by C. E. Murphy
“That’s not possible. They almost killed us.”
Lara let go a quick laugh. “Maybe it’s not possible, but it’s true. It’s just like the military trying to use compressed air for nonlethal weapons.” She started back up the mountain, hearing Kelly follow close behind. “The only difference is this guy can add a visible component to the attack. I’m sure of it.” She felt like she was floating on the music, confidence shoring her up.
“The military can’t turn compressed air into visible rocks,” Kelly muttered, but the argument had run out of her. “Lara, what do we do against somebody who can turn illusion against us? I mean, he could be hiding in plain sight.”
“I don’t think it’ll work on me now that I’m looking for it. Dafydd’s glamour wouldn’t, anyway. I knew he was using it, but I still saw him as he really is.”
“Good,” Kelly whispered. “In that case, can you please tell me that I’m not seeing the Headless Horseman riding down on me?”
Lara twisted around in time to watch blood splatter from Kelly’s face.
She saw nothing: no horse, no cloaked figure, no sword; nothing but Kelly spinning with the hit she’d taken. There was no sound, not even of Kelly hitting the earth, much less hoofbeats against the stone. Two, she thought clearly: two upstate New York legends so far, and though she didn’t like fairy tales, Lara knew these things usually happened in threes. She said “Two is enough” under her breath, and slipped down yards of grass-riddled rock to Kelly’s side.
Her friend’s eyes were wide but glazed, and the cut along her cheek scored hideously deep. It had caught the bone, narrowly missing her eye; narrowly missing the fleshy cheek, where it might well have severed her face. The strength Lara had wished for earlier roared through her and she savaged the skirt of her dress, tearing off a strip to ball it against Kelly’s face.
Kelly gave a thin gaspy shriek that turned to a real scream as she saw something over Lara’s shoulder. Lara risked a glance as she folded herself over Kelly. There was nothing there, a promise she shouted into Kelly’s screams. The truth was a shield and Lara its manifestation; no new scores opened in Kelly’s flesh, though she whimpered again with fear.
“It isn’t there, Kel. It isn’t there.” Truth pounded through the words, but not enough: even if Kelly wanted to believe her, the monsters were too real. Lara, shaking with determination, bent her head over Kelly’s until their foreheads touched. “I’m going to show you. I have to show you, so you’re not afraid. So it won’t be able to hurt you. This will work,” she promised. “It has to work.”
The music had always been internal, even when it had opened a path from one place to another. Even when she’d sung aloud to focus it, the power had come from within, bound by her flesh.
It wasn’t enough. Not this time, not now. She reached for the staff where it lay to the side, abandoned when she’d collapsed at Kelly’s side, but it remained sullenly quiet, unwilling to offer her any of the strength it had shown when she’d struck it against the earth and broken open a path to another world. Frustrated, she wished for an instrument, for some talent to share music directly with others through something other than her voice. A lifetime of hearing truth’s song, and she’d never thought to learn to play anything. She would, she promised herself. She would do that, when she was free of the complicated world Dafydd had introduced her to.
The words woke a snatch of music in her mind, a phrase of gospel song. Eyes closed, she whispered the lyrics, then struggled to strengthen her voice. “Great God Almighty, I am free, I am free at last.”
She whispered the will to be free toward Kelly; freedom from the illusions of the world, from the comforting lies, from the terrible things hidden by falsehood. Freedom, most especially, from the magic that convinced her of the Horseman’s presence. Such a conviction could hurt her, even kill her, if she believed hard enough.
Song and strength poured out of her in a rush, leaving her temporarily bereft and in sudden silence. Kelly, though, screamed again and surged upright, fingers clawing at something Lara couldn’t see. “Oh my God, oh my God, no, make it stop!”
“Kelly! Kel, it’s me! You’re okay, I’ve got you!” Lara caught her, holding on hard, and for long seconds Kelly struggled, her gaze still panicked and distant. Then she collapsed, hands over her ears as she twisted away from Lara.
