by C. E. Murphy
It was in every way the opposite of the shining Seelie citadel. Where that was soaring opalescence, the Unseelie city was low rambling black mother-of-pearl. Lara tore through its streets, half fearing her horse’s hooves would damage the delicate-looking stone, but no chips flew. A few astonished children, wearing brightly colored and warmly woven clothes, scattered away, and sent alarmed cries to their caretakers as the rest of Emyr’s guard rushed in seconds behind her. Lara crashed through the open courtyard that joined palace to town, guiding her horse over silver-pebbled pathways and down half-remembered halls in search of the pool Ioan had met her at, and which Emyr had called up with his scrying spell.
Her horse, more sensitive to changing landscape than she, dropped into a trot that snapped Lara’s teeth together with every step, then fell into a more comfortable amble as it entered the enclosed garden with nowhere left to run. Lara let it go to the pool and drink—Seelie bridles lacked the bits humans used—and examined the floor, wondering if getting down was worth the effort.
Ioan ap Annwn startled her with his greeting. “Welcome back, Truthseeker.”
Lara’s spine stiffened and she turned to glare at the Unseelie king, who had emerged from among the brittle trees. “ ‘Welcome’? Welcome back? Is that really the appropriate phrase, when last time I was here it was as a kidnap victim, not an honored guest?” Hooves rattled against the stonework floors beyond, and she bit back her ire. “Emyr’s right behind me. Ioan, where’s Dafydd? What’s—?”
Emyr swept in, his horse slowing not at all as the king stood in the stirrups and drew his sword. Ioan shot Lara one dismayed glance, then crashed into the pool, avoiding Emyr’s first attack. Lara shrieked and hauled her horse’s reins, trying to pull away from danger. The beast pranced sideways until it ran up against marble trees that would let it go no further. Lara, wanting a weapon, reached for her ivory staff, then left it where it was, strapped across her back. She would do more harm than good, probably to herself, if she joined the fight.
Ioan scrambled out of the pool as Emyr sent his horse crashing into it, silvery water splashing across the garden. Aerin rode into the garden’s entryway, Emyr’s guards behind her as she turned her horse so it blocked egress. Ioan glanced her way and she, too, bared her blade. Exasperation rushed across his features and he muttered “You were kinder as a child” before drawing a belt knife and turning his attention back to the monarch trying to kill him.
Emyr’s horse surged in a circle, spraying Ioan anew, but Emyr didn’t bother bringing the beast out of the pool. He had every advantage of reach and speed already; Ioan’s only weapon was the small knife, and the pool was shallow enough that Emyr retained the height advantage as well. He lunged, a quick, beautiful movement that saw the air around his sword chill. Ioan skittered back, knocking the tip of Emyr’s sword aside with his knife. “Your horse is your vulnerability, Emyr. Don’t make me kill it.”
“Will you not even call me Father?” Emyr lunged again, this time bringing the horse closer yet to the edge of the pool, and this time only narrowly missing Ioan as he darted back again.
“Would you even wish me to?” Ioan watched as Emyr lunged a third time, then darted in as Emyr’s blade retreated. Lara drew in A cold breath, but neither king nor beast was Ioan’s target. Instead the saddle’s strap parted under his knife, and Emyr, all indignity, slid sideways into the pool as the saddle came free. The splash was rimed with ice, and he came to his feet thigh-deep in the pool, frost crackling across his armor.
Ioan slammed into him before he fully had his balance. Emyr went down with a shout, driving his horse away. It scrambled free of the pool and shook itself before turning its elegant head to stare disdainfully at the men wrestling in the water. A spike of empathy for its evident opinion ran through Lara as Emyr, looking like a drowned rat in silver armor, rose again with one gauntleted hand holding Ioan beneath the surface.
The water was too ice-lined and choppy to clearly see what happened, but Emyr shouted and his feet came forward, sending him onto his back. Ioan popped up and lifted a fist. Water rose in the same gesture, Emyr captured in its grip, and Lara remembered suddenly that the Unseelie king’s element was water. Emyr was alive because Ioan wished it, but there was no reason to expect his goodwill would hold. Emyr held the Seelie people together; without him, the army might break, and the Unseelie might finally win the land they claimed was theirs.
