalling the ease and speed Ioan had moved with. “He brought you back to Annwn, then to the Drowned Lands and their healing waters, because you weren’t recovering on your own.”
“You said that. And you came here how? Not through Ioan’s spell, if time is yesterday and half a year since.” Dafydd strode the chamber as he spoke, leaving Lara and Aerin to watch in bemusement. He paused at each tomb, examining the sleeper atop it, then moved on until Lara’s answer brought him to a full stop:
“I followed Merrick, Dafydd. He’s alive.”
“That is not possible.” Dafydd lifted a hand even as he spoke, barring any protest of truthfulness Lara might have made. She hadn’t planned to; Dafydd’s confidence in her power was sufficient that she recognized his denial as both necessary and perfunctory. People often disbelieved reality, even when the so-called impossible had taken place before their eyes. To be told the man he’d murdered was alive, without seeing it himself … it took Dafydd less time to recover than Lara thought it might. He gave a minute nod, freeing Lara to speak.
“He was your brother in all ways that mattered. You know what element he commanded?”
“Air.”
“And with the right glamours, air becomes illusion.” Lara counted loud heartbeats, waiting for Dafydd’s second nod. Waiting for him to work through what he’d been told, and waiting for the argument she knew he’d make:
“The compulsion that drove me more than once was no illusion.”
“Dafydd, I can lay compulsions.” Lara made her hands into fists, hating the confession. “It’s what I’m doing when I make people believe me, or when I stop them from acting as they might want to. And I’m only human. A truthseeker, maybe, but still only human. If I can do it, I’d think anyone with enough will and power could do it.”
“Someone of royal blood,” Aerin said. “Someone of Rhiannon’s line.”
Lara, taken aback, blinked at Aerin. “I thought Rhiannon was Emyr’s wife. And I thought you were all of her line. I thought that was the point.”
“We are, but some are closer to her than others. Your faith is full of contradictions itself, Lara,” Dafydd murmured. “Do you believe all mankind to be descended from Adam and Eve? Or from Noah, after the Flood?”
High chimes of discomfort sent cold crawling up Lara’s nape. It was a question she’d struggled with as a child, until religion and science had come to a truce: she had no concept of how long God might think a day was, nor any reason to be utterly convinced that making Man in His image had not taken generations of evolution. There had been Adams, of that she was certain; there had been Eves. Men and women who were the first of their kind whose children, through the ages, bred true. “Point taken. But does that mean Rhiannon was both your mother and grandmother?”
Dismay twisted the words, and the staff, quiet for so long, gave a sentiment very like chuckling. Lara resisted elbowing it as if it were an annoying person only because its location across her back made the action impossible. She twitched toward it, though, and her shoulder shrieked an objection, providing another reason not to react to the object’s teasing.
Aerin said, “Yes,” without seeming unduly disturbed by it. “Emyr and Hafgan are the oldest of Rhiannon’s blood. Their sons are her children and grandchildren both, while we others are farther removed, and less exalted.”
Contradictory truth ran through it, jarring Lara’s skull bones. She put a palm forward, stopping Aerin. “All right. Okay. Faith is simple. That’s what’s complicated about it. And truthseekers probably shouldn’t try dissecting it. What’s relevant is that the magic is there, Dafydd. Compulsions can be laid against your will. Everyone saw you draw and fire on Merrick, and saw him die, but none of it was real.” The language, she thought grumpily, wasn’t well suited to determine between things that had happened under coercion and things that were voluntary. “He was trying to sow the seeds of civil war,” she finished. “And he’s succeeded. If he can get the rest of the royals to kill one another …”
Dafydd hadn’t moved from in front of the tomb he’d stopped at, though he finally looked back toward Aerin and Lara. “Here lies Hafgan, king of the Unseelie court. Now we are four, we royals, and Merrick only one. The warmongering will end, and Merrick pay the price. This I swear.”
Resolution rolled through his words, deep and comforting. Aerin, though, snorted with humor. “A worthy oath, my prince, but there is one flaw. We have no one to waken Hafgan with love’s kiss, and without him your truthseeker’s quest will fail.”
“Love’s kiss.” Dafydd turned a slow smile on Lara. “Is that what wakened me?”
A blush began below Lara’s collarbones and rushed upward, so her shoulder ached anew and her face blazed with heat. Dafydd’s smile grew larger still, wicked delight dancing in his eyes. “I was right. There are things I would like to say to you, Lara Jansen.” Say, and, from his bright, lascivious examination, do. Lara blushed harder, blood stinging her cheeks to painful prickles and making her shoulder throb so hard she whimpered and put a hand over it. Outside pressure made the pain flee inward, twisting her stomach, but at least it was different.
Dafydd’s smile fell away, concern replacing it as he truly saw her for the first time. His gaze lingered on her shirt’s bloody stains before coming up to meet hers. “You’re hurt.”
“I’ll live.” Lara tested the phrase for veracity, then shrugged her shoulders. Close enough for government work, Kelly would say.
“These are healing chambers—”
“And if we’d come in the right way I might be willing to ask for help.” Lara shook her head carefully, trying not to jolt the renewed discomfort in her shoulder. “But we came in through the back
door, magically speaking, and I’m afraid calling any more power than we absolutely need to will have consequences.”
“I’ve missed rather a lot, haven’t I,” Dafydd said after a few heartbeats of silence. “I’ll want to hear it all.”
“Let’s wake Hafgan up and get out of here first. I want to get away from the Drowned Lands before Emyr contacts Aerin.”
“I’m sorry, Truthseeker.” Aerin sounded as though she spoke from a great distance. Lara turned on a heel, dread sickening her belly. Aerin stood rimed with ice, more invasive than the cold that had gripped them on entering the chamber. This seeped out from her, freezing the air into thin crackling lines, a reminder that only Llyr’s power allowed them to breathe.
Emyr. His icy scrying spell was meant for a recipient who was surrounded by air, not water. Here, in the heart of the Drowned Lands, the magic was bound to go wrong, freezing what it touched. Hoarfrost crackled and fell, new stuff forming as Aerin turned her head to glance at Lara and Dafydd. “I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I fear it’s already too late.”
Lara jolted forward a step, stopped by Dafydd’s hand on her elbow as he murmured, “This isn’t right. Scrying shouldn’t ice the air.”
“It’s not air,” Lara hissed, but bit back the rest, still uncertain of how the pressing sea might respond if she voiced truth aloud. “If it keeps up it’ll freeze us all, Dafydd.”
“No. Only me. I can do that, I think.” Shards of ice buckled and folded in as Aerin spoke, digging against her armor. Frost patterns appeared where they touched, cold spreading inhumanly fast. Her sword’s hilt went dull with layered cold, icicles forming on her gloves when she reached for the weapon. “The magic is not right,” she agreed hoarsely. “It grips me, struggles to hold me. It is not the window it’s meant to be.”