A mad orchestra, every instrument playing its own tune, crashed back over Lara as Kelly broke away. She put her own hands to her head, agog at the noise. It drowned out the sound of her heartbeat, of her breathing; of every normal thing that told her she was alive. The world was abruptly too much to take in, filled with cluttered, unorganized truth that no one person could possibly bear.
But she’d borne it all her life. Lara shook her head hard, trying to sort out the cacophony, and pieces of it fell away so quickly she had the impression the very world was abashed at its behavior. Notes came clearer, different instruments coming in to tune with one another, so that when a sour flute sounded she sensed it as wrong, and tried to tug it into alignment. It resisted and she pulled harder, then let herself forget it as Kelly half sat up, staring at her in horror.
“Is that what it’s always like? So loud, all that music everywhere, all that pain, all that awful truth?” She crumpled and Lara pulled her close again, breath coming hard and short.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“I don’t ever, ever want to see things the way you do again.”
“I promise,” Lara whispered. “I promise, Kel. I’m sorry. I know you weren’t meant to see things like that. Only I am.” The world was calmer now, cymbals of discontent settling into more regular chimes. Distortions still rippled through it, tunelessness striking again, and this time she recognized it as the same dissonant warning the nightwings carried with them. It was closer, reluctantly closer, and she remembered how she’d pulled at that off-tone, trying to make it match the rest.
“Well done,” said a bitter male voice. “Well done indeed, Truthseeker. I had never meant to come this far.”
Bewildered, bloody, angry, Lara lifted her gaze to see a young man—as all the people of the Barrow-lands were—standing before her, his dark hair shadowing equally dark eyes. He had his people’s beauty, but it was marred with a glimmer of madness. “Ah,” he said, mocking. “But you don’t know who I am, do you.”
“You’re wrong. I do.” Lara, full of calm certainty, got to her feet. “You’re Merrick ap Annwn, and this is all your doing.”
Thirty-Six
“When did you know?” Strained curiosity filled the Unseelie prince’s voice, as though he strove to make light of being discovered, and fell just short.
Lara gave a deprecating laugh. “Not until just now. Not until I started thinking what could be done with illusion. I just don’t understand why. What do you get out of starting a war between the courts?”
“Power.” Merrick shrugged. “You should have seen that much, Truthseeker. What else does any ill-favored son covet?”
Kelly, unexpectedly, muttered, “A father’s love, usually. It’s all very Oedipal, or something. Lara—”
Lara hissed a warning, trying to silence her friend. Merrick’s gaze flickered to her, then back to Lara, a dismissal that caused Kelly to draw offended breath. “Tscht!” Lara said, and splayed her fingers backward, trying again to cut Kelly off without ever taking her own eyes from Merrick.
His attention, though, was drawn to Kelly a second time. “You mortals have a saying, I think. One that suits my situation. ‘Better to reign in Hell,’ is that not what you say?”
“Not most of us.” Kelly subsided as Lara shot a despairing glance over her shoulder. The wadded-up skirt Kelly held against her face was black and wet with blood, and something in the way her mouth pinched told Lara that sharp commentary was meant to distract Kelly from her injury. But the truth wasn’t a shield that could protect her, and so Lara was desperate for her silence, not wanting Merrick’s regard to linger on her.
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“For most of you,” Merrick said softly, “there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of others between yourselves and absolute sovereignty. For me there are four. It’s a surmountable number, and most easily achieved through war.” His voice sharpened. “A war that should have been met within hours of my ‘death,’ were it not for mortal interference.”
“Mor—I didn’t get to the Barrow-lands for almost two weeks.” Lara turned back to Merrick, her hands clenched with worry.
“But Oisín made his prophecy and stayed Emyr’s hand for those critical few days until my dear brother could bring you from the mortal world to ours. How is Dafydd?” he added, voice gone oily and smooth. “Shall we see, Truthseeker?”
He made a familiar gesture, fingers clawing the air to rip a shining door between one world and the next. Lara’s breath caught and she started forward, but Merrick lifted an imperious hand. “Do you know what a scrying spell is, Truthseeker?”
“It lets you see across—” “The Barrow-lands” was how the sentence was meant to finish, but Lara swallowed it along with bitter recognition. “Across space,” she said instead, and Merrick’s smile turned pointed with approval.