It was a claim Lara preferred answered in ways that didn’t involve regicide.
“You will stop!” Her voice boomed across the garden, across the palace, across the whole of the Unseelie cavern. Echoes rained back on her and both combatants froze, Ioan with a hand still uplifted, Emyr in his watery grip. Even Aerin lowered her sword, and Emyr’s discontent host ceased their shuffling and muttering. Lara’s horse twitched an ear, then edged forward at her urging, stopping at the pool’s edge as she glowered at the men within. “Put him down, Ioan.”
A spasm of protest crossed Ioan’s face, but he did as he was told, opening his fist to drop Emyr gracelessly into the water. Emyr surged to his feet, water streaming from his armor. Lara made a guttural sound of warning as he turned on Ioan, and for the second time, both kings went still. Neither looked happy, Lara suddenly their common enemy.
Well, her agenda was not their own, and now she had their attention. Hands tight on her horse’s reins, she frowned down at Ioan. “Where’s Dafydd? Why hasn’t he returned to Emyr’s court?”
A second spasm, this time of regret, darkened Ioan’s face. “Because he’s dead, Truthseeker.”
Five
Nerveless, Lara slid from her horse’s back and put a hand against its shoulder so she could keep her feet. She was cold all over, her heartbeat too slow. She wanted to protest: No, it can’t be true! but neither her power nor Ioan’s flat words would allow for it. They rang on in her mind, finding notes that were true and notes that were not within what he’d said. Half-truths, the same kind she’d sensed when Dafydd ap Caerwyn had introduced himself as David Kirwen, the ordinary American translation of his name.
“You’re lying,” she said without conviction. He wasn’t quite telling the truth, but nor was he without question telling a falsehood. “Tell me what you mean.”
“I mean he’s dead, Lara, or close enough as it makes no difference.” Ioan, like Emyr, like all the others in the immediate area, seemed unable to move beyond where he’d been when Lara’s order had broken over them. It was just as well: Emyr’s expression said that if he could move freely, Ioan would be dead by now, or Emyr dead in the trying.
And Ioan had once been Emyr’s favorite. The glorified older son, given away to an enemy king as a hostage for good behavior. Distance had made the heart grow very fond indeed, and Dafydd had been unable to live up to the expectations of a brother who wasn’t there. Worse, Merrick had been raised under a Seelie roof by a father figure who loathed the sight of him. That status quo had held for aeons, and now was so undone that the beloved eldest would be dead if the father had his way.
Immortal elves were not so very different from mortal humans after all, it seemed. Lara closed her eyes, put her forehead against the horse’s shoulder, and again said, “Tell me what that means.” This time she infused it with command, bitterly confident she could force Ioan to confess all if need be.
“He returned from your world nothing more than a shell.” Ioan’s voice was brittle, as if the words were indeed forced. “His magic was burned out, leaving only a husk behind. I’ve never seen it before, not even in the oldest among us. Healers could, or would, do nothing to help.”
Emyr snarled, “They refused—?”
Ioan’s voice cooled further. “They refused an enemy prince, if that’s what happened. Some did try, of that I’m certain, but they could do nothing. The living power in him was so ruined that I don’t know how he continued to breathe. I kept him for weeks. Months, hoping the land itself would help him regain his strength. But in the end all that was keeping him alive was the h
ealers, and their gifts were needed elsewhere.”
Lara focused on her horse’s shoulder. The hair there was brown and gold, shifting subtly as the animal breathed. It was a small thing, normal, and helped her move past the fear chilling her blood so she could speak. “And?”
“And so I brought him to the Drowned Lands,” Ioan said softly. “To the waters that—”
Anything more he might have said was lost to the crash of metal against flesh. Something ripped loose inside Lara, as if the fabric of power she’d woven had suddenly been shredded by an unexpected force. Her chest hurt, air gone from her lungs. She barely turned her head in time to see Emyr smash a second fist at Ioan, the compulsion that had held him frozen now broken.