“Very good. It’s no small feat to turn the worldwalking spell to a scrying window, but let us see what’s to be seen. Think of Dafydd, Truthseeker. Think of your love.”
Anger and fear stung Lara in equal parts. Merrick knew more than she did, as if he’d been watching them all along. The frequency of the nightwing attacks struck her, and she thought perhaps he had been, right from the moment she’d crossed into his world. She didn’t want to give him an even greater advantage by playing his game, and yet …
She’d escaped the Barrow-lands through a twist of magic she had no idea how to command, much less replicate. Merrick’s torturesome offering could far too easily be the last chance she would have to see Dafydd ap Caerwyn. She crept forward, gaze locked on the glittering window between worlds.
The image on its other side swam, blurring with the thickness of melting glass, then slowly came clearer, focused on a single man. Dafydd lay in a bed of ermine, impossibly pale against the soft black fur. He didn’t move, not even to breathe, so far as Lara could tell. She muffled a cry, inching closer, and became aware that she was almost within Merrick ap Annwn’s reach. She froze in place, unwilling to risk his presence even when distance from the window lost details that might have eased her heart.
His surroundings were semi-familiar to her, the Unseelie palace’s black opalescent walls reflecting light from the scrying window. A white-haired woman moved into the image, tall and confident in her moon-silver armor: Aerin, who in no way belonged at the heart of the Unseelie palace. She knelt beside Dafydd, then slipped an arm behind his shoulders, helping him to sit, and offered him a drink from a goblet like the one Ioan had shared with Lara.
Childish envy made Lara’s eyes hot. She dashed the heel of her hand against them, trying to turn misery into anger. “She shouldn’t even be there. What’s she doing there?”
Answers flooded her without Merrick speaking aloud. Aerin was one of Dafydd’s oldest friends; Ioan might well have sent for her, or even stolen her the way he’d done Lara herself, so that someone Dafydd knew would be there to care for him. Someone of his own people, rather than an unknown Unseelie. Ioan might even be wary of showing himself to Dafydd; he had no way of knowing that Lara had already betrayed the secret of his change to the younger Seelie prince.
And the more hateful answer was even more obvious than those. They were lovers, Dafydd and Aerin, perhaps even meant to wed someday. Lara was an ephemeral thing to them, barely lasting a moment. She could never offer what Aerin might: a lifetime of intimacy for a man whose years spanned aeons.
Dafydd took a wracking breath, doubling against Aerin’s side. Hope leaped in Lara’s heart: he was alive, at least, and she hadn’t been at all certain he would be. He’d been so weak, so close to burned out entirely, all for the sake of protecting her and her world. A life like his lost for a planet full of mortals who would neither know nor care would be criminal, and that ache rang true in Lara’s breast. Aerin helped him to lie down again, smoothed his hair, and stood, leaving the scrying window’s frame.
Lara whispered, “No. Follow her.” Dafydd was sleeping; he would remain that way without her worried supervision. The window, at Merrick’s command but at Lara’s wish, trailed after Aerin until she entered another room, more grandiose and brighter than the one she’d left.
Ioan ap Annwn stood alone in that room, looking through a window of his own. Lara imagined he looked over his city, and wondered how many of his people had returned. Not enough. If even one was lost, not enough had returned.
Merrick made a startled sound as Aerin said, “Ioan,” and for an instant Lara’s gaze strayed to him. She’d told Dafydd of Ioan’s transformation, but Merrick, true son of the Unseelie king, hadn’t known about it. He must have expected a man as pale as Dafydd to appear in his scrying window, and a strange twinge of sympathy jolted Lara. He had been traded away and now it was revealed to him that he had been replaced more thoroughly than he ever would have dreamed. No one would take such a change of fortunes easily.
His crimes, though, had been developed well before he had made this discovery. Lara tightened her stomach muscles, trying to literally harden her heart, and turned her attention back to the window between worlds.
“He’s dying,” Aerin said in response to something Ioan had said. Then she shook her head and sat gracefully, as though she wore a court gown rather than armor. “Worse than dying. His fire is gone, Ioan. Everything that makes him Seelie is burned away. He’s … mortal.”