The broader man caught it with a grunt, trembling muscles visible beneath the wet silken fabric plastered to them. Blood welled along his cheekbone where Emyr’s first blow had landed, but his voice remained calm and soft. “To the waters that my people believe to be restorative. There is the potential of a hundred steads there, all the life that might have been, had they not drowned. The waters are rich with power. I could think of no other way to save Dafydd’s life. My lady Truthseeker, call off this dog before I am forced to drown it.”
Lara muttered, “The dog isn’t mine to call,” but added, more sharply, “Emyr, leave him alone.”
Tension left Emyr’s arm almost instantly, his body obeying even as his mind resisted. Ioan released him and backed away, water pouring from his clothes as he left the pool. Within seconds he was dry and tidy, as though the ruckus had never happened. Lara closed her mouth with a click and looked elsewhere to keep herself from staring. It didn’t work: in an instant she was gaping at the Unseelie king again, though she knew he would regard the magic he’d just called to be little more than a parlor trick. “What’s the problem with having sent Dafydd to the Drowned Lands to recover?”
Aerin sighed and nudged her horse a single step forward, calling attention to herself. Lara had a sudden impression of the white-haired woman’s life, always standing second to a king and his family, always there to answer the questions that needed answering but which royal pride refused to acknowledge. “They’re the waters Rhiannon drowned in, Lara. They might be restorative to the Unseelie, but the Seelie regard them as deadly. Sending Dafydd there is tantamount to an execution.”
“Don’t be absurd. We’re not separate races, one born of starlight and the other bred of earth. We’re one people, divided by a schism older than memory. What heals one will heal the other.” Ioan looked as though he’d had this argument a dozen times before.
“You are no part of us,” Emyr snapped. “You’re earth-grubbing, dank-loving fishermen and farmers, and we are—”
“You are my father,” Ioan reminded him. “Or had you forgotten that, Emyr? I’m the child you engendered. An earth-grubbing, dank-loving stoneworker and king.”
“And what have you done with the king before you?”
“Hafgan? Like Dafydd, he has returned to the Drowned Lands.” Ioan’s voice dropped. “Were his stories true, Father? Did you drown the Unseelie lands and uproot a people?”
“I owe you no answers.”
“I want an answer.” Lara stepped forward, anger rising in her again. She had lost time and now Dafydd to the Barrow-lands’ bickering and politics. They had asked her to uncover hidden truths. She was not going to stand aside now, not when she had come this far.
Emyr waded out of the pool. It was a measure of him, Lara thought, that he could be as unforgiving and regal as he was even standing thigh-deep in water. “Did you drown the Unseelie lands, Emyr? Did you start this war?”
“I do not recall.” The precision of his words belied their softness, making them more a threat than a confession. But the music in them rang pure, if unsettled: his voice could carry a whole orchestra of sound, perhaps as the result of age. The symphony it played was one of foreboding and distrust, directed as much inwardly as toward Lara. Emyr didn’t recall, and from the rumbling music, loathed that inability. “It is why I said to ask Hafgan,” he went on, music thick with stress. “And yet it seems his memories were failing, too. When so much time has gone by, Truthseeker, what does it matter?”
“People are still dying over it, that’s what it matters. Ioan, the Drowned Lands, the healing waters … are you sure Hafgan’s not just dead? You’re not using a euphemism?” Lara doubted it; figures of speech tended to set off warning bells, and Ioan had come across as sincere.
He shook his head. “At rest, but not dead. He could be roused,” he said reluctantly. “If it is necessary, he can be awakened.”
As could Dafydd, Lara concluded silently. Relief swept over her as heat, making her want to turn away and hide her face until her expression was under control. But Dafydd’s health, important as it was to her personally, might be the least of the concerns she faced. Clinging to the hope of his recovery, she steadied her voice to say, “Okay. So we have two old people—”
Emyr made such a violent sound of protest that Lara laughed. “Forgive me, your majesty. Ancient peers. Venerable elders. Respected monarchs. Old people,” she repeated with cheerful emphasis. “Neither of whom can remember all the details. I might be able to help you remember, but I’m going to need both of you. And probably anyone else old enough to remember the drowning of the lands. Was Oisín here then?”