Something akin to disgust filled the last word, but Lara’s hands went icy with hope. Mortal meant a life span like hers, a lifetime that could be shared. Her heart hammered with a painful, misplaced joy. If she could return to him even briefly, then she might convince him to come home with her, where they could be together without magic or monsters to confuse their future.
Selfish, she whispered to herself, but repugnancy crossed Ioan’s face as well. Wouldn’t it be better, she reasoned, to make a home and a life in a world where everything was mortal, than to always be an object of pity and disgust in the land that had once been his?
“I can open the door,” Merrick said. Truth shivered through it, proof of his royal blood. “You could bring him back here. It would be the end of everything you tried to do in the Barrow-lands, but it would be a future for both of you.”
Without thinking, Lara breathed, “Open it,” and the window winked back to Dafydd’s chambers. Light exploded everywhere, gold and blinding, but she ran forward, staying just out of Merrick’s reach as she dove across worlds.
She hit the black mother-of-pearl floor with as much dignity as she’d landed in a sandbox weeks earlier, but this time she was able to roll to her feet and run to Dafydd’s bedside. The furs were soft, so soft she wanted to bury herself in them and hold Dafydd forever. She could, she promised herself. She could hold him, but not here. His skin was cool beneath hers as she caught his hand and brought it to her lips.
Like a fairy tale, his eyes opened at her touch. They were brown now, such an ordinary mortal color, and confusion rose in them as he frowned. “Lara?”
“Come with me. Merrick’s holding the door open—” She glanced over her shoulder, making certain it was true. Merrick stood in her world, grim with concentration against a backdrop of stones and mountain grass. He made a gesture: hurry, and she twisted back to the exhausted man on the bed. “Dafydd, you used too much power. You burned out your magic, but you’re alive, and you’re … you’re mortal, Dafydd. Come with me,” she whispered. “We can be together in my world for the rest of our lives. But we have to hurry. It’s a terrible thing to ask without any warning, I know that, but there isn’t much time.”
“I’m not … I’m not sure I can.” Dafydd laughed thinly as Lara scooted her arm under his shoulders like Aerin had. “I barely remember what
happened, Lara. I’m very weak.”
“I know. The nightwings, the hydra—” Lara shook her head. “I’ll tell you everything later, but if Aerin comes back—”
“She won’t stop you.” Aerin’s voice, cool as glass, came from the doorway. Lara flinched toward it, awed all over again at the woman’s tall beauty. She’d set aside her armor in the little time that had passed, and looked the part of a queen in her castle, garbed in white that spoke of a bride’s gown. “He would only be a reminder of what we’ve lost,” she said. “It’s better for all our people to make a new start together.”
Ioan entered behind her, putting his hand under hers. He was resplendent in black, groom to her bride, and his handsome features were pinched with sorrow. “This war has offered us that much, at least. We’re no longer enemies, and reparations are being made to the Unseelie people. Emyr is reluctant, but dares not stand against the rising sentiment of all our peoples. Take Dafydd,” he murmured. “Make a good life. Do not come here again.”
Lara, heart breaking, whispered, “We won’t,” and helped Dafydd to his feet. He hesitated, looking toward the brother he didn’t know and the woman he did, and then drew strength from somewhere, straightening himself to walk, unbowed, through the door that Merrick held open.
It blinked out behind them and Dafydd dropped to his knees, exhaustion greater than pride. Lara fell with him, trying to support him. Relief mingled with joy and terror and sent her heart hammering. A life with her; he had chosen a life with her, and no amount of worry could undo that. But now he turned his gaze slowly upward to examine Merrick ap Annwn. “You were dead.”
“It was a trick.” Merrick’s lip curled. “A trick that has not played out how I meant it to. I meant to be the crowned head that it seems Ioan ap Caerwyn now is.”
“But we were brothers.”
“No. I was a hostage to my father’s good behavior, and no amount of time could have made me more than that within your father’s court. What else was I to do, Dafydd? Spend all of history waiting to sip from a cup that would never come?”