Aerin nodded, earning a dark look from her king. Lara, though, smiled. Oisín and she had not only mortality in common, but also love for an immortal. More usefully, though, their magic interfered with elfin power. Glamours and other misguidances might cease to function with two human magic users on hand. That would save time, as she doubted either Emyr or Hafgan would willingly reveal the secrets they half recalled.
“And what will you do if you find answers?” Ioan wondered.
Lara touched the staff she wore across her back. “Try to fix what was broken. Isn’t that the whole idea?”
Ioan’s gaze sharpened as if he hadn’t fully seen her until then. “That—?”
“I found it in my world, like you thought I might.” Lara spread one hand and let it fall, willing to let the simple explanation suffice. “I have to be sure of what’s happened here before I’ll be ready to use it, but it has tremendous power. If anything can help set things right here, I think it can.”
“If? If you’re willing to use it, if there’s anything to be healed? How can you doubt?”
“Because none of you know the whole truth, and I’m not about to start rearranging the landscape here on anybody’s say-so.”
“Forgive me, Lara.” The lines of Ioan’s face hardened as he spoke, intimating that he had no expectation of forgiveness, but every expectation of obedience. “My people have suffered far too much to wait any longer. I will have that staff from you now.”
His voice rang with command, even with truth, but Ioan’s demand was so preposterous Lara had a fleeting moment of simply not believing him. Her gift had changed in the past weeks, adapting enough that she could have such moments, but the sensation of disbelief was still almost entirely new.
He wasn’t lying. It was simply that his expectations lay so completely opposite her own as to be astonishing. Lara worked past the emotion to respond with cool certainty: “No. You won’t.”
“I—” Ioan, as astounded by the refusal as she was by the ultimatum, broke off, then scowled in an excellent mimicry of Emyr. “You are alone, Truthseeker, and in the heart of my city. How do you expect to stop me from taking it?”
Lara heard Emyr’s guards shift, closing ranks, preparing to fight. That was answer enough, but the staff thrummed with anticipation that warmed her spine. Emyr had said it abhored a Seelie touch. Even if Lara herself couldn’t stop Ioan with words, the staff itself seemed likely to reject him. “Do you really want to test me, Ioan?”
His lip curled and smoothed again very quickly, as if he’d hoped threat alone might cow her into giving up the staff, but he was wise enough not to press the matter. Lara n
odded, satisfied, and went on. “I don’t trust any of you with it. Not you, not Emyr, maybe not even Dafydd. You all have your own agendas. I’m the only outsider.”
“My agenda,” Ioan said through his teeth, “is merely the survival of my people, Truthseeker.”
“By which you mean the Unseelie, despite having argued that Seelie and Unseelie are all one race not two minutes ago.”
Chagrin flushed Ioan’s cheeks. Lara rolled her eyes. “I’m hardly going to give you the staff so you can commit genocide. What I will do is collect every puzzle piece I can and put them together to make the clearest picture possible before doing anything.”
“What gives you the right,” Aerin murmured from the sidelines.
Lara splayed a hand in exasperation. “Dafydd does, by asking me to come here and solve Merrick’s murder in the first place. You all do, by your word for what I am. Truthseeker. You can’t give me that title and then not expect me to go seeking the truth. And you may have thought I would fetch and deliver this staff to you, Ioan, but you yourself named it Worldbreaker. I don’t believe any neutral truthseeker with a weapon like that in her hands would be inclined to offer it to an individual with an ax to grind. What does it take to bring someone back from the … healing waters?” Lara chose the less ominous phrase deliberately. “Is it a spell? Can we bring Hafgan and Dafydd here like the worldwalking spell brought me here?”
Aerin, softly, said, “No one returns from the Drowned Lands,” but Ioan raised a hand to silence her.
“No one returns without help,” he agreed, “but that doesn’t mean no one returns. There are trials to be faced, but they must be faced even when bringing someone to the healing waters. The petitioner must be found worthy